"Today," Hayomo says, lifting her chin as she stalks her line of soldiers, "we make our first trip out to the departure site. This is neither a quick journey nor one that will be made comfortably. Brace yourselves. There will be no whining once we enter the tunnels."

My curiosity is piqued. My childhood was perforated with stories of these underground tunnels. People talk about them often, but mostly because they endeavored to debunk their existence. Ramrod straight and waiting for Hayomo's next command, I realize I've been here before. Right here, in this same spot, in the dark stickiness of Level 9.

When we were nothing but awkward fourteen-year-old loose cannons, I managed to convince Dean to duck out of Influential Individuals of History to unearth these exact tunnels. Back then, we were onto something.

As Hayomo scrutinizes the pristine form of the team before her, Dean and I share a subtle nod—we knew it all along.

Roving over the line one last time, I notice something that sends my recently acquired calm into abrupt turmoil.

Kai and Cambell are missing. I shift, breaking the statuesque quality of our lineup. Hayomo glares at me.

With the tumultuous movement of my stomach, it takes the full power of my self-control not to fidget. My skin itches. I wonder where they are, what they're doing, what's taking them so long. In which dark little corner of the URE is his body hovering over hers? Is she the type of girl who's going to whisper his name or scream it? My gut twists again.

I can feel my lips tighten to a frown as I imagine Kai holding Major Cambell's tight yellow ponytail behind her slutty face and moving his mouth down her long neck. My stomach drops further when I wonder where else his hands could go. My body trembles.

"Cold?" Dean mouths to me in the silence of the room.

I shake my head.

He returns his gaze ahead with his hands behind his back.

A few minutes later, Kai and Cambell saunter through the doors completely calm and steady in direct contrast with my tense and crazy.

"Let's move." Hayomo leads us forward, and the guards on either side of the entrance scan their own PAHLMs on each side of the enormous cast-iron door. When it clinks, rattles, and screeches open an inch, the guard on the right pulls it open farther. We march through the darkness. The temperature drops as soon as we cross the threshold. At the front, Hayomo begins a mechanical jog we follow with ease.

Singular bulbs strung along the rock walls like Christmas lights illuminate our path. Every four meters, the undulating brightness glows and recedes as we move past in the cloud of our own breath.

Thirty minutes later, we arrive at the apex of the tunnel, which branches off into five distinct new routes.

"We separate here," Hayomo says as we stop before the fork. "ARCs One and Two, head through here." She points to the tunnel on her left. "ARCs Three and Four, through here. Five and Six are directly behind me. Seven and Eight are through there. Nine and Ten will follow me to my right."

I shiver as a frosty wind blows through the dark abyss of the last tunnel and glides past my cheek.

"Today, you will meet the navigator of your ship. Most of the alien species have some capacity to communicate. Those of you who are unable to comprehend your host's language, now is the time to figure it out." She stares at the two headed toward ARC3. "We meet back here at nineteen-hundred hours. Tune your PAHLMs to channel two-forty-one."

We tap around, getting our frequencies synced together.

"Good luck." She nods, releasing us to our designated ships. Dean, Birgar, and I follow her through the right tunnel, our pace brisk and silent. The end of the tunnel is not too far away. When we do reach it, I spot one wide, black door and a solitary soldier—one I haven't seen in years.

I stop dead in my tracks before her.

My eyes confirm it, but my brain won't register the sight. Here in the darkness, in this underground highway system that I'd recently learned existed, in the middle of this ridiculous mission, stands the woman I once called my sister.

The one I saw die three years ago.

With the lamps throwing long shadows around the room, I don't want to sound crazy and call some poor soldier by a dead one's name.

"Is that . . ." I strain to get to Dean's ear and whisper, ". . . is that Moyra?"

"Moyra who?" he whispers back.

"Oh my Lady, really? Moyra White. How many other Moyras do you know?"

He pauses, squinting into garish spotlight around her. "I can't tell."

Hayomo scans her hand with the stoic soldier and instructs us to do the same.

No. It can't be. Sisters don't come back from the dead. The dead don't guard ARCs.

Do they?

Dean approaches the girl first. Swift recognition dawns over him as his PAHLM signals the transfer. Her absent, unfocused gaze with walnut eyes is all the proof I need.

I remember those eyes clearly, but my heart can't believe this dream has finally come true. It's a miracle simmering in a three-year brew.

I face her. She faces me. Our hands touch.

"Moyra?" My voice crackles a pathetic and timid note, not what I'd hoped for if I ever got a chance to say her name to her again.

She remains motionless, glassy eyes focused on some world beyond me in the respectful gaze of a militiaman at work.

I linger on her face because I know, I know it's her. The moony eyes, the face cut from obsidian—I remember everything. She died three years ago when we were out on one of the biggest missions of my career. It's the one that toppled me into notoriety even more than my societal debut with Kai, the rod, and the HHP.

But she died. I mourned this girl. I lit her candle. How can I be here, holding her hand, and rejoicing in the false permanence of death?

The faint resonance indicates the scan has completed, but I hold on anyway, winding my fingers around hers. After a few seconds, she drags me through a muddy memory when I perceive the gentle squeeze of her fingers over mine. I'm hauled back three years to the time we covered our heads in dark hoods and crawled through pine needles on the surface of the Earth for Operation Hell Strike.

The night sky stretched over the earth and muddied where the two converged. No one could tell where the blackness began or ended. It was too dark everywhere.

It was supposed to be an easy night. It was a simple test drive of the new HEL-SR weapon. The OPLAN for Hell-Strike was simple—set off explosions in one area. Invader ships would follow it, allowing us to move quickly into place where large cannons were strategically dropped weeks before. The cannons would lie dead until activated. If they were dead, the Invaders, not sensing a threat, would ignore them. Once activated, we could use the HEL-SRs to take the bitches down.

For a race so terrible, the Invaders can be stupid.

That night in the clearing with the pine needles sticking to our special utilities, we saw the Invaders were not fooled by our decoy explosions. Everything in the mission was ass-end wrong. My artillery jammed. Thirty-one Reapers lay dead around us. It was me, Moyra, and nine others hiding in the trees. I worked frantically, remembering my training, holding my hands steady and trying to pull myself out of my misery from the events proceeding this mission.

"So unfair. So fucking unfair," I muttered to myself as I attempted to clear the jam. It was a fire-red anger at Dean for pulling the stunt that got me overlooked. It was a smoldering frustration that clouded my ability to think clearly. "It should be me. It should have been fucking me." Over and over, this thought spun, creating its own centrifugal force.

"Lorn!" Hernandez tapped the steering wheel impatiently. "Bitch about this later. We gotta go."

They approached in the sky, shadowing the little light we gleaned from the moon. Moyra ran, the HEL-SR swinging at her side.

"Are you ready?" she asked, coming to a full stop next to me.

"What does it look like?" I snapped back.

She lowered her eyes and glared at me. "Hurry up. I need you." Moyra tightened her specialized battery belt and ran in the opposite direction. She held the shoulder rifle and rapidly shot the stars. When they sensed her fire, they maneuvered to face their new target.

I heard the weapon charging, drawing hot energy from the pack at her hip. I remember staring in awe as the white beams stormed the night.

It was supposed to be me.

She continued running in the opposite direction. I watched her shoot.

I worked for seconds ticking away like hours. Finally, my anti-air gun fired up again.

"Go!" I shouted to Hernandez as I slid behind the gun again. It nestled between my knees and hummed to life as he shot us forward in the Jeep. I clasped onto the gun to stop myself from being flung off the back.

Hernandez was the best. I used to visit his candle at the chapel sometimes, too.

He wove us through the trees until he spotted a clearing.

With balls as big as the moon, he drove us close enough to entice the massive Invader ship out from over the trees.

A clear shot.

The rest of the convoy plowed through the clearing a hundred yards away. They waved their arms and screamed we were stupid sons of bitches. We were going to die.

I fired three times.

The ship, massive and gray, plummeted to the ground directly where Moyra was firing at them.

The night lit up like early dawn.

I screamed her name.

Reapers ran toward us to jump in the Jeep and escape the destruction.

Leaping from my place by my gun, I sprinted to her. But arms grabbed me around the middle and dragged me back, kicking and begging. Hernandez drove on as the strange arms held me down for the forty miles to our convoy site.

We drove in pitch darkness where my cries cracked the night into morning.

A few days later, Tactical Recovery team returned with a few survivors from that night. Among them was Moyra. Barely breathing, her heart stopped on the return trip. The medics revived her. They didn't believe her heart would make it again if it quit one more time.

I shoved myself through the wall of medics surrounding her cot.

"Get her out!" The medic in blood-splotched khaki scrubs shouted at someone behind me.

I fell to the cold concrete floor outside the clinic on Level 2. She was twenty.

Dean found me dirty and covered in blood. He dropped to the floor to comfort me.

I pushed him away. "It's your fault," I screamed on repeat.

He didn't say anything, and he didn't leave my side.

Hours later, the medic told me her heart had failed. We had lost a valiant soldier. All we could do now was visit her candle in the chapel of Our Lady of the Impenetrable Heap to pray that her brave spirit found joy with Our Lady over the rubble.

I sobbed hysterically with Simon until the next morning.

Dean floated in and out, wallowing as a ghost, waiting for me to forgive him. It should have been me with HEL-SR. It should have been me on the ground. Not her.

When I went to the chapel, Jacob, her biological brother, fell into Simon's arms. He pressed his face between my father's chest and his own clenched fists. He cried in anguish for his baby sister as Simon held him tight. They looked so different from how I remembered them in their ephemeral relationship from seventeen years before.

But here she is now. I ask her again.

"Moyra White?"

"Is there a problem here?" Hayomo drifts nearby.

I drop my hand and hold Moyra's gaze for a few seconds longer before returning to the group.

"No, General."

Hayomo nods us away, and we leave the woman who might be Moyra guarding the entrance. I feel the distance between us expand.

We tread through the rest of the tunnel in tense silence. Not even the click of Hayomo's boots break the stiffness.

My mind races. I stare at the ground, wondering, puzzling, fixating on how Moyra could possibly be alive and working in these underground tunnels. How could that be Moyra? Why didn't she tell me she'd made it? Didn't she realize how much pain her supposed death caused us?

When Dean's hand lands on my shoulder, I realize I'm missing out on something monumental.