A hand grips mine and I spin, ready to shove its owner through the crowd, but instead I come face-to-face with Luka.

My breath leaves me in a shudder of relief. I have to force myself not to throw my arms around him even as my legs, jerky with adrenaline, threaten to give out.

Luka nods toward the way we came in. But to leave this minute would be an accurate display of my abject fear. And I just can’t give Nikola that.

There’s another reason I’m unwilling to go. Because I am strangely elated. Yes, what I did was foolish. But we’re all adrenaline junkies here, in some form or another. And after cowering and scurrying from the corner of one country to another, it feels good—so good—to have stood upright for a moment. I am high with the kind of adrenaline that comes with stepping out on a narrow ledge. And by God, while I’m there, I’m going to dance.

I leap up into Luka’s arms and he catches me at the last possible instant, his responses jarred to catlike life, clutching my legs to his chest as I throw my arms toward the lights overhead with a shout.

I have no idea what I’ll say to Claudia. She’ll hate me, maybe, when I tell her we can never come back. Thinking about this only makes it worse, and the need to move more essential until I’m caught up on the shoulders of a fiery phoenix with flames on his mask and arms.

I know that feeling, of rising from ashes. Of stumbling on reborn legs that have forgotten how to stand. Of threatening to set yourself—and everyone around you—on fire.

I thought I had to find answers. I thought I had to find safety. I have neither answers nor safety—less of each, in fact, than before. But I am alive. Right now. And for this moment, at least, I am done with dying. With anonymity, which is its own form of death. My face already conceals more than I will ever remember of who I am.

In the periphery of my vision I spot a camera along the wall. Tibor and Nikola and who knows how many others, monitoring an underground more tightly controlled than the streets above.

With a sweep of my arm I tear off my mask. Toss it high over the milling mass of Progeny. The gold hairpiece gets flung against the wall. Last of all the wig, hurled directly at the camera. It snags, obscuring the lens. I don’t care if my hair is mashed, or if the scar from my procedure is visible through the patch of hair behind my ear. In fact, I hope it is.

Luka swiftly pulls me down. He’s shouting, and though I can’t hear him, I make out the shape of his words.

What are you doing?