To my astonishment, Rayla steps in front of Theo, blocking him from his grandmother’s reach.

“Your husband killed your only grandson,” Rayla spits at Mrs. Roth. “Theo was never yours.”

“The Roth family is finished.” Alexander releases his grip on his mother and moves to stand beside Theo. “We’re Common blood now.”

“I didn’t . . . ,” Mrs. Roth mumbles. “How could he have killed our Halton . . .” Tears of contrition fall down the First Lady’s gaunt cheeks. All her power has left her.

Now to take her husband’s.

I’m on the verge of demanding Mrs. Roth admit the governor murdered my father when a single word escapes Ava’s mouth. My breath catches, heart in my throat.

“Mother.”

Under the glowing light of the chandelier, my mother walks up the steps to the stage. She’s much older than her hologram memories, more worn down and wild and neglected than I ever thought she could be. But her eyes are the same. Green and fierce. Like every woman’s in our family.

“Not your mother,” Rayla says in a hoarse whisper. “This is Haven, your aunt.”

Ava and I snap our heads back to Rayla. She looks at the two of us, so much suffering in her red-rimmed eyes, like she was trying to find the right way to share this revelation but just didn’t know how. How could she have?

Our mother’s twin is alive.

My aunt. The term is so unbelievable it doesn’t penetrate.

Ava curls her fingers around mine. I can feel the goose bumps prickling her skin.

Haven stops an arm’s length away. Hers is a fractured smile, a lopsided, shaky curve that says smiles were rare in her past. Hers was a life of hardship.

I can never imagine what she’s been through.

“You survived?” Ava says like it’s still a question.

I used to talk to my mother’s twin in my dreams. Asking her if she was lost, if she made it out of the void. Now she’s here; she’s real. I reach out and hug her.

Ava also falls into the embrace; then Rayla wraps her arms around her progeny, holding on tight. We become a circle of four broken hearts, trying to be whole together.

Emery begins a slow clap. Owen starts whooping, and soon the entire auditorium erupts in vibrant applause.

“This here is what it’s all about,” Kipling says, fat tears in his crinkled eyes.

Click, click, click. The sudden metallic din echoes across the building. The noise stops the cheering, and pulls my family apart.

Is that coming from the exits?

“That doesn’t sound good,” Owen shouts to Rayla.

It sounds like a lockdown.

OWEN

“Son of a Glut!” I curse. I wave the key fob Emery gave me in front of the smart lock and try the door handle one more time, just in extra case. Still nothing.

Yep, we’re trapped.

No keys. No worries. Just scan your microchip. That’s the selling point of the nationally adopted electronic lock system. It’s convenient!

Yeah, convenience is all well and good until the government decides to seize control of your door, sealing you inside.

We’ve been using physical keys to swipe our way in and out of the safe house, but they mean diddly-squat during a lockdown.

I turn to deliver the bad news to Rayla and company. All eyes are on me, the Common’s resident Programmer. Shit. I’m expected to figure this out. My slightly panicked brain fires off a hardwired Kismet lesson: Every found key can unlock victory.

When there are no keys, you have to hack your way out.

I open my mouth to tell the team that I’ve got this, except the voice of a combative government official speaks first.

“Dallas is under mandatory lockdown!” the riled-up voice yells through the giant theater speakers. “Remain inside the closest building—any person found in the streets will be arrested or shot.”

The whole capital’s trapped.

Whatever semblance of calm the people crammed into the theater were holding on to, it blows to absolute pieces. And rightly so. Roth authorizing a full emergency protocol is historic—an entire freaking city going on literal lockdown has never been done before. Ever.

What other taboo lines is the governor willing to cross? The question scares the living daylights out of me. And this is the man that wants to have power over the whole country.

Nope! That can’t happen.

First step: Get us the hell out of here.

I turn to Rayla with a quick “I’m on it!” and rocket toward the control room. There’s got to be computers in there.

The panicky mob of Common members isn’t making my passage easy. Half are scrambling to the doors, knowing damn well they’re shut, and a quarter are shouting, “What are we going to do!” Most simply stand smack-dab in my way, looking lost.

And to really amp up the alarm, the government’s threats continue to play on repeat like a playlist made by Satan himself. “Dallas is under mandatory lockdown!” “. . . will be arrested or shot.” They might as well be blasting the song “You’re All Going to Die,” because that’s exactly how it sounds.

“Screw your lockdown!” Ava calls out from the stage. I whip around to see her raise her gun and shoot down the closest speaker.

The gunshot makes me jump.

Get it together. I only half killed a man. Ava killed the other half, and she’s fine. You’re fine.

“I’m fine!” I announce out loud, triggering way too much attention.

Whoops.

I race back down the aisle to a chorus of gunshots firing around the theater—Common members following Ava’s lead.

Just like that, the government has been silenced.

Yeah, for now.

I’m wondering when I’m going to give myself better pep talks when the guy who was hanging off Ava’s arm on the newscast shoulders his way past me through the aisle. He’s switched out his tux for rugged Blackout Wear, and his face is cut and dirty, but yep, positive it’s Pawel.

He hops right up on the stage where Rayla and her family have set up shop, and Ava’s face lights up with relief when she sees him. The two of them hug it out. Mira pauses in doctoring her own grandmother’s wound to join in on the reuniting action.

Is this me being jealous? Well, stop. There are bigger things to worry about, like freeing the Common from its own safe house.

I finally make it to the back of the theater. After I barrel up the stairs to the control room, I see Blaise is on it too. He’s already organized an improvised hacking station—his lightning-fast fingers are busy punching in thousands of lines of code. The guy’s in the zone.

We’ve got something Roth’s side doesn’t: the best hacker in all the land. He’s probably already unlocked half the doors in Dallas by now. And with my added talents, the lockdown doesn’t stand a chance. We’ve got this.

“Huge problem,” Blaise informs me without looking up from his computer screen. “There’s a simultaneous information blackout happening . . .” It takes him a beat to spit out the rest. “I can’t break through.”

What?

“Without the Blackout Codes to shut it off,” he says, “we’re totally up shit creek.”

Okay, new problem. Digital lockdown trumps door lockdown. We can’t hack our way out with no Internet.