WE MADE QUICK WORK OF feeding the animals and cleaning up the house. Once it was locked up, awaiting Sam and Lucas’s return that night, we divided ourselves between two cars and siphoned the gas out of the third.

“I’d like to go with Zu,” Liam told Chubs, then glanced over to where I was stowing our filthy, battered bags in the trunk of the SUV Chubs had driven. “If you don’t mind?”

Liam had showered and shaved before coming down, and while his movements were still stiff, and he seemed to be vibrating with anxiety, he looked a little more like himself. Or, as Vida put it, he no longer looked like a cult leader who wanted to murder all of us.

“Of course not,” I said. “But I’m driving.”

A faint smile. “All right, then.”

“I hope you’re ready to snuggle up in the back,” Priyanka told Max as they came down the porch steps. “I’m about to defend my repeat champion status in I Spy.”

Max turned to Vida. “Can I please come with you guys? I could use some peace and quiet.”

Vida opened the back door, sweeping her hand inside. “Be my fucking guest.”

“Should one of us tell him that’s not the ‘peace and quiet’ car?” Liam whispered, limping over to help me finish loading our supplies.

“Some things are more fun to discover on your own,” I said.

“Are you sure you want to drive?” he asked, staring longingly over the backseats. Something in his expression changed.

Hopeless.

I reached into one of the backpacks, unzipping the front pouch. The photo I’d taken from Haven was still inside, burned and wrinkled, but still mostly in one piece.

I held it out to him until he looked down, his eyes widening.

“Everything’s not lost,” I told him. “It’s going to be okay.”

He took the photo in one hand, then reached over, resting his palm on the top of my head, the way he used to. “When you’re the one saying it, I can actually believe it.”

“Ready?” I asked him.

“It’s a long drive,” he said. “Maybe you’ll need to take a break…?”

I shot him a long look.

“There’s my Zu,” he said, pocketing the photo. Before I could move to the driver’s side, he took my wrist.

“Liam, don’t be ridiculous—”

“No, I just want to say—” He shook his head, a few strands of dark blond hair falling over his forehead. “I’m sorry I didn’t even say good-bye.”

“Which time?” I asked, fighting the need to hug him.

He winced. “Both. For leaving without warning, and for letting both of you go with angry words between us. I’ve never been perfect, but I’ve always wanted to be for you.”

“I never needed perfect,” I told him. “None of us did.”

“After Cole died, after everything,” he said, struggling with the words, “it was the only thing I could think to do.”

“I know,” I said. “Liam, I know. It’s all right. Just…none of us are allowed to leave without saying good-bye, not anymore. Yeah?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“All right,” I said, giving him a nod of my own. “Then let’s go.”

Vida looked back at me before climbing into the driver’s seat. “If you lose track of us, just keep going. We’ll meet four blocks south of the lab.”

I opened my own door. “What makes you think I’m going to be following you?”

Vida grinned.

As I slid inside, buckling my seat belt, Priyanka turned and looked out the back window. “Farewell, Snowflake, princess of my heart.”

“Everything all right?” Roman asked.

“Much better,” I said, breathing out and hitting the ignition button. A powerful thrust of electricity blazed through the body of the car. A faint pop song I didn’t recognize came on the radio, but before I could change it, Liam opened the front passenger door.

Where Roman was already sitting.

Liam clucked his tongue, jerking his thumb toward the backseat.

After a long look at me, Roman unbuckled his seat belt and moved.

“What?” Liam asked when he saw my look. “I’m wounded. I need more room.”

I shook my head, putting the car in drive. The car lurched ungracefully as I got used to the looser steering. Liam pressed a hand to his chest.

“Settle down, old man,” I told him, picking up speed as we turned off the long driveway and onto the dirt road. Vida was already leaving a blazing trail of dust behind her. The longer I drove, ten minutes, twenty minutes, the harder it became to ignore the way Liam was practically vibrating.

“You’re starting to offend me,” I warned him. “Not to mention annoy me.”

“No—no, you’re a great driver,” he said quickly. “It’s just…why would you listen to this when you could listen to literally anything else?”

I’d just tuned out the pop music, focused on keeping pace with Vida. “Change it, then.”

He looked almost horrified at the suggestion. “Driver chooses, always.”

“It is amazing no one has ever tried to push you out of a moving car,” Priyanka noted.

He turned in his seat. “You were my favorite of Zu’s new friends. Now it’s him, because he at least respects his elders.”

“Since when are you an elder?” I asked him.

“It’s a fair statement,” Roman said, staring out his window. “The brain supposedly hits peak performance at age twenty-five, and after that it’s all downhill.”

“Nice,” Liam said, facing forward again. “This is the guy you’re choosing to make out with on fences?”

“Whaaaaaaat?” Priyanka sang out, a false note of surprise in her tone.

“You were watching!” I said, reaching over to smack his shoulder. I glanced up at Priyanka in the rearview mirror, her eyes on the roof of the car. “You were all watching?”

Roman seemed completely unbothered by this revelation, and instead focused on drawing out alternate routes on the maps.

“Okay, yes,” Priyanka said. “But it’s not really our fault. Charlie went out to yell at you to come inside before you got hit by lightning, and he saw it, and then he ran back inside and got very flustered and embarrassed and told us it was nothing, which seemed deeply suspicious, all things considered, so of course we all had to go see, just to make sure you were all right and not a pile of charred remains.”

I glared at her in the rearview mirror, then jabbed the scanner button to search for another station. Mercifully, it landed on the zone’s official channel, not Truth Talk Radio’s garbage of the day.

But, unfortunately, it wasn’t good news.

“—catch up those who are just tuning in. We interrupt our usual broadcast to bring you this breaking report from your local Zone Three station—”

“Why did I just shudder at the words breaking report?” Priyanka asked.

Roman let the map drift down to rest on his legs. “Can you turn it up?”

“Following last night’s attempted attack on Interim President Cruz’s motorcade as she returned to the White House, the Secretary-General of the United Nations has issued the following statement….”

The blood seemed to swell inside my veins, the pressure driving my pulse up to the point of pain. Secretary-General Chung never issued public statements on behalf of America unless…

“After a meeting with delegates from each nation of the coalition overseeing the restoration of the United States government, we have reached a unanimous decision to extend the United Nation’s oversight for the next two years. These tensions, all of which have arisen over what would have been the first independent election since the removal of former president Gray’s administration, have demonstrated a dangerous volatility that still exists in the country. For the sake of domestic and international stability, we will maintain the status quo as it exists today, and increase our support to both the Defender and peacekeeping forces. Thank you.”

“They actually did it,” I said. “They actually called off the election like Moore predicted. He couldn’t have wanted this….”

He couldn’t have wanted anything that kept him away from power.

“Residents of Chicago, Indianapolis, Detroit, and other major cities are advised to remain inside and keep roads clear for emergency services as they manage spontaneous demonstrations.”

Spontaneous demonstrations. Classic PR-speak for what were likely raging protests.

“Did he overplay it?” Priyanka asked. “Isn’t this what they’ve been fear-mongering all along? Churning out all that propaganda that the United Nations was too controlling, that they would never let this country go, even as they forced the UN into this position. This is exactly what he wants: open rebellion.”

For weeks—for months—Moore and others like him had been launching dangerous sparks of dissension into the air. And now they were about to rain down over us. In the chaos, the public would turn to him for guidance, even the ones who hadn’t necessarily believed him before. He’d manufactured the proof he’d needed that he was both a prophet and a savior.

“Well,” Liam said, turning to gaze out his window. “Shit.”