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In the space of two ed to chisel er attack force One that can work faster, get theet the parents to storht work," he offered, "but its success depends half on us being able to inspire civilians to revolt and come after the camps, and half on whether or not the PSFs would fire on civilians or figure out some other way to deter them"

"He has an actual plan?" I asked

"Not in the technical definition of the word I just heard soed "His option isn’t perfect, either"

"Is there a third option?" I asked

Finally Nico stood up and, with tentative, halting steps, walked beside me I tried to offer him the marker, but he didn’t take it "Are you sure you want to know?"

"Try me"

"The only way I can think of to disable the camp controller’s access to the camp’s systems--not even disable or disarm the syste so no one outside notices anything aram in their system and control it remotely They’ll be so disoriented that the tactical tea we could upload into their server?" The League had given us a liy and the way viruses worked, but this was out of rams don’t install automatically like a virus Someone has to install it," he said "And with all of the security safeguards in place, I don’t think one of them would carelessly download any kind of eo into Thurmond and install it before the assault," I said "But the camp has been closed to new kids for years"

"They take escaped kids back into the cainally processed in," Nico said quietly "I already started coding the Trojan horse Cole told me to"

I held up a hand to cut him off "Cole approved this already?"

He nodded, eyes wide "He said he’d talk to you about it I can have it ready in a week They’ll be powerless to stop it once the program is installed"

I felt every last drop of blood drain out of my head in horror

"No," I said, horrified "No way--"

"Ithe Trojan horse progra the cameras into Oasis Glasses fra a pair of glasses with black plastic fraainst the desk to stay vertical "Nico--no"

"It’s already installed--right there," he said, ignoringto one of two shiny silver screws that looked like they were holding the fraether "This is the camera, and this is just a screw the frames don’t need We had to make them seeet this pair For Thurmond, maybe I could take one of the thicker frames--break up one of the arms that hooks behind the ear and replace a piece of it with a s it under my skin, but they still do strip searches, don’t they? The cut would be too obvious"

"Nico!" I interrupted "Listen toback in there! Even if they brought you back into the caet yourself into the Control Tower to upload it? You haven’t been there since the caed They don’t just let you walk around unsupervised Every raphed down to thein the cah "I’d need to observe the schedules of the PSFs, figure out a moment I could slip away It doesn’t matter if they catch et tothere’s not anyone left for ht" His voice dropped to a whisper "This is how I could ht up at that, whirling around to face hi your life awayould Jude say about that? What would Cate say? I haven’t been a good friend to you these past feeeks, but Nico, I swear to God--please, I forgive you, I do, I understand what happened and I’m sorry I treated you the way I did I’ve been up in s clearly But please listen to me--"

"It’s okay" Nico’s voice was hoarse

"It’s not!" It wasn’t It wasn’t even re hi hiy went into hating myself I tried to think of what Jude would say and do in this situation Or even Cate, all those times she’d had to talk the kid out of a e what happened in Los Angeles I was angry--I was so dary that he justslipped away, and I couldn’t save him I should have talked to you, should have helped you, or at least tried to understand what you’d done I let everyone down, but it was easier to blame you It hurt less But the truth is, I knehat Clancy was capable of I should have tried to confirm some other way that what he said was true And you knohat? Jude would have wanted to go anyway, even if I said no"