“No, that’s not what we do,” I reply calmly. I need her to keep her voice down, so I squint through the dark until I can make out her shape and I move carefully closer.

“Then what, Lyss? What do we do now?”

I reach blindly until I’m clasping her hands. “I said Kael’s right about us not being able to free everyone and stop Vanik yet. But I didn’t say we’d do nothing.”

I can sense her confusion even before she says, “I don’t understand.”

There’s a determined note in my voice as I tell her, “Get some sleep, Cami. Because after the meeting in the morning, we’re going to Lengard.”

Her reply is little more than a shocked whisper. “What?”

“We might not be able to free them all, but we’re going in and getting Ward out. He’s the best person to help us strategize what to do next—he knows Lengard and who we’ll need to bring down. And, more importantly, how.” I release her hands as I feel my way toward my bed and, over my shoulder, say, “We’re freeing that new breakout Speaker while we’re there, too.”

I say it casually, not wanting to alert Cami to how desperate I am to see the boy again. Despite Kael and the rest of the Remnants being willing to abandon him to his fate at Lengard, there was something about him that struck a chord in me and I just … I need to see him again.

Because I have questions, and something tells me he has the answers.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Despite having managed only a few hours of restless sleep, I wake full of energy, my blood pumping double time in anticipation of the coming day. Cami, too, moves with a spring in her step as we leave our room and follow a stream of people through the tunnels.

“Do you know how many Remnants are down here?” I ask her as we shuffle along with them like sheep. My leg gives a pang when someone bumps into me, reminding me of my wound, which I cleaned and re-dressed before bed. The rest of me still looks like I was attacked by a cheese grater, but the damage is minor enough that I again turned down Cami’s offer of healing, telling her that if I wanted to, I could do it myself. In return, she reminded me that her main limitation is that she can’t Speak her power on herself—and sure enough, when I experimented with one of my smaller scratches, nothing happened.

“I asked Keeda the first day I was here, when you were—” Cami breaks off, clearing her throat. “She said there’s not as many as at Lengard, but close. A small number of Genesis Speakers, but mostly Exodus, who came in as breakouts. They don’t call them that, though—the classifications, I mean.”

Interesting. The Genesis Project and Exodus Project were— and are—Lengard’s training programs, so it makes sense that the Remnants wouldn’t adhere to those labels.