“You were a lost, broken girl when we brought you into the program,” she said. “We made you a colonel.”

“You turned me into a weapon that belonged to you,” I said.

“And now you are pointing that weapon at your own family,” Caroline said.

“You aren’t family,” I said. “You’re a project manager.”

Behind them, the rain lashed against the boarded-up windows of the parlor.

I knew Mara was in the basement, her fingers flying across the keyboard as the black drive’s data crawled up into the cloud.

I needed to keep them here, in this room, until the progress bar reached one hundred percent.

“The files on that drive,” Voss said, his eyes scanning the dark corners of the ceiling. “You don’t know what you’re holding.”

“I know enough,” I said. “I know about the chemical trials in Virginia.”

“Those trials saved thousands of tactical personnel from cognitive degradation,” Voss said.

“They killed twenty-four soldiers in a basement in Norfolk,” I said.

Voss sighed, a small puff of white mist in the cold air of the room.

“Progress requires a baseline,” he said.