It was because of her that we were able to take out Ibrahim and Anderson. And it was because of her that Warner is locked up with Robo J somewhere. Honestly, I don’t even know how to feel about it all. I haven’t really allowed myself to think about the fact that J might never come back, that I might never see my best friend again. If I think about it too much, I start feeling like I can’t breathe, and I can’t afford to stop breathing right now. Not yet.
So I try not to think about it.
But Warner—
Warner is either going to come out of this alive and happy, or dead doing something he believed in.
And there’s nothing I can do about it.
The problem is, I haven’t seen him in over an hour, and I have no idea what that means. It could either be really good news or really, really bad. He never shared his plan with me—surprise surprise—so I don’t even know exactly what he’d planned to do to once he got her alone. And even though I know better than to doubt him, I have to admit that there’s a tiny part of me that wonders if he’s even alive right now.
An ancient, earsplitting groan interrupts my thoughts.
I look up, toward the source of the sound, and realize that the ceiling is caving in. The roof is coming apart. The walls are beginning to crumble. The long, circuitous hallways all ring around an interior courtyard within which lives a massive, prehistoric-looking tree. For no reason I can understand, the steel railings around the hallways are beginning to melt apart. I watch in real time as the tree catches fire, flames roaring higher at an astonishing rate. Smoke builds, curling in my direction, already beginning to suffocate the halls, and my heart is racing as I look around, my panic spiking. I start banging on the door, not caring who hears me now.
It’s the end of the fucking world out here.
I’m screaming for Nazeera, begging her to come out, to get out here before it’s too late, and I’m coughing now, smoke catching in my lungs, still hoping desperately that she’ll hear my voice when suddenly, violently— The door swings open.
I’m knocked backward by the force of it, and when I look up, eyes burning, Nazeera is there. Nazeera, Lena, Stephan, Haider, Valentina, Nicolás, and Adam.
Adam.
I can’t explain exactly what happens next. There’s so much shouting. So much running. Stephan punches a clean hole through a crumbling wall, and Nazeera helps fly us all out to safety. It happens in a blur. I see things unfold in flashes, in screams.
It feels like a dream. My eyes stinging, tearing.
I’m crying because of the fire, I think. It’s the heat, the sky, the roaring flames devouring everything.
I watch the capital of Oceania—all 120 acres of it—go up in flames.
And Warner and Juliette go with it.
ELLA
（JULIETTE）
The first thing we do is find Emmaline.
I reach out to her in my mind and she answers right away. Heat, fingers of heat, curling around my bones. Sparking to life in my heart. She was always here, always with me.
I understand now.
I understand that the moments that saved me were gifts from my sister, gifts she was able to give only by destroying herself in return. She’s so much weaker now than she was two weeks ago because she expended so much of herself to keep me alive. To keep their machinations from reaching my heart. My soul.
I remember everything now. My mind is sharpened to a new point, honed to a clarity I’ve never before experienced. I see everything. Understand everything.
It doesn’t take long to find her.
I don’t apologize for the people I scatter, the walls I shatter along the way. I don’t apologize for my anger or my pain. I don’t stop moving when I see Tatiana and Azi; I don’t have to. I snap their necks from where I’m standing. I tear their bodies in half with a single gesture.
When I reach my sister, the agony inside of me reaches its peak. She is limp inside her tank, a desiccated fish, a dying spider. She’s curled into herself in its darkest corner, her long dark hair wrapping around her wrinkled, sagging figure. A low keening emanates from her tank.
She is crying.
She is small. Scared. She reminds me of another version of myself, a person I can hardly remember, a young girl thrown in prison, too broken by the world to realize that she’d always had the power to break herself free. To conquer the earth.
I had that luxury.
Emmaline didn’t.
The sight of her makes me want to fall to pieces. My heart rages with anger, devastation. When I think about what they did to her—what they’ve done to her—
Don’t