Chapter 1: The Bomb

Anthony Vale kissed me under the awning outside the library while the rain came down so hard it sounded like a crowd clapping. I stood with my back against cold brick and my heart going off like a firework, thinking, finally. Three months. That was how long it had taken me.

Three months of drinking coffee I hated because he liked it. Three months of walking him to class the long way, memorizing which professors he complained about and which ones he secretly admired, learning badminton just so I could lose to him with a straight face. I had earned this kiss. I had paid for it in sweat and stupidity and one sprained wrist.

"I think I'm in love with you," Anthony said against my mouth, and he laughed a little afterward, embarrassed, like the words had slipped out before he could stop them.

I opened my eyes. His lashes were wet and his hand was warm on the back of my neck. Somewhere behind my ribs a small voice that sounded a lot like me said, you did it, you actually did it, and I was ready to cry right there in front of the book return box.

Then another voice cut in, flat as a dial tone.

"Mission one is complete."

I froze. Anthony kept smiling at me, so he hadn't heard it. Of course he hadn't. Nobody heard the system but me, which was the only reason I had not been dragged to a doctor yet. It had shown up the morning I woke in this dorm room, in this body, with this schedule taped above the desk and no memory of how I got here. It had given me one job and one deadline, and I had followed both like a good little employee.

"Thank you," I thought back, keeping my face soft for Anthony. "Does this mean I get a rest now? A day off? Maybe a week at the beach?"

"Error detected," the system said.

My smile stayed where it was, but my stomach started to slide. "What kind of error?"

"The target was selected incorrectly."

"Hey," Anthony said, and his thumb moved over my cheekbone. "You went quiet. Are you okay?"

"Yeah," I said. My voice came out about an octave too high. "Just happy. Really happy. I need to use the bathroom."

I do not remember how I got him home. I remember the walk, his umbrella tilted over my head instead of his, his shoulder getting soaked, and me nodding at everything he said without hearing a word. I remember kissing him goodnight at his door like a man kissing a grave. Then I ran to my own room, locked the door, sat down on the cold tile of the shared bathroom, and hissed at the ceiling.

"Explain. Slowly. Using small words."

"Anthony Vale is not your conquest target," the system said, in the same tone a person might use to read a weather report. "He was a misidentification during the initial scan. The correct target has now been confirmed."

I put my head between my knees. Three months. Ninety days of my one and only life, wasted on a misidentification. "Who is it? Tell me it's someone nice. Tell me it's someone who likes cats."

"Lucas Hale."

I lifted my head slowly. The bathroom light buzzed above me like a fly that knew something I didn't.

"Lucas," I repeated. "Lucas Hale. The tall one, with the jaw, who sits three rows ahead of me in macroeconomics?"

"Correct."

"The one who looked me up and down at orientation like I was something he'd stepped in?"

"Correct."

"The one who calls me the parasite when he thinks I can't hear it?" My voice was climbing now, bouncing off the tile. "The one who told Anthony, in front of the whole study group, that I smell like desperation and cheap cologne? I don't even own cologne! That is slander!"

"Correct," the system said, bored.

I put a hand over my face and breathed through my fingers. I could see him so clearly it was insulting. Black hair that never seemed to get wet in the rain, shoulders that took up more of a doorway than any person's should, and a mouth that only ever moved to say something cruel. Every time he saw me, his eyes went flat and cold, like a door being shut. Every time Anthony laughed at something I said, Lucas's gaze would drift over and sit on me for one second too long, heavy with something I had always assumed was disgust.

And now the universe wanted me to make that man fall in love with me.

"This has to be a joke," I said. "I will go to my grave begging. Pick someone else. Pick anyone else. I'll take a professor. I'll take the guy who sells bootleg sandwiches in the quad."

"The target cannot be changed."

"Then I quit."

"Quitting results in erasure."

The word landed in the bathroom like a dropped plate. "Erasure of what?"

"You."

I stared at the grout between the tiles. Out in the hall someone laughed and a door slammed, ordinary dorm noises that suddenly sounded very far away. My hands were shaking, which annoyed me, because I wanted to be angry and not scared.

"How long do I have?" I asked at last.

"Ninety days from this moment."

Ninety days. I did some quick, miserable math. The semester ended in forty-one. That meant I would have to win over a man who hated my face, while somehow breaking up with the boyfriend I had just spent three months acquiring, without Anthony finding out why. I would have to do all of it while pretending, to everyone, that I was fine.

And somewhere on this campus, Lucas Hale was probably sleeping peacefully, dreaming of new insults.

"Fine," I said, climbing to my feet. My reflection in the mirror looked pale and wild, hair stuck to my forehead, a tiny idiot in an oversized hoodie. "Fine. I'll do it. But I want it on record that this is the worst day of my life."

"Noted," the system said. "Mission two begins now."

I turned off the light and stood alone in the dark, listening to the rain, and for the first time since I arrived in this world I was truly, honestly afraid.