I bunched my hands into fists, puling against my restraints. “Past.” Maybe a month. Maybe a few weeks. I couldn’t tell exactly, and even if I could, it was the last thing I’d tell Darren.

“We used the information you provided to take her into custody.”

I focused on the holographic Cipher to keep from slipping anything else. A but was coming.

For sure. It had to.

“She escaped with a guerrilla force.” Darren stepped through the image of Cipher, coming to hover at my side. “We suspect she’s joined with the Shadow Ravens.”

My held breath slipped out. Thank Odin, Ra, and Jesus. My problem child was still safe.

“Now we need to know where she and the other traitors are hiding.” Darren said. His voice came out cool and even, but I knew him well enough to know he was frothing for info.

Cipher had already been number one on the Seligo shit list before she escaped their grasp. According to them, the girl should’ve been killed at birth. Her electrical powers were crazy dangerous, and if she ever lost it…

I scrunched my eyes before the image got projected, but a whiff of ozone wafted from a potential future that involved a city-sized crater and a few continents of charred electrical grids. “She’s too distant. You know I can’t zero in without—”

Before I could finish the thought, a weight settled in my lap. A purple backpack.

Darren grinned pure poison. “See if that triggers anything.”

I swallowed. Three guesses who the pack belonged to.

I didn’t need to guess before the pack’s recent past layered over my reality. Techs in white coats pore over the fabric, searching for fibers and DNA, analyzing Cipher’s things for any hint that would tell them where she’d been or where she was headed.

I was supposed to be doing the same.

Instead of fighting the inevitable, I followed the page-back of time. If the Seligo had picked up her stuff, then the damage was already done and the past wouldn’t hurt her. Images flickered across the screen as they moved through my head. I peeled back layer after layer. The techs. Black Helix goons in helicopters. Then Cipher.

I froze there, showing her and the pack on a beach. The background projected hazy—just bright sand and a blurry blue sky—but she looked clear enough with her blue hair and black bathing suit.

“Follow from here.” Darren’s gaze shifted back to the holograph. “Where did she go?”

My muscles clenched so hard the holo flickered. This was where I lived or died.