“Your mother would be proud of you, Lumina.”

Startled, Lu glanced up at her father. He stared back at her with unblinking intensity, his eyes bright with unshed tears. “I wish you’d had more time together. I wish the cancer hadn’t been quite so aggressive. I know how hard it’s been for you, growing up without a mother. Growing up so . . . different.” He swallowed and looked away.

“She always called you our little miracle,” he said in a strained voice, staring out the small kitchen window into the alley beyond. The view was of the building next door to theirs, identical rows of concrete housing that were nervous looking in the red-dressed twilight. “We wanted a baby so badly, but it never happened. Then one day you came, years after we’d stopped trying. Just . . . out of the blue, there you were.” He turned his gaze back to her. “That was the happiest day of my life. Seeing your mother so happy . . . it was the greatest gift I’ve ever been given.”

Lu was aware that her mouth was open. She was aware of a dull roar in her ears, and the feel of her pulse pounding hard through her veins, but she wasn’t paying attention to any of that because her father was talking about her mother, something he hadn’t done since she’d died when Lu was six years old.

What could this possibly mean?

He reached across the table and grabbed her wrist. “You have to be careful, Lumina,” he said with vehemence, his eyes burning hers. “Today, at work. They’re going to question everyone, you can’t do anything to stand out—”

“The call from the Prefect last night,” she guessed.

“Yes.”

The hair on her arms prickled. “I can handle the inquiry, you know that. I’ve always been fine before—”

“It won’t just be the Inquisitor this time, Lu.” Her father’s face had gone a startling waxen gray.

“What do you mean?”

He swallowed. The pause that followed seemed cavernous. “The Grand Minister will be there, too.”

All the blood drained from her face. Her father tightened his grip on her wrist.

“No matter what happens, you can’t lose your temper. You can’t let your control slip. One false move and you’ll be collared, then . . . then . . .”

He couldn’t say it, but Lu knew the word he was choking on.

Cleaned.

Killed, only worse, because she’d still be alive, trapped inside a body immobilized by drugs, her marrow harvested from her bones, her stem cells harvested for reengineering. A single Aberrant could provide enough genetic material to make potentially millions in profits from the medicines the Phoenix Corporation created from their captive donors. Rumor had it the donors were kept alive for years; some even said there were donors from decades ago, right after the Flash, zombies in rows staring up at the same patch of ceiling since they were caught.

“I won’t go to work,” Lu whispered. “We’ll run right now. Our bug-out bags are still ready; we have guns, money, papers—”

“No, Lumina.” Her father’s voice was sad, his eyes even sadder. “I’m too old to run now. I’d only slow you down. You’ll have to go by yourself, liebling.”

“If I run, the first one they’ll punish is you! I’m not going anywhere without you!”

It wouldn’t be mere punishment, Lu knew. Her father would be made an example of. His death for high treason would be protracted, gruesome, and televised for all the world to see. In the Federation, harboring an Aberrant was a capital crime.

Her father drew a long, labored breath and dropped his gaze to the table. His grip on her wrist loosened. He patted her hand. “If you won’t go, the only choice is to try and fool them. But the Grand Minister won’t be so easily fooled.” His eyes, now full of warning, flashed up to hers. “He knows what to look for. He knows all the signs. Jakob says the man is clever as the devil himself.”

Jakob was the leader of the underground church, a man her father admired and trusted. Lu trusted him far less—all zealots struck her as unhinged, whether they were religious, members of the Elimination Campaign, or their Aberrant-loving opponents, the Dissenters—but she had a hunch on this the wild-eyed Jakob was right. The Grand Minister’s prowess at sniffing out a hidden Aberrant was legendary. Some said he had a sixth sense for it.

A cold sweat broke out beneath her armpits. “Do I wear my gloves?”

“If you don’t, it will look suspicious.”

“If I do, it will look suspicious!”

Her father nodded sadly. “You have little choice but to try and behave as normally as possible, as if you know nothing. As if you’re just like everyone else.”

They stared at each other. Lu had been trying to be just like everyone else her entire life. Trying and failing. A thought arrested her. “Why did the Prefect call to warn you?”

A thin smile curved her father’s lips. “Not everything is as it seems, liebling. The face we show the world isn’t always the face we see in the mirror. You of all people should know that.”

The revelation hit her like a punch in the gut: The Prefect was a Dissenter. Shocked, she lifted a hand to cover her mouth. Cold and clammy, a flood of guilt for what she’d done all those years ago to Annika at the market flashed over her.

“You’re going to be all right,” her father assured her, gently patting her arm again. “You’re smart, child. Just control your temper, keep your head down, and everything will be all right.”

She would keep her head down. But what if the monster inside her wouldn’t?

Walking to work, with a second cup of coffee in hand, through the winding, cobblestone streets swamped with pedestrians and bicyclists and the occasional horse-drawn carriage—people thronged the streets immediately after Curfew was lifted as if they’d been spat out of the buildings—Lu tried to calm herself by humming. A habit she’d learned as a child when she’d awoken from a nightmare, she hummed the song her father used to sing to coax her to sleep.

Svetlo tve daleko vidi,

Po svete bloudis sirokem,

Divas se v pribytky lidi . . .

It was from a Czech opera called Song to the Moon, about the daughter of a water-goblin who desperately wants to become human after she falls in love with a hunter/prince who frequents the lake in which she lives. She asks the moon to reveal her love to the prince, to awaken him from his dreams so he will come and be with her.

Lu had never seen the moon. Or the stars. Or been in love. All of them existed in the same fairy-tale place as the water-goblin’s daughter, imaginary and utterly out of reach.

She glanced up at the sullen sky above, glowering with its usual load of impenetrable oxblood clouds. Hard to believe there was blue somewhere far above, blue like a wide-open eye with a yellow sun hung in the middle of it, blindingly bright. She’d seen pictures in IF-issued history books—look what was taken from us, look what those Aberrant bioterrorists did!—and imagined for a moment what that blazing sun might feel like on her face.

Blistering, that’s what. Her lips skewed to a wry pucker.

Even through the thick layer of clouds, the sun up in that blue sky beyond was vicious enough to kill during daylight hours. The few Third Formers desperate enough to break Curfew in search of food or water inevitably found that out. Even if they escaped the Peace Guard, the sun showed no mercy. Only after twilight was it safe.

Safe being a relative term.

Still looking at the sky, Lu bumped into something hard. Coffee sloshed from the mug and splattered her face, trickling down her chin and neck.