This was no longer only about a possible future apocalypse. The Potomac Zeds had pushed this into a new realm for her. Using dreams to mess with people’s minds was a system-breaking, society-ending weapon, and there was no longer any doubt in her that something had to change.

So she didn’t let the Moderators’ needling rattle her. She shone her flashlight slowly over the mannequins they’d just walked through. She had a funny thought that there were twenty-three of them. She counted them.

Twenty-three.

But Nathan was dead, and they were chasing three entirely different Zeds who had nothing to do with him. It was coincidence, not magic. Her subconscious had taken in information about her surroundings while her active mind was doing something else. There was a term for it. Unconscious cognition? Priming? One of those. She’d taken some courses in college.

This is your guilt, Farooq-Lane told herself, letting herself acknowledge it. Guilt for not stopping Nathan. Guilt for getting him killed. Guilt for feeling guilty. Guilt for killing so many Zeds over the last several months.

Guilt for not asking questions.

They had come to an enormous ruined space, a tree bursting through the collapsed roof, the night sky visible overhead. Farooq-Lane shivered in the suddenly brisk air. This ruin was what they were trying to prevent. Humanity wiped out. Every human accomplishment reduced to rubble and vines. Civilization was so tenuous. This museum had been important to someone, once. If a Zed had made this, she thought, it could have been made supernaturally permanent. This was the real danger of Zeds, she thought. The scale of it. Humans could only do so much. Zeds could kill infinite people, start infinite fires, create infinite destructive legacies.

A gun went off.

Everyone jumped; Farooq-Lane hit the deck. As the ferns tickled her cheek and her palms pressed the cold rubble beneath her, she wondered, Is this real?

It felt real. But she’d seen what the Potomac Zeds could do to perception.

A moment later, Lock rumbled, “That was very unprofessional.”

Farooq-Lane lifted her head. One of the Moderators—Ramsay, of course—was holding a pistol, the barrel still visibly smoking in a flashlight beam. In his other hand he held half a limp black snake. The other half of it had been shot away. As Farooq-Lane watched, the ruined end of the snake slowly twisted in a muscle memory of life.

She had to look away.

Nathan’s words about clubs came back to her. She didn’t need them, he’d said. They needed her.

Did they?

“Weapons discharge only when I deem it necessary,” Lock intoned. “This area is obviously clear. Let’s move on.”