Confused, I start to stagger back, but all at once, the ground beneath my dad gives way. The entire floor to the secret bunker room is collapsing. He screams as he plunges down, with bits of the huge radio machine falling after him.

“Dad!” I cry, reaching for him.

It’s no use. He’s fallen a good thirty feet to the bottom of a long pit. The wires of the device have snapped and dangle against the wall. Every time they touch, electricity zaps across them, sending sparks down on my dad. He peers up at me, terrified.

That’s when I realize I’m not alone. All around the perimeter of the room, looking down at my dad in the pit, are hundreds upon hundreds of biovictims. They shout and jeer, waving their fists in the air.

My dad is in an arena.

From the far end, a door opens and a huge spider, at least ten feet tall, crawls into the arena. Its legs are as thick as tree trunks. It scuttles toward my dad as fast as a tiger. The spectators go wild.

He looks up at me. “Brooke!” he cries. “Brooke! Help me! You have to come to me!”

I start to scream.

I wake, screaming, and look all around.

I realize I’m back in my room, in my bunk bed. Daylight is streaming through the curtains and Bree snores softly in the bed beneath me. My heart is beating fast. I take deep breaths to try and calm myself down. It was just a dream, I tell myself. Just a dream.

But it felt like a dream that was telling me something. Urging me to find my dad. To help him.

Telling me that he’s alive.

Quietly, I climb down the ladder of my bunk bed and land softly on the ground. I take the fresh uniform Neena cleaned and ironed for me and slip it on, feeling the rough fabric against my skin. It’s a sensation I’ve become familiar with over the last six months at Fort Noix. As I sling the backpack over my shoulder, I hear Bree’s voice coming from behind me.

“You’re an idiot, Brooke,” she says.

I tense. I hate hearing my sister so angry, and I can’t help but draw painful comparisons to the way I left Mom, the last bitter words I said to her.

Without looking back, I say, “I’m sorry, but I have to do this.”

I take one more step, stop, and add: “I love you. Don’t ever forget that.”

There comes silence in return.

Then, without another word, I step out of this room, out of this new life, for what may be the very last time.

CHAPTER NINE