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make with Armitage won’t be worth the price. Even if you get what you’re looking for.”
    A part of Mira believed the girl, but it didn’t matter. She’d painted herself into a corner a long time ago. “I don’t have a choice.”
    “You always got a choice, Freebooter,” the girl replied, holding Mira’s gaze.
    There was a commotion to their right; a scream or two, an anguished cry.
    A group of kids had formed a circle around someone on the ground, lying still. Other kids were running to help, but Mira was pretty sure there wasn’t anything they could do.
    “Now, that’s a shame,” the girl said, though her voice seemed to lack compassion.
    Mira peered through the crowd. It was what she figured: a boy lying on his back, motionless, staring blankly up into the night sky, eyes solid black. He had Succumbed, reached the end of the road, the same one Margot had finished just a day earlier.
    “Pathetic, isn’t it? The way they waste it?” The girl’s voice again, from just behind Mira. “But what do you do? Sheep are always gonna be sheep.”
    Everything went dark as something slipped over Mira’s head. It felt like a bag, a thick one, and she felt a cord tighten around her neck and seal it in place. She struggled, tried to get away, but it was too late. The slender but strong arms of the girl slipped around her throat; a hand muffled her mouth before she could cry out.
    “Armitage will see you now,” the girl whispered through the bag. “Should have left when you had the chance.”
    Then Mira felt herself being dragged away.

Armitage
    It was black, but not completely. Mira could see dim traces of light in the gaps between her neck and the black hood the girl had slipped over her head. The chair she’d been tied to was missing a good amount of its padding. A jagged screw still poked up through the base, and depending on which way she leaned, it jabbed her in places she didn’t appreciate. She was strapped so firmly, though, there wasn’t much she could do about it. Besides, she had a feeling she had bigger problems.
    There was a noise from behind her as a door opened. She heard two pairs of footsteps, one of them heavy, one of them lighter, more deft.
    Mira tried to keep calm, tried to keep from shaking. Showing fear in situations like this usually got you hurt sooner rather than later. She had to seem strong.
    Someone yanked the hood up and over her face—and she gasped at what was in front of her.
    Nothing but open air, falling straight down to a snow-covered street far below. She could see the glow of neon and flashing televisions. Her chair had been placed at the very edge of a roof.
    She tried to push back and away from the edge … but she couldn’t.
    The Asian girl stood behind Mira, staring down at her with an unreadable look, a hand clamped onto the back of the chair. She could shove it forward if she wanted, Mira realized, and that would be that. The girl smiled. A little. Mira noticed something else, something new and disconcerting: A matching pair of sharpened knives sat in sheaths across her chest. The accustomed way she wore them made Mira uneasy.
    “What do you think of the view?” a deep, masculine voice asked beside her. There was something unique about it. It was aged, the voice of someone much older, and in a world like this one … that was a very rare thing.
    A man sat casually in a similar chair, and the sight of him almost made Mira forget the deadly drop. He was definitely older than twenty. Much older. He had thick, swept-back hair, laced with streaks of gray, and his features held the marks of age: wrinkles around the eyes and mouth, ridges on the forehead, fine lines everywhere else. She guessed he must be something like fifty.
    The man was Heedless, obviously—one of the rare, lucky few who were somehow immune to the call of the Tone. He sat in his chair, staring out over the field of twinkling lights and towering collections of scrap wood and sheet metal of the