“Inmate Z-TX-11, get the hell up now!” CG Hale shouts. Twenty feet away. A metal club is pulled from her belt. Ready to beat me back to work. The beating will last the remaining fifteen minutes of Shift One.

My tenth barrel will not be complete.

A night spent on my toes in the Tank. I won’t last the twelve hours this time. CG Hale would like that. Four points for her.

I want to pass Shift One. I want to live. I grab two handfuls of beans, throw them into my barrel. Five more handfuls and it’s complete.

CG Hale strikes her club into my back. I fall into my tenth barrel. It spills the beans into the Field.

“We’ve got ourselves a date tonight, Inmate,” CG Hale says. “I think it will be the best one I’ve had in years.”

I crawl to my barrel. Drag beans back inside. The club cracks into my shoulder. Pain. And anger.

CG Hale sits on my overturned barrel. “You don’t want to see me tonight?” A smile on her face. “Are you scared I’ll ask you to take your clothes off? Don’t be shy.”

No Tank. No Gulf. It ends now, 8:50 a.m. On my own time.

Five seconds before the Sniper will react.

I take hold of CG Hale’s boot. Pull her down into the Field. Lunge for her neck with my hands.

A Scream Gun, not the Sniper.

It goes off somewhere by the loading docks. Every Inmate drops to their knees. I let go of CG Hale’s throat. Our hands press against our ears. Trying to block out the screaming. I’ve learned many times nothing can keep out the noise. But I have to try.

Large vehicles break through the Camp’s closed gates. Six of them. The women and men standing in the truck beds don’t wear uniforms. They shout, “Surrender!”

They have guns. Aimed at the CGs. Two are shot dead.

The Scream Gun cuts off. A Camp siren takes over. Stay on the ground or die. All remaining CGs run to the gate, weapons out to fight. “Aim to kill! Aim to kill!” the Warden shouts from the front.

CG Hale aims her gun at my forehead. Not at the women and men she was ordered to kill.

“Fail—”

A bullet fires into the back of her head. She falls into the Field at my side.

I dive face-first into the bloodstained water. Cover my head with my hands. There’s a ninety-eight-percent chance the Sniper can still find me. End me.

Two minutes go by.

My lungs burn. When I come up for air, the sounds of the fight have stopped. It’s hard to breathe. I can’t understand what I’m seeing.

The Corrections Guard of Camp 22 has failed. Killed off in 120 seconds. By the women and men with guns.

A man steps forward. He puts out his right arm to show the Inmates a symbol on his skin. “We are with the Common,” he says. “We’ve come to liberate this Camp and every other Camp across the country.”

None of us know what liberate means. We stay pressed to the ground.

“Stand up!” the man with the symbol shouts. “The Guard is dead. Join us or go your own way. Whatever your choice, you are free.”

The young Inmates get to their feet. They move to the trucks, to the open gate. A girl wearing no uniform walks up to me. Holds out her hand. I take it. She pulls me up to stand.

“You’re going to be okay,” the Common girl says.

I clear my throat. No questions for more than half my life. Now feels like the time again. I have to ask the question I’ve asked myself every day since I can remember. “Why? Why did they put us in here?”

The girl looks at me with tears in her eyes. “You honestly don’t know?”

Every Inmate in Camp 22 is outside now, laughing. Hugging.

A handful of the Inmates strip off their red uniforms. Sprint around the Fields naked. They stomp on the sea-bean plants, shout out every word they know. Because they can.

“You’re a Multiple,” the girl says. “Probably a twin.”

“What is a twin?” I ask.

There are so many questions.

AVA

Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. The sound of valves closing as blood travels through a heart. I’m surrounded by it. It’s soothing, life affirming. And wholly familiar.

Lub-dub. Lub—

No dub follows. The strong heartbeat suddenly stops. All at once I rip through a weight of blackness, screaming, “Mira!”

But when my eyes wrench open, my sister isn’t beside me. No one is. I sit up on an unfamiliar twin-sized bed in a bare, seemingly doorless room. “Mira!” I cry out again, certain the heartbeat I dreamt was hers. Where is Mira now? Is she hurt? I can’t feel her presence. “Mira!”

Calm down. Breathe and think. I remember a bag being thrown over my head and then ascending up, up, up in disorienting darkness. A helicopter, stealing me away from the Common’s headquarters.

It was an ambush. The Canadian president was never going to grant Mira and me asylum. But why have they separated us? Did they capture all the Common members? I have absolutely no sense of where I am or how much time has passed since I was taken.

Then my own heart stops beating.

Have we already been deported back to Texas? Roth could walk into this room this very minute and kill me in cold blood just like he murdered Father. What if he already got to my sister? It wasn’t a dream at all. Oh God.

“Mira! Mira!” I scream my sister’s name over and over. I rise and pound uselessly against the white walls, my heartbeat racing at a dangerous speed. “Mira!”

I’m trapped, powerless and ignorant, unable to protect Mira or myself or the Common.

If we die, will the cause die with us?

I sit on the twin bed with my knees drawn protectively against my chest, arms wrapped around my ankles. Hours must have passed—maybe even an entire day. My eyes sting from lack of sleep, and my stomach grumbles from lack of food and water.

A meal tray—surprisingly decent—sits untouched on the far side of the room. It appeared through a narrow slot in the wall with a jug of water shortly after I first woke up inside the cell. I ran to the small opening and screamed for my sister again, but the slot closed as soon as it opened.

Nothing has happened since.

I’ve been left alone with my thoughts for hours. With each passing second, I’m more and more sure we’ve been betrayed.

Was it Ciro? Maybe he was always the Canadian president’s man—a mole that burrowed its way to the very top of the Common’s ranks. He was the one who orchestrated the secret meeting with Moore, disguising it as a ploy for Mira’s and my freedom, but really he must have intended all along for us to be taken captive. For trade? Out of loyalty? A hidden hatred?

If so, Barend must’ve been in on it too. They seem to be a team.

Or did Roth get to Ciro? To the entire rebellion?

What if the Common itself turned its back on us? The Traitorous Twins became too unruly a face for the movement, and they needed to find a new mascot. We became too much of a liability as publicly branded murderers, diluting the justness of the cause. Mira and I have been abandoned in our hour of need. Sacrificed for the greater good.

And left alone in our own fight.

Three uneaten meals now lie in a pile against the wall. The spoiled stench permeates the stuffy room. My message to whoever holds me prisoner and whoever put me here: Screw you. I won’t comply. Lock me in a box and throw away the key, and still I’ll fight back.