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The arcade’s noises—people laughing, yelling, and talking, all crashing against the bleeps and bloops from music, games, and aimless entertainment blaring out from the background—waged war with Adam’s attention as he hung on Michael’s every word.

Adam said that he could keep a secret, and now was leaning across the table—heart pounding—dying to know what Michael was about to say, already picturing himself back in the Chief’s office, ready to report whatever Michael was about to tell him.

The Chief would be so proud of Adam.

His lips parted, but then Michael closed his mouth and leaned back against the table instead. “I think we should go somewhere private first.”

“Where?” Adam looked around Nips. It seemed like everyone was busy talking or playing. It seemed safer to talk among the crowd, where no one was paying attention, than out in the open where an orb could sneak up above them at any time. As Adam learned in the Academy, orbs didn’t even need to be that close to see, hear, and record you.

“Anywhere but the arcade,” Michael said. “Come on, let’s go.”

They left Nips. Outside, Michael walked the main boulevard, avoiding wall screens broadcasting the latest Games — Brian Handler was the momentary favorite for City 6, arrested for beating a man to death after the man accosted his wife. Brian was in the game’s final stretch, on his way to the Mesa for a toe-to-toe with a City 4 serial killer, Bridgette Phillips—the “Black Widow” they called her—from its own Dark Quarters.

Adam followed, scouting the sky for orbs, but not yet seeing any. After about a block, Michael started talking. “I used to be just like you. Did you know that?”

No, he didn’t—and wasn’t sure what Michael meant. Grown-ups had been saying they were once “just like him” forever—it was a way of getting Adam to lower his guard and trust them. He understood this, always had, but didn’t like it when people said things that weren’t true just to make him think better of them. Adam didn’t mind when the Chief said he was a little like Adam, because Adam could see that. Plus, what the Chief really meant was that maybe Adam was a little like his son, who the Chief would never ever get to see again, so even if it wasn’t true, at least it was easy to understand. That made it OK.

But Michael hated The State, and Adam didn’t think he and Michael were similar at all.

“How do you mean?” Adam asked as they turned off the boulevard and began walking down a back alley that snaked between the back of two rows of 10-story apartment buildings. Adam was thankful that the backs of the buildings were all brick, and had no windows through which people might spy on their conversation.

Then, like Michael was reading his mind, he said, “I used to be faithful to The State, and believe in City Watch. I was loyal to the system, like you. I believed in it, Adam. Then something happened … and everything changed.”

Yes—you sent my sister to The Games!

“What changed it?”

Despite the fact that they had left the arcade because Michael had something to say, he now seemed like he was still trying to decide whether he was going to. He wore the same look Adam imagined he himself wore when about to get into trouble, when he had to tell the truth about something he didn’t care to talk about. Michael was showing some of the same signs City Watch had been teaching Adam to look for: the back and sides of his neck blushed a light red like his ears, his breath accelerated, hairs raised along the length of his arms as he glanced nervously in every direction.

“What is it, Michael?” Adam asked, because Michael still wasn’t saying anything.

Michael stopped walking, then blurted, “It was me—I’m the one who told City Watch about Ana and Liam. I got them in trouble.

“I’m the reason your sister was sent to The Games.”

Adam wanted to punch Michael, then kill him, then beat on his dead body. But at least he wasn’t lying—at least Michael had finally told him the truth. So Adam said nothing, waiting for Michael to fill in the blanks. Michael spoke fast, as if hurrying to expel his remaining confessions.

“I’m so sorry, Adam. I was never trying to do anything bad. I wanted to do the right thing; I wanted to help Ana, not hurt her. I went to Keller and told him what I knew, but never expected that would get her into trouble, at least not like it did.”

Michael’s voice cracked. Adam thought it might break.

He wouldn’t have been upset if it had.

“How could you do that to my sister?”

Adam’s rage was a controlled boil. He wondered what he would be feeling if Michael’s confession wasn’t already old news.

Michael steadied his breath. “I wasn’t trying to do anything other than be a good friend to your sister. I was trying to
protect
her. I knew Liam was bad news and didn’t want her falling in with his group. I had no idea she would get in so much trouble. But The State started lying about Ana, saying she was up to things I knew she wasn’t. Trusting Keller was a mistake. I wanted to fix things, but didn’t know what to do. I started asking around, then met a group of guys who knew Liam. We all got to trusting one another after not too long—and this time the trust wasn’t misplaced—and they asked me to join them.”

Adam’s heart started racing. Keller was right about Michael, like the Chief had been right about everything else. Adam hadn’t wanted to think his sister could be part of The Underground, but Keller explained how she had been tricked by Liam.
Used
, he said. And while her heart probably held no malice, she still had to be held accountable. That Michael didn’t see this made anything he said about Keller, City Watch, or The State, ignorant at best.

“Wait!” Adam cried out. “Are you in The Underground now?” He wasn’t shocked by the information itself. After all, the Chief told him what to expect—that was why Adam agreed to meet Michael at Nips in the first place. Adam’s surprise was the speed of discovering Michael’s secret: Michael had come right out and said it, three blocks from the arcade.

Michael met Adam’s eyes. He nodded and said, “Yes.”

Adam had thought this was what he wanted: Michael’s confession. But suddenly, the reality of the situation sank in. Michael confessed, and now Adam was obligated to tell Keller. As much as Adam hated Michael for what he’d done, there was a small part of him that didn’t want to see his friend rounded up, thrown in jail, or worse, into The Games.

Michael just signed his own death warrant.

“Why would you tell me that?” Adam felt like retreating, somehow unhearing what Michael had said. “You know I’m a Cadet, Michael! What makes you think I’ll keep your secret? You can’t expect me to do that.”

“I believe you’ll keep my secret because you promised to in the arcade a few minutes ago. And I believe it because even though you work for City Watch, you have principles. You’re not a Cadet because you want to exercise power or hurt people, or because you believe in The State’s evil cause.

“You’re in the Academy because you’re a good kid who doesn’t know better.”

Adam was going to come back at Michael, mad at his assumption. But as Adam was about to argue, his attention was snapped by the soft whirring above. He gasped as an orb floated by overhead. It stopped and hovered, looking at them—probably recording them together to show back at City Watch.

Adam’s heart was racing, feeling as if the towering buildings on either side of them were closing in. He wondered if a group of Watchers would suddenly rush at them, grab Michael, and throw him in a van.

Adam shook his head violently back and forth, upset, wishing that Michael had said nothing. “I don’t want to know that, Michael!” He punched his friend on the arm. “I don’t want to keep that kind of secret.” As if it needed repeating, he yelled, “I’m a Cadet!”

“I know,” Michael said. “And I know what a risk it is telling you, but I had to. I’ll take any consequences coming my way. I’ll take you being angry with me for getting Ana into trouble, and for getting her killed. But I had to tell you the truth, Adam. You’re my friend. You’re practically family to me.”

Adam felt tears welling up. Michael was right. He was like a brother. And since he’d never see his father again, and his sister and mother were dead, Michael was the only person in Adam’s life who’d been there for him since the beginning.

Michael continued, “You have to know what you’re getting into. The State, City Watch, Watchers, Keller—none of it’s what you think. Same for The Underground. It’s nothing like the terrorist group described by The State. The Underground isn’t the enemy you’re taught it is. The Underground is an enemy of The State because The State stands for tyranny. The Underground fights for people like you, working to get the oppressed out of The City to places beyond The Walls where we can live truly free.”

“But The Underground kills innocents!” Adam insisted. “I’ve seen the Reels, Michael. Shootings, bombings, all sorts of stuff The Underground’s been responsible for. How does that make you the good guys?”

“Because those are all lies, Adam. The Underground doesn’t do any of those things. And it never has. The Underground is made up of people like me, and … like your father.”

“What do you mean my father? Dad wasn’t in The Underground! Nobody ever accused him of that.”

“Yes, he was,” Michael said, his voice soft. “The State didn’t accuse him because it didn’t want to admit that one of its top City Watchers had been a part of The Underground. The State couldn’t admit that one of its own had turned. So it set him up somehow for your mother’s murder. He didn’t kill her, Adam.”

From nowhere, and shocking himself as he did it, Adam swung at Michael.

Michael, caught off guard, took Adam’s blow hard to the jaw. It was the same punch Adam had used on Ruben in combat. Michael reeled back, nearly losing his feet before regaining his balance. He looked like he was about to clock Adam back, but stopped short, wobbled, then met Adam’s eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Michael said. “But it’s true. Your precious City Watch has lied to you, Adam, and has since the start.”

Adam shook his head, refusing to believe and not wanting to hear, knowing Michael was the one telling lies.

“The State set up your dad and your sister.”

Heart pounding, Adam said, “Why would it do that? Ana
saw him
kill Mom!”

“The State rigged it. I’m not sure how, but it tricked your sister into thinking she saw something she didn’t. It couldn’t admit that someone with such a high rank was a City Watch traitor, so it set him up for murdering your mother. It was The State’s way to silence him. It threw him in The Games, then did the same to Ana.”

“Because of you!”

“Yes. And I told you that, knowing how much it could hurt you—hurt
us
—because I want you to trust me. Want you to know what I’m saying is the truth.”

Adam hated himself for not knowing what to believe. “If my dad didn’t kill my mom, then who did?”

Michael shook his head. “I don’t know. We’re still trying to find out. I know you hate me right now, but you don’t have to take my word for it. Let me introduce you to some people who can better answer your questions.”

“What do you mean
some people?
”

“I want you to meet some of The Underground,” Michael said.

Adam was shocked how far he was getting without even trying.

The Chief would be proud … if Adam could still bring himself to turn Michael in.

Ana’s skin was on fire, her body one big ball of flame. The world had dug a deep hole in the hottest desert, then planted her inside, buried her to her neck, leaving her to an angry sun with no sense of humor.

Earlier in the day, she’d seen that the blisters and peeling had spread past her bitten wrist and up to her elbow. Now, though it was the middle of the night and it was too dark to see herself, it felt like it was spreading even farther, onto her shoulders and chest.

She’d seen this happen on The Games many times. The infection slowly working its way from one limb and then through the body. The thing about infections, at least the ones she’d seen on TV, was that they started slow, a hand bite infection that went to the wrist, and then to the arm. But, all of a sudden, the infection spread to the entire body in as little as an hour.

She was living on borrowed time.

Viewers loved it when someone got bitten in the beginning and tried to outrun becoming a zombie. It wouldn’t matter, because even if the infected player won, there was no way he or she could be allowed into City 7—not that there was one.

She didn’t want to outrun it. She wanted to die. Not like when she was little and said she wanted to die while stomping her foot and throwing a fit. No, Ana wanted to close her eyes and never open them again, even if that meant never seeing her father or knowing how Adam was doing. Before she was bitten, Ana wasn’t sure what her future held. She could picture living out her days in The Barrens with Liam. There were worse ways to live. In the past few months, she had come to like Liam, a lot more than she would’ve ever thought she could. He was kind to her, funny, and could even be sweet on occasion. Plus he was, beneath the gruff exterior, a good man. Like her father, in some of his idealistic ways. Yes, Liam had betrayed her father, but hell, so had she. If things had been different, perhaps they could’ve fallen in love—not that Ana had ever been prone to such impractical thoughts.

But now everything was different. Life as she knew it, and life as she might have dreamed it, was over. She would be dead soon. Better to go out now. At least she wouldn’t be walking rot, or a danger to Liam.

Her eyes snapped open.

Ana’s body was itching because she was changing. The something she couldn’t quite explain was under her scalp, deep in her armpits, between her legs, and all over her arms. She felt an army of ants, but bigger, with claws that burrowed under her skin. She wanted to scratch and scratch and keep on scratching until her skin was in ribbons, but she knew if she started, she wouldn’t stop, and that would be the end of her.

She would be a zombie by the end of the night, in minutes if not hours.

It’s happening.

Ana looked over at Liam, who was sleeping deeply. He must have felt safe, which shouldn’t have been possible. For some reason Ana still couldn’t figure, Liam wasn’t afraid of her. He was snoring, somehow able to ignore the monsters in the forest, and the one waiting to be born beside him.

Ana slowly stood, her head swimming, wanting to vomit so badly that to avoid doing so, she took a full minute to go from flat on the floor to kneeling, then twice that to standing. Once vertical, Ana wandered to the edge of their impromptu camp and stared out of the cave and into the pitch black forest. The pain was so bad that she wanted to scream, just to let some of it out. But her volume would attract the countless monsters in the night and endanger Liam.

If Ana could gather the strength to die, everything would be better. She could say good-bye without turning, before staining The Barrens with her undead body, wandering with no purpose, meaning, or reason for breathing other than to feed.

The woods were silent, but Ana didn’t trust them. Too many times she’d been a fool to believe they were empty, when really the forest was waiting, preparing to spit its undead at her. She knew the woods would start crawling soon. The zombies could smell Liam and her.

My sisters and brothers.

Ana had to leave. If she didn’t now, she couldn’t trust that she’d be able to later. She was almost too woozy to make smart decisions. Her head swam as acid sloshed in her stomach and the itching worsened. She wanted to rake her skin with anything sharp.

Broken glass would be nice.

She pulled at her shirt to see that while the infection hadn’t spread to her shoulders as she’d thought while lying down, it was getting closer.

It won’t be long now.

Liam snored loudly. Ana crept closer to his body, inching toward the bag of supplies and weapons they retrieved from the bandits. She needed only one pull of the trigger—Liam’s lead spitter or one of the clumsy energy guns they looted from the bandits—to fry her face and brains.

She unzipped the bag, slipped her hand inside, and slowly fished, timing her movements with Liam’s loud snores. He held all the weapons—they both thought it best considering her condition, so she didn’t want him seeing her with her hand in the bag. He’d immediately know what she was up to. Her fingers found the polished wood handle and drew it from the bag. She tightened her grip and stood, then crept away from Liam and back to her spot.

Ana opened her mouth and shoved the barrel inside, eager to end it, hungry to stop the itching and silence the change she couldn’t keep from coming otherwise. The cold metal tasted clean in her mouth—a cool punishment for being stupid enough to get bitten. She should’ve seen it coming. Life in The Barrens was “Be Ready or Be Dead.” She had failed, so death found her.

Pull the trigger; then it’s done.

Ana closed her eyes to make things easier, but that didn’t work. She kept her finger tense over the trigger.

She looked over at Liam, suddenly imagining the life they could’ve had together. But hope was the enemy of bold decisions. She couldn’t go down that road. She had to act. Now.

Her heart pounded, slamming hard and begging to die.

I can’t leave him to thunder and blood.

Ana thought of her friend, Stacy, who had found her brother hanging dead in his bedroom. She had knocked on his door for 10 minutes before finally going in, hoping he wasn’t doing something that involved pictures bought in the upstairs arcade bathroom. The lights were off in her brother’s room. She told Ana that she had known “something was off.” Stacy saw a lump under her brother’s blanket and felt relief when she got closer and saw it was pillows. Then she saw her brother, dangling so low she couldn’t believe she’d missed his feet. A sheet was coiled tight around his neck, and small blotches of reddish-purple depressions and lesions on his skin. His eyes were open in a forever death stare. Stacy told Ana she screamed for minutes.

Ana couldn’t do to Liam what Stacy’s brother had done to her. She would still end it; she had to, but not within earshot. Ana didn’t want Liam to wake to her murdering herself.

Ana stood, shaky, then moved the gun to her left hand as she crept through camp, past Liam, and away from their shared ground.

She entered the forest wondering how far she should go. Ana wasn’t sure how loud the gun would be or how far the sound would carry, and didn’t know how deeply Liam was sleeping or how much distance it would take to muffle the sounds enough that he’d snore through the gunshot.

Crap.

Ana realized that it wasn’t enough just to get out of earshot. Once she was dead, the zombies would come. They would feast on her, and if she were anywhere near Liam, they might feast on him too. She might also turn immediately, then make her way back to camp. If he was still nearby, she was a threat. So Ana trudged deeper into the darkness, figuring if she wandered far enough, Liam might be safe after she turned.

Every step better prepared Ana to die. She was no longer scared. She knew her life was over from the moment Duncan’s teeth had ripped into her wrist. She saw it in Oli’s eyes, just like she later saw it in Liam’s. Every minute since then had been prolonging the inevitable. Now that she was moving away from camp, she felt better, calmer, more capable of a hard pull of the trigger.

She saw a clearing ahead and walked faster. It was ironic: now that Ana was only a minute from ending it all, the pain had stopped bothering her, fading to barely an ache. But the reprieve was temporary, Ana was sure, subsiding only so the undead could slip comfortably into her cells, changing her into the wandering terror that haunted The Barrens and scared the citizens who lived blindly behind The Walls.

A horrible thought brought Ana up short: she should have found a way to leave a message for Liam—a way to let him know what she was doing, and not waste time looking for her. She thought of him desperately searching, never knowing what happened. It was crueler than killing herself in front of him.

No, you’re just stalling. Do it. Do it now.

Ana made it to the clearing, and put the gun in her mouth again.

Suddenly, she heard Liam calling out for her.

She was filled with panic. Liam couldn’t find her, not now. Not when she was so close to ending everything, so close to sparing him from the pain of seeing her turn, and the constant risk to his life.

I’m too close. If I turn, I’ll kill him.

Ana took the gun from her mouth and ran into the woods on the other side of the clearing, farther from Liam, thankful the throbbing had dimmed. Branches snapped in her wake. She ran faster. Liam screamed louder.

“Ana, please! Stop! You don’t have to do this.”

He was on to her. He must’ve seen the open bag and missing gun. He thought he could stop her, which meant she had to be strong, had to do what was necessary.

“Ana,
please!
” Liam sounded urgent, desperation wavered his plea. “I can protect you. We can get help at Hydrangea. Without you, I won’t want to keep going, Ana. You have to stop. You have to trust me. You have to know you’re
supposed
to live,
supposed
to make it to Hydrangea,
supposed
to see your father, and
supposed
to stay with me. You can’t leave me alone. I need you.”

It was then, in the sound of his voice, Ana realized how strongly he felt for her. It was almost too much. She wanted to turn back and run to Liam. But she would be doing that for her, not him. To him she was a danger.

Ana fought the urge to run to him, murdered the desire to fall into his arms. She closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, rooted her heel in the dirt, then opened her eyes, launched herself forward, and tore deeper into the forest.

Ana had to be strong enough to do the hard thing and leave Liam behind.