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her.”
    My spine goes rigid, and my heart speeds up. “What?”
    “Yeah.” He glances at the time again. “She’s in the training center right now with all your cadets.”
    Even though I know it’s impossible, a bolt of electricity shoots through my chest. It stings with fear and dread, but it also leaves a trail of warmth in its wake. 
    Harper can’t be here. Miles must be talking about someone else who just looks like her, but I have to see for myself. 
    Without another word, I fly out of my chair and squeeze past the servers crowding the doorway. I shoot out of the surveillance room and down the dimly lit tunnel toward the training center.
    The smell of bleach and sweat hits my nostrils before I even open the doors, and when I step inside, my senses are overwhelmed by activity after hours alone in the dark.
    It’s nearly oh-eight hundred, so the training center is swarming with cadets warming up and waiting along the walls for their commanding officers.
    I carve a path around the older Recon veterans stretching on the mats, looking for a dark head of silky hair and a pair of luminous gray eyes.
    In my desperation, I almost call out for her, but there’s no way she’d be able to hear me over the cadets’ chatter and the heavy clink of weights. As someone passes above me on the suspended metal track, the loud shaking adds to the din.
    Out of the corner of my eye, I catch the flick of a dark ponytail.
    If Miles is seeing things, then I am, too. But there’s no mistaking Harper’s lean profile or her energetic cadence as she jogs around the track.
    The fear simmering just beneath the surface spills into my bloodstream and ignites a fire in my chest.
    Miles wasn’t hallucinating. Harper is back.

 
     
     
     
     
    four
    Harper
     
    The first rule of avoiding murder? Don’t go anywhere alone. Stay away from dark tunnels and shady underground fights. Stick to public places with lots of people.
    That’s the only reason I dragged myself to training this morning after Celdon and I returned from 119. I didn’t sleep at all last night. My mind was reeling from everything we’d learned about the virus and the danger we’d be facing now that we’re back on Constance’s radar.
    Jayden is going to try to make me disappear — no doubt about it — but I don’t plan on going down easily.
    As I round the corner of the suspended metal track, I inch closer and closer to Lenny. Her normally creamy complexion is flushed from the run, and her fiery red braid is swinging back and forth between her shoulder blades.
    She isn’t as fast as I am, but she’s pushing herself this morning. She beat me to the training center and didn’t even stop to talk when I arrived.
    Her impending deployment must have lit a fire under her, and now she’s training like crazy in the hope that if she’s fit enough, fast enough, and strong enough, she might be able to outrun death on the Fringe.
    Blaze is another twenty yards ahead and gaining speed. When I got to the training center, the first thing I noticed was that he’d trimmed his spiky copper hair into a clean crew cut. His normally carefree expression mirrors Lenny’s look of panic and determination, and his shirt is already drenched with sweat.
    “Hey! Riley!” calls an angry voice from below.
    I know that voice. It sends a surge of heat through my chest that quickly spreads to my extremities.
    I quicken my pace and glance down to the training floor. Eli is standing in the crowd, staring up at me.
    Even though it’s only been a little more than a day since I last saw him, I drink in the sight of him as if it’s been a year. Those sharp blue eyes are boring into mine, and the severe set of his jaw makes it look as though his face has been cut from stone.
    This is not the concerned, compassionate Eli from the Fringe or the intense, fiery version who pinned me up against the wall. This is Eli the asshole, and he looks pissed.
    “Get down here!” he yells.
    Lenny glances over