Isla Blume is dead.

That's all Sergeant Major Belinda Lawrence needs to know, and that's exactly what Ian told her to buy us some time before Roberts' crew lands. When they do, we will be there. We have to be if we ever want to end the fighting. Until then, I am officially dead, catalogued among the many who died in the attack. Like Nina.

Once Roberts' crew lands, we will reveal ourselves to the Sergeant Major and her army as we stand to support them against whatever steps off that ship. If we can convince the Sergeant Major that Gunther's plans for world domination are immoral and that our lives are meaningful, then we can stop the war before it begins.

But if not... at least we fought for the freedom of our minds while we were alive. Of course, I never express my fears out loud. People look to me now more than ever. They can't see me falter, even though I'm broken.

We are in position on the mountain. I used to look at these mountains from the window of Daniel and my room, and I'd watch the birds fly over the peaks. Now I do the opposite. I watch the estate, and I track the movement of Sergeant Major Lawrence, Gunther, Ian, and their troops as they raid the empty fortress. If I squint, I can even see the red walls inside Daniel and my old room. It makes me sick.

We are camouflaged in the changing autumn brush. We wear brown, maroon, and gold clothing, and our faces are striped with brown branch-like lines painted across us. Flynn O'Neil's hand hovers over a red button, a literal manifestation of Gunther's threat to me during our first meeting. If O'Neil presses it, his geothermal energy system will overheat, causing the entire estate to explode. It's our plan B in case we are discovered.

"Do you see anything Isla?" Daniel asks. This is his first mission as a commanding officer, since Declan had already appointed a new General after the bunker attack. Back with our people, Daniel is just a soldier, and that's fine with me. He doesn't need any extra attention. But he's done well in training, and the General allowed him to spearhead this recon mission. He hides his anxiety well, but I know what to look for. He taps his middle finger to his thumb in rapid succession and licks his lips as he waits for my response.

"I'm not getting anything right now," I say. My mom, who stands right beside me, hands me an eye mask, and I secure it over my eyes. My mom helps me to lie back in the brush so I can concentrate. My dad would have helped too, but she insisted he stay back at the new camp with Declan, Eleanor, and Celia. To rest, she said, but I think she just wanted to know he would be safe. This isn't a fighting mission, it's recon, so he agreed without argument.

I let the darkness behind my eyelids and the mask lull me into the implant. It's damaged to the point that it won't control me, but rather, I can control it. I let my eyes roll back in my head and relinquish control to the network. I feel my consciousness slip into the airwaves and sneak into Ian's mind. Like hacking a computer, I now have access to all his files, including those stored currently in his occipital lobe, his visual processing center.

There's a bright light shining into Ian's eyes, but then it falls, and I see Gunther standing in front of him with a small flashlight in his hand, peering into Ian's pupils. "She really got you good, huh?" he asks, running his eyes over Ian's lingering bruises from our fight.

"Yeah, stupid Deathless bitch," Ian says, referring to me. I'm glad I'm in his brain and can feel his heart rate increase with the lie, otherwise I'd wonder if he really meant what he said. I wonder what a lot of people will think of me once they hear about what happened after they left. Once they hear about how I almost lied to those pilots. I almost helped Gunther kill them, and I hate myself for that. Why would anyone else feel differently? And I haven't even talked to Declan about Hugh yet, or about how he died right beside me. Will Declan wonder if I could have stopped him like Gunther wonders? I am terrified for everyone to know about what happened after they escaped the estate.

"Mm hm," Gunther hums, still squinting into Ian's eyes. Then he walks away, onto the next soldier we planted in their ranks.

Ian looks around the ballroom, where they are lined up against the windowed wall. From a distance, Sergeant Major Belinda Lawrence examines the remains of Gunther's morbid Rube Goldberg machine behind Ian and the soldiers, and lifts her soles tentatively in the remaining blood marks on the floor, blood from my friends and comrades.

"Isla Blume did all of this?" she asks, her English accent dry in disbelief.

Gunther spins on his heels to face her. "Yes. She was a... monster," he says, then turns to the line of soldiers to watch their faces. He's waiting to see if I've gotten into another implant or if I'm really dead, I know it, but I feel Ian's face freeze in certainty.

"If you knew she could still be a Deathless rebel, why would you allow her to construct this machine?" she asks, gesturing to Gunther's Rube Goldberg machine of destruction. "Why give her so many allowances?"

Gunther stumbles for an answer, "We... We gave her the benefit of the doubt, because she was in love with one of our scientists."

She smiles skeptically. "The Roberts and Cooper I know wouldn't have given a damn about a teenage rebel's love life. Maybe it's best Cooper is gone now," she says, allowing her voice to trail off as she moves her hand over the golden banister along the stairs. "I assure you Mr. Quail, under my leadership, there will be no mischief. Roberts' crew lands in a few weeks, and we will be prepared."

Despite her alignment with Roberts and Cooper, I almost want to shake her hand for putting Gunther in his place, and I feel Ian's hand twitch with the urge. From the corner of Ian's eye, I see that Gunther noticed the movement.

"Were all the rebels killed?" the Sergeant Major asks.

Gunther is walking briskly toward Ian, so I begin to pull out of his brain. "Yes," I hear Gunther say before he re-examines his eyes with the light, and I am gone.

I rip the eye mask from my face and frantically retrieve the disruptor headband from my supplies pack. My mom and Daniel created disruptor patches for all the implanted survivors to wear instead of the hard drives that are normally plugged into the incision, so that no one could hack into our brains. Celia connected my disruptor patches to a spiked headband for me. I try not to think about the spiked spear that killed Nina, and just support Celia. She thinks the spikes are both fashionable and practical in battle. I don't want to ruin her entire design scheme with my insecurities.

"What's going on?" Daniel asks.

"Should I...?" O'Neil asks, still hovering over the button, beads of sweat pooling on his forehead despite the cool air.

"No, don't. Gunther told her we're all dead, but he's suspicious of Ian."

"The Sergeant Major isn't?" my mom asks.

"No. She seems suspicious of Gunther, though. She knows not to take him seriously. It will be difficult for him to do anything under her supervision."

Daniel smiles. "Good."

"What do we do now?" O'Neil asks, disabling his detonator and breathing a sigh of relief.

"Now we wait until Gunther ruins it for himself," I say, channeling the strength of my lost friends. I don't have to feel confident, I just have to sound like I am. I have to get back to my core self, the Isla who is honorable and smart and compassionate, and the best way to get there is to pretend I'm already there.

"I'll check in with Ian from time to time," I continue, "and we will wait. Then we'll surprise them at Roberts' landing. Gunther wants to destroy the Roberts crew. We can finally show Sergeant Major Lawrence that we are a force of good when we support her in keeping them alive."

Daniel straightens his posture and fills his lungs with confidence as he turns back to the Deathless soldiers hiding in the brush behind us, just in case. "Move out men. At nightfall, we'll head back to camp," he commands.

We hike to the other side of the mountain and wait at a basecamp we built yesterday. No fires allowed, just in case Belinda Lawrence and Gunther fly over us when returning to England, though that wouldn't make much sense. Still, we need to seem as dead as possible until we are ready to meet them at the spacecraft landing in a few weeks, so they don't attack us before we're ready. We don't want to take any risks.

I've been inside Gunther's mind. I snuck in one night while he was dreaming, which is probably why he has a feeling I'm still alive, lurking in someone's mind. While I was inside his head, I saw his dream, his plan to use the remaining Prowlers and drones to overcome both Lawrence's army and the remaining crew with Roberts. Let Gunther worry about where I am, I think. I won't give myself away.

As the temperature hits below freezing that night, my mom passes out solar-powered electric blankets to keep us warm, and we hide our heat signatures beneath forest-built shelters. There's no privacy here, we're all together like a row of logs, but I still hold Daniel's hand beneath the blankets. He stares back at me, his face unchanging, and even though he would usually squeeze my hand, his grip is loose.

I give him a peck on the tip of his nose, since, on top of everything else, things are still strange between us. He's been strange. Not sleeping, not laughing, not holding me. He seems depressed, but he won't tell me why. I know he's still sore about the baby his mom is carrying, but he forgave me. It wasn't my fault, after all. I'm not the person who combined my DNA with Nate's in an artificial egg. Hopefully now all his anger is directed at Gunther, as it should be. As most of mine is, split between Gunther and myself.

I release his hand, roll over, and close my eyes to sleep, my mind guarded by the headband.

As soon as the sun rises the next day, we gather our things to check back on the estate, and by the time we reach the lookout where we stood yesterday, Belinda Lawrence, Gunther, and their troops are gone. I close my eyes and slip the headband from its place.

Ian? I think, and he opens his eyes to let me see the hull of an airplane. We're gone, it's safe, I feel him tell me, so I pull the headband back into place and open my eyes.

"Okay," I say, "it's safe to go."

We arm ourselves and start down the mountain. It takes a few hours for us to descend and cross the plain toward the estate, and in the silent time, I try to focus on my footsteps and the crackling of leaves beneath my boots. It's all I can do to ignore the feeling of the sky closing in on me.

I don't want to go back to the estate, but I have to. We have to find what Gunther used to detonate the planes in case he plans to use it on Roberts' spacecraft. I hate Roberts, even without knowing him, but just as the people in the estate were mostly innocent, I am sure the people on board are too. Besides, I told myself I would watch this place burn. I intend to do that. I have to. I can't know that this place still exists in a world we're rebuilding.

As we cross through the air field, Daniel kicks one of his detectors and it echoes hollowly. It's the only sound any of us have made in the hours since we began walking. I look back at him over my shoulder, and he shrugs. "Whoops," he says dryly. I continue forward.

We cross the crumbling wall into the yard where bodies of broken Prowlers lie, and I lock a magnetic ball into the slingshot my mom and Declan made for me. With our weapons loaded and ready, we enter into the foyer, just in case someone or something was left behind without Ian's knowing.

The ballroom, stained in blood and dirt, is littered with fallen autumn leaves that have snuck in with the fall winds. It's only been abandoned for a week or so, but as it appears now, one might think it was forgotten long before then.

Daniel whispers to the soldiers, "Fan out. Check the rooms. Shoot if necessary."

My skin crawls at his command, but it's his job. I told him I would support him, now I have to keep my word.

My mom comes behind me and takes my hand. "This is where you were kept?" she asks. I nod. "You're safe now, Isla. You know that, right?"

I think about it for a moment. "No. We're not safe. They're still out there."

I take a step toward the grandfather clock at the ballroom's entrance, and I see Flynn standing in the doorway opening where the clock once stood. He moves his boot over the blood puddle at the opening. "Is this where Nina died?" he asks, looking up at me with glassy eyes.

I nod. "Yeah."

He sniffs, biting his lip. "Well then." He reaches to his back pocket, and retrieves a stem of purple wildflowers he's been stashing there since we were at the base of the mountain. "I'll leave these here." He kneels down to rest the flowers on the blood-stained floor, kisses his fingertips, and presses them to the floor. He doesn't move his gaze from the floor, not even when he begins to walk away. He mumbles into the marble, "Better salvage what I can from the lab."

"C'mon," I whisper to my mom and pull her toward where the grandfather clock once stood. I tiptoe past the flowers and into the room where Gunther kept his secret work.

"What is this room?" my mom asks.

"Gunther's secret lab."

I stumble into the room, now nearly all red with blood, and I find that his work is missing. His tapes, his documents, his binders, all of it; but when I turn around, I see a closed envelope taped to the door frame. "Isla Blume" is written on its face.

"Isla...," my mom says cautiously, but I have already torn the envelope down. I rip it open, ignoring the fact that the sealant is still wet with Gunther's saliva. They must not have left long ago.

Inside is a packet of papers bound together with a paper clip. I read the first page:

My Dear Little Monster,

I know you're reading this. I know you're still alive. I feel you. That's what happens when you hate someone so passionately: You feel their presence, even when they're not around. You understand this, I'm sure. You won't feel satisfied until my presence is gone from your life either. Perhaps we should both kill ourselves. Get it over with. But then... where would the fun be in that?

Because I know you so well, I've left something behind for you. A distraction? A cause? Whatever you need to get through the day and still pretend like you aren't the reason Declan's beloved is dead. Does he know yet? I'm sure you've told him, but were you honest with Declan? I'm sure you told him the same lies you told me. Hugh wouldn't have killed himself just because of my goals. You must have said something to him, and I won't forget this.

Don't worry. I'll find you. Whether you read this or not, I'll find you. Enjoy the time you have left. Maybe now is the time to finally be the girlfriend Daniel deserves, unless you want to disappoint him like you've disappointed me. You were supposed to be something special, the girl we all searched for. Honestly, is there anything about you that isn't disappointing?

Oh well. Cheers.

-G

"What does it say?" my mom asks.

I swallow hard. Even from far away Gunther's words can slice through me like a scalpel driving into my brain, and my head begins to throb. I drop the letter and press my palms against my temples, as if I could squish out the pain. I hold my eyes shut, so tightly that I begin to see swirls of dots and lightning behind my eyelids, but at least I can't the words "disappointment" and "monster" mocking me from the page.

My mom must have read the letter by now, because her arm is around me and her voice is shrill. "Who the hell does this guy think he is? He's blaming all his own problems on you, but Isla," she says, pulling my hands from my head. I open my eyes and let the swirls fade. "You are not to blame. Hugh is a grown man who made a choice. Gunther is in denial of that. And you, of all things, are not a disappointment. You have been the greatest gift your father and I could have ever asked for, and you have saved so many lives. You are worth every accolade you've been given. Do you understand me?"

White noise clouds her words like a ringing in my ear. Almost like the blur of sound after Hugh shot himself.

"Isla, do you hear me?"

I shake the noises from my head until it's clear. "Yes."

"You are not what Gunther Quail says you are. You are Isla Blume, my daughter, and you have never disappointed me."

"Okay," I say, nodding my head. "What else was in the envelope?"

I distract us both by reaching for the other papers, and I begin to read. Names of women... Carriers... DNA combinations. "It's the list of pregnancies," I say, my voice filling with brightness. "He gave me the list of pregnancies."

"Why would he give you that?" she asks. Her eyes light up in thought. "It's because you and Nate were combined for Eleanor's baby. He's taunting you. Isla, you can't let him get to you, he's just trying to—"

"—Mom, I know. Don't worry. He thinks this is going to break me, but it's not. He just gave me answers I can bring back to camp. We can work with this, start talking to the Carriers, and create a list of babies who may need home placements."

"Eleanor's been begging for a job," she suggests, taking out her electronic pad to scan the list.

"She'd be perfect for it," I say as the names lock into the device. I tuck the papers into the envelope again and place it back where Gunther left it for me.

"You want to head out now?" my mom asks. "I think Daniel is out in the yard checking for the weapons Gunther used on the planes."

"Go ahead," I say, leading the way out of Gunther's secret lab. "I have some looking around to do."

She holds my shoulder, stopping me just before I re-enter the ballroom. "I don't want you to be alone."

"No, Mom, it's okay. I promise. I need the time alone... if that's okay."

"As long as you're really fine."

I smile. "I promise."

She sighs, then slips past me, giving me a small hug as she exits. "I love you, Isla."

"I love you too, Mom." I pass the white room, now speckled with blood. Turn away, I tell myself. Don't see the blood.

"Back here," I yell, once I pass the salon. A group of soldiers march toward me. I point toward the wooden door that leads down to the training area and the Caregivers' cells.

"Ms. Blume?" one of the soldiers asks.

"The military equipment and training center is down there. Check for any underground weapon systems."

"Yes ma'am," he says, and they file down the stairs. Old Isla would laugh at the soldiers calling her ma'am, but New Isla just nods and continues toward the foyer.

I smooth my hand over the banister, my fingers dipping into scorch marks left by fiery bits of books from the explosion in Gunther's official office. I shuffle through torn sections of great literature, muddying beautifully random words beneath my boot soles. I bend down as I climb the stairs, more like I'm climbing a ladder, so I can read the words, breathe them in, soak them into my palms.

"...friend of hers..."

"...hear these ill news..."

"...quite distinctive, actually..."

I pick up my favorites and stuff them into my pockets. Words. Some of the only things that can bring me comfort. Words and Daniel. And my family. And friends. The list gets longer, but the list of troubles gets longer too.

My pockets overflow with words by the time I reach the top of the staircase, but they can't comfort me enough to forget what happened here. Hugh's blood on my skin and the shot ringing in my ears. The memory freezes me with anxiety, as suddenly all I can see is red, from the carpet to the blood stains to the cherry wood. The color churns in my stomach, knocking this morning's dehydrated breakfast around my belly, and then it leaps to my throat.

I sprint into the Comforter bathroom at the end of the hall, and, not being able to make it to the toilet, vomit into the sink. I empty my body until only sour acidic bile spills out. Yellowgreen. I turn the white and gold faucet, cup some water in my palms, and rinse my mouth out with a few swishes. I splash more water in my face and look into the mirror.

This is the first time I've seen myself since I was in the drain, when I was speckled in Hugh's blood. The burns on my face are healing well, and with my long sleeves, I can pretend I have no other injuries, inside or out. I can pretend there aren't computer parts beneath my skin and tucked into my brain.

But my hair... it's red. No, orange, I tell myself, but Nate used to call me Red before I threatened that nickname away. I swallow air to drown the acid, and cup more water into my palms. Only this time, I don't drink it. I spill it over my head, and let the water darken my hair, as beads drip onto the armor Celia made for me. The camouflage face paint runs down my cheeks, and brown splotches fall into the sink. I drag my palms from my cheeks to my hairline, pulling the brown paint into my hair. Between the water and the face paint, my hair almost looks brunette. Anything but red will do.

I catch my breath, steady myself, and trudge into the Comforter's quarters. It's dark, and the absence of light casts a grey shadow over the old quarters until I trigger the motion sensors, and the lights switch on with a clank. Within a moment, the holographic television flickers awake, resuming the same black and white film it played before. The audio plays clearly in the silence: "If we stop breathing, we'll die. If we stop fighting our enemies, the world will die."

"Oh my God, I get it," I say beneath my breath. I know the movie's right. What's left of this world needs to survive, and we need to fight to make that possible. I'm just sick of hearing it.

I block out the conversation and focus on the task at hand: retrieving Nina's guitar. Other than a polished teardrop shape around the sound hole, the guitar body is worn and scratched, especially around the top where Nina's skin rested when she played. Even the varnish has been worn away there, exposing the blotchy grey wood from which it was made.

I sit on the bed and position the guitar as I saw Nina do, and as I've seen in books. Letting my fingers fall loose, I strum over the strings, each note higher than the one before. I wish I knew how to play, or even sing for that matter. I've sung for fun before, but it's never been good. Squeaky and out of pitch is how I would describe it, but now, in solitude, I try. I try to be better, for Nina.

I strum again, this time pressing my left fingertips to the neck. The sound is off, disjointed and dissonant, but still I sing the only words I still remember from Nina's song, "My ghost I've seen." Strum. "We're ghosts I'm told." Strum. "It's all a dream."

"Nina wrote that," Flynn says from the doorway, startling me. "Not quite those notes, but those are her lyrics, right?"

I smile in embarrassment and set the guitar down. "Yeah. I'm sorry you had to hear that."

He chuckles and starts walking toward me. "No bother. I miss her too. She and I had an interesting relationship." He takes a seat beside me. "I knew she wasn't interested in me as I was in her, and she knew that too. Those are always the hardest situations. The heart is tricky."

He moves the guitar onto his lap and presses the body to his. He carefully positions his fingers on the pearlescent dots on the neck. He strums, moving the tuning pegs around a bit to get the sound just right, and then begins playing an actual melody. He taps his foot as the song continues, and I catch myself smiling.

Before I can join in, he stops, chuckles, and relaxes his arm over the body. "I used to play a lot as a boy. Thought it would attract women into my life, but what they don't tell you is you spend most of your time locked in your room learning the songs, and less time actually playing them. And when you do eventually gather the courage to stand in front of an audience, it's likely there will be a lot of old, miserable blokes at the one bar that will accept such a novice player as yourself, and hardly any ladies will notice you're playing at all."

"Is this from experience?" I ask, smiling.

"Yes, unfortunately. But I garnered a healthy fanbase of middle aged men in my time." He waits for my reaction and then laughs to himself. "The life of an artist."

"Did you ever teach Nina any songs?"

"Of course. Music was her currency, she said. I taught her a lot. For a while, music was the only way I could manage to keep her in the same room as me. Other than Cooper's mandatory meals, of course." He sighs. "That man. Well, I suppose he wasn't a man at all, just... a ghost, Nina would say. That's what happens to a person once they've lost all they love. They become a shell of metal, incapable of moving without provocation, all but empty inside. I'm fighting against the shell. I feel it creeping around me, but I haven't given up the fight."

I'm too scared to admit I'm feeling it too, as if saying it out loud would allow the metals to start their war against my bones. Instead, I say, "Keep the guitar. It will remind you of your... wholeness, so you don't become an empty shell. Besides, there are far more ladies at the camp, and they are probably all in need of some entertainment. You can really grow your fanbase there."

He smiles. "Are you sure? Not about the fanbase, of course, about the guitar."

I brush my fingers against the tuning pegs. "Yeah, keep it."

For a moment, it looks as if he might cry. "Thank you. That's a very kind gesture."

I shrug. "It means more to you than me."

He thanks me again, and together, we leave the Comforter's quarters. I focus on Flynn's dark brown hair to avoid the red, but in my peripheral vision, I track the door numbers. Just as we are about to pass room 6, I tell him to go on without me. There are a few more things I need to get.

The door creaks open, and again, I try my best to ignore the red.

The explosions must have shaken the floor so hard that the chandelier fell from its place in the ceiling, because the crystal daggers sprawl in broken shards on the bed. I turn away from it and open the dresser drawer to retrieve the slingshot Celia made for Daniel—mine was lost in my final fight before being converted—and I lift her painting of the exploding tiger lily from the wall. The other painting, the one with all the reaching hands, can stay where it belongs. I stuff the slingshot handle into my bra and grab the tiger lily painting by its frame.

Before leaving our beautiful room of death, I pass my eyes over all of it—the window, the bed, the chandelier, the red walls—and I'm filled with anger. It rises from my chest to my cheeks, but instead of a scream erupting from my throat, I spit. Right into the heart of the room.

As I descend the staircase back into the word littered foyer, I hear Daniel yelling from outside in the yard, and then I hear a loud gong. I hurry down the last of the stairs and run straight out through the main doors of the foyer.

"Daniel, stop it!" I hear my mom yell as the gongs continue. They are just past the outside wall.

I drop the painting, and instinctively pull Daniel's slingshot from my shirt. As I run into the yard, I hunch over to pick up a rock, a little too big for the sling, but I pull it back anyway. When I clear the wall, I find my mom screaming at Daniel, all our soldiers around them to watch the scene. "I said, stop!" my mom yells.

Daniel holds one of his detectors up over his shoulder. He swings it down against another one that's still planted in the ground. With each hit a loud clash of metal echoes across the plain.

"You don't know what Gunther did, now stop it!" my mom continues to yell, but Daniel is so consumed in rage, it's as if he can't hear anything. I've never seen him so angry.

I aim the rock toward Daniel and release. It strikes his neck, snapping him out of his rage. He drops the detector and holds his neck. He looks toward me and yells, "What was that?"

"Calm down," I say, feeling the eyes of our soldiers, my mom, and Flynn bearing down on us.

"They were my detectors!" he screams, so I scream back, "Calm down!" My throat is raw with anger, and his nostrils are flared. It's almost like a real enactment of our games of soldiers.

He catches his breath, panting wildly as he scans the faces of everyone who has gathered in the yard. Then, as if his legs give out beneath him, he falls to the ground and begins to sob. I've never seen him so emotional, especially now that everyone on our team is now crowded around us. It frightens me. What has gotten into him?

I hand the slingshot off to my mom, and approach Daniel, placing my arm around him. He swats me away with a forceful push. "Hey," I say, raising my voice, though it's still hoarse. "Watch yourself. I'm here to help." I turn around and see the soldiers. They're confused and possibly embarrassed that their mission commander is falling apart on the ground, so I move my body to block Daniel from their view. "Everyone's here, Daniel," I whisper. "Calm down."

He catches his breath and mutters, "I'm sorry," over and over again.

"Stop, stop," I tell him. "What is wrong? Why are you freaking out?"

"I'm sorry I pushed you," he says.

"You lost yourself for a second," I say. I rip some of the cool grass from the ground, and press the handful to his neck where I hit him. "I'm sorry I shot you. I had to stop you. What's going on?"

He takes a deep breath and looks up at me finally. His face is drenched in tears and his eyes are red with solar flares of veins stemming from his irises. "My detectors were the weapons Gunther used to kill the pilots and explode their planes. He must have reprogrammed them to expel the energy they were capturing in a pulse, instead of storing it. That's probably why he wanted me to create them in the first place." His nostrils flare again and his lips quiver. "I'm the bad guy. I told you, this is why I didn't want to continue with science. I didn't want to create anything that could be used for evil, and now...? My detectors are responsible—no, I am responsible—for the deaths of those pilots. How many deaths?"

I shrug, though I know. Ten pilots died, but I don't tell Daniel. I can't. He doesn't need to know.

"We have to make sure these detectors are destroyed," he says. "I know what he's going to use them for. He is going to use them to destroy Roberts' spaceship. We have to give them a fair chance."

I smile. "That sounds familiar."

Daniel doesn't miss a beat to respond, "We can't allow Gunther to do this."

"We will stop it. We will find the detectors, and we will stop him." I glance around to all our people, unsure what to do. "Let's go," I whisper. "C'mon, I'll help you up. Explain to them what that was about and apologize."

"I know, I will."

I grip his hand and pull him to his feet. "Hey," I whisper, "I love you."

He takes another deep breath before facing everyone. "I love you too. Thanks for shooting me."

"Any time," I say, smiling.

Daniel clears his throat, takes my hand, and walks back toward my mom, Flynn, and the soldiers. "I sincerely apologize for my outburst just then. I just realized that Gunther used my inventions to kill the pilots of the New World Council members. They were probably innocent people who were killed without question or trial. I don't want that to be our future. We need to be better, and I'm sorry that I took it so hard. We need to return to camp and begin planning to search for this detectors around the country. I installed many around here, and no doubt Gunther installed more. Whatever he has planned for them, it can't be good for anyone but him.

"Fan out. I want everyone on the perimeter searching for detectors. I will guide us to the ones I know about, and we will double check for ones I may not have been aware of. Because they have been reprogrammed, make sure to turn the detectors off when you see them. Just rip them from the ground and they will be disabled. With the wires severed, they can't be used again, so make sure if you cut the wires. Any questions?"

Flynn speaks up, Nina's guitar in hand, "What about those of us who have artifacts from the estate?"

Daniel thinks for a moment. "Does anyone else have something from the estate?"

"I do," I tell him.

"Anyone else?" No one speaks. "O'Neil, you and Isla can head back to the pods. We will be back before the day is over."

I give Daniel's hand a squeeze before releasing it and running back to the wall to grab Celia's paintings. "Let's go," I hear Daniel tell the others.

I hug my mom, and then Flynn and I head back over the mountain with our "artifacts." Pieces of people we miss. In Flynn's arms, Nina's happiness. In mine, Celia's past.

By the time the sun has almost set, the others meet us at the pods, and we leave the estate for the last time.

"Everything go alright?" I ask Daniel once he gets into the pod with me and my mom.

He smiles. "Yeah. We got all the detectors around the estate. The bad news is that if Gunther or Sergeant Major Lawrence come back, they'll notice."

"So what now?"

He turns the pod on and begins to steer it south toward our new camp. "Nothing to do about it now," he says, but there's a smile on his face. It's the first time I've seen him smile in a long while.

"What did you do?" I ask.

From the back seat, my mom answers, "He set fire to the estate."

His face lights up. As he drives, we reach a pass in the mountains, and in the distance, I catch the sight of the estate glowing with fire. Between the redness of it and the brilliance, I don't know how to feel. This is what I wanted, but I struggle to feel at peace.

"What if Gunther sees it?" I ask, half panicked.

"Don't worry," my mom says, and I turn back to her. "I made it look like Flynn's system overheated. Those systems are fragile. Getting dust or debris from an attack in the vents could be hazardous." She smiles a sneaky grin.

I turn back, take a deep breath, and relax in my seat. "What would I do without you two?" I ask, smiling. I let the momentary calm lull me to sleep as we head to our temporary home, and for the first time in weeks, I don't have a nightmare. I don't even dream. My mind finally just relaxes.