The driver pulled up to a curb next to a gravel walkway that led to a blank steel door.

“Is this where my dad is?” I asked as we headed to the door.

The man didn’t answer, but he pulled a blank white card from his jacket pocket and waved it in front of a plastic square next to the door. A light turned from red to green, and the door clicked. He pulled it open and motioned for me to enter.

We were definitely not at the front desk. A narrow hallway, with linoleum flooring and a chemical smell, lay before us, air-conditioned and chilly. I could hear the faint hum of electricity, like from an old refrigerator.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Then take a left.”

Boot steps echoed behind me as I walked. I was sweating more now than I did during the whole eight-mile ride through the woods.

I shouldn’t have come here. I should have waited for my dad to come home—but how soon was that going to be? There was no home for him to come back to, anyway.

We turned left at a T junction and went down another long hallway, with doors lining the left side. The walls were cinder block, painted beige to match the floor. The place looked weathered and smelled like school bathrooms after the janitor had washed them.

“Room 203,” the man said sharply.

I turned the knob, which was cold, and entered the room to see a few people sitting and standing around a table, none of them my dad.

Two men in suits, the ones who had come to watch football practice, were there. So was a third man who didn’t stand. He appeared to be a scientist, wearing a white lab coat, and I had a shock of recognition.

The face. Skin pulled back. Burnt.

The man from my nightmare.

CHAPTER 25

Jordan

I STUMBLED BACKWARD into the wall, staring at the grotesque scientist. His skin was stretched across his face. He was heavily scarred, whether by fire or acid or some major plastic-surgery mishap. He had no lips, so his teeth were completely exposed, as if he were a grinning skull. He had no ears, at least as far as I could tell, and his hair sprouted in little parched-crabgrass patches. One of his eyes was completely white and opaque, and the other was a dot of black.

I had a dual impulse to vomit and to blubber like a baby, but I was too shocked to move. I reminded myself to breathe.

“Please sit down,” said one of the men with no please in his tone.

The human-looking guys offered little to tell them apart. Aside from their identical black suits, white shirts, and black ties, they wore their dark hair parted on the left and looked to be about six feet tall. The best way to tell them apart was one man had a small scar on his chin, while the other sported a plain gold ring on his finger. Each was the all-American man: white, tall, lean, and someone who could give me a lot of trouble.