Untwisting our tangled limbs, Owen and I scramble to our feet and rush to the rooftop’s ledge. Boom! Boom! Two smaller blasts erupt simultaneously a block away.

“They’re taking out the cell towers!” Owen shouts. “Shit, and the backup generators, look!”

From our 180-degree vantage point, he gestures across whole districts whose emergency lights have suddenly gone out. All of downtown and West Austin, and presumably every neighborhood in the whole city, is now completely without power.

“Is this the State Guard?” Owen asks, voice taut with anger.

My attention snaps to the commotion in the street below. While most citizens shelter on the ground, hands over their heads in protection, a group of people dressed in plain clothes with bright-yellow kerchiefs around their necks run shouting toward a street corner. I watch, helpless, as one of the attackers pulls a pipe bomb out of a bag and launches it on top of an artificial treescape that hides a cell site.

“Run!” I scream to the bystanders within range of the blast wave, but it’s too late.

Boom! The cell tower blows, sending shrapnel flying, crueler than bullets. The sharp fragments of metal find their targets, slicing indiscriminately through bodies and building facades.

From my medical training at Strake, I know the gruesome damage shrapnel can cause. Awful, life-changing injuries, shattered bones. Death.

I pull my gun from my hip and start rapid firing.

“Ava, what are you doing?” Owen shouts beside me. “They’re wearing our colors!”

Though the attackers wear the yellow mark of the Common, these are not our people. We do not senselessly kill our own.

The yellow kerchiefs are a ruse.

This is Roth’s doing.

“I’m aiming to wound!” I shout. “We can capture and question them!”

Bullets ricochet off the roof’s ledge. Owen and I crouch down, gasping breaths pounding in sync. “Our own people would never return fire on a Common base,” I tell him, certain. “It’s Roth.”

“They could be a rival faction vying to usurp Emery,” Owen conjectures. “Or crazy anarchists who want to throw the world back into the Dark Ages.”

Words that Roth spit at my grandmother on national news come flooding back to the surface of my mind. Your criminal gang is on a rampage that will soon spiral out of control.

A part of me now worries if our rebellion inspired too much change. What if these attackers aren’t the State Guard? What if they’re Common members who seek to subvert the past, just like me, but are willing to take it a hundred steps further? Wipe out all technology, power, communication, modes of transportation, news. And government rule.

A total reset from which to rebuild the world.

Screaming from the wounded reaches us in the growing dark. After the initial shock of being hit, it took a few minutes before the first signs of pain kicked in. The cries are so gut-wrenching, I want to cover my ears.

Instead, I grip my gun tighter. Before I can rise to fire off another round, Owen shouts, “Cover me!” and surges to his feet.

I charge after him, protecting his flank until we both run out of ammunition.

“To the basement!” I yell, leading the way back to the stairwell door. Fear clenches my insides, all at once terrified that Mira or one of my teammates could have taken a sunset walk out on the streets.

Everyone was accounted for, in their sleeping bags, when I sneaked out of the room. Except for Ciro. His sleeping bag was empty.

Oh God.

Owen and I race down the stairwell and shoulder our way through the now-crowded hallway, packed with Common members gathered around their leader, the man with the goatee who gave us shelter in the basement.

“The Common Guard has set up a perimeter to capture the assailants,” the man shouts, coolheaded under pressure. “Our focus is on helping the wounded. Our medics will administer care under fire, then we will evacuate the victims to Barton Hospital.”

His leadership style shows a people-first mindset; he’s empathetic, a servant to society, much like a pastor. He opened his doors to Haven and the other former Inmates after they were liberated from the Camps. When we arrived early this morning, I watched as he gently informed my aunt of her friend Cleo’s death, the woman who freed her from her prison farm. Haven never stopped searching for news of her after the Battle for Dallas. But Cleo never made it out of Guardian Station. She was shot on the rail platform fighting soldiers who were dragging citizens without microchips away to the Tower.

I almost freeze when I see a familiar face I’ve been hoping to avoid since arriving in Austin. “Duck!” I tell Owen, and he does so immediately.

Throwing myself behind him, I bury my face against his shoulder before I can be recognized by Kipling. The hardened but jovial cowboy was assigned by Emery to help the Common hold Austin, along with Xavier and his son, Malik. When I feel Owen’s muscles tighten against my cheek, I know he’s spotted his friend.

After the combat he and Malik went through together, they’re more like brothers, he told me.

“We can’t talk to them.” I tilt my chin up to whisper. “No one can know we’re here.” I squeeze his arm to encourage him to keep moving forward.

Even a quick hello could jeopardize our entire mission.

It feels like a betrayal, purposely excluding friends who have been there for Mira and me time and time again since our initial escape from Dallas. They would join our new mission in a heartbeat if they knew of our plans.

But they are most needed here, and they will be safer.

I can’t risk more people dying on my account.

We reach the door that leads to the basement, and I pull away from Owen’s shoulder, his earthy scent of sandalwood and pepper lingering on the cloth of my headscarf. But when I turn the door handle, hard, it doesn’t budge.

“It’s locked,” I say, my fear returning. I will not be separated from my sister.

Owen attempts to bulldoze the door open with his body, to no avail.

“Allow me,” Ciro says, appearing out of nowhere. He produces a nickel key from his pocket. Where’d he get a copy? Futile question, the man is a master of keys.

I scan the large stuffed duffel bags he’s carrying. Is this why he disappeared? To gather supplies? Ciro’s shemagh outlines his glacial-blue eyes. There’s a clarity in them I haven’t seen since the day we first met at Paramount Point Hotel.

The door opens, and my focus quickly jumps from Ciro to my sister. I see her, bathed in lamplight, trying to fight her way up the stairs, but Kano stands like a wall in her path.

“I can help,” Mira argues, heated. “I have medical training. Ava is probably already out there, giving aid, instead of standing useless in a basement like I am!”

“They have their own real doctors; you’re not needed,” Alexander says, stepping into the orange pool of light.

“Attackers wearing Common colors are blowing up cell towers and backup generators!” I inform the team, hastening down the stairs. Mira rushes to my side, ignoring Alexander.

“What?” she says, face twisted in confusion. Mira’s gut reaction is the same as mine: this isn’t the Common’s doing.

Barend barrels past Mira and me, racing to get to Ciro.

“Where have you been?!” he reproaches. “What are these bags?” He takes two off Ciro’s narrow shoulders and places the heavy load onto his own.