War. The inhabitants of the Icebox struggle enough day to day, barely surviving in the conditions caused by the Interface blocking the sun. The Remnants can’t merely be to keep them out of the mines, and somehow I know everything is related to the paper we took from Greta’s shop. It all comes back to the looms.

“If Kincaid controls the Icebox—” I begin.

“He controls all the territory under the Interface,” Dante corrects.

“Okay,” I say, “but outside the Interface?”

“That’s Guild territory,” Dante says. “Their mines occupy a large portion of the uncovered area on Earth.”

“But how do you collect the solar energy then?” Jost asks.

“Kincaid doesn’t care much about Guild boundaries, but it makes Sunrunning dangerous. If you get caught, you don’t come back.”

“How do you manage it?” I ask.

Dante leans in and grins. “I don’t get caught.”

Neither side respects the other’s territory. That much is clear. Sunrunners might be dangerous, but they’re also the only people with the courage to stand up to the Guild.

“Why did you run from Arras?” Dante asks us.

“We’ve lost people to the Guild,” Jost answers for us. “We saw through the Guild’s lies, and the truth brought us here.”

Jost is telling the truth without giving anything away.

Dante isn’t appeased by this answer. “Strange things have been happening around here. More Guild presence. A ship was downed from the sky. I can’t help thinking that your typical refugee doesn’t show up with the sign of Kairos printed on her arm.”

This is why he’s interested in us. “My father did it before the Guild killed him,” I admit. “Before I ran.”

“And he never explained to you what it was?” Dante presses.

“There wasn’t time. The Guild was onto us, so I had to go before I could ask. I assumed it was another Lewys family secret.”

“What did you say?” Dante asks.

His face is ashen, and I replay my last words, trying to determine which triggered such an intense reaction. Before I land on an answer, a red light pulses through the room in sync with a shrieking alarm.

“That’s not possible,” Dante says, jumping up and knocking his chair over in the process.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, unease creeping, unwanted, into my chest.

“It’s a perimeter alert. We’ve had a breech in one of the entrances.” He’s already starting down the hall, and we have to race to catch up.

“Remnants?” I ask.

Dante doesn’t respond. He’s busy sliding through screens on a companel. It’s Guild tech, much more advanced than anything we’ve seen on Earth so far.

How flexible are the Sunrunners in their alliances?

He lands on the security stream that shows the point of access. The feed glows green and white, so we can see the movement in the darkness outside. A handful of humans are tearing at Dumpsters in an alley.

“Is that here?” I ask.

“In the back,” Dante murmurs.

Jost thinks to ask a more useful question. “Is this normal?”

“That, maybe,” he says, pointing to the Rems leaping out from the garbage bins, but then he swipes the image to the next feed. “This isn’t.”

The stream shows a crumpled steel door lying on its hinges in the alley. One of the Rems is caught underneath it. It’s a woman from the look of her long hair, but I can’t see her face and she isn’t moving. The feed shifts to show Remnants inside a concrete holding area, much like the sally port we entered through.

“The Guild must have given them some fancy explosives to get through our doors,” Dante says. “They’re not here to blow us up, they’re trying to reap us.”

“Can they get in?”

“Doubtful. The holding areas are triple reinforced—two layers of concrete and steel supports in between. Anything they used to get through that would kill them, and we have our own booby trap that will be triggered if they try to take out the other door.”

The camera feeding us the stream of the holding area circles to the next corner of the room, and I feel my heart thumping hard in my chest. I’ve barely glimpsed the footage before the stream changes again, but the last image is all I can process.

They have Erik.

SIX

THE ALARM DOESN’T FADE AND ITS WAIL pierces the air, pounding in my ears. Thoughts and ideas tumble through my head as quickly as they evaporate. How did this happen? How did they know to bring Erik here? Has the Guild found us?

Are we being watched?

Dante wastes no time pulling rifles from a storage unit in the safe house. He starts to hand me one but hesitates, and I understand what he’s thinking. He doesn’t want me to go. Maybe Sunrunners don’t think much of girls, but I have my own tricks. I refuse the rifle, reaching for a short knife with a serrated blade.

“Jost and I can handle this,” Dante says.

“He’s right. Those things are after something,” Jost says. It’s a warning. Jost thinks they’ve come for me, but there’s no reason to believe that. Except that they chose this safe house to attack. And that they took Erik as a prisoner. So actually there are several reasons to think that.

“Maybe,” I grant him, “but they aren’t going to get it.”

The security stream doesn’t show anyone near the main entrance, so we head there.