I glance at my watch: 12:13 p.m. “Ava, you’re going to be late for your cell biology class.”

Ava slides her tablet under the scanner of a 3D printer labeled “Kipling’s Kangaroo Sticks.” Gazing around the dining hall, I wonder what I should choose for my lunch today. Spaghetti? Chicken? Chocolate cake? It still feels novel that I have access to the food printers.

No microchips, no limits, I remind myself.

“You know,” Ava says, smiling up at me. “The one thing I do miss about the old days is you doing half my homework.”

I laugh, mirroring her grin. My eyes land on the thin scar across her throat. The cut from Valeria. Ava could have bioprinted new skin to help the knife wound heal cleaner, but she refused. I’m not afraid to show my scars, she told me.

She pops the jerky into her mouth and curls her lips into a smirk. “Can you tell Theo that Alexander can’t come to the party?”

“I’ll tell Theo you said hello,” I say.

“Fine. The new general and his ego can come if he must. But tell him he cannot wear a suit.”

“See you soon,” we tell each other. Then Ava’s off, and I watch her race down the lawn beside Barend, her long red hair bouncing wild in her wake.

“The festivities start at six?” Kano asks, tearing into a slice of pizza before pointing a warning finger toward an advancing freshman.

“Five, if you want to avoid the foot traffic,” I say, nodding to the young freshman who waves at me with such eager admiration that my cheeks burn.

Soon, the entire city will be flocking downtown to celebrate a year of rebuilding. In a few hours, concerts, processions, massive balloons shaped like all the Common “heroes” will fill the streets. And I’m grateful that my teammates, now household names, are choosing to be with Ava and me tonight, instead.

I still don’t like crowds. Or being in the spotlight.

There are too many eyes on me, even now. The panic starts to rise again, but then I feel a hand slip behind my back, an arm hugging me into the curve of his body, where I fit perfectly, like a puzzle piece.

“Happy birthday, mi amor,” Theo whispers in my ear.

I forget about all the eyes and pull Theo into a kiss.

“How was your day?” he says when I finally draw away.

It’s a question Ava used to ask me every day, just so we could stay alive. But Theo doesn’t know this. He asks just so he can grow closer to me.

“And don’t skimp on the details, your retellings are the highlight of my day,” he adds, smiling.

Only weeks after we reunited, Theo moved here to Dallas—his birthplace—with his father and mother. He’s a sophomore at Strake now, taking eighteen hours of coursework, learning who he is and what he wants to be.

“I’ll tell you everything,” I say, locking my arm around his, breathing in the moment. Thankful that two souls who never had a place to belong, now belong with each other.

“Ready?” Theo asks me.

“Yes. Let’s go home.”

AVA

So much of life has changed.

But some things, the small moments, like walking home after a long day of classes at Strake, have stayed the same.

Except now, three days a week, Owen is at my side.

On top of his role on the Cybersecurity Team with Blaise, Owen’s earning his degree in criminal justice with the hopes of becoming a computer crime investigator one day. He wants to be a source of good, he says.

Detective Hart. I like the sound of that.

It fits nicely next to Dr. Goodwin.

“Well . . . I got kicked out of class again today,” Owen begins, as we stroll our Trinity Heights neighborhood, his hand laced in mine. It’s become our routine, something I never thought I’d want again after the repetition of my upbringing. But it’s at once familiar and soothing. He talks, recounting entertaining stories from his day, and I listen, a half-hour reprieve from thoughts of my research.

I laugh to hear how Owen, after his esteemed computer forensics professor boldly claimed himself unhackable, hacked the man live in front of the whole class, sending videos recorded by his own security cameras of him dancing around his apartment in his underwear. Just to prove no one is bulletproof.

“Really, he did it to himself . . . He should’ve learned by now not to challenge me like that,” Owen says, his dimples surfacing with his proud smile. “Don’t worry, he let me back into class ten minutes later when the sting wore off from being outdone by a former Code Cog.”

Sometimes I worry Owen really is too smart for his own good. But that’s one of his attractions—he loves to test boundaries, questioning things, always. Like I do.

“This is your stop,” I say, turning to a modest prefab eco-friendly home with a rock garden out front. It used to belong to a Loyalist, but now Owen lives here with his parents and Tess, his adopted sister.

Owen’s mother’s breast cancer is back. It haunts him, knowing how close we were to getting hold of Project Albatross and a possible way to cure his mother’s sickness. For curing millions of people’s incurable diseases.

But the briefcase was empty. Father’s discovery, lost.

We’ll never know if Roth really had Albatross, or if it was all just a ruse. He could have hidden the tech, and someone out there in the world could have it right now, could be plotting to finish Roth’s plans, or to become the mastermind of some new destruction.

What I’ve built will not die with me, Roth swore.

Deep down, in that unknowable part of me where I can feel those who have passed on, still with me, guiding me, I know that Father wants me to destroy what he helped to create. But after our return home, after weeks of waking up sweating from nightmares—convinced there was an impending bio attack against Dallas—Mira read these lines to me from our father’s favorite poem:

And from my neck so free

The Albatross fell off, and sank

Like lead into the sea.

We have to let go, she told me.

Whatever the truth is, Mira and I will not spend the rest of our lives searching for what Roth may or may not have left behind. Too many people we love sacrificed their lives so we could stop running, take root, and live in peace.

And that’s what we intend to do.

I have to let go, and trust that Albatross died with my father, Director Wix, and the governor. I have to.

“See you later tonight,” Owen says, rubbing his thumb over my knuckles before he lets go. “I’ll be there with bells on.”

“If you come to my party in a suit, I won’t let you in,” I say, half-serious. Owen’s forgoing the big capital party celebrating the Rule of All, a parade where he would be touted as a national hero, to come to my family’s small, far-from-fancy birthday gathering. He could show up to my party wearing a trash bag and I wouldn’t mind. But teasing is our way of saying I love you.

“Well, we have to ring in your new decade right,” Owen insists. “The big two-oh. That calls for a tux.”

He kisses me, letting his soft lips linger.

We’re interrupted by Duke’s sudden arrival. Owen’s car pulls into the driveway, the doors fold open, and Tess steps out. She has on a long, UV-protective dress and classic Audrey Hepburn–style sunglasses, her school bag draped over her narrow shoulders.