I try to remember all the details of what happened. Pander and Kina had come in during the energy harvest and shattered the tube. We had escaped with Wren through the roof, with Igby driving the flying car. Then what? It’s already hard to remember, like a dream. The lake, the subway train, the sewer.

It had all been so real, and I had been foolish enough to believe it.

I’m torn away from my thoughts by a sound. I can’t turn my head to look, but I’m sure it’s coming from the metal door of my cell. A steady clanging sound that is growing in volume.

And then there’s a boom, and I’m sure the door has been smashed inward.

Next there are footsteps, slow and deliberate, approaching my bed.

A face slowly appears in my field of vision and my heart begins to race.

“Hello, Luka Kane,” Tyco says.

The last time I had seen Tyco Roth was in the moments after he had drugged me with Ebb. His plan had been to separate me from the group, drug me, and then murder me, because he blamed me for the death of his brother. In truth it had been Molly, my sister, who had pushed his brother from the roof of the Black Road Vertical, but she had only pushed him because he was going to shoot her.

I was saved from Tyco’s assassination attempt by Shion and Day Cho, a mother and her daughter who survived Happy’s plan to wipe out civilization by being high at the time of the chemical drop. Shion had shot Tyco six times. Tyco is dead, I know that, and so this is just another one of Happy’s attempts to torture me with nightmarish visions.

“I’m going to kill you, Luka Kane,” Tyco says, and then he raises his hand. A knife with a long gleaming blade is grasped tightly in his fist and he brings it down into my chest.

I can’t feel it, but I see him struggling to pull the knife free before plunging it down again, and again.

In my peripheral vision I can see blood beginning to pool around my head as Tyco stabs and stabs and stabs, smiling all the while. And I think, At least it’s over now. At least it’s all over.

Day 2

I gasp in a deep breath and sit up. I can feel the sweat covering my body, and for a few moments I can’t tell if this is real or if I’m still dreaming.

I look around. The room is unfamiliar at first, but then I recognize it as the tiled room in which the doctor injected me with a sedative. Tentative hope begins to fill me up, but I push it away. I know that hope—when dashed—is more painful than anything physical.