Audrey ripped her arm free, baring her teeth. “Don’t touch me.”
“Enough!” Nikos thundered. “People say that every year. Conscription just passed. She knows nothing.”
“What’s Conscription?” Audrey asked. The word brought an old memory of her mother saying it like a curse to the surface. She refused to talk further about it, but later Audrey looked it up in a dictionary. It was defined as compulsory service or forced enlistment, yet the fear in her mother’s voice had implied something worse. Audrey couldn’t shake the impression that Conscription wasn’t just about losing freedom—she got the distinct feeling it shaped Voíríans into weapons.
Her fists shook at the thought.
“Another time,” Nikos said flatly.
That meant the word mattered. Which meant her mother had feared something worse than prison.
“Christ, fine.” She rolled her eyes. “Just stop grabbing me.”
“Shut up, Audrey,” he snarled. “You’ve said enough.”
For once, she agreed.
The questions stopped as they climbed the hill out of town. Audrey welcomed the peace, needing the space to think. Everything from the past week tumbled around in her head.
Conscription. Tests.Pnévmas.
She ran her fingers through her tangled curls. The closer they got to Home Field, the more she wanted to attack, to move, to dosomething. She needed one of them alone. Basir first, if shegot lucky. Then Taryn. Then a Silo. Then Emerson, if he was still alive and still following.
It was a bad plan. Full of holes. But it was a plan.
Five seconds.
That was all she ever needed.
They stayedat another ramshackle house that night. The Separatists had safe houses scattered across the moon, which made them seem far more organized than Audrey wanted to admit.
Basir shook her awake. He shouldn’t have.
Audrey struck on instinct, snapping upright with a snarl. She attacked because the constant danger made every touch a possible threat. The sharpened toothbrush jabbed into Basir’s neck; the broken comb spike buried into his side. Her boot cracked against his shin.
Basir roared—a sound raw enough to choke the air, and the room shattered into chaos. Nikos and Nassar burst inside, weapons ready. Taryn screamed and threw up her hands. Audrey braced herself for bullets or flames or both.
But then Nikos exhaled a cloud of black smoke, swallowing the room in shadow. When Audrey glanced at her through the smoke, Taryn looked terrified. Of all of it. Of what the room had become. Of what they were all turning into.
Audrey threw out her arm on instinct, trying to stop him. Something responded, hot and ravenous, inside her. The cuffs should have stopped it. Instead, they only seemed to choke the power, turning it into a violent, erratic force underneath her skin.
Audrey paused.
The room seemed to halt with her.
The sensation growing inside her was no longer a feeling.
It was power.
And it was hers.
A knife sliced past her cheek—she caught it midair with nothing but will, ripped it out of the smoke, and drove it straight into Nassar’s heart.
He gasped once and folded.
Audrey was already turning toward Basir, who was on his knees, holding his bleeding throat, horror collapsing his features.
Nikos’s power gathered in the room. Blue fire dripped from his fingers, searing the air. “Audrey!” he called. “Stop or I burn this whole fucking place down!”
