“No one’s home. Father sent Hap on an errand.”

“An errand? Isn’t he supposed to stick by your side?”

“Usually. But Father needed something and he had already given Dorian and Jory the day off.”

We reach the Secretary’s office and I push the door open. Unlike the last time I was here the office is in meticulous order, but conveniently one file has been left open, which is good news for me. It means the whole system hasn’t been shut down and hopefully I can access the folder with the red triangle again—the one with blueprints for the lighting system in the tunnels.

I walk around to the desk. Raine waits on the opposite side as I explain what I’m looking for. With one touch after another, folders open and files fill the air, including the blueprints.

“I’ve got it,” I say. I read the map, finding the third and fourth light pads in the tunnel, when something begins happening with the files. One by one they converge back into a single pile, like they’re on autopilot. I try to grab them out of the air, spreading them back out again, but in seconds, they’re stacked into one unreadable pile—and finally a note flutters to the top. A handwritten note.

The hairs on my arms rise.

Raine must see something on my face and she races around the desk to see what I’m looking at.

We both stare at the note.

Welcome, Locke.

“Step behind me,” I whisper to Raine. She doesn’t move. “Step back,” I say again, using my arm to push her behind me.

The office door swings open. LeGru enters, flanked by two Security Force officers, one of them heavily armed with a gun that looks like it could take down a whole army with one blast.

The Secretary walks in behind them. He smiles. “So much more convenient for you to come to me instead of me having to hunt you down. I suspected my daughter hadn’t cut off communications with you. Now, if you’ll come out quietly from behind that desk and take a seat.” He motions to the guards who take another step toward us.

Raine grabs my arm, trying to stop me. “It’s okay,” I say. I look at her, trying to convey how deadly our situation is. This is no longer just her father who might discipline her for acting out. He’s a cunning and desperate man who will not lose eighty billion duros at any cost. “Just stay here,” I tell her. “Trust me, please.”

I walk to the other side of the desk. The guard raises his weapon, showing he’s ready to use it. I take a seat as I’m told. The Secretary walks over to his rightful place behind his desk, just inches from Raine. He touches her chin, and she flinches away. “He’s filled you with lies already, hasn’t he? Who to believe?” He pushes Raine down into his chair.

He explains he doesn’t have time to waste. He knows I’m not who I say I am, that every record and document submitted to the Collective turned out to be fake. “But who are you? No question that you’re part of some resurging Resistance faction trying to acquire the same thing I am. But as you well know, time is running out. I don’t have days on end to interrogate you until you break. Whatever is in your head, I need it now.”

He looks back at LeGru and raises his brows.

I feel a stab in my neck, and a flash of heat pulses out to my fingertips. Almost instantly I lose focus. The room spins and my vision doubles, triples, my limbs going numb, garbled voices surrounding me. I can’t even be sure I’m still sitting in the chair, but then something strange happens. As quickly as the disorienting wave hits me, it begins to subside. I know what’s happening. I feel it happening. Whatever they injected me with, my BioPerfect is attacking it, disabling it, like a virus that’s invaded my system. Just as BioPerfect repairs cuts and gashes on the outside, it works for survival on the inside too. Survival is its prime objective. The dizzy wave dissolves, my focus returning with heightened clarity, and I listen to the Secretary drone on with his smug explanation.

“And as it turns out, this also gives us an auspicious opportunity to try some new technology out on you. Unfortunately for you, the scan is quite painful, but well worth the—”

LeGru abruptly walks over to the Secretary, interrupting him and showing him a device in his hand. “Something’s wrong,” he says. “It’s not working. The nanobots are all … disappearing.”

LeGru slowly looks from the device in his hand to me, his lip pulling up in a disgusted sneer.

“Am I making your skin crawl, LeGru?” I ask, knowing he’s figured it out. “The same way you made my skin crawl from the moment I met you?”

The guard standing behind me knocks the back of my head with the butt of his gun.

LeGru shakes his head, his sneer widening as he turns to the Secretary. “His body’s not even—”

I recognize my chance and won’t wait for a second one. I jump to the side, grabbing the smaller unarmed guard, swinging his body to deflect the armed guard who is already coming at me. The smaller guard flies across the room, smashing into the wall, and falls unconscious to the floor.

The armed guard regains his footing, but before he can come at me again I lunge, both of us wrestling for control of his weapon, flailing through the room, overturning tables and smashing into the Secretary’s precious artifacts. When we tumble into a chair, the guard breaks free, aims the weapon at me, and fires, but not before my leg swings up, knocking him back, and his aim is thrown upward, blowing a hole through the ceiling.

Plaster rains down around us. I lunge again, trying to grab the weapon from him, but his grip on it remains secure, which helps me when I swing him around and send him flying through the air—straight toward the window. He crashes through it, disappearing along with his gun, the shatter of glass blending with his scream as he falls nine stories. I catch my breath, wiping blood from my mouth where the gun hit my lip, and I spin, ready to take on LeGru and the Secretary next, but the Secretary already has me beat.