If someone finds the message, they will think Rose was just passing along a fashion-industry tip. Which is exactly what they are supposed to think. I grab the blue hat out of my bag, tuck my hair under it, and head out to find Atlas, who has grown more resigned to losing his father and saying good-bye to me.

Thunder crackles outside as I tell him, “I have an idea. Come with me.”

“Where are we going?” he asks as I head for the door. “The Marshals are still looking for you. It’s why you have to leave the city.”

“I know,” I say with confidence that helps keep the fear away as I sneak out the door into the thick air. The promised rain is on the way.

Rose is waiting for us at the open back door of Gloss, as I knew she would be. After all, it is where she procures the makeup she always has handy. “This way,” she says as we weave through a storeroom filled with samples to her mother’s office. “There’s a few people working late on the next issue, so I set up in my mom’s space upstairs. No one will bother us there.”

“Set up?” Atlas asks. “What are we doing here?”

“We’re not giving up,” I say as Rose leads us to her mother’s expansive office filled with images of Gloss covers, along with a familiar image Rose loaded onto the screen—the one I sent to her. The one she tells me her mother loves. A new logo for Gloss.

It’s a version of the Stewards’ tattoo—with sharp lines looking like pages of the magazine fluttering open and flames of every color shooting out. “We’re just going to change the way we fight.”

Atticus and Isaac could still be out there. People continue to disappear and are shipped off to who knows where for purposes we can’t yet know. But just because we lost the battle doesn’t mean the fight is over. The war has just begun.

“Ready to change?” Rose asks as she pulls out a chair next to a table piled with hair products she gathered for me. Because there is only one option if I want to stay and fight.

Am I ready to become someone new?

I look at Atlas, who is calling Index to tell her we won’t be taking the Stewards’ final train to safety. I think of my father and all we have been through. I love him, but as much as I want to help him, I have realized the journey he’s on is one he needs to take without me. I can’t change him or his drinking. And I can’t shape my life around trying.

Still, uncertainty swirls as I take off Stef’s blue hat and run my fingers along the lining that I will take apart tomorrow. I’m not sure if we can find the location where Atticus and Isaac are being held or what happens to those who are taken away. The truth is, I’m not sure of very much at all.