I’d noticed it earlier.

I can’t stop staring at it now.

Something pulls me forward, some need I can’t explain. It’s becoming familiar now—almost normal—to feel the strange heat filling my head, so I don’t question my compulsion to move closer. Something somewhere inside of me is screaming at me to stand down, but I’m only dimly aware of it. I hear Max’s muffled, low voice in the other room; he’s speaking with someone in harried, aggressive tones. He seems fully distracted.

Encouraged, I step forward.

My hand curls around the drawer pull, and it takes only a little effort to tug it open. It’s a smooth, soft system. The wood makes almost no sound as it moves. And I’m just about to peer inside when—

“What are you doing?”

Max’s voice sends a sharp note of clarity through my brain, clearing the haze. I take a step back, blinking. Trying to understand what I was doing.

“The drawer was open, sir. I was going to close it.” The lie comes automatically. Easily.

I marvel at it.

Max slams the drawer closed and stares, suspiciously, at my face. I blink at him, blithely meeting his gaze.

I notice then that he’s holding my boots.

He shoves them at me; I take them. I want to ask him if he has a hair tie—my hair is unusually long; I have a vague memory of it being much shorter—but I decide against it.

He watches me closely as I pull on my boots, and once I’m upright again, he barks at me to follow him.

I don’t move.

“Sir, my commander gave me direct orders to remain in this room. I will stay here until otherwise instructed.”

“You’re currently being instructed. I’m instructing you.”

“With all due respect, sir, you are not my commanding officer.”

Max sighs, irritation darkening his features, and he lifts his wrist to his mouth. “Did you hear that? I told you she wouldn’t listen to me.” A pause. “Yes. You’ll have to come get her yourself.”

Another pause.

Max is listening on an invisible earpiece not unlike the one I’ve seen Anderson use—an earpiece I’m now realizing must be implanted in their brains.

“Absolutely not,” Max says, his anger so sudden it startles me. He shakes his head. “I’m not touching her.”

Another beat of silence, and—

“I realize that,” he says sharply. “But it’s different when her eyes are open. There’s something about her face. I don’t like the way she looks at me.”

My heart slows.

Blackness fills my vision, flickers back to light. I hear my heart beating, hear myself breathe in, breathe out, hear my own voice, loud—so loud—

There was something about my face

The words slur, slow down

there wassomething about my facesssomething about my facessssomething about my eyes, the way I looked at her

My eyes fly open with a start. I’m breathing hard, confused, and I have hardly a moment to reflect on what just happened in my head before the door flies open again. A roar of noise fills my ears—more sirens, more shouts, more sounds of urgent, chaotic movement—

“Juliette Ferrars.”

There’s a man in front of me. Tall. Forbidding. Black hair, brown skin, green eyes. I can tell, just by looking at him, that he wields a great deal of power.

“I am Supreme Commander Ibrahim.”

My eyes widen.

Musa Ibrahim is the supreme commander of Asia. By all accounts, the supreme commanders of The Reestablishment have equal levels of authority—but Supreme Commander Ibrahim is widely known to be one of the founders of the movement, and one of the only supreme commanders to have held the position from the beginning. He’s extremely well respected.

So when he says, “Come with me,” I say—

“Yes, sir.”

I follow him out the door and into the chaos, but I don’t have long to take in the pandemonium before we make a sharp turn into a dark hallway. I follow Ibrahim down a slim, narrow path, the lights dimming as we go. I glance back a few times to see if Max is still with us, but he seems to have gone in another direction.

“This way,” Ibrahim says sharply.

We make one more turn and, suddenly, the narrow path opens onto a large, brightly lit landing area. There’s an industrial stairwell to the left and a large, gleaming steel elevator to the right. Ibrahim heads for the elevator, and places his hand flat against the seamless door. After a moment, the metal emits a quiet beep, hissing as it slides open.

Once we’re both inside, Ibrahim gives me a wide berth. I wait for him to direct the elevator—I scan the interior for buttons or a monitor of some kind—but he does nothing. A second later, without prompting, the elevator moves.

The ride is so smooth it takes me a minute to realize we’re moving sideways, rather than up or down. I glance around, taking the opportunity to more closely examine the interior, and only then do I notice the rounded corners. I thought this unit was rectangular; it appears to be circular. I wonder, then, if we’re moving as a bullet would, boring through the earth.

Surreptitiously, I glance at Ibrahim.

He says nothing. Indicates nothing. He seems neither interested nor perturbed by my presence, which is new. He holds himself with a certainty that reminds me a great deal of Anderson, but there’s something else about Ibrahim— something more—that feels unique. Even from a passing glance it’s obvious that he feels absolutely sure about himself. I’m not sure even Anderson feels absolutely sure of himself. He’s always testing and prodding—examining and questioning. Ibrahim, on the other hand, seems comfortable. Unbothered. Effortlessly confident.

I wonder what that must feel like.

And then I shock myself for wondering.

Once the elevator stops, it makes three brief, harsh, buzzing sounds. A moment later, the doors open. I wait for Ibrahim to exit first, and then I follow.

When I cross the threshold, I’m first stunned by the smell. The air quality is so poor that I can’t even open my eyes properly. There’s an acrid smell in the air, something reminiscent of sulfur, and I step through a cloud of smoke so thick it immediately makes my eyes burn. It’s not long before I’m coughing, covering my face with my arm as I force my way through the room.

I don’t know how Ibrahim can stand this.

Only after I’ve pushed through the cloud does the stinging smell begin to dissipate, but by then, I’ve lost track of Ibrahim. I spin around, trying to take in my surroundings, but there are no visual cues to root me. This laboratory doesn’t seem much different from the others I’ve seen. A great deal of glass and steel. Dozens of long, metal tables stretched across the room, all of them covered in beakers and test tubes and what look like massive microscopes. The one big difference here is that there are huge glass domes drilled into the walls, the smooth, transparent semicircles appearing more like portholes than anything else. As I get closer I realize that they’re planters of some kind, each one containing unusual vegetation I’ve never seen. Lights flicker on as I move through the vast space, but much of it is still shrouded in darkness, and I gasp, suddenly, when I walk straight into a glass wall.

I take a step back, my eyes adjusting to the light.