It’s a frenzied scene. I’m wriggling to get out of the guard’s grasp. He’s even angrier now that I put teeth marks in his skin. Levi has wrenched his guard’s arm backward in its socket, causing him to squeal in pain. He involuntarily releases Levi, who runs up to Jaeger and rips the tape off his mouth. My other friends are similarly trying to fight off the guards. Theodora manages to swiftly kick one in the mouth and grab his Taser. She holds it out in front of him, threatening to use it. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a guard who has Pru in his grasp. He holds a gun to her head and warns us that he won’t hesitate to shoot, if we don’t fall in line. Jaeger’s eyes widen in fear.

“Put it down,” I tell Theodora under my breath. “The Taser. They’ve got Pru.”

Theodora lowers it—we have to play this carefully. The Similars have super strength, but Pru, Jaeger, and Bianca don’t. And the guards have guns, making us well matched. I don’t know who would win if we charged the guards now. Or who we might lose in the process.

Meanwhile, Levi rips the bindings off Jaeger’s wrists. I notice tears in the real Bianca’s eyes. A guard grabs Levi by the armpits and drags him across the room, as we hear Duplicate Bianca take the stage outside, to the deafening roar of the crowd.

Maude has nabbed a gun from a guard’s belt and trains it on a different guard across the room, the one fighting Levi, but another guard knocks it from her hand, and it fires…shooting Jaeger in the leg.

I feel myself scream but don’t know if any sound comes out.

Jaeger crumples in his chair, howling in pain, as Pru elbows her captor and tries to get to her father across the room. “Dad!” she screams out. That’s when a couple of people I don’t recognize rush into the tent, guns trained on the guards.

“Let them go,” one of the men says. I assume he’s a Quarry member. “Let Bianca and Jaeger and the kids go, and we won’t have to use these.”

A scuffle ensues, shots are fired, and the next thing I know, I’m being dragged from the tent and shoved into a black SUV. I hear the crowd cheering Duplicate Bianca on the stage. She’s speaking so eloquently and with such conviction, there’s no way anyone would ever suspect she’s not who she claims to be.

The car door slams, and a guard slaps duct tape over my mouth and thrusts the barrel of a gun in my face. The message is clear—cooperate or die.