Motherfuckers.
The ground is cold and wet under me; my clothes stiff, matted with blood. The dregs of a fever still cling to my overheated, clammy skin, and I shiver involuntarily, pressing the heels of my bloodied hands against my eyes.
This headache is award-worthy.
This headache is so bad they should study it. Someone should sell tickets to this nightmare. People should line up for the opportunity to try on my skull in order to appreciate the way my brain has melted between my ears.
I don’t usually pass out unless things get really bad—life-threateningly bad—because even though sleep generally accelerates the healing process,the trade-off is rarely worth the risk. I’ve learned the hard way over the years that it’s pretty easy for someone to finish murdering me, for example, when I’m too unconscious to fight back.
In this case, I don’t remember having a choice.
I squint my eyes open again, studying the slant of sun. It’s early morning, which means I’ve been unconscious, exposed, and completely vulnerable for at least several hours. The fact that these shitheads let me live to see daylight tells me our fun together hasn’t even started. Last night was just an appetizer of all that’s yet to come.
Yay.
I drag myself into a seated position, grimacing. The pain is abating, but slowly, which tells me this was a more brutal assault than normal. I heave myself against the nearest tree trunk, closing my eyes again on a sigh. Hell, I’d just finished washing off all the blood from the first round of attempted murdering.
Like I said:motherfuckers.
This situation isn’t funny anymore. To be clear, it was never funny—but now I’m really, actually mad.Super mad.Like that time someone nearly killed Juliette during a public appearance and she was so messed up she had to learn to walk again. Or when we were forced to move out of our homes into a heavily fortified compound because of security concerns. Or even that time Kenji ate the sandwich I’d been saving for dinner and didn’t apologize.
I look up, distracted by sudden movement, only to discover a squirrel staring at me upside down. A rare pulse of rage awakens my adrenaline, and I snatch the furry monster in one go, staring briefly into its flashing blue eyes before snapping its neck. I search the forest floor for a shard of something sharp, then use it to rip the creature open, exposing its glowing innards. My eyes narrow.
There’s no electric wiring running alongside its veins, no organs enhanced with machinery. There’s nothing at all to denote a change in state except a subtle blue gleam that glistens all throughout its otherwise ordinary anatomy. I prize apart the rest of its body, my fingers dripping with blood, until I discover the nearly undetectable chip buried inside its brain. I yank the small piece free, my large hands fumbling, then hold it up to the morning light, examining the strange, fingerprint-like texture of the blue metal.
I experience a grim moment of triumph.
Forget the guns. If I can getthisback home, we might have a chance of understanding exactly what we’re up against.
Fever broken, energy returning to my body, I decide to test my strength, using the tree trunk for support as I haul myself upright. Carefully, I put weight on my legs, exhaling in relief when all seems to be in working order. I toss the alien squirrel carcass into the woods, tuck the chip inside my pocket, then turn to look at the wildlife, the many eyes of which stare down at me.
“Judge all you like,” I mutter. “I’m not taking another bath.”
I scrabble up the base of the trunk, launch myself onto the lowest branch, and heave myself up, straightening on the bough only to knock my head on the tree limb just above me. I rub the back of my head, scowling, and when I turn to glower at the offending branch, I walk face-first into an enormous spiderweb, scream like a little girl, lose my balance, and nearly fall out of the tree.
I can almost hear the animals laughing at me.
“All right, okay, show’s over,” I say, meeting the many eyes watching me through the canopy. “And if the hot serial killer is watching this right now, I’d just like to state, for the record, that I’m recovering from what I’m pretty sure was a recent brain injury.” I slap threads of spider silk from my face, then spit remnants of sticky web in the direction of indignant birds. “Also? Spiderwebs make my insides feel weird. Spiderwebs makeeveryone’sinsides feel weird. Don’t pretend you’re better than me.”
A sparrow lands on my shoulder just then, and I startle as its wings flap and settle next to my face. The bird and I turn to stare at each other at the same time, holding a moment of weird and intense eye contact, and even though I know it’s a demon robot-bird, I can’t help but reach out and pet its smooth little head. It trills softly under my touch.
“I’m living Kenji’s dream right now,” I whisper, still petting the bird’s head. “Except for all the blood, I’m basically a fairy-tale prince. All I need is a musical number and a fairy godmother. Now get the fuck out of here.”
I backhand the robot-bird off my shoulder and return my narrowed eyes to the canopy.
At a glance,I’d clocked the evergreens in this remote region to be at least a hundred feet tall—some even taller. This will do.
Taking a breath, I jump for the next branch.
Carefully, I climb the tree as quickly as possible. My movements are still a little sluggish, but my energy levels are improving by the minute, and by the time I’ve scaled the top—breathing only a little harder than usual—I’m not disappointed.
I’ve got a decent aerial view of most of the island.
It’s no surprise we’ve never been able to get satellites in the Ark’s airspace, but the fact that we have no images of this place from above has dealt us some serious blows. We have no idea what kind of military infrastructure they’ve got out here; no idea of the scale of their weaponry; no idea what crazy new tech they might be building. But it’s clear even from a cursory glance that this place was planned with precision. The bustling epicenter is crowned by tall, important-looking buildings while neat squares of residential communities ring the outskirts. It’s easy to spot the schools, the bridges, the airports, the farmland. I exhale slowly, taking it in.
Somehow, it’s even worse than I thought.
Warner said he’d always suspected The Reestablishment was building a sanctuary somewhere; that, in fact, it wouldn’t make sense if they didn’t have a backup plan. But in the weeks following the collapse of The Reestablishment,we didn’t have the resources to stop the regime’s elite from fleeing the mainland. Our people nearly died bringing down the system; Juliette in particular was in such bad shape that by the time they got her to safety no one was even sure she’d survive. There was no bandwidth to think about anything but the immediate fires in front of us.
