Two young seeksmen are dead, and Sydney blames herself. The only way to get her sister back from the county’s clutches, while also preventing more death, was to offer her own life in exchange for Evvie’s freedom.

She expected a dreadful end, but nothing like the prison in which she wakes. Agonizing county life is redefined in Neo-Necropolis, new city of the dead, which lies beneath the earth. Worse than being allegedly deceased, is the false identity Sydney is forced to assume where Evvie, Sheridan’s captain, and Crewe never existed.

Sydney alone knows the magnitude of the county’s evildoings inside, outside, and now below. At only eighteen, the responsibility to defend freedom falls solely on her tried and tested shoulders—a burden that requires desperate action when a catastrophic revelation upends the world as she knew it.

The people Sydney cares for are more vulnerable than ever. Though she’s buried underground and monitored by county agents, she must escape this new captivity. Maybe it’s time to fight fire with fire. Sydney has proven her courage in facing their weapons, but can she trigger her own?

Excerpt

 

I address the leader again. “Don’t tell me you’re not the bad guys; you killed two innocent men! They were practically kids,” I charge.

“I know!” an agent yells with all his might. I hear a scuffle between him and the other man in the room. Something small, maybe a tablet, hits the floor just before a body does. Something is very wrong here, but it’s still unclear whether it’s to my advantage.

“I know everything those boys were.” His words are coated in pain. “But, innocent wasn’t one of them. They knew seeking was a crime,” he snaps.

“It wasn’t a crime they had to die for!” I shout back, my fury now being directed at this man rather than the inaccessible leader.

“I know it!” he yells back. “I tried to protect all of them, even you, but you’re impossible to reason with. Look where it got everyone, Sydney.”

The air is sucked from my lungs when I hear this agent speak my name. My heart drops to try to fill the void. I know who I’m speaking with.

“You killed them, you traitor!” I scream, flailing within my chains. “You killed Cy and-” My mouth is re-covered, but my rage continues internally. Jerus could be the one smothering me, so I jerk and kick at him as much as I can. I might be hurting myself against the restraints, but I can’t feel it. All I can feel is the burning need to make Jerus pay for betraying his fellow seeksmen and his captain, my father.

“I know,” Jerus says quietly from the other side of the room. He takes two more steps away, and then I distinctly hear the elevator sink to take him deeper inside the earth.

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