He rubbed his wrists—they weren’t stiff, or sore, but it was a hard habit to shake, that urge, and the small gestures that made people ordinary. Human. Eli surveyed the room. It was an elegant hotel suite, with a large bed and two tall windows. A garment bag hung on the back of the bathroom door, another had been cast onto the bed. A chair sat beneath one of the large windows, a low desk beneath the other, its surface adorned with a pad of paper and a pen.

Eli started toward it.

“Stay away from the windows, inmate.”

Eli ignored him, resting his hand on the desk. “We’re here because of this window.” His fingers closed around the pen. “This view.”

He leaned across the desk and looked out at the Old Courthouse across the street.

What a perfect choice, thought Eli. After all, a courthouse was a place of judgment. Justice.

He straightened, slipping the pen up his sleeve, and started for the bathroom.

“Where do you think you’re going?” demanded Green Eyes.

“To take a shower,” said Eli. “I need to be presentable.”

The soldiers looked to Stell, who stared at Eli for a long moment before nodding. “Sweep it,” he ordered.

Eli waited while the soldiers secured the bathroom, making sure there was no way out, removing anything that might be even vaguely construed as a weapon. As if Eli himself weren’t the weapon of choice today.

When the soldiers were satisfied, he unhooked the garment bag from the bathroom door and stepped inside. He was pulling it shut when one of the soldiers caught the door. “Leave it open.”

“Suit yourself,” said Eli.

He left a foot of clearance, for modesty. Hung up the borrowed suit, and turned on the shower.

With his back to the open door, Eli freed the stolen pen from the cuff of his EON-issued jacket and held it between his teeth as he stripped off the clothes, let them pool around his feet.

He stepped into the shower, the frosted glass door falling shut behind him. He ran his fingers over the surface of the steel collar, searching for a weakness, a groove or clasp. But he found none. Eli hissed in annoyance.

The collar, then, would have to wait.

He removed the stolen pen from his mouth, and under the static of the water’s spray, snapped it in two.

It was hardly ideal, but it was the closest thing to a knife he was likely to get.

Eli closed his eyes, and summoned the pages from the black folder.

He’d studied them thoroughly, memorized the photos and scans that had accompanied each of Haverty’s experiments.

The record had been gruesome but revealing.