Maybe I’ll have to.

No. I can’t. Not without setting the room on fire. People with flames racing along their skin don’t just stand still and calmly let their bodies be burned to cinder and bone. He’ll take the whole place down with him. It’s a gruesome thought, one that brings the sickening smell of burnt flesh to mind. My stomach flips over. In what scenario are both of us getting out of this room?

“Okay,” Dunn says when I don’t answer.

My heart is slamming against my ribs. He doesn’t know it wasn’t an order for me to come in here. Not yet. Maybe he won’t think to radio in and ask someone.

Can I scare him into silence? I think so—I take a step forward and he takes a generous one back. The Trainers taught us to fight with fists as well as fire. They wanted strength in body, not strength in mind. But he would know, wouldn’t he? That we aren’t supposed to do anything without orders, that my will has supposedly been crippled. Two issues with that: he can’t be as scared of me as I think, but when he finds out the rules don’t apply to me, he will tell someone. There’s no way he won’t. These adults are all on the same side.

Think, Lucas—Christ, do something, say anything, get the hell out of here—

Killing him won’t help me and Sam get out of here. It won’t help me find Mia who—a wave of nausea passes through me—might not be findable. I can break the jar, use the shards to cut him deep where the Trainers showed us to, but how long before the Control Tower puts together who did it?

“It’s...hey,” the man says, his voice strained, “everyone needs to take a break, get away, right?” He starts to lower his hands. “It’s fine. Go get the kid you brought in and take him—”

His eyes have latched on to the computer screen. He squints at it and my pulse starts beating behind my temple.

“Orfeo?”

The name cuts me like a knife through my spinal cord. I didn’t clear the search field. I shouldn’t have done this, I should have made a plan, a real one, but—I need to get out of here. I need to get Sam out of here. I need to find Mia. My uniform is drenched in hot, clammy sweat and the collar of my vest has me like a hand wrapped around my throat.

The nurse steps closer to it, giving me a wary look as he reaches past my arm. I can’t speak. And not just because I’m supposed to be playing a role.

“Did you search for this?”

Can’t. Breathe.

I want to disappear into my head so badly. The silence that stretches between us is unbearable. I look down. He must take it as a nod.

“There’s no one here by that name,” he continues, leaning over the desk to move and click the mouse around. Another field appears on the screen, and the whole thing refreshes. “But there’s a Natalie Orfeo who’s listed as being in Belle Plain. That’s in Texas, apparently.”

I hadn’t searched right? I catch myself before I can spin toward him. He’s baiting you. He wants to catch you. He’ll turn you back over to the Trainers.

But...if I hadn’t searched right, that meant that there were listings I didn’t see. It meant—

“No? What about a Mia?”

My body reacts before my brain can stop it. My whole body surges toward the computer. Dunn jumps back, both arms up, but I don’t care about anything other than what’s on the screen. Joy crashes into relief. My knees might give out on me if I don’t hold on to the table.

There’s a photo of her next to a profile—her hair is longer than I remember, dark and curling over her shoulder the way Mom’s used to. My throat burns. Weight, height—classified as Blue. God. Thank you, God. She’s alive. She’s not like me. Something brittle in my chest snaps, and I have to keep swallowing back the urge to cry.

Black Rock. That’s her camp. Where is it? I keep scrolling, but it doesn’t say.

“Is that...your sister? A cousin?” Dunn is edging back toward me but stops when I turn and pin him with a glare.

They’re all the same. The Trainers, the PSFs, even these nurses. They are not on our side and they’ll never be. He is going to take so much pleasure in taking me down for this. Was this worth it? I know she’s alive and where she is, but I’m done. Done. I won’t even get to say good-bye to Sam, or somehow tell her that they’re taking me out, back to the Facility, back to be worked over again and again until they figure out a way to turn my head into an empty husk. The thought of the building with its bleach-white walls makes me feel almost manically desperate.

Mia is alive. She’s alive. Any happiness at the thought is smashed into pieces under the weight of knowing that, yeah, she’s alive, but she’s in a place like this. I’ll never be assigned there once the Trainers are told about this. They’ll keep me for months, trying to break me. Would they hurt her in order to hurt me? That would work. God—oh my God. There would be no place safe for that kind of pain.

Dunn leans against the counter, his arms crossed over his chest. “They would never ask any of you to look something up in the system, so I have to believe that this was important enough to you to risk getting caught. I’d ask whose log-in you used, but it doesn’t matter. I admire your balls, but if you’re going to try this again, you have to be more careful. Anyone could have walked in.”

I rise to my full height, clenching a fist and drawing it up in front of me like I’m about to...do something. I have enough control over the fire to spark a flame with a small snap.