“For fuck’s sake,” Maisie said, exasperated. “I do not think we should be encouraging that.”

  “Take it up with Declan,” Hadley said. “Apparently he thinks they keep people from the north from trying to come here.”

  Elise pushed her mask down. “He’s not wrong.”

  Lennon was almost afraid to ask. “They’re really…cannibals?”

  “Yes,” Maisie said with an eye-roll. “They’re a bunch of idiots who think that eating human flesh protects against all illnesses.”

  “We tried telling them that they get sick less often because they never leave the border and interact with other people, but there’s no arguing with stupid,” Hadley said.

  “Sure.” Lennon was still thinking about how someone named Declan had implied they wouldn’t be that upset about eating people from the north. He’d heard that the Spencer/Lopez rivalry was intense, but that was next level.

  “Listen, fancy-pants,” Hadley said, and he could only assume she was speaking to him. “Once you get out of here, tell everyone how smart and cool we were, okay? Me, specifically. Tell them how cute I am.”

  “I…uh…” It would not be a lie to tell people that Hadley was cute, but he’d also undergone extensive media training with a serious man named Trevor who had threatened to punch him in the nuts if he ever discussed a woman’s appearance. Or anyone’s appearance, actually. But especially women.

  His father was above all that. They were projecting an image. He would need to go back and say Hadley was “polite and friendly and professional.”

  “I’d prefer you tell no one how cute I am,” Maisie said dryly.

  “Maisie, shut up,” Hadley said pleasantly.

  “I think that maybe he’ll have more important things to discuss,” Elise said, and coughed.

  “I doubt it.” Hadley waved a hand and they all laughed. He didn’t quite get the joke.

  He glanced from Elise to Maisie to Hadley. He’d heard about them—not them, specifically, but the generation born inside the Q. Generation Q, people called them. He’d seen a show once exploring what it must be like to have grown up in a confined area, under constant threat of illness or death. It had been a grim hour of television.

  And they’d gotten it completely wrong. These three girls seemed fine. Happy, even. Well, not Elise, but she seemed in good spirits despite the obvious lung problems. He wondered if she was going to get a new one. Surely it helped to be friends with Dr. Lopez’s niece and the daughter of Isaac Rojas.

  He heard footsteps in the hall, and turned to see Dr. Lopez approaching the door. His expression was tight, annoyed.

  “Mr. Pierce? Seems like we’re going to have more trouble getting you home than I expected.”

  MAISIE

  MAISIE WATCHED AS Lennon’s carefully arranged expression gave way to horror. He’d been doing a pretty good job of pretending not to be absolutely appalled at ending up in the Q, but his bravado faded at Lopez’s words.

  He straightened and put the blank expression back on his face. Given how quickly he’d recovered, she guessed that he was used to pretending everything was fine when it actually wasn’t.

  “Why?” Lennon asked. “What did they say?”

  Lopez turned. “Come with me. Maisie, you too.”

  She followed them across the hall. Lopez gestured for her to close the door. He leaned against one of the tables, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “I’ve talked to my contact at the CDC,” he said. “They’re only giving us seventy-two hours to get you out. Said that the tests we did don’t prove that the vaccine will work any longer than that. And that’s seventy-two hours from when you were dropped, so technically…” He looked at his watch. “About seventy hours from now.”

  “Is that…not enough time?” Lennon asked.

  “It would be plenty of time, if they’d let us scale a wall. But they said it’s out of the question.”

  “Why?”

  “They think that if we do it, everyone else in the Q will get ideas and start trying to hop over. Absolutely no scaling walls. They’ll shoot us if we try.”

  “Can they send a helicopter?” Lennon asked. “There was plenty of room for them to land out where I was before.”

  “They definitely won’t do that,” Lopez said.

  Lennon appeared confused.

  “Last time they sent a helicopter in, people mobbed it,” Maisie explained. “Pilot was killed. Not to mention that people used to shoot down planes.”

  “Mostly in the north,” Lopez added hastily. “They developed some impressive antiaircraft technology in order to make the gate the only option for supplies.”

  “But that incident with the helicopter was, what? Fifteen years ago?” Lennon asked. “And we’re in the south. You’re not going to shoot down any planes, are you?”

  “They’re not a forgiving bunch out there,” Lopez said. “They said no helicopter. They insisted that there is only one legal way in and out of the Q. Through the northern gate.”

  Maisie laughed.

  Lennon looked at her sharply. “What’s wrong with the northern gate?”

  “It’s on the other side of Spencer territory.”

  Lopez nodded grimly. “Northgate—the territory where the gate is—is at the northwest tip of the Q, deep in Spencer territory. Which we do not enter.”

  Lennon appeared alarmed suddenly. “So…?”

  “So, I think you’re stuck here, Fancy-pants,” Maisie said. Lennon turned quickly to Lopez.

  “No,” Lopez said. “I’m going to put a team together and we’re going to try.”

  Maisie’s mouth fell open. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I’m not scared of going into Spencer territory. We’ll be fine.” He said it with so much confidence that Maisie knew immediately he was lying. Maybe he was reluctant to tell the Americans that relations with the north were so bad he couldn’t transport Lennon fifty miles to the gate.

  “Maisie, why don’t you go find Declan and get him up to speed?” Lopez asked. “Tell him to start thinking about who he wants to send. We’ll leave tonight or tomorrow.”

  “Sure.” Declan was not going to be interested in transporting this dude anywhere, which Lopez must have known. She moved toward the door.

  “We have a call scheduled with the FBI,” Lopez said to Lennon as Maisie opened the door. “They want proof you’re alive. And they have a few questions about your kidnapping.”

  “Yeah, do you know who did this to you?” Maisie asked, pausing halfway into the hallway.

  “I’m sure it was Howard or someone from his campaign,” he said.

  “What? Isn’t that dude your president?”

  He nodded. “We get a lot of threats. Everyone who runs against a Howard does, and I’m the quarantine zone point person for the campaign. They hate me a lot.” He said it like he was almost proud of it.

  “Huh.” Maisie glanced at Lopez, who was focused on his phone. “Sounds like a real shitshow out there.”

  “Well, Senator Pierce is ready to change all that. He’s running an honest, straightforward campaign that will—”

  “Mr. Pierce, we can’t vote in here,” Lopez said, glancing up from his phone with an amused expression.

  “Right. Sorry. Habit.” He smiled sheepishly.

  Maisie lifted a hand in goodbye and walked out the door, closing it behind her. If Lennon was smart, he wouldn’t get his hopes up. The chances of a team making it to the northern border—alive—were incredibly slim.

  * * *

  —

  Declan took the news about Lennon about as well as she’d expected.

  “I am not transporting that little shithead anywhere,” he said, tossing a wrench across the garage with impressive force. Declan loved throwing things across rooms. It was his main hobby.

  “I figured you’d say that.” She leaned against the side of the truck while one of the guys fished the wrench out of the corner and delivered it back to the toolbox.

  Declan pushed his hands into his hair. He had great, thick hair. She used to run her fingers through it all the time.

  The urge was very much gone now. In fact, if she got her hands on that hair, she might rip out a few strands.

  “He didn’t say why he wants to get Pierce out of here?” he asked.

  “Not really. He just said he wasn’t scared to go across Spencer territory.”

  “It doesn’t matter whether he’s scared or not. He’s giving up leverage. I’d keep the son of a US senator, if it were me.”

  “Possibly the son of the next president,” she pointed out.

  “I doubt it. The Howard family hasn’t lost an election since before the Q was formed.”

  “Who are you going to send?”

  “Not you, if that’s what you’re thinking.” He gave her a look that she knew very well—he had zero faith in her abilities.

  She considered arguing, but she actually didn’t want to transport the dude anywhere either.

  “Maybe whoever you send can figure out why our shipments keep getting held up,” she said.

  “Maybe.” He braced his hand against the side of the truck as he peered under the hood. “This wouldn’t be a problem if Lopez would just let me put a team together and take the north.”

  Maisie rolled her eyes. Declan was convinced that he could take the north from the Spencer family, if just given the opportunity.

  Lopez pointed out—correctly—that trying to take the whole Q for themselves meant a bloody battle, with lots of lives lost.

  Declan said it was worth it, to stop having to deal with the Spencers to get shipments from the US. They desperately needed the medical supplies in those shipments, and relying on the north to deliver them was risky. And Declan thought it was only a matter of time until the north invaded them anyway. He’d always been the type to shoot first, just in case, and ask no questions later.

  Maisie thought that was a dumb strategy, but no one had asked her opinion.

  “Are you done collecting for the day?” Declan asked.

  “No.”

  “Then get to it.” He gestured to her bloody knuckles. “Did you break your hand again?”

  “No,” she lied. The hand ached. She’d almost certainly broken her knuckle for the third—or was it fourth?—time. Her last break had barely fully healed. But Declan didn’t need another reason to think she was weak. “You know you have a problem, right? If people aren’t getting their stuff, they’re not going to pay. The Reapers are increasing their numbers. We might have a problem there.”

  “I got your text.”

  “Are you going to do something about it?” she asked impatiently.

  “The Reapers have been whining about something or other for as long as I can remember.”

  “Yeah, but people may think they have a point this time. They deliver a pretty great pitch about the benefits of their stupid ‘no leader, we all do what we want’ lifestyle.”

  “If it’s stupid, then we don’t need to worry about it.”

  “Not everyone is as smart as me.”

  Declan just squinted at her. He never had appreciated her sense of humor.

  She sighed. “If we can’t deliver what they need, we should give people a break from rent for a week.”

  “They still get plenty.”

  “They’re getting angry. We can smooth things over, make people feel better about—”

  “Make people feel better?” He straightened, cocking an eyebrow. “I’m not a fucking shrink. People are going to pay because I’m going to go knock their heads together if they don’t. I don’t give a shit about their feelings. Now, can you collect or not? Because you can go—”

  “Work at the garbage plant, I know.” She turned away, resisting the urge to flip him off as she went. She might have done it if they were still together. But he probably wouldn’t let her get away with it anymore.

  She walked out of the garage and down the street. If her father were still alive, he probably would have said the same thing. No one will ever respect you if they don’t fear you. He said it all the time when she was younger. Not so much as she got older, though. Not after it became obvious that Declan was going to be the next second-in-command, not Maisie.

  Maybe she’d volunteer to go north with Lennon after all. Just as a screw you to Declan.

  LENNON

  LENNON SNUCK OVER to a window when no one was looking.

  They were on the tenth floor of the comms tower, and he could see a large expanse of the quarantine zone from up here.

  There were buildings he recognized from pictures of Austin before the virus. The capitol, and a couple of skyscrapers. Others were long gone. Aerial shots had shown the change in the area in the twenty years since they were all put in here. He’d spent time poring over them with the rest of the quarantine zone team.

  The people inside had left Austin mostly untouched until the walls went up. But after the walls were erected, the people inside stopped thinking of themselves as Americans and the area around them as Austin. It was just the Q, and they were allowed to do whatever they wanted with it.

  They’d torn down some buildings—no one wanted a huge football stadium—and built others. All law-enforcement buildings were demolished. They kept the libraries. Ransacked all the homes in the suburbs, then bulldozed them down and built farms. They picked a few important roads to maintain, and let the rest fill with potholes and weeds. From the satellite images, it looked like the north had demolished more of the old Austin than the south had. The north had been suburbs and large shopping centers before the quarantine zone was established. Now, the satellite images showed fields, open space, and new, smaller buildings.

  The comms tower was at the edge of what had once been downtown Austin. He was facing north, so he couldn’t see most of the old downtown. He could see the big highway leading out to buildings and homes. An apartment building on the side of the highway had a big flag on the side of it that said KEEP THE Q WEIRD.

  “Mr. Pierce.”

  Lennon turned. Dr. Lopez gestured for Lennon to join him at the table.

  “Lennon is fine,” he said as he walked to him.

  “Let’s call the FBI, Lennon.”

  “Right.” He sat down next to the doctor. “Did they say what was going to happen to me after I get to the northern gate?”

  Dr. Lopez was reaching for the phone, but he pulled his hand back and turned his attention to Lennon. “You’ve seen the northern gate? From the other side, I mean?”

  Lennon nodded. He’d visited once, with his dad.

  “They’ll let you through the gate that takes you to the other side of the wall. There, they’ll administer a test to see if you’re positive for the virus.”

  Lennon’s stomach clenched. “And if I am? Will they make me go back in?”

  “They didn’t say. They did say that there will be a hazmat suit waiting, and you’ll need to put it on before they let you through the next gate. But there will be someone there to do the test and help you. Then you’ll be quarantined, though they didn’t tell me how long. I imagine at least a month, to be on the safe side. Okay?”

  He tried not to look nervous as he nodded. “Okay.” He could picture the place that the doctor was talking about. There was a chain-link fence around the northern gate, a secondary precaution in case anyone ever escaped through during shipment deliveries. It was about twenty feet from the wall, with signs that said DO NOT APPROACH—YOU WILL BE SHOT. It was not an empty threat.

  Dr. Lopez reached for the phone. “I think they’re going to patch your father in as well. He asked to speak with you.” He seemed to think that Lennon would be pleased to talk to his father.

  In reality, Lennon would have preferred to just stick with the FBI.

  He’d had numerous conversations with his father about the threats against the family. The senator had suggested more extreme security measures for Lennon, as most of the vitriol being spewed at them was aimed at him. He delighted in pissing off the Howard family, and he was really, really good at it.

  He already had a security team that didn’t even let him go to the bathroom by himself. He’d declined more, and told his father that scaling back his public events—or showing up under heavy guard—was the wrong move this late in the campaign.

  It’ll look like we’re scared, Lennon had argued.

  We should be scared, his father had countered.

  So. Lennon had been wrong, and his father was right. As usual.

  He shouldn’t have joined the campaign at all. His parents had been hesitant about it, happy to let his sisters—his cheerful, perfect sisters—take on that role instead. The son who had set a family record for arrests wasn’t the type of guy you wanted on your presidential campaign.

  Of course, the family arrest record had been zero before Lennon, so it wasn’t much of an accomplishment. He’d set the bar high for future generations, though.

  But their hesitance had made him want to do it even more. He was sure he would be good at campaigning, and it wasn’t like he had anything pressing to do, anyway. It had been strongly suggested that he should take a hiatus from Yale (Perhaps you should reconsider whether this is the best choice for you, the dean had said wearily), so it was the perfect opportunity.

  They’d agreed, and Lennon had been so smug when he became the star of the campaign. All the papers said he’d follow in his father’s footsteps and run for president one day. Yale was going to be begging for him to come back next year.

  Now look at him. Kidnapped three times, currently held hostage in the most dangerous place in the world. Absolutely distracting from the campaign at the most crucial point. He should have stayed in New Haven and ignored that little voice that said he had to prove his parents wrong, in the most public way possible. His girlfriend at the time had told him that he would never find happiness through their approval, and he should grow up.