Her stomach began a slow, creeping slide toward her feet.

“And the date and city of your birth?”

There was an employee file open on the desk in front of him in which, Lu knew, all her information was held, including the date and place of her birth, but he ignored it as if it wasn’t there.

“September twelfth, twenty-twelve. Vienna. Old Vienna.”

He lifted the skeletal hand and stroked one finger slowly along the edge of her file, his thin lips pursed, his expression thoughtful. “So you would have been about . . . thirteen months old at the time of the Flash. An infant.”

He said the word infant as if it was bomb or plague or serial killer. Lu was mystified.

“Yes.”

“And your parents? Their occupations?”

What the hell was this? Why wasn’t he asking her about what happened with Cushing last night? What exactly was he getting at? “My father works in the grow light fields. My mother . . . my mother is dead.”

“Your father now works in the grow light fields,” the Grand Minister corrected, his voice as soft as silk. “But he didn’t always work there. Did he.”

The last part wasn’t a question. He was insinuating something, but Lu had no idea what. “Yes, sir, he’s always worked in the fields. As long as I can remember, anyway. Ever since I was—”

“An infant,” he finished quietly, his cold blue gaze meeting hers. Her spine crawled as if a cluster of tarantulas were crawling up it.

“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t really know what—”

“Your father was a missionary before the Flash, traveling from country to country, trying to convert people to his faith. Were you aware of that?”

He stared at her accusingly. She stared back, utterly stumped. Her father had pointedly refused to speak of what he did before the Flash. It was one of his “stop asking so many questions, Lu,” “the past is just that, Lu” off-limits subjects.

“No. He never mentioned it.”

The Grand Minister’s brows arched. “Never once, in twenty-five years? Strange, don’t you think?”

“Strange,” concurred one of the guards flatly, and Lu stiffened.

“Yes, my sources tell me he was quite religious back in the day,” the Grand Minister said with a sniff of disdain, still fondling her file with an almost reverential touch. “I understand he felt personally called by God to spread the word, primarily to the poor and uneducated. In places”—he paused, looking musingly at the ceiling—“far off the beaten track.”

Her shock at hearing the forbidden word God on the Grand Minister’s lips was eclipsed by her shock of discovering her father had been a missionary before the Flash.

Or had he? Was this all part of the game?

Beneath the thin latex kitchen gloves she was still wearing, Lu’s palms began to sweat. Her fight or flight instincts were screaming FLEE! but she was rooted in place, unable to move.

The Grand Minister abruptly turned to one of his guards and said, “Scanner.”

From beneath his fitted jacket, the burly guard produced a thin, black device, wireless, about the size of the government-issued data pad on which Lu played IF-approved games, visited IF-approved websites, and read the IF-approved news. This device, however, had an outline of a hand with fingers spread on the display, and Lu sagged with relief.

Fingerprint scanner, not ocular.

The guard set the scanner on the desk in front of her, touched an invisible button to activate it, and stepped away as the screen glowed red.

Without a word, the Grand Minister motioned for Lu to put her hand on the screen.

Proud that her hand wasn’t shaking, she slowly peeled the glove from her right hand and laid it on the cool glass of the scanner. There came a soft glow, a line of light moved across the length and breadth of her hand, then a beep sounded, which to her ears seemed almost disappointed. The screen again went black, and Lu stepped away.

“Well, Fräulein Bohn, it appears you have fingerprints. And they match your mainframe profile. Congratulations.”

His tone wasn’t congratulatory. He and the guard who’d produced the scanner shared a loaded glance, and Lu was seized with the terrifying certainty that he already knew she was wearing synthetic, black market bonded prints to cover her lack of natural ones, and this entire thing was a ruse. A sadistic game, designed for his amusement, to see how long he could frighten her before she’d finally break.

She was already close to breaking. On the console behind him, a pencil skittered across the glass top and rolled off onto the floor, landing with a plunk as loud as gunfire in the silent room.

Everyone ignored it.

Slowly, carefully, Lu slid the latex glove into her coat pocket, then stood with both hands hanging loosely at her sides. The Grand Minister watched every movement with the avid attention of a crocodile contemplating a meal.

“Have you ever seen an Aberrant, Fräulein Bohn?” he asked quietly, studying her. “Up close and personal, I mean. In real life.”

Lu didn’t dare move.

“I must admit, for such vile creatures, they’re quite beautiful. Unnaturally so. Every single one of them I’ve ever encountered, male or female, has a certain . . . otherworldly appeal. It’s always puzzled me, how such beauty could conceal such evil.” His tone became contemplative. “But I suppose your father might remind me that Lucifer was the most beautiful of all the angels, before he was cast from heaven.” His gaze raked her face. After a moment, he said softly, “You’ve inherited your mother’s looks.”

Lu’s mother had been short and thick-waisted, an olive-skinned brunette. The two of them looked nothing alike.

All at once, Lu understood, and the world fell away beneath her feet.

This man had known her mother. Her real mother.

And he knew what Lu was.

Heat rushed to her face, burned hot across her cheekbones. A thrill ran through her body, high and pure and resonating, and with an awful, bellowing battle cry, the monster inside her leapt to its feet.

Lu took a single step backward. Each guard took a single step in. In a coordinated move, they reached inside their jackets.

In a gentle voice, the Grand Minister said, “If you cooperate, you won’t be harmed. Your father won’t be harmed. The stories of the treatment of Aberrants are greatly exaggerated, urban myths. You’ll be kept with others of your kind, kept comfortably and well. You’ll never want for anything again.” His voice grew even more caressing. He looked at her pleadingly, with grandfatherly concern. “And you can meet your mother—you’d like that, wouldn’t you? To meet your birth mother? She’s missed you so much.”

Lies, all of them, spoken with such ease Lu had to admit that beneath her hatred for this man, she felt a twinge of jealousy. It cost him exactly nothing to produce these smooth untruths, to playact a role. She wished she’d been blessed with such an ability; it would have made her own mask-wearing life much easier.

The funny thing was, knowing she’d finally been discovered wasn’t the terrifying experience Lu had always assumed it would be. She felt instead as if a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Though her nerves were stretched taut and adrenaline coursed through her veins, all her fear fell away like a skin she was shedding, until finally there was nothing but acceptance, cold and solid as rock.

Life as she knew it was over.

So be it. If she was being honest with herself, she’d known it would come to this all along. The relief was almost dizzying.

The Schottentor gate, you know the one? We’ll get you out. Look for the white rabbit.

Lu reached out with her mind. It was like stretching a rubber band, pulling her awareness across empty space until she came up against a soft resistance. She pushed past it, and with the animal inside her sinking into a killing crouch, said silently into the Grand Minister’s head, I’m going to roast you for those lies, you smug son of a bitch.