“Why don’t I have that report?” I asked.

Pace put his hand on my arm. “You rescued Zenn two hours ago, bro. Give him five seconds to sleep before he downloads every report he’s filed in the past eight months.”

“Fine,” I said. “But no one gives me five seconds to sleep.”

Pace smirked. “I can give you some meds that will give you as long as you want.”

I waved him away. “Where did Cash Whiting work?” I asked Gunner.

“Evolutionary Rise,” he said. “Raine told me about an Alias list. His name was on it, with ‘Insubordinate’ behind it. And ‘Deceased.’ ”

I nodded my understanding as Pace restarted the vid. Cash leaned over his station, and the camera showed his view, as if it were perched on his shoulder.

A tray lay in front of him. He poked at something liquid and pushed the end of his tech instrument. Blue dye seeped into the tray, brightening little rectangles one at a time until they were all showing.

“Administration of DNA,” Cash whispered. “From someone with voice talent.” He covered the tray and placed it in a chamber at the back of the counter.

I sucked in a breath. I knew what the scientists did in the Evolutionary Rise. Entire floors had been dedicated to creating genetic copies of talented people.

“Whose?” Gunner asked, his pale face almost gray. “Whose DNA is that? There aren’t many voices in the world.”

I knew what he was really asking: Is that my DNA?

I put my hand on his arm. “I don’t know.”

On the video an alarm rang, and we all jumped.

“Time to see if Batch 4395 can support life,” Cash said, almost like he was making a video journal for his scientific records and not for us. Maybe he was.

“The embryos have been grown in the dark,” he continued. “The temperature was kept two degrees below normal standards. They’ve been starved of the DNA needed to create a voice box—until they receive this application of DNA from Subject 261.”

Cash removed the tray, and I leaned even closer to the p-screen. “Upon application, the embryos are warmed in an accelerator for three minutes and fifteen seconds. If life is sustainable, the blue dye will be purple, and physical evidence of life will be visible to the naked eye.” Cash removed the lid.

He gasped.

I yelled.

Pace stumbled backward.

Gunner swore.

There, on the projection screen, purple overwhelmed every other color. The embryos had already begun to grow, the rectangles I’d seen before rounding into fetuses, pushing against each other and the edges of their containers.

Cash Whiting’s face filled the screen. Fear lined his eyes. “This experiment is a success. Subject 261 will be brought in for DNA donation. The army will be grown in thirty days.”

He glanced over his shoulder, and I saw the movement in his throat as he swallowed. When Cash turned back, he set his mouth in a thin line of determination. “I will destroy them, and all my notes. Starr, get this out to the right people. If They can replicate my procedures, the Resistance will never stand a chance.”

The screen went dark, leaving only silence hanging over everything.

“Dammit,” I said. I paced away from the e-board and rubbed my hand along the back of my head. Starr spoke again, drawing me back to the p-screen.

“He destroyed them all, as well as his notes. He died for his actions. Hightower has doubled the personnel in the Evolutionary Rise. We don’t have much time.”

“No kidding,” Gunner said, his voice haunted and hollow.

“I will be available to cache with you, Gunn, beyond the wall,” Starr continued. “Trek will send Pace the coordinates and times. We’ll keep you updated on any news from inside the Rises, especially the Evolutionary Rise.” She looked down for a moment. When she met the camera again, her eyes sparked with power. “We can still win this. Do not lose hope.”

Then the screen went black. I blinked, and a violent shade of purple imprinted on the backs of my eyelids.

“Destroy it,” I whispered.

“Jag—” Pace said.

“Destroy it,” I repeated. I stood up straighter and pinned Gunner and Pace with a glare. “The three of us know. No one else needs to be burdened. We’ll use this knowledge and Starr’s intel to our advantage, but we don’t need to freak people out.”

“They’ll quit,” Gunner said, leaning against the stone wall. “Won’t they? They’ll just quit if they think we can’t win. If they know how close They are to successful cloning.”

“Yes,” I said. “No one breathes a word of this to anyone. Am I clear?”

“You got it, bro,” Pace said. He snapped the chip out of the port and brought a rock down on it. The shards flipped through the air.

“I want Raine out of that city,” Gunn said.

“It’s one of my top priorities,” I said. “But let’s wait for Indy to come in before we go storming Freedom.”

* * *

My jaw hurt. Indy packed a mean punch. I totally deserved it, but ow. I wanted to throw a wicked jab at her like I used to when we were younger. Then we’d end up wrestling and laughing like we used to, and she’d forget why she wanted to murder me.

Like she used to.

None of that happened. Number one, we were too old for that now. Number two, I left her behind without instructions for the Resistance, and then I got myself thrown into prison in the Goodgrounds. Number three, I’d taken her brother—not her—with me, and neither of us had seen him since. Number four, when I’d returned to the Badlands seven weeks later, I had a new girlfriend. Number five, the cavern was now filled with people, and Indy and I needed privacy to say all that needed to be said.

And then there was the whole her-being-in-love-with-me thing. I certainly couldn’t encourage that.

Especially because of the whole Vi-glowering-in-the-doorway-with-her-arms-crossed thing.

So I’d taken my punch like a man.

That had happened a half hour ago. While I was bleeding, I had called an emergency meeting with my most trusted. Indy and her team were now resting in the infirmary—which was really just a tiny cave with two cots shoved against the wall. Our techs worked miracles in there, using whatever supplies they could find to make sure we all didn’t die.

And, damn, Indy looked terrible. Her dark skin appeared bleached and her hair did not. The truth? The pink was totally faded. And she obviously hadn’t been sleeping much.

Not that I could blame her for that. There isn’t time for sleeping.

“So,” Vi said, snapping me out of my Indy-focused thoughts. She was scowling. I kept forgetting that she can see just about all my thoughts, including the ones about Indy.

But if Indy’s gorgeous—and she is—she still had nothin’ on Vi. I tried to arrange my mouth into a smile when Vi dialed her glowering down to a glare, but it hurt my throbbing jaw.

“So, Indy says Thane wasn’t in the farmhouse.” I punctuated the news with a deep sigh. “Which isn’t good.”

“Where is he?” Zenn rubbed his eyes and blinked real fast.

I’d woken everyone up in the middle of the night, but Zenn had come off his watch. He looked pretty bad too. Some things couldn’t be helped. Gunn yawned, and his eyes were bleary with exhaustion.

I’d never actually gone to bed last night, so yeah. I didn’t feel sorry about waking them up.

My brother folded himself into a chair next to me at the rickety table. “Is he dead?”

Vi stiffened at the mention of her possibly deceased dad, and I threw Pace a shut-the-hell-up look. “Way to be sensitive, bro,” I said. “We don’t think Thane is dead. Indy says there was plenty of blood in the farmhouse,

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