When Cassie arrives in DC, she meets Briggs’s partner, Special Agent Lacey Locke, who reports no new information to Briggs on a case they are currently working. Locke, who will be training Cassie, is a profiler with the behavioral science unit at the FBI. Cassie is then taken to a large Victorian house in Quantico, Virginia, where she and the other Naturals in the program will live. The caretaker of the home is Judd Hawkins, a stern but friendly retired marine. While touring the home, Cassie notices the hallways are lined with framed pictures. A girl whom Cassie describes as catlike appears and explains that the people in the pictures are serial killers. Cassie learns that the girl’s name is Lia; she is a Natural skilled at lying and detecting lies.

Cassie is left to settle into the room she will be sharing with another girl. She starts to profile her absent roommate based on the clothes and shoes in her half of the closet but stops herself. Lia takes Cassie down to the basement to meet this roommate, Sloane, a Natural with numbers and data. In the basement are training sets meant to simulate crime scenes, and Sloane is running tests based on algorithms.