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is-”
    “And Jack and Sebastian are either dead or captured,” I finish for him.
    Lionel pats me on the shoulder then. It’s a slightly stiff, awkward seeming gesture for him, but he does it. “Now, we don’t know that for certain, young lady. Jack remains a very resourceful agent, while Sebastian is a highly intelligent man. It may be that they were able to come up with a solution to their situation that we simply haven’t been able to think of.”
    “But it isn’t very likely,” I say.
    Lionel shakes his head. “You mustn’t give up hope like that. As I said, Jack is a highly skilled Fader, and he has gotten out of tight spots in the past.”
    I want to believe him. I do. I can still remember the ease with which Jack got us away from his apartment when the Others showed up there. The way he tracked me down to save me and Grayson when we were being chased along the highway. It’s just that the circumstances seem so hopeless that I can’t see how even Jack could possibly get out of them.
    I open my mouth to say something, and an alarm goes off. Lionel’s head whips round, and he taps something into his keyboard. Instantly, the screens around us change, becoming an outline map of Europe with a dark background. Mostly dark, anyway. There are spots of brightness here and there, mostly not very intense. There’s a brighter one in the south of England, and another brighter one further away, on the continent.
    “What is this?” I ask.
    “This is the display for our main scanners,” Lionel explains. “The ones that allowed us to identify you, and which have allowed us to explore a number of other… phenomena over the years. You see the bright spots? Each one represents something that the Underground would need to investigate further.”
    “Why are some of the spots brighter than others?” I ask.
    “That is simply a question of signal strength.”
    I remember then what Sebastian told me back at the Underground’s other base. “And I give off a strong signal, right?”
    “Exactly.” Lionel jabs his finger at the first of the bright dots. The one in England. “This one is you, Celes. Or at least the signal our scanners pick up of you. This one…” he moves his finger to the other glowing spot “…this one is new. And it’s intense, if it’s enough to set off the alarm.”
    “So that’s emitting the same kind of signal Celes did?” Grayson asks.
    “That would appear to be the case, yes,” Lionel says. He sounds like he wants to be excited, but is restraining himself from letting too much of it show with a certain amount of difficulty. “It also appears to be of a similar strength. Which suggests that there may be something else like you out there.”
    He says it so calmly that the implications don’t sink in for a moment or two. “There’s someone else like me out there?” I ask.
    Lionel nods. “That’s what it looks like, at least.”
    “Where?”
    I need to know. I need to know that I am not alone. That there might actually be some answers for me out there somewhere. Lionel looks at the map, then taps in yet more instructions to the computer. A more detailed map overlays itself on the first one.
    “It looks like Switzerland to me.”
     

SEVEN
     
     
     
     
     
    L ionel stares at the computer screen for a moment or two longer, then pulls out a phone and started speaking into it.
    “How soon can you have a full team ready to fly? We have a signal. Twenty minutes? Good. Switzerland. Yes, I know. We’ll be taking them with us.”
    By ‘them’ I guess that he means me and Grayson. That guess is confirmed almost as soon as Lionel puts his phone away.
    “Come on,” he says. “Looks like you are not going to get much of a rest here. We can’t very well leave you behind while we’re all off chasing after things in Switzerland, so you’re going to have to come with us. The helicopters will be touching down shortly.”
    Lionel doesn’t give us a chance to say anything, but leads the