CHAPTER TWENTY

"I never should have let you go," fumed Tiergan. "How could you have let this happen?"

"It's not our freaking fault!" exclaimed Lia.

"Because of your foolishness, we now have four members of our ranks to recover instead of two, including a member of the Collective," he went on. "Who'll be next to disappear? Della? Tam?"

The two of them looked down. Della had appeared in the Tower a couple hours after the rest of them. After waiting a long time by the bushes, she had come to the conclusion that something must have gone wrong and come back to Perspeculum.

"We're sorry," said Sophie. "It was—we made a mistake. We'll be more careful next time."

"There won't be a next time," he said darkly. "It's too dangerous to go back. They saw you, Sophie. They'll increase the goblin security. Our only chance was to catch them off guard."

An uncomfortable silence hung over the room. Tiergan was right. They had completely blown it.

"So if we can't go back, what do we do now?" said Lia timidly.

"You will stay in Perspeculum like you were supposed to," said Tiergan. "I want all of you escorted by a goblin bodyguard at all times. Whenever you go anywhere, you must tell a member of the Collective where you are headed. I want to know precisely where you are twenty-four hours a day."

That seemed hardly fair, but Sophie kept her mouth shut.

Tiergan's features softened. "This isn't meant to be a punishment. It's important to keep you children as safe as possible, especially in a world such as today's." He waved them away. "You can go. I'll send your bodyguards in a few minutes."

Sophie swung her legs back and forth over the edge of the roof.

"That did not go as well as I had hoped."

"What had you hoped for?" asked Lia.

"I don't know. That the plan would be successful. That we would get in and find Dex and Biana and get out without anyone noticing. That I'd get the elixir to fix my stupid hair." She tugged at her hair. It felt like a bristly brush.

"But we never should have gone," Sophie continued. "I should have teleported with Dex like he asked me to. Then he wouldn't have gone with Biana and they wouldn't have gotten lost . . ."

"That's not true, Sophie," said Lia.

"Yeah, not true at all," Fitz agreed. Sophie did a quick check to see if his thoughts matched what he was saying—and they did.

"If it's anyone's fault, it's mine," said Tam. "Maybe you were right, Keefe. Maybe we could have gotten in. I just . . . panicked and dropped the key. And Linh was out of range and I forgot she was there, and now she's gone." The fingers on his left hand dug into his wrist, and all the shadows on the roof seemed to stretch.

"We wouldn't have gotten in," Keefe said. "And dropping the key was a mistake. We all make mistakes."

"Not on missions."

Sophie scoffed. "Did you forget the time we accidentally sealed you behind the Lodestar mirror?"

"Or when I got hit by my mom's throwing star?" Keefe chimed in.

"Or the time I got impaled by an arthropleura?" added Fitz.

"Alright, alright," said Tam. "Fine. We all make mistakes. But now what?"

"We need to get them back," said Lia.

"How?"

"If Sophie teleported with us right now, before Tiergan sends the goblins—"

Sophie shook her head violently. "No. Tiergan was right. There'll be more guards and more security now that we tried once and failed. We'll never get in. I'm not going to risk all your lives again by going on an impossible mission."

"But we need to get them somehow!"

"Not necessarily." A thought was pushed to the front of Sophie's mind. It had been stewing in her brain since they had gotten back to Perspeculum.

"If you were a Councillor and you had caught four members of the Black Swan, what would you do?"

"I'd let them go free," said Fitz. "The Black Swan and the Council aren't enemies."

"We weren't enemies," Sophie corrected him. "Until tonight. We just broke a law. Actually several laws, I think. Definitely more than one."

"We've broken laws before and there were never any consequences. Why would it be any different now?"

"Because times are changing, and we can't trust the people in charge anymore. We can't trust the Council to do the right thing anymore."

"Tell us something we don't know," said Tam.

"I was mostly talking to Fitz."

"Hey, I'm willing to be a rebel," said Fitz.

"You'll need a superhero name," Lia quipped. "'Wonderboy' won't quite cut it."

Fitz flushed.

"Lia, stop that," said Sophie. She didn't like seeing Fitz embarrassed. "This is serious."

"What's serious is that Fitz needs a Batmobile," Keefe joined in. "Do you think they sell them in Atlantis?"

"This isn't funny!" Sophie huffed. "I can't believe you're all joking around when four of us are missing!"

"Seriously," agreed Tam. "Shut up. You're acting like kids."

There was silence. Then Lia did something Sophie would never have expected.

She burst into tears.

A hatch appeared on the roof, and Lia disappeared down it. The hatch clanged shut.

"Now look what you've done," Sophie said to Tam.

"I don't get it. What did I say?"

"I don't know, but you made her cry." She was starting to feel a boiling in her stomach. It threatened to unravel the knot of emotions underneath her ribs. For a second, she wanted to let it go, let it unravel, let her pent-up emotions spill out all over the roof, bowling over anyone in their way . . .

She got a hold of herself just in time. She tugged out an eyelash.

"I'm gonna go down there." She opened the hatch.

"Let me come too," said Tam. "I need to say sorry."

"Nobody goes except me!" Sophie snapped, instantly regretting it a moment later. She jumped down the hatch.

What's wrong with me? she wondered as she climbed down a ladder. It had the consistency of jelly and stuck to her hands as she climbed—a sign of a poorly transported object.

In that split second, she had felt so angry. And she had almost Inflicted on her friends. She massaged the knot in her abdomen. The emotions had reformed into a tiny, compact ball, but it felt heavier than ever. She felt like it would tumble right out of her stomach.

Fitz's voice entered her mind. Hey, are you ok—

Don't talk to me! she transmitted without meaning to.

That worried Sophie. Why was she lashing out at people? Was there something wrong with her? Was she broken again? Or was this all just part of being a teenager?

Her foot hit the bottom rung, and Sophie jumped to the ground.

"Lia?" she called out softly. She looked around the pink-and-orange room. Her little sister was nowhere to be found.

Where could she be?

As she turned over pillows and looked under couches, Sophie almost felt like she was eight years old again and playing a game of hide-and-seek in her human house. At any moment, Sophie would find her sister underneath a table or around a corner. "Boo! Ready or not, found you!" she'd shout. And they'd both laugh as a tangle of dark brown curls crawled out of hiding.

"Amy, ready or not," she murmured without realizing it.

And she heard a whimper from behind a potted plant.

Sophie pulled back the waxy leaves to find Lia hugging her knees and rocking back and forth. She squeaked when she saw Sophie and quickly brushed a few angry tears from her face.

Although it was a little cramped, Sophie sat down next to Lia. She put a hand over her abdomen, but her emotions seemed to have calmed down.

"Tam asked me to tell you he's sorry for what he said."

"He shouldn't be. It's my problem, not his."

"What was going on up there?"

"Nothing," said Lia forcefully. A silver tear trickled from her right eye.

"That didn't seem like nothing."

"It wasn't anything. Get crackin', Soybean," she spat.

Sophie blinked. Lia had used to say that to her all the time when they lived with humans, whenever she wanted her to scram.

But Lia—Natalie—wasn't supposed to remember that. Only Amy did.

Sophie suddenly realized she hadn't been paying much attention to her little sister since they had escaped the Tower. She hadn't been trying to get to know her, at all.

Might as well start now.

"Lia, I just wanted to ask . . . how are you holding up?"

"What do you mean?"

"It's hard, being told everything you know is a lie and having to leave it all behind."

Lia didn't argue. Instead, she nodded. "Yeah."

"And what's more, when I came to the Lost Cities there were so many things I was learning about myself, all at once. That I was genetically engineered and I was part of this rebel organization. And of course, my memories started coming back."

"Memories?"

"Memories that the Black Swan had hidden from me started to come back when I came to the Cities. Before, there had always been these weird gaps in my memory like black holes. As more memories were triggered, those holes were filled."

Sophie studied Lia closely as she talked. Her sister's face confirmed her suspicions.

"Are you ready to come back up to the roof?" she asked.

Lia hesitated. "Could—could I stay down here, just for a little longer? I want to be alone."

"Okay."

Sophie left her and started back up the ladder. As she climbed, a tiny voice inside her wondered what memories Lia had uncovered. But she decided not to pry.

Lia would tell her in her own time.

A/N: Sorry I've been M.I.A. for a couple weeks, I've been battling a bad case of writer's block and I have a cold to top it all off, so . . . not fun. Anyway, after The News™ yesterday I felt all inspired to finally finish this chapter. Okay I've been trying to stay calm about it but IT'S CALLED NIGHTFALL IT'S CALLED NIGHTFALL WHO CALLED IT WHO CALLED IT NOT ME IT WAS EMMI WHO SUGGESTED THE TITLE AND I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE STARSTONE AND THEN REALIZED EMMI'S IDEA MADE A LOT MORE SENSE AND NOW I CAN FINALLY GIVE THIS FIC AN OFFICIAL TITLE AND I AM SO PUMPED RIGHT NOW YOU HAVE NO IDEA :))))))))))