figured they’d head toward the bank of elevators, so he was surprised when Owen veered to the left, heading down a long hallway with vaulted ceilings, and dark, wooden doors lining either side. The walls were covered with black screens, a stylized BP spinning lazily in the middle. Through floor-to-ceiling windows, Nick saw a man moving in what looked like a conference room, bopping his head as the tile buffer whirred loudly across the floor.
Now that he was here, Nick wasn’t sure this was the best idea. He thought about finding a way to get out of it, to convince Owen they needed to think this through, but every time he opened his mouth to say just that, he saw his father, unconscious in his hospital bed, the machines beeping and hissing around him, the line of his heartbeat bouncing.
“All right?” Owen asked, glancing back at him.
No. “Yeah.”
They turned left, and then right, and then right again, and Nick wasn’t sure he could find his own way out. Burke Tower was a labyrinth. He didn’t know how anyone found their way around here.
“It’s bigger than it looks,” Nick told Owen. “This whole place.”
A strange look crossed Owen’s face. “It’s all about layers, Nick. My family tends to have a certain … flair for the dramatics. My grandfather built this place from the ground up. And when he died, my father continued his work.” He chuckled bitterly. “And one day, it will all be mine, and I’ll wear the crown, heavy though it is.”
Nick shrugged awkwardly. Owen’s carefully placed mask seemed to be slipping again, and it made him uncomfortable. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“My family isn’t like yours. There are certain expectations. Any choice I would’ve had in this life was taken from me the moment I was born.”
“That … sucks.” Dumb, but he didn’t know what else to say. Vulnerable Owen wasn’t something Nick knew how to deal with.
Owen laughed. “Oh, Nicky. Such a way with words.”
“You’re making a choice here, right?”
“What do you mean?”
Nick shrugged. “Being here. Doing … what we’re doing. You chose to tell me about it. You chose to bring me here.”
Owen shook his head. “This isn’t about choice, Nick. This was inevitable.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know. There’s a lot of things you don’t understand.”
Nick felt a drop of sweat slide down the back of his neck. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“You’re going to do this too, aren’t you? Become an Extraordinary? I don’t know if I want to do this by myself.”
“Getting cold feet?”
“No. I just—why would you want to be normal when you can be something more?”
Nick didn’t like the glint in Owen’s eyes. “Exactly what I’ve always thought. This is going to be good, Nick. You’ll see. We’re here.”
* * *
They stopped in front of ornate double doors. There was a black box next to the doors, similar to the one on the outside of Burke Tower. But instead of using the same card, Owen pulled a different one out of his pocket. He swiped it through the thin slot. It beeped … and a little light turned red.
Owen frowned.
He swiped it again.
A beep. A red light.
“Huh,” Owen said.
“What’s wrong?”
“Card’s not working. My father must have had the doors recoded. Can never be too careful these days. Keep an eye out.”
“Maybe we should—”
“It’ll only take a second, Nick.”
Nick turned and looked down the hallway. It was empty.
“I like you, Nick,” Owen said. “I always have. I know—I know things were weird between us for a little while. And I know I haven’t been as good a friend as I could be, but there’s a reason for that.”
Nick looked back over his shoulder. Owen hunched over the black box. Nick couldn’t see what he was doing to it, but he could see Owen’s arms moving. “Because you’re a stuck-up jerk?”
“A little. But I don’t suppose it matters now, does it? You’ve got Seth.”
“I don’t know about that,” Nick muttered. “He’s … Something’s going on with him, and I don’t know what.”
“Life,” Owen said airily. “We’re teenagers. Everything is unnecessarily complicated. We’re told we have to be a certain way, even if we know it’s wrong. We’re not taken seriously. Our ideas are cast aside as though they’re without merit. Sometimes, we need to act out so that people pay attention to us. So that people know we mean what we say. That we’re capable. That we shouldn’t be dismissed.”
Nick didn’t know what he was talking about. “I thought