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raises a hand to her mouth. Diego’s brow is furrowed.
    â€œThere are three thousand people missing,” he says, like he’s trying to think it through. “If a few hundred went to the compound, where did the rest go?”
    â€œThat we don’t know,” I tell him. “We have no idea where to begin looking for them.”
    They stare at us for a moment I fear will go on forever, before they finally turn to each other. To my surprise, Winnie laughs.
    â€œI mean, we
knew
it, right?” She runs a hand through her long red-blond hair. Her eyes look a bit wild. “It’s not like all those people could just be
gone.
But that it all happened an hour away? Frick’s been that close the whole time? That’s just unbelievable to me.”
    Diego rubs his jaw. “Where is the compound?”
    â€œPoint Reyes. But we stumbled onto it. I don’t know if we’d be able to find it again.”
    â€œDon’t worry about that. We’ll take care of that.” Then he grins again. “Not to criticize, Vivian, but you undersold that information. For that information, I would have protected you and your best friend and your dog and basically everybody you’ve ever met in your entire life. That information, my friend, is everything.”
    I smile weakly. But I’m beginning to feel a growing ache near the base of my spine, the result of keeping my posture so rigid. The effort of keeping my guard up has worn me down. Diego nods toward Cliff House and says, “Let’s get that hand looked at.” He leads the three of us up the steps, and I feel a gnawing revulsion, a shuddery feeling deep in my bones, at the thought of anybody touching me for any reason at all.

Chapter Four
    Inside Cliff House, the lights are off.
    I think at first there must be some kind of problem—a power outage, or something more sinister—but Diego ushers us forward, explaining that they keep the lights off at night to avoid notice from passing ships. As my eyes adjust, I see the huge windows lining the back wall, overlooking the dark horizon. Amanda’s militia has converted what seems like a former restaurant into something between a command center and a home—to our right is a balcony, looking down on a space crowded with beds, and to our left is a section functioning as an office, with desks and laptops. I notice people dressed like soldiers moving around, dark shadows holding flashlights they point at the floor. I don’t know what I expected the nucleus of this billion-dollar operation to look like, but this is not it.
    Diego leads Harp and me over to a woman with short salt-and-pepper hair and thick horn-rimmed glasses. Her name is Frankie; she was a doctor before she joined Amanda’s army. Diego briefly explains the situation—even in the dark, I see her go pale at his quick description of the faked Rapture; he tells her there will be a strategy meeting in ten minutes. Then he wanders away with Winnie, speaking in murmurs I can only just make out: “. . . tonight? Do we have enough intel?” “Research . . . ask Suzy . . . can’t be that hard, if they did it.”
    Frankie leads me behind a bar left over from the building’s previous function; the shelves underneath are piled with medical supplies. She lifts my arm and tests my fingers until I inhale sharply through my teeth in pain.
    â€œWell, you certainly did a number on these guys,” she says cheerfully. “Luckily, it seems like a sprain rather than a break. What happened? Did you fall on it?”
    â€œShe punched Beaton Frick’s face last night,” Harp bursts out proudly.
    Frankie gives me an appreciative look. “Badass.” She gets me to relax my fingers, then places a thick wad of gauze beneath them and tapes them together. “Well, I’m sure it hurts, but you were smart not to go to the hospital.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œYou