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smart bandage from his emergency kit, not because he wanted to, but because Syd had asked him to. While he packed her wound, Syd took the opportunity to glance back out of the alleyway to the open avenue and the stage. What he saw took his breath away.
    Everyone but the Purifiers had left. They were stacking the bodies of the Guardians in a pile in the center of the avenue, tossing them like unsalvageable garbage onto a heap. There were over twenty bodies piled and more on the way. Some of them were just pieces.
    The bald man was gone, but Syd quickly saw that Finch was not. He was kicking a severed head up in the air, trying to keep it aloft for as long as he could.
    “I got twenty-three!” he shouted when his last kick missed and the head smashed onto the pavement.
    Syd took a step forward. He was going to destroy Finch this time, in front of his friends. He didn’t need Liam to do it. He’d take Finch apart and, when he was done, he’d have Finch transferred to sanitation detail. What good was being Yovel if he couldn’t settle a few scores for himself?
    “Don’t go back out there,” Liam told Syd. “Or I won’t bandage your friend.”
    “How kind of you,” Marie grumbled.
    Syd stopped and watched from the edge of the alley. “This is sick.”
    “Nopes don’t feel any pain,” Marie said, wincing while Liam packed her wound with the gentleness of a battering ram.
    “How do you know?” Syd replied.
    “Guardians never did.”
    “Like you said.” Syd turned to her. “They aren’t Guardians anymore.”
    “Syd.” Marie shook her head. “Do you really care? Back when they were part of the system, they wanted to kill you, remember? They tortured you. They’re getting better treatment than they deserve.”
    He looked down at the Guardian with the knife in her head, the other with her throat crushed. He thought of the dead Machinist assassin. He felt sick to his stomach. He was Yovel, the symbol of the revolution. And the revolution was capable of this.
    “So are we,” he said.
    Knox’s word’s echoed in his head again:
It’s your future. Choose.
    This couldn’t be what Knox had meant.
    Syd heard a cheer and turned back to the avenue. The Purifiers stood in a circle around the heap of bodies. One of them lit it on fire and the smell of burning cloth and flesh and hair carried on the breeze. It filled Syd’s nostrils, overwhelmed his senses. A plume of black smoke rose from the bonfire, a spreading stain on the cloudless blue sky.
    It’s your future. Choose.
    “Syd, are you okay?” Marie asked.
    “He was exposed to a lot of their blood,” Liam said again.
    “The Reconciliation says the infection can’t spread to regular people,” Marie told him.
    “Still, I’d like to get him to a medic, just to be sure.”
    Syd heard their voices, talking about him, as if they were a thousand miles away. His ears rang and his vision went red around the edges. Blurred. He felt sick. He tasted black blood on his tongue, felt the mud hardening on his face.
    He needed to lie down. He needed to talk to Baram and the Advisory Council. He needed to get some clean air. He needed to stop the bloodshed. He needed to—
    He passed out and Liam couldn’t move fast enough to catch him.

[ 7 ]
    “I NEED A FULL medical checkup,” Liam snapped at the medics as he stormed into the medical station, carrying Syd. Marie staggered in after him.
    “And she could use some attention too,” he added.
    “Thanks.” Marie gave Liam a sarcastic smile.
    Three medics, all in the green uniform of the Reconciliation, jumped up to object and, seeing Syd, froze. There was a line of cots along the far wall of the metal container that they’d turned into a makeshift hospital. They’d cut out one wall of the container and used a tarp and mosquito netting to create space for two more rows of cots. All the cots, save one, were empty, as if they were waiting for an influx of patients that had yet to materialize.
    “Stop!” A Purifier