Ian and I wait until nightfall to steal one of the pods, which hang from the sides of the Immortal like lifeboats. Declan told us to stay, and I know he'll be angry with me, but I have to see my home, see if my dad made it, and talk to Daniel. Celia said she would handle it if Declan found out. The last thing I want is for him to veer off course. He needs to get everyone to the new refugee camp, down the river from the Hoover dam, where it's safe.

But before Ian and I leave, we get Nina. The Atlantic isn't far from where I used to live, and I made a promise to her. The Immortal has a strict rule, like General Sato seemed to have at the camp: For space purposes, all bodies are cremated, which actually makes me feel at ease. I'd rather her ashes mix with the waves than her body be torn apart by sharks. I hold her remains close to me in a metal urn on my lap.

For hours, we spin across the country, through dark plains and rivers, over mountains and finally past a river I recognize, the Susquehanna. We're almost home. It's nearly morning when Ian and I approach the farm.

The other pod is parked beside the guardrail on Route 30, so Ian and I weave through the still remaining cars, just as my mom and I did before we were captured by the Prowlers. Ian parks the pod behind the other, but for whatever reason, parking reminds me of Gunther. I think of him in a plane, crossing over water, and panting in fear. The image seems so real, it makes me shiver.

"Are you okay?" Ian asks.

"I just thought about Gunther," I say, opening the pod door and placing Nina gently on the seat to wait.

"In a plane?" he asks, crossing in front of the pod.

I lose my breath. "Yes."

"I saw that too," he tells me, and, after exchanging panicked looks, we say, "The implants."

"Could they still be connecting us?" Ian asks.

"If they are, that would mean Gunther has an implant," I say, and then I remember something he said a million years ago: Remote controls are for the old world. Why use them when implanted Mitchell can create a connection that allows me to control everyone with my mind?

"Of course he does," I scoff, "which means he might be able to tap into our brains too. We have to be careful... develop a disruptor."

"Below freezing temperatures will work until then," Ian tells me, and then I see my family in the rising sunlight, emerging from the woods with flashlights. They call my dad's name over and over, and I'm shocked back to my purpose. For now, the cold autumn morning will have to do to keep Gunther out of my head.

"Dad!" I call, joining my mom, Eleanor, and Daniel in their search. "Dad! Todd!" His name echoes through our land, catching on the wind. With my injuries, I can't move very fast, but I run as quickly as I can, limping toward my mom with Ian close behind.

"You were supposed to stay on the Immortal," Eleanor scolds me when I near them. My mom is still yelling for my dad, her face streaked in tears. She survived thinking he was dead once... I'm not sure she can do it a second time.

"Good luck giving her orders, Mom," Daniel says, but it isn't playful, and Eleanor and I both catch it.

"Excuse you," Eleanor says.

Daniel bites his lip. "Ask her whose baby you're carrying, Mom. Go on, ask her."

She looks at me in anticipation.

"It's mine," I say. "It's mine and Ava's cousin's. No, we never did anything. No, I never even had feelings for him like that. He liked me, he died protecting me, and he was my friend. That's it. Gunther mixed our DNA for us."

For a moment, Eleanor looks genuinely disappointed, as if she secretly hoped the baby was actually hers. Then my mom stops screaming and gasps. "Oh my God," she says, and starts into a sprint. I turn around and squint to see across the fields. A man emerges from below the horizon, carrying a gun and some animal carcasses over his shoulder, but what catches my eye, what my mom saw when she began running, is his fiery red hair. Just like mine.

My dad.

He's alive.

That night we eat around the fire pit like we used to before the Prowlers changed us. It's the old neighborhood, but Ben is conspicuously absent, as are Ian's parents. "Both my mom and my dad died in the Prowlers," Ian tells us after my mom asks about them.

"Your father was a really good man," my mom tells him. She and my dad sit together beneath a flannel blanket beside me. Daniel shares my log, but that's it. Usually we would share our blanket on a cool autumn night like this, under which we would secretly hold hands, but he's so mad at me now, apparently we can't even share warmth.

"Your dad saved our lives once," Eleanor tells Ian, "did he ever tell you that?"

Ian shakes his head. "He didn't talk about the past much. My mother didn't like it."

Eleanor and my mom exchange looks and roll their eyes. I don't know much about Ian's mom, except that both Eleanor and my mom hated her.

Ian doesn't notice, he just continues staring into the fire and says, "I think it was too painful, you know? You all lost too many people... I get it now. I wouldn't tell my kids about those I've lost," he says, though I can tell he's referring to Ava. "It would hurt too much to even say their names anymore."

"I'm sorry for your losses," my dad says.

Ian makes eye contact with me from across the fire, and says, "Me too."

There are a few moments of silence before Daniel says, "My dad is dead. He died in the Prowler on the way to the bunker."

I expect my mom to react with shock, since Eleanor clearly didn't tell her any of the bad news when they were reunited, but she just holds her hand over her mouth, as if to keep her sadness inside.

"I know," my dad admits. "My Prowler arrived to the bunker after yours. I saw his body on the ground when I was removed."

Tears run down Eleanor's face, but she doesn't make a sound.

"He's here with us," my mom adds, her voice shaking. "They all are."

As long as we're talking about painful, uncomfortable things, I add, "I have to go to the shore tomorrow before heading back to the refugee camp. I made a promise to Nina."

"Daniel will go with you," Eleanor suggests, though I can tell by her tone it's not optional. "You two have a lot to talk about."

We finish dinner and start toward the Crowley house to sleep. Theirs wasn't destroyed by Prowlers like ours was. It's where my dad has been staying. Before I go, my dad stops me. "Hang back for a little, Tiger Lily. I want to talk to my daughter."

He waits until everyone is up the street before he takes my hand and leads me back to where our home once stood. I've been trying not to look at it. I want it to be complete in my memory, but my dad walks with me through the rubble and I am forced to see it now. In the moonlight, it looks even more like a warzone than I can handle.

I begin to shake uncontrollably, so my dad stops. "Stay here," he says, and runs around the gaping hole where the Prowler fell into our basement and destroyed the safe room. He races to where the sunroom used to stand, picks some plants from the floor, and, hiding them behind his back, returns. "Here," he says, revealing a couple of plants, root and everything. Goldenseal and Comfrey Root. They are medicinal plants Ben and I used to make salves and tinctures from. He opens the root of the Goldenseal plant and rubs its ooze on the spot behind my ear, then holds the Comfrey Root leaves to my arms.

As he holds me he says, "I remember, by the way. I woke up and remembered. You gave me the gun and told me to run home. It wasn't clear at first, more like remembering a dream, but I remembered. You saved so many lives, mine included."

I nod, still shaking. I can't tell if it's from the autumn night air or the memories anymore. Probably both.

"I always knew I raised a strong young woman... I just didn't realize how strong you would actually grow to be. I can only imagine, based on your scars, what you must have gone through to save Daniel and Eleanor. I could not be more proud of you, Isla."

My lips quiver. "Thank you."

"Remember when we went hunting?" I nod. "The rabbit?" I nod again. Like I could ever forget that. "I was so worried after I saw how you reacted. I wasn't sure you would be able to survive if we were ever gone, but I couldn't have been further from the truth. You don't need anyone to survive. You are strong all by yourself."

My throat aches from holding back tears. "Thanks," I manage to say.

"I don't think you learned that strength from me, either. Maybe from your mom. But I think you always had it in you."

"Why?" I ask.

He smiles. "When your mom was pregnant, I was so terrified. We knew people who lost their wives during childbirth, or lost their babies, or both. Your mom was screaming so much, I thought for sure I would lose one of you, and I was terrified. But Eleanor was there, and she looked calm, so I tried to stay calm, too," he chuckles at the memory. "I was just scared, you know? It should have been this happy time, but I was so nervous and frightened, that all I could think about was what would happen if I lost either of you." He stares at the ground for a moment, pain in his eyes. "When you finally arrived, I knew immediately that your mom would be okay. She has this way of looking at you that lets you know not to worry, you know that thing she does when she sort of turns her head down and smiles?"

I nod, finding myself smiling too.

"So Eleanor took you in her arms, and cleaned you off, and that's when I realized that you weren't crying. I started panicking, I thought you were stillborn, and just when I was about to scream or cry or punch something, you made a sound. It was the faintest little cry, almost as if you were sighing, and in the split second before you started wailing, I knew you were meant to be my child."

"How?" I can barely get the words out anymore.

"That little cry... it was as if you were telling me that everything would be okay, you know? And you've done that for me, time and time again. That's the strength you were born with: the strength to somehow care for everyone. We live in a scary world. So for all my life, my first instinct has always been fight or flight. But you always calmed me down. I would look at you, and if you were happy, I knew that everything was going to be okay." His smile fades. "Are you happy now?"

My face is covered in tears. I shrug. The truth is, I don't know. How can anyone be happy during war?

"Daniel will forgive you," he says, "he always has. This isn't your first fight, you know. He's just upset now. And your friends you've lost? They're still with you. In the—"

"—the wind, I know," I say, smiling.

He removes the leaves from my arms and points to my heart. "In here too." He lets the leaves drop and pulls a small piece of wood from his pocket. "I whittled this on my way here. It kept me focused on what's important," he says. I hold the wood in my hand and see what he's made for me. It's a bird. "A mockingbird," he says, "from that book you like. I remembered what you used to say after you first read it and Ben and I would go out hunting. You would always tell us not to shoot any mockingbirds, because they never did anything to us. Do you remember?"

I smile and nod. "Yes," I say, "I was such a brat, huh?"

"No," he says, "I loved it. It stuck with me, and I thought about it the whole way here. About how, even during war, you didn't give that up."

"I almost helped someone kill people," I spurt, like vomit. I want him to know the truth. "I didn't, but they died anyway, and I almost went through with it. This man, Gunther Quail... he told me I had to tell them to come to Cooper's estate. I agreed, because I wanted to get my friends and Daniel out, but... what kind of person agrees to that?"

He closes the mockingbird in my hand. "We all lose ourselves from time to time, but we can always get back to our core. We're never lost forever." I nod, holding back tears again, and throw myself around him in a hug. He lifts me into his arms, and even though I'm 17 years old, I feel like my dad's little girl again. "I've got you," he says, and carries me to bed.

As I fall asleep, I listen to Eleanor's faint cries in the room next door.