“Coward!” I scream too. “Coward!”

The barrage of insults ricochets against the tunnel’s concrete walls, finding him before we do.

Governor Roth waits for us at the next turn. His pistol at his side, Roth stands in the center of the passageway like he’s bulletproof. I remember that I am too.

No one shoots. We linger in a face-off.

Roth suddenly teeters. Even in the pitch-black tunnel, I can make out how pale he is. Almost as pale as Rayla. He’s like a sinister full moon.

Roth’s sick. A psycho, yes, but he’s also physically ill. We can end this quick.

“You have nowhere to run!” I shout. “The Common owns the tunnels!”

I shut my mouth. Rayla must have a million things to say to him. Rayla must get the final word.

“It’s over” is all she says. It’s all she needs to.

“Yes. It is over,” Roth agrees. His gaze shifts over my shoulder. Is the governor smiling?

I hear the pop a millisecond before I feel it.

“I’m shot,” I say stupidly.

Four more rounds are fired, two of the bullets connecting with my spinal cord.

The pain is mind melting. I face-plant onto the pavement. It’s the fight of my life to suck in a breath.

How am I even breathing?

Bulletproof.

It’s all coming back to me. I’m wearing a bulletproof vest. A real one. Barend. He handed them out at the theater.

Rayla’s up against the wall, trying to lift her gun. Her shooting arm is shot up and disabled.

I twist my neck, scraping my cheek along the jagged concrete to look at what we didn’t see coming.

Guards.

Roth’s backup, not ours.

The governor takes his time coming for us—coming for Rayla.

The gun drops from my leader’s hand.

Her strength is seeping out of her.

I’m in a virtual game, a dream, a fucking nightmare. I can’t move. I can’t scream. All I can do is watch.

The governor stands toe-to-toe with Rayla. He says everything he needs to with the bullet he sends straight between her eyes.

When Rayla hits the floor, I have an out-of-body experience. I look for her soul floating up here with me. I can’t find her.

Don’t die! I tell it—her—me.

I’m doing a really great job at playing dead. The Guards step on and over me to flank their governor.

I think I black out for a while after that.

When I come to, I’m alone.

I spend the next twenty seconds staring into Rayla’s eyes. They never blink.

Don’t die; don’t die; don’t die.

“Rayla! Don’t die!” I shout.

Shout as loud as you want. She’ll never hear you again.

That life-stopping fact powers me up to my feet. I grab Rayla’s gun and sprint down the tunnel like an injured bat out of goddamn hell.

I fall to the ground. Pretty sure my ribs cracked from the bullets hitting the vest. Too bad. Get the hell back up.

“Rayla’s dead, Blaise,” I pant through gritted teeth to no one. Blaise can’t hear me. I lost my mouthpiece somewhere in Roth’s escape bed. I’m on my own down here.

And Roth’s getting away. He’s going to get away with everything if I don’t catch him.

Stop him.

Shoot him.

Back on my feet, I drag one foot after the other. Left, right, left, right. One tunnel after the next.

Then the tail end of the governor’s Guard is in my sights.

Bullets fly, but not toward me. Up ahead, into the left side of a crossroads.

“Grab the boy! Shoot the rest!” Roth’s orders reach me down the passage.

Am I “the boy”?

“No! Theo—” Someone’s rage-filled cry gets cut off by gunfire. Was that Mira?

Theo. He’s the one Roth wants. I catch sight of his heir tossed over a Guard’s shoulder. Needle to the neck, Theo’s out like a light.

The governor’s taking another one of us. And I can’t do jack to stop him.

“Roth!” I scream, hoping Rayla’s words will work a second time. “Do not run away, coward!”

But when I reach the junction, it’s Mira I find this time, not Roth. She’s lying flat on the ground at the entrance of a side passage.

The instant I spot her bulletproof vest, she comes to, gasping for air. I help her to her feet as our reinforcements finally storm down the tunnel.

Too late.

“He took Theo,” Mira chokes out the words.

He took Rayla too.

We race up an exit ladder, no idea what we’ll find on the surface.

Two of our Guards hang out the side of the van, dead.

Pawel is on the ground. A helicopter’s in the air.

“The governor is escaping!” Alexander shouts at the top of his lungs.

The emerging Common members shoot at the military chopper, but it flies away until it’s a pinprick in the sky.

I bet Alexander doesn’t know yet that his son’s in there too.

Ava’s bent over Pawel’s body. Her slippery hands cover a hole in his neck. Her screams sound like alarms. But we’ll all never wake up from this nightmare.

“Rayla’s last words were it’s over,” I mutter out loud.

“Last words?” Mira asks, her voice all raspy and broken. “What do you mean?”

I stand there quiet, delaying the truth.

It all definitely feels over.

PART IV

THE WILDFIRE

AVA

We’ve come to bury our dead in a cemetery full of trees instead of gray tombstones. A vibrant woodland on the outskirts of Dallas, where our fallen can rest in peace and beauty, creating new life out of death.

I lead the funeral march flanked by Mira and Haven. We’re gripping each other’s hands tight so we don’t fall to our knees, holding up the honor procession with our insurmountable grief. Rayla would want her family to walk tall and proud. She would want us to show unity and strength as we honor those who have sacrificed themselves for the rebellion.

I’m utterly empty. My heart is so broken I can’t feel it anymore; it’s disappeared from its cage inside my chest. That’s what happens when your heart shatters into millions of little pieces. It can escape.

Now I am heartless.

When we reach the base of a certain eighteen-year-old live oak tree, we stop our march. My mother, Lynn, was buried underneath this tree. Its long, sprawling branches reaching down toward the earth are her new limbs. Its simple, narrow green leaves are her new strands of hair, its thick, scaly barked trunk her new body. My mother lives on, growing inside this tree each year.

Rayla and my father will take their places beside her, surrounded by a yellow field of wild black-eyed Susans.

The pallbearers, Xavier and Owen, step forward with Rayla’s body, encapsulated inside a biodegradable burial pod. Emery and Barend make their way to the front with Pawel’s pod.

I couldn’t save him. All his youthful vibrancy and intelligence, stolen with a single brutal bullet. If I still had a heart, it would ache in one long, continuous pang until the day it stopped beating.

Our father’s body is lost to us—Mira and I have nothing to bury except the small, empty oval casket that I hold in my hands. I refused to let his microchip serve as a replacement—he will not be tracked even in death—and I couldn’t bear to part with our family photograph. His spirit will be buried as a seed in the earth. He will grow tall next to our mother, Mira promised me. We will return to visit living memorials, not gravestones.