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Rosabelle kills prisoners to feed her dying sister

Rosabelle opens empty cupboards every morning, pretending for thirteen-year-old Clara's sake that there might be food.

Rosabelle kills prisoners to feed her dying sister

Rosabelle opens empty cupboards every morning, pretending for thirteen-year-old Clara's sake that there might be food. They live in a sanctioned settlement called the pit on Ark Island—the last refuge of The Reestablishment's elite—punished for their father's treason. He was chief commander of Sector 52 before selling secrets to the rebels and rotting in prison, leaving their mother to shoot herself in front of ten-year-old Rosabelle. Now twenty, Rosabelle survives by doing the regime's dirtiest work. Lieutenant Soledad, the island's security chief, arrives with an offer: four prisoners need killing. In exchange, Clara gets food, medicine, and firewood. Rosabelle agrees to kill them all at once, right now. She straps on a rifle and walks into the cold.

James's unauthorized infiltration of the Ark ends in gleaming steel

The cell is spotless and doorless—walls of polished steel reflecting his warped face in every direction. James Alexander Anderson is twenty-one, half-brother to Aaron Warner Anderson, the man who helped topple The Reestablishment a decade ago. James came here on an unauthorized solo mission to prove he's more than the baby of the family—to do what no mainland spy has survived. Instead, he's been gassed, imprisoned, and left with nothing but a packet of gummy bears swiped from his five-year-old niece. He knows his family will be furious—Warner, his wife Juliette, their friend Kenji, James's other brother Adam. He eats the gummies and talks to his own reflection, rehearsing bravado. Then a wall dissolves, and a girl materializes.

Rosabelle slits his throat; the wound heals on the way to organ extraction

She's so small he mistakes her for artificial intelligence—white-blond hair, icy eyes, doll-like hands pressing a knife to his throat. When James tries to grab her, she falters at his touch, and he catches her instinctively. She whispers that he smells like apple. Then she opens his neck. James watches blood seep through his fingers as she calls for organ extraction and swipes the gummy wrapper from his pocket. But James has a secret: he heals. On the gurney, his throat knits shut beneath a mask of drying blood. He sits up, terrifying the medic wheeling him toward dissection. He shoves the heavy gurney into Rosabelle, cracking her ribs against the wall, then demands she show him the exit or surrender her knife.

James kills twelve soldiers and spares the girl who murdered him Soledad arrives with troops and recognizes James's face—the likeness of his famous father. He tosses his gun to Rosabelle for the kill shot. James snatches…