The Last Stand

THE LAST STAND Two years after President Stone's government dissolved the last free elections, Emily Voss loses her family in a Resistance raid gone wrong — a "misfire" the regime blames on the rebels, though Emily suspects otherwise. Grief curdles into purpose: she disappears into the undercity and joins the very group accused of killing them. Her handler assigns her to a joint operation with Jake Reyes, a defector who spent six years enforcing curfews for the government before a night he won't talk about turned him. Neither trusts the other. Emily wants to believe he's changed; Jake isn't sure he deserves her believing it. Their mission: infiltrate the Stone administration's data center and expose the surveillance network the regime uses to identify and "disappear" dissidents — including, Emily comes to learn, the operation that killed her family. The deeper they go, the clearer it becomes that the raid wasn't a rebel mistake at all, but a deliberate strike ordered from inside the Resistance's own leadership, to eliminate a family that knew too much. As Emily and Jake close in on the truth, they're forced to decide who they can still trust — the government they're fighting, the rebellion they've bled for, or only each other. Their growing feelings complicate every choice, but they can't afford the distraction: Stone has learned about the coming operation and orders a city-wide purge before it can happen. The book builds to a confrontation at the data center where Emily must choose between destroying the surveillance network (saving thousands of future victims) or using it to expose her family's real killer (getting the justice she came for) — she can't do both before Stone's forces arrive. Her choice, and its fallout, sets up who survives the last stand and what kind of resistance movement is left standing afterward.