I beat him to it. "Do you remember that day you found me crying in the shower? After Warner forced me to torture that toddler?"

Adam hesitates before nodding slowly, reluctantly.

"That was one of the reasons I hated him so much. I thought he'd actually put a child in that rooma"that he'd stolen someone's kid and wanted to watch me torture it. It was just so despicable," I say. "So disgusting, so horrifying. I thought he was inhuman. Completely evil. But . . . it wasn't real," I whisper.

Adam looks confused.

"It was just a simulation," I try to explain. "Warner told me it was a simulation chamber, not a torture room. He said it all happened in my imagination."

"Juliette," Adam says. Sighs. He looks away, looks back at me. "What are you talking about? Of course it was a simulation."

"What?"

Adam laughs a small, confused sort of laugh.

"You knew it wasn't real . . . ?" I ask.

He stares at me.

"But when you found mea"you said it wasn't my faulta"you told me you'd heard about what happened, and that it wasn't my faulta""

Adam runs a hand through the hair at the back of his neck. "I thought you were upset about breaking down that wall," he says. "I mean, I knew the simulation would probably be scary as hell, but I thought Warner would've told you what it was beforehand. I had no idea you'd walked into something like that thinking it was going to be real." He presses his eyes shut for a second. "I thought you were upset about learning you had this whole new crazy ability. And about the soldiers who were injured in the aftermath."

I'm blinking at him, stunned.

All this time, a small part of me was still holding on to doubta"believing that maybe the torture chamber was real and that Warner was just lying to me. Again.

But now, to have confirmation from Adam himself.

I'm floored.

Adam is shaking his head. "That bastard," he's saying. "I can't believe he did that to you."

I lower my eyes. "Warner's done a lot of crazy things," I say, "but he really thought he was helping me."

"But he wasn't helping you," Adam says, angry again. "He was torturing youa""

"No. That's not true." I focus my eyes on a crack in the wall. "In some strange way . . . he did help me." I hesitate before meeting Adam's gaze. "That moment in the simulation chamber was the first time I ever allowed myself to be angry. I never knew how much more I could doa"that I could be so physically stronga"until that moment."

I look away.

Clasp and unclasp my hands.

"Warner puts up this facade," I'm saying. "He acts like he's a sick, heartless monster, but he's . . . I don't know . . ." I trail off, my eyes trained on something I can't quite see. A memory, maybe. Of Warner smiling. His gentle hands wiping away my tears. It's okay, you're okay, he'd said to me. "He's reallya""

"I don't, uma"" Adam breaks away, blows out a strange, shaky breath. "I don't know how I'm supposed to understand this," he says, looking unsteady. "Youa"what? You like him now? You're friends with him? The same guy who tried to kill me?" He's barely able to conceal the pain in his voice. "He had me hung from a conveyor belt in a slaughterhouse, Juliette. Or have you already forgotten that?"

I flinch. Drop my head in shame.

I had forgotten about that.

I'd forgotten that Warner almost killed Adam, that he'd shot Adam right in front of my face. He saw Adam as a traitor, as a soldier who held a gun to the back of his head; defied him and stole me away.

It makes me sick.

"I'm just . . . I'm so confused," I finally manage to say. "I want to hate him but I just don't know how anymorea""

Adam is staring at me like he has no idea who I am.

I need to talk about something else.

"What's going on with Castle?" I ask. "Is he sick?"

Adam hesitates before answering, realizing I'm trying to change the subject. Finally, he relents. Sighs. "It's bad," he says to me. "He's been hit worse than the rest of us. And Castle taking it all so hard has really affected Kenji."

I study Adam's face as he speaks, unable to stop myself from searching for similarities to Anderson and Warner.

"He doesn't really leave that chair," Adam is saying. "He sits there all day until he collapses from exhaustion, and even then, he just falls asleep sitting in the same spot. Then he wakes up the next morning and does the same thing again, all day. He only eats when we force him to, and only moves to go to the bathroom." Adam shakes his head. "We're all hoping he'll snap out of it pretty soon, but it's been really weird to just lose a leader like that. Castle was in charge of everything. And now he doesn't seem to care about anything."

"He's probably still in shock," I say, remembering it's only been three days since the battle. "Hopefully, with time," I tell him, "he'll be all right."

"Yeah," Adam says. Nods. Studies his hands. "But we really need to figure out what we're going to do. I don't know how much longer we can live like this. We're going to run out of food in a few weeks at the most," he says. "We've got ten people to feed now. Plus, Brendan and Winston are still hurting; I've done what I can for them using the limited supplies I have here, but they need actual medical attention and pain medication, if we can swing it." A pause. "I don't know what Kenji's told you, but they were seriously messed up when we brought them in here. Winston's swelling has only just gone down. We really can't stay here for much longer," he says. "We need a plan."

"Yes." I'm so relieved to hear he's ready to be proactive. "Yes. Yes. We need a plan. What are you thinking? Do you already have something in mind?"

Adam shakes his head. "I don't know," he admits. "Maybe we can keep breaking into the storage units like we used toa"steal supplies every once in a whilea"and lie low in a bigger space on unregulated ground. But we'll never be able to set foot on the compounds," he says. "There's too much risk. They'll shoot us dead on sight if we're caught. So . . . I don't know," he says. He looks sheepish as he laughs. "I'm kind of hoping I'm not the only one with ideas."

"But . . ." I hesitate, confused. "That's it? You're not thinking of fighting back anymore? You think we should just find a way to livea"like this?" I gesture to the door, to what lies beyond it.

Adam looks at me, surprised by my reaction.

"It's not like I want this," he says. "But I can't see how we could possibly fight back without getting ourselves killed. I'm trying to be practical." He runs an agitated hand through his hair. "I took a chance," he says, lowering his voice. "I tried to fight back, and it got us all massacred. I shouldn't even be alive right now. But for some crazy reason, I am, and so is James, and God, Juliette, so are you.

"And I don't know," he says, shaking his head, looking away. "I feel like I've been given a chance to live my life. I'll need to think of new ways to find food and put a roof over my head. I have no money coming in, I'll never be able to enlist in this sector again, and I'm not a registered citizen, so I'll never be able to work. Right now all I'm focused on is how I'll be able to feed my family and my friends in a few weeks." His jaw tenses. "Maybe one day another group will be smartera"strongera"but I don't think that's us anymore. I don't think we stand a chance."

I'm blinking at him, stunned. "I can't believe this."

"You can't believe what?"

"You're giving up." I hear the accusation in my voice and I do nothing to hide it. "You're just giving up."

"What choice do I have?" he asks, his eyes hurt, angry. "I'm not trying to be a martyr," he says. "We gave it a shot. We tried to fight back, and it came to shit. Everyone we know is dead, and that battered group of people you saw out there is all that's left of our resistance. How are the nine of us supposed to fight the world?" he demands. "It's not a fair fight, Juliette."

I'm nodding. Staring into my hands. Trying and failing to hide my shock.

"I'm not a coward," he says to me, struggling to moderate his voice. "I just want to protect my family. I don't want James to have to worry that I'm going to show up dead every day. He needs me to be rational."

"But living like this," I say to him. "As fugitives? Stealing to survive and hiding from the world? How is that any better? You'll be worried every single day, constantly looking over your shoulder, terrified of ever leaving James alone. You'll be miserable."

"But I'll be alive."

"That's not being alive," I say to him. "That's not livinga""

"How would you know?" he snaps. His mood shifts so suddenly I'm stunned into silence. "What do you know about being alive?" he demands. "You wouldn't say a word when I first found you. You were afraid of your own shadow. You were so consumed by grief and guilt that you'd gone almost completely insanea"living so far inside your own head that you had no idea what happened to the world while you were gone."

I flinch, stung by the venom in his voice. I've never seen Adam so bitter or cruel. This isn't the Adam I know. I want him to stop. Rewind. Apologize. Erase the things he's just said.

But he doesn't.

"You think you've had it hard," he's saying to me. "Living in psych wards and being thrown in jaila"you think that was difficult. But what you don't realize is that you've always had a roof over your head, and food delivered to you on a regular basis." His hands are clenching, unclenching. "And that's more than most people will ever have. You have no idea what it's really like to live out herea"no idea what it's like to starve and watch your family die in front of you. You have no idea," he says to me, "what it means to truly suffer. Sometimes I think you live in some fantasy land where everyone survives on optimisma"but it doesn't work that way out here. In this world you're either alive, about to die, or dead. There's no romance in it. No illusion. So don't try to pretend you have any idea what it means to be alive today. Right now. Because you don't."

Words, I think, are such unpredictable creatures.

No gun, no sword, no army or king will ever be more powerful than a sentence. Swords may cut and kill, but words will stab and stay, burying themselves in our bones to become corpses we carry into the future, all the time digging and failing to rip their skeletons from our flesh.

I swallow, hard

one.

two.

three.

and steady myself to respond quietly. Carefully.

He's just upset, I'm telling myself. He's just scared and worried and stressed out and he doesn't mean any of it, not really, I keep telling myself.

He's just upset.

He doesn't mean it.

"Maybe," I say. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I don't know what it's like to live. Maybe I'm still not human enough to know more than what's right in front of me." I stare straight into his eyes. "But I do know what it's like to hide from the world. I know what it's like to live as though I don't exist, caged away and isolated from society. And I won't do it again," I say. "I can't. I've finally gotten to a point in my life where I'm not afraid to speak. Where my shadow no longer haunts me. And I don't want to lose that freedoma"not again. I can't go backward. I'd rather be shot dead screaming for justice than die alone in a prison of my own making."

Adam looks toward the wall, laughs, looks back at me.

"Are you even hearing yourself right now?" he asks. "You're telling me you want to jump in front of a bunch of soldiers and tell them how much you hate The Reestablishment, just to prove a point? Just so they can kill you before your eighteenth birthday? That doesn't make any sense," he says. "It doesn't serve anything. And this doesn't sound like you," he says, shaking his head. "I thought you wanted to live on your own. You never wanted to be caught up in wara"you just wanted to be free of Warner and the asylum and your crazy parents. I thought you'd be happy to be done with all the fighting."

"What are you talking about?" I say. "I've always said I wanted to fight back. I've said it from the beginninga"from the moment I told you I wanted to escape when we were on base. This is me," I insist. "This is how I feel. It's the same way I've always felt."

"No," he says. "No, we didn't leave base to start a war. We left to get the hell away from The Reestablishment, to resist in our own way, but most of all to find a life together. But then Kenji showed up and took us to Omega Point and everything changed, and we decided to fight back. Because it seemed like it might actually worka"because it seemed like we might actually have a chance. But now"a"he looks around the room, at the closed doora""what do we have left? We're all half dead," he says. "We are eight poorly armed men and women and one ten-year-old boy trying to fight entire armies. It's just not feasible," he says. "And if I'm going to die, I don't want it to be for a stupid reason. If I go to wara"if I risk my lifea"it's going to be because the odds are in my favor. Not otherwise."

"I don't think it's stupid to fight for humanitya""

"You have no idea what you're saying," he snaps, his jaw tensing. "There's nothing we can do now."

"There's always something, Adam. There has to be. Because I won't live like this anymore. Not ever again."

"Juliette, please," he says, his words desperate all of a sudden, anguished. "I don't want you to get killeda"I don't want to lose you againa""

"This isn't about you, Adam." I feel terrible saying it, but he has to understand. "You're so important to me. You've loved me and you were there for me when no one else was. I never want you to think I don't care about you, because I do," I tell him. "But this decision has nothing to do with you. It's about me," I tell him. "And this life"a"I point to the doora""the life on the other side of that wall? That's not what I want."

My words only seem to upset him more.

"Then you'd rather be dead?" he asks, angry again. "Is that what you're saying? You'd rather be dead than try to build a life with me here?"

"I would rather be dead," I say to him, inching away from his outstretched hand, "than go back to being silent and suffocated."

And Adam is just about to responda"he's parting his lips to speaka"when the sounds of chaos reach us from the other side of the wall. We share one panicked look before yanking the bedroom door open and rushing into the living room.

My heart stops. Starts. Stops again.

Warner is here.

TWENTY.

He's standing at the front door, hands shoved casually in his pockets, no fewer than six different guns pointed at his face. My mind is racing as it tries to process what to do next, how best to proceed. But Warner's face changes seasons as I enter the room: the cold line of his mouth blossoms into a bright smile. His eyes shine as he grins at me, not seeming to mind or even notice the many lethal weapons aimed in his direction.

I can't help but wonder how he found me.

I begin to move forward but Adam grabs my arm. I turn around, wondering at my sudden irritation with him. I'm almost irritated with myself for being irritated with him. This is not how I imagined it would be to see Adam again. I don't want it to be this way. I want to start over.

"What are you doing?" Adam says to me. "Don't go near him."

I stare at his hand on my arm. Look up to meet his gaze.