it's not a race up the stairs to freedom. we practically crawl up, hanging on to one another as we climb, me in the lead, zombie at the rear, amélie behind me, sammy behind amélie, and cassie behind sammy. the closed space is choked with fine particles of dust, and soon we're all coughing and wheezing loud enough, it seems to me, to be heard by every silencer in a two-mile radius. i move with one hand extended in front of me in the blackness and call out our progress softly.

"first landing!"

a hundred years later we reach the second landing. almost halfway to the top, but we haven't hit the debris evan warned us about.

we're halfway to the third landing when my hand smacks into stone. i turn to cassie and zombie with a whisper, "i'm going to see if i can climb it—there might be room to squeeze through at the top."

i hand my gun to cassie and get a good grip with both hands. i take a deep breath looking up at the rocks. shit.

i'm maybe three feet up when a rock slips beneath my foot and I come back down, smacking my chin hard on the way.

"i'll try," zombie says.

"don't be stupid. you're hurt." i say sternly.

"i'd have to try if you made it, dove," he points out.

he's right, of course. i hold on to amélie while zombie scales the mass of broken concrete and shattered reinforcement rods. i can hear him grunting every time he reaches up for the next handhold. something wet drops onto my nose. blood.

"are you okay?" i call up to him.

"um. define okay."

"okay means you're not bleeding to death."

"i'm okay."

he's weak, vosch said. he's not weak, but wounded. no matter the challenges zombie controlled what happened to our team. but ben, ben may have been weak. and right now he's between the two. zombie and ben are two people in one body, a body that's wounded, zombie was fighting back bens attempt to pour through the seeping wound, that kept overflowing with blood

the weak have been swept away.

that's the flaw in voschs master plan: if you don't kill all of us all at once, those who remain will not be the weak.

they tested us. and we survived. we are surely not weak. they had put us through hell.

killing us off one by one through stages, or waves of grief. and we survived. we are the strong. and it shows. what kills us makes us stronger.

he may be able to manipulate the earth into turning on us, but he will not manipulate us to turn on the earth.

you're beating plowshares into swords, vosch. you are remaking us.

and we will be the death of you. that's a promise.

you built an army. we will rebel. you killed our families. we will kill you. you took our innocence. we will prove you guilty.

"well?" cassie says after several minutes pass and zombie doesn't come down—the slow way or the fast way.

"just enough room. i think." his voice sounds tiny. "it goes back pretty far. but i can see light up ahead."

"light?" i call up to him.

"bright light. like floodlights. and — " he abruptly stops.

"and? and what?"

"and it's not very stable. i can feel it slipping underneath me."

i squat down in front of amélie, telling her to climb aboard, and wrap her arms around my neck. cassie does the same to sammy.

"hold on tight, sam." she demands him before gasping. "not that tight."

"don't let me fall, cassie," i hear him whisper to cassie.

amélie had too much faith in me even though i was slightly wounded i would never let her fall. and she knew that.

"i won't let you fall, sam."

reach. grab. pull. step. rest.

reach. grab. pull. step. rest.

zombie grabs my wrists when i near the top of the debris, but i gasp for him to pull amélie up first. i've got nothing left for that final foot. i just hang there, waiting for zomvie to grab me again. he heaves me into the narrow gap, a sliver of space between the ceiling and the top of the slide. the darkness up here is not as dense, and i can see his gaunt face dusted in concrete, bleeding from fresh scratches.

"straight ahead," he whispers. "maybe a hundred feet." no room to stand or sit up: we're lying on our stomachs nearly nose to nose. "dove, theres nothing. the entire camp's gone. just gone." he says after helping sammy and cassie up.

i nod. "have to rest," i pant. "amélie are you okay?" i ask.

"yes."

"are you?" zombie asks me.

"define okay."

"that's a definition that keeps changing," he says. "they've lit the place up out there."

"the plane?"

"it's there. big, one of those huge cargo planes."

"there's a lot of kids."

we crawl toward the bar of light seeping through the crack between the ruins and the surface. it's hard going. sammy starts to whimper. his hands are scraped raw, his body bruised from the rough stone. we squeeze through spots so narrow, our backs scrape against the ceiling. once cassie gets stuck and it takes zomvie and me several minutes to work her free. the light pushes back the dark, grows bright, so bright i can see individual particles of dust spinning against the inky backdrop.

"i'm thirsty," sammy whines and amélie whines in agreement.

"almost there," cassie assures him. "see the light?"

at the opening i can see across death valley east, the same barren landscape of camp ash pit times ten, thanks to the floodlights swinging from hastily erected poles anchored in the shafts that funneled air into the complex below.

and above us, the night sky peppered with drones. hundreds of them, hovering a thousand feet up, motionless, their gray underbellies glimmering in the light. on the ground below them, and far to my right, an enormous plane sits perpendicular to our position: when it takes off, it'll pass right by us.

"have they loaded the—" cassie starts. zombie cuts her off with a hiss.

"they've started the engines."

"which way is north?"

"about two o'clock." He points. his face has no color. none. his mouth hangs open a little, like a dog panting. when he leans forward to look at the plane, i can see his entire shirtfront is wet.

"can you run?" i ask nervously.

"i have to. so, yes."

cassie turns to sammy. "once we get out in the open, climb back on, okay?"

"i can run, cassie," sammy protests. "i'm fast."

"i'll carry him," zomvie offers.

"don't be ridiculous," i say to him firmly.

"i'm not as weak as i look." he must be thinking about vosch.

"of course not," i say back. "but if you go down with him, we're all dead."

"same with cassie."

"he's my brother. i'm carrying him. besides, you're hurt and—"

that's all she gets out. the rest is buried under the roar of the huge plane coming toward us, picking up speed.

"this is it!" zombie shouts, but i can't hear him. i have to read his lips.