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the right slide open.
    “After the West closed,” Spurling went on, “the tunnels were backfilled with twenty feet of rubble. But if someone wants something badly enough …”
    The chamber brightened as a flashlight beam appeared in the open door. It took me a second to realize that it was part of the recorded projection.
    Spurling’s expression turned smug. “When I had the cameras installed last week, I didn’t expect such a fast payoff.”
    I watched with dismay as a ghostly version of my father stepped through the steel door, his messenger bag in one hand. I scooted out of the way as he walked past, and then I caught Spurling’s faint amusement. When the ghostlike form of my dad was halfway across the chamber, a red light started flashing. Behind him, the door began to slide shut. My father whirled and raced for the tunnel, darting right through me. At the last second, he slipped sideways into the opening, but the messenger bag in his hand was too big and he dropped it just as the door closed.
    Spurling frowned and froze the image. “He tripped the motion sensor, which was supposed to lock down this chamber with him in it. That way he and I could have had a face-to-face chat. Instead, I have an overflowing case file, damning evidence, and a missing fetch. That wasn’t the plan.”
    A knot of pain tightened in my gut. It tightened and tightened, hard and cold, until it was the only thing I felt. Why had she shown me this? My father was all I had and she knew it. “What do you want?”
    She turned off the projection and the lights came back on. “I just told you,” she said, tucking the tablet under her arm. “I want to talk to Mack privately, but at this point, that’s not going to happen.”
    By “talk to” she meant “arrest.” Why didn’t she just say it?
    Because she doesn’t want to arrest him , I realized with icy clarity. She wants something else.
    Spurling watched me without a word, as if willing me to piece it together.
    I drew in a shuddering breath. So, what did she want? To talk to Mack privately , or so she’d said. But that wasn’t really it. No, what Director Spurling specifically wanted was to talk to a fetch. One who had been all the way to Chicago and back … My heart rose in my chest. Maybe my dad’s fate wasn’t sealed after all. “You want him to fetch something for you. Something you left behind in Chicago.”
    “Aren’t you the bright one?” Spurling took a cream-colored envelope from her suit pocket. “If Mack brings me what I want, I’ll destroy the recording and his file. All the information he’ll need is in here.” She handed me the envelope.
    I stiffened, seeing the catch. “I can’t give it to him. I don’t know where he is.”
    “Oh, but you do.” She tipped her head toward the twin steel doors.
    A heavy wave of cold moved through me. “You want me to go into the Feral Zone?”
    “Of course not. You’d never make it across the river. Go as far as Arsenal Island.”
    My vision tunneled. Spurling, the envelope, the chamber, all slipped back as if to give me room to think. She was offering me the chance to save my dad. I didn’t need to think. I’d do whatever it took — even cross the quarantine line.
    Spurling watched me with sharp eyes. “You want to help your father, don’t you?”
    I nodded, not trusting my voice.
    “Good.” She began putting my dad’s things back into the messenger bag, all except the rolled canvas and the map. “There’s a doctor on Arsenal Island — Dr. Vincent Solis.” She spread the map on the table and pointed to a rectangular island in the middle of the Mississippi River. “Dr. Solis will probably know where your father is. He has an ongoing deal with Mack.”
    “What kind of deal?”
    Spurling gave me a thin smile. “I’m not at liberty to say. Just know that I have chosen to look the other way when it comes to Dr. Solis’s activities … for now anyway.”
    The map had been printed pre-exodus — there was