“Or at least they would have stepped out before people started firing. Did anyone step out?” Hadley asked.

  Maisie considered, and then made a face. “Shit. I don’t know. I was focused on Beto.”

  “Well, at least we know he’s not in on it.”

  Lennon pushed a hand nervously through his hair. There hadn’t been any talk about him, and the clock was ticking. It was too rude to ask, when Dr. Lopez had just died.

  But he really needed to get out of here. He’d thought the situation was bad before, but it was downright dire now. He did not want to be here if Dr. Lopez was dead and Mr. Musclehead was ready to start a turf war.

  “If he goes up there and takes the shipments by force, even more Lopezes might want to join him,” Hadley said. “They’re pissed about the situation.”

  “I know.” Maisie turned her attention to Lennon. “Declan asked about you. I told him you took off and I didn’t know where you were.”

  “What’d he say?” Lennon asked.

  “To lock you up when I found you. Listen.” She sighed. “You’re not going to make it to the northern gate.”

  His stomach fell to his feet. He’d been expecting it, but still, the words hit him like a smack to the face.

  “There’s no one who can take you. We actually talked about it at the meeting—”

  “Before the shooting,” Hadley added.

  “—and Beto said there was no team to send. You’re welcome to go by yourself, but I don’t recommend it.”

  Relief coursed through his veins. At least she wasn’t going to lock him up, like Declan wanted. He still had a chance. “I can go by myself.”

  “When Maisie says she doesn’t recommend it, she means you will definitely die if you go by yourself,” Hadley clarified.

  He gave Hadley an exasperated look. “Contrary to what you both seem to think, I am fully capable of taking care of myself.”

  “Yeah, you haven’t even fainted once today,” Maisie said dryly.

  “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”

  “Nope. And seems like you’re going to be here for the next several decades, so I have plenty of time to give you shit about it.”

  “One, I’m going to that gate, so, no, you don’t; and two, if I stay, isn’t it certain that I’ll get sick? And possibly die?”

  “Don’t be so dramatic,” Maisie said. “You’re not going to die. Do you have any serious health conditions?”

  “No.”

  “You are probably going to get sick, yes,” she said. “The virus will likely shut down an organ or two, and you’ll get new ones like the rest of us. Half of my organs are artificial, and look at me. I’m doing great.”

  “Same,” Hadley said.

  He swallowed. He couldn’t really argue with that. It was common knowledge that the residents of the quarantine zone had adapted to live with the virus. Their technology kept them alive. But they couldn’t be released into the general population because they were still contagious and millions of people would die when exposed to the virus for the first time. And there was no way to know how the virus would mutate again once it had the chance to infect millions of new people.

  But he was young and healthy, and Maisie was right.

  “We actually don’t know how long your immunity will last,” Maisie said. “Maybe you won’t catch it at all. I have badass antibodies.”

  “Those were your antibodies that they gave me?” he asked, surprised. She nodded.

  “Of course they were.” Hadley said it like he should have already known this. She opened her mouth to say more, but Maisie shot her a look and she closed it.

  “Anyway, my point is, you may be helpful in developing a vaccine,” Maisie continued. “You’re the first person to receive temporary immunity. There’s a possibility that your immunity could last even longer than a few days. Maybe Lo—the medical teams—can use you to finally make some progress on a real vaccine.”

  “There are people in the US working on vaccines. I’d be happy to help them.”

  “Wow, you really don’t want to stay in here,” Hadley said.

  “I didn’t mean—” He took a deep breath. “I don’t belong here. My family is on the other side of the wall. My parents. My sisters. All my friends. My entire life. I’m just going to never see any of them again?”

  Hadley gave him a baffled look. “Isn’t your dad running on a platform that advocates for finding a vaccine and tearing down the walls in the next ten years?”

  Shit.

  “Do you not believe him, or is that just a load of crap?” she continued. Maisie seemed amused suddenly.

  “It’s not a load of crap….” He’d never really considered whether he believed it could be done. Democrats always ran on a platform of liberating the quarantine zone. It was just a given.

  He’d listened to a host of doctors and scientists on the issue, and they’d certainly been hopeful, but also cautious. There wasn’t enough funding. There wasn’t enough help from inside the zone.

  It’s become a war zone in there, one had said to him. They rarely send out samples anymore. They rarely communicate with us at all, and when they do, we’re not sure if they’re even telling us the truth. It’s hard to fix a situation that we can’t even fully understand.

  “I believe that he wants to,” he finally said. Maisie cocked an eyebrow. “But there are challenges. Most of all that you guys don’t communicate with us.”

  Hadley and Maisie glanced at each other.

  “What?” Lennon asked.

  “Well, all the communication has to go through Lopez. We can’t talk to anyone out there now, even if we wanted to.”

  “I know,” Lennon said. “But you have to understand, people are scared of you guys in here.”

  “We understand that fine,” Maisie said with a frown.

  “We can fix that, though. If I get out, then this isn’t just some terrifying place that no one’s seen. I will have been in here and come out the other side. I can tell people what you’re like. How you helped me. People won’t be as likely to—” He cut himself off abruptly.

  “As likely to what?” Hadley asked.

  He hesitated. Lopez had told him not to say anything, but Lopez was dead now.

  He took a breath. “I just want to apologize in advance.”

  “Well, that sounds bad,” Maisie said.

  “There are some…people who…think we should just bomb the whole quarantine zone.”

  They both stared at him. Hadley’s lips parted.

  “They want to bomb us?” Maisie repeated.

  “What did we ever do to them?” Hadley exclaimed.

  “It’s a fringe idea. Or it was.” He winced. “It’s starting to go mainstream lately. There are some people who think that if the Howard family gets elected again, they may be able to get Congress to support it.”

  “Can they just do that?” Maisie asked. “Just kill us all?”

  “I mean, we do have US history books in here,” Hadley said. “They’ve bombed a lot of people throughout the years.”

  “Crap, that’s a good point,” Maisie said.

  “My dad would never, if he won the election,” Lennon said quickly.

  “Oh, his dad would never,” Maisie said dryly. “I feel so much better about everyone wanting to murder us now.”

  “But, listen. Here’s the thing. They’re going to have satellite photos of what just happened in here. The US government, I mean. They will know that someone just bombed the south.”

  “So?” Maisie asked.

  “So it will strengthen their argument that this is a dangerous war zone that needs to be controlled. Especially now that Dr. Lopez has died. They don’t usually release information to the general public about what goes on in here, but if President Howard wants support to bomb you guys, he will do it this time. I need you to understand how truly screwed you might be now.”

  He saw Maisie draw in a slow breath.

  “I get dropped in here, then there’s a bloody turf war, and the world-famous doctor everyone is counting on for the cure is killed? The people who want to bomb the zone have worked themselves into a frenzy out there, I can guarantee it, and they only know about the first thing so far.”

  “I mean…” Maisie threw her hands up. “Frankly, Lennon, we have no idea if you’re full of shit or just exaggerating to get us to help you. We have no way to confirm this.”

  “Actually…” Hadley bit her lip. “I think maybe we do.”

  MAISIE

  “YOU WANT ME to what?” Elise gaped at them through Maisie’s laptop screen.

  “I want you to bring up an American news station,” Maisie repeated. They were all sitting around her kitchen table, talking to Elise on her screen. “You can do it, right? And stream it to my laptop?”

  “I can, but I won’t. Do you know what happened to the last person who accessed American internet without permission?” Elise coughed. “Only Lopez can authorize that.”

  “Well, he’s dead,” Hadley said flatly.

  Elise flushed. “I’m sorry, I just…”

  Hadley sighed, pushing a hand through her hair. “No, I’m sorry. It’s been a really bad twenty-four hours.”

  “What happened to the last person?” Lennon asked.

  “Lopez sent some guys to kick his ass,” Maisie said. “Then they threw him out of his house, seized everything he owned, and sent him to do a five-year stint cleaning up after the border patrol. It’s a job with a high turnover rate.”

  “Because they usually get murdered,” Hadley added.

  “Oh.” Lennon swallowed.

  “We can easily communicate with the outside world from the comms tower,” Elise said. “But I have this job because Lopez knows that I never would, unless he approves it first.”

  “But Lopez is gone, and no one knows who’s calling the shots now, so I say we take advantage of this window,” Hadley said. “No leader, no rules.”

  “You have a point.” Elise put her mask up for a moment to take a breath, and then poised her fingers over the keyboard. “We all should be taking orders from Maisie right now anyway.”

  Lennon looked at Maisie curiously. She pretended not to notice.

  Elise punched a few keys. “Okay, should be up in a few seconds….”

  A second screen appeared next to Elise’s face. It was a woman, enjoying yogurt more than anyone had a right to.

  “What is this?” Hadley asked.

  “A commercial,” Lennon said.

  Another woman replaced her, this one sitting behind a desk. “Welcome back. The situation in Spain has grown more serious today, and officials—”

  “Try a different livestream,” Lennon said.

  Elise frowned but did as he said. Lennon’s face filled the screen before it returned to a woman sitting at a brightly lit desk.

  “Day three of the Lennon Pierce kidnapping, and we’ve yet to hear any word about his condition inside the quarantine zone. Supporters are keeping vigil outside the fence, the closest point that people can get to the zone.”

  The image changed to a video of hundreds of people lining a fence. Flowers and cards were stuck to it. Beyond the wire, armed men stood in front of a huge concrete wall with signs that read NO TRESPASSING. YOU WILL BE SHOT.

  “Oh, shit, is that the other side of the wall?” Hadley asked.

  “Yes,” Lennon replied.

  “Looks like people like you,” Maisie said, pointing to a crying woman.

  “Yeah, I’m great from a distance.”

  She blinked, glancing over at him, but he was staring at the screen. What a tragic thing for him to think about himself.

  The image onscreen changed to a young boy, maybe four or five years old.

  “Lennon Pierce, now nineteen, is the middle child of Camden and Melinda Pierce.”

  The image switched to child Lennon with two girls on either side of him.

  “Change it, we don’t need to hear about me,” Lennon said.

  “No, no, I want to see,” Hadley said.

  “Lennon showed great promise as a student, and his parents enrolled him in an exclusive private school. It turned out to be the first of many schools, as the young Pierce had a knack for getting into trouble. He became a favorite target for the tabloids.”

  The image changed to a picture of four naked people on a tennis court. All the good bits were blurred out, including Lennon’s butt. The headline above the picture said: LETTING THE BALLS FLY—LENNON PIERCE ARRESTED FOR PLAYING NAKED TENNIS WITH THREE FRIENDS.

  “Oh my god,” Hadley said. She clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle. Lennon sighed.

  “Lennon was arrested four times before turning seventeen, but he cleaned up his act after joining his father’s campaign—”

  “You were arrested four times?” Maisie asked, cocking an eyebrow.

  “I like how you sound impressed by that,” he said.

  She was a little impressed, actually. She tried not to let it show.

  “Was it always for playing tennis naked?” Hadley asked. “Is that, like, your thing?”

  “No,” Lennon said, but didn’t elaborate.

  “Is it against the law to be naked on the other side of the wall?” Elise asked. “My neighbor would get arrested, like, every week.”

  “Can we please change the channel?” Lennon asked.

  “So demanding,” Elise muttered. But she punched a few keys, and a man replaced the woman. There were two boxes next to his face, a man and a woman apparently calling in from a different location.

  “It’s not a matter of if this happens again, it’s when,” the man at the desk said. “Lennon Pierce will not be the last person dropped into the quarantine zone against his will. Are we just going to ignore the fact that this situation has become untenable?”

  “I disagree,” the woman said. “This was a terrible, isolated incident, and everyone is taking precautions to make sure it never happens again.”

  “But how did it even happen in the first place?” the man behind the desk asked. “How did they even get the plane above the quarantine zone? It’s restricted airspace. How can we trust that there won’t be more breakdowns in security? If we’re able to just drop people in now, who’s to say that people can’t start getting out? How long until they start trying to scale the walls again? You do know that there have been rumors that they’ve been biding their time inside, developing a way to break down the walls and escape.”

  “I agree,” the man in the box said. “We can’t keep pretending that this isn’t happening within our borders. It’s no longer just a public health issue, it’s a defense issue. They are a lawless, violent society in there, and Lennon Pierce will not be the last one to suffer for our inaction.”

  “Jesus,” Hadley said.

  “We’re not lawless,” Elise said. “There are some laws.”

  “They’re more like guidelines,” Hadley said.

  Lennon turned to Maisie. “You see what I mean, right? Listen to them. They hate you.”

  “Let’s not forget that Lennon argued for the liberation of the quarantine zone,” the woman said, and Maisie returned her attention to the screen. “Repeatedly. He spoke often about his father’s plans for the future of the zone.”

  “What was the plan for the future?” Maisie asked.

  “A cure, a vaccine, and a reintroduction to society for all of you,” he said.

  “Dream big, my dude,” Hadley said.

  “Senator Pierce’s policies are radical!” the man in the box said. “He’s arguing for forgiveness for all crimes committed inside quarantine, plus money and housing for all of them once they’re on the outside. I don’t know why we would reward criminals with a free house, but I bet that if Lennon could weigh in now, he would have very different advice for his father.”

  Maisie looked at Lennon expectantly.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t have different advice. If anything, being here has confirmed that I was right. And you need to let me tell them that.”

  “What, now?” Elise asked.

  “You can broadcast outside the zone, right?” Lennon asked. “You just did that joint broadcast, didn’t you? I missed it while I was kidnapped.”

  “Yeah, we did it. But the US has to approve it,” Hadley said. “We can’t just do it on our own.”

  “What about video? Can you get video out? The US government doesn’t have to approve anything I send to a news station.”

  “I mean, we could, but…” Hadley chewed on her lip. “That’s never been done. Not since the walls went up, anyway.”

  “Exactly,” Lennon said. “People are scared of what they don’t understand, and they don’t understand any of you, since you cut off all contact years ago. But we can make them understand. We can make them root for us.”

  “Root for us?” Maisie asked skeptically.

  “Yes. We make a video letting everyone know that I’m fine, and tell them about the progress on the temporary vaccine. We tell them that you’re helping me get out.” He pointed to the computer screen. “You saw them out there. They’re acting like I’m dead. Let me tell them that I’m not.”

  Maisie ran a hand down her neck, considering. Lennon had a point about people hating them. It was obvious from the way the newscasters talked. And she’d heard some of the older residents of the quarantine zone speculating about the US government possibly taking drastic action. It hadn’t been out of the realm of possibility, in their opinions.

  Hadley was staring at her, eyebrows raised. She could obviously tell that Maisie was considering it.

  Pop-pop-pop.

  Maisie whirled around at the sound. Gunfire.

  She rushed over to the window.