“When we figured out that Dr. Price had been drugging everyone to keep them docile and compliant, he went crazy—he destroyed several of the Safe-Death chambers, killing those who were inside … One of them was your mother.”

“I don’t understand what you mean,” she replies. “Mom was here just ten minutes ago, she was … she disappeared, sort of faded away … Luka, what are you telling me?”

“Dr. Price killed her, Day. I’m so sorry.”

“That’s not true,” Day says. “You’re lying.”

“I wish I was,” I tell her. “I wish it wasn’t true, but it is.”

“It’s not true,” she says again. “She’ll be back any minute; she’ll be home any second now. Why are you lying to me?”

“Day, I—”

But before I can say any more, Day has slammed the door to her room in my face, leaving me alone in the eerie corridor.

The elevator cable snaps on the way down, and I respawn in the bar.

I feel, once again, broken and in turmoil, but I have to compartmentalize these feelings, as I see that the bar is now filled with hundreds of the Missing, all coming to their senses, some angry, some upset, some demanding the answers I promised.

“Luka,” Kina calls out, and I make my way through the crowd to my friends, who are gathered at the bar.

“Everyone’s pissed off about Price drugging them,” Malachai says.

“Good,” I reply. “That means they’ll join us.”

“That’s great and everything,” Igby adds, “but we have another problem.”

“What’s that?” I ask over the growing volume of the crowd.

“Akimi and Pod stayed with Sam at the library; she was having … what do you call them?”

“Braxton-Hicks,” Dr. Ortega replies. “False contractions.”

“Right, that,” Igby continues. “They stayed to look after her and make sure Wren was okay. The next problem we have to solve is: Happy is sending a storm cloud over the city, presumably to block out the sun and stop all solar-powered machinery from working. But they’ll be safe for a while—our scrambler is hooked up to the Loop’s old battery and we have at least a year—”

“It’s not a storm cloud,” I say, remembering what I witnessed at the top of the Arc.

“What do you mean?” Igby asks.

“The cloud is thousands of Mosquitoes and attack drones,” I tell him. “I saw the production line at the top of the Arc. I don’t know why, but they’re making loads of them every day.”

Igby’s digital face fills with horrified realization. “Jesus,” he says, “they’re going to overwhelm the scrambler.”

“They’re going to what?” Kina asks.

My stomach sinks.