“Close your eyes and pick a book,” Pod says, joining Akimi in the fiction section. “A mission like this will require … how many?”

“Three,” Igby replies. “Two to go for the processor, one to try and get some supplies.”

I watch as Akimi and Igby stand in front of a shelf of books, close their eyes, and grab one each.

“Throw me one,” Sam calls, snipping the thread and examining the closed wound. Pod tucks one book under his arm and then throws another one toward Sam. It misses her outstretched arm by a yard, and she rolls her eyes before retrieving it from the floor.

I join the others, close my eyes, run my hand along the spines of the books, and—before I select one—I smile. I love the feeling of books; they remind me of all the hundreds of hours I escaped prison without ever leaving my cell. I stop on one and pull it from the shelf, and then open my eyes. The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood. I’ve never read this one, but I have read others by her and loved them.

“All right,” Akimi says, holding her book up, “first letter of the first word of chapter one.”

“Yours is T,” I say, recognizing her book as A Wizard of Earthsea, a fantasy classic.

“What?” she asks.

“The Island of Gont,” I say. “Those are the first words of that book.”

Akimi flips to chapter one, looks at the first word, and nods her head. “Yep, I got T,” she says, and then looks at me. “How the hell did you know that?”

“I’ve just read that book a bunch of times, that’s all.”

“I got I,” says Sam, and then begins to read her book, a Victoria Schwab classic.

I flip my book past the opening poem and on to chapter one. “Mine starts with I too,” I say.

Pod hands his book to Igby, who reads the first word. “Z,” he says.

“That wasn’t funny the first ten times,” Pod mutters.

“Fine, it’s a D, mine is H, which means Luka, Akimi, and Sam are heading into the city,” Igby says. He closes his book and points it at me. “I need a SilverWave quantum processor—you’ll find them inside almost any SoCom unit and all LucidVision headsets. They’re silver and about the size of your thumbnail. If you don’t have time to remove the processor, just bring me the whole unit and I’ll do it.”

“I’ll try my best,” I tell him, already feeling apprehensive about sneaking into a city full of soldiers who want to take me back to the Block.

“You better,” Igby says, “and then get back here safe, understand?”

I nod. He hugs me, and then Akimi and Sam.

“All right,” Sam says, pulling her bloodstained T-shirt back on. “No point in wasting time. Let’s go.”