.

creating a common enemy, and she had given them one; she’d dropped Samm right in their laps with her idiotic trip to Manhattan. That was why they’d brought him back, and that was why they’d put her in charge of the project—so that one day they could blow it all up without losing anyone important, and they could pose with the rubble and bring everyone together against the big, bad enemy they could never let go of. It was the same general plan they’d just explained to her, but deeper and older and far more sinister. They wouldn’t back out of it now, no matter how much she talked.

      Kira looked at Samm—not just looked at him but stared at him, thought at him, willed him to understand her, wishing with all her being that she could link with him and breathe her thoughts straight into his brain. I’m sorry, she thought. I can’t stop them. Please . . . I’m sorry.

      “It’s time for you to choose,” said Delarosa. “Join us, bring peace to the island, put an end to the Voice threat . . . or stay a rebel, and live your days as an exile. You could live comfortably on one of the farms.” She leaned forward. “You are a firebrand, Ms. Walker—people follow you, and if you join our cause, they will follow you into the brightest future we’ve seen in decades. A new dawn for humanity. The choice is yours.”

      I’m sorry, she thought again. She gripped the IV stand, gritted her teeth, and dragged her charred leg one step back toward the senators. “There’s nothing I can do to stop you.”

      She could feel Samm’s shock like a wave of betrayal, slamming her in the back and washing up and over her head. Just trust me, she thought.

      Hobb narrowed his eyes. “You’ll do it?”

      “No, I won’t.” She half turned, not daring to look Samm in the face again. “I can’t keep fighting you—look at me, I can barely stand up—but that doesn’t mean I’m going to sell him out to help you and lie to my friends.” A tear rolled down her cheek, but she kept her gaze firm, desperate for them to believe her. “Do whatever you have to do and be done with it. I won’t stop you.” She turned to the door, took a painful step, then paused, gasping for air. “And get one of your goons out there to carry me back downstairs. I can barely move anymore.”

      “Of course,” said Hobb. “Take your time. Recuperate. This will take us a few hours to set up anyway.”

      Kira nodded. That’s exactly what I’m counting on.

      

      The guard laid her gently in her hospital bed, cringing as she groaned in pain. It wasn’t fake—her leg seemed to hurt more now than it had climbing the stairs. She tried to arrange the blanket over her legs, but even that much motion brought tears to her eyes. The guard moved her legs for her, then turned off the lights and left. Kira closed her eyes, clenched her teeth, and forced herself to sit up.

      Never underestimate me.

      The regen box was still in the room, and Kira gave herself another treatment—a third in less than eight hours, accelerating her cell growth far past the point of safety. It would cause long-term damage, but in the short term it would let her walk. She peeked out the door and smiled grimly. Her wound was so bad, and her walking so debilitated, that the guard hadn’t even stayed to watch her.

      She found Marcus in the cafeteria, staring silently at a tray of untouched rice. Will he even help? He has to. She inched slowly toward him across the empty floor. “Hey.”

      He looked up, eyes wide with shock, and leaped to his feet. “Where have you been? I came in as soon as they reopened the building, and you weren’t in your room—I tore the building upside down until they finally made me come in here and wait.” He looked her up and down, frowning in renewed concern. “How on earth did you get in here? You can barely walk.”

      “Magic,” she said coolly. “Can you do me a favor?”

      “Of course.”

      “I need an MRI.”

      He frowned again. “They won’t give you one?”

      “I want you to do it.”

      “Why?”

      “I want you to hold my hand while it runs.”

      “I . . . okay.” He grimaced, obviously confused. “Wouldn’t you rather have a DORD, they’re so much better—”

      “I need an MRI.”

      “Then let me find someone to run the scan while I—”

      “Just you,” she said firmly. “Just you and me.”

      Marcus nodded, his face worn and worried, but there was a look in his eye—he was starting to pick up on what she was doing. “Okay, sure.” He offered his arm and she took it gratefully, staggering alongside him back into the main hallway.

      “What’s really going on?” he whispered.

      “Call it a medical hunch. I want to see something.” She hesitated for a moment, trying to figure out what to say to him. They hadn’t spoken since his proposal.

      He walked in silence, and she did the same. After everything I’ve done to him, will he even trust me anymore?

      They made their way down the hall to the radiology center and found a private room. Marcus eased her onto the exam table, and she let out a gasp as the weight came off her leg. She felt like she’d been running a marathon through a sea of broken glass. The MRI machine was smaller than the DORD in her lab—just a doughnut instead of a full-body box, and not nearly as powerful—but its electromagnetic field was exactly what she needed.

      “I need to go turn it on,” said Marcus. He ran to the viewing room, fiddled with the controls, and Kira took a deep breath. This is it. This is either the beginning, or the end. The machine hummed to life, the powerful magnetic field washing over her, and she reached out her hand as Marcus came back.

      “We don’t have much time, so just listen,” said Kira, leaning back while the MRI ran its sequence. “Mkele has me under heavy surveillance, and I am almost certainly wearing some kind of listening device. The field from this machine will disrupt it, but I don’t know how much time we’ll have before his goons get suspicious.” She glanced over at him, and then faced forward again. “Do you trust me?”

      “What?”

      “Do you trust me?” She felt him staring at her, but she kept her eyes forward.

      “Yes. Of course I trust you. What’s going on?”

      “The Senate set the bomb that blew up my lab. They killed Shaylon and threatened me. This entire thing—Samm, the studies, the bomb—has all been a ploy to generate enough fear, aimed in a precise direction, to cement their power over the island. Now they’re using this scenario in order to—” She dropped her eyes, then found her courage and finally looked at him. “Marcus, they’re going to kill Samm.”

      She saw something play across his face. Whether it was horror or shock or jealousy, she couldn’t tell. His eyes flicked up toward the ceiling, then slowly turned back to her.

      “Kira,” he said, “they were always going to kill it. To kill . . . Samm. You know this.” His voice was even and controlled, enough that she knew he must have been repressing something powerful. “Besides, why would they blow up their own people? Their own hospital?”

      “Because it’s part of their plans,” said Kira. “I could never figure out why I got the assignment to study Samm, but this must have been it. I’m just a plague baby to them, the least experienced medic and the most expendable. If the bomb had killed me, they could have used me as a martyr, but since I lived, they offered me a role as their figurehead; the brave young scientist who survived the Partial attack.”

      “The Partials set the bomb?”

      “The