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and Cap rolls out, his gray stubble scruffier than I’ve ever seen. Deep lines bracket his eyes as he looks past me. “Where’s Luka?”
    “With Gabe.” Who’s dead somehow. “What happened to him? Why did he die?”
    “ Kataphagon .”
    “What?”
    Cap rubs his scraggly cheeks, then pulls his face long with a sigh. “ Kataphagon . It’s a Hebrew word that means the devouring . The contemporary name for it is transurgence.”
    I shift my weight from one leg to the other, ready for him to finish his mini lesson in etymology and move on to the information I want—why did Kataphagon kill Gabe? And why does the strange word make my skin prickle with foreboding?
    “That wasn’t a shield Gabe threw. It was his life. It’s something only Keepers can do.”
    My foreboding turns to dread. It sinks like an icy rock into the pit of my stomach.
    “Once the Fighter absorbs it, their power is magnified. How much depends on the strength of the Keeper.”
    As if remembering the sensation, the tendons in my fingers flex. It was like a thousand suns had entered my body. As soon as I threw it out, it devoured the guards. It devoured Gabe, too. “Did Gabe know he would die?”
    “Yes.”
    My mouth turns acidic. “So he basically committed suicide.”
    “ Mori est Vivire . To die is to live. He didn’t take his life, Tess. He gave it. And because of that, you’re here. Because of that, Luka is here. To a Keeper, it’s the most honorable way to go.”
    I press my lips together to keep my rolling stomach from staging a revolt. Did Gabe teach Luka about transurgence? I push the question away, scrambling about for something else to focus on. I just got Luka back. I can’t think about losing him again. “The man with the scars said there were other ways of getting to me. I thought he was talking about Claire. But He was talking about Clive, wasn’t he?”
    “It would appear so.”
    “Do you think he got to anyone else?”
    “I don’t know.” Cap sets his hands over the wheels of his chair and pushes himself forward. “But I have the immense pleasure of finding out.”
    “What are you going to do?”
    “What I should have done after Claire tripped you.” He rolls down the hallway. “Interrogate every member of my team.”
    *
    Clive sits in a chair inside the small room, his wrists and ankles bound by rope. He doesn’t fight against his restraints. He doesn’t even lift his head to see who walks inside the makeshift jail cell. The sight of him obliterates the numbness I felt while staring at Gabe.
    I picture Clive, the way he was the first time Link and I jumped into his medicated dream—standing at attention, alert and ready. A soldier prepared for battle. Turns out, he was preparing to battle for them. I led us on a mission to rescue the enemy. And because of that, Luka was tortured, I brought a betrayer into our midst, and Gabe is dead.
    Contempt digs into my shoulders. “We risked everything for you, and you stabbed us in the back.”
    I wait for a response. Something— anything . But he doesn’t react at all, and the longer the silence stretches, the deeper the contempt digs. I want to tear him apart. I want to make him bleed with regret over what he’s done. I want Gabe’s death to be his fault, not mine. “If not for us, you’d be locked up in Shady Wood. Or maybe you’d be dead like my grandmother.”
    He lifts his chin. His expression isn’t indifferent, or resentful, or calculating. It’s filled with desperation, an emotion I mistook for eagerness. After all the enemy had stolen from him, I assumed he was ready to fight back. “You know what it’s like,” he says.
    I narrow my eyes. “What what’s like?”
    “Being separated from someone you love.”
    The sparse details of his file wiggle into place. I studied it enough to have it memorized. Divorced with two kids and no visitation rights. “You mean your sons?”
    “My children. My wife . She put a restraining order on me. All because of