I’m so depleted and numb, I don’t even recoil. I look at anything but him. The scads of weapons on the walls, in soldiers’ hands. The oxygen tank below Roth’s seat, the bags of inky red liquid that must be his blood.
All armaments making the man harder to kill.
“I’m glad we’ve been reunited,” he says after a long delay. Was he waiting for me to speak?
Ripping my hand from his, I knock the boots to the floor and cram myself into the farthest corner. A flashy piece of metal strapped to the nearest soldier’s utility belt grabs my attention.
There it is. The knife Mira entrusted to me. The blade, with its ringed knuckle duster handle made of steel, was stolen from me the second I was taken captive. Now it’s only an arm’s length away.
“You will pay your grandfather respect,” the Director snaps at me, but Roth holds up a quiet hand.
Peering down at my wrist, I outline my sad excuse of a tattoo. By only the light of the moon, I carved the symbol into my sunburnt skin with the sharpest rock I could find.
To me it means truth is greater than ignorance. Greater even than pain.
And fighting for truth is greater than my own well-being, because the cause is bigger than me.
I move my eyes back to my knife, then finally meet Roth’s scrutiny. I hold his heavy gaze, calculating whether I have enough strength, in body and will, to shove the blade straight into his chest.
“There’s not a single thing about me that’s like you,” I say.
Except my jawline, my height, my nose. My name . . .
And my sudden desire to kill.
“Get him ready, Director Wix,” Roth orders the Family Planning Director. “Our arrival is imminent.”
Get me ready for what? Where are we arriving? There’s nothing out here to arrive to.
As the compact, hawklike woman eagerly makes her way toward me, one of those IV bags and needles in her slight hands, tornadoes of dust unexpectedly whirl outside the Beast’s windows.
I didn’t hear their approach, this tank limo is soundproof, but a pack of military SUVs with the Texas State Guard seal on their doors have formed a ring around us. At first, my optimism soars, thinking this could be the Common Guard here to finish what they started in Dallas.
But why aren’t they firing?
¡Ponte trucho! You idiot! The State Guards are his.
Roth still has soldiers loyal to his side.
My elation drops to the floorboards that are stained his favorite royal purple, and I suddenly can’t catch my breath.
Not because of the military reinforcements.
But because I just caught a glimpse of our destination.
I shake my vision clear again. No, this is not a mirage, as much as I wish it were.
The gargantuan fifty-foot wall we’re speeding toward is very much real. The steel and concrete barrier blots out the entire horizon, as if right here at the edge of this wasteland we’ve reached the end of the world.
It might as well be.
Before I can even compute how we’re supposed to make it through the indomitable blockade Roth calls his Big Fence, the bumpy terrain flattens out into a smooth dirt road. The vehicles all queue up behind the Beast and I feel us moving steadily downward.
Walls close in around us.
A tunnel.
We’re going under the wall.
And straight into Mexico.
AVA
Sleep has no place in the aftermath of tragedy.
Rest is impossible when every part of my being desires to retaliate against a wrong so grievous, I’m certain there’s no good left in the world. How can there be when my father, Rayla, Pawel—good, passionate people who were fighting for something greater than themselves—are all dead, while their murderer still lives free?
I don’t even pretend to sleep anymore. In the midnight hours while the rest of the Common members are tucked into whatever makeshift bed they were able to find, I roam the ravaged Governor’s Mansion, now the rebellion’s new headquarters, searching for any secret clues to where Roth could be hiding.
I know he’s still alive. Monsters don’t die that easily.
The halls are dark—no wasted resources—but I can still see the torn-off wallpaper, the leftover pieces of glass from the shattered portraits. All the custom furniture—extravagant leather couches, costly American chestnut tables and benches—tailor-made clothing, and invaluable art, all the symbols of the governor’s wealth and power, are gone. They’ve either been destroyed or stolen, the loot already showing up on the Black Market after the storming of Roth’s gilded mansion.
The biggest trophy went to whoever took the governor’s most prized possession: Stephen F. Austin’s flintlock pistol. Owned and passed down in the Roth family for generations, the centuries-old piece of history—used in the Texas Revolution by the Father of Texas himself—has now disappeared into obscurity.
Out with the old.
It’s time for the new.
I run my fingers along the deep knife marks that have been cut into the plaster walls, a small smile on my lips. I used to love history, always more than eager to honor those who came before. But now I know we can’t build the future until we raze the past.
The former First Family’s wing is roped off. There’s a Common Guard standing at attention, gun on his hip, making sure no one enters. This section of the mansion barely survived the Battle for Dallas—Emery ordered soldiers to protect the Roth family quarters after a group of angry citizens attempted to light the wing on fire. We must preserve all evidence, our leader insisted, steady hand on my shoulder.
What about my family home in Trinity Heights? The basement where Mira and I successfully hid from the government for eighteen years? Father blew it to pieces.
The evidence of my life wasn’t allowed to survive.
Why should evidence of the Roths’?
“Did you hear the news?” the young, recently enlisted Common Guard says to me. “The vice president has run off.” His heart-shaped face twists in disdain. “The coward.”
The president of the United States is dead. The day after Roth, his greatest ally, fled Dallas, a rush of stress hormones stunned the president’s heart, causing rapid and severe heart-muscle weakness. His left ventricle stopped contracting and he never recovered. It’s rare for the sudden condition to be fatal, but the president wanted an out—he knew he was no match to lead a country at war with itself—and his heart gave it to him.
Now that the vice president has fled, our country’s highest office remains vacant. A special emergency election could spiral us into further post-rebellion turmoil.
Two people will likely throw their hats in the ring. Senator Gordon of Washington State—the man whom I thrust into the spotlight when I forced him to publicly resist Roth’s invasion and align himself with the Common—and his opponent Millicent Cole, the autocratic governor of New York, a carbon copy of Roth and his ironfisted policies.
“If there’s an election, we have to make sure our side wins,” the Common Guard says, urgent.
I nod to the soldier but don’t engage further. This Guard reminds me too much of my friend and former mission companion Pawel, and it hurts to even look him in his eager, wide eyes. They’re the same steel blue as Pawel’s were, before I closed them to the world forever after he died in my arms.