My stomach clenches at the mention of my grandmother. Heartache threatens to burst through the carefully constructed dam I’ve built for myself, but if I give in to my grief, I’ll be lost. I must keep hold of my anger.

“I miss her so much,” I murmur, so softly that only Mira could possibly understand.

“I miss her too,” Owen says surprisingly, mirroring my pain. His dimples shine with his tears. He wipes them away with a quick brush of his shoulder, an indication he, too, is keeping his own heartache at bay.

But somehow, sharing a small piece of my immense hurt out loud, with him, I feel lighter. Like we’re carrying the impossible weight of Rayla’s loss in tandem.

Owen places the silver bottle safely back into the bag that sits at my hip. I catch sight of his inked wrist, a twisted snake, just like mine, in honor of the woman who showed us both how to use our own strength.

He keeps hold of a clothbound book, a rare third edition of Frankenstein that bears the first visual depiction of Mary Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein and his monstrous creature, worth a fortune.

“I’ve never seen an actual book before,” Owen marvels, running a finger over the gilded title on the dark-brown spine. He looks up at me, one eyebrow cocked. “Odd choice of story to be carrying around, no?” His face twists, thinking on it further. “Actually, it’s pretty perfect,” he says, smiling.

That gives me pause. Has he read the book? I look Owen up and down with fresh eyes.

“So where’d you get it?” he asks furtively.

He lingers close to me in a familiar, casual way—we’ve grown comfortable with each other’s company over the past few weeks. So much so, I’m honest with him about the duplicitous way I obtained the priceless present.

“I stole the book from Strake’s library,” I tell him. All schools and universities in Dallas have closed until the capital regains its stability. With a war going on, the Guard isn’t concerned about safeguarding an antiquated campus library filled with never-touched books—so I took the beloved story before someone else did.

“Gift for your sister?” Owen says without skipping a beat. “Must be a trip sharing a birthday with someone.”

That gives him pause. I never told Owen our birthday was coming up. He flashes a sheepish grin, which I interpret as, Hey, in all fairness, I’m a hacker. I know everything about everyone.

“I don’t know what it’s like to not share a birthday with someone,” I say. “I grew up sharing everything.”

“Even your DNA,” Owen observes, handing me back the book. “Is there anything you have just for yourself?”

We stand there, close enough to feel each other’s breaths, both of us a little awkward and unsure. I know from the way Owen’s looking at me that he senses it too, the thread that suddenly connects us. Pulling us together.

Is it more than just a bond that sprang up over losing someone we love? I don’t know. I just know it’s a relief to feel something other than sadness and anger.

In another move of pure reactionary emotion, I place my palm against Owen’s wet cheek.

I’ve never kissed anyone before—I could never reach that level of intimacy with someone while Mira and I were playing the life-or-death game of sharing a single identity. I ignore the nervous lurch of my stomach, close my eyes, and lean my mouth toward his.

But my lips touch nothing but air.

I snap my eyes open to find Owen’s no longer there. He’s back on the ground, questing for more fallen books and paint thinner bottles, mumbling to himself that he thought the sonic fire extinguisher would have turned on by now.

He’s attempting to play off what just happened.

His clear rejection of my advance.

No one says no to a Goodwin is my first irrational thought, my hands balling into fists at my sides. My nails dig into my palms, erasing the touch of his skin. My second fiery thought is cut off when a deep, heavy bass sound pulsates the ceiling above. The low frequency rumble is so intense, my chest rattles.

Owen jumps to his feet faster than a bullet, grateful for the booming excuse to change the subject. “Ah, there it is!”

Of course. He must’ve been alerted that someone time delayed the autonomous fire-extinguishing system and came to see if there was a problem. Owen’s part of the Cybersecurity Team now. That’s why he’s here.

Not just to find me.

Up in the Governor’s Quarters, wall-of-sound extinguishers have dropped from the ceiling, several large collimators focusing sound waves directly onto the fire. The burning material and all the oxygen that surrounds it are being manipulated and separated—eliminating the fuel for the flames. All public buildings are equipped with these high-tech sonic extinguishers, an innovation driven by the need to safeguard our country’s water supply from being drained on unremitting wildfires.

Above us, the flames are dying out, just like between Owen and me.

“Crazy cool what sonic waves can do, right?” Owen says, his cheeks vibrating when he smiles.

I stare daggers at him, waiting for him to explain himself, or at the very least to remove that grin from his face. But all I get in response is a half-baked, “What?”

If Owen’s playing games with me, drawing me close only to turn away the moment I make a first move, he should have learned by now that I’m the master of games. He won’t win.

But this is one I don’t wish to play.

Screw this. I carefully place Mira’s birthday gift back into my bag, turn, and charge down the tunnel, toward the next-closest secret-passageway entrance. By the time my fingers wrap around the first rung of the ladder, Owen has caught up with me. One by one, we climb in tense silence.

The tunnel opening pops us out near Market Square in the middle of uptown’s affluent shopping district. Half the well-to-do stores are closed and boarded up, fearing plunderers. It makes sense that Roth would place a tunnel entrance here—he has many allies in this district.

“Ava,” Owen begins, standing two feet apart from me like he’s afraid I’m going to jump him again. “It’s not that I don’t want to—”

But before Owen can finish his excuses, something much more distracting happens.

The lights of every single building around us suddenly go out, plunging the entire capital into darkness. It’s so eerily pitch-black, for the first time in my life I can see the stars between the towering skyscrapers.

“What the hell?” I breathe.

“Uh, that’s not good,” Owen says, closing the gap between us in a hurry. Hand on his gun, he scans the shadow-filled Market Square, looking for signs of a threat.

But this is the hottest summer in Dallas on record, two degrees higher than the twenty-first-century average. Owen comes to the same logical conclusion that I do.

“The electrical grid itself must have gone out,” he says.

Or is this something more? Did Roth just make his first counterstrike?

Either way, Owen is right, this is not good at all.

I have to find Mira.

“She’ll be looking for Emery,” Owen says, anticipating my thoughts.

Even in the dark, I can tell he’s fidgety, bouncing on the balls of his feet like he’s itching to take off. It’s obvious something—or someone—is on his mind. Owen’s popularity in the city is second only to mine and Mira’s. He has his pick of eager admirers.