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MARA

“ G ood evening, Miss de la Puente.” The man was dressed in his formal military uniform, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he ever even went to sleep.

“Giza?” My attention shifted to the other two individuals tailing him—Liddy and my mother. Liddy walked past the Sergeant General and came to stand by Javi, kissing him in greeting. My mother came to Giza’s side, folding her arms across her chest.

“Nora?”

“You didn’t think you and Javier would have to do this alone, did you?”

Well, yeah. That’s exactly what I thought. “But…?”

Giza stepped toward me, placing a hand on my shoulder.

“The fabric of the new world begins with the choices we make today,” he said, my words striking me.

“You were right, Miss de la Puente. Our choices now matter more than the choices we’ll make tomorrow.

Change must begin with us, and with how we handle this moment will define the future of the UFA.

As much as I respect President De’vor and all she has done, she’s wrong, and I choose to stand with you on this. ”

“We all do,” Liddy said, slipping into the space under Javier’s arm. “And if my sister was here, she would too.”

I stood in shock, jaw hanging as I looked from Lin to Giza, and then at my mom.

Her brown eyes glistened with tears as she stepped forward.

“I have never been more proud of anything in my life than I was of you in that War Room, Mara. And though I can’t take credit for the woman you’ve become,” she said as she stood before me, “I am incredibly proud of you.”

I smiled.

Before I could blink, I was in her arms, feeling her wrap around me, resting her cheek on my head. “Thanks, Mom.” I felt her stiffen at the title, and my heart swelled with an achiness that actually felt good, pushing back on the sorrow.

“Unfortunately, you don’t have much time,” Giza interrupted. I let go of my mother. “I’ve secured you transport to Telvia, but you’ll need to be quick.”

My mother placed her hand on my shoulder. “I’ve gathered supplies for us, and the Libertarians will wait for my command. I don’t want to turn against the North or the Dissenters, but if we need to buy time, they have their orders.”

“What’s the plan?” I asked.

“President De’vor has ordered a Dissenter airstrike on Telvia in seven hours. It’ll completely decimate the city. By the time you arrive in Telvia, you’ll be left with four hours to find Raúl.”

“Find Raúl?” I asked, looking from Giza to Javi. But my mother was the one who answered.

“Yes. If we can find your father and convince him to surrender, then we might be able to convince Sasha to call off the airstrike. If Telvia backs down, then there’s no need to exterminate the city.”

“What if he refuses to surrender?”

My mother worked her jaw as a little line of worry formed between her brows.

“Then we’ll need to take him out and find a way to deactivate NIT-V2 from the computer terminal at the Presidential Palace.

There has to be a kill code. If we find it, we can end all of it tonight and save the citizens of Telvia. ”

A shiver ran through me, one I wasn’t convinced was from the cold. “Four hours isn’t a lot of time.”

“And it’s getting shorter every minute,” Javier added.

I looked at Giza. “We’re going to need access into the city. Something close to the Presidential Palace.”

“Done,” he announced. “I’ll get you permissions for one of the tunnels in District 1.”

“Okay,” Liddy said, teeth chattering slightly. “So we’re doing this, right? We’re going rogue?”

Javi snickered as he tucked her in closer to him. “It’s what you and I excel at, mi vida.”

She snorted a laugh. “Guess old habits die hard.”

“All right,” I muttered, and then looked at Giza. “Sergeant Major?”

His eyes found mine, warm and calming as they always had been. “Yes, Miss de la Puente?”

And then I was hugging him. I launched myself and threw my arms around this man’s waist, burying my face in his chest. I promised myself that one day I would hug Giza, and since today may very well be the day I died, it seemed like this was my chance.

He felt stiff, as though he didn’t know what to make of it all, and then his body slowly slackened.

Arms came to wrap around me, and I thought I even felt the pressure of his head on mine.

“Thank you,” I muttered. “Thank you for everything.” He held me a second longer before slowly drawing back. Looking into his eyes, I said, “It has been an honor serving with you, sir.”

My heart splintered as I spoke because I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was never going to see this man again. And I was going to miss him .

“No,” he said with a smile, eyes glistening with what I swore were tears. “The honor has been all mine.”

***

Giza had organized everything for us, and Nora had pooled her resources to give us everything we needed.

It was just the four of us: Javier, Liddy, my mom, and me.

We suited up in mission jumpsuits, loaded bags with supplies, armed ourselves, and boarded a Valor that was waiting in an open field not too far from Calvernon Estate.

Then we were off, making great time on the two-hour flight to Telvia.

Javier was huddled with Lin, both of them dozing, while my mother sat in the front, flying the plane. As it turned out, she was a pilot. Go freaking figure. Then there was me, and all I thought about was everyone I had lost and everything I had just left behind.

Since returning from Apex, I hadn’t seen Edith or Chelsea.

I knew Giza had told them about Matias’s death.

Chelsea was given PTO and escorted back to Fort Warren by Edith, who was instructed to watch over her carefully.

Chelsea had no one. Like Matias, she was an orphan from the last civil war.

Before I came along, she and Edith were good friends.

It made sense Edith would be assigned to keep an eye on her.

But I missed my best friend. And a huge part of me felt sorrow that I may never see her again, either.

That was another thought… It was crazy to think that I started this journey with only Jacob as my confidant, and then developed so many amazing relationships with people who truly became family to me.

Edith.

Matias.

Chelsea even.

And, of course, Wes .

And now here I was, walking away from all of it to save a man that didn’t deserve my sympathies. But failure to give my father a chance meant I was condemning him to his death, along with the death of thousands of people. And that just wasn’t who I was. It wasn’t what I was about.

It wasn’t what Jacob would have wanted.

I had to end all of it, but just as Javi had said, we had to end it the right way.

The fate of the UFA depended on us making the right choice, right now.

And I was choosing the path of love and compassion and empathy.

Not because my father deserved it…he didn’t.

But because this was a moment that would define who I was, and who I was to become.

Wealth.

Power.

Survival.

Revenge.

I refused to be defined by those four motivating factors, and I was damn well tired of just merely fighting to survive. But more important than any of that…

I refused to become someone who allowed revenge to become the guiding light of their soul. That’s what the shadows wanted. That’s what grief and pain and brokenness demanded.

They craved vengeance, and they craved blood.

They craved an eye for an eye and a life for a life.

And I refused to become that.

Because becoming that meant I had become the last person I ever wanted to be. And I refused to do that. I refused to become another version of my father or Charles or even Sasha. Because at the end of the day, that’s what I was fighting for—my soul.

In less than one hour, I was going to be faced with the greatest task ever asked of me. I was going to have to convince my father to surrender. All I could hope for was to appeal to the humanity I dared to believe still lived within him .

Because if I failed…

If I couldn’t convince him to surrender…

I’d have to kill him.

If I didn’t, someone else would.

And if it truly came to that…well, all I could do was hope that it didn’t.