“Mercer gets kids, but what would Moore get out of it?” I asked.

“That’s a good question,” Max said. “You’re welcome to get out of here and go figure it out somewhere else.”

Priyanka ignored him, drumming her fingers against her knees. “Moore does want an army, doesn’t he? He can tell the world he wants to reeducate Psi and make them ‘useful,’ but the original plan was some kind of fighting force, no?”

“What are you getting at?” Roman asked.

“Isn’t it easier to make yourself an army, instead of trying to force all the Psi back with their families into service?” Priyanka said. “Moore gives Mercer the kids, but Moore’s going to buy them back one day. Trained, and with heightened abilities.”

“Why take Greens if he had been working with kids without the mutation?” I asked.

“My father discovered that it’s easier to mutate a preexisting mutation,” Max said. “And the Prodigies have less power to fight back.”

“Well, Maximo, time for you to make amends on your father’s behalf,” Priyanka said.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone else,” Max said, shaking his head.

“I think you mean that you don’t want anyone else to hurt you,” Priyanka said. “We were a team, and you broke us. You ruined any hope we had of destroying Mercer from the inside, so now he goes on hurting kids, trafficking them, training them, testing on them, killing them. I would think you’d feel a little more responsibility, considering your father is his main instrument.”

“Did you seriously break into a black-site prison just to yell at me?” Max asked. “You shouldn’t have bothered. There’s nothing you can say to me that will make me feel worse than what I’ve been telling myself. I see them every single night, Priya. Every person we hurt. Every person he had me search for. So, yeah, I surrendered. I wanted the cure. I didn’t want to be used like that ever again. If that’s what you’re here for, you’ve wasted your time. I never took either of you for being fools, and yet, here you are.”

He took a deep breath, closing his eyes again. When he spoke, it was so quietly I wasn’t even sure I was hearing him right. One palm lightly slapped against his forehead, as if he could embed the words deeper into his mind. “I cannot change the world, I can only change myself….I cannot change the world, I can only change myself….”

The scar on his scalp wasn’t as prominent as some of the others that I’d seen, likely because it had had more time to heal. But it was there, and he was right. It had been foolish to come here, especially without trying to learn more about what we’d find. Foolish. Reckless. Desperate.

With good reason.

“We did come here to ask for your help,” I said. “But I think you need our help more.”

“And who are you, exactly?” he asked, looking up.

“My name is Zu,” I said. “And I’m going to get you, and everyone else, out of here.”

THE IDEA HAD COME TOGETHER as I’d said the words. Both Roman and Priyanka turned to me in surprise, but I kept my gaze on Max.

“We think a friend of mine was tracking down kids who went missing and might have been caught by Blue Star,” I explained. “She’s vanished, too.”

“I’m sorry about your friend, but—”

“The friend is Ruby Daly,” Roman said.

The change in Max’s expression was immediate. His eyes widened, his nostrils flared. It all clicked for him. “Zu as in Suzume Kimura.”

I nodded.

“Daly’s been missing for years….”

“No, she’s been in hiding for years,” I said. “There’s a difference. If we can find her, we can use the information she might have gathered as evidence to expose Mercer and Blue Star.” I thought of the girl in the skating rink, adding, “And any partners they’re using to move these kids and sell them.”

“Even if I wanted to help…it’s too late,” he said, rubbing a hand along the scar on his head. “You’re too late.”

“You think I can’t take care of that?” Priyanka asked him. “I would have thought by now you’d know not to underestimate me.”

“Wait—you can hack a cure implant?” I said. The device, as developed by Lillian Gray and others at Leda Corp, effectively worked like a pacemaker. It regulated the abnormal flow of electricity through a Psi’s brain caused by the mutation, preventing them from accessing their power.

She shrugged. “Sure. I would just switch it off.”

“And that wouldn’t hurt him?” I asked, glancing over at Max. “I’d offer to try shutting off the implant’s power myself, but they put a special casing around its battery to protect it from interferences and tampering, both technological and Psi.”

“Well, I haven’t tried this, either, so I can’t promise it won’t hurt, or that there won’t be side effects,” Priyanka told him. “The implant will always be in there. But it’s not keeping you alive. I don’t see why turning it off would impair you in any way.”

Max looked down at his lap, where his chapped hands had fallen open.

“You’re not getting out of here. None of us are,” Max said. “And what’s the point? This is the Island of Misfit Toys. Thieves. Troublemakers. All-out criminals.”

“Yeah, and what crimes are they guilty of? Stealing to survive? Accidentally hurting others because they’ve never been able to safely learn how to control their powers? Self-defense?” I asked. “We were set up to fail. These laws have been slowly knotting around us like a noose and now the knot’s too tight for any of us to escape. The more we struggle, the tighter it gets, the faster we die.”

Max tilted his head, confused. “Don’t you work for the government?”

“Not anymore.”

There would be no going back now. I had seen too much and was too deep into the shadows. But I just needed to see the way forward little by little, until we were through the darkness, and heading toward whatever light was waiting on the other side.

“Would I be reading you?” Max asked me. “I could do it now, then you could do whatever it is you think you’re going to do to get out of here.”

“No,” Priyanka said. “She hasn’t seen Ruby in years. The reading wouldn’t be accurate. We need to bring you to someone who has.”

Max shook his head. He ran his hands back through his hair, clutching at it. “I should be here. I deserve to be here.”

“You really don’t,” I told him. “None of the Psi here do, either. No one deserves this.”

“Please,” Roman said. “I’m asking you to help us. Not because you feel that we’re owed it, but because it’s the right thing.”

“I thought you of all people would understand,” Max said, his voice breaking. “It’s just not right….I shouldn’t get to be out there, not with everything that’s happened. How am I supposed to make amends? I don’t know how to make it right. Tell me how to make it right….”

“Penance can mean prayers for forgiveness,” Roman said. “But it can also be works that do enough good to earn it.” He looked around the tent. “You’ve suffered enough. Don’t let your pain become a prison.”

“You’ve never known a day of peace in your whole life,” Max said.

“No,” Roman agreed. “And maybe I don’t deserve to. But it doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying to find it for the people I care about. That includes you.”

“We were the ones who survived, Maximo,” Priyanka said. “It’s our responsibility to stop Mercer.”

“And my father,” he added quietly.

I straightened. “Does that mean…?”

“Yeah. I’ll help you,” he said. “For whatever good it’ll do. But it still doesn’t solve the problem of getting out of here. I won’t leave the others behind.”

“We need to burn this place down,” I said. “They need to know we aren’t going to just fade away.”

“Is this a figurative or literal burning?” Priyanka asked. “Because I’m ready to start spitting fire.”

I rubbed at

my face, thinking. “How many implants could you deactivate before it became dangerous for you?”