I try to work out why this might be. We were all injected with the same healing tech, so why have they died and we haven’t?

There’s no time to debate this. I push the guard forward.

“Open Kina’s cell first,” I command.

She leans down and activates the iris scanner.

I hear the lock click and I reach for the handle. I open the door and what I see stops my heart.

I had known that Kina’s plight was the same as my own, but to see her, lying motionless on her bed, every muscle immobilized, her face so slack and unmoving that she might be dead, I can hardly breathe.

“Give me your Lens,” I say to the guard.

“What are you going to do?” she asks.

I raise the gun until the muzzle is against her forehead. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”

She reaches two fingers into her eye and pinches out the clear contact lens. A smirk spreads across her lips. “I can’t wait to see what Galen Rye does to you when you’re caught.”

She hands me the Lens, placing it into my broken palm just as another finger snaps from its abnormal angle back to straight.

I squeeze the Lens between two fingers, destroying it so that she’ll have no way out.

I use Jacob’s Lens to navigate to the energy harvest activation option. My eyes scroll to cell 317 and select INITIATE ENERGY HARVEST. A circle of light appears in the middle of the floor.

“Stand in the circle,” I tell the guard.

The smirk falls from her face like melting snow. “I’ll help you escape,” she says, her eyes bulging now with the prospect of the harvest.

“Stand in the circle,” I repeat, moving the gun barrel toward the ring of light.

“You can’t open the rest of the cells without me. Are you just going to leave your friends locked up?”

“I have Jacob for that. Stand in the circle. Now.”

Shaking, she limps to the circle. “You don’t have to do this,” she says, turning to face me.

I stare at her, the heads-up display of the Lens around the outskirts of my vision. “Yes, I do.”

I activate the harvest and the tube appears from the ceiling, surrounding the guard. Seconds later, she begins to scream.

I run to Kina, deactivating her paralysis.

She gasps, coming back to life. Her eyes take in her surroundings. She sees me, tears forming in her eyes and spilling down her cheeks as she sits up. “Oh my god, Luka. Is this real? Is this the Sane Zone?”

I take a moment to soak in her features, her dark eyes, her brown skin, all her beauty and character.

“This is real,” I tell her.

“I … I …”