An openmouthed rattlesnake uncoils itself out of a ridged cog. A symbol of my old self transforming into the new. It’s got a silver diamond-shaped head and a rattler vibrating in warning. I asked Malik to make half the scales yellow, just like Rayla’s. My homage.

I inked two red fang marks with my own hand in the spot where my microchip used to be. A reminder of how close death is—and how much it hurts.

I can’t stop the waterworks. Don’t think I even want to. In the past, I’ve always been one to check my emotions just fine, but here I am, my feelings spilling out of me on full display.

I can’t work up the nerve to look at Ava and Mira. I failed them both. The sound the sisters made when they saw their grandmother’s body . . . I’ll never forget it.

Darren, Rayla, Pawel. They’ve had so many people taken from their lives in such a short time. A wink and suddenly everyone’s gone.

Theo might as well be counted as one of them. There’s no telling what Governor Roth will do with him—I mean, he had his other grandson, Halton, killed. If Theo’s still alive, who knows how long it will stay that way.

Alexander blames the twins—especially Mira—for his son’s abduction. He didn’t even show up for the funeral, and now Alexander refuses to be in the same room with them. After the service I heard him locked in a screaming match with Emery, vowing to get Theo back, the oncoming Common war be damned.

That game plan is fine with me. I’ll join forces with him—my only focus is to find Roth. I have my own war with the governor. The others can fight the Texas Guard.

I have to end what Rayla started.

I catch eyes with Ava—she stands close to her sister at the front of the stage. We go on staring at each other for a good thirty seconds, neither of us uncomfortable.

With my fingers bunched up like I’m ready to throw a punch, I hold out my wrist and salute her. My first official act as a full-fledged member. Ava uncrosses her arms and holds out her tatted wrist right back at me.

Her rebellion mark is a snake too. It’s an Ouroboros, a tail-eating serpent, twisted into an infinity symbol.

“Death and rebirth,” I say out loud.

Rayla will live on.

Governor Roth made her a hero. He cut off one snake’s head, and millions more grew back in its place. Half the country’s Common now.

The man could be on the moon, and we will still get him.

He doesn’t stand a chance.

MIRA

We speed through the haze at eighty miles per hour.

Ava wraps her arms around my waist as I turn into our old neighborhood in Trinity Heights.

With one shared look, Ava and I had made our silent way to our Triumph motorcycle after the service. No one from the Common or the Common Guard tried to stop us. Not that they could. I had to get away.

We had to go home.

I flip up my helmet’s visor, wanting no barrier between my eyes and what’s become of our childhood streets. At first glance I could almost be tricked into believing we’re riding into our past and that everything will be as it was. Our home will be intact and whole. Father will be waiting for us in the basement, ready to ask his usual question: What was your favorite part of your day?

Nothing, Father. Absolutely nothing.

I wipe the windswept tears from my eyes to see more clearly. Nothing is the same. Abandoned, looted houses are all that’s left. We’re the only ones here.

I wonder where our neighbors went. Did they flee the night we were caught, afraid to be accused of aiding the Traitorous Twins?

Ava releases her grip on me and points to the greenhouse—the place I’d spend my allotted weekends, gardening and reading and dreaming. The building’s glass walls and roof are completely gone, its metal bones the only parts left standing. I imagine a mourner like me, keening out a death wail, hitting the perfect frequency to shatter the structure clean of glass.

I ease the clutch and stop the bike in the center of the road. But it doesn’t feel like the world has slowed around me. It still races past, just like time. Never stopping. Always changing.

I used to dream of change. Now I know change just means losing something.

Ava leans the bike on the side stand, and I pull off my helmet. Even though there might be surveillance. Even though people might recognize us.

“Screw it,” Ava says, ripping off her own helmet.

Those are the first words she’s spoken to me since they showed us Rayla’s body in the tunnels.

We move to the sidewalk and look down at the gaping cavity that was once our home.

I don’t know what I expected to find: “Keep Out” warnings, “Exterminate the Gluts” signs, rubble, remains, anything that proved the Goodwin family was here.

The night we ran, our father detonated the basement, trying to destroy all evidence of our secret. In the aftermath, the Guard took everything, down to the last crumble of concrete.

All that’s left is dirt and memories.

Ava sets her helmet next to mine, and we slide into the empty pit, making for the front corner where our basement would have been. I lie down. Ava lies beside me. We both gaze up at the changing sky.

We stay like this for a while, my thoughts flittering by with no real shape or fluidity.

“We keep failing, Ava,” I finally admit now that no one else is around to hear.

I feel so desolate and numb in my misery. The fire that’s kept me going is flickering and fading.

How much loss is worth the gain?

What if we keep losing?

“We have no idea where Governor Roth is,” I say. General Pierce told us he sent out every drone in his arsenal to hunt down the governor.

We took his city, but the country’s still not ours.

Our nation is so vast it makes my head spin. Roth could be hiding anywhere.

Ava squeezes her fingers into a fist, her knuckles white and sharp. “He was poisoned by Skye. He could be dying out there.”

“Or he’s getting stronger,” I argue. “Regrouping. Calling every State Guard to his side.”

The dirt crunches under Ava as she sits up, wrapping her arms around her knees. She hasn’t cried yet, at least not in my presence. I want to tell her it’s okay, that she can release her inconsolable, heartsick grief, that there’s no one here to see but me.

“You can talk about him if you want,” Ava says, quiet as the still evening.

Him?

She turns to me. “Theo.”

I’ve muted Theo from my mind, out of guilt and shame of thinking about anyone else but Rayla and Pawel and Father.

They just grabbed him. Took him. I couldn’t do a thing about it. My chest aches where a Guard’s bullet hit my vest, right over my heart.

“Theo could still be alive,” I say, trying to convince us both. “If we find Roth, we find Theo.”

“And we win,” Ava asserts, fanning a new spark of hope.

Finding Roth. Freeing Theo. Taking on the Guard. It all sounds impossible.

But then again, so were counterfeit chips and twins only a few weeks ago.

I look around at the raw earthen walls that surround us. We can rebuild.

We can still fight and make our future.

“It’s not over,” I tell my sister.

“No, it’s not.”

We will get him back. I renew our old promise. We’ll get Governor Roth back for what he did.