I let my long hair fall over my face and look at the floor. It’s not good to stand out. Life may be different outside the Camps, but that will still be true.

Attention is dangerous.

11:15 p.m.

What is this place?

Questions. No one will spit in my mouth now if I ask them things. I want to know where I am. What is a place if it is not for work?

The building is big and worn down. It looks like a warehouse. Much of the first floor is wasted space. Inefficient, a Camp Warden would say. Why are we here if it is empty? All buildings must have a purpose. If not, they should be leveled.

I keep walking. Open every door I pass. At the back of the first floor are big rooms filled with rows of crops. Grown by LED lights, not the sun. The sight confuses me.

The Texas government is the only producer of crops at scale. The only farms that exist are Camps. The Camps help Texas survive. That is what I was made to believe.

Does the Common run this city they call Austin? Are they the government?

I close the door and go up a flight of stairs. The second floor is used as storage. No walls, just a single open space. Packed floor to ceiling with wooden crates full of fruits and vegetables I never knew existed. Five Corrections Guards could be fed with the amount of stockpiled food.

A noise on the stairs behind me. I go rigid, prepare my body for punishment. I’ve found something I wasn’t supposed to see. My arms, legs, and torso tighten. I exhale. The best way to take a baton hit.

Nothing comes. I turn and see the girl with straight dark hair. She helped me to my feet in the sea-bean field. She smiles at me. A different smile than CG Hale’s smile.

I’m a civilian now, not an Inmate. I need to behave like one. I relax twenty percent.

“I was looking for you,” the girl says. “Do you want to join the group gathering on the third floor? I’m Cleo, by the way.”

No title of CG or Warden or Inmate. Just Cleo.

“Sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” Cleo says.

Inmate Z-TX-11 is my name.

“Just Zee,” I say. My voice sounds rough, out of practice. The girl doesn’t seem to mind.

Cleo holds out her hand. Why would she do that? I pull away. No touching, even if I am free to do it.

“Follow me, if you’d like,” she says. She drops her hand. Doesn’t make me feel like I made a false move. “The talk is about to begin.”

“Where are we?” I ask.

“We’re at one of the Common’s safe houses,” Cleo says. “Did you see the yellow door when you entered? That signals the building is a safe place for our members.”

A safe house? That means the Common needs a hiding place. If they’re hiding from the Texas government, the Guard, they have a zero-percent chance of living.

I still choose to follow Cleo.

She leads me up another set of steps. “I wanted to say, it’s an honor to meet you.”

Why? I don’t ask.

We get to the third floor, and I hang back, away from the crowd. No straight lines and shut mouths like at the Warden speeches. Members stand in little groups, talking. Smiling.

Actions that would have cost me twenty strikes in the bad Camps.

The young Inmates don’t have as many years to unlearn. Forget. It’s hard for an old hand.

I make my way to a corner window, looking at no one. Just listening.

“A member said we have siblings.”

“You belong to a family, not the Camps.”

“What’s a family?”

“Will they want us?”

Did my family give me up? That’s a question I can’t stop asking myself.

I move the cloth covering the window and look onto the street. The CGs will be here soon. Surveillance hears and sees everything.

I’m safe here. But for how long?

“Today you might have heard a lot about Ava and Mira Goodwin,” a man shouts from the front. He stands on a box. He has no microphone. “The Secret Sisters of Dallas, the twins, came out of hiding a month ago and changed our future.”

My height gives me a good view of the wall. The place where everybody points their attention. A line of ID portraits hangs behind the man. Not the digital holograms I’m used to. Images I could hold, made from a material I’ve never seen before. The portraits are all covered in glass, like they’re important. Should be protected.

The speaker keeps telling the crowd about the Common, but it’s hard for me to follow.

The portraits. The faces behind the glass. I go to them. The members move out of my way.

The two young girls at the top must be Ava and Mira. I feel like I’m seeing double. Like after a club strikes my head. Then I understand I’m seeing twins.

Their hair is different, one red, one blonde, but their faces are the same. An ID portrait of a silver-haired woman hangs below the twins. She has the same green eyes as they do. They must be a family.

The time I saw myself in a piece of glass, I had green eyes too.

“Roth . . .”

“Tyrant . . .”

“Darren . . .”

“Sacrifice . . .”

I don’t understand any of these words.

I don’t understand why so many eyes are on me. I’ve attracted too much attention.

I need to leave. But I don’t. The Common speaker has gone quiet.

“Is that you?” my old bunkmate asks, Z-TX-558. She points to the portrait of a woman beside the twins.

I touch the glass. The face that looks like mine. A pretty, younger image of me. Smiling.

Who I could have been.

“What’s it say below your face?” Z-TX-558 asks.

No member speaks for me. All wait for my answer.

The letters come into focus. I clear my throat and read the words out loud.

“Lynn Goodwin, Mother of the Rebellion.”

My twin.

AVA

The Council Room, the War Room. Tower Three, Level Ten. This is where Mira and I should have gone immediately when we entered Paramount Point Lodge the first time. We never joined the Elders at the last meeting, but we should have demanded it.

We can only trust ourselves, I told my sister during the frantic drive back to the rebellion’s headquarters, hidden underneath the seats of the white tourist van. Our father taught us to go where we’re least expected—when we fled our home in Dallas, we ran deeper into the inner city, not away from it—and I can only hope that his lesson remains true, because we’ve returned to the location of our ambush. The Elders must be betting President Moore doesn’t know the lodge is the rebellion’s nerve center.

Still, we should remain at headquarters five, six hours max.

I sit inside the War Room, at the head of a long oval table next to Mira, every seat filled with a leading member of the Common: Emery, Ciro, Pawel, Skye, Kano, the three Common Elders who were there when I learned of my father’s murder. Barend’s here too, sitting in a chair at his usual post by the door, on guard as always. Everyone stares back at us, expectant, but all I can think is Which one of you betrayed us?

The expertly crafted maple tabletop is painted a striking shade of yellow, and I’m hit with the nagging notion that this color can also represent cowardice and deceit.

I open my mouth to commence the meeting, but Ciro talks over me, attempting to lead our dead-of-night emergency council. “The Elders have spoken, and we all agree there was unquestionably no treachery from within the Common’s ranks,” Ciro proclaims, confident. “I urge you both to understand that the moment President Moore acted remarkably out of character and abducted you without so much as a civil conversation, every Common member sitting at this table sounded the alarm and began plotting your recovery.”