“But it was happening all around them!” I can’t believe this, and yet I know it to be true.

“It’s easier to focus on the life around you than to see the whole picture,” she says.

“Then what will happen to this sector?” I ask. “What do you mean by ‘unraveled’?”

“Extermination?” Jost asks with disgust.

“The disease in the streets only increases the rate of the sector’s decay.”

“We need to get everyone out of this sector,” I say.

“What do you think we’ve been doing?” Falon asks in an annoyed voice.

“It’s been weeks!”

“Do you think you could have done better?” she asks.

“This is getting us nowhere,” Dante says. “We’re working on a plan, Adelice. We expect to have survivors out within a week.”

“What about the sick?” I ask.

“We can’t take them,” he says.

I can’t help but feel disappointed in Dante. He had once set my mother free even though the Guild had turned her into a monster, but now he was turning his back on the people of the Eastern Sector.

“Unfortunately, if what you say is true, the virus progresses so rapidly we have no time to find a cure,” Loricel says. “But the diseased represent a clear and immediate threat to our operations here.”

“It doesn’t sound like we’ll be safer on Earth,” Erik mutters.

Next to him Jost has gone pale. No doubt he’s wondering how to protect Sebrina. I want to kick Erik right now.

“Can we prevent the singularity?” I ask, trying to focus on something positive.

“That is what Protocol Three is for,” Loricel explains.

If the first two protocols alter people’s psychology and destroy whole metros, I’m not sure I want to know what Protocol Three does.

Albert is the one to finish the explanation. “Protocol Three will end the Cypress Project.”

“End it?” I echo. The Cypress Project was once an idea—the theory that with machines men could manipulate the most basic strands of the universe to create a perfect world. Now that idea was Arras itself.

“The men who created it were scientists. It stands to reason we would create a termination procedure if the experiment was deemed a failure,” Albert says.

“And Arras is a failure?” I ask, feeling slightly insulted.

“It will be a failure if it results in the death of two worlds.”

“But the people in Arras—”

Loricel holds up her hand. “Protocol Three will allow for total evacuation of every metro in Arras before the world unravels.”

“And that’s it?” I ask. “We press a button and then poof! No more Arras?”

“That oversimplifies things a bit, but—precisely,” Albert says.

In a way it’s what I wanted, but I’ve seen Earth and I know the hardships generations will endure rebuilding that world.

“You would let Arras go?” I ask Loricel.

She laughs at this. “I’ve been trying to let it go for hundreds of years.”

I can’t help it. I don’t want to see Arras destroyed. Does that make me the same as Cormac?

“You spoke to me once of the greater good,” I say to her.

“Age understands what youth cannot,” she replies, but she offers no other explanation.

“How do we do it?” I ask.

Jax and Albert share a look and my stomach clenches.

“That’s the hard part,” Albert says.

TWENTY-ONE

ACCORDING TO JAX, WE PRETTY MUCH HAVE to bust into the Guild offices in Cypress, hack their controls, and start evacuation procedures. Which will work—if we don’t get caught. Returning to Guild-controlled Arras unnoticed won’t be simple, especially if we need to break into the Ministry offices. But then there’s still the matter of the self-destruct code—a code only Cormac knows.

Because we wouldn’t want this to be too easy.

“I can get it out of him,” I say finally.

“I would love to know how you’re going to do that,” Falon says.

“You have to let me go back. I can claim I was kidnapped and escaped.”

“He’s not going to believe that,” Jost says.

“I don’t care if he believes it,” I say. “I only need to get close to him.”

Cormac might be eager enough to continue the wedding charade to go along with my lie, and I’d only need a little time to get him alone.

“No way.” It’s Erik who speaks, which surprises me, considering the distance he’s kept since I arrived. But one look at his face and I know he’s serious. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

I open my mouth to argue with him, but Dante raises his hand. “It has been a long day. Adelice should rest. We should all rest.”

As soon as he says it, I realize I am tired. More tired than I’ve been in weeks. I can’t quite stifle a yawn.

“We need a plan,” Falon says.

“And we can come up with one eight hours from now. But we aren’t going to come up with anything if we’re tired and arguing,” Dante says in a gentle tone.

“I believe you should all spend the evening with those you love,” Albert advises. “Our time here is growing short.”

I don’t want to ask him what he means—whether our time in Arras is growing short, or our time in general.