“Thank you,” he mouths to Ansel, his voice raspy and weak.

“Lean on me,” I say, and he complies. I half drag, half carry my father to the edge of the cage, where Pippa and Pru are holding the door open. Guards swarm in, and I try to count them. There are at least ten, maybe eleven, but I can’t stop to check. I am singularly focused on getting my dad out of this hole. Ollie’s next to me in an instant, lending a hand, and we manage to carry my dad outside the room and into the hallway. We prop him up behind some pipes that run the length of the corridor.

I hear shots being fired in the caged room, and my friends struggling, but I tune it out. I have to focus on my father. Right now, he is all that matters.

“Emma,” my dad croaks, his voice sounding scratchy and raw. At least it’s more audible now. I hope that means he’s gaining strength.

“Save your energy,” I beg him. “We need to get you out of this place. Gravelle has replaced you, but it’s not too late to return you both to your lives—”

“So it’s true then,” Ollie says, recognition dawning on his face. “He installed Duplicates in our place.”

I nod. “Yes. They’ve been given all your thoughts and memories. You were probably both implanted, without your knowledge, with a device that continuously transmits those memories straight to their brains—”

I’m distracted by Ansel and Madison Huxley hurrying past. She’s in the regulation uniform, yelling something muffled about being completely traumatized, though she looks more robust than some of the others. Ansel must have freed her. Which reminds me. We haven’t rescued everyone yet. There are still more people in that pen.

“We should go back,” I tell Ollie. “The others—”

“Wait,” my dad says, weakly. “Emma, I have to tell you something.” Now’s not the time—there are literally shots being fired around the corner—but something about the intensity in his eyes gives me pause. “Please,” he croaks. “I know you’re angry at me, Emma. You have every right to be. But you have to understand. When I lost you—when I lost her—I’d already lost your mother. I experienced more pain in that year than I thought was humanly possible. It nearly did me in. I didn’t want to accept that Gravelle had copied her, because I worried that I’d never love you as much as I should. It turned out to be quite the opposite, Emma. I fell in love with you instantly and completely.”

“Dad—” I say at the same time that Ollie says, “Mr. Chance—”

But he doesn’t let us speak. “I was terrified that one day I’d lose you too, and that when that happened, I wouldn’t ever recover.”