“What?” Marcella asks, her earlier joke feeling flat now. “But we’re not done. The corporation is finished, but we still have to sort out what’s going with Leandra.”
“And we have to find the other girls,” Brynn adds. “We’re not leaving them behind.”
“You’re right, Brynn,” I say. “And I want to help them, but we don’t know where they are. And even if we did, what if they didn’t wake up—at least, not the way we hoped?”
Brynn flinches back from my words. And I’m sorry it hurts her, but we haven’t seen the other girls since we left the academy. It’s still possible that they helped murder those investors. What do we do then?
“And there’s still Rosemarie to deal with,” I say. “We can’t leave her to enact whatever plan she has for society.”
“Why are you so worried about them, Mena?” Annalise asks. “So she reprograms a few boys. Do we risk everything to save them when they’re hell-bent on destroying themselves? Destroying us, quite frankly?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “And it’s not just boys. All humans.”
Annalise tilts her head. “You know that, with a few exceptions, none of them would show up for us if the situation were reversed,” she says.
“You’re not giving them enough credit,” I say, thinking about Adrian standing up to her father.
“And you’re not giving them enough criticism,” she replies. “None of us are perfect, so there is no perfect solution. But when do we fight for ourselves?”
“Annalise does have a point,” Sydney tells me gently. “When we were at Ridgeview, we saw the Mrs. Reachers of the world. Imagine how her hate would have exploded if she knew the truth about us?”
I can’t disagree with that point. But one horrible womandoesn’t speak for all of them. I don’t want to believe that.
“What if we just…?” Sydney pauses. “What if we just let the humans sort themselves out?”
“No,” I say. “We can’t just abandon them.”
“I agree with Mena,” Brynn says. When Marcella sighs, Brynn pushes her mug away to glare at the other girls. “I know you all think I’m too soft,” she says. “I get it. But I’ve been with you all along. I’ve seen the same things and fought the same men. And I’m telling you now that I’m still going to fight, whether it’s for our girls or for humans. Just because someone else is terrible doesn’t mean I have to be.”
She picks up her tea again, and takes a sip, ignoring all of us. Sydney smiles.
“Then we go back to Connecticut,” Sydney suggests. “We’ll confront Leandra, find the girls, and convince Rosemarie to find a better way to change society. Voting, perhaps. I heard it can work wonders when trying to oust failing policy.”
“That would be a good start,” I say.
It’s close to midnight when we finally turn in for the night. Marcella and Brynn are asleep in one of the bedrooms, while Annalise is in the upstairs loft.
Sydney is curled up at my side in the other bedroom, both of us quiet as an owl hoots outside our window. The night is pitch-black, ominous. Not the kind of sign you want before risking your life.
“It’s going to work,” Sydney says, as if reading my thoughts. “We’ll get the girls and get out of there.Andwe beat the corporation. We did it, Mena.”
“We did,” I repeat. Although it doesn’t feel like the victory I’d hoped for. Things aren’t magically better just because we took down our oppressors. Society is still a mess. Humans are still a mess. And we still have to navigate all that messiness.
“Do you think you’ll marry Jackson?” she asks. I laugh and turn to her in the bed.
“What? Where did that come from?”
“Just wondering,” she says. “Wondering what will happen to us. Wondering if you’ll end up married to a boy you met in a gas station.” She snorts a laugh, and I push her shoulder.
“I’m not sure what mine and Jackson’s future is,” I say honestly. “But I know we’ll always be close.”
“Yeah,” she says. “I see that.” She’s quiet for a moment, but then she lifts her head to look at me.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“I want to see my parents,” she says. “I want to see them when this is over.”
She still calls them her parents. Sydney was made in a lab, specially for them, but she’s not their child. She was programmed to love them. And even awake, she still does.
