Two weeks had passed since Harper first devised her plan. We moved through our routines like good soldiers, each of us wearing composure like a mask. The fatigue dulled, but the insomnia never lifted. It was as if I didn’t need as much sleep anymore. My agility and endurance tests spiked far above my baseline. My body felt foreign. For so long it had been soft and weak, slender but not fit. Now, for the first time since I was a teenager, I was rapidly building muscle again.

  During those weeks I grew close to the guys, and to Harper. There was no point holding back when we all knew our days were numbered. I became friendly with the staff who fed us and kept the place clean. I joked with Nurse Dayna about her bad dates before she’d opted for solitude at the resort. We gossiped about Dr. Everly and Dr. Stevens’s affair. Dayna confided that her work here secured her family premium subscriptions for ViraRx’s healthcare, housing, and education. Her parents and six younger siblings were all supported by her work.

  I started to doubt the plan to expose the trial. What would happen to the employees like Dayna who were complicit out of desperation? Their livelihoods and families would be at risk. How much collateral damage is acceptable on the way to truth? Was it even possible to fight the monster without becoming one yourself?

  Meanwhile, Elijah’s cough, which I had first thought was his way of masking his feelings, worsened. Soon he stopped eating. We watched his bright, positive energy slowly deplete, though he still managed to crack corny jokes. Then, one morning, Abe and I were already eating breakfast when Harper slammed Eli’s glasses onto the center of the table. She sat down next to me with her tray, without saying a word. She refused to look at us. Abe and I exchanged a glance. After a long silence, I quietly pocketed the glasses.

  Eli had been our hope personified. He was an unrelenting optimist, even as his health declined. Now it wasn’t just dread that I felt—it was splinters in my heart. I felt like a balloon leaking air. Abe was subdued too, but Harper was furious. Her metal fork scraped against her metal tray with every jab into her eggs. I flinched at the sound. Before she even finished her last bite, she stood, marched to the tray return, and set it down hard. The clang echoed across the cafeteria. Everyone stared. Abe and I finished in silence, then quietly left to find her.

  “I found them in his bedside table,” she said as we approached the bench outside, fists clenched, her whole body vibrating with anger. Her breath steamed in the cold. “The door wasn’t even locked! They aren’t even trying to hide their abductions anymore. They just assume we’ll go along with whatever the hell is going on here!”

  Passersby began to notice us. Abe and I exchanged another look, aware of how exposed we were. Harper lowered her voice, speaking through gritted teeth, “This ends tomorrow. Tonight, we’ll meet at Mia’s after dinner before curfew. I’ll fill you in.”

  We nodded and returned to our routines. Eli’s glasses weighed heavily in my pocket. Another friend gone without goodbye. Was he with Kel… or with Ben? My resolve hardened, but I still tried to memorize the faces of everyone I’d come to know. I wasn’t sure when—or if—I’d see them again after tomorrow night.

  That evening Harper laid out the plan in my cabin. She had learned from the kitchen staff that a shipment was due after midnight. That would be our window. Harper had cloned the kitchen staff IDs and found a way to override our curfew using our branch of Alice to amend our status from “patients” to “employees with privileges” in their tracking system.

  The plan was simple on paper: blind the cameras, swap credentials, and use Dayna’s keycode to unlock doors. We would meet outside E Building at nine, finish by half past twelve, then steal the truck near the storage building. I doubted it was enough time to comb three floors of secrets, but Harper was resolute. Another nurse had told her they were already preparing for the next cohort of patients. They weren’t going to stop—no matter how many of us were dead.

  The following night, I packed my small overnight bag, watching the sun set behind the mountains. I draped it over me and it hung crossbody with ease.

  We share the same view, Julius had said.

  Dodged that follow-up conversation.

  But some part of me was grieving. I knew Derek would see my choice as betrayal, and an ungrateful one at that. I also believed a part of him would understand, and with time, might even forgive me. Ultimately, I knew I was severing a rope already frayed and ready to snap.

  Accelerating the inevitable, right?

  Alice alerted me it was almost nine o’clock. Time to see if Harper’s hacks would hold. I turned off my light and stepped into the dark. Clouds dulled the moonlight. Soft, clumpy snowflakes clung to my hair and jacket. I pulled up my hood and braced against the wind.

  Harper waited just outside the door. She nodded to me as I approached. She checked the contents of her bag. Five minutes passed. No sign of Abe.

  “We can’t wait any longer,” Harper said, scanning her watch at the lock pad.

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  “Are you sure? Something doesn’t feel right. He should be here…”

  “Don’t you get it, Mia? They got him too. Now it’s up to us.” The automatic door slid open.

  I’d always found it odd that there weren’t any security guards in the building, just cameras. If the files were really there, wouldn’t Julius do everything to protect them?

  I followed Harper upstairs to the third floor. Lights flicked on as we entered the hall. She moved straight to the file room, as if she’d been there before. I hadn’t asked about her previous reconnaissance. I trusted her.

  The door’s seal was easy to crack. Too easy?

  Inside, the room was small, stacked floor to ceiling with boxes coded in indecipherable script. At first, I was surprised the files weren’t digital, but maybe it was too risky to keep a digital footprint. Harper pulled out a flashlight from her bag, and I let the door close behind me. She moved fast.

  “Here!” she hissed, pulling down a box with an incomplete code—likely the newest. She set it on the only small desk in the room near the door, flashlight between her teeth, and turned on the desk lamp. We rifled through the folders.

  The first file I opened was labeled Benvolio Russo. His headshot stared back at me, unsmiling. Beside it: STATUS: DECEASED. Below, a single paragraph: Patient 11, broad spectrum cohort. Suffered systemic organ failure after initial tumor reduction, likely caused by CRISPR delivery to healthy cell populations. Lethal off-target effects.

  I swallowed hard. This was indisputable confirmation. Ben had been sweet, from what little I’d known of him. Daniela had sent her brother here on a hope and a prayer. Harper was right, she deserved the truth. Rage rose in me as I read.

  I looked at Harper. She was fully engrossed in her file, mouth open.

  “I don’t believe it,” she whispered. “We’re not sick—at least not the way they told us. They planned it from the beginning!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Before she could answer, the desk lamp flickered out. A click from the door lock snapped behind us. Blue light pulsed from the cameras into the dark as an ear-splitting alarm erupted.

  Shit.

  Harper’s face contorted in panic.

  “Alice, what’s going on?” I asked.

  “Hello 17. There’s been a security breach. Protocol Capture has been initiated.”

  “What’s Protocol Capture?”

  “Protocol Capture is the containment and deactivation of all test subjects. The protocol is a fail-safe measure in the event of catastrophic failure. All subjects and affected individuals are considered biohazardous. The Colossi will contain and destroy them to protect public health and safety.”

  Very. Very bad.

  “No, no, no, no!” Harper banged on the door, repeatedly scanning the lock pad, unable to hack it. “It can’t end like this!”

  I channeled her panic into my own concentration, sharpening my focus.

  “Alice, activate administrator privileges. Password Frederick.”

  “Hello, Mia. Access granted.”

  “Alice, end Protocol Capture.”

  “Access denied. Julius Dravo is the only authorized user who can make changes to the protocol. Biometrics required.”

  Damn it.

  “Okay... Create new script to override locked doors. Unlock and open all doors in the building.”

  “Command executed.”

  The door unlocked and propped open under the weight of Harper's hand, just in time to hear the distinct march of heavy footsteps and metallic hydraulics of artificial limbs moving in unison toward us.

  Colossi.

  “RUN!” I pushed Harper through the doorway and grabbed her hand, dragging her down the hall.

  “Mia, wait! The files!” She yanked away from me.

  “No, Harper! There’s no time!”

  But she sprinted back. I ducked around the corner just as Harper reached the file room, and the Colossi entered the hall. A group of eight-foot tall humanoid AI-driven robots marched down the hall with weaponized limbs.

  A scan of green light didn’t quite reach my corner, but it caught Harper.

  “Lifeform detected.”

  Gunfire ripped through the file room.

  “Threat neutralized.”

  My heart plunged. But there was no time to process it. I was next.

  “Alice, get me out of here,” I whispered.

  “Across from your position is a stairway. Take the stairs to the first-floor exit.”

  I bolted for it. I took the stairs two at a time as fast as I could. I opened the door to a darkened hallway. No glowing arrows to guide me now.

  Shit. A dead end.

  Heavy boots closed in. I darted into the only room in the hall. It was a lab with a heavy manual door. I quickly sealed it shut. Moonlight poured through unshaded windows, but there was no clear way to open them.

  I heard a soft hiccup from the corner and turned to see Dr. Stevens propped up against a lab fridge, a bottle of red wine in her hand. I ran over to her.

  “Dr. Stevens?” I gave her arm a firm tug into consciousness. She looked up at me, dazed and confused.

  “Gina? You came! Oh, I’m so glad. I hate how we left things. You know I didn’t mean to steal your job, right? But you didn’t give us another choice. You were right, of course, we should have listened to you. We were not anywhere near ready, and now... have a drink with me!”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “Pffssshh, I hope so! Wouldn’t you drink too, if you orchestrated the greatest failure in modern clinical trials? They all died. Well, not all. Yet. But they will. Especially now!”

  “Where is Dr. Everly?”

  “Jacob? He was terminated, of course.” She waved her free hand and took another swig.

  “They fired him?”

  “BAHAHAHAHA,” she cackled, harsh and manic, spewing wine droplets into the air. “That’s hilarious! Fired him? Because they turned him to ashes! God, I missed your dark humor. Thank you for that last laugh.”

  Her words were a tangle I didn’t have time to unwind. She was fading fast, and we were still trapped.

  “Raychelle!” I slapped her cheek, forcing her to focus. “How do we get out of here? How do we get past the Colossi?”

  “Colossus? No, no, nope. No getting past them, but you can stay and drink with meeeeee. These walls are lead-lined. Their scans won’t work here. I think this is the better way to go. At least it is our choice. Right?”

  Her laughter stopped abruptly. Her body convulsed and slid to the floor. Her eyes rolled white as foam appeared at her mouth. She seized, then went still. I checked her pulse. I found none.

  Stunned, I sat for a moment. I reached for the bottle still tucked under her arm and cautiously gave it a sniff. It smelled sweet and sharp like almond extract. Not at all what you’d expect from red wine. Oh, Dr. Stevens…

  Nausea crept over me, but it wasn’t time to fall apart. The alarms still wailed in the distance. My legs tensed, feeling the urgency to move.

  “Alice... Get me out of here.”