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I shuddered. I didn’t want to.

Jacob’s voice whispered,It ends with us.

I opened my eyes, my gaze landing on the clock ticking down.

Three minutes.

It ends with us… Finish it.

But it was too hard, the grief too heavy. I didn’t want to do it anymore, not without my brother.

Finish it.

My mind wandered, memories drifting of Edith and Matias. Of the laughs we had at the camp. The secret moments Matias and I shared. And I loved them. But it didn’t outweigh the sorrow in my heart. I nuzzled in closer to my brother, resting my left hand on his still chest as I watched the clock beyond, silently ticking.

Two minutes.

I watched each number change, and my left hand blurred as I kept my focus on the clock beyond. I shifted slightly, and something glistened on my finger. My vision refocused and then I saw it.

My ring.

The dim lighting caught the golden diamond, causing it to glitter on my finger, and my heart seized.

Wes.

I never got the chance to tell him the truth. He would never know what really happened. That I loved him forhim, for whohewas.

What if he didn’t make it out of the city? What if none of them did? What if they were captured, taken to the tower, and retrofitted with NIT-V2?

No.

I couldn’t bear to think about that. To think of Wes as nothing but a mindless drone of Raúl’s, or worse…of Charles’s. Becauseif Charles got his hands on this technology, what would keep him from implanting Wes just like Raúl did to Jacob? And if Wes defied him, would he share Jacob’s fate? Bleeding out, suffocating on his own blood?

I sat up.

I couldn’t let that happen. I had to warn him. I had to warn all of them. I looked at the clock.

One minute.

Shit.

I looked back at my brother and gave him one last kiss on his cheek. “We’ll see each other again,” I whispered as I stroked his hair. And then I leaped over his body and grabbed the backpack, leaving the bomb behind. There was no way I was going to try and deactivate that thing. Not only did I have zero knowledge of bombs, but there wasn’t nearly enough time for me to even try.

I raced to the window, looking out below. We weren’t that far—three stories. And I had survived much higher drops than this. Remembering Wes’s epic move of smashing the window in the Admin Building, I grabbed a chair and banged it on the window—once, twice, three times—until it finally shattered. A gust of wind whipped in through the broken glass, whipping my hair all about my face. In the distance, I could still hear people screaming, terrified of the battle happening just beyond the wall. Quickly, I pulled the stash of rope my brother had packed just for this exact scenario and desperately searched for a place to tie it.

Twenty seconds.

I couldn’t find anything except…maybe a desk? It would be better than nothing. I looped the end around, tying it off.

Ten seconds.

I raced back to the window. Just below me was the main entrance into REG Command with its decorative canopy just two floors below. I could drop onto that, and then easily jump to theground floor. I tossed the rope and turned around to climb down when my eyes caught sight of the clock.

Two seconds.

“Shit,” I breathed out, and then the bomb exploded.

***