I hadn’t thought about it, but when I look down at the book in my hands I realize what it should be. “You can call me Merriam.” If nothing else, it’s close enough to my own name that I will remember to answer to it.

Spine smiles and holds out her hand. “Well, Merriam, it sounds like we need to get to work.”

I take her hand in my dirt-streaked one and hold fast. “Yes, we do.”

“Lockdown is in just over thirteen hours.” Spine turns, leaps up onto a wrought-iron fence, and starts shouting orders.

“Merriam,” Atlas says, “what you just did was . . .” He searches for the right adjective.

“Unexpected?” I repeat the word he used last night before Rose called.

“Yeah.” He gives me a slow smile. “Spine and the others would have heard me out, but you impressed them. That’s not easy to do.”

“I was impressed that you understood some of the book you were given.” Dewey appears at my side. “We have people and, if Atlas is correct, a place to assemble. But we still don’t have a logistical plan that will make this work.”

“We will,” I say. “I just have to figure out what it is.”

“I’ll get you the map your mother, Atticus, and I were using.”

Dewey is back in no time with a worn city map as well as paper and a number of pencils. He then heads off to organize how to remove the supplies from the hidden room. Atlas goes to talk to Index, leaving me to figure out how best to get the truth into the hands of as many people as possible.

Since I don’t want the Engineers to spot me, I find an out-of-the-way corner of the Lyceum to spread out the map. Worry snakes through me as I study the small red X’s someone marked throughout the entire city. There are fifty of them in all. Some in the heart of the Loop. Others along L and bus routes farther out from the center of Chicago. We might have enough Stewards to hit every area my mother and Atticus identified. The Marshals will be alerted not long after we start. So we will have only a short window to operate. Spreading out seems like the obvious answer. The more areas in the city we share the truth in, the less chance the Marshals have of putting a complete stop to our work. It makes sense.

And yet I can’t help thinking that there is something wrong with that plan. Maybe if we were doing the slow release of information my mother and her friends had planned, I would feel more comfortable with the choices they made. But tonight’s operation is different and—

I jump as something brushes my arm and turn to see the shining green, unblinking eyes of a sleek gray cat staring at me. “What do you think, Margaret?” I ask quietly, wishing Atlas were here to give his opinion. “Should I just do it my mom’s way?” After all, she and the others had been working on this plan for months. They were Stewards. They knew all this stuff better than I do.