Prodigy

As Pascao, Day, and the other Runners prepare for their upcoming mission—a decoy assassination in which the Patriots will also be stealing supplies from a passing train and destroying a shipment of Republic grenades—Day watches footage of June in her bedroom with Anden, where he reluctantly bears witness to their intimacy and notices her signal. As they depart for the train, he combs through additional footage of June and wonders what part of the plan she wishes him to stop. He notes suspiciously that this footage includes no sound and wonders if the Patriots have something to hide.

During the mission, Day becomes distracted by an asterisk symbol on a railway car—the same symbol sprayed on his family’s door after Eden was diagnosed with a new strain of the plague. When he boards the car to inspect its contents, he finds a young boy inside a glass cylinder; he is almost entirely blind because of the plague. As Day attempts to save the boy, Sam, by opening the glass cylinder, Sam tells him that he is a plague survivor who carries a dormant virus, and that every time the train stops, a blood sample is taken from him. Day theorizes Eden, like Sam, is being used as a bioweapon against the Colonies.