Gretchen McNeil - 3:59

“Exactly,” Nick said. “If they targeted us and Penelope, it’s only logical everyone else was on a hit list too.”

“Why would the Grid do this?” Josie said. The idea that the shadowy, nebulous corporation that Nick and Madison blamed for everything was somehow using Nox as hit men against a group of high-school students seemed so fantastical, Josie couldn’t quite wrap her brain around it.

“I don’t know,” Nick said. He shook his head, defeated. “I really don’t. We were just looking for our families, for the people we cared about who’d gone missing. My brother . . .” He paused. “Well, we know how that turned out. But the rest, we just wanted answers.” He turned and gripped Josie’s arms. “And honestly? We hadn’t gotten anywhere before you showed up. So I have you to thank for helping me find Tony. And for getting me out of that warehouse.” His eyes trailed down her face to her neck, then down to her arms. He paused, and his brows drew together. Again, his eyes scanned her face, but this time he wasn’t looking at her so much as he was examining her. He looked around her head, to her ears and her neck. He lifted her hair off her back, then froze.

Suddenly, his hands gripped her again. Fiercer this time. The look of confusion vanished from his face, replaced by hardened features and a cold, dark stare.

“What’s wrong?” Josie asked. She could feel his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her arms.

“Your neck. Your face.”

“Yeah?”

“You weren’t attacked. In the warehouse. There are no wounds on you anywhere.”

It was true. She’d realized it after Tony led her down through the passage, but she’d put it out of her mind. The Nox hadn’t touched her. Moreover, when she’d been trying to protect Nick, she’d touched one of them, and its reaction had been surprise and fear. Like it didn’t realize she was there.

“How is that possible?” Nick growled.

“I don’t know,” she said, trying to stay calm. “But I’d think by this point, you’d actually trust me.”

Nick’s gaze faltered. “I—”

Brrrrrring!

Penelope’s phone. Josie still gripped it in her hand. She glanced down and saw the name of the incoming caller. Madison.

Nick snatched the phone from her hand and put it on speaker. “Who is this? What have you done with Madison and—”

“Listen carefully,” a woman said through the speakerphone. Her voice was familiar. “Are you ready?”

Nick glanced at Josie. She leaned in next to him and listened. “Yes.”

“Your friends are safe. For now. Whether or not they stay that way is up to you.”

Nick set his jaw. “What do you want?”

“You know what we want.”

“You killed Penelope,” Nick growled through gritted teeth.

“She wouldn’t tell us what we wanted to know.”

Josie realized how she knew the voice. “Dr. Cho,” she said out loud.

Dr. Cho was silent a moment. “I seem to have both of you on the line. How convenient.”

“You didn’t have to kill her,” Nick said.

“She didn’t give us a choice.”

Josie clenched her fists. First her mom, now Penelope. If she ever got her hands on Dr. Cho, she’d make a Nox attack look like a playground catfight.

“We’re wasting time,” Dr. Cho said. “You have the antidote. We are willing to exchange it for your friends.”

Nick covered the mic with his hand. “How did they know?” he whispered.

Josie cringed. “I told my mom. In her cell at Old St. Mary’s.”

“Damn.”

“Are you listening?” Dr. Cho said.

Nick scowled. “Yes.”

“Bring the vial to your warehouse. Tomorrow.”

“Bring my mom,” Josie blurted out. Nick looked at her. What are you doing? he mouthed silently.

But Josie realized this might be their only chance to get her mom out of the hospital. She had to risk it. “Bring my mom and all the others. Our friends and their families.”

Again, silence on the other end. Would Dr. Cho argue the point? Try to negotiate?

“Fine,” she said at last. “Tomorrow at nightfall. Do not be late.”

12:05 A.M.

NICK SLOWLY LOWERED THE PHONE. “IT’S A trap,” he said simply. “No way they’d just let us all waltz out of there.”

“I know.”

Nick handed the phone to Josie and pulled down the garage door. Then he slowly walked around to the door of his car and climbed in. Josie followed, and they sat in Nick’s SUV, silently lost in their own thoughts.

Josie’s eyes were fixed on the phone. Something wasn’t right. How had it gotten inside the rim of the tire? Even in the chaos of a Nox attack, it couldn’t have bounced off the concrete and into the tire, especially since Penelope was right there, huddled against that side of the car.

Unless she put it there.

Of course. Penelope had been trying to hide her phone, a last act of defiance. But why? Josie clicked on the phone and scrolled through the recently opened applications. Phone. Messaging.

Camera.

Josie caught her breath.

“What?” Nick asked.

Josie opened the photo gallery on Penelope’s phone. There were three new photos, all of equations. “Holy shit,” she said.

Nick leaned over her shoulder and squinted at the photos. “Math equations. Any idea what they mean?”

Josie scrolled through the photos, a lump rising in her throat. “Yeah,” she said hoarsely. “Yeah, I do. This is what she was killed for.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We were trying to figure out a way to use the X-FEL laser to open a new portal, and Pen had an idea of how we could get it to work without killing us all. Then she had another idea. Long story short, she thought we might be able to apply the same principle to the antidote, using it to phase-shift the antidote itself, before the subject’s been inoculated. Which would make it about a million times easier to get rid of all the Nox.” She looked at the equations again and laughed. “It’s like crop-dusting on an epic, quantum level. And the only way the injectable might actually work. I can’t believe no one thought of it before.”

Nick whistled. “That’s enough to kill for.”

“Yeah.” Josie paused, thinking about the various pieces of this conspiracy: Dr. Byrne and the Grid, Tony’s formula, everyone’s missing family members. A plan was forming in her mind. “If we go to the warehouse, we’re dead, right?”

“Pretty much.”

“Nox again, would you guess?”

Nick nodded. “Most likely.”

“So what if,” Josie said slowly, “what if we’re ready for them?”

Nick looked at her sidelong. “What do you mean?”

“We have Penelope’s equations. We have the formula. Why not just zap the Nox right out of the universe?”

Nick scratched the back of his neck. “We’ll need a laser,” Nick said. “You heard my brother. The one in the storage shed isn’t powerful enough.”

“Then we get him a laser. There’s one up at Fort Meade?”

“Josie,” Nick said, eyeing her cautiously. “We cannot break into Fort Meade. No way.”

“Of course not.” Josie smiled. “But Mr. Byrne has security access, right? You two can go borrow it.”

“Mr. Byrne?” Nick looked skeptical. “I don’t know if we should get him involved.”

“What choice do we have?”

Nick was silent for a moment, mulling over the idea. “We don’t,” he said at last. “Make the call.”

Josie pulled out her phone and powered it up. She’d turned it off at the warehouse and completely forgotten about it. As soon as the network connected, the phone beeped a dozen times in rapid succession. Voice mails, all from Mr. Byrne.