THERE IS NO Rowan, or Yarrow, or whatever else is in my head. There is only grief. I cling to Lachlan and hardly even know who he is. There is only loss and emptiness.

I don’t hear it when Iris comes to tell us that Ash is stable, but Lachlan tells me a little while later when the well of tears seems to have run dry. “I guess I have to face Flint now,” I say, taking a deep breath that ends in a shudder and one slow final tear. I wipe it away and stand up straight.

“I’ll be with you,” Lachlan says. “Always. I won’t let him kick you or your brother out. He’s loved. So are you. The other second children won’t stand for that.”

I don’t know. People get scared, and that makes them clannish. They want to follow a leader, even if they don’t totally agree with his decisions. Lachlan will stand against him, on our side, but will that be enough? Flint has already proven he has no problem being merciless when it suits his cause . . . or him. His very nature is brutal, I think, when there’s nothing to hold it in check.

I walk in first, without knocking or announcing myself. I think the flashbacks will be about me, about my own torture in this room, and I’ve steeled myself to bear it unflinchingly. But when I see the pale outflung arm covered in bruises I don’t think of myself, but of Lark when she was captured and interrogated. There’s a girl strapped to the table.

Adder stands over her, on the far side of the table. Her knuckles are bruised. She could use a club, but she prefers to use her fists.

Flint is on the near side of the table, and turns when he notices me, revealing the strapped-down figure.

Long silvery hair matted with blood. Vivid blue eyes half-shut, glazed over, staring, appearing lifeless until I see a blink. A svelte curvy frame gone gaunt. The most expensive clothes her parents’ credit can buy, torn and filthy.

It’s Pearl.

And despite everything that has happened between us, everything that she’s done, I feel an overwhelming surge of pity for her. I want to protect her from Adder’s fists, and Flint’s plans.

But I’ve gotten to know the world pretty well by now, and I think no matter what I want, it’s not going to go well for Pearl.

“What is she doing here?” I ask. I feel Lachlan move up beside me.

“That’s exactly what I want you to tell me,” Flint replies. “Were the two of you working together? Concocting some little scheme with your Center handlers?” He turns to Lachlan. “I told you we couldn’t trust her.”

I almost have to smile as I say with utter frankness, “Pearl and I would never work together on anything.” Not now.

“She came at the same time you did.”

“We weren’t followed, I’m sure of it,” I say. But am I? I tried to keep watch, but mostly trusted Lark to do it. She was under a lot of stress. If she made a mistake, maybe Pearl had been able to follow us when we left Oaks. But why would she do it?

I step closer and look at her battered face. She seems to be unconscious. Both of her eyes are purple-blue and swollen nearly shut. Her lips are bruised and split. Her nose, which had been at such a perfectly refined angle it was hard to imagine it was natural and not the result of a surgeon’s skill, is now bent at a horrible angle. There are bruises all over her body, finger marks, and larger marks from the grit-filled tube Adder’s associate wields as a club.

“Did it really take so much to make her talk?” I ask, glaring at Adder.

“No,” Adder admits with silky pleasure. “But it never hurts to be sure.” She chuckles unpleasantly. “Well, it doesn’t hurt me, anyway.”

“Pearl,” I say gently. “Can you hear me? It’s Rowan.” Her eyes try to focus. I wonder if she has a concussion. Then I remember she has no idea who Rowan is. “I mean Yarrow. From school.” She’s dazed, and it takes a long time before she recognizes me.

“Yarrow!” she gasps. “Help me!” She moans when talking reopens a recently split lip. “I’m so sorry, Yarrow. She didn’t give me a choice.”

“Who didn’t give you a choice?” I ask.

“Chief Ellena. I tried to say no. I swear I did. But she knew things about my parents, about me. She would have told everyone. We would have been cast into the outer circles. But I didn’t want to do any of it.” She looks at me like she’s drowning. She starts to cry, the tears washing tracks through the blood on her face.

Flint got her story out of her easily enough, but she tells me again in a pained whisper as I bend close. Not long after we left to look for Lachlan and the forest, sentries found Pearl wandering through the cave system. She’d followed us to the secret entrance.

“Why did you follow us?” I ask.

“Your mother—”

“Don’t call her that!”

“Chief Ellena, the head of intelligence, she wanted me to keep an eye on you. All the time, from the first day you came to Oaks. She told me to take you in, be your best friend . . . and tell her everything you did and said.”

“You were her spy!” I say accusingly.

“What choice did I have?”

“Everyone has a choice,” I snap. “You could have told me. You could have lied to her.” But I can imagine how hard it must have been for her. A privileged girl who had never had any hardship, suddenly faced with disgrace and poverty? Of course she would have yielded. And if the brain manipulation started on her, as it had on me, is she really responsible?

But this is Pearl, horrible Pearl, who tormented so many people. There must have been some innate aspect of her real nature that allowed her to act so badly. Just as there must have been of mine.

“After the . . . incident on the rooftop, she was so mad at me. Half her bikking research budget almost fell off the roof, she said. After that, she told me to never let you out of my sight.”

In serious trouble with the head of intelligence, Pearl had to find a way to get back in her good graces. “When I saw you go underground, I didn’t know what it was all about. But it had to be something she wanted to know about. Something big. Yarrow, I have no idea what’s going on here! I swear I don’t. I just wanted to give her something so she’d leave me alone.”

She thought about running back to the Center to tell them, but what if it was just some secret party? What if she summoned the chief of intelligence and a bunch of Greenshirts and it was just a bunch of kids dancing? So she did what was probably one of the bravest things in her life and slid into the blackness after us.

“I thought I was going to die,” she says bleakly. I can’t help glancing up, and Flint catches my eye. She is going to die, I realize. She’s an enemy who knows their location. She can’t live.

“You and Lark weren’t there,” she goes on. “There were passageways everywhere! I thought I heard you and went in one direction, but I never found you. The caves went on forever . . .” She drifts into a daze, and Flint continues her tale.

“When we found her she was severely dehydrated. She’d been wandering down there since you came. She told us everything in exchange for a sip of water.” He adds with grudging admiration, “She’s not strong like you or your friend.”

I catch my breath. Lark was so strong. She gave me the world. She gave me myself . . .

Flint interrupts my reverie. “What do you think we should do with her?”

He’s kicking me out, he claims, so why is he asking my opinion? It must be a test. If I pass, I can stay. The right answer, the strategic answer, the one he’s looking for, is that she can’t be allowed to live. She could lead the Center directly to us. In one way, I know this is the right answer. Even if she’s being blackmailed by the Center, she’s still working for the enemy. Her release could mean the death of every single second child, from the ancient grandfathers to tiny Rainbow.

But what if we kept her a prisoner here? It is almost funny to think of snooty Pearl living hidden away from the limelight, wearing secondhand clothes, never doing anything fashionable. She’d never be popular again! Who knows, maybe she’d even change after a while down here. The second children wouldn’t put up with her bullying. Her insults wouldn’t hurt them. She might learn to be a decent human being.

But that would mean she was still a risk. What if she escaped? And a strategist would think of the drain on resources. She would be one more mouth to feed, and a useless one at that.

She left me to die, dangling by my fingertips off the roof. She drugged me. She made dozens of people miserable all her life. She is a dire threat to the people I love. Does she deserve to die?

Flint holds my gaze, and I can almost hear him willing me to be merciless. To believe that the ends justify the means. To be like him. I could . . .

I feel Lachlan’s warmth at my back, and know there is always a better way.

“We let her go,” I say resolutely.

He shakes his head. “I’m disappointed in you, Rowan.”

“Why should I care about that?” I snap. “Look, you can give her a huge dose of whatever you gave Lark.” I have to clench my jaw when I say her name, but I force myself to go on. “Make her confused, wipe her memory.”

“That doesn’t always work,” Flint says.

That’s true. Lark was fuddled and uncertain, but the next day she still remembered chunks of what had happened when the second children captured her. Once we talked about it, she eventually remembered almost all of it.

“Maybe Flame can try something. If the Center can manipulate memories, surely she can, too. She gave me my identity back. Maybe she can take enough away from Pearl that she can go back. So she doesn’t even know who she is anymore!”

I had my real self stolen. I had another person stamped over the core of my own nature. How could I allow that to happen to Pearl?

Would that be, in its own way, even worse than death?

I don’t think Flint is even considering it. He dismisses me brusquely. “You can go now.”

“But what are you going to do with her?” I ask.

“You should be more concerned about what we’re going to do with you,” he replies.

“But you can’t just kill her!” I cry. “She’s young, she’s being controlled . . .”

“This is war, Rowan,” Flint says. “Bad things happen in war. Kill or be killed. It’s human nature.”

“But it shouldn’t be!” I gasp out. Before I can object any further, the entire Underground is shaken by a deep tremor, and a grinding boom echoes through the cavern. I run to the door and look out over the huge chamber. The tree’s leaves are trembling as if rustled by a breeze.

“What was that? Another earthquake?”

For a moment there is silence.

Then, from all around us, an alarm begins to sound. Somewhere, a desperate voice shouts, “The Center! The Greenshirts! They’re here!”