The very idea that Roth and Theo could be tracked down and unearthed without us—without me—there to witness it feels unbearable.

Between my tireless nightmares I’ve dreamt of nothing but the shock on Roth’s face as he realizes he’s been caught and the game is finally over. Won.

And Theo. I dream of Theo’s amber eyes, wide-awake and alive, staring into mine, knowing I found him. And knowing—knowing—that we can make a place for us to belong.

“If we want to make it,” Ava cries, holding out her hand for me, “we have to run.”

Don’t we always?

The first thing I notice when we push through the back doors is Owen’s car. If ever I’d call an inanimate object gorgeous, it would be this blinding-red luxury model. I expect to see Owen standing watch over his transport, but instead spot only a Common Guard, face wrapped beneath the woven cotton cloth of a military-style shemagh. Ava sprints to her, instructing the Guard to help Haven with an arrest at the Center.

It’s still strange seeing a soldier carry out our orders. But Ava wears the role of a leader like a second skin. She commands so effortlessly, so sure and decisive, skills I’ve yet to master.

The car doors open like the wings of an eagle, and we all pile in, Ava behind the wheel. I snap my head to Barend, our veteran driver, in surprise. My sister doesn’t know how to drive.

He raises his shoulders in a dismissive shrug, but I note the set of his jaw, so tight he could crack teeth. “Apparently, Owen’s very particular about who drives his car.”

“He only trusts me,” Ava says, hitting the accelerator before the doors even seal shut. She drives as wild as our grandmother, stopping for nothing. And no one.

We burst out of the alleyway with a neck-jerking left turn toward the heart of downtown. Ava pounds on the horn, warning the sluggish, sun-drunk pedestrians. No one tells her to slow down or be careful. Careful doesn’t get you anywhere in a rebellion.

We even speed past a Guard SUV, and instead of racing to pull us over, the two soldiers hold down their wrists in the Common salute. They can’t see our faces through the one-way windows, but they must recognize the car and assume we’re on a mission.

“So Owen tipped you off?” I ask Ava, popping my knuckles, anxious to catch sight of the glistering glass ball of Guardian Tower. Owen keeps close company with Alexander, a fact I don’t much care for. But it also means he can keep a close eye on him.

“Alexander received intelligence this morning,” Ava answers, eyes never leaving the road. “The drone left for the Island of Houston half an hour ago.”

Houston? Despite myself, hope surges through me like a taser shock.

This could be it. The uninhabited city, the drowned metropolis, is the perfect place for Roth to hide. After a dozen failed search missions—from Albany to Detroit, Austin to Phoenix—this could be the one.

“That pompous ass really thought he could keep this from us?” Barend sounds off from the back seat. The normally inscrutable soldier lays his anger bare. He eyes my headrest in front of him, looking like he wants to punch out his frustration, but Ciro keeps Barend’s hand firmly gripped in his. “Who does he think he is?”

“A Roth,” Ava jabs, smacking the horn harder than necessary. The relentless beeping overpowers my racing thoughts, until my mind grabs hold of just one. The four words Alexander screamed at me the night Theo was taken.

It’s all your fault.

I’m the one who led Theo to Dallas. The one who made him shout his truth for the world to hear, and now he’s gone. Stolen.

Lost.

It’s my fault we lost our father too. Ava and I swore to each other we’d get him back, that we’d rescue and save him. In the end we couldn’t even find his body to bury.

Sweat stings my eyes, but I gaze out unblinkingly until Guardian Tower fills my view, soaring high above the city and smoldering in the heat.

This is where our father died. Where Governor Roth murdered him in secret like a malicious coward. Level 102. Cell 148. Thousands of miles and a border away, I watched the hours-old surveillance footage that captured the moment Roth shot him, my greatest protector, first in the kneecap, then between the eyes. Ending the life that gave me life.

I’ve never before dared enter the prison and former Texas State Guard headquarters, yet now I have no choice. My body jerks forward as Ava jumps a curb and slams to a halt directly in front of the Tower’s entranceway.

The car doors pop open and I fling aside my seat belt as six Common Guards rush to stop us. Ava and I keep moving toward the glass entrance, Barend and Ciro close at our sides. We remove our scarves and hoods, revealing our faces, and all the soldiers back off but one. Kano, my old mission mate.

“Finally!” Kano says, pulling down his olive-colored shemagh. “I thought I’d have to break up the party without you!” He throws me a stirring smile, casting the damp, loose strands of his topknot away from his deep-set eyes. Even impending war in high summer can’t dim his mischievous gleam. He lives for trouble.

“The latest?” I ask as we sprint inside the high-ceilinged foyer, beelining for the elevator bank.

“The drone just reached the coast,” Kano answers. “A little island retreat for the runaway governor? Seems promising to me . . .”

Microchip scanners jut out from the walls beside each elevator door, like thin steel arms ready to reach out and stop me. They’re out of commission, I remind myself. Once symbols of control, the devices are just relics now. Metal bones of a dead regime.

“Dallas should not be a museum for the past,” Ava says, echoing my thoughts. She stabs the scanner with the butt of her gun before entering the circular elevator, as wide as our old basement. “The general should have ordered them ripped down the very first night.”

“He did, but Alexander suggested it was a waste of his unit’s time,” Barend says, the sharp disapproval in his voice as cutting as the blade on his duty belt.

His unit? Alexander deserted the military when he fled to Canada with his illegal family some eighteen years ago. Shouldn’t he be court-martialed, rather than officially reinstated as a high-ranking officer?

“Control room,” Ava yells as the last of us crosses the threshold. The elongated doors pound closed, inches from my nose, each displaying the Texas Guard seal. I wait for the elevator to shout back “access denied,” fully believing Alexander capable of deleting our voices from the admittance list, but the numbers on the dull black wall start rising. Twenty, seventy, one hundred. I feel no sensation of skyrocketing upward, past the countless floors of prison cells, the thousands of solitary concrete rooms overflowing with so many of our enemies.

Yet the two most important remain empty. One for Governor Roth, the other for Director Wix. I personally captured and saw to the swift arrest of the last head of the Family Planning Division, but someone let—helped—the Director escape. Before I can dwell too much on this oversight, the doors slide open to a flurry of pandemonium.

It sounds as if we stand in the center of a hurricane. At first, I think it’s more industrial fans, but then I realize the uproar is audio from the search drone.

The UAV is flying into a superstorm.

The dome-shaped control room, with its arched, low-emissivity glass walls, offers a famed, breath-stopping 360-degree view of the capital, but I only take notice of the bright screen that hangs high above the bedraggled head of Alexander Roth. Live video shows blurry overhead footage of a stilt house, battered and caked green with mold and decay. Violent waves hammer against its four twenty-foot concrete supports as the ocean surges higher and higher, making the house look like a lone breakwater trying to save a city that’s already drowned.