Sloan straightened, wiping the last of the blood from his shoulder.

“Why isn’t he dead?” asked Alice, storming in. “And what happened to you?” Her gaze flicked to the engineers. “You didn’t save me any.”

Sloan slid on a fresh black shirt. “You’re supposed to be watching our pet.”

“Where is Kate?” she demanded. “You promised—”

“Katherine will return to us,” said Sloan. “And when she does,” he added, “you can have her.” Alice beamed at that.

“Did you evacuate the Malchai?” asked Sloan.

“Most of them,” she said, hopping onto the counter. She looked down at the bowl of shrapnel and crinkled her nose. “There’s a few in the lobby, but they were sound asleep. I didn’t want to wake them.” Her attention flicked to Flynn. “Speaking of . . .”

Sloan turned in time to see Flynn’s eyelids flutter open. He tried to move, but Sloan had bound him to the chair with wire, and he watched as Flynn struggled, winced, and then went still, realizing where he was.

“I have to admit,” said Sloan, buttoning his shirt, “I expected more.”

Flynn coughed, a deep rattle in his chest. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“You didn’t put up much of a fight,” he mused. “One might almost think you wanted to end up in this position. Hoping to rally the troops?” The man looked up at that, and Sloan saw that he was right. “That was quite a gamble, Mr. Flynn.”

“Unlike you,” he said, a hitch in his voice, “I care about more—than my own life. The task force—will finally—bring the fight here—to me—to you.”

Sloan reached out and spun Flynn’s chair toward the windows. They were still two hours from dawn, and the night was at its thickest. He pointed toward the beacon of light that was the FTF Compound and lowered his head to whisper in the man’s ear. “That,” he said, “is exactly what I’m counting on.”

Flynn tensed.

Alice, now cross-legged on the counter, only chuckled. “Time to lay out the cards, and see who has the better hand.”

Flynn shook his head. “Kate knew you’d see it as a game.”

Alice’s eyes brightened at the mention of her maker, but Sloan held up a hand.

“Do you believe in fate? Callum did not. Neither do I. And yet, here you are.”

Alice began toying with a circle of metal. It was a collar, the kind worn by the Fangs. Sloan plucked it from her hands.

“Make yourself useful,” he told her, flicking his fingers toward a camera on a stand. Alice sighed and hopped off the counter. Sloan returned to Flynn’s side and fastened the collar around the man’s throat, relishing the visible shiver that ran through Flynn at the metal’s touch. Sloan swung the chair back around and considered his work. Something was missing. He took up a roll of tape.

“When I first met Leo, he asked me if I believed in God.” The tape made a ripping sound as he pulled a length free. “I think he expected me to say no, but if we are not proof of a higher power, what is?” He tore the strip with his teeth. “I like to think that we are simply what you humans have sowed and reaped. You have earned us. Leo and I saw eye to eye on that.”

Flynn’s gaze hardened. “He drove a metal bar into your back.”

Sloan flicked his hand dismissively. “I would have done the same to him. Monstrous acts, I can respect. Besides, he did miss.”

Flynn looked at him with fire in his eyes. So there was still a spark left.

“If you’re going to kill me—”

“Oh, I don’t plan on doing that, much as I would enjoy it.” Sloan leaned in. “Dead, you are a martyr.”

He pressed the tape over Flynn’s mouth.

“Alive, you’re simply bait.”

They were all idiots, thought Kate.

Henry Flynn had handed the FTF a cause, a reason to fight. And the Council couldn’t get out of their own damn way.

“It doesn’t matter if he’s alive,” she said, a remark that earned her August’s wide eyes and Soro’s cold glare and a whole lot of judgment from the rest of the room. She pressed on. “You’ve always been divided into North and South, us and them. You keep talking about safety, about defense; but these people, your soldiers, they want to fight, and now they have something—someone—to fight for. So for God’s sake, don’t waste it.”

Just then the screens throughout the room crackled and went dark. Everyone looked to Ilsa, but Ilsa was staring at her own tablet in a way that made it clear this wasn’t her doing.

The signal came back up, but instead of broadcasting from the various Compound rooms, every single screen showed the same image.

Henry Flynn.

Bloody, half-conscious, but alive.

There was no sound on the feed, and even if there had been, his mouth was taped shut, some kind of steel contraption around his neck. It took her a second to process the wires, the small timer ticking down.

59:57

59:56

59:55

59:54

And just like that, the room burst into motion. Chairs pushed back and people rose. The signal was being broadcast across the entire feed, to every screen and every tablet, not just in the command center but across the whole Compound.