LOGINSophie I didn't tell Daniel that I understood what he had just revealed. Not because I wanted to frighten him further, but because I needed him to keep talking. "Why did he want my family's names?" Daniel shook his head. "He didn't explain.""Did he ask for everyone?""No." His eyes dropped to the floor.b"He asked about the triplets."My fingers tightened around the strap of my schoolbag. "What exactly did he ask?""Whether they were really your brothers and sister. He wanted to know where they studied.""They don't study here.""I told him that.""What else?""He asked whether they were still going to the gifted academy."I stared at him. That information was old. The triplets had left the academy weeks ago. Anyone watching us should already have known that. Unless they were trying to confirm whether the change had actually happened. "Did you tell him?"Daniel looked ashamed. "I said they weren't there anymore." I nodded slowly. "That's all?""Yes." I believed him.At least, I belie
Sophie By the time Emily sent me the remaining files, I had already changed out of my school uniform and settled at my desk. There wasn't much left.A few photographs of historical sites, some handwritten notes, and the introduction we'd written together. The actual presentation was gone. I stared at the folder on my laptop, hoping that perhaps I had simply overlooked it. Nothing. I checked the backups. Nothing.Then I checked the school drive. The folder existed. The presentation did not. I frowned.Emily had sounded worried, but I wasn't convinced this was an ordinary computer problem. I opened my notebook. Under the observations I'd been collecting, I wrote: The file disappeared. The folder remained.I stared at the sentence. Then I called Emily."Did you delete anything?""No.""Did you move the presentation?""No.""Did anyone else have access?""Our teacher. Maybe the computer lab technician.""Did you tell anyone we were working on it?""Everyone in our group knows."I paused.
Sophie Marcus Hale answered the second challenge three days later. By then, I had almost forgotten about him.School had swallowed most of my attention again, especially because our history presentation had been moved forward. Emily and I spent two afternoons arguing over which parts of the project deserved more space, and I had begun to suspect that she would happily turn a ten-minute presentation into a forty-minute documentary if nobody stopped her.At home, however, my siblings had not forgotten Marcus. They had been watching.Not him directly, because they had promised themselves they would never invade his private life merely to satisfy their curiosity. Instead, they had been studying what he did with the information they gave him. That distinction mattered to them. I understood it now.Aegis wasn't supposed to be a collection of talented people who could do whatever they wanted. It was suppo
Sophie By the end of the week, my notebook had become something I carried everywhere. I never told anyone what it was for. At school, it looked like an ordinary notebook filled with messy handwriting, unfinished homework, and observations that probably made very little sense to anyone else.Emily once grabbed it from my desk. "What are you writing all the time?" I snatched it back. "Nothing."She laughed. "You've become secretive.""I'm not secretive.""You absolutely are." I smiled and pushed the notebook into my bag. She didn't know that I had begun noticing things differently.Our English teacher always touched her necklace when she was nervous. The headmaster never looked directly at people when he was lying. One of the boys in my class pretended not to care about his grades, but he checked every marked paper before anyone else. None of it seemed important. Still, I wrote it down.
Sophie I kept their secret. That was harder than I expected. The following morning, I sat across from Atlas at breakfast while he calmly spread jam across his toast, and I had to pretend I didn't know that he had spent part of the previous night designing an organization with his siblings.Selene was beside him, arguing with Mom about whether four-year-olds needed bedtime. Leon was unusually quiet. Every few minutes, his eyes met mine. I wondered whether he knew I'd been listening. He didn't say anything. Neither did I. Perhaps that was our first secret between siblings. Not the kind that created distance. The kind that created an invisible thread.After breakfast, my tutor arrived. I spent two hours working through mathematics, literature, and history while the triplets continued their separate lessons. My mathematics tutor gave me a difficult logic problem. I solved it faster than she expected.She smiled. "You've
Sophie The next few days taught me something I had never considered before. My siblings could pretend. Not ordinary pretending, like telling Mom they had finished their vegetables when Selene had secretly pushed them beneath the table. This was different.They had learned how to make themselves look less intelligent. It began with their tutors. Professor Hartwell would present Atlas with a problem that was far below his ability, and Atlas would deliberately take longer to solve it. Sometimes he made an innocent mistake, then corrected it after his tutor explained the answer.Selene became even better at it. When Miriam asked her to demonstrate something on a computer, Selene occasionally clicked the wrong button before eventually finding the correct one.Leon was the most convincing of all. He could move with an accuracy that made Master Chen increasingly cautious, yet whenever someone unfamiliar entered the training room, Leon became a quiet four-year-old who needed instructions rep
IslaThursday morning came faster than I expected. I almost canceled twice. Once when I noticed the faint stain on the cuff of my blouse, the only “smart” one I owned now, and once again when Sophie decided she wanted only the pink socks with the tiny gold stars and nothing else would do.But someh
IslaThe kettle clicked off, the sharp hiss resounding in our tiny apartment. The sunlight slipped through the blind, the rays reflected across the kitchen table where Sophie sat with her favorite bowl of oatmeal, swinging her little legs beneath the chair.I eased myself into the seat opposite her
IslaI stopped in my tracks, Sophie’s little hand tugging insistently at mine. Her chatter about the picture she drew at daycare blurred into background noise as my eyes locked on the sleek black car parked at the community gate. Of course it was him. Alexander Langston.He leaned casually against
IslaI closed the front door behind Sophie, tucking the little blanket she had brought home from daycare into the corner of the sofa. Her chatter filled the apartment for a moment before she flopped onto the rug, arranging her crayons and paper like a tiny general organizing troops.And me? I sank







