I feel exhausted and drained. I have nothing more to say. Peering down at my hands, I realize I’ve twisted my wig into an unwearable mess. Without a second glance at Theo, I move for the exit—I don’t want to be in a roomful of Roths any longer than I have to be.

Why is Theo so willing to come with us?

Why do you care? I scold myself.

We got him. That’s all that matters.

“You can cut his cuffs,” I tell Kano, and slam the door behind me.

ZEE

TXRAIL

4:46 p.m.

The rail is behind schedule. By thirty seconds. It’s enough time for a handful of civilians in my section to look troubled.

“Is the rail ever late?” I ask Cleo.

“No,” she answers. “Be ready to move fast.”

A boy on the other end of the car keeps pulling down his right sleeve. Three women in hoods hide their hands in pockets, eyes on the ground.

“They cut out their microchips,” Cleo says. “They must’ve sneaked on like us.”

No problems at the other station stops. No Guards.

The capital is the next stop. Dallas. The place where my twin died. Lynn. Her body failed. She’s gone. I’ll never meet her. Her husband died here too. Darren.

The Common played me the video of my mother. Rayla. Show those in power we won’t be tracked or controlled . . . The power is now in our hands.

I look down at my hands.

Who will stop the government’s bloodshed? my mother had asked.

I will.

Cleo understood. She said she would take me to a safe house in Dallas. She will help me get the man they call the governor.

“Welcome to Guardian Station.” An electronic voice from the speakers. The railcar slows down, then stops.

The other civilians around me are at eighty-five-percent fear. This is normal, Cleo tells me. The percentage doesn’t ever go below eighty.

I’m at a hundred percent. My Camp instincts tell me something isn’t right.

The doors break open, and everybody screams.

Armed Guards block the entrance. And dogs. Huge dogs with sharp teeth. Barking, biting at the leg of a small boy. Everybody screams louder.

“Line up on the platform!”

“Move, move, move!”

“Line up to be scanned!”

Nobody moves. They’re all too scared to follow orders.

“Present your wrist for authorization, or you will be arrested immediately!” a Guard shouts.

The civilians form a ball. Thinking that there’s protection in numbers. I’ve never seen women and men try to help others in danger. In the Camps you keep to yourself to survive.

It won’t protect them. There are more of them than us. The back door opens.

More dogs and Guards. Pushing us out the front entrance. Onto a platform. Batons, guns. Tasers.

“Line up to be scanned!”

“Roll up your sleeves now!”

A Guard checks wrists with a scanner. Another test of pass or fail. He points right, you live. Left, you are dragged away screaming.

Two men break free, try to run. But the tasers get them. They fall to the ground, their bodies shaking. Then they stop moving.

This is no better than life inside the Camps. Dallas must be one big Camp.

“Drop to the ground,” Cleo says.

I drop to the ground.

Feet step on my back, my hair. My hands. I am hardened to such abuse. Cleo cries out in pain.

We crawl to the edge of the platform. Roll off the ledge to land on the rail tracks.

But only I make it.

“Run for it!” Cleo shouts. Her voice is being dragged away, up the platform.

How do I help her? I can’t.

I run.

Shouts reach me through the dark tunnel. A round of gunfire goes off.

I find an exit. Marked “Emergency.”

The door won’t give. Anything on the other side is better than the TXRAIL.

My arms are heavy. Weak. I would one hundred percent fail Assessment Checkup. I’m so angry I scream. I’ve never screamed so loud. It feels good. I let out another and turn the handle.

It gives. I throw the door open, and an alarm sounds off. The alarm doesn’t make me drop to the ground like it used to.

I run again.

I’m in the middle of a crowded walkway. Civilians are all around me.

Dallas. The air is thick. Dark. Loud. I can’t see the sky. Tall buildings are everywhere. I don’t know where to go.

My family was here. None of them are here now.

A second siren sounds off. Everybody stops.

“Make way!” a voice shouts. “Make way, immediately!”

A military vehicle drives from the gates of the tallest building I’ve ever seen. The top is a glass ball. I listen to the whispers around me.

“Guardian Tower.”

“Prison.”

“I hear it’s full to capacity.”

“Common members.”

Cleo.

The vehicle moves down the empty street, the crowd jumping out of its way. They wave small bits of cloth, red, white, and blue. A single star.

“General Pierce . . . he’s headed for the Governor’s Mansion. Something’s happening,” a woman whispers to a young man next to her.

I look at their shirtsleeves. Blood spots give them away. They cut out their microchips like my mother told them to.

I follow the vehicle down the road.

It’s good to know the name of your enemy. After all this time I finally know my true enemy’s name.

Governor Howard S. Roth.

Being this close to him feels like a second freeing.

OWEN

We must’ve sped through four states by now. It’s pathetic, but I couldn’t even tell you which—I’ve never thought much about them before. They all start with the letter I . . . I think.

My butt’s numb, and my brain is mush. We haven’t stopped in over six hours, and Rayla the Leadfoot hasn’t said a word. The woman’s a driving machine. It’s like she’s storing up all her energy and focus for Denver. Or her bullet wound is slowly sapping all her strength . . . but this conclusion makes me uncomfortable, and I shift my thoughts elsewhere.

There’s nothing to look at. It’s the same monotonous view mile after never-ending mile, so I dust the cobwebs off my memories from school before my parents and the government pulled me out to work. There was this one teacher I actually liked who tried to teach us punk kids a catchy, cheesy song to memorize all fifty-one states in alphabetical order. I was the only student who could do it, and naturally I thought I was a genius. Let’s see if I still am. The tune comes back to me no problem; it’s the words that are a bit fuzzy.

It takes fifty-one states

to make a country great.

Fifty-one, we are one,

the United States of America . . .

I skip over the hand-holding kid lyrics that are complete bullshit and hum my way to the main event.

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut . . .

Son of a Glut. I know there’s a D in there somewhere. I rack my brain for five minutes, then give up. Who cares about the state that starts with a D that no one ever remembers?

“Delaware,” Rayla says.

I jump in my seat. I guess I was singing out loud—I’m not what you would call a songster, but I’m not completely mortified. Blaise didn’t hear; he’s still passed out in the back seat. That guy sleeps like the dead. Which I hope we all aren’t soon.