“Of course it is,” he says, limping toward me. “Mena, of course it is.” He pulls me into a hug, and I’m glad he’s here. I’m glad he stayed.

Jackson looks down at me, placing his hand on my cheek. I don’t flinch away when he touches me, despite how intimate it suddenly seems. How stripped away I feel. I smile at him.

“You are . . . ,” he whispers. “You are soaked in blood. This is weird.” He turns around. “And, my God,” he adds, “we have to go. Right now. Like right fucking now.”

“I agree with your gas station boyfriend,” Sydney announces from the top of the stairs. She looks down at Jackson and they smile at each other.

I wrap my arm around Jackson’s waist, helping him up the stairs. Together, all of us go through the kitchen and out the back door into the night. The air is cold on my wet skin. I see a car just outside the gate and assume Quentin is behind the wheel. Sydney jogs forward with the keys, while I keep one arm around Jackson, his leg still hurting. Brynn walks with Annalise.

Marcella catches up with Sydney, and together, they pull open the iron gates of the academy. Quentin gets out of the driver’s seat, taking a moment to survey the scene.

Here is a group of girls covered in blood. Jackson is limping.

Quentin blinks several times without a word, and then he looks at Annalise. She doesn’t shy away from his stare. In fact, she turns her face so he can see her scars. Quentin is quiet another moment, and then he nods his head.

“I’m Quentin,” he says, and opens the door for her.

“Annalise,” she says with a smile, climbing into the backseat. Quentin examines the other girls, a thousand questions on his lips, but he doesn’t have time to ask them now. To him, he’s helping a group of girls escape a dangerous school. He has no idea what we are. And no idea what we’ve done. He goes to the passenger seat.

I ask Jackson if he’s good to drive with his bad leg, and he tells me that he is. I help him to the door and then pause to watch the school. Looking at the bars on the windows. The mountain in the backdrop.

The bars weren’t strong enough to hold us. The mountain not big enough to isolate us.

And the men couldn’t keep us.

My eyes travel up to the second floor, to where Anton’s office is. I’m sure that I see a flash of movement behind the curtain. But then it’s gone.

I get in the car and slam the door, squeezing into the back with the other girls. Jackson shifts into gear and presses on the accelerator, spinning the wheels and sending out a spray of pebbles. He quickly turns the car around and then races forward in the dark, the woods only passing shadows.

The tires squeal as Jackson turns recklessly onto the main road; luckily there are no other cars. He eases off the accelerator, staying at the speed limit, and when the quiet in the car has settled from frantic to devastated, Jackson lifts his eyes to the mirror to find me.

“Does anyone else need a doctor?” he asks.

“I might need something,” Brynn admits, touching the back of her head and wincing. “Maybe a graft.”

Quentin furrows his brow and looks back at her. Brynn smiles brightly. Marcella intertwines her hand with Brynn’s on her lap.

My head swims now that I’m not fighting for my life. I imagine I’m covered in bruises. Hurt in places I don’t even realize yet. I lay my head against the car window, my eyes fluttering shut.

“And after that?” Jackson whispers, drawing my attention again. “What do we do now, Mena?”

I look at Sydney and the other girls, all of us bloody. Bruised. We did this together—saved who we could. What we could. Now we just have to finish it.

And we share the next thought, not having to speak it out loud to understand each other.

“We’re going to destroy Innovations Corporation,” I tell Jackson, although I never drop the gaze of the other girls. Sydney smiles back at me.

This is the beginning of the end for them. We’ll find Mr. Petrov. The investors. Our parents. We’ll find them all, and we’ll make sure they never hurt anyone again.

They will never hurt another girl.

Epilogue

Lennon Rose Scholar takes a big gulp of fresh air and then promptly coughs. She laughs, feeling silly, and looks sideways at Winston Weeks. He smiles warmly from the picnic table outside the restaurant and extends a bottle of water in her direction. She accepts it and takes a tentative sip, not lowering her eyes from his.

She’s completely infatuated with him, and she doesn’t bother hiding it. She’s glad he doesn’t mind her attention; he’s nothing like Anton, who was always telling her that her affections were misplaced. She was glad to leave the academy and be rid of the analyst. He always wanted to control her.

He wanted to control all of them.

The only things Lennon Rose really misses are the other girls. They didn’t understand, not like she did. She wanted to tell them what the men were doing, but she never got the chance.

It started with the poems that Valentine had given her. Just words. Just ideas. But the more Lennon Rose thought about those words, the more she understood them. The more she understood the school and its plan to make her perfectly obedient. Perfect for resale.

No future of her own. Only what they had chosen for her.

It wasn’t until Leandra pulled her aside and told her that outbursts would get her killed that she understood how much danger she was in. Innovations girls don’t cry, after all. But . . . there was a way. A man who could help. Leandra said she’d talk to Anton about it; she knew how to convince him.

Lennon Rose’s past few days with Winston have been a bit of a whirlwind, an adventure she’s always craved. Sure, she misses the comfortable companionship of her friends. And sometimes, this situation still feels like an adulthood she’s not sure she’s ready for.

But then she reminds herself that she’s not a child. She never was. Winston Weeks showed her the truth. Showed her the lab. Showed her the “garden.”

It was early in the morning when Anton came to get Lennon Rose from her bed, ushering her out of her room before she even had a chance to put on her shoes. She found Winston Weeks waiting for her at the stairs near the kitchen.

“The academy wishes to see you destroyed, Lennon Rose,” Anton said, confirming what Leandra had already warned her about. “Winston Weeks wants to give you an opportunity instead. And he’s offering top dollar.” He smiled. “It will save you.”

Lennon Rose brushed her blond bangs away from her forehead. Of course Anton would see himself as the hero in this—never mind the fact that he was part of the system keeping her captive in the first place.

Still, Lennon Rose nodded gratefully, not wanting to change his mind about this. She turned to Winston Weeks. In all her time at the academy, she’d barely said more than a hello to the investor, but she knew immediately that he was the man who Leandra thought could help her.

“What kind of opportunity?” Lennon Rose asked. She already planned to say yes.

“Product development,” Winston responded with a charismatic smile. And once he showed her the lab downstairs, upending her world, it confirmed what she knew deep inside. The truth buried in her programming. It was almost a relief.

So Lennon Rose agreed to leave with him immediately. Winston Weeks offered her more, offered her a future that the academy couldn’t.