kill the Chancellor? Then we’ll have lost valuable resources and the Chancellor will still have the seer.”
“That’s the other reason I will be leading this mission,” the General said. “Adrien’s knowledge is too powerful a weapon. Many more will die if he’s allowed to remain the Chancellor’s pawn, so I take the burden on myself. Should Zoel fail, I will bomb the building with Adrien in it.”
Her words were like a punch to my chest.
“No!” Sophia screamed. “You can’t!”
“Restrain her,” Taylor said, her voice steady. Two Rez fighters grabbed Sophia’s arms to hold her back. She kicked and fought against them. “I’m sorry, Sophia, but there is no other choice. We will try to save him if we can. You will remain in lockdown until the mission is finished, one way or the other. Take her away.” The Rez fighters dragged her from the room. My heart was in my throat as her screams echoed from the hallway.
Taylor turned her flinty gaze toward me, waiting to see if I too would object. But what could I say? If Adrien stayed with the Chancellor, I couldn’t deny that others would certainly die because of the foreknowledge he would be forced to share. I tried to quiet the sudden wave of panic rushing to my head. I was Adrien’s only hope. I must succeed.
“How do I get in?” I asked with only a slight tremor in my voice.
Taylor looked back at me. “Any way you can.”
I nodded and swallowed hard.
She looked around at the rest of the group. “The second transport team will remain outside the city until the extraction is performed. We leave in two hours.”
They nodded. Before anyone could ask any more questions, Taylor strode from the room.
I stepped into my dorm room to put on my biosuit. I put my legs in and pulled it up to my waist, consumed with worry about Adrien, when I stopped, startled. Saminsa was sitting on her pallet, back against the wall, watching me.
“Ginni said you are going to kill the Chancellor,” Saminsa said, her voice quiet. She looked up, her dark eyes piercing. “Is that true?”
I paused, surprised. I’d barely heard her speak two words strung together since we rescued her during the raid.
“Look,” I said. “I’m so sorry for everything that was done to you. We should have—”
“I’m coming with you.”
“Oh.” Of all the things that might have come out of her mouth at the moment, that was the last thing I would have expected.
“Jilia flushed the meds from my system. I could be an asset. I’m coming with you.”
I paused, confused. “But why would you help us?”
“I don’t care about helping you. I want my revenge.” She didn’t say anything for a moment, but then continued. “Do you remember how it went silent when you attacked?”
I nodded.
“His name was Din.” She closed her eyes as if remembering. “In the part of the Sector where I lived, we stopped school at twelve and went to work in the factories. The machines were so loud. But then the Chancellor found me out and I met Din. For the first time in my life, I had quiet.” She smiled a little, even though it looked like the memory brought her pain. “Being around him was so peaceful.
“Bright promised that if we helped her kill you we could be free.” She shook her head. “It was my fault. I’m the one who spotted you and sent the com that triggered the explosives. I should have realized she considered us expendable. I thought his death was my fault for a long time. But then I realized that I may have pushed the button, but she’s the one who killed him.” Her voice broke, but she gritted her teeth.
She looked up at me, her eyes hard. “I want the Chancellor dead. If you’re the person who can make that happen, I want to go with you.”
I hesitated. She could be lying. But then I looked at the fierceness in her face. I believed her. And Adrien had had a vision about her—that was why we’d brought her back with us from the raid in the first place. She may have some part yet to play in all this. I looked at the clock on the wall. “We leave in a little over an hour. Go find Tyryn, he’ll tell you what to do.”
Chapter 27
I PULLED ON THE TOP half of my suit, alone for the first time since the insanity of the past few hours had begun. I checked to make sure a fresh epi infuser was safely tucked in the pocket at my thigh, then tugged the thin blue sleeves over my arms. But before I could put my helmet on and fasten the suit closed, it all hit me. Adrien was gone. He had been captured all this time, and I hadn’t even realized. The thought tore me apart inside. Now I had to face the most dangerous and powerful woman in the Sector, and if I didn’t succeed, the love of my life would be killed.
I suddenly felt very small. Fear and self-doubt bubbled up. It was ludicrous. We didn’t even have a plan. The Chancellor would know we were coming. I wasn’t strong enough for this. How could I possibly—
I squeezed my eyes shut and put my hands to my temples, as if I could physically force all the stray thoughts out of my head. I needed to empty my mind. I needed to focus. But the fear kept crowding back in.
I am that, I repeated desperately to myself, trying to find my center. I am that. But they were just words without meaning.
Then Max’s face popped into my head, and with it a swelling tide of rage. I am
I pulled the helmet and face mask over my head, fastened everything in place, and headed toward the transport bay. It was time.
There was no moon, only the soft sifting of stars as we flew through the night sky. I looked up at Taylor’s face in the rearview mirror. “I understand why it couldn’t be Adrien’s mom, but why not let someone else take me?”
“It had to be me.”
I paused a moment. “Adrien told you. He had a vision about this.” It wasn’t a question. Another thought struck. “Did he know he was going to get captured?”
Taylor was silent a moment before answering. “Yes, he knew he would be captured, but he didn’t know when.”
I almost jumped out of my seat. “Then how could you have let him go on the raid?”
“He didn’t tell me.” Her voice was calm and even. “He’d been keeping a vision journal full of everything he saw and his theories about how things might connect. It was an elaborate, spiderwebbed map. I found it when we returned from the raid. I forbade him from leaving the Foundation after that.” In the mirror, I saw her frown. “Of course, it was already too late by then. I was talking to Maximin without knowing it.”
I sat back, feeling baffled and angry at Adrien. I thought about when he’d taken me to watch the sunset before the raid. He’d talked about how precious time was, but I hadn’t realized it was because he knew his was running out. “Why did he go? Why would he do that if he knew he’d be captured?”
She pursed her lips. “He didn’t know when it would happen, and he insisted on going on the raid. He said it had to do with protecting the causality chain. Along with the vision journal, he had endless scribbled notes about research into temporal paradoxes and causality links.”
“Causality? What does that even mean?”
She looked away. “He said he needed to make sure certain visions were fulfilled in order for others to come true.”
I sat back in my seat. “If he needed to protect a vision and make it come true, it meant he believed they
