I wake up with tears in my eyes. Our home was destroyed, and Mom... I'm not even sure anymore. The last thing I remember is hitting my head against the cavity wall, and seeing those strangers. I start to panic, and I can see it reflected on the heart monitor. Who were they? They said they were Deathless, but what does that mean? I wonder if they are looking for me too. Whoever they were, they pulled me out of the Prowler, but what if they couldn't get to Mom in time? What if her Prowler got away?

Everything I've ever known, all my memories and all the things I've collected over the years, are gone. If Mom's gone too, I won't have anything left in the entire world. And I don't want to live in that world.

I turn my head from side to side, but it still aches from when I crashed against the Prowler's inner hatch. I can still move it, which is a good sign, but now I see that I'm in an unfamiliar, sterile room. My head rests on a pillow, so I must be on some sort of bed. The windowless walls around me are gray concrete and silver metal pipes stretch across the ceiling. Long wires drape from the ceiling, dangling glass lights. Directly in front of my bed is the only door, a large metal sheet with a pad of numbers above the handle. I am covered in a white blanket, but I can feel that my clothes have been replaced with some sort of stiff fabric night shirt. Everything here is so different from home. There's no character, no love, no color. Just grey and white nothing.

Beside me are two flat screens, one of which is connected to my chest by long, thin wires, monitoring my heart rate with lines and peaks, while the other screen just seems to be an unfinished profile of who I am. It reads: "Unidentified woman. Approximate age: 15."

Seventeen, actually.

"Condition: Stable. Ailment: Head trauma."

I try to get up, but the pain from my head is too overwhelming. From this position, I can't really see past the screens, only that the room continues on with other beds in it. It reminds me of a photograph I saw in a book about World War II of a long hospital room with lots of beds and wounded soldiers in it. Daniel and I looked through that book a lot when we were younger—I was ten and he was eleven—which was why we started playing soldiers. We would run off past the fields, into the woods, and toward the train tracks, where we'd shoot at each other from opposite sides of the track. I never knew who I was supposed to be—the Nazis or the Allied forces—so I'm pretty sure we both imagined we were the good guys. That's how it always is in reality too, though, isn't it?

Daniel and I would bring our slingshots and load them with tiny pebbles we found along the tracks. Dad made them for us and warned us that they were serious weapons, and that they were not to be played with, which of course put the thought into our heads to shoot at each other. That's why we would always run so far away to play: We never wanted our parents to catch us. Of course, ultimately, one of us would shoot the other in the face or the neck with one of the pebbles, and we would have to stop playing. After a while, Daniel thought up a new game: Army hospital. Whoever got hurt in any given game of soldiers would lie down, automatically transitioning the game from soldiers to hospital, as the other person would then have to take care of the wounded soldier.

One day I accidentally shot Daniel right in the center of his forehead. He squealed in pain and dropped his slingshot, falling back into the weeds. When I found him, he was rolling back and forth, trying to hold back his tears, and cupping his hands, darkened from the summer sun, over his forehead. I ran to the edge of the woods and tore a fistful of cool leaves from the shady trees, feeling guilty for having actually hurt him. Whenever either of us would get shot, we would use the leaves as makeshift ice packs. I pressed the leaves to his already darkening bruise, and even though he was the one in pain, he smiled and told me not to worry.

I wish he were here now to comfort me, because the floor rumbles beneath me and I recognize the faint sound of tank wheels moving.

They got me. Whoever these people are, they have a tank, like the soldiers looking for me. I start to panic, so I push through the pain and roll up to sit on the bed. Now that I can see past the screens, I see the row of four other beds, the furthest of which is occupied by someone wearing bandages over their chest.

Please let that be her.

I squint to read the screen: "Unidentified woman. Approximate age: 35. Condition: Stable. Ailment: Shallow puncture wound below right clavicle."

Mom.

I rip the wires from my chest and leap to my feet. My ankle buckles, swollen to twice its normal size, and when I look past the edge of the gray night shirt, I can see I'm covered in bruises.

Once I am steady on my feet, I limp as fast as I can to Mom. When I reach her side, I lean against the mattress to hold myself up and look down at her. Her face rests peacefully with only a few cuts and scrapes, but blood soaks through the bandages over her chest.

I wrap my hand around her arm and give her a squeeze. No response. I gently shake her, but still nothing. I lean my mouth to her ear. "Mom," I whisper. "Wake up. We need to go." Still, she doesn't move.

The monitor mimics the beating of her heart, so I know she's still alive. But why isn't she moving? I crawl into the bed, gently scooting her over so I'm not hurting her. I focus on her heart beat. I feeling it against my body, and watch it dance on the screen, when I hear beeping from behind the door. Who knows who it is or what they will do to us, so I jump from Mom's side and guard her sleeping body. She's always protected me. Now I have to do the same for her.

One last beep from behind the door, then a loud clicking of gears, and the door opens. A dark skinned man, his face nearly the same tone as Daniel's, with glasses and a white coat enters to the room, his eyes glued to a clipboard in his hands. Like in our hospital game. He looks up from his clipboard, expecting me to be in my bed, but when he sees I'm not, I get his attention from the end of the room. "Who are you?" I ask.

"You should really be resting," he says, glancing down at his clipboard to write something. He walks toward us and sits at the foot of the bed across from me, setting the clipboard on his lap. "I need to collect some information from you."

My muscles tighten with nerves. "Are you going to kill me?" I ask.

He laughs. "No, we don't kill refugees. You will be cared for, and our hope is that you will decide to join us once you're fully recuperated." He looks at me like I'm supposed to react, but when I don't, he continues: "You're going to be fine. You've sustained a few injuries including a sprained ankle, some bruising, and a head trauma. Your vital signs are stable; however, I recommend that you remain in your bed to recuperate. If you would like, we can move you closer to your friend—your mother, yes?—but before we can do that, I need to get some information from you including your name, age, and—"

"No," I spit, my body pulsing with nervous energy.

"Excuse me?" he asks, adjusting his glasses.

I try to stay strong. "I'm not telling you anything until you tell me who you are and where I am."

He clears his throat. "Okay. My name is Dr. Rumi Patel. I'm a medical professional on the rebel tank where you are now being housed. It's called the Immortal. It was a model, developed in the government bunker, and stolen by the rebels, including myself, when we escaped. We call ourselves the Deathless. You are now in our care. Nearly all survivors we find react as you do now. Are you aware of the global nuclear war that decimated the earth?"

I nod my head to seem strong, trying my best to suppress my extreme surprise. Global nuclear war? I had no idea. All my parents and the Crowleys ever told me was that there was a nuclear blast that took out everything around us. But everything on the entire Earth?

Dr. Patel smiles again. "It's quite alright to admit you weren't aware," he says. "Many refugees aren't. Before the nuclear war, international relations were tense, and the globe was on the verge of a major environmental and economic collapse. NASA and an organization known as Roberts and Cooper co-funded a mission to colonize an Earth-like planet Janus in an effort to create an alternate plan for our species' future. That's what we were all told. Those of us who worked for the government participated in emergency drills, but one day it wasn't a drill. They injected us with a substance one of our Deathless leaders Dr. Ovis and the lead scientist with the government created together. The substance helped preserve us in a cryogenic state inside an underground bunker while a chain of nuclear bombs strategically hit every major city in the US, which led to a worldwide nuclear winter. Billions of people died."

I wonder if Mom knew how serious the blast was, but I doubt it. She was only ten when it happened. I imagine what she must have experienced. The fires, the screams, the sweeping blast of nuclear energy that follow an explosion of that size. All the lives lost... I nearly vomit thinking about it, but swallow my breath to keep it down.

"After we became reanimated a few years ago, we discovered that Roberts and Cooper orchestrated the entire apocalypse alongside our government," Dr. Patel continues, and I am pulled back into his story. It all seems like something out of an H.G. Wells novel. "That's when we left and became the Deathless rebels." As he finishes telling me this, he clicks his pen and returns his attention to his clipboard. "Now, I'd like to get a statement from you regarding what happened to you prior to being found."

I finally catch my breath, enough to mumble, "Wait. I need a minute to process this."

In my mind, I always imagined the end of the world being an accident or something, like some goof accidentally leaning on a red button somewhere. Aside from the Nomads, I couldn't—and still can't—imagine anyone knowingly murdering so many people. Knowingly beckoning the apocalypse and welcoming it to Earth with open arms. How could anyone, even the most monstrous of us, do something like that?

The familiar warmth of anger fills my cheeks and burrows deep into my chest, but I clench my jaw in an effort to force it away. "Does the government have soldiers?" I ask.

He clicks his pen away and rests the clipboard on his lap. "Yes. Why do you ask?"

"In green and brown uniforms?"

"Yes?"

I breathe some of the anger away. "They killed an entire town of people. They were looking for someone."

"Yes, a survivor named Isla Blume."

My arteries constrict. He has no idea the survivor they're looking for is sitting in front of him.

"They killed an entire town trying to find her," I repeat, hearing my volume increase with each word, but I can't control it anymore. "After they killed an entire world." My head begins to throb, so I let it fall into my hands. The first I've relaxed since waking up.

After a few moments of silence, Dr. Patel clears his throat. "If I could get your statement...."

"Sure, yeah, whatever," I say, lifting my head and pushing my hair back from my face. My jaw still clenches with residual anger, but I have to move past it. I have to hold myself together for Mom. "But first, I need to know my mom and I will be safe. No matter what I tell you. I need you to promise not to hurt us."

"I promise. As I said, the Deathless don't hurt refugees." Dr. Patel clicks his pen again, and presses it to his paper. "Now, I'd like to begin by asking you about what happened with the collector droids."

"Collector droids?"

"Yes, the large robots that captured you in their collecting compartment—"

"What do they do?" I interrupt. He knows about the Prowlers, maybe he can tell me what happened to Daniel, Dad, and the Crowleys.

"Well, they were developed to collect living specimens and bring them back to the government bunker. They were meant to be an instrument of good, of reconstruction, but they're now being used to collect survivors."

"What happens to people who get collected?"

"Most suffocate in the chamber," he says with assurance. Before, when I thought about Daniel being gone, I tried not to imagine his last moments. I always just imagined him being around me, being in the wind that passed over my skin, watching over me. Now I can't stop myself from thinking about him and his parents and Dad choking for air, scratching at the metal for hope. I want to throw up.

"But if the droid is equipped with an air chamber, which the later models are, then the person would likely survive the trip to the government bunker, where they are being kept. You're lucky the scientists found you when they did," Dr. Patel continues. "I was told both you and your friend were in chambers that weren't properly equipped to sustain life."

"The scientists? No, two people in goggles and hard hats saved me."

He laughs. "Those were two of our rebel leaders. They are scientists, I assure you. Most of us here are."

"Scientists?"

"Yes. Now, if you could continue about what happened with the collector droids."

"Sure, so we followed a convoy of soldier tanks from the town they destroyed back to our house. They were checking all the houses along the way for survivors. They found our guns and my garden, so they left the droids behind to take us, I guess. It took my mom first, so I tried to fight them off. That's when they took me, too." He's writing everything I say on the clipboard. "Why do you need to know?" I ask.

"Information on the collector droids' behavior provides insight into government plans," he says, without looking up from his writing. "How did you attempt to fight off the collector droids? I was told that one was found already malfunctioning."

"Well, that was because our tub fell on it," I continue. "But I used my slingshot to shoot magnets at the others."

"Magnets?" There is a twinge of suspicion in his voice, and the last thing I want is for him to be suspicious of me. The more suspicious he is, the more closely he'll watch me, and who knows what these rebels want. That's how it always worked with our parents. The more they thought that Daniel and I might secretly be dating, the more they would spy on us.

"Is that wrong?" I ask, playing dumb.

He opens his mouth as if to question me, but doesn't make a sound. "Our tank, the Immortal, is equipped with weapons we've specially engineered to combat the collector droids, which use magnetic energy. How did you know to use magnets?"

"I read a book on electromagnetism back home, and I remembered something about magnets interrupting electric fields."

I'm being modest. I know exactly why I used magnets—because magnets throw off the electromagnetic field created in an electric circuit—but I don't want to give up all my secrets just yet.

"It didn't work when I shot the Prowler, though," I continue. "The magnets were too weak."

"The Prowler?"

"Oh, yeah, that's what we call the collector droids."

"Okay," he says, writing down the last of my words. "And now I just need your personal information."

"Well, like I said, this is my mom, her name is Beatrice—" I'm about to say our last name, but I stop myself. They don't need to know she's a Blume. At least not until I know what exactly the government wants with me. "She's thirty-five, and I'm actually seventeen. My birthday was last week."

"Happy belated birthday to you," he says without looking up. "And what is your name?"

My mind goes blank—I didn't think this far in advance—so I spit out the first name that pops into my head: "Scout Finch."

He stops writing and looks up at me over the rim of his glasses. "Scout Finch? As in the protagonist of Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird?"

Crap. "Yeah... it's my favorite."

"So you named yourself Scout Finch?"

"Well, it's my mom's favorite too."

He sets the clipboard back on his lap. "You can tell me your real name. You don't have to be afraid."

I swallow hard and feel my resolve breaking. "I don't know you, and I have no idea if I can really trust you. Until a few months ago, I believed that I was just a survivor like everybody else I'd ever met. Then the droid things started coming, and I thought, there has to be something bigger than this. But I could have never imagined a tank of rebel scientists from before the apocalypse, fighting against the government. So please... don't tell me how to feel. I've been afraid for months, and that's not going to stop just because you say so."

He frowns. "I'll tell you what, I'll have someone show you around so you can see what the Deathless are like for yourself. Then, if you feel as though you can trust us, you can tell us your name and stay. If you still don't trust us, we'll stop, and you and your mom can leave."

I think about the latter. Leave and go where? We have no home. We'd be Nomads. I take a deep breath. What other options do I have?

"Fine."