The drive wasn’t the only place that information was logged, not in North City. She logged into her father’s private uplink, clicked on the archive labeled human. The screen filled with thousands of thumbnails, each with a name and date. Freddie wasn’t like the other kids at Colton, and maybe she wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. She typed his name into the search bar, half hoping his face would show up with a tag for some disturbance, even just an anomaly, but—nothing.
Exasperated, she clicked back to the school directory and reconsidered the picture, staring at it for several long minutes as if it might come to life, complete the arc of motion, meet her eyes. When it didn’t, Kate scrolled through his profile, scribbled down his address, and got to her feet.
There was still one place she hadn’t looked.
“Hello?” she called out as she crossed the penthouse. No answer. She did a quick lap through the open layout. No sign of Sloan or Harker. The door to her father’s office was locked, but when she pressed her good ear to the wood, she didn’t hear the hum of the soundproofing system that Harker activated when he was inside. She keyed in the code—she’d set up a camera on her second day, caught the motion and order of his fingers—and a second later the door opened under her touch.
The lights came up automatically.
Callum Harker’s office was massive, and strangely classic, with a broad, dark desk, a wall of bookshelves, and a bank of windows overlooking the city. She crossed to the shelves and ran her hand over the large black books that ran the wall. Ledgers.
Harker was a careful man; he kept both physical and digital copies of the information on all his citizens. The computer was locked—Kate hadn’t been able to crack the access code—but the beautiful thing about books was that anyone could open them. The ledgers were alphabetical, and retranscribed every year. When people lost Harker’s protection in the course of that year, their names were blacked out. If they gained protection, their names were written in at the back of the book.
Kate pulled the G ledger from the wall and opened it on the desk, paging through until she found the name: Gallagher.
Eleven Gallaghers were listed under Harker’s protection in North City, and there was even a Paris Gallagher whose address matched the one on Freddie’s profile, but there was no mention of Freddie himself. But she’d seen the pendant around his neck. She turned to the back of the ledger, hoping to find his name in the additions.
It wasn’t there.
“Where are you?” she whispered, right before someone cleared his throat.
Her head snapped up. Her father was standing in the doorway, wiping his hands on a black square of silk. “What are you doing, Katherine?”
The air stuck in Kate’s lungs. She forced it out, hoping the exhale might pass for an exasperated sigh. “Looking for a name,” she said, leaning against the desk, as if she had every right to be there. “There’s a girl at my school who’s driving me crazy. She had a medal, and I was hoping it was stolen or expired, but alas,” she said, letting the ledger fall shut, “she’s still under your protection.”
Harker’s dark eyes hung on her. She tried to ignore the dried blood on his cuffs. “Sorry,” she added. “I should have waited for you to get home, but I didn’t know when that would be.”
“I didn’t think I’d left the room unlocked.”
“You didn’t,” said Kate coolly, pushing off the desk and walking out. She was relieved when he didn’t follow.
Back in her room, she sank into her chair, Freddie’s student profile still up on her screen. It made even less sense now, a blurred photo beside a name that, according to her father’s records, didn’t exist. Could he be using an alias? But why?
The only people who hid were the ones with something to hide.
So what was Frederick Gallagher hiding?
August hated blood—hated the sight, hated the smell, hated the slimy, too-thick feel—which was unfortunate, since he was currently covered in it.
It wasn’t his, of course.
It was Phillip’s. The FTF with the warm smile and the buzz cut, the one who treated August like a friend, and glared at Harris whenever he used the word monster.
“Hold him still,” ordered Henry. “I need to tourniquet the wound.”
Phillip’s shoulder had been torn from the socket. Visibly. His FTF gear had been shredded, and August could have reached out and traced his fingers over the Corsai’s claw marks—teeth marks? It was always hard to tell—if Phillip hadn’t been writhing around so much on the steel medical table.
August had been sitting at the counter doing homework, Allegro playing with his laces, when they got the call. Another attack. But this one wasn’t at the Seam. And it wasn’t random. It was an ambush. Harker’s monsters knew exactly where the FTF would be patrolling, and when. Someone had told them. And now four FTFs were dead and Phillip seemed hell-bent on going down in a blaze of obscenities and blood.
“For God’s sake, hold him still.”