With Declan by my side, I tell Dr. Patel about the soldiers searching for me. Then I tell him my name.

"You're Isla Blume? I see why you felt hesitant to tell me. Do you have any idea what they could be planning? Did you overhear anything else from them?" Dr. Patel asks.

"No, just my name."

"I don't mean to sound like a jerk," Declan says, "but why would the government want you?"

I shrug. "I honestly have no idea."

"Were your family members significant people?" Dr. Patel asks. "I'm wondering now if perhaps they made it to the bunker alive, and are asking for you. Were they politicians or diplomats before all of this? Scientists maybe?"

I shake my head. "My grandparents were just farmers, and my parents were kids when it happened, but... do you think my family could still be alive?"

"It's too soon to tell," Dr. Patel says, "and I don't want to get your hopes up. This is a far-fetched idea, but then again, so is sending transmissions for a random survivor to be found."

"What exactly do the transmissions say?" I ask.

"They simply say 'Find Isla Blume.'"

"Patel, maybe we should let her rest. We just threw a lot of information at her," Declan says, resting his bony hand on my shoulder.

"Yes, of course. Isla, I will let our leaders know who you are and that you're fine. They'll likely want to meet with you, so I will be back later to clear you. I've already set up the bed beside your mom so you can be close. Rest for now."

He leaves the room and Declan helps me to my new bed. "Thank you," I tell him. "I thought my head was going to explode."

"No problem."

I pull the blanket over my legs and lie back. "Can I trust you to give me an honest answer?" I ask. He nods. "Am I in danger here?"

"Here, no. He would have moved you down to our detention center on the first floor if you were. But honestly, I don't know what's in store for you. This is a really weird situation."

"Do you think my family could still be alive?"

He frowns. "Maybe, if the government still need bodies to help rebuild, but... the soldiers you told us about were shooting survivors, so I wouldn't get my hopes up. Then again, how else would the government know your name?"

I shake my head and shrug.

He pushes his glasses up the slope of his nose. "Hey so, feel free to say no to this, but if it's cool with you—and only if you're up for it—I'd like to hear the story of what happened to your family. I want to know what it's been like out there for survivors."

I nod. "Okay."

"Okay, cool," he says. He stands to leave.

I laugh. "I can tell you now if you want."

"Oh, okay." He sits back down beside me. "You sure?"

I nod. "I haven't been able to talk about it with anyone." I check to make sure Mom is still sedated. "She never wanted to. I think she didn't want to consider the possibility that they were dead, you know? There would be days when I'd catch her staring into the fields for hours. I think she was waiting for all of them to come back."

He frowns. "I didn't mean to sound so pessimistic before. There's still a chance they could be alive."

"It's okay. It's enough just to be able to talk about it."

"All right, so what happened? Why was it bad timing? Other than the fact that it's always bad when your family is taken. I'm just going to stop talking. I'm making things worse."

I smile. "It's okay. My dad and my uncle—well, he wasn't really my uncle. I grew up with him always in my life. Ben, Ben Crowley. He and my dad were out in the field around sunset, right before the time the Prowlers—the collector droids—usually came around, so they started heading in. You want to know the worst part?" I ask rhetorically. "My dad and Ben were out there talking, because Ben's son Daniel asked me to marry him the night before and they didn't want my mom and Daniel's mom to hear yet."

"You're a baby, though. Marriage?"

I shrug. "Life moves quickly in the apocalypse. Our parents got married at seventeen, so it made sense to us."

"I didn't mean to offend you. I just keep making this worse."

"It's okay, don't worry about it. Anyway, Ben was telling my dad the good news, sort of asking his permission for his son to ask his permission away from my mom and Daniel's mom Eleanor, 'cause they would have freaked out. That's when I heard the screeching gears. The Prowlers. And then, there they were on the horizon: Three walking towers of metal in the field, scanning for life.

"I grabbed my mom from the kitchen, and dragged her back to the front window to see. I'm not sure why I took her there. Maybe so that I would feel safer, or maybe because I hoped that she could do something to stop it all, but neither of us could do anything. We were just... frozen. All I could do was watch as the droids' red beams blinked twice over my dad and Ben. They armed themselves with the rifles they always carried, and waited for the droids' next move. That's when Eleanor ran out of their house screaming. Ben told her to get back in the house, but it was too late, the machines had already found her. Their beams blinked twice over her, and my mom pressed her hand against her mouth to keep from crying. Not a second later, my dad and Ben started shooting at the machines, and even from inside, I could hear the bullets hit against the metal. But the machines didn't stop. They sprung into a gallop, and my dad and Ben ran for the house, looking back every few steps to shoot at the machines."

I take a deep breath before I can continue telling my story, and Declan says, "If it's too much, you can stop."

"No, it's okay, I want to," I say. "Stories are important. You should know what's happening out there. So then all three machines stretched out their arms and opened their claws, running after my dad and Ben. My dad turned around to fire at them again, but that's when one of them wrapped its metal claw around him. One of the clawed fingers hit my dad in the head, knocking him unconscious, and his gun fell to the ground. I couldn't watch it anymore, not after seeing my dad like that. My mom gripped her mouth so tightly that her cheeks were turning white, and she began shaking, trying her best not to scream. I heard the machine's cavity open and shut. I knew that meant my dad was gone. I tried to stay as quiet as I could, and I had almost regained control when I heard two more cavities slam shut, the second joined by Eleanor's scream. I wrapped my arm around my mom, and she sprung up to tuck me beneath her shaking body. We stayed like that under the window as the earth shook with Prowler footsteps. I could hear them stomping through our backyard and past our barn. I could hear them make their way back to the front of the house and back into the field. I whispered to my mom that they were leaving, but then I heard four more shots ring out."

"Daniel?" Declan asks. I nod. "You can stop. Really, you don't have to go on." I shake my head. "You sure?" he asks. I nod again. Despite the tears that have begun rolling down my cheeks, despite the pain, I need to face this. I need to talk about what happened.

"I heard Daniel yelling at the machines through the sound of gears and gun shots, but I couldn't understand what he was saying. I could hear that he was crying, and all I wanted to do was leap up and scream for him to hide, to save himself; but my mom gripped me as tightly as she could and held me to the floor. Then, another slam of metal, and then nothing."

I brush the tears from my cheeks and take a deep breath.

"I'm really sorry, Isla," Declan says. "If we had known what the President would do with the collector droids, we never would have made them. I'm so sorry."

"It's not your fault," I say. "You didn't destroy the world." I wipe my eyes and collect myself. "Anyway, thanks for listening. I really needed that."

He half smiles. "No problem. Thanks for sharing. I had no idea what the collector droids were actually doing. I saw what they brought back, but I had no idea how horrifying it was to live it."

"How horrifying it is," I correct him.

He pats my leg over the blanket and stands to go. "I'll let you get some rest. I need to get back to the lab now anyway. If the leaders let you train in science, request to train under me. We could be plant geeks together. It would be nice, I think, for both of us not to be so alone in that. We botanists got to stick together."

"Yeah, of course," I say.

"See you later, okay?"

"Yeah, see you later," I say, smiling. It feels nice to have someone else to talk to beside Mom. He almost feels like a friend already.

As he exits the room, I roll to my side and watch Mom's heartbeat pulse on the monitor. I can't wait until she wakes up. I need my mom. I need to talk to her about all of this.

When I can't will her awake, I try to rest like Dr. Patel told me to do, but my mind races. Roberts and Cooper, with the help of the government, destroyed the world twenty-five years ago, and I'm on a tank full of people trying to stop them. Not only that, but the people who successfully killed billions of people are now searching for me by name, and I have no idea why.

But maybe, just maybe, it means my family is still alive.