Requiem

The third and final installment of the Delirium trilogy, Requiem alternates between two first-person narrators whose lives have sharply diverged. In this dystopian world, the United States government has classified love, known as amor deliria nervosa, as a deadly disease. At eighteen, citizens undergo a mandatory surgical procedure called "the cure," which dulls their emotions and renders them obedient. Those who refuse or escape the cure are called Invalids and live in the unregulated wilderness beyond electrified border fences, known as the Wilds.

Lena Haloway, who escaped Portland, Maine, before her cure, travels north from New York with roughly two dozen resistance fighters and refugees. Among them are Raven and Tack, the group's leaders; Julian Fineman, the son of a prominent anti-deliria activist whom Lena rescued and brought into the Wilds; and Alex, Lena's first love, whom she believed dead after he was captured during her escape. Alex survived imprisonment in the Crypts, Portland's notorious prison, but has returned cold and hostile, refusing to speak to Lena. Julian is patient with Lena, but she cannot fully return his feelings while Alex's presence haunts her.

In Portland, Lena's former best friend, Hana Tate, has been cured and is preparing to marry Fred Hargrove, the incoming mayor following his father's assassination during coordinated attacks known as the Incidents. Although the cure has muted her emotions, Hana is troubled by persistent dreams and by a chance encounter with Jenny, Lena's emaciated younger cousin, which stirs guilt she thought the procedure had erased.

After reuniting with old allies near Poughkeepsie, Lena's group debates where to go next. Alex and Julian both advocate for Waterbury, Connecticut, where a large Invalid camp reportedly thrives. During this period, Alex and Lena have a devastating confrontation in which he describes being tortured in the Crypts and tells her that hope of seeing her again kept him alive. Unable to forgive her for moving on with Julian, he declares he never loved her. A starving bear interrupts them, and Lena faces it down, driving it off. Alex is stunned by her transformation. Lena retreats to Julian's tent, where he holds her as she grieves.

Hana attends events with Fred, who reveals an increasingly authoritarian temperament. He plans to control electricity distribution as a reward-and-punishment system, cutting power to families suspected of resisting. Driven by guilt over Lena's family, Hana bikes to the Highlands, a partially demolished neighborhood where Lena's relatives have been relocated. There she finds Grace, Lena's youngest cousin, who shocks Hana by speaking aloud for the first time. On subsequent visits, Hana secretly delivers food and gasoline, hiding supplies in a cellar Grace shows her. Hana also begins investigating Fred's first wife, Cassie O'Donnell, whose records have been erased from the public system.

Along the route to Waterbury, the group rescues an injured young woman named Coral, and Alex becomes inseparable from her, speaking with the gentleness he once reserved for Lena. They also discover a ransacked house surrounded by government biohazard tape, confirming that regulators have penetrated the Wilds. When they reach the Waterbury camp, they find not the organized settlement they expected but a vast, desperate encampment of thousands. They connect with Pippa, a resistance operative who has found almost no one willing to fight. The river feeding the camp has been dammed by forces inside the evacuated city, cutting off the water supply.

The group devises a plan: diversionary explosions near the city wall while a main force breaches it to destroy the dam. When Lena's explosion fails, she climbs the wall herself. Trapped inside the city with Coral, she discovers that Lu, a longtime member of their group, bears a procedural scar behind her ear. Lu has been cured and working as a mole. She reveals that 10,000 soldiers will reach the camp within 24 hours. Lena holds Lu at gunpoint but lets her go.

In Portland, Hana's investigation leads her to the Crypts, where she finds Cassie imprisoned in the psychiatric ward under her middle name. Cassie, lucid and sane, tells Hana that Fred poisoned her with ricin to keep her dependent, then had her committed. Cassie also claims Fred orchestrated the Incidents that killed his own father to seize power. Hana later discovers a painting of the Bluebeard myth in Fred's study, confirming that Cassie's fears were not delusions. Fred, learning Hana has been visiting the Highlands, grabs her by the throat and warns her to obey.

Lena's group flees the camp and reaches a resistance safe house. Alex and Julian's tensions explode into a brawl; Alex breaks Julian's nose. By morning, Alex is gone, leaving a note: "The Story of Solomon is the only way I know how to explain. Forgive me" (248). Resistance contacts arrive, and among them Lena recognizes her mother, Annabel, who escaped from the Crypts years earlier and now operates under the name Bee. Annabel explains she stayed away to protect Lena, referencing the original Story of Solomon, in which a true mother relinquishes her child rather than allow the child to be harmed. Lena grasps the meaning of Alex's note: He left not out of hatred but out of love, removing himself so she could be free.

The resistance directs them north to Portland. Pippa and nearly 400 survivors of the Waterbury massacre rejoin the group. Coral quietly tells Lena that Alex was obviously still in love with her. Lena accepts this but remains committed to Julian.

On the morning of Hana's wedding, hundreds of fighters rush Portland's new concrete border wall. Inside the laboratory complex, the ceremony is interrupted by alarms. During the assault, Raven is shot and killed while pushing Pippa from a guard's line of fire. A pipe bomb blows a hole in the wall, and fighters pour through. Pippa slips into the city carrying a bomb destined for 88 Essex Street, Fred's house.

Lena breaks away to search for Grace. The car carrying Hana strikes Lena on a Portland street, and the guards seize her. Hana orders them to bring Lena inside. In the Hargrove kitchen, Hana confesses the secret she has carried since before her cure: She betrayed Lena and Alex to the regulators out of jealousy. Lena slaps her. When Fred arrives, Hana lets Lena escape through the back door. Lena warns Hana about the bomb. Hana tells Lena that Grace is at 31 Wynnewood Road, then squeezes Lena's hand. Hana whispers, "I remember" (370), and pushes Lena out.

Hana sends the guards away on a false errand and persuades Fred to stay in the house, then walks out the back door, leaving Fred behind. Lena races to the Highlands, now ablaze, and finds Grace hiding in a cellar beneath a burning house. She carries Grace out on a stolen bicycle.

At Back Cove, Lena spots Alex. He tells her he will not let her go again. She says she never stopped loving him but acknowledges the situation is more complicated now. Grace points to the wall, where thousands of people, Invalids, uncured youth, and even some cureds, are tearing it down. Lena takes Grace's hand, climbs the rubble, and begins pulling apart the concrete, watching the border dissolve and a new world emerge beyond it.

In a concluding epilogue told from Alex's perspective, readers learn how he survived the Crypts, escaped during the Incidents when resistance fighters bombed the prison, and tracked Lena through the Wilds by following a clue: a trader carrying a turquoise ring that had once been hers.