I paused at the edge of a building, crouching down to avoid being seen, and watched the activity below. Park Road had been in chaos. People hauled from their beds and lined up on the street, iRec’d without warning and then made to kneel while their houses were searched. We’d been in an abandoned apartment, but I was sure they’d find evidence of our squatting before long.

  I hoped they did, then the residents of Little D'awa could go on with their lives unharmed.

  But even this far away from Harjeet’s domain, the streets were teaming with buzzing drones.

  “Shiloh is on a rampage,” Trent whispered at my side. “What did you do?”

  What did I do?

  I knew. That’s what I did. I spoke directly to Shiloh, I called her bluff. She knew that I knew.

  I closed my eyes and breathed through my nose.

  “Lena?” Trent whispered.

  I shook my head, opened my eyes and took one last look at the mayhem below, then spun around and crawled back up the roof to where the others were waiting behind an air-con unit. I slumped down beside Tan, my breaths coming a little too quickly, my skin flushed with the humid air and something else. Something I was beginning to recognise.

  Fear.

  Shiloh knew that I knew.

  “What did you see?” Wang Jie asked once Trent had made it back as well.

  “The entire drone force is out on the streets,” Trent whispered.

  Several different looks of incredulous shock were swiftly replaced by unanimous dread.

  “So many?” Navin asked, his words initially subdued. “Just because we broke into their factory?” His voice now rising on each successive word. “We hardly took anything!”

  “Quiet,” Tan hissed, his hand coming out and wrapping around Navin’s wrist in lightning moves. “Calm down. We breached their security; a security that should have been impossible to breach.”

  His eyes flicked to mine. Keen understanding shone back at me through the dim glow of the ambient street lights.

  “Lena is no longer our secret weapon,” he added.

  “When has she ever been a secret?” Alan offered. “The woman walks amongst Elite and then embraces Citizens.” He offered me a grin and shrug of his shoulders in apology. I smiled on the outside, but inside I knew.

  Shiloh would stop at nothing now.

  “Lena?” Trent said, a repeat of his earlier unanswered question.

  I turned my head and met his steady gaze.

  “Why is Shiloh upping her game?” he asked

  “The factory…” I started, but Trent just shook his head. He didn’t believe that. This was bigger than retaliation for breaking in.

  “You know,” he pressed.

  Yes, I did. And so did Shiloh.

  I stared down at the tiles beneath us, saw my distorted reflection in little puddles of water that had accumulated along their edges. I reached out and dipped my index finger into the nearest, watching as my face disappeared in a myriad of ripples. Each consecutive ring racing outward, taking my wavy image with it.

  My hand came up and touched my hair. Brown strands falling through my fingers. I stared at it, long seconds ticked past.

  “Lena,” Trent said, this time not a question. Steel coated my name. Not the first time I’d heard him say it that way.

  I knew. I knew that Shiloh was sentient. In control when others believed she was not. I knew and I’d told. Trent, the rebels, even the refugees who had moved in with us. I’d told them all.

  And now Shiloh knew, too. Because I’d challenged her. Because I’d spoken directly to her. Because I had called her bluff.

  I was now her greatest threat.

  My hand fell down from where I’d wrapped my fingers up in my hair. I stared at the slight tremble that still existed. And suddenly I was mad. Angry that a computer could dictate my fate.

  “She knows,” I whispered.

  “Who knows?” Trent asked immediately. “Shiloh?”

  I nodded.

  “What does she know, Lena?”

  My eyes lifted to his, I saw compassion and concern there, but also understanding. He knew, too.

  “She knows that I know,” I said. “And now she wants to stop me.”

  “Stop you?” Tan asked, his words carefully delivered.

  I sucked in a deep breath of air. She would not win. I would not let her rule my life with fear. I’d fight back with what little I already had.

  My hand reached for the brown strands of my hair, my fingers rubbing them together. Time for a colour change.

  Or, at least, a colour reversal.

  My eyes lifted and met the collective gaze of all five men.

  “Stop me from telling the rest of our world.”

  Chapter 30

  I Wanted To Shake The Fucking Shortwave To Get Him To Talk

  Trent

  Fucking hell. Shiloh was gunning for Lena and the fear I saw in her pale blue eyes almost did me in.

  I understood fear. I’d faced it down a time or two. I recognised it. I’d tasted it in her tears. I saw it in the trembling of her fingers, which I now believed was caused more by nerves than a head injury.

  Unflappable, remarkable, reckless Lena Carr was scared.

  All because of a fucking computer programme with murderous ideas.

  “What’s the plan?” Alan asked the silence that had engulfed us after Lena’s last words.

  The plan was to get Lena back to the safety of the bunker and kiss away her fears.

  A sound strategy, but not exactly one worthy of a rebel leader.

  I glanced back at her; she was Elite controlled again. I’d seen many sides to Lena. Until now I’d wager I had been the only one to have seen that vulnerable part she hid so well. It was not only Shiloh who had discovered something tonight. From the looks of the rest of the men present, they’d learnt something of Lena as well.

  I did the only thing I could think of. I made Lena reckless again.

  “We fight back,” I said. “But not as Shiloh would expect. We put Lena out there on every vid-screen, in every home. We do what Shiloh fears. We tell the rest of our world.”

  “Are you mad?” Tan hissed. “Lena’s had enough of the spotlight. It’s time for us to take some of the attention away from her.”

  Again, a sound strategy. But I knew Lena. And I realised, then, that I knew her better than Lee Tan.

  My eyes found hers; a sparkling, almost iridescent, pale blue shone back. She smiled. And I swear the sun shone through the thick black clouds and bathed me in its warmth. Right there. Just after midnight. On top of a slick sloping roof. In the middle of Little D'awa. A whistle away from alerting Shiloh’s army.

  “You can’t be serious,” Tan spluttered. “With what proof?”

  Yeah, that was a problem. The shortwave radio beeped quietly then. Alan reached down and pulled it off his belt, switching the volume up just enough to hear what Si had to say.

  “Come in, Si,” he whispered softly.

  “I’ve got video footage of Lena challenging Shiloh in Harjeet’s office.” Bingo. “It also includes the drone waking itself up after being deactivated. It’s clear to see it acted on its own.”

  “Brilliant!” Navin exclaimed in an appropriately quiet voice.

  “But is it enough?” Tan pressed, his eyes boring into mine. When he didn’t get any traction he turned that disconcerting blue gaze on Lena. “You’ll do it, too. Won’t you?”

  She nodded her head.

  “You think it’s bad now, wait until you’re public enemy number one.”

  “I already am,” she said with a sweep of her arm toward the drones over the edge of the rooftop. “This is the only way.”

  “There has to be another,” Tan pushed. “One that doesn’t involve your imminent death.”

  “Only if she catches me,” Lena shot back.

  “The more you broadcast, the more chance she’ll have of finding you. Us. The bunker and all the refugees.”

  Oh, he was aiming well below the belt on that one.

  “Si can do it,” Alan offered, holding up the shortwave radio. “He’s very good at making us fly under the radar.” The radio was encrypted, like our earpieces, and in all the years we’d used Si’s encryption code, Shiloh had never cracked it.

  Even when our gear had fallen into Cardinal hands, they’d never been able to hack it. Rather like Lena’s Shiloh unit.

  A thought emerged, but I didn’t have time to investigate it further, Tan was going in for the kill.

  “Who’s to say she hasn’t already got the decryption code. Who’s to say that’s not what gave us away tonight.” He nodded towards the radio.

  “Si, what’s our blocks like?” I immediately asked over the radio.

  “Solid. Been checking them every fifteen minutes. They’re completely impenetrable.”

  “Someone sold us out tonight,” Tan reminded us all. “If not the radio, then one of us.”

  “One of us here?” Navin squeaked.

  “Or back at the bunker.”

  Darkness fell over our little huddle like the cloud of an impending storm.

  “Is the bunker safe?” Lena asked, immediately thinking of the refugees, no doubt.

  “No activity in our area,” Si offered. “But I’ll up the watches.”

  “Yes, but who to use?” Tan pressed, pushing his spy theory home. He needn’t push so hard, I’d already considered it.

  “Lock down the refugees,” I advised, feeling Lena tense at my side. “Belay that order,” I corrected, my mind racing. “Better yet, Si, lock down everyone except Li Xiu Ying and Zhang Jun.”

  “What?” several voices, including Si’s, said at once. Lena just smiled.

  “She has a close knit group I believe we can trust,” she offered. “Those of hers outside the bunker can provide eyes on the streets in the surrounding area. They need not know of our exact location.” She shrugged, a movement I was beginning to love on her slender shoulders. “They’d give us warning without being able to give us completely away.”

  “It’s a good idea,” Alan offered, throwing his support behind Lena as though he’d never questioned her at all in the past. I’d noticed a shift recently, one where Alan had finally realised what it was I’d known from the very first time I’d laid eyes on this Elite.

  She was special. She was the one person who would tip the scales in this long drawn out war. She was the one Citizen who would unite Wánměi.

  “Lock down everyone else, Si,” I said, my eyes stuck on Lena’s. So fucking alive. “Cut off external communications.”

  “Use my Shiloh,” Lena added. “Put the speaker against her now.”

  All eyes target locked on Lena.

  “OK. Ready,” Si said a few moments later.

  “Shiloh,” she said into the radio.

  “Good evening, Honourable Selena Carstairs,” Shiloh’s voice intoned, immediately sending goosebumps skittering across my skin. This was so not right. It went against every finely honed instinct I’d had amplified in the past few hours. “Have you been a model Citizen today?” the unit added.

  “Yes,” Lena said, a twitch to her lips as she watched me. I dreaded to think what she saw on my face. “Override, Lena Carr,” she said softly. “241386.”

  A soft breath of air left me. We’d all known that Lena had a way to manipulate the machine, but she’d never let us see or hear her do it. Only once had I heard her say those words, and at the time we’d been nowhere near her Shiloh for me to make the connect. I made it now. It was probably voice recognition locked, as well, but now we knew the code. It could be easily imitated.

  Her Elite superior gaze rested on each man. Alan. Tan. Navin. She stared at Wang Jie and said, voice low and, despite the harmless words, somehow still threatening, “Tie her into the bunker’s security system, Simon.”

  Wang Jie was the first to look away. Interesting. Lena didn’t trust him.

  “Done,” Si replied. “Whoa,” he suddenly added. “What the fuck is she doing?”

  Lena laughed. It was a throaty purr that reached right down inside of me.

  “Introduce yourself to her, Si,” she said, humour lacing each word. “She won’t bite. But she will keep us safe.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “Because she’s just taken a peek inside my unmentionables and suddenly I feel a little dirty.”

  “Your unmentionables?” Lena asked.

  “You know, all my codes.” Oh, fuck.

  Lena blinked. Was she stunned? Surprised?

  “What’s she doing now?” she finally asked.

  Silence.

  “Si?” I said, alarm slicing through me. Had Lena’s Shiloh been compromised too?

  I glanced at her, saw the uncertainty and confusion, and dear fucking God, the loss. This was the last of her father’s gifts that she had. She trusted it. Maybe blindly.

  “Fuck me,” Si said, awe lacing his tone. “I understand her now.”

  “Who?” Tan demanded. “Shiloh? Lena’s or the real deal?”

  We hung on the muted crackle of the radio, drones no more than a few yards away, our makeshift home until daylight hidden and as safe as we’d get out on the streets tonight, breaths all but stalled in our throats.

  I wanted to shake the fucking shortwave to get him to talk.

  “Both,” Si finally said. “I think Lena’s Shiloh is the key.”

  My eyes met Lena’s; hope, wonder and an aching sadness flashed ever more quickly across the blue.

  Her father had given her the answer. The answer to a threat he’d never once mentioned to his daughter when still alive.

  A threat, Tan had told me tonight, that Overseer Carstairs had already seen.

  Chapter 31

  Always

  Lena

  I was wrecked, there was no other word for it. The night had been a long and arduous one. And that was just the part sitting huddled behind an air-con unit on a rooftop in Little D'awa in Wánměi’s thick night air.

  Drones patrolling in synchronised beats on the streets below had added to the experience. But a scarcely seen helicopter spotlighting the district from above, as its rotor blades, a sound not heard by many Citizens before, thump-thumped all around us, turned our night into pure terror.

  If not for the angle and design of the air-con unit, we would have undoubtedly been discovered.

  But we’d survived. Hungry, wet from an early morning shower, exhausted from our vigilant guard, and for my part, sick to the stomach from a headache that wouldn’t abate no matter how much Trent tried to make me feel better.

  Walking back through the bunker’s secret doors had relieved some of the tension. But not all of it. Shiloh knew. And I was now the thorn in her side that she’d want to eradicate.

  I followed Trent into the tech room which was, as of now, closed to all except Simon, Alan, Tan and myself, and prepared for some good news; that Si had cracked my Shiloh, which would surely give us something of an advantage.

  “How’s our blocks?” Trent asked as I closed the door behind me and crossed to a seat in the corner. My body relieved to be sitting again, despite having spent hours on that rooftop unable to move a muscle.

  “All good,” Simon replied. “Shiloh checks them automatically every ten minutes. I don’t even have to ask.”

  “Can we, at least, call Lena’s Shiloh by a different name?” Trent demanded, but I don’t think his heart was really in it. He leaned against a long bench running the length of the room, drinking from a water bottle, looking as exhausted as I felt.

  “What would you suggest?” Simon asked. “Shiloh mark II?”

  “I think my Shiloh came before this current version,” I offered, wondering just when exactly my father had developed the overlaying programme that kept my unit separate from Shiloh’s mainframe.

  I’d have to talk to Tan again. I had hopes that it would go better this time than it did in the storage room.

  “Ultra Shiloh,” Simon suggested. “Ultimate Shiloh. Or uShi for short.”

  I smiled, then felt my eyes closing as I leaned my head back on the seat I’d commandeered.

  “What did you discover?” Trent asked, making my eyes flick open again with eager anticipation.

  “An algorithm that controls the protective programme overlay.”

  “And you’ve cracked it?” Even Trent sounded excited.

  “Hardly,” Si snorted. “It will take some work, but at least I know what it is and where to start.”

  Silence.

  “It’s good,” he insisted, when he realised we weren’t jumping up and down with enthusiastic joy as much as he’d have liked. “It’s a positive step in the right direction. It also explains a lot about Evil Shiloh.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  Si’s eyes lifted across the space between us and pinned me in my seat. I recognised the warning in his hesitant look before he even spoke.

  “Because she has the same algorithm, too.”

  If Shiloh had the same algorithm that controlled the protection programme in the unit my father had written…

  “Oh,” I said. What else could I say? My father had clearly been involved in both Shilohs. A realisation that chilled me.

  Trent cleared his throat, but I didn’t look up from my study of the worn upholstery on the chair I was sitting on. I couldn’t see compassion or empathy in his eyes. I wouldn’t survive it. I pulled on every Elite mannerism I had, and ignored how this news made me feel.

  “If it’s the same,” Trent started.

  “Then why is she evil?” Si finished for him. “That is the million dollar question.”

  Silence. Again.

  “OK, take a look at this,” Trent said, clearly choosing to change the direction of the conversation. I didn’t want to feel the relief that kindness provoked, but it flooded me, all the same. He handed over my make-up case, the one used to record Harjeet’s message, and added, “See what else Lena managed to get from Harjeet’s room.”