Jason woke to an aching jaw and a faceful of dirty mop water. He sputtered, eyes snapping open.

Rachel stood over him, holding a bucket. "Wakey, wake—"

Jason shot to his feet, pinning her to a wall. A broom clattered to the floor. Surprise splashed over her face. His anger concealed the throbbing pain in his shoulder. It clogged his words in his throat.

Ana was alone. Ana was gone. And it was this girl—the one trapped under his hands, his full weight pressing her shoulders into the wall—who the fault belonged to.

His fingers curled, pressing into her skin, but she stared back unflinchingly. Her chin tipped up. Her steady eyes met his. "Done yet?"

Lips tightened by fury and fear, Jason said nothing. Unshrinking as she was while he towered, a spark of guilt ignited beneath his anger.

"You might wanna make up your mind quickly," she said, "because in, oh, I don't know, five minutes or so, there's a bomb behind you that's going to explode."

Jason threw a glance behind him. In the corner, a paint can with a tight lid popped and fizzed ominously.

"So," she said, voice dripping with scorn, "you can keep playing big strong man and keep us trapped here where we'll both get blown to bits. You can run out the front doors into the cops' arms. Or you could follow me, and we can both walk out of here."

"You're an absolute lunatic." He pushed off of her, arm aching.

"And you're a freaking liar." She dusted herself off, as if brushing his presence off of her. Her hands were shaking, he noticed, even though she shoved them into her hoodie pocket just after. "You know something you're not telling me."

Jason grit his teeth, not wanting to even count all the things he hadn't told her. "Didn't you say that was a bomb?" He pointed at the corner.

"Yeah." She stalked forward in the tiny space, blocking the door. "Why? Does it scare you? Not knowing when it's going to go off? Not knowing how it works? Not knowing if you're safe?"

Her inflection twisted that word into a weapon, as if it should mean something more to him than it did. He stared at her, willing his expression not to give anything away.

She sneered. "Typical. I should have seen it from the beginning. You," she said, jabbing him with a finger, "are nothing, are no one. You're not a scared kid, and you're not a caring brother." He drew back from her tirade, but she stepped closer. Disgust painted her face in twisted ripples. "You are a mirror. You let people see what they want. That's all you are."

His chest constricted, and his head shook. Not because she was wrong, but because he'd said that to himself too many times to bear hearing it from her lips. "No."

"Yes," she snarled, jabbing him again.

"No." He caught her wrist. Her lip curled, but she didn't pull from his loose grasp. I haven't lost you yet, he thought, he hoped, he prayed. Ana was lost, Sam had abandoned them, and his plans were crumbling around him. Himself, he'd lost, but he hadn't lost her. "I need you," he begged, voice soft and urgent. "Please. Let's get out of here, and I'll tell you whatever you want to know."

"You'll tell me more lies."

"What do you think I've even lied to you about?" He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth, but he was deep into his own act, and he honestly didn't know why she had flipped on him. He'd been so careful.

The legitimate confusion and desperation must have lent credence to his words. Her face softened, a coil of hair falling escaping from behind her ear. She looked his face over again with wary eyes. "I expect the truth."

But before he could give it, she turned and opened the door. Her wrist slid through his grasp until her hand was in his, and she pulled him into the hallway.

They ran like children at a playground, sliding around corners, vaulting down maintenance stairs. The building was clear, and the still-ringing alarm provided a jarring soundtrack for their escape. Jason's arm throbbed in time with his strides, but grit his teeth and kept up.

On the first floor, she tugged him into a dead end hall. Drawing the gun from her waistband—when did she take it from my pocket?—she brought it down on the door handle. It held, and she cursed.

"Let me," he said, holding his hand out.

"As if!"

She slammed it into the knob again. Still, it held. Scowling, she flipped it around as if to shoot her way through.

"You don't think they're going to hear that?" he protested. He edged her aside, backed up, and kicked below the handle. The door cracked. As he stumbled back, she threw her shoulder into it, and they were in.

This apartment was set up like a cleaner version of Sam's. Rachel darted over to the windows and peered past the curtains. "Thought so," she said, nodding. She flipped the locks, slid the window up, and gestured him over. "Let's go."

She disappeared past the moonlit curtain. Throwing his leg over the sill, Jason dropped into a dark, wet alleyway with her. Somewhere distantly, the hubbub of the crowd rose, muted by the building in between. Rachel dashed to the left, peered around a corner, and flattened back.

"You see anything?" Jason asked, edging up beside her. The rain dusted his hair and shoulders.

She shook her head. "They probably have the block surrounded, though. We'll wait until it blows."

We'll have him soon, Mr. Foster thought for the dozenth time. After young Mr. Reeves had dodged him at the police station, Foster had been forced to reach out to the organization. They'd hacked into license plate readers for him and sent him a wave of information as soon as the children crossed into New York. He'd arrived at the apartment complex soon after they did. Never one to use a hammer when a scalpel would do, Foster had planned to talk the doorman into letting him view the security footage and discover who exactly they'd come to visit.

The first part had been easy enough—in his black peacoat, slicked back hair, and air of authority, people often mistook him for some government official. But in the security videos, Mr. Reeves's redheaded companion blocked the angle for the name board. The security guard who'd interacted with the children was much more suspicious than the doorman had been, and so Foster had left before the man started asking too many questions of his own.

He'd radioed a local team of Minutemen: children who'd grown up and moved on from the organization but still served when they needed local boots on the ground. Rather than storm the place, he'd had them block off the roads and keep an eye on all the likely exits. Then, they flushed everyone out with the fire alarm. It was a textbook scenario, one he had run many, many times.

We'll have him soon. Foster's hand curled and uncurled, the leather crinkling against his skin.

As he waited, he glanced back at the girl asleep against the seat of his car. One of his Minutemen had found her in the bushes, rocking and crying, so tired she'd barely fought as the man picked her up and carried her into Foster's backseat. A little chloroform had soothed the worst of her fears; she now slept soundly.

She looked peaceful in the dark, like a child curled up for a long trip. She did not, however, look at all like Jessica or Matthew. No matter how much he searched her soft, petite face, nothing sparked recognition in him. Of course, not everyone looked like their parents. But it was odd.

"No matter, Miss Anatole," he murmured. "We'll get you home soon enough."

The radio crackled. "We got him, sir."

Foster clutched the radio tighter. "Mr. Reeves?"

"No, no, sir. Sam Wiles. We caught his fat butt trying to climb down a fire escape. Invisible or not," he snorted, "he's not as sneaky as he used to be."

Sam Wiles. That was a name Foster hadn't thought about in a long time. "Is he safe?"

"Fell down when he tried to run away from us, but we don't think he broke anything. We got him cuffed. You want him, sir?"

"As quickly as possible."

Foster clicked the radio off, finger tapping against the side. They needed to get out of here soon, before the real authorities showed up. Already, fire trucks wailed in the distance. His lip curled. "Don't play coy with me, Mr. Reeves," he muttered.

In just a moment, Foster's passenger door opened, and one of the Minutemen shoved Sam Wiles inside. The boy—man, now, Foster supposed—had let himself go in the last two decades. He looked more like a delinquent teen than an operative. Scrapes and bruises scattered his pale skin; he cowered back from Foster, pressing his body against the door as it closed and locked.

"Now, this is no way for us to meet again," Foster said gently. One finger at a time, he pulled off the glove from his cold hand, revealing blackened, scabbed skin. "But we don't have much time. I know Matthew's boy came to see you; you and Jessica were friends, no?"

Sam's lips were pressed in a thin line, eyes wide in overwrought terror. But it wasn't Foster he was staring at. It was the cold, blackened hand: the hand of discipline, the hand of justice.

Foster sighed. "You know you can make this as easy as you want. Just speak, boy. Where is Jessica and Matthew's son?" The cold tingled in his hand, the ice promising just as much pain for Foster as it did for his target. They never understood that.

As the hand drew closer to Sam, he blinked out of sight, then in, then out, losing control of his ability in his fear. The sirens grew louder. The handle of the locked door snapped. "Please," Sam begged, appearing again, sweat rolling down his forehead. "Please."

"We're running out of time, Sam." Foster brushed his hand against the man's face. Icy pain surged forward, like a million needles crawling under his skin. Foster didn't even grit his teeth anymore, but Sam whimpered like a man on his deathbed. A patch of frostbite kissed Sam's cheek, black and blue and necrotic. Voice sharp, Foster demanded, "Where is Jason Reeves?"

"I don't know," the man blubbered. "I don't know, I don't know, I don't know..."

And then behind him, the building rocked with an explosion.

People's distant screams faded with the echo of the bomb. Barely ten feet from the apartment complex, Jason relaxed out of his instinctive duck and watched as Rachel did the same.

"Come on," she called. "We need to get out of here."

"Not yet." He grabbed her wrist. "We need to circle back to make sure you were right. I'm not leaving Ana until I'm sure."

Rachel opened her mouth as though to argue.

"I can't," he said.

She glared at him before turning away sharply. "Fine," she said over her shoulder. "But do exactly what I say. I am not going to jail for you."

She led them in a wide loop, melding them into the outer edge of the frenzied crowd. Fire trucks had made it to the scene but couldn't get close to the building. Cars and people blocked their way. A handful of people in the crowd stood out, though—not milling, not pointing and clinging to their loved ones, not recording or running away. Just watching. Standing still, like dutiful, attentive statues. Jason's spine tingled.

"Keep your head down," Rachel hissed, jerking on his good arm.

A little coffee shop sat diagonal from the apartment complex, and Jason followed Rachel into a side door. Everyone there was watching the fire leap up across the street, their faces and cellphones pressed against the wide front window. Jason slid and jockeyed through the group, searching for any sign of his sister.

The crowd on the street surged and swelled like a living being, making it hard to get a good look at anyone. There were plenty of girls with black hair. But none of them were Ana. Though through the dark, the flashing lights, the cops playing crowd control, and the firefighters beginning to fight the blaze, it was hard to really see anything.

Jason pushed off the window and started for the front door.

Rachel snatched his wrist. "What do you think you're doing?" she hissed.

He jerked his arm out. "Going to find her."

The bell jingled as he left.

Rachel chased after him. "Jason." He didn't stop. "Jason." She danced in front of him, blocking the sidewalk. Keeping her voice low, she said, "There are a million cops over there—six cars before we ever got outside. Maybe response time's different for swanky New York apartment complexes, but not this different. This? This was staged. They're waiting for you."

"They might not have her," he hissed back. "She might be frozen up somewhere, or hurt, or—"

Rachel's eyes flashed. "You're not doing anyone any favors getting caught. Might as well have walked straight out to them before we blew the building up. You know?"

His gaze slipped from Rachel's face to the surging crowd down the street. Ana had to be right there. His stomach sank. She had to. He just had to find her.

Rachel's voice softened. "You can't get her back if you're trapped alongside her."

His eyes still searched, as if they looked long enough, she would simply appear. For once, the sharp edge of logic felt more like a cut than a tool. His arm ached. His heart twisted. His face screwed up, and he turned away.

"Let's go back to the cafe." His hands jammed into his pockets. "I want to watch the crowd break up, make sure Ana's not still here and we've just missed her."

"Jason, if we're smart, we'd run as far away as fast as we—"

"Rachel." He locked eyes with her. "I'm going back in."

And he did. He wasn't sure if he expected her to follow. He wasn't sure if he cared.