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Whit agrees. “The One is probably expecting us to be licking our wounds right now, not remotely imagining we’ll do
     something bold like this.”
    He grabs a fresh sweatshirt off a nearby rack and starts to put it on.
    Janine’s losing her patience. She folds her arms across her chest authoritatively. “Whit, this is a really bad idea.”
    Her eyes shift to a rack of cycling shorts that suddenly sprouts a head.
    Byron!
    “I have unfortunate news for all of you,” he says smarmily. “Care to hear it?”
    “You weren’t eavesdropping on us, were you?” I say indignantly.
    He laughs.
“I’m a Resistance spy, and don’t you forget it,”
he mimics. I roll my eyes.
    “Well? We’re waiting for your
unfortunate news,
” I say.
    “Just because Margo was…
eliminated,
” Byron emphasizes, “it doesn’t mean that suddenly Janine is leader of the week. Nor you, Wisty, nor Whit. This mission isn’t
     your decision.”
    “Then whose is it?”
    “Mine,” Byron announces with a ridiculous chest heave. “While Whitford’s been reciting love poetry and Janine’s been nursing
     Mr. Heroic back to health, you’ve all missed the majority vote of the group back at Home Furnishings for leader of the week.”
    He clucks as we stare at him, gaping. “Next time, you might want to make sure you pay more mind to your civic duties.”
    I guess you can take the kid out of the New Order, but you can’t take the New Order out of the kid.

Chapter 18

    Wisty
    HAVE YOU EVER TRIED to cut off
all
of somebody’s hair with a pair of scissors?
    It’s incredibly hard to do without achieving a certain insane-asylum look. I actually do a pretty good job on Whit—he looks
     kind of like a war-movie hero. Apparently Emmet’s hack job on my head doesn’t fall into the same category, though. (I wouldn’t
     let my brother come
near
my hair with scissors.)
    “At least you don’t have to worry about that witchy red color any longer.” Byron cackles as we pull up to the Acculturation
     Facility. “Except for a couple of patches.”
    “Who invited you on this mission anyway, B.?” I grumble, even though I know we don’t have a choice. He’s our way in—but I
     can’t help but fear this is a trap. I can’t bring myself to actually trust Byron Swain.
    At least Sasha and a few others are with us—but they’reback manning the escape vehicles hidden beyond the tree line.
    Byron unfurls his folio of various New Order badges and medals and memberships and ID cards at the guards at the entry, and
     then he drags us, handcuffed, through the door to the registration area.
    The whole place has that oh-so-distinctively-generic-New-Ordery blandness to it. If it were a turtleneck color in my K. Krew
     clothes catalog, it would be called Dirty Dishwater.
    “I’ve got Stephen and Sydney Harmon here,” Byron says with an exaggerated bluster of authority. He plays the part so well.
     Maybe because he
is
the part? “Transfers from AC Facility #625. The One Who Reassigns is expecting them—I just spoke to him an hour or so ago.”
    “Certainly, Mr. Swain. They’re expected. The elevators are down the hall to your left.”
    Byron’s in his element as he theatrically yanks us this way and that and into the elevators. Once we sink down a couple of
     levels, he shoves us out the door. “Okay,
Harmons.
” He grins. “You’re on your own. See you on the other side.”
    As much as I sort of hate Byron, I have to admit, getting into an N.O. joint has never been so easy. His timing is perfect—as
     the elevator doors close behind us, we encounter a group of passing kids and join the rear of the party.
    They’re heartbreakingly pathetic, these “students.”Skinny, hopeless, haunted-looking, and silent as monks. The spirit of youthful anger and rebellion has already been sucked
     out of them. No complaints, no sarcasm, no anything. They’re so beaten down, they don’t even seem to notice our arrival.
    We follow the procession as it