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afraid he might be right.
    Zaide clears her throat. “Commander Larken, Van Zant would like to pull up some direct feeds, and they were just explaining Lieutenant Kinsey’s orders. No one but officers are allowed in HQ. Should I call him? Perhaps he’d want us to make an exception?”
    â€œThat won’t be necessary.” He raises a hand. “I’ll take care of it.”
    She takes a step back, affirms. I’m not sure why she’d stick her neck out for me, but I’m grateful.
    â€œThank you,” Larken adds. Zaide shoots me a sympathetic look, and I try a little harder to hate her less. No, that’s not fair. I don’t hate her. I only hate the space she occupies. This is what it’s come to: I resent her, the way Bear resented Cash.
    When she and all the rest get back to work, Larken turns. “Come with me.”
    I follow him to a flex glass table, one normally set aside for intercepting and filtering feeds. We take it all in: the official news from Castra, and raw footage from friendlies—hacker groups like BitReaper and the Fist. For weeks, Hank’s kept an eye on communications; noone gets new data in or out of our little valley without clearing it with him first. Sure, we can access transmissions, but HQ screens them. All this time, I thought Hank was protecting the rebellion. Now, I see, he was also protecting me .
    Leaning over the table, Larken signs into the system, disables half a dozen applications, then pulls up a single screen. “Should be able to pick up a few direct feeds from here,” he says, stepping aside. “Find me when you’re done.”
    After he leaves, I sit in the chair. I stay up all night watching the screen, staring at feedcast after feedcast. Zaide brings a cup of coffee, but I leave it, cold and untouched. I don’t need it to stay awake. The rage is enough.

    Back home, I used to avoid too much screen time. Working at the Larssens’ clinic and racing for Benny kept me plenty busy, and even when I had the time, I never saw the point in watching anything but circuit racing. On Castra, the news is always depressing, and scripted Sixer shows are nothing but subtle propaganda.
    But there’s nothing subtle about what they’ve done to me. My family. Hank and a dozen other rebels. To millions, we’re now a pack of bloodthirsty terrorists. Castra’s Most Wanted.
    Sure, I’ve seen most of it before. We knew Benroyalwould make us outlaws. But I never expected this latest spin on the story.
    It’s been three months since the prime minister’s disastrous public statement, and I guess Benroyal’s smooth-talking strategists got to work. To say they perfected damage control is an understatement. I watch the old feeds, and see the first story break. Then another and another and another.
    New Evidence in Vanguard Disappearance.
    Circuit Racer Linked to Bombings.
    Phoenix Vanguard: Accomplice or Mastermind?
    Dradha Presumed Dead, Assassinated by Ex-Racer.
    Then, the most recent story. The perfect final blow. False footage of me, supposedly recovered from the ambush. The angles are all wrong, and the action’s choppy. The fiery chaos looks all too real, and I could almost believe they actually captured this, then and there, during the attack. Except in this new “footage,” there’s a new Phoenix Vanguard. A slick, digitized copy of me. Same eyes, same hair, same black racing uniform, but there’s a gun in her hand.
    I tense, my nostrils flaring.
    I stare at the screen. Through hopeless smoke, my ringer stands over a kneeling victim, posed to look like Cash. You can’t see his face; he’s mostly out of frame as she raises the barrel.
    It isn’t the jump cut to barren ground as she fires that turns me inside out. It’s the crack of the bullet and the sound of his body dropping. The angry churn in my gut curdles into a full-on case of the shakes. One grainy clip, and