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The city of Freedom lay a thousand miles to
the east, and teleporting such a great distance held the potential
for intense complications. I eyed the teleporters in front of me,
their indicator lights still dark, with a sense of
foreboding.
    “ Blaze, you go first.” My
dad stood at the controls, adjusting a sensor. I watched from my
position next to Blaze Barque, a quiet discomfort growing in my
stomach.
    But this mission was
necessary. Information created power, and we didn’t want the
Association to know how powerful the Resistance had grown here in
the west. Three prisoners had been taken from the Goodgrounds last
week, and we needed them back before they cracked.
    Or were
killed , I thought, but quickly pushed
away. No doubt the Director of Freedom would extract what he needed
and order their swift executions. Blaze and I needed to prevent
both.
    “ Zenn, you’ll go second,”
Dad said without a trace of fear in his voice. I don’t know how he
did it. His government job in the teleportation department
benefited the Resistance greatly. But the risks he took every
day—and every night—had to weigh on him. He lived like they didn’t.
“The drop point has been set to an alley behind Rise
Eleven.”
    Blaze nodded his
acknowledgement and tightened the straps on his backpack. He
carried the tech we’d need to cancel the incoming teleportation
signal that would bust us before we began. Freedom was no
lightweight when it came to security. The only way in or out
without breaching the tech barrier wall was by teleportation. And
that needed at least ten codes and special clearance from the
Director.
    We had neither, which
meant that we didn’t have clearance to enter the capital of the
Association in the middle of the night. But that hardly mattered to
Jag Barque, Mr. Leader of the Resistance. My fingers fisted at the
thought of him. I glared at Blaze since I couldn’t laser-gaze at
his younger brother. They were both idiots. Blaze Barque had been
appointed Assistant Director of Seaside a month ago. He should be
nowhere near Freedom on this cold January night.
    I could handle this
mission alone. I’d told Jag that. I’d argued that if Blaze got
caught, or recognized, or didn’t make it out alive—always a
possibility when entering enemy territory—that the entire
Resistance would be compromised. He was an Assistant Director , a position of
authority inside the Association. Someone who could gather
intelligence and keep the Resistance supplied with reliable
information. We didn’t have many spies as high up in the government
as Blaze. He shouldn’t be going.
    But neither he nor Jag saw
the wisdom in that. When I’d mentioned it to my dad, he hadn’t
looked away from his notes and said, “Jag does what he
wants.”
    And that was the
solid-silver truth. He didn’t care that he was only fourteen, or
that I was; he never considered that the few adults in the
Resistance might know more than him. Sure, he acted like he
listened, and he asked for opinions, but in the end, Jag always did
what he thought best. And apparently, sending his older brother to
Freedom to evacuate Insiders was what was best.
    As his second-in-command,
I thought my opinion meant more. Obviously
not , I thought as the lights surrounding
Blaze blinked and wavered.
    I’d been risking my life
for almost two years for Jag Barque and the Resistance. I believed
in it fiercely. I felt caged inside a life with no purpose, with no
way out, and the Resistance gave me an anchor to hold onto. Jag and
I worked together seamlessly. Though we didn’t always agree, we
kept the end goal in sight. Our methods differed, but our
determination to see this through to the end did not.
    I just hoped the end
didn’t include my death. The knot of tension in my stomach
tightened as the teleporter whirred. Blaze blinked and
wavered.
    Then he
vanished.
    Teleportation to Freedom
took two minutes, twelve seconds. Dad worked at his instrument
panel to cancel the record of