I'm at the helm of the Immortal. The only person in the world who I imagine is crazy enough to believe in this plan of mine is Declan, so together, we take charge. He and I were always the same kind of crazy, and with our earlier argument behind us, Declan and I are a team again.

I make a wide turn with the Immortal and manage to get behind the Prowlers, and face the tank back toward camp. As I do this, Declan shouts through the walkie for the driver of the Beast to move it out of the way, and makes an announcement over the loudspeakers. "Attention! Move out of the way of the Collector Droids! I repeat, move out of the way!"

There aren't many soldiers left, most of them have already left to fight at camp where a swarm of drones hover. The ones who remain scatter, and I line up the Immortal to crash right into the Prowlers. I hold my foot on the gas petal—Go faster, faster—until finally, I hit the first Prowler. There goes ⅓ of Gunther's message: I will. It topples over as the Immortal's first speed bump, and Declan and I cheer. Eleanor appears in the doorway. "Isla," she says in her stern voice, "why is the Immortal moving?"

"I'm bulldozing the Prowlers," I say, laughing maniacally as I drive toward the second one. My laugh doesn't even sound like mine anymore, but someone else's. Nina's. It reminds me of Nina's laugh as she destroyed Gunther's secret office. I swallow away the sadness, when I realize, maybe she's here with us. Maybe she's outside in the wind, guiding us.

The Immortal knocks over the second Prowler, and with a little bump, crushes it beneath us, destroying another third of Gunther's message: always.

The third Prowler, however, has moved out of the Immortal's line of collision, and the tank is too big to turn sharply enough to hit it. Now the Prowler stands at the end of the Beast, swatting at the back of the small tank's body.

"Can we back up in this thing?" I ask Declan.

"Of course," he says with apparent enjoyment. He joins me at the console, pulls a lever back, and steps on the pedal.

"Not too much," Eleanor reminds us. "The pods are still behind us."

Declan steps off the pedal and returns the lever to its original position. "That should do it," he says.

I turn the Immortal to face the Prowler when I see Daniel climbing onto the roof of the Beast. The Immortal stops with my breath.

"Why did you stop?" Declan asks.

"Daniel's on the roof."

I watch as his assistant hands him a large, metallic object. A magnet. Daniel stretches his right leg behind him, and leans forward with his left, preparing to run. He hugs the magnet to his chest, as the Prowler hits against the Beast once more. Daniel's stance keeps him balanced, and as soon as the tank stops shaking, Daniel darts forward, his legs propelling him forward. Faster and faster he runs, and we all watch on in silence.

Finally, Daniel is almost at the end of the tank, and just before he would run off its edge, he turns toward the Prowler and leaps off the tank. His momentum allows him to fly through the air, across the distance between the Prowler and the Beast, and he raises the magnet up over his head.

As his arc of motion falls toward the Prowler's top, Daniel lowers the magnet, and with its force, he is yanked from the air and thrust against the Prowler's metal body. It shakes in malfunction, and falls backward, into the Immortal's path. Daniel leaps from the body before it collapses to the ground, and then runs toward the Immortal's ground level entrance. A light appears on the console to show me that the door is open, then turns off.

"He's in," the soldier says, so I push my foot against the floor, turning the Immortal back toward camp, and manage to run over the third Prowler's top. With that, Gunther's message is completely destroyed. I will always find you.

But the words still echo in my chest, sending nervous pulses throughout my body. There are so many possibilities for how he could have found us: He could have tortured it out of Ian; he could have hacked our radio signal; he could have hacked our network or the satellites that pinpoint the pods; or he could have gotten it from Mitchell.

I continue toward the camp with all of this still buzzing in my mind, but as we move forward, I see the swarms of drones above the camp. My stomach drops. Somewhere out there is my mom. I start to panic. I told them not to attack, I scream in my head, but I try to stay calm and think positively.

My mom is invincible. Declan makes good choices. We will all be happy together again soon.

That's when Daniel comes into the command center with my slingshot, and asks, "Missing something?"

"Take this," I tell Declan, and as soon as he's slipped his foot over the pedal, I rush into Daniel's arms. "My mom's out there," I whisper into his ear so no one will hear. "I'm so scared."

Then, in front of everyone, he says the most heroic three words he can: "I'm scared too."

We continue forward until the camp is in sight. I don't see Mom, but what I do see horrifies me. More drones than I could ever imagine in one place, swarming over the panicking Originals at camp.

When one of the drones, just like the Prowlers, blinks a light over an Original, it swoops down, arms extended, and shoves the needles into multiple points of their skulls. The Originals scream, blood drips from the puncture wounds, though the needles remain.

The blood. I feel dizzy. I want to scream. What is happening?

The drones appear to turn off once they've drilled themselves into skulls, and wait overhead like spiders preparing to eat their ensnared prey.

All the sound—the screams from outside the Immortal, the grinding gears beneath us, the soldier begging for an order, the strained sighs of disbelief from Declan, Eleanor, and Daniel—all of it fades to nothing. I search the crowd frantically. Where is that willow-like hair, the color of tree bark? Where is Mom?

"Stop! Stop!" I shout, feeling my throat beginning to tighten around the last syllable. "Does anyone see my mom?"

We search the crowd for any sign of her, until finally, Eleanor nearly explodes saying, "There! There!" She points her finger at the lake. "She's there! Oh thank God, she's there. Pull closer!"

The soldier drives the Immortal closer until we are nearly rolling over the tents. Some Originals who are still intact scurry around the tank, and the door light overhead the command center flashes on and off as they hurry inside for safety. But at the end of the lake where the Originals hosted their party the night before, my mom ushers survivors into the lake. They hop in and beneath the makeshift diving board, holding the wood over their heads for cover, with only their nose and eyes above water. My mom shoots down drones as they dive down to try to get Originals, and they flicker into disrepair as they hit the water's surface.

I catch myself smiling at how impossibly courageous my mom is. Until the drones get tired of swooping. And one shoots.

A streak of white light sparks from the drone, sending its force straight at my mom. She holds up her gun to shield herself from the laser beam, but it's not enough. The laser cuts through her arm and sparks ricochet into her face. She screams and jumps into lake to stop the embers from creeping over her skin.

Before my brain even has a chance to speak to my legs, I'm out of the room, racing as fast as I can to get outside. I barely see the blur of gold running beside me. Together, Daniel and I run down the hall. I'm not sure either of us have a plan, but I'm sure neither of us cares.

Winston is out on the patio with some of the remaining Immortal soldiers. It takes me a moment to realize what he's doing until I see the harnesses on the soldiers and I hear Winston shouting orders at them. It brings me back to my training with Nate, Winston, and Phoebe months ago when it was all just practice.

"Go, go, go!" Winston shouts, and they begin rappelling down the Immortal, periodically shooting back at the drones flying above the camp.

Daniel passes the scene, heading toward the stairwell. I stop him, pulling him by the sleeve. "Win, strap us in," I say.

He throws the harnesses to the ground, and lifts them around us one at a time. He tightens our ropes around our harness clip then guides us to the edge. "You know the drill," he tell me. "I'll cover you from here. We still have our emergency collector droid weapons out here."

I climb over the edge, careful not to look down, so I don't trigger memories from earlier. Daniel's face is wide with fear, and his hands shake with adrenaline or terror or both, I can't tell. My own hands are shaking around the rope as well, but I hide it beneath firm grips.

I take a deep breath and peer at Daniel. I breathe a quick sigh. He smiles through clenched teeth. And then we drop.

We don't rapel at all. We just free fall, our safety in Winston's steady hands. Just before hitting the earth, Winston tightens our ropes and we are jerked into a stationary position. "Unclip," I tell Daniel, and once we are free of our ropes, we run for the lake, harness and all. I expect the harness to chafe my legs, slowing me down, but it keeps them in place, like pendulums swinging from my hips.

Winston and the other soldiers on the ground cover us as we kick up tan dust with our steps. I don't even have my slingshot—I left it in the command center—and I have no idea if Daniel is armed or not. All I know we have is our desperation. Especially after I realize that since Mom dove into the water, I have not yet seen her come up. I squint to see the faces beneath the diving board, but from this distance I can't tell if any of the eyes belong to her.

But at least one of her eyes would be red with injury, wouldn't it? I don't see any red eyes.

Red.

I start to lose my breath, but I can't—not now—so I fight through it until I feel my lungs go raw.

As we near the lake, the buzzing of drones intensifies overhead, everything begins to burn with pain. My lungs, my legs, my abdomen—which is still healing from the estate—my arms which are still healing from... gosh, pick an injury. From the drone propellers? From the removal of my control panel? From pummeling Ian's face with my fists? Any of those would work.

A drone swoops down, buzzing viciously in my ear as it passes, so I turn and dive into the water. A rush of water, and then a second as Daniel dives beside me. I open my eyes to the teal world beneath the battle when I see a plume of red. My heart begins to pound: Mom is floating motionless, suspended in the water as if she really were a mermaid, waiting for me to swim toward her. Blood stems from her eye, more stems from her arm.

I lose my breath.

I poke my head back above water, into the world of buzzing machines and bleeding skulls to gulp the air, and then return to the water. I am swimming as fast as I can, Daniel now slightly ahead of me. His arms and legs are longer than mine. As long as one of us reaches her soon, I won't have a heart attack.

Daniel pushes the water around him with forceful kicks and with one last thrust, he propels himself forward to reach my mom. With his arms around her, he drags her up to the surface. I exhale in relief and pop up to breathe again.

Swimming toward shore, I follow the ripples from their bodies until the water is too shallow for me to swim through. I push my legs off the lake bed and emerge running from the water. Daniel carries my mom onto shore and begins performing CPR when a laser strikes the earth beside him. Blood pools from Mom's arm onto the shore.

I stop thinking. All I can do is hate. I lift Mom's gun from the shore, surrounded by her blood from when the drone struck her, and begin firing at the drones. One down, two, three. I keep pulling the trigger, aiming through cloudy eyes, trying my best not to shake and waste energy.

I'm screaming and crying. I won't stop until I've hit every single one.

I barely see Winston across the lake, firing at the drones from the other side of the lake. He is helping me, as are some soldiers and Dad, who looks as panicked and fearsome as I probably do now.

But the Originals don't help at all. They cower beneath the water where Mom was floating after she risked her life to save them. Calm your breathing, steady your hands, focus through the tears, I tell myself. It's all I can do not to point the gun at the Originals.

I continue shooting at the drones as they zip around, but we have the lake surrounded, and they fall one by one into the water. I notice now that the people who have drones attached to their skulls have gone. I see them walking away in the distance like a mindless herd.

No time for them right now.

We shoot and shoot until all the drones are gone, and when the last machine falls, I race to my parents. Daniel breathes into my mom and pounds on her chest as she lies motionless in a blood-red patch of earth. Why isn't she getting up?

I can't breathe. I'm shaking too much to stay in one place. I pace around the shore, just trying to stay in one piece. My heart beats against my ribcage, my lungs pop like balloons in my chest, my stomach twists to ring out the acid from inside it, burning holes through my abdomen.

I'm certain that I'm about to die from hyperventilation when finally Mom coughs awake and spouts the water from her lungs. I fall to the ground beside her in relief, as Dad runs toward us. He falls to his knees and cradles her to his heart. He's crying and gripping at her clothes to close the space between them. Daniel reaches toward them to start wrapping my mom's arm with a tourniquet.

"We have to get her inside to Dr. Guzman," Daniel says and Dad nods. They hurry to carry her back to the Immortal.

I catch my breath to follow them, but then one of the Originals asks, "Is she okay?" It's one of the teens from the party last night.

I grit my teeth to keep from screaming. "Is she okay?" I ask. "No, she almost drowned. She was in the water with you, why didn't you get her?"

"We... I... I was scared," the Original boy mumbles. The others divert their eyes and turn their heads away. The sight of their cowardice reminds me of Mitchell, and then I'm reminded of Nina. Her accidental, pointless death at the hands of a stupid coward. My chest burns with hate and I resist the urge to raise my aim toward their heads. But I'm not Gunther. I don't hurt people who have hurt me. I simply cannot have them in my life anymore. I lower the gun, despite every muscle in my arms battling against the motion.

"You were scared?" I ask, disgust dripping from my words. "How do you think she felt protecting all of you?"

No one speaks until one of the adult Originals, a man with a little crescent of hair around his head says, "We'll come with you now. It's not safe for us here anymore."

I laugh right in his face. "You're not coming with us, oh no. Not after what you just did. No... I have dealt with enough traitors to realize that once a coward, always a coward. You're not welcome with us anymore. You will stay here, and you will mourn the survivors you lost to those drones, the ones who walked away with machines in their skulls, and you will have to rebuild on your own. You're not part of us, and we don't want you."

The Original man looks around, arms out to his sides so I see the camp: the burning tents, the bodies of people shot and killed by lasers from the drones, lifeless metal orbs floating in the lake. But there's a difference between seeing something and caring about it, and right now, I'm so angry that I honestly don't care.

"But," the man starts. "We can't survive like this. There are too few of us and many of our supplies have been destroyed."

I shrug. The hate causes my shoulders tingle with rage at the gesture. "My mom and I lived by ourselves for two months before the Deathless found us, and we were grateful. Maybe some time alone is just what you need."

I sounded like Gunther just then, I think to myself. I remember his words at the estate, how he told me we were alike. I never truly considered that that could be true until right now. My stomach turns, but I calm it with two very important facts:

(1) I believe that everyone deserves a fair chance, and the Originals took it. We went back to help them, and my mom nearly died protecting them. All they needed to do was reach out and pull her beneath the pier where she could breathe. And they didn't. We're going to war... I can't trust people to join us who don't even have the courage to reach out their hand to someone in need.

And (2) this is me choosing family. I have to look out for the people I love, and having the Originals around will only put them in danger. We don't need incompetence. We need strength.

"It's that simple for you to leave us?" the man asks.

I feel a hand on my shoulder, so I turn, startled. General Kazemi stands beside me and nods in approval. "It's time to move out, Commander Blume," she says.

I look back at the man and the group of distressed Originals left to survive in this desert. Nothing fills me but hate. "Yes. It was that simple for you to hide, wasn't it?"

I turn to leave with the General and the man shouts out to me, pleading, "Surely you understand fear."

I stop and glance back. "I've understood fear all my life. Fear of not fitting in, fear of being alone, fear of losing my family, fear of losing myself. Fear is natural. You're allowed to be afraid. What you're not allowed to do is let your fear hurt others."

And with that, I glance forward again and march back to the Immortal with the General.

Once we reach the end of the lake, she tells me, "Some of our soldiers were taken by the drones. When my men tried to track them, they were seen being loaded onto an airplane, which took off and headed east. I'm sure you know who is behind this."

"Gunther."

"Any idea how he might have found us?"

"He has his ways," I say, "but we should check Mitchell first." Out of my peripheral vision I catch her staring at me. "Yes, General Kazemi?"

She chuckles a bit to herself. "You seem very different at first. Like you would be weak and make the easy decisions, even when the harder options are the best for the group."

I shrug off the compliment. It's backhanded anyway. "I do what I have to do. Everyone deserves—"

"—a fair chance, yes I heard you say that. I just thought you would be the type of person to continue giving chances."

I think back to Nate, about all the chances I gave him to be decent and to be my friend. That was who I was before all of this. I miss that girl, but I can't deny that I've grown since then. And letting go of people who have repeatedly disappointed me or hurt me is a strength I've picked up and want to keep. Maybe piecing myself back together means choosing which pieces I want to define me.

"Maybe I used to be," I admit. "But I'm not anymore."

One of the soldiers greets us at the entrance to the Immortal. "General?" he says in anticipation for an order.

The General turns to me. "Commander Blume?"

I reply without hesitation. "Let's get everyone who is with us back on board and into the pods. Make sure they are still secure. We need to interrogate Mitchell first."

Declan appears from the doorway, with a teary eyed Celia behind him. I stop in my tracks. "They just cauterized the wounds," he says. "She... she will be blind in her right eye, and she may lose mobility of her right arm. But... at least she's still alive for now. She needs a blood transfusion, though. Dr. Guzman checked her blood type and it's rare."

He doesn't need to go on, I know exactly what he's trying to tell me. "Yes," I say. "I'm coming with you. I'll give her my blood."

He breathes a sigh of relief and turns up the stairs with a hop in his step. "Let's hurry," he says. We run up the stairs, the metal staircase clanging and shaking with our stampede. General Kazemi announces from behind us, "I'll check on Mitchell." I don't answer, I just keep running.

Until a cry for back up and screams sound from the first floor. From the detention center. My blood, what Mom needs to survive, turns to ice, and I'm suddenly frozen on the steps.

Declan starts down the steps, calling back for me to go to my mom. Celia races after Declan, and I'm almost warm enough to move. Then Celia screams.

All I can hear is Celia. Through her shrieks, she tries to form words but can't grasp the syllables.

I feel as though I'm being pulled in an invisible tug of war. Do I run to Mom or to Celia? Then, I hear Declan yell too, "Someone call for a doctor!" Did something happen to Celia?

I'm hot with fear and will myself to run down the stairs to meet my sister. I jump the last four stairs to reach the first floor landing, and as I pull the door open, I make out one of the words Celia is screaming: Blood.

It's too late, I've already opened the door to the first floor. I've already seen it. My vision becomes blurry with anxiety, but a clear pinpoint of vision focuses on Celia perfectly. She's huddled against the wall opposite the detention center doors, shrieking and hugging her knees to her chest. She's not hurt, but she's shaking and rocking herself back and forth against the white tiles.

White tiles. I remember the white computer grid as Prowler Gunther chased me through theprogram. He's still prowling for me. That's what today's attack was, Gunther as a Prowler.

Blood leaks out from beneath the detention center doors, staining the white tiles, and just as Celia kicks her feet against the file to escape its path, red fog consumes my vision until it suffocates the light from the hall. All goes black, and I pass out.