"Look at the view, Ariel! We're finally here." Kora's laugh glittered like broken glass. Her manicured finger jabbed through the window at the barbed-wire crown that crowned Shadow Creek's perimeter. The fences were a promise and a threat all at once. Ariel blinked. Dust settled on the van seats in thin gray moons. Outside, the dirt road ran flat as a bone toward the compound—guard towers, corrugated metal, the Tower cutting the skyline like a black tooth. The van smelled of cheap coffee and diesel and the sticky sweat of people who'd already given up. Kora pressed closer, lipstick white on her teeth. "Can you believe we made it? Girls like us—" she squeezed Ariel's shoulder, nails sharp enough to leave souvenir crescent moons. "—they only recruit once in a lifetime. Grayson will love you." Ariel's fingers flexed on the vinyl. No scars. No missing nails. She checked twice like a child unsure she was awake. Her palms were clean. Her thumbs moved with the precise, automatic motions of someone cataloguing evidence. Her life had reset to Day One. Memory came like a cold submachine of water and electricity—dark, slick walls; the hum of generators; the metal taste of salt in her mouth. She had died in the Dungeon last cycle. Drowned and shocked until the light behind her eyes shuttered. She had begged once. Someone had laughed. A voice—Kora's—had laughed the loudest. Kora's smile widened. "You