I hear some of my friends behind me in the car, and when I crane my neck, I see Maude and Jago. Then someone else is shoved next to me on the seat. It’s Levi. I’m shaking on the cool leather, fear coursing through me. But Levi subtly moves his hand next to mine, so that our fingers are touching. It’s the only thing that keeps me from totally losing it.

• • •

The car ride is short and no words are exchanged. One guard drives the SUV; the other rides shotgun and points a weapon at us. I can tell my friends have done a similar calculation to my own. We may be strong, but the guards are armed. Super strength won’t save us if they’re willing to shoot. So for now, we don’t try to fight them. Not until we have to.

When we pull up to a towering office building in Midtown Manhattan, we’re ordered out of the car and told to walk single file into the building, where we ride an elevator to the top of the tower.

I feel my body shaking with every step. What’s their plan—to throw us off the roof of this fifty-story building? Is that really what Gravelle would want, to kill us all so brutally in one fell swoop? Surely he didn’t raise and train the Similars just to kill us off so unceremoniously, did he? Then again, we know about the Legacy Project and that Bianca has been replaced, along with all the others. We’re a liability, thanks to our snooping—my snooping and discovering that Ollie was a Duplicate.

Tears prick my eyes as I meet Levi’s. I hear him breathing next to me in the elevator, and I long to tell him the one thing I didn’t last night—that I love him. But it’s too late. We’re on our way to our deaths, and I wasted my chance. And Ollie. I’d been so worried he might be dead, and I’d never see him again. What if I never see him again because I’m the one who’s killed?

No. If you give in, Gravelle wins. We won’t let them do this to us. We’ll fight them tooth and nail.

Ding! The elevator doors open. A guard prods me in the back with his gun, jolting me forward. The wind hits us hard up here because we’re so high up.

But wait. That’s not the wind blowing us. It’s man-made wind from a helicopter.