Maybe I’m being foolishly optimistic, but Nazeera practically said as much to me the other night with her whole speech about wearing a symbol of resistance and hating her dad and honoring the women he shamed.
Maybe Nazeera’s big secret is that she’s actually here to help us. Maybe there’s nothing to be afraid of. Maybe the woman is justperfect.
I’m suddenly grinning like an idiot. “So Nazeera is one of the good guys, huh? She’s on our team? Trying to help you out?”
“Oh my God, Kenji, please focus—”
“I’m just saying.” I hold up my hands, take a step back. “The girl is fine as hell is all I’m saying.”
Juliette is looking at me like I’ve lost my mind, but she laughs. She sniffs, gently, and brushes away a few forgottentears.
“So.” I nod, encouraging her to speak. “What’s the deal? The details? Who’s coming? When? How? Et cetera?”
“I don’t know,” Juliette says, shaking her head. “Nazeera is still trying to figure it out. She thinks maybe in the next week or so? The kids are here to monitor me and send back information, but they’re coming to the symposium, specifically, because the commanders want to know how the other sector leaders will react to seeing me. Nazeera says she thinks the information will help inform their next moves. I’m guessing we have maybe a matter ofdays.”
My eyes go painfully wide. A matter ofdayswas not what I was expecting to hear. I was hoping for months. Weeks, at the very least.
This is bad.
“Oh,” I say. “Shit.”
“Yeah.” Juliette shoots me a beleaguered look. “But when they decide to obliterate Sector 45, their plan is to also take me prisoner. The Reestablishment wants to bring me back in, apparently. Whatever that means.”
“Bring you back in?” I frown. “For what? More testing? Torture? What do they want to do with you?”
“I have no idea,” Juliette says, shaking her head. “I have no clue who these people are. My sister is apparently still being tested and tortured somewhere. So I’m pretty sure they’re not bringing me back for a big family reunion, you know?”
“Wow.” I look away. Blow out a breath. “That is somenext-level drama.”
“Yeah.”
“So—what are we going to do?” I say.
Juliette studies me for a second. Her eyes pull together. “I mean, I don’t know, Kenji. They’re coming to kill everyone in Sector 45. I really don’t think I have a choice.”
I raise my eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I’m pretty sure I’ll have to kill them first.”
Five
I leave Juliette’s room in a daze. It doesn’t seem right that so much horrible shit should be, like,allowedto go down in such a short period of time. There should be a fail-safe in the universe somewhere, something that automatically shuts down in the event of extreme human stupidity. Maybe an emergency lever. A button, even.
This isridiculous.
I sigh, feeling suddenly sick to my stomach.
I guess we’ll have to wait to discuss all this tonight, after the symposium, which is going to be its own kind of shitshow. There doesn’t seem to be a point to attending the symposium now, but Juliette said she didn’t want to bail, not this late in the game, so we’re all supposed to make nice and act like everything is normal. Six hundred sector leaders gathered in the same room and we’re supposed to make nice and act like everything is normal. I don’t get it. It’s no secret to anyone that we, as a sector, have betrayed the entire establishment, so I don’t understand why we’re even bothering to pretend. But Castle says maintaining these pretenses means something to the system, so we have to follow through. Jumping ship now is basically like flipping off the rest of the continent. It’d be a declaration of war.
Honestly, the ridiculousness of this whole thing would almost be funny if I didn’t think we were all probably going to die.
What a day.
I spot Sonya and Sara on my way back to my room and I nod a quick greeting, but Sara grabs my arm.
“Have you seen Castle?” she says.
“We’ve been trying to get ahold of him for an hour,” says Sonya.
