“A few weeks later I was coming back to my apartment and saw him standing on the sidewalk. He asked me if I had given any more thought to how words shape history. If I had said no, I’d be living a very different life right now. Instead, I learned the meaning of ‘verify.’ I became a member of the Stewards, and now my life is down here. And no offense, if I’m ever going to get back out to a real life instead of one that involves paper cuts and a lack of sunlight, I have to get back to work. So why don’t we—”

“No!” The word cracks like thunder in the cavernous room.

Renu and I both move at the same time down the corridor of bookshelves and around the corner as Atlas shouts, “No way in hell!”

“Atlas,” a woman snaps. “Stop being emotional and think about what we are saying. You father would want you to think like a Steward instead of a son.”

“Don’t tell me what my father would want,” Atlas shouts as we step into a room in the back of all the shelves . . . a real room with a long, silver-and-black table spanning the middle of the space and with a high ceiling and walls that are covered with maps and whiteboards. Atlas stands at one end of the table with his back to us. He is ignoring the half dozen people standing along the walls and appears to be directing his anger at the short but sturdy woman with a cap of white-streaked dark hair and the tall, lanky blond man at the room’s other end.

“I understand you’re upset.” The woman’s voice is cool and controlled. “We don’t know how the Marshals learned of the Granville Station or whether your father is among those that were captured. None of them have turned up dead, yet.”

Yet?

I take a step closer to Atlas and get jerked back by Renu and her killer nails.

“The Telegraphers think they were targeted,” the woman says. The looks exchanged by three older, gray-haired men say that they believe it is more than possible. “It could have just been someone who turned them in to the Environmental Department, or someone could have been attempting to get at Atticus in order to learn the location of the Lyceum and the rest of our network. Regardless, after losing a dozen members in the last week, we have to assume the worst. We have to implement the Lyceum’s lockdown protocol before the new recycling program goes into effect and we lose even more.”

“Which is what Dad didn’t want you to do,” Atlas shouts. “He could be hurt somewhere. He could be in a hospital or hiding out and that’s why he hasn’t returned. And even if the Marshals took him, they don’t know who he is. He’ll never tell them what he knows.”

“You don’t know that.”

“If the Marshals really had forced Dad to talk, they would already have come for us. We wouldn’t be having this debate right now!”