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up for arrest like we always planned.”
    “True. You’re here now, and that’s admirable. Idiotic, actually. But one thing isn’t clear. Why? What made you come back to the palace when the bomb hit?”
    “I overheard two guards talking about Mills and a bomb that was supposed to hit the square. Our entire clan was headed that way, so I thought I could intercept them before it was too late.” And I wanted to save Treena’s life.
    Edyn’s eyes flew open wide. “Mills? They mentioned him?”
    “You heard me. Mills arranged the attack. And now he’s trying to pin it on me. It won’t work, though. Too many people know the truth.”
    She got slowly to her feet, shaking her head. “Mills never left here. If he arranged for a missile attack, he had contact with someone on the outside.”
    “He spoke with me twice via the feed,” I pointed out. It had never occurred to me that the reason he didn’t have a Rating was because he lived outside the borders. I should have questioned that.
    Edyn gave me a long look. “If you say so. Well, I have a lot of work to do. You managed to screw up a lot of lives along with yours.”
    “Misery loves company. Can you find my mom and tell her I’m here? She hasn’t stopped by yet.”
    The last time I’d seen my mom was on a tiny screen. Our conversation had been rushed, mostly an explanation of my deal with Mills and how he was going to smuggle them out. She’d sat huddled in an apartment building with gray walls, whispering, her tired eyes darting about the room as we spoke. She never did look me right in the eye. It was like having a conversation with a stranger.
    Edyn hesitated. “I’ll tell her.” Then she turned to leave but paused. “Do you ever think—no, that’s a dumb question.”
    “What?” I asked.
    Her gaze looked haunted. “Do you ever wonder what would have happened if NORA hadn’t come? If you’d taken your father’s place?”
    I snickered. “Not really. I would’ve made a horrible leader.”
    “That’s not what I mean.”
    I leaned back and stretched casually. I knew exactly what she meant. She was referring to the arrangement our parents had tried to set up, the one we’d both resisted. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
    “Yeah. I know it doesn’t. I just wondered.” She pushed the door open.
    “Edyn,” I called after her.
    “Yeah.”
    “Thanks for your help. It’s good to know there’s someone on my side.”
    She shrugged. “I’m probably the only person right now, but you’re welcome.”

 
     
     
     

     
    The hours crept by, then one day, then two. Coltrane took it upon himself to entertain me with stories. For a fifteen-year-old, he had a lot of them, and he rarely paused for breath. I half listened, picking out the interesting tidbits about this settlement. There were several hundred members, all of whom lived underground, and it took forty minutes to walk from one end to the other. Apparently there were far more boys than girls, a strange phenomenon Coltrane dismissed with a shrug.
    Lillibeth and Coltrane left twice a day to eat at the cafeteria and bring me back my meal, which always included potatoes in some form—mashed, sliced, baked, seared. If I dared use all of Lillibeth’s nutrition pills, I would have asked for those instead. Somewhere in NORA, a young girl had been taken from her father and fostered out, all because of a potato. She had offered me her precious food, and I’d returned her kindness by having her arrested.
    And now I had to eat them at every meal. It seemed the fates wanted to keep my wrongdoings squarely in the center of my mind.
    If I could go back and help her, I would , I reasoned as I forced down the horrid, mushy food on day two. That girl had probably found a foster family to stay with. She’d have a home and food, which was more than I could say for myself once I left this place.
    By evening, when Coltrane finished telling me about the time a rabbit got into the ventilation shaft,