I’m not waiting for Diego to strike against my father.
There isn’t time.
I’m getting ready, using all my connections, all my allies in this fight. Every piece of tech that Yandre can beg, borrow, or fabricate. Every scrap of intelligence the free cities have gathered. Every rebel and Vic willing to come along.
Only the best commandoes.
We’re going back to Shreve, but not in force this time.
In stealth.
Bone implants to fool the scanners. Skinsuits that fleck off borrowed DNA. Shoes to alter our gaits. Larynx chips that change our voices.
And face-shifting surgery, of course, like the pretties of old.
We’ll walk into Shreve as different people, random citizens. Impostors.
Because X is our brother-in-arms.
And there’s another reason—if I’m going to rule my father’s city one day, I have to see what it’s like for his people, living in the shadow of his tower, breathing his dust, watching every word.
Don’t say what you think. Don’t move the wrong way.
Don’t dream too loudly.
Don’t have the wrong feels.
Spending a month in my father’s tower, pretending to be Rafi every minute—it almost erased who I was. But the citizens of Shreve have spent a decade hiding themselves, living as impostors every day.
What if something’s missing in them now? Lost to the dust?
There has to be a way to give it back to them.
As X told me … Not all that’s missing is gone.
Maybe I can save my city.
Scott Westerfeld is the author of the Uglies series, the Leviathan trilogy, the Zeroes series, as well as the Spill Zone graphic novels, the novel Afterworlds, and the first book in the Horizon series. He has also written books for adults. Born in Texas, he and his wife now split their time between Sydney, Australia and New York City. You can find him online at scottwesterfeld.com.
Copyright © 2019 by Scott Westerfeld
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
First edition, September 2019
Cover art © 2019 by Peter Crowther
Cover photo © 2019 by Mark Frost
Cover design by Christopher Stengel
e-ISBN 978-1-338-15043-8
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