Cassie arrives in Virginia on the FBI jet with Briggs and Michael. At the airstrip, Special Agent Lacey Locke greets them and introduces herself as Briggs’s partner and the profiler who will handle Cassie’s training. Locke is not a Natural, but she has formal FBI behavioral-analysis experience and quickly shows a sharp, teasing manner.

Briggs asks Locke why Locke is back early, and Locke reports that Boise was a dead end. The brief exchange suggests ongoing work outside Cassie’s view, but Briggs redirects attention to Cassie and the program.

The group goes to the Naturals program’s base: a large Victorian house in Quantico, close to FBI headquarters but separate enough to avoid attention. Judd Hawkins, the retired marine responsible for the house and the teenagers, gives Cassie a clipped tour and tells Cassie that Cassie will share a room with another girl. Cassie reads Judd as gruff but softer than Judd appears.

On the staircase, Cassie notices framed photographs of various people. Before Cassie can interpret them, an Asian girl named Lia appears and says the pictures are of serial killers, claiming they are meant to remind someone named Dean why Dean is there. Lia’s manner is theatrical and provocative, and Lia immediately tests Cassie by trying to make Cassie uncomfortable.

Michael and Lia trade barbed, flirtatious comments, revealing that the two already know each other. Locke explains that Lia’s Natural ability is deception: Lia can tell when people are lying and is also an unusually skilled liar herself.

Cassie asks whether Lia lied about the photographs being serial killers. The silence from Michael, Judd, and Locke answers before Briggs confirms that the statement was true. Cassie realizes the house, its residents, and the program’s methods are stranger and darker than Cassie expected.