Kate surged up off the bed, and retched on the old wood floor. She crouched there, forcing air into her lungs. How could she forget so much?

But she remembered now.

She remembered everything. And those memories didn’t belong to a different Kate. They were hers. Her life. Her loss. And one way or another, she would have Sloan’s heart.

Shaking, she got to her feet, steadied herself, and rounded the bed. She rolled the rug up with her shoe, fingers skimming the wooden floor until she found the lip of the loose board and shifted it aside. Nestled in the darkness beneath she found the metal case and lifted it free. She spun the lock, lining up the numbers until the case clicked open. Inside she found a clip of cash, a set of border papers, and a handgun. Her mother hadn’t wanted to take it, but Harker insisted, so she had put it here, with the other things she didn’t need. Kate pocketed the cash, checked the gun’s magazine—it was full of silver-tips—and slid it into her waistband, tucked against her spine, before turning to the papers. She thumbed through the stack, hesitating when she saw Alice Harker’s face staring up at her. She put her mother’s papers back in the box, folded her own, and got up.

In her mother’s chest of drawers, Kate found a dark sweater and when she held it up, she was surprised to see how close they were in size. Another reminder of how much time had passed. She set the sweater on the chest of drawers and stripped off August’s jacket and the shirt beneath, cringing at the way her stitches tugged as she pulled on the clean clothes, the silver medallion warm against her bare skin. She closed her eyes and brought the sweater cuffs to her nose, inhaling the fading scent of lavender. Her mother had tucked it into all the drawers to keep the clothes fresh.

She found a T-shirt for August and slung it over her shoulder.

The bathroom was still quiet in that heavy way, so she hung the shirt on the door and went outside, padding across the tangled grass and ruined garden toward the small garage. The sun was already starting to sink, but the light caught on something in the distance, beyond the line of trees and back in the direction of the Waste.

Kate squinted.

It looked like some kind of warehouse, or an industrial barn. It was new—at least, it hadn’t been there six years ago—but the whole thing was still, no smoke rising from the chimneys, no trucks coming and going, no perimeter. Either it had been abandoned or raided.

Inside the garage, she found the car. It had gone unused, even when they lived here, but her mom had insisted on having one, in case of emergencies. The day they returned to V-City, Harker had sent a small entourage to pick them up, so there’d been no reason to take it. She disconnected the battery from the generator and closed the hood. She tipped a gallon of gas into the tank and tried the door. It creaked, but came open, and Kate lowered herself into the driver’s seat, and found the key tucked against the visor. She slid it into the ignition, held her breath, and turned. On the first try the motor shuddered. On the second, it started.

A victorious sound escaped her throat.

And then, as she turned the car off, she heard the rumble of a second engine. A distant truck. She held her breath and reminded herself that the main road lay on the other side of an incline and beyond the line of trees. She reminded herself that no one could see the house from there, but she still stayed in the car, gripping the wheel, until all she could hear was her heart.

August knew he was losing his mind.

The worst part was he could feel it happening.

The sickness had taken over his body, infecting his thoughts, and now he was trapped inside himself, caught in the haze like a dreamer trapped at the edge of sleep. He could feel the corner of the dream but he couldn’t reach it, couldn’t pull himself out.

He couldn’t hold on to his words, either. They slid through his thoughts and out of his mouth and then they were gone before he could grasp their meaning.

The pain had faded for a while, smothered by madness and joy, but now the tallies seared across his skin again, pulsing hotly, and the gunshots rang through his head in a barrage of white noise. He pressed his burning forehead against the cold tiles, his skin hissing like doused fire as the cold fought against the fever.

His body finally cooled and he slumped back against the wall of the tub, letting the cold water rise over his shins, up his spine, closing over his ribs.

Kate came and went, her dark eyes floating in the steam, here and gone and here again.

She was here now.

“Listen to me,” he said, trying to hold on to the words before they got away. “You need . . . to go.”

“No.”

“You can’t . . . be here . . . when I fall.”

Her hand on his again, one of them cold and the other hot and he didn’t know which was which. Lines were blurring. “I’m not going to let you fall, August.”

Again, the fear, the wrenching sadness. “I . . . can’t . . .”

“You can’t hurt me,” she cut in. “Not as long as you’re you, right? So I’m going to stay.”

He clenched his teeth, closed his eyes, and tried to focus on his heart, his bones, his muscles, his nerves. Picked himself apart piece by piece, cell by cell, tried to feel every little atom that added up to him.

Every one of those atoms begged him to let go, to give in, to let the darkness wash over him. He felt himself sliding toward unconsciousness and forced himself awake, scared that if he went under now, something else would surface.

Kate perched on the edge of the couch, a cigarette between her teeth.

She’d scavenged and come up with half a pack, her mother’s old stash.

Those things can kill you, he’d said that first day.

Kate’s lips quirked around the cigarette. She clicked the silver lighter, watched the flame dance in front of the tip, then put the fire out, and tossed the cigarette aside, unlit.

Plenty of other ways to die.

She clicked the television on, cringing at the sight of her face on the screen.

“. . . the hours since Harker’s press conference,” the news anchor was saying, “there has been a rise in unrest along the Seam, and FTF and Harker forces have reportedly come to blows. We go now to Henry Flynn . . .”

The screen cut to a press conference. A slim man stood behind a podium, back straight.

A dark-skinned woman stood at his left, her hand on his shoulder—his wife, Emily. On his other side, an FTF with his arm in a sling. Thousands of task force members, and Flynn had picked a wounded one. Clever, thought Kate grudgingly, casting himself as the victim. Then again, he was: His son was missing, framed for a crime he didn’t commit. Because of her father. Because of her.