Fog lifts from the yard, hiding corpses from view, if only just for the morning. At least, I think it's fog, but it could still be smoke from the fires and explosions last night.

Since last night, the Deathless have dug out as many fox holes for everyone as they could, while most of my troop works as medics. Meanwhile, Mom runs between the trees, hidden under smoke, falling snow, and her now dirty white cloak, trying to get a count of our dead. I don't want to know the number.

Last night, I drove the Beast into the woods as my troop readied the medical supplies and patched up my dad and any others who were injured. The Beast tore through the forest until I steered it toward the trench. Then I turned the tank so that it worked as a wall behind the trench. General Kazemi's troop started filtering into the trench, and bringing their wounded around the back of the tank. That's when the fighting died down a bit as everyone hunkered down for the rest of the night into the early morning.

Now, safe behind the beast, Jacob and Dad talk to the Nomads who were stationed in the trees. They are the only group who came to our aid, and they refuse to speak to anyone but Jacob. Apparently the Deathless' spiked metal armor and the Beast links us too closely in their minds to the Prowler machines. They don't trust us, but they trust soldiers with machines on their heads who think they are in a video game even less. As for Dad, apparently they trust a red haired boy named Blume. They must know, or have known, my grandparents.

From out of the small window in the Beast's control center, I can barely see them talking, and I take a break from collecting food to try reading their lips. Celia leans over to see what I'm staring at, setting her bag of protein balls down on the ground. "What's going on down there?" she asks.

"I don't know. I'm trying to read their lips, but with all the shivering, it's not really working," I say. I hold my bag open and begin stuffing it with more protein balls.

"Yeah, I didn't think it would be this cold already," Celia says. "The armor doesn't help much."

Even through my sweater and inside the Beast, I feel the cold metal press chills into me, but Celia worked so hard on the armor that I feign comfort. "The armor is wonderful... and necessary."

"Not for our dead," she says, nodding her chin toward the Beast's balcony. Just below is where they've been gathered, and Mom directs our soldiers to carry more toward the pile as she checks names off an electronic pad.

"That's not your fault," I tell her. "Without you, we would have been in a much worse state. Did you ever see the armor we had before? It was like spider webs around our chests, totally impractical. It was just for show. Your armor is a huge upgrade."

"Thanks," she says, lifting her cloak hood over her helmet. "Time to feed the troops."

We tighten our bags shut and head down the stairs, outside of the Beast. As soon as I clear the exit, a gust of cold air knocks the air from my lungs. I cough to catch my breath.

"Are you okay?" Celia asks.

I nod. "Yeah. Be careful passing out the food. Stay close to the ground."

"You too," she says, and we split up, Celia toward the foxholes to the north, passed the pile of the dead, and me toward the foxholes to the south, passed the Nomads, Jacob, and Dad.

As I near them, Jacob points me out. "Here's one of the Deathless leaders now. Perhaps she will know how to answer your question," he says.

The five Nomads gathered with Jacob and my dad turn to me, and one of them, a gruff older man with scars all over his face, extends his hand to me. "Carmine," he introduces himself.

"Judge Isla Blume," I say, trying to sound as professional as I can. "What is your question?"

"What happens after the war? I've lost men to this fight, and we need to know that there's something in it for us when this is all over."

"You mean besides freedom from the collector droids and Gunther's drones?" I ask. My dad smiles, but hides it behind his hand, pretending to scratch his nose. His other arm is in a sling, allowing his wound from last night to heal.

Carmine turns to the other four Nomads. "Alright, let's get out of here," he says.

"No, stop," I say. "I'm sorry. It's been a long night."

"For all of us," Carmine adds. "So what's in it for us?"

"What are you willing to do?"

"We are tree warriors. Our best attacks are aerial. We could infiltrate their area through the trees, leading them back toward the frontline, where your troops could finish them off," Carmine suggests.

"I think we need to talk to General Kazemi," I say, "but if you follow through with that plan, what are you hoping to receive in return?"

"Looks to me like you're starting to rebuild the nation. We want our own territory. A new state so to speak."

I'm taken aback. First, because I hadn't considered that the Deathless would have the power to distribute territories like that after this war; and second, because the request is so direct.

"I would have to discuss this with the Deathless legislator and executive, but if we granted you that territory, what would prevent you from attacking us for more land in the future?"

"You've heard of treaties, right?" Carmine asks. "We sign one, and I will ensure my people honor it."

I look between Jacob and my dad. Neither looks surprised or worried. Jacob adds, "This is something I will be requesting for the rubble sweepers as well."

"Dad?" I ask.

He nods. "I know Jacob and I know Carmine from when I was a Nomad myself. They keep their word."

"Is he from your parents' group?" I ask my dad, but Carmine answers.

"The Blumes were good people. You come from good stock, which is why I have no problem fighting for you if you allow us our territory."

"Where would you want it?" I ask.

"Southern Virginia into North Carolina."

That's where Nina was from, I think. These are the people who killed Terran. My grandparents' group. I feel sick thinking about what Nina would say if she saw me now, making deals with them to claim her land. "I still need to talk it over with Legislator Blume and Executive Kunkle," I say, "but I'd like you to meet with General Kazemi to review your plan."

"I'm not doing anything without your word," Carmine says.

"Fine," I say. "I need to pass out food—my troops come first—but then I will discuss it with the other leaders and get back to you."

"Good," Carmine replies. "My people are aware of the plan and ready to act whenever I give the word."

"Great, I'll get back to you soon. Excuse me," I say, slipping past the group and toward the edge of the Beast. Is this what leaders do? I hadn't even considered that we might have to divide up the U.S., but it makes sense. That's our end game, right? To get a new start?

Before I can start to run between trees and foxholes to pass out food, Dad grabs me by the arm. "You handled that well," he says. "I barely recognized you. You're growing up so fast."

I smile. "Thanks."

He reaches into the back pocket of his pants, and retrieves a folded piece of paper, then hands it to me, smiling.

"What's this?" I ask.

"I wrote something," he says.

"You wrote?" I rest the bag of food against the Beast and unfold the paper to read it. In my dad's incredibly sloppy, nearly illegible handwriting, is a short poem:

In spring, buds sprout.

In summer, flowers bloom.

In fall, plants wither.

In winter, they die.

This is the life of most flowers,

But not the life of a tiger lily.

The tiger lily lives past winter,

Because it's not a normal flower.

It keeps blooming.

It keeps growing.

It is the hidden garden

In the winter.

My dad's lips move over the words as he reads them silently to himself. Once he's finished, he looks up with pride. "Do you like it?" he asks. "It's the first thing I've ever written."

It's not the most amazing poem I've ever read, but the format isn't what matters. It's the thought behind it. "I love it," I say.

He smiles widely. "I mean it, too. You are the hidden garden in winter, so don't let the snow keep you down." He pauses, smiling even wider if that's possible. "Do you get it? The comparison?"

I smile and nod. "Yeah, I get it."

"Good... because this battle... it looks pretty bad. It's going to get even worse the more we fight, but you have all the strength you need to get through it as long as you don't let it weigh you down."

I fold the poem again and slip it into my back pocket. It's a little difficult to maneuver with the armor strapped around my legs, but once it's tucked away, I give my dad a hug. "I won't let it," I say.

"Good. Do you need help passing out the food?" he asks.

I pull away, remembering my duty, and lift the bag from the snow. "No, it will be easier if I do it by myself," I say.

He pulls his gun from his holster. "Okay, I'll cover you then."

"Thanks," I say. I take a deep breath and shake the cold from my core. Then, my courage mustered, I run out from behind the Beast, and into the nearest foxhole. Shots fire, but through the fog, it must be hard to see me in my white cloak, because the bullets miss completely. Still, Dad fires back into the grey.

I catch my breath and find myself in a foxhole with Ava and another rubble sweeper. "Please tell me that's food," Ava says.

"Mostly," I joke. "They're protein balls. They're pretty gross and probably frozen, but—"

"I don't care," Ava says, holding out her hands. They are pink from the cold. I drop two protein balls into her hands and two into the palms of the other rubble sweeper.

"Eat up," I say. Then, I army crawl to the next foxhole.

I continue crawling between foxholes, distributing protein balls despite the cold, and as I do, I check in on everyone. Morale is pretty low, so I make sure to stay positive even though I'm scared out of my mind of what will happen once the fog lifts. That's when fighting will really continue, and that's when the number of names to check off of Mom's list will grow.

"Finally," Phoebe says when I plop into her foxhole. She opens her hands without another word.

"Good to see you too," I say, reaching in to give her two protein balls. Dr. Valencia from the biology sector sits beside her, and thanks me quietly as I place her share into her hands. Both women shove the food into their mouths, barely breathing as they chew.

"Are you two okay?" I ask.

"We're at war," Phoebe responds. "What do you think?"

Unlike before, I don't hide my emotions. I'm her boss now. I purse my lips and raise my brows in preparation to sass her right back, but Phoebe rolls her eyes and says, "We're fine for now."

"Well let me know if you need anything," I say before crawling out of the foxhole and into the next one over.

This one is occupied by a couple of the Originals. I recognize one of them as the man I yelled at after my mom's near death back at the lake.

"Protein ball?" I offer, and they open their hands to me, both the man and the younger girl beside him. She looks to be about my age and resembles the man quite a bit. She must be his daughter.

I plop the food into their hands, and they munch on it slowly, taking small rodent-sized bites. The father focuses on the food in his hands, but as the daughter nibbles, she shifts her gaze between me and a bullet wound in her dad's knee, just between the metal plates of armor covering his legs. I can barely see the red through the dirt, but mucus-like pus collects at the surface of his wound.

"That looks infected," I say. "You need to have that examined before it gets worse."

"No, no, it's just healing," the man says. In this moment, he reminds me of my own dad.

His daughter pulls the food from her mouth. "It's infected, Father. You know that." She turns to me. "He can't move, otherwise he would have already been treated." She clenches her jaw in anger. "But he's still fighting."

She looks at me with the same anger I felt when my dad was shot, like she might want to shoot me too, and I recognize that she's not a coward like I thought the Originals were. Neither is her father. She's just looking out for her family, just like they both always were. By wanting to stay at the camp, by hiding the pain, by standing by their family.

I reach into the bag and take out an extra protein ball for both of them. "I'll call a medic," I say, and crawl out of the foxhole. I crawl back toward the Beast, when I see Jane bandaging someone in a nearby foxhole where Declan and General Kazemi are seeking cover. I slither into the hole beside her. My heart immediately rises into my throat when I see Declan reach his red-stained gauze and fabric covered hand to Jane.

"Declan, what happened?" I ask, but I can barely get the words out as tears choke the air from my throat. He winces as Jane removes some of the fabric. "Declan, answer me," I say.

He groans in pain as Jane removes the last of the gauze from his hand, and I am free to see the damage. His hand is mangled into a bloody mess, and he's lost his all but his ring finger and pinky. I can't hold it back anymore. I lean up over the side of the hole and vomit.

"He had his weapon raised, and someone shot it out of his hand, taking his fingers with it," General Kazemi explains.

"I have to cauterize the wound," Jane says, swallowing back her discomfort.

"No, don't," Declan says through clenched teeth. "That'll increase its chances of infection. I need new bandages after you clean the wound. Then get me antibiotics and keep pressure on it."

Jane reaches into a bag she's carrying to get a bottle of water, antibiotic salve, and clean bandages. "I'll do it," I offer, feeling the nausea pass. I take the materials and place them in my lap as I crouch in front of Declan. "The man in that foxhole there needs immediate attention for his bullet wound. Here," I say, opening the antibiotic salve and squeezing a generous amount into my hand, "take this. His wound is beginning to pus."

"Okay," Jane agrees, and she crawls out of the hole.

"There's food in my bag," I tell the General as I open the water bottle with the hand that isn't covered in salve. "Take two." I make eye contact with Declan. "I'm going to pour this over your hand, okay?"

"Yeah," he says, wincing. I begin to pour and he sucks in air. Bits of dirt fall from the tissue, as does blood and pieces of flesh just barely connected to the rest of him. I try not to gag, though the reflex forces my tongue from my mouth a couple of times.

When the water has nearly left the bottle, I tell Declan to drink the remaining liquid as I let his wound dry a bit before adding the salve. I rub it between my fingers, and, looking away, rub it onto Declan's raw skin. He groans and grunts in pain, so I finish quickly, and rub the rest on the inside of my cloak to clean my hands. I still don't want to see red if I can help it.

I wrap the new bandage tightly around his hand and hold it into place with tight pressure. Declan breathes heavily to calm the pain, but eventually opens his eyes to meet mine.

"Don't scare me like that," I tell him, trying to keep it light, but my fear bleeds through.

"I'll try to be more considerate next time," he says, but through the pain he can't quite pull off the sarcasm.

Still, I smile. "That's all I ask," I say.

General Kazemi clears her throat. "Any plans for when this fog clears up?" she asks.

The Nomads. I remember the compromise, and I fill them both in. Declan says he doesn't care about giving them territory as long as the treaty is signed, so General Kazemi crawls out from the foxhole toward the Beast, where she fills my mom in, who appears not to mind the compromise either, as they then meet with Carmine.

"We're totally outnumbered," Declan says, still panting with pain.

"But we could still win this."

Declan shoots me a look of disbelief as Mom runs, crouched down, toward our foxhole.

"You both agreed to the compromise with the Nomads?" she asks, hopping in..

"Yeah, what do I care if they get Virginia," Declan sighs. "I never want to come back to this place again."

"I think it's worth it if they help," I say.

"Yeah, me too," Mom says. "My only concern is, what happens after they settle Virginia? What happens when they want more land?"

"We'll deal with that when we get there," Declan says.

"Yeah," Mom agrees, allowing herself to lean against the wall of the foxhole. As she relaxes, the screen of her pad tilts toward me, and I see one of the names checked off of her list: Flynn O'Neal.

I lose my breath. My lungs ache from the cold, making it impossible to catch my breath. I think of Flynn's smile, of the stories from his childhood, of the way he drunkenly played Nina's guitar, of his hopes.

"Flynn's gone?" I ask in disbelief. He can't be. He can't be dead, he had too much life inside him. Where did all of that life go? I'm too in shock to believe it's true, and after Ava and Jacob's appearances and all those weeks with the implant in my brain, a twinge of doubt stirs inside me. "I have to see," I say, standing.

Mom pushes me down by the shoulders. "Isla, honey, he's gone. You can see him from here."

I snap my focus to the pile of our dead and search from afar until I spot him. He's close to the top, his arm reaching down the pile. His face is stained with blood from the wound just below his helmet line, but he somehow still looks carefree.

The song he sang back at the Original's party... what was it? Then I remember with a quick smile: Danny Boy. I hear him sing the last verse he sang before he drunkenly realized how sad the words were. "If I am dead, as dead I well may be, ye'll come and find the place where I am lying, and kneel and say an ave there for me."

I want to defy my mom and go to Flynn now. Sing something—or better yet, say something—in his memory, like the song says, but her words ground me. "He was among the three hundred that we lost last night. Number 302, actually," Mom tells me as I push back tears. "So was the Sergeant Major from England and the rest of the people from Gunther's army. The trauma to their drones caused hemorrhaging. They bled out."

The split second of hope I felt when Sergeant Major Lawrence believed Ian and was determined to stop Gunther fades away. And then I think of Ian. The last I saw him, I had just willed Gunther to shoot Ian in to the drone. If all those people died... Ian must have died too.

"Flynn was shot in the head," Mom continues, "just below the helmet line, so... at least it was quick. He didn't feel a thing."

I imagine what that must have been like: to hear the hiss of a bullet, and then before you can move... darkness. Nothing. I begin to hyperventilate at the thought. "I don't want to die. I don't want to die." I wish Daniel were here with me, I think. "I have so much more to live."

Then something booms from across the yard, but it's not the sound of an explosion. It sounds more like all the air around me sucking into a vacuum until it collapses in on itself. Before I can move to see what's happening, an invisible pulse shoots across the yard, slicing through trees which collapse around us. A tree crashes over our foxhole, one of its branches nearly missing my head. Then the pulse slams into the side of the Beast, and I realize Gunther must still have one of Daniel's reprogrammed gamma ray detectors.

The tank is knocked back, falling on its side. General Kazemi was behind the tank, as was Carmine and Jacob and... Dad.

I begin screaming for him—"Dad! Dad!"—but over the screams of others, I'm barely audible. Mom holds me back, like she did when the Prowlers came to our home. She's shaking in fear and shock, tears pooling in her eyes, but her grasp around my arms is so tight and so steady, I can't break free, which is lucky.

Gunther's voice carries across the yard. "I'm bored," he whines through his megaphone, but I can't take my eyes away from the Beast, which I see through the branches over us, still rocking gently from impact.

But I don't see my dad anywhere. I'm breathing in puffs of anxiety and panic, trying not to pass out. Where's my dad?

"Enough sitting around," Gunther says, his voice echoing. "Back to the fight."

A haunting chant begins across the yard like something from one of my nightmares. "Find Isla Blume," voices chant in unison.

"What the hell?" Declan asks, and, with his good hand, he pushes off the side of the hole to peek out of the sliver of space left between the branches.

"What's going on out there?" Mom asks, her voice shaking.

Declan lowers himself back into the hole. "Gunther's entire army is marching toward us, all of them chanting 'Find Isla Blume.' And I don't think they're the programmed World War II fighters anymore. They look... blank now. I don't think Gunther cares if they die."

"He can't want to lose his army," Mom says. "Why wouldn't he care if they died?"

And then, as if to answer her question, pounding steps rumble the earth and the familiar sound of shrieking gears sound from across the yard. A deep roar bellows through the trees.

Now the Prowlers are here to fight us.

MXJ=_