They ushered the crowd toward the southern doors. They were locked, but August keyed in the code as Ani tapped her comm. “Clear?”

A crackle of static, and Rez’s dry voice. “Clear as it gets.”

The whole group parted around August as he made his way to the front of the group, recoiling as if that small measure of distance would keep them safe.

Outside, North City now rose at their backs, but the sun was continuing its slow descent between the buildings.

There was still safely an hour before day began edging to dusk, which meant that monsters weren’t the most pressing concern. The Corsai kept to the dark, and while the Malchai weren’t incapacitated by daylight, it did weaken them. No, the real danger, as long as the sun was up, were the Fangs—humans who’d sworn allegiance to the Malchai, who worshipped the monsters like gods, or simply decided they’d rather submit than flee. It was Fangs who’d ambushed his team at the symphony hall that time, Fangs who committed most of the daylight crimes, Fangs who ushered new monsters into the world with every sin.

August started forward across the street.

Only six blocks separated the checkpoint from the safety of the Flynn Compound, but forty-two dazed civilians, four FTFs, and a Sunai would be too tempting a target. They had a dozen jeeps, but gas was tight, and the vehicles were in high demand, plus tensions were always high in the wake of a screening, and Henry didn’t want the new recruits to feel like prisoners being carted off to jail.

Walk with them, the man had said. Step for step.

So August and his squad led the way toward the broad set of stairs on the corner.

Boots sounded nearby, the stride even, casual, and a moment later Rez fell into step beside him.

“Hey, boss.”

She always called him that, even though she had ten years on him—more than that. After all, August only looked seventeen. He’d risen out of gun smoke and shell casings on a cafeteria floor five years before. Rez was short and slight, one of the first North City recruits to trade their Harker pendant for an FTF badge. She’d been a law student in her past life, as she called the time before, but now she was one of the best on August’s team, a sniper by day and his partner on rescue and recon after dark.

He was glad to see her. She never asked how many souls he’d reaped, never tried to make light of what he had done. What he had to do.

Together, they reached the gated stairwell, a steel arch overhead marking it as a subway station. At the sight of it, several people slowed.

August didn’t blame them.

The subways were largely the domain of the Corsai—dark tunnels like the one he’d raced through with Kate, full of shadows that twitched and twisted, claws that glistened in the dark, whispers of beatbreakruinfleshbonebeatbreak sliding between teeth.

But beyond the gate, these stairs blazed with light.

The FTF had spent three painstaking weeks securing the line, sealing up all the cracks and pumping the passage so full of UV rays that Harris and Jackson had nicknamed it “the tanner,” since you could pick up a tan between the checkpoint and the Compound.

Rez undid the series of locks, and August flinched a little at the brightness as they made their way down to the platform and then onto the tracks.

“Stay together!” ordered Ani as Harris locked the gate again behind them.

It was a dead zone down here, and the comm signals guttered out, the tunnels echoing around them as they walked in rows of two and three. Jackson and Harris punctuated the silence by lobbing instructions at the shaken recruits while August focused on the beat of his heart, the tick of his watch, the markers on the walls, counting down the distance until they could come up for air.

When they finally climbed the stairs to the street, the Compound rose like a sentinel before them, lit from tower to curb. A UV-Reinforced strip the width of a road traced the building’s base, the technological equivalent of a castle moat, powering up as the daylight began to thin.

The Compound steps were flanked by soldiers, their expressions varying from grim to annoyed at the sight of the newest North City survivors; but when they saw August, their eyes went to the ground.

Rez peeled away with a “later, boss,” and the forty-two recruits were marched up the steps, but August lingered at the edge of the light strip, listening.

In the distance, somewhere beyond the Seam, someone cried out. The sound was too far away, too high, too broken for human ears to catch, but August heard it all the same, and the longer he listened, the more sounds he heard, and the more the chords began to untangle, the quiet unraveling into a dozen distinct noises: A rustle in the darkness; a guttural growl; metal dragging against rock; the buzz of electricity; a shuddering sob.

How many citizens, he wondered, were still across the Seam?

How many had fled into South City or escaped into the Waste?

How many had never made it out?

One of the first things Sloan and his monsters had done was round up as many humans as possible and trap them in makeshift prisons fashioned from hotels, apartment buildings, warehouses. Word was that every night they’d let a few of them go. Just for the fun of hunting them down.

August turned back and went inside. He headed straight for the bank of elevators, avoiding the eyes of the soldiers, the new recruits, the little girl being handed off to a member of the FTF.

He leaned against the elevator wall, relishing the moment of solitude—right before a hand caught the closing door. The metal parted, and another Sunai stepped in.