Trey’s face shifts. “He’s mentioned testing before. Some kind of program his father’s involved with. I didn’t think much of it at the time.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m thinking about the way he looked at her.”
Fuck.
I look at the others. We’re all following the same thread.
Silas isn’t just a bully with a grudge. He’s connected to something bigger. Something that cares about Nova’s missing mark enough to make phone calls about it. Something that involves testing.
“We don’t have time for this,” I say. “She’s out there alone. Whatever Silas is doing, whoever he’s talking to—none of it matters if we don’t find her first.”
“So where do we look?” Rane stands up. “We’ve already hit the main buildings.”
“She’s not going to show up on a fucking map,” Beckett says. “She knows how to disappear.”
“Then we think like her.” Kyron pushes off the tree. “Where would she go if she wanted to vanish? Not hide—vanish.”
“Off campus,” Locke says.
“The gates are monitored.”
“You think that would stop her?”
No. It wouldn’t. She spent fifteen years slipping through systems designed to catch people like her. A campus gate wouldn’t even slow her down.
“Twenty minutes,” I say. “Go back, grab whatever you need. Who knows how long we’ll be gone.”
No one argues.
They scatter. Locke’s already halfway across the clearing before I finish talking. Rane and Kyron head off together. Beckett pauses, looks back at me once, then goes.
Trey stands there, uncertain. Outside the formation. Not sure where he fits.
“You coming or not?”
He nods. “I know where it is. I’ll meet you there.”
I don’t trust him. Not yet. Not fully. There’s too much I don’t know—about Silas, about whatever’s pulling him toward Nova with the same gravity that’s pulling all of us.
But she’s gone. And he burned his future to come looking for her.
Right now, that makes him one of us.
Chapter 23
Nova
My phone’s at 3%.
I’ve been watching it die for the last hour. Couldn’t charge it even if I wanted to—no outlets in alleys, funny how that works. But I haven’t been able to stop checking it either, scrolling back through messages I’ve read a dozen times already.
Locke:Where are you?
Locke:Nova.
Locke:Answer your fucking phone.
