“It’s a disgrace,” my mom says, giving the proverbial middle finger to our truce about sticking to neutral topics. “Commoners have no decency, like I said.”

Strike three.

I did my best, but a day just wouldn’t be over without one of our blowups. They’re a ritual, like a lullaby before bed.

“Your observation is totally off target,” I assert with as stable a voice as I can muster, but my dear mother won’t look at me. “A disgrace is decades of unchecked rule by a governor who feels zero hesitation in pulling the trigger on his own citizens. Roth murdered Darren Goodwin—”

“Fabrications,” my dad mutters. I round on him. His dull brown eyes bulge like he thinks I might sock him.

Calmly, so he’ll listen, I place my trigger finger between his creased brows. “He shot Rayla Cadwell right between the eyes,” I whisper, hoping my voice won’t crack. “I was lying on the ground right beside her when he did it. Are you really so sick to think I could make something like that up?”

I still feel the dead weight of Rayla’s body in my arms when I carried my leader—my friend—from the tunnels. She was so heavy.

“That woman was asking for it,” my dad says, smacking my hand aside. His bony finger stabs at my chest, but I stand my ground. “She knew exactly what she was getting into,” he presses, “and she had no business dragging a sucker kid like you down here with her.”

“Kid?” I yell.

“Rayla the Slayer is no martyr,” my mom spits, sitting pretty on her cushy passenger seat, arms crossed, mind proudly closed.

Rayla cared more about me in the week I knew her than you ever have in my whole existence.

Speaking my mind has long been my specialty, but when it comes to my parents, it’s always been impossible. And heavier things, harder things, like emotions and love? Those don’t fall under the category of “neutral topics.” I’m the first to confess that I’m no good at admitting my deeper feelings out loud. Guess I inherited more from dear old Mom and Dad than I care to own up to.

Out of nowhere, Ava’s fiery, disappointed eyes sear across my vision.

But a guy can learn, right?

My tablet starts rattling away again—“Blaise” lights up across the glass—and I almost throw the damn thing across the hall. Instead, I mitigate my stage-ten irritation by powering the pest of a device off.

“Oh, so you only answer if it’s Ava, huh?” a peeved voice reaches me from the doorway.

The man himself. Blaise.

Well, folks, the other shoe finally dropped, along with my stomach. I stop breathing and stand comically still, like Blaise somehow won’t be able to track me in the dark.

“Owen, you know this . . . person?” my mom gasps.

To be fair, at first sight, Blaise is a lot to take in.

He’s got on his trusty boogeyman bandana, smile of flames and all, and he’s shirtless like me—great coders think alike—but his crazy-pale chest shines like a glowworm.

It might just be the battle bonds talking, but I’ve come to view his scary appearance as comforting.

“And who are these happy-looking people?” Blaise wisecracks, eyeing my glowering parents, no doubt double smiling underneath his fire-grin mask.

“You tracked me?!” I protest. “Isn’t that treason now or something?”

Blaise shrugs. “Had to, man. You weren’t answering my calls.”

“What’s so important you had to call me sixteen times and then stalk me?” I say.

“Two things. Alexander’s making a mess of himself again at his favorite bar . . .”

Not good.

“A bad look for the Common’s morale,” Blaise chides, shaking his head so hard his detachable hood nearly slides off. “As I’m sure you know, you’re the only one he’ll listen to when he’s drowning in his cups.”

“Alexander and his tequila,” I mutter with a prolonged sigh. I’ve stuck with the guy since I pegged him as my best shot at getting to his own dear old dad, the ex-governor. I trusted his thirst for revenge as a counterpart to mine, what with Theo being MIA and all. But it looks like his thirst for liquor and his quest for oblivion will be serious roadblocks.

Do all adults have to be taken care of?

“And the second thing?” I ask Blaise, more than ready for this night to be over. Fires, a blackout, my total meltdown of nerves with Ava, my ever-more-inconvenient parents . . . what else? Lay it on me.

“Oh. We got him.”

“Who?” my dad butts in.

“You got the governor?” my mom asks, highly skeptical, slightly scared.

“Almost,” Blaise answers.

He holds out the suspense, a twinkle in his eyes.

“We got the Whiz Kid.”

This announcement is a major letdown for my parents. Their faces screw up in complete confusion.

But it’s a mic drop moment.

“Roth’s IT guy?” My jaw drops. “You should have led with that! How?”

Blaise’s fingers make a steeple, his favorite triumphant gesture. Then, another milking-it pause.

I lean forward into his silence, my whole body buzzing with excitement like a wild beehive. This is huge.

“He walked right up to our front door.”

The Cybersecurity Team has been searching nonstop for this elusive ghost for three freaking weeks. And now he’s come to us?

Blaise and I bump fists in celebration, opening our palms and spreading our fingers to make it rain.

We knew a guy like the Whiz Kid had to be in Roth’s employment; any Programmer worth his salt has been solicited to work for rich crooks at some point in his career. Luckily for the two of us, things never got so dark as to necessitate such a soul-destroying job. It’s not a path you want to take unless you’re dark and twisted yourself or you’re flat-out desperate.

All right, enough self-congratulating, it’s time to go. I fling my backpack off and shove it into my dad’s hands.

“Here’s food and water to hold you over until I come back,” I say double-quick. “The last of all my rations.”

“You’re not leaving Dallas, are you, Owen?” my mom says, wringing her hands all concerned. Not for me, of course, but for their own preservation.

Am I being too harsh? She does seem clammy . . . out of breath . . . The effects of the heat, I tell myself, choosing to ignore her sallow complexion.

I turn away and give my dad a stern look.

“Just go back to your dorm room. Lock the door. And stay put.”

The Blind, Drunk, and Happy is popping tonight.

It’s way past serving hour, and still there’s a line down the block to get inside. Rules are meant to be broken during blackouts, it seems.

Blaise and I don’t have to wait, of course—one of the few perks of being famous. We push our way through the open doorway and into the hot main room that’s lit by red candles in long, skinny glasses. The retro lighting really classes up the joint, I have to say.

There’s nothing classy, however, about more than two hundred sweaty bodies all packed together, most of them juiced up on so much warm beer, they’ve forgotten basic decorum.

I know the heat is getting everyone buzzed faster—but come on. That doesn’t excuse the off-duty Guard who just decided to banshee scream utter nonsense directly into my face, immediately followed by an unidentified, uninvited butt grab, rounded out by an elbow to the temple by an elderly drunken dancer with two left feet.