The First Lady shakes her head, holds on to the wall. Tries to close it.

I force her to the ground and push her through.

Then I follow. Hand on her ankle. We stand. I grab hold of the back of her neck.

Her mask fell off her face in the struggle.

No time to go back for it.

No shots fired yet. But I’m prepared to shoot.

Gun in my left hand, the First Lady in the other. Pushing her forward.

A Common Guard signals. We are on the move again.

There’s a clear line for twenty-five feet. Then a zigzag path through a garden for the next fifty. Blaise talks Owen through it, and we follow his path.

I can’t make out the shapes we pass. A final left.

Bodies. Five soldiers without the yellow mark.

“Hold your fire!” two of the enemy soldiers shout at the same time.

They have no weapons. Their arms are up in the air.

Mother shines a light in their faces.

“We do not want to die for Roth!”

“We surrender!”

In the Camps, if you yielded, you died anyway.

“Cowards!” the First Lady cries.

How does it feel to have nobody fight for you?

“Tranquilize them!” Mother shouts.

Our two Common Guards fire. The enemy soldiers drop where they stand. Red sticks poke out of their necks.

“Asleep, not dead,” Owen says to me. We keep moving.

The mansion is in full sight now.

“Movement up ahead,” Mother says.

A flood of civilians leaves the dark building. They run into the garden, hands up. Screaming.

“It’s the governor’s staff! Don’t shoot!” Mother shouts. “Let them pass!”

The First Lady tries and fails to free herself from my hold. “I took you through the wall. Now let me go!” she cries.

“If I were you, lady, I’d keep my voice down,” Owen says. “Some disgruntled staffers of yours might recognize you, and well . . . your best bet is with us.”

The First Lady goes quiet. We reach the massive back doors. They’re already wide open.

“Keep moving!” Mother shouts. “Haven, Owen, stay close.”

“All eyes,” a Common Guard says.

We are inside a hall of mirrors. Glass and gold all around. A portrait of Governor Roth hangs at the end of the long passageway. The walls mirror his face at us a hundred times over. He is everywhere.

Owen jumps. The First Lady cries out.

“Five of them!” Owen shouts. “Ten o’clock!”

“Fire!” Mother yells.

A shot is fired from the left. Shatters a panel of glass. Another, then another. Roth’s face explodes into a thousand pieces on the floor.

“Get down!” a Common Guard shouts.

I throw the First Lady behind a table knocked on its side. Lift my gun to a Guard with no yellow mark. The soldier falls before I pull the trigger. Mother.

A bullet shoots by my head. Sparks spray the gold wall behind me.

“Guards in back!” Mother shouts. Her gun is aimed over my shoulder.

The Common taught me to shoot at the safe house. Protect yourself, they said. You can shoot back now.

Our enemies are shooting to kill. I return fire until my bullets run out.

I hit a body.

“All clear!” a Common Guard shouts.

Six Guards down, one of our own.

All goes still. Without the flash of gunfire, it’s all black. Like my eyes are closed.

I move for the table that covers the First Lady. Mother is behind me. Glass crunches beneath our feet.

The First Lady is gone. But where?

“Blaise says somebody is running up the hall, opposite the Governor’s Quarters!” Owen shouts.

Our remaining Common Guard leads. Mother stays behind me. We step over the broken portrait of Roth, full of bullet holes.

We turn left into another dark passageway. It’s silent.

There are no windows in this hall. The First Lady could be hiding right in front of me. I wouldn’t see.

Every door is locked. I get to the end of the hall. Nothing opens. I kick the wall. It moves. It’s a door.

The First Lady must be on the other side.

Gun up, I lift my hand in a signal to the others. The way Mother taught me.

I can see more now. My eyes are used to the dark. I don’t scream. It’s not a body in front of me. It’s a portrait. Massive. Covered behind glass.

I know that face. What is his name?

“Halton Roth,” Mother whispers. She sounds angry. She spits on the floor.

The Common Guard pushes open the door with his boot. Mother charges in.

The room is large. Made for a Camp Warden.

It’s empty.

“Lights on,” Owen says.

The room stays black. Something moves in the left corner. A bright-blue light. Halton. In uniform. The kind the governor wears. I can see through him.

“It’s a hologram,” Owen says.

The hologram walks up and down the room. Marching like the CGs at inspection. Is he guarding the room?

“Super creepy,” Owen says.

Mother walks right through it. “Under the bed,” she says.

We find the First Lady on the floor. Still. Quiet. She doesn’t fight when I pull her out from under the bed of her dead grandson. Halton. Her failed family.

She’s tired. All the fight has left her. She looks like an Inmate who has failed her final Assessment Checkup. An expired body.

I zip-tie her wrist to mine. We need her prints for the locks. I will take zero chances now.

No Guards are on the short run to the Governor’s Quarters. The door there is steel. Closed. Locked.

“Blaise gives the thumbs-up. All clear on the other side,” Owen says.

Mother takes off her mask. Everybody follows her lead. She looks at me. Smiles just for me. Like I passed my own Checkup.

“I’ve spent the majority of my life fighting for this moment. I’m thankful you’re here with me,” she says. “But stay back when we get to the bunker entrance. I won’t let a governor take you from me again.” She squeezes my free hand.

“Unlock the door!” the Common Guard shouts at the First Lady.

“You’re killing all of us,” the First Lady whispers. I lift my left arm. Force her right hand onto the scanner.

It lights up green under her finger.

The door opens. Shots sound.

Not all clear.

There’s a hailstorm of bullets.

AVA

I’m back at Strake University.

The campus is devoid of students. Unless you count Mira and me. But we aren’t students anymore. Our uniforms are black, not pure white, our royal-purple ranks renounced. We’re renegades with yellow slashed across our chests.

“That’s a college football stadium?” Theo asks, incredulous. Governor Roth’s east tunnel exits next to Strake’s stadium, the largest in the country. Probably the world. A twelve-thousand-square-foot scoreboard was approved for the state budget while untold numbers of citizens die from hunger all across Texas. But it’s more than just a football stadium, I realize now.

It’s one of Roth’s emergency escape plans. A giant field makes for a perfect helicopter pad in a megacity otherwise clogged with buildings.

It’s ingenious.

But Roth won’t be making it out of the tunnels a free man. Common members block every entrance: east, west, north, south, and center. The only way he’s getting out of this is if he’s in handcuffs or dead. I’ll take either.