My breath caught in my lungs for a second, and I felt a moment of fear. Maddox had made a mistake by letting that slip, and now Astrid was waiting for an answer from her.

Maddox shot me a helpless look, and I answered for her, not caring how it appeared to Astrid. The last thing Maddox needed was an interrogation, and if Astrid challenged me for answering, then I would call her out on it.

This time, I stuck to the truth—but only to an extent. “During our baton qualifiers, there was something off about the batons the opposing team was using. I was hit only once, but the charge on it was much stronger than it was supposed to be. I considered bringing my concerns up to the officials, but—”

“But you were worried that if the investigation turned up nothing, you would be ostracized for trying to cast doubt on another candidate,” Astrid finished for me with a sigh. “That stupid rule.” She shook her head. “You should’ve said something, Liana. Scipio changed the rules this year so that all complaints and investigations would be sealed. His recommendation was based on a few different things, but the end result is the same: if you suspect cheating, then reporting it will not earn you a black mark.”

Scipio had changed the rule? That was weird, because as far as I knew, Scipio wasn’t in complete control of his own faculties. He was being manipulated. I had seen it firsthand during our trial, when Lacey and Strum planted a false memory in Scipio’s database to confirm my version of events, resulting in me being exonerated for the crime of murdering the former Champion, Devon Alexander, and my mentor, Gerome Nobliss. But if someone had created this rule through Scipio, then I had to wonder why they had. What purpose would it serve?

I wasn’t sure, and I made a mental note to ask Leo… once I felt comfortable with him again.

Meanwhile, Astrid’s stylus dipped up and down, and I watched as she swiped a finger across her pad, seeming to look something up. Her finger tapped the screen twice, and a moment later, a frown twisted her lips downward. She clicked another button, made a few notes, and then looked at Maddox. “I apologize for interrupting you, kid. I know this is quite hard for you, so I promise I won’t do it again.”

Maddox clenched her jaw tight, a look of fierce determination on her face. “Good, because I’m only going to be able to do this once,” she said, and Zoe reached out and rested a gentle hand over Maddox’s wrapped one. The taller girl gave Zoe a grateful smile—but it didn’t last.

“Shortly after his friends left, we were chatting in the living room, when I swore I heard the sound of the door opening. I stood up to check it out, and then suddenly six or seven people…” She shuddered, exhaling slowly. “I’m honestly not sure how many. I just know that three of them were on me before I could…” She trailed off with a choked cry, and Zoe scooted closer to her, rubbing her arm soothingly. I doubted Maddox noticed. She was practically shaking, tears running down her cheeks. “They grabbed me and dragged me into the kitchen. One sucker-punched me in the stomach, and I went down. They started kicking me. They started kicking both of us. I heard Ambrose… He tried to fight back, but there were so many, and then there was this crunching sound, and Ambrose… He just stopped making any noise. I was certain I was next… I thought I was going to die.”

Her voice grew high, her breathing panicked as she tried to recount everything from start to finish. I knew she was leaving the details out, but I could understand; she didn’t need to tell Astrid what it felt like to feel her ribs breaking while she was helpless on the floor, listening to Ambrose’s cries of pain, the sound of his death.

Zoe was constantly there, trying to soothe her. A moment later, she gave Astrid a questioning look. “Do you need any more, or can I take her back to bed? She needs her rest.”

Astrid tapped her pad and then rotated it to face Maddox, answering Zoe’s question indirectly. “Do you recognize any of these people from the attack?” She held the pad out at an angle, and I could see rows and rows of image grabs from net IDs, but paused when I noted the background color. Background colors were how we could tell the work status of a citizen, with the color of their department to show that they were working, a flat gray to show that they weren’t, yellow if they were injured. The backdrop for all of the photos was purple, indicating that they were all contestants from the Tourney.

Maddox stared at the pictures, her eyes searching, and then reached out and tapped on two to drag the images up and scroll through them. She picked two more, and then shook her head. “Those are the only ones I remember,” she said tiredly. “They were contestants?”

Astrid took the pad back, her face an unreadable mask. “I’m going to tell you something, but only because it will be made public in a few hours, on my insistence. The Tourney and the Citadel have had a massive security breach. These ten people—” She tapped something on the pad and turned it around to me, revealing two rows of five pictures. “—seem to have used false nets to gain access to the Citadel and the Tourney.”

“What?” I exclaimed. “How?”

She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “We’re not entirely sure yet, but it seems that they exposed a weakness in how we handle our citizen/net scans. We assumed that the scanners in the Citadel were foolproof, but apparently they managed to get around the system by uploading a virus into the scanner’s buffer and forcing the computer to accept the false IDs as the real thing—and that included giving them permission to enter Ambrose’s apartment through the door override privileges they got as a result of their falsified ranking.”

I was stunned. The level of preparation that had gone into this was staggering. They’d had to falsify nets, which meant getting blank ones, which I knew from personal experience wasn’t the easiest thing to do. Then they had created a virus in order to bypass the security in the Citadel. It wasn’t something anyone could have done on a whim. It took time. It took planning.

“Have you captured any of them?” I asked, hoping that she would say yes. I wasn’t sure how I could pull it off yet, but if she had one of them, then I had some questions for them. I wanted to know who they worked for, and whether they had gone after Tian to draw us away from Ambrose. I knew it had to be the same people, and I was going to make them tell me where Tian was. Also… I wanted to look into the faces of Ambrose’s killers—and I was betting Lacey would want to as well.

Astrid’s frown twisted even tighter. “No,” she grated out. “As soon as the techs discovered the credentials of the last person to enter the room before you and Grey did, we moved to detain him and his entire team—but they were gone. That made us figure out something else was wrong, and I ordered them to dig a little deeper. It seems my gut was right, because the techs uncovered the virus. We ran a trace on it through the remaining candidates, and these six stood out. Unfortunately, they were already gone as well. What’s more, we ran facial recognition on their image grabs, but there isn’t a single match to be found in the Tower. Whoever these people are, they are very good at covering their tracks.”

I gave her a hard look. “Are we safe?”

She returned my gaze, and answered honestly. “I don’t know. Which was why I didn’t make a big deal about all of you being up here. There’s a conspiracy at work here, I’m sure of it. I just can’t seem to figure out what it is.”

She tucked her pad away and leaned back in her chair for a moment, stroking her cheek. “All right, kids, who’s got questions for me? Bearing in mind, I’ve said all I’m going to say about the investigation at this point.”

It was a fair statement. No doubt she’d already revealed more than she should’ve, but knowing her, she had made sure to include the slip in her notes. She had too much integrity not to. Still, I was disappointed. I wanted to know more about the ten individuals who had infiltrated the Tourney, and why facial recognition couldn’t find them. I supposed that they could have assumed disguises, like Quess did, but… would they be wearing the makeup the rest of their lives? How could they disappear inside the Tower?

I knew how we did it: we had paint designed by Quess that blocked our net transmissions, making it impossible for Scipio to see us. But this wasn’t the same. Our faces would still be recognized by the sensors around the Tower, which was why we’d had to disguise ourselves. These ten people had made a massive sacrifice in murdering Ambrose; they were now enemies of the Tower, and their faces would be searched for constantly, until the day they were found. Wherever they were hiding would likely be their home for the rest of their lives, for they would be unable to step outside again without risking exposure—which seemed like a miserable life.

“I hope this doesn’t sound awful, but… what will happen to the Tourney now?” Leo asked.

Astrid sniffed. “You’ll receive notification in a few hours that, if you wish to drop out, you’ll have to do it by tomorrow evening. Teams that were found to have infiltrators in them will be broken up and randomly reassigned or formed into new teams. If your team chooses to continue, you’ll have to select a new leader, and your open slot will be filled randomly—although you can reject the first candidate, if you’d like to. That’s if you choose to proceed, of course. No one would blame you for backing out. Still, Ambrose was the driving force behind your team, as I understood it.” She smiled at me. “How do you feel about it, kid? You’re the most popular candidate on your team.”

I hesitated. I hadn’t even thought about what would happen with the Tourney, nor whether or not we were proceeding. In truth, once I had seen Ambrose’s still form, I had figured that we were done with it. That we’d have to escape the Citadel… or die trying. But Lacey hadn’t followed through on her threat to turn us in, and Tian was still missing, so I felt… stuck. And uncertain of what to do.

Astrid took my hesitance as a negative response, and looked disappointed. “That’s too bad,” she murmured softly, slowly pushing up from her chair. “But I think your mother will be relieved. She netted me last night, asking about you. Are you and she not on speaking terms?”

I shifted awkwardly. My relationship with my parents was the very definition of strained, but the last few interactions with my mother had left me feeling confused about her. Like she was actually starting to care about me—the real me, rather than the girl she had always wanted me to be. She seemed concerned about me, and not just in a selfish way, for once.

I wanted to explore it, but at the same time, I was afraid. I had been willing to cut both of my parents out of my life when I had left, but my mother was making it difficult to do so, which was… strange.

“She stopped by eight times, yesterday,” Zoe added. “It was all I could do to keep her out and let you get your rest.”

Eight times? That was a bit much, especially for my mom. Was she… Was she worried? Was this what worried looked like on her?

“I’ll make sure to net her,” I said with a nod.

Astrid’s eyebrow twitched—a sign of disapproval—but she nodded. “Good. All of you, thank you for your time. I hope to find whoever killed your friend soon, and bring them to justice.”

“Thank you,” I murmured. I stood up and followed her over to the door. “Let me know if there’s anything more we can do.”

Astrid smiled at me. “Of course. Net me if you think of anything else.”

She exited, and the two Knights waiting for her fell into line. Lewis turned long enough to wave, and then they were gone, heading back down the hallway. I watched them go for a minute, feeling surprisingly optimistic that something would actually get done with Astrid on the investigation. Maybe if we were lucky, she’d figure out who was conspiring with those ten individuals, and possibly give us a clue as to who our enemies might be. We wouldn’t have to be alone anymore; we’d have experienced Knights who could help us…

I sighed and shut the door. It was wishful thinking. As much as I looked up to Astrid, and had enjoyed our family dinners with her, there was no way of knowing what her true motivations were. For all I knew, she’d been selected because she was the best person to execute a coverup. Her integrity was beyond reproach, earned from years of dogged investigations and a reputation for never backing down, no matter where her investigation took her. But how much of that was true? How could we trust that she was actually trying to catch Ambrose’s killers?

I wasn’t sure, but there was nothing we could do about it.

I turned around and headed back into the living room, freezing when I saw everyone looking at me expectantly.

“What happens now?” Zoe asked.