I turn toward Jost, unsure what to say to him. His blue eyes meet mine and there’s fire in them. There’s an electricity in the air around him, waiting to be unleashed. Finding Sebrina is all he’s ever wanted, and even now, I want it for him.

“I remember she was rewoven into the Eastern Sector,” I say. I’d found the information on the night we escaped from Arras to Earth. Even then Jost had been separated from her for almost three years, believing the whole time that she was dead—a victim of the Guild’s warning to Jost’s hometown. I cried for them both the night Cormac severed the Eastern Sector.

“They destroyed most of the files when they cut this sector off from Arras,” Jax says, cracking his fingers as he speaks. “I had to get into the Guild’s mainframe to recover the information. It took me a couple days. “

Jax gives Jost an apologetic look, but Jost waves it off. “The important thing is that we found her.”

“Is she still here?” I ask in a small voice.

Dante steps forward and nods. “We have every reason to believe she’s still within the Eastern Sector.”

“Even ministers that evacuated left their families,” Jax says.

I nod my head, already knowing this. I wonder for a moment if Grady left. “I watched Cormac tell a man to abandon his family because he could get a new one.”

“You were there?” Erik’s jaw tenses as he asks.

“I didn’t want to be,” I snap. He must know I tried to stop it.

“It’s pretty clear that Protocol Two quarantines everyone in the sector who isn’t a high-ranking Guild official.”

“They must protect their secret,” Loricel says in a soft but cutting tone.

I take a step back and meet Loricel’s eyes once more. Does this mean she knew about the officials all along? Had she seen it before, herself?

When I first met Loricel, I wondered how old she was. I thought I had an idea after her short mentorship of me at the Coventry, but now I’m no longer sure. She still has paper-thin skin, creased with age, and the same silver hair. At some point, she allowed herself to age rather than maintain the charade of perpetual youth.

“Older than you think,” she says.

It’s clear Loricel remembers every moment that’s transpired between us. And as she says the words—words she spoke to me at our first meeting—I realize she’s been telling me the truth the whole time.

I just didn’t hear her.

She knew about the Guild and how far renewal technology could go, but she hadn’t told me. Loricel had covered up the Guild’s biggest secret: they made themselves immortal at the cost of other people’s lives; their own life spans were extended using the time strands of people whose lives the Guild had cut short.

“If Sebrina is out there,” I say, trying to focus on the task at hand and not on the questions burning through my brain about Loricel’s secrets, “we need to go after her.”

Despite the chaos and strategizing going on around us, Dante grins at this. He looks a bit maniacal. It’s how I know we’re related.

“That’s our next order of business.”

EIGHTEEN

THE STREETS ARE DESERTED, AS THOUGH THE citizens are still abiding by the quarantine Cormac placed on the sector before he severed it. I can tell people have been out of their homes, though. Glass crunches under our feet from the shattered remains of storefront windows. The food co-op is devoid of rations. I wonder how many mothers and fathers fought one another for the little bit of food stocked on its shelves. I wonder how many people have run out of food entirely after the Eastern Sector’s time in limbo. This is how Cormac left things. When he severed the sector in front of me, I thought he was a monster. But knowing that he left millions of people to starve in the dark makes me question if the word monster can even begin to describe him.

I trade my traveling suit and heels for something more practical—boots and jeans. Valery’s shorter than I am, and her jeans and tunic are a bit too short and tight on me to be comfortable, but it’s still better than running around in a skirt and stockings.

“We have to move quickly because we estimate resources will run out in as little as two weeks here,” Dante explains to me.

“And what happens then?”

“People will start to die.” He blows out a long sigh of frustration. “We need to evacuate everyone between now and then.”

“Dante,” I whisper. I’m not sure I want Jost to hear what I have to say. He has to be worried enough about Sebrina as it is. “Doesn’t it seem too quiet to you here?”

Dante gives me a quick bob of the head that the others don’t see. “On the one hand, it follows the pattern of behavior of the people left behind on Earth after the exodus. There’s clearly been looting. Most food supplies are compromised. But you’re right. On the other hand, it’s too quiet.”

“What do you think is going on?”

“I’m not sure,” Dante says. “But it’s not a coincidence if the Guild’s involved.”

Jost and Erik walk a hundred yards ahead of us, watching for danger. Valery trails between us and the Bell brothers. I want to ask her to join us, but I need to talk to Dante and I’m not sure I trust her yet. She may have proven herself to the others somehow, but her betrayal is still fresh to me.

Watching Jost and Erik in the distance, I can’t help but think they’re both avoiding me, and yet the sight of them working together makes me smile. They’ve become friends again in the time I’ve been gone.