But the dorm’s oversized doors are wide open too.

I lock my hands in front of my waist, fighting to remain calm, and creep into the dark lobby.

The first thing I clock is how quiet the 3D-food-printing machine is, shut down from lack of power. Awesome. Going to have to come up with another food-supply plan. Not that they were ever grateful for my hacking skills that got them access to the fine-dining printer without a microchip in the first place.

The only thing that’s edible is the pecan pie! Nothing tastes as good as the way they print it back home!

Who knew people could still be so critical, in wartime, while a huge chunk of the country goes hungry?

Trained in the art form of grinning and bearing it, I continue to inch my way through the ridiculously huge foyer, but before I can make the left turn that leads to the first corridor of dorm rooms, the high beams of a souped-up security golf cart cut into the unlit entrance hall, and straight into my eyes.

Instant blindness. Second “Who knew?” of the night: light can pierce as effectively as a blade.

Properly nettled now, I whisper a few choice curses and slam my body against the nearest wall a) to wait for my eyes to blink away the stars and b) to make sure these people are not Guards, looters, or ex-Strakers out for a joyride.

Before my eyes can catch up to the scene, I hear screeching tires and then a loud crash!

I rub my vision back into working order and initially think I must still be dazed. Seeing things, because on the floor in front of a stalled security vehicle are bits of . . . people?

Cut-off arms. Shattered torsos. A disembodied head.

Someone jumps out from the driver’s seat and starts fumbling with a rogue leg.

Next second, my pistol is in my hand.

An argument, testy and snappish, echoes down to me.

“No, no! You’re doing it all wrong!” a woman’s voice screeches.

“Well, dear, if you’re such an expert,” a man counters, “why don’t you get up off your—”

“I told you I should have been the one driving!”

“You’re the one who told me to make a left!”

Holstering my gun, I mutter a few more curses and slap a hand to my sweaty forehead. Whitman give me patience, because I’m speedily losing my temper. Nope, it’s flat-out gone. AWOL. And with these two under my charge, who knows when I’ll get it back.

“What part of ‘stay put,’” I chide, sounding way too much like my old Kismet overseer, “means nabbing a set of wheels and gallivanting across campus in a blackout?”

Life with my parents has never been easy. Why should it be now?

“You guys have one task. Stay hidden,” I continue, stopping next to the driver’s seat. I reach over to the control panel and kill the engine with a tap of the screen. “That means stay put. Do nothing.”

It was easy enough for them to stay put and do nothing back home in Atlanta, while I plugged away and did all the work in Detroit, keeping them—and myself—alive.

“Oh, look dear, who decided to bless us with an appearance . . . ,” my dad says, shaking a chipped marble hand in my face.

Right. Stone statues, not real people, are the victims of my parents’ latest blunder.

I swat the severed hand back toward my dad. He’s still wearing the same monochromatic baby-blue shirt and pants he’s worn since I was a kid. Rolled at the elbows and ankles, never wrinkly, an ace color against his dark skin. Same hairstyle too. Clean, fresh, and sharp, like if he never changes his looks, maybe the world around him will stay the same too.

My attention jumps from my parents to the broken white limbs that are scattered across the corridor’s floor like some ghostly crime scene. A line of Roths—from the supreme grandmother, Meryl Roth, to the beheaded face of Howard Roth—lie at my feet. I stick my steel-toed boot into one of the ex-governor’s hollow eye sockets.

“Your day is fast approaching,” I promise under my breath, so my parents don’t hear. Best to avoid flaring up another argument.

“The lights went out,” my dad accuses, like I’m somehow to blame. “Your dear mom has been terrified—we waited for you, but we couldn’t just sit there in the dark! We thought it was an ambush!”

My parents have always had an inflated sense of self-importance, but impending civil war has really fine-tuned it, nurturing the idea of their global relevance to next-level.

“Breaking news: the lights are out across the whole capital, not just here,” I say as coolly as I can. “And I was only gone for three hours. I sprinted here right when the power blew.”

“And you’ve lost half your clothes in that time, I see,” my mom says, frowning at my bare chest. Her pursed lips highlight the small dimples on her cheeks, the only feature I inherited from her.

“Is that the new Commoners uniform?” she continues in her clipped way. “Stripped of shirts . . . all decency and morals?”

Strike one.

I bite my tongue so hard I taste a mouthful of bitter blood.

Mom and I are about as opposite as two people can get. How we’re both dressed—or not dressed—right now sums it up nicely. She’s buttoned up all the way to her neck, reserved and uptight in her rigid, practical gray dress and leggings, whereas I’m shirtless—free and open to face the new and no doubt scary experiences that come with the admission price for a post-Roth America.

Comfort and consistency are Dedra Hart’s brand. The road ahead—still under construction—will not be a smooth one for her. Or Dad. Change frightens the daylights out of them both.

My tablet starts vibrating in my back pocket for the tenth time since Dallas went dark, but whatever it is can wait. My plate is kind of full right now.

“If you’d both stop yacking and do something useful, we could get this done triple-quick,” my dad huffs and puffs.

“I’m not the one who knocked the statues over,” my mom states, crossing her arms into her favorite pose. “We should never have come to Dallas . . .”

Yeah, well, I really wish you two hadn’t come here either. After the Battle for Dallas, I didn’t think things could get any worse, until dear old Mom and Dad showed up one morning at the Common’s headquarters. They saw their meal-ticket son all over the news and knew exactly where to find me. Well, not exactly. That would require a level of ingenuity just out of their reach. Turns out, I found them, wandering lost in the old state dining room.

To say it was an unhappy surprise is the understatement of the year. It’s more than just that they’re embarrassing parents. They’re full-on pro-governors. Pro-Roth. Even after all that’s happened. I’ve been killing myself for fourteen long days and nights, keeping them a secret from Blaise and Ava. Can you imagine what they’d think if they knew the people I came from?

Hey, I remind myself, a Hart has to start somewhere.

“We both agreed, dear,” my dad says in his faux-calm voice, struggling to haul a full-figured bust upright. “We couldn’t leave our son in the hands of Commoners.”

Strike two.

Yeah, go on telling yourselves you came here for me.

I wind back my leg and give a good kick to Roth’s smug limestone face, sending his head rolling. “Just leave it. It’ll all go to the landfill soon anyways.”