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what?”
    I seized her in a fierce hug. Instantly the turmoil inside me began to quiet. I wished she wasn’t my drug, wished I could find solace in myself. But I couldn’t. Since the day Imet Violet Schoenfeld, she’d calmed me from the inside out.
    “You,” I whispered into her hair. “I just want you to be safe. If anything happened to you . . .” I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead against hers. “I just need you to sense the barrier. That’s all. Zenn will be there to protect you, okay?”
    “I don’t need Ze—”
    “Yes, you do. Thane took you once. Made you forget. I can’t go through that again.”
    “Where were you all this time?” she asked, in a classic Vi-topic-change.
    No one needed to know where I’d been, what I’d gone through. If she thought she couldn’t sleep now, Vi didn’t know the depth of nightmares she’d have if I told her.
    I clung to her a moment longer. “Zenn’s flying mid-pack, but you guys will need to fly frontal with me until we make it around the barrier.”
    I ignored the flare of disappointment that rippled through me when I released her. The twinge of guilt when she stepped back, those changeable eyes of hers set on super-angry.
    I’d taken three steps toward the war room when she said, “Will you ever tell me?”
    I half turned back. “I can’t.”
    “Can’t, or won’t?”
    “They’re the same,” I said.
    “We shouldn’t keep secrets from each other,” she said. “ You told me that.”
    I bowed my head to acknowledge that she was right. Had I told her that? Yes. Should we keep secrets from one another? No.
    “I love you,” I said, and walked away.

Zenn
    6 . Next to me, Vi flew silently, her left hand held out to her side as if she was letting her fingers trail along a wall. In essence, she was. Vi can feel tech, and the barrier created a wall she could “see” with her hands. She’d been careful not to make contact as she guided us.
    In front of her, Jag rode his hoverboard as expertly as ever. Whatever had happened to him during his eight-month disappearance hadn’t affected his flying ability.
    Part of me admired that; another part wished he’d come back more broken. He remained as mysterious as ever, keeping people out and fortifying his barricades.
    We’d been soaring over open water for fifteen minutes. Gunn rode in tight next to Saffediene, his face pinched with worry. I couldn’t decide if it was because of the thirty-foot drop, the mission, or the fact that Raine was in danger.
    But hey, she knew the risks of running missions with the Resistance. He did too.
    I switched my thoughts to the insane half plan we’d concocted. Our mission: Fly to Rise One, bust in, take Thane and Raine, and hightail it back to the ocean.
    Not stellar. Especially considering the length of the flight, and the fact that just because the sky had settled into ashy evening didn’t mean there wouldn’t be EOs out in abundance.
    “Here,” Vi said, her voice whipping away with the wind. “Jag! The tech is gone.”
    I slowed my board to a stop, as did everyone else. All eyes rested on Vi.
    Jag inhaled, exhaled, before launching the rock he’d brought with him. Gunner cringed, expecting it to hit the techtric barrier and spark into jets of light.
    Instead, the rock arced through the air, landing in the water a good thirty feet away.
    Jag urged his board forward, almost at a crawl. He didn’t fry to a crisp, much to my partial disappointment. The otherhalf of me felt nothing but relief, especially when Vi glared at me with knowledge in her eyes.
    “What?” I asked, though I knew exactly what.
    We began the twenty-minute flight back to land, Vi still fondling the techtricity from the barrier. I watched the half smile form on her face, and it scared me. I didn’t know what Jag had said to her, but that smile—that was Vi’s way of sticking it to him.
    I’d seen her direct it at her mother enough to know.
    She caught me looking at her. “What?” she