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Next to her, Lin was shivering. She’d pulled her hood up too, and in its shadow her face was gray. She held her morph-card in fingers that had gone so pale, they looked bloodless. “It’s okay,” Lin said, although she spoke so low and her voice was shaking so much that Elissa could hardly pick up the words. “You don’t have to—you’ve already done so much. I—” She swallowed. “Thank you for helping me. Thank you for the card.”

Elissa’s hand shot out to grab her arm as she moved away. “What? What are you doing?”

Lin’s lips were as bloodless as her fingers. “If I go now, you can just go back. To—to your normal life. They’re after us, and if you keep running, you’ll end up being a criminal too. And I never meant that. I never
meant
this for you, Lissa.”

“You’re going to
go
?”

Lin nodded, pale lips pressed together, face set. She was going to do just that. After finding the sister she’d known about all her life, the sister whose link had kept her alive through fear and torture, she was going to leave so that same sister could go back to her nice, normal life. So she could have the link burned out of her brain, so she could forget.

Elissa’s hand tightened on her twin’s arm. “You’re not. We’re staying together. I know I was a complete bitch to you, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay for you to leave.”

“I— Lissa, it’s not because of
that
.”

“I know.” She moved her hand, twitched out the creases she’d left in Lin’s sleeve. “Okay, listen, we’re going to the top floor. There’s a whole kind of roof garden—it gets completely crowded later on, but right now it’ll be okay. Then there’s like a back route out down to the slidewalks—it’s all old-style stuff, just bridges and walkways, so it hardly gets used.” She continued talking, not particularly quietly, as she led the way to the elevators at the end of the gallery, sparing a scrap of attention to be amazed at how relaxed her voice sounded.

Inside she was all coiled and burning tension, hyperaware of the tone of voice of anyone who passed her and Lin, of every gaze that touched them and then moved away. They were just the same as before, a pair of—she had thoughtWhat are you teenage girls, familiar, unremarkable. But now Elissa was aware that everyone they passed gave them a second, sometimes a third, glance,
paid them just a little more attention than before.

They’d
had
to come here, they’d
had
to get clothes, but—oh,
hell
, it was the worst place possible to have an alert put out for them, a place full of lazily browsing, slow-moving people with time and attention to spare for news broadcasts, for noticing the unusual. And here Elissa was, hiding beneath the merest skin of a disguise, going around with a girl who, despite all their efforts, was still the same height, had the same face shape, the same hands, moved in the
same freaking way
as her.

Run
, said her father in her head.

Oh, Daddy, it’s too late for that
. Their only chance was to get out of the mall as smoothly as she could manage it and then disappear in the anonymity of the city outside.

Except now that the alert was out, was there anywhere they could go where they’d be anonymous? Two teenage girls, traveling together without parents or grown-ups anywhere nearby, in a city made famously low-crime by an intricate network of security, cameras, alarms, and ID checks, a city that was ultrasafe for anyone who stayed within the law—and terrifying for anyone outside it.

There were two people waiting for the elevator, and the door opened as Elissa and Lin joined them.

They slipped inside, moving instinctively, without discussion, to stand by the far wall, their backs to the other occupants.

The elevator was built at the far end of the mall gallery, against the glass wall of the building. As the elevator slid upward, the glass of the mall and, farther down, the rock wall of the canyon fell away beneath them.

We’ll get up to the roof, out to the walkways. Get back down into the city.

If only they could get out without being spotted.

“What class have we got first?” Elissa said, grabbing at random for something that would sound normal, would make her and Lin seem like two ordinary girls leaving the mall on their way to school.

Lin hesitated too long before replying. “I—languages?”

Elissa bit back a flare of irritation.
I’m having to think of everything, having to do everything, and you can’t even sound as if you know what you’re talking about?

But if I hadn’t insisted on calling my dad
 . . .

She spoke through the wave of cold, drenching guilt. “Oh no, it’s okay, I remember. It’s health and hygiene. Listen, you know that party this weekend, I’m going to wear my red dress, okay? As long as you don’t want to wear your blue one, ’cause they’re way too much alike and everyone will be all . . .” She talked on, an endless rattling of words that didn’t mean anything, as if she were running some resurrected program from a life she hadn’t had for years. It sounded horribly fake to her own ears, and although she kept talking, kept churning out meaningless phrases, the skin at the back of her neck began to prickle with an awareness of being watched. Those other people who’d gotten inem;
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Artto the elevator, were they looking at her? Were they already taking out their phones to call the police, the mall security guards?

She couldn’t bear it. She threw a look around just as the man opposite her glanced up from the myGadget in his hand.

Their eyes locked. Elissa couldn’t move, couldn’t look away. He’d been reporting them. The stupid disguises they’d wasted so much time on hadn’t done any good.

He’d recognized her. He was reporting them.

The man gave Elissa a quick, uncomfortable smile, then looked back down at his myGadget. As he tilted it, its screen reflected briefly in the glass wall of the elevator. Game scores. He’d been checking game scores, that was all. Maybe he hadn’t even heard the news alert yet. If he’d only just entered the mall, if he hadn’t been near the newsscreens . . .

Elissa leaned against the handrail, floppy with relief, forgetting to look away, forgetting to carry on talking. In the glass across from her, the reflected display on the man’s myGadget changed. A news ticker scrolled backward across it.

No. Oh, no
. Elissa’s stomach dropped as if the elevator had plummeted.
Click away. Look at something else. Something else
—

Too late. From the little colored, moving reflection, Elissa’s own face looked out at her. She couldn’t see the mirror-text scrolling across it, but she knew what it said.
Elissa Laine Ivory, seventeen years old . . .

The man was suddenly very still, the myGadget motionless in his hand. He lifted his head and looked straight at Elissa.

At the same time, the elevator came to a halt. At the seventh floor, not the top, but it didn’t matter.

Elissa was at the opening door in two strides. “Lin. This floor.”

“Wait a moment,” said the man. “Are you that girl? The runaway?”

Elissa shook her head, backing out of the elevator, Lin by her side. “No. No, I’m not.”

“
Wait
a minute now!” The man took a long step toward them, but they were out of the elevator, hurrying away along the gallery floor.

“Hey, someone!” The man’s voice rose behind them.
“Those girls—they were on the news alert! I’m calling the police!”

“Lissa
—
”

“I know. Run.”

Up on this floor, there weren’t many people around. But all the same, as she and Lin took off down the long gallery, Elissa heard a scatter of concerned voices beginning as other people caught the man’s alarm.

Another man put out a half-unwilling, ineffectual arm to bar their way, and a woman stepped in front of them, but they dodged, not breaking stride, running as if running itself could get them away, keep them safe.

One set of elevators was behind them, and the others were way at the far end of the building. But halfway through the mall moving staircases connected the floors, zigzagging up and down the cliff face. Elissa jerked Lin toward them, avoiding a couple of slow-moving mothers with toddlers and an older couple walking arm in ar. She was looking through Lin, cm.

Then they were on the staircase, racing up past the people who stood on it, who were turning surprised faces to stare. They reached the top of the stairs, the next floor. Elissa flung a glance up as she and Lin swung around the corner and jumped onto the next staircase. Two more floors till the roof, that was all, they could make it—

For an instant she thought the ringing was only in her head, then she realized it was the sound she’d been dreading since the motel—the sound of alarms ringing all over the building. Then the screech and scrape of security grilles cutting off the ground-level exits. Then more raised voices, these ones confident, authoritative. She spared a quick look back. Security guards, two of them, taking the stairs three at a time, gaining on them.

“They’re coming,” Lin said, panting.

Elissa had no breath to agree. They hurtled up the rest of the staircase, pushing past the few people who didn’t move quickly enough out of the way. The girls jumped for a moment onto the static floor of the next landing, and rounded the corner onto the last extra-long staircase. Only a handful of people stood on this one, letting it carry them slowly up to the top floor: a businessman talking on the phone, a young woman with a baby in a sling, an older man with his walking support leaning on the stair above him. If the girls could just get up to the top of this last staircase, just keep running till they made it, just get out—

Oh God. They’ll have locked those doors too
. Not every door had one of the expensive high-security grilles, but they could all be shut and locked. And by now they would be.
We’ll get up there and it’ll be a dead end, we’ll be trapped
.

But she couldn’t do anything but keep running, hoping that somehow they’d be able to get out anyway, hoping that something would happen to save them. They were halfway up the staircase when the guards appeared at the bottom and began to make their fast climb up. One of them shouted something.

Déjà vu caught Elissa, a moment of dizziness like vertigo. She’d been here before, running from men in charge, men commanding her to stop. Running with no hope of escape. Last time an eleventh-hour miracle had saved her, a last-minute stroke of luck that had left a gate unlocked. A miracle like the fire that had gotten her out of her house—
Wait
.

As if Elissa were running so fast that she’d left her brain behind, her thoughts suddenly caught up. The fire
hadn’t
been a miracle. It had been Lin. And the gate—the sealed gate, too?

“Can you open the doors?” Elissa gasped, breathless. “The doors at the top, if they’ve locked them?”

Lin cast a wild look at her. “What?”

“The way you did the fire? Electrokinesis?
Lin
, can you do it?”

Lin stopped dead in the middle of the staircase, so suddenly that Elissa had leapt five more steps before she realized and turned to look down at Lin. A long length below them the guards had overtaken the young mother, were racing up toward where the businessman stood staring, phone call forgotten. The older man moved sideways, ready to get out of their way.

“
Lin
, don’t stop—”

0">“Yes.” Lin’s face was flushed and sweaty, but now it took on an extra glow—one of triumph. “Yes, I can do that.” She grinned, a wide flash of teeth. “And more. Hold on tight.”

“What—” But even as Elissa spoke, the staircase shuddered beneath her feet. She grabbed with both hands for the handrail.

The staircase shuddered again, a vibration that went all through it, then stopped dead. The guards, climbing two steps at a time, hands only loosely on the rail, were jerked off their feet. One stumbled, snatching for the rail; the other fell on one knee, hands flung out to break his fall. The businessman’s phone flew from his grasp, and it, too, fell, bouncing from step to step.

“Lin, be careful. Don’t . . .”

Lin wasn’t listening. Her grin spread wider. “Hold on tighter.”

The staircase began to shake.

It went in a wave, down from where Lin stood, each step
lifting a little, sending the movement into the one below it. Then again, faster, the steps lifting higher, one wave after another, like ripples running down a length of ribbon.

The guard who’d fallen had been getting back to his feet, but the wave of motion threw his hands off the rail, flung his feet from under him. He gave a cry of pain as he went down, his knee hitting a step. The older man’s hands, sharp-knuckled on the handrail, lost their grip. He fell heavily on his side, grabbing uselessly for his walking support, his face a mask of surprise and panic.

The wave came again, this time strong enough that even Elissa, standing above where it began, felt it shake the steps. And again. On the handrail Lin’s hands were clenched as tightly as the old man’s had been, her feet braced apart, her teeth bared in what might be effort, or what might still be that grin of triumph. And again came a wave, stronger. This time the steps didn’t fall back into place. They crashed and grated, forced out of shape, a heaving avalanche of broken metal.

With each wave the old man was bounced down another section of treacherous broken slabs of sharp-edged metal, his walking support rattling after him, knocking against his hands as he scrabbled for a hold, tumbling helplessly down toward the businessman.

The guard had given up trying to stand. He’d locked his hands around the rail, his head shielded behind them. Where his knee had hit the step, the metal edge shone wet and red.

Elissa couldn’t look away. Far below a woman screamed, and a baby gave a sudden terrified wail.

“Lin,” she said again, her voice thin with horror. “Lin, please, stop.”

Lin looked up at her. She spoke through clenched teeth, in a voice Elissa hardly recognized. “They’re after us. We have to get away.”