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Sasha’s jaw dropped. “You ordered her to kill me.”

Jacob’s brows furrowed, his lips set in a thin line as a pained expression crossed his face, but he nodded, admitting his crime. “Yes. We just never found out if it succeeded.” Sasha leaned back in her chair, the shock painted on her face, aging her. Jacob swallowed. “I knew it wasn’t perfect before we implanted Chelsea. It created a type of electrical feedback in the brain, causing many of the original test subjects to go mad. Several had short-term memory loss. It just wasn’t ready. But my father didn’t care and wanted to begin production right away. I’d been working on an improved version of the device, and I was almost done with it when Chelsea was captured. I had a partner in Telvia who was helping me. She knew all the plans, had access to all my work. She’s completed the project, and now my dad has an improved implant.”

This time, Wes spoke up. “NIT-V2.”

“That’s right,” Jacob confirmed.

“You were retrofitted with the implant.” Wes stated it plain and simple, as though he was telling the room the sky was blue. Emotionless.

“Yes,” Jacob confirmed again.

“What?” Bynes yelled, standing in her chair and pulling out her sidearm.

“Calm down!” I yelled, extending my arms out. “It’s not active, not yet.”

Giza stood up this time. “Sit down, General Bynes,” he ordered before setting his gaze on me. “What do you mean, it’s not active?”

Jacob spoke up. “The technology isn’t ready. Before the raid at the camp, Sally and I still had a lot of work to do, and we both knew it was going to take most of the summer. When I was at the tower, she visited me under the guise of not understanding my notes to complete the project. She…she warned me that the device was almost finished, and that my father had plans to implant me with the chip. She’d been stalling the project, trying to buy me time. But she couldn’t keep stalling without creating suspicion. She warned me they would activate the chips within a few weeks.”

“How could you possibly trust her?” Bynes sneered.

Jacob snapped. “Because Sally wasmorethan a colleague to me. She was my partner. We loved each other, but we were never matched because she was from District 2. She risked her life to tell me what was going to happen. And…” his voice grew quiet as hurt twisted his handsome face. “She was asking for permission, and I gave it to her. I knew what it meant, but I would rather be my dad’s mindless puppet than watch her die at the hands of my father.That’swhy I trust her.”

My hands covered my mouth, filled with grief. My brother was in love with someone from another district, never allowed to be together. And she was tasked with creating a device that would steal his autonomy forever.

I couldn’t believe it. How ironic that my brother and I would find ourselves in the same situation, but the roles reversed. I turned to face Wes. He was my brother, he just didn’t realizeit. He didn’t know that I was the device that would be used to control him. The only difference was Sally gave my brother the last piece of autonomy he would have. She gave him the power of choice. To choose his fate. And he loved her more for it. Suddenly, I felt sick and rotten inside, the guilt causing acid to build up in my throat.

“Wait a minute,” Giza cut in. “If they’re not active yet, then how much time do we have?”

“I can’t be sure. Sally gave me some timelines, so based on those…three days?” Jacob stated calmly.

Sasha cleared her throat, her voice serene as always. “What happens once the chips are activated?”

I dropped my arms, hands curling into fists. “Do you remember all of those District 3 and District 2 citizens going missing from Telvia?”

Sasha placed a hand over her lips. “Oh my heavens…”

“What?” Charles barged in. “What’s this about people missing?”

Giza spoke up this time. “We’ve been getting reports for months of hundreds, possibly thousands, of citizens going missing from the Middle and Subclass. It was something we were trying to investigate prior to the loss of the camp.”

“It’s not just them,” Jacob interjected. “Every captured Dissenter, every person in the reeducation camps, every single Telvian soldier and REG officer…all of them. Every single one is being retrofitted with NIT-V2. And the second that device goes live, every single one of those individuals will be totally and completely under my father’s control. And theywillobey his every command.”

The room grew silent, everyone trying to wrap their minds over the giant clusterfuck we were all in. And then Sasha tapped her nails on the table once, then twice. Slowly, she stood up fromher chair as she rolled her shoulders back, bringing herself to her full height.

“I never thought I would find myself saying these words but, what do you propose we do, Mr. de la Puente?”

Jacob looked to me and I to him, our gazes locking. Because we knew exactly what we needed to do, and we had less than three days to make it happen. I turned to face her. “We’re going to resist, Sasha. And we’re going to take the fight to them.”

71: Knock, Knock…Who’s There?

Three days. We had three days to prepare hundreds of Northern and Dissenter soldiers for a battle at the northern border of the Telvian wall. To take the war to Raúl’s doorstep and force him to use everything he had inside the city to defeat the rebellion. But it would all be a decoy. A distraction. Something to draw his attention away from what would happen inside his very own walls.

A small team would infiltrate Telvia and eradicate the nanochip technology, making sure that all the programming, computers, files, and prototypes were completely destroyed. No nanochip meant no mind control. And no mind control meant we had a fighting chance of winning the fight against Raúl, finally taking Telvia back, and freeing the people for good.

Three days.

But we were going to do it in thirty-six hours.