Summary

Chapter 8 opens just after the fight with Major Beltran. Cienfuegos and Matt headed to the holoport to speak to Esperanza. The control room had a giant screen filled with messages from people trying to contact Opium. Cienfuegos reminded Matt that nobody could send messages in or out of the country, or open the borders, because the controls were wired to respond to certain people’s skin, and with El Patron and all of his family members dead, the country had been in a state of seclusion for three months. El Patron, who thought Matt would die with the rest of them, had wanted to kill everyone in Opium by locking the borders and keeping supplies out, slowly starving everyone still in the country.

Cienfuegos believed that Matt, who was El Patron’s clone with his DNA, would be able to work the controls...