“Decentralized everything. Detached everything,” Chris told me. “Do you want to try this again? I’m still confident I’ll win. If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have been here when you finished with the Simurgh.”

“What do you want, Chris? What can I offer you?”

“Nothing.”

“I refuse to believe that! If it’s about your faith in everyone else following through on this, give me a test. Let’s prove it can work on the small scale.”

“I’m not interested.”

I clenched my fist, and then I lunged for him again. This time, it was the Wretch and me together, pulling apart, attacking him from two different directions. The Wretch fragile but strong, me… broken but resilient.

“What are you—” he started. He stopped speaking for a moment while protecting himself. The Wretch avoided giving him any clear strikes, while taking up as much of his concentration as possible. Tables, chunks of the lab’s counter, and pieces of computer equipment were leveraged as weapons. I used every technique I’d learned sparring with my mother. Faster than me, more lethal—but there were always stumbles. He wore a body he wasn’t used to, and there had to be a weak spot.

He clawed at me, caught my breastplate, clawed at me again, caught hair and a bit of my cheek. His elbow hit me in the sternum in a deliberate, measured way, and the pain of broken and fractured bones connected to that point threatened to knock me out. I threw myself at him, all of my strength dedicated to keeping aware and keeping my senses together as I wrapped in a bear hug despite the breaks and fractures I was suffering from.

The result wasn’t what I’d pictured in my head. I’d thought it would be fierce. Instead, I slumped, leaning hard into him with one side of my body, relying on flight to press me into him, his back against a damaged counter.

The Fragile One held one of the syringes I’d had her knock to the floor in the first move. Sveta’s, the one that was supposed to give her a body, left deliberately behind.

Poised, ready to stab Chris, and to take away his new, Simurgh-immune body.

“You think I’m scared?” he asked. “Do you think I’m surprised?”

He reached out, grabbed the syringe, and pulled it toward himself. The needle punctured his body.

I thought it was a bluff. We were already playing a game of chicken, me putting off telling the Wardens what was happening and getting them to back off on sending the message to Dauntless and Fume Hood. Meanwhile, he was standing on the tracks, his own train incoming. The Simurgh pursuing him. We were both at this standoff—

—But he pressed the plunger.