Текст книги "The Rift"

Автор книги: Chris Howard

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“I know.” I put my hand on the back of her neck. Felt the scruff that had grown back on her head since GenTech had shaved it.

“I’m scared of what’s gonna happen.”

“What did you see?” I asked.

“Something all wrong.” She turned to grab fistfuls of the mammoth’s long fur so she could pull herself up top. And all I could think of was that bark on Alpha’s belly. I imagined it growing and spreading in the spring, sealing her inside it like a wooden tomb. A disease, the Speaker had called it, when they’d shown me that woman in the corrugated coffin.

“It was me and you,” Alpha said, not looking at me as she swung herself up.

“What was?”

But Alpha wouldn’t say.

“Just a dream,” I called after her. “Only a dream.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

I’d told them there weren’t no reason to worry, but once we were rolling forward, I realized catching up to Crow would only be easy if we knew which direction he’d gone.

“He could be anywhere,” said Alpha. “Those are some long legs if he’s figured out how to use ’em.”

My head quit aching, leaving me more room to worry. Crow had tried to leave me once already, after all, back when I’d wanted to stay with the Kalliq. Hell, maybe he figured there weren’t room in my plans for him and his Soljahs, so he’d smuggled off with the trees, hoping to reach Niagara without us.

And what if he made it? Would the Rastas get fat on apples in the shade of their forests, while the rest of the world stayed sunburned and starved?

The winds kept silent as the peaks began to fade, receding into the high, stony ceiling and patches of ice. And as we traveled on, splashing through the water, we hollered Crow’s name and peered into every nook and shadow. But we couldn’t see him any damn place at all.

“What if he fell?” asked Alpha. “He could’ve drowned.”

“Crow,” I yelled, kicking at Namo to make him gallop faster, though I reckoned we were riding him right into the ground.

Kade leaned off the side of the mammoth and puked up a glob just like the one I’d spat out earlier.

“Better?” Alpha said, clapping him on the back.

“Feels like I’m coming off a bad batch of crystal.”

“Reckon it was something in the water,” she said. “Got us seeing crazy and feeling like crap.”

But I remembered that dried-out moss I’d pulled out of the pack the night before, and wondered if it hadn’t been something we ate.

“Look.” I pointed across the water. There in the distance was the last peak. It sat out alone from the rest. No mountains beyond it or near it, just a big, jagged finger of rock jabbing down.

“The Speaker said the last peak points us home,” I said.

“Then let’s check it out.” Alpha tugged at Namo’s fur to steer him. “Maybe it’ll point us to Crow.”

The stone ceiling was becoming less and less patched with ice, so we were losing light as Namo crashed through the pool. Got closer, though, and we could see a figure beneath that last peak, dark and damp, bobbing on the water.

“It’s him,” I hollered, sliding off Namo and splashing forward.

The purple thread splinting Crow’s broken legs shone through the gloom. I grabbed him. Pulled him towards me. He was floating face up, eyes closed, and his right hand was clasped tight around the pack full of trees.

“I told you,” Kade said, coming up behind me. “The big freak is a thief.”

Alpha shoved at Crow as he bobbed on the water. She slapped his face, then she glanced at me. “He’s breathing.”

She went to slap him again, but Crow’s hand reached up and grabbed her, his fingers locking onto her wrist.

And when Crow’s eyes came open, they were full of madness.

“The lion’s mane,” he roared, his voice brimmed full of tears and echoes. “I and I.”

“Let go,” Alpha said, trying to pull her hand free.

“I and I. In the blaze of God’s dreadlocks.”

“Stop,” I yelled. “Let her go.”

But Crow wouldn’t let go. And his voice bellowed and sang.

“In the lion’s mane. Through the dust and corn, leaving rivers behind us.”

“He’s breaking my arm,” Alpha screamed.

I grabbed Crow’s fingers, twisting them. Trying to bend back his knuckles. Kade was thumping him in the belly, but it didn’t do a thing.

“An army,” Crow moaned. “In the golden sunrise. And the Tree King buried beneath the shade of the South Wall.”

“Banyan,” Alpha wailed. Her eyes so wide and frightened. And I sank my fists in Crow’s face and forced him below the water. Holding him under as he gurgled and twitched. He kept thrashing about, and I kept holding him down. He was dragging Alpha towards him.

But then he just quit.

He let go of her wrist, and she staggered clear. And as Crow’s body went limp, I staggered back, too. I leaned down and pulled the pack of trees from his other hand, checking the saplings, then swinging them onto my back.

Crow floated up out of the water. Eyes shut now. And when his eyes bulged back and spun open, it was because he was coughing, and when he puked, the slime sprayed upward, then landed all over his face.

It was disgusting. And I went to turn my back on him. But he was sick, I reckoned. Just like we’d all been. Driven to madness by the water or the moss or this place.

I splashed water on him, trying to get him cleaned up.

He was crying. Sobbing and shuddering. “What happened?” he croaked. “What have I done?”

“Take it easy,” I said. “You been walking a long way.”

“No. I can’t. Remember? I’m a cripple. You said so yourself.”

“But you walked here. On your own.”

“Don’t leave me, Banyan,” he cried. “Please. I know that you want to.”

“Quit crying,” I told him. “This all just some act?”

“He’s faking it,” said Kade. “I told you.”

“Come on.” I stared down at Crow as he floated in the shallow water. “Stand up.”

“Where’s Namo?” he asked, sounding real feeble.

“He’s just over yonder. Let’s see you walk over to him now.”

“Why you doing this? You seen what GenTech done to me.”

“But I seen where you’re at, big guy. You walked all the way here.”

“Don’t know how it happened.”

“Either you know you’re faking or you’ve fooled yourself, too.” I leaned down to him. “But you can walk. There ain’t no doubt about it no more.”

He found the bottom of the pool and tried to sit up. Tried to stand. Then he managed to haul himself against the jagged rocks of the last hanging peak and leaned against them, barely standing.

“Come on, damn it,” I shouted. “Walk.”

Crow took a step forward. Then another. He let go of the peak, and then he buckled and pitched.

And none of us helped Crow get back up. We just watched as he half swam and half crawled towards Namo, then pulled himself up the side of the mammoth, legs dangling beneath him.

“You go walkabout again,” I called to Crow, “crazy or not, you better not touch these trees.”

He stayed silent as my voice echoed around the cavern.

“Understood, Soljah?” I shouted.

“Yes, man,” he called back, hardly loud enough to hear. “Understood.”

“And this is meant to point somewhere?” Kade muttered, peering up at the peak.

“Supposed to.” I felt its rough edges, fumbling around for some clue.

Alpha shook her head, still rubbing her wrist where Crow had grabbed her. “All it does is point down.”

I ignored them. Just worked my way around the peak. And I made it all the way to the other side before I got smacked in the shins so hard, I landed face down in the water.

I knelt and splashed around, my fingers groping for whatever it was I’d tripped on, and I found me a rusty piece of metal down there. Some kind of iron pipe. Rotten and flaking, but sturdy enough. Big, too. I could barely get my hands around it.

“Thing’s sucking up water,” I said, finding the pipe’s opening, right beneath the rocks of the last hanging mountain. “Check it out. A pipe. Must be pumping the water someplace. I can feel it getting sucked up inside.”

I tried tugging at the pipe, but the thing was bolted in place. And I’d no doubt the other end was also bound tight to something.

We’d just have to follow it to find out where.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Alpha splashed out in front, and me and Kade kept on behind her, Namo following our ruckus as we followed the pipe through the pool. Crow was slumped on the mammoth’s back, and he seemed to have given up speaking as well as walking. He just belched and moaned, holding his stomach. Clutching at the beast as if Namo’s legs had replaced his own.

The water began to get warmer. Thicker, too. Tasted dirty now. Full of silt. And it weren’t much longer before I quit drinking it, no matter how empty my guts.

Then the water started drying up. We started stomping through puddles. And then, when the puddles were gone, we were slopping through mud.

By then, no more light seeped in anywhere, and we could hardly even see each other through the darkness. There was nothing to do but shuffle forward, gripping the iron pipe so you didn’t lose direction and end up lost.

“You want me to take the lead?” I asked Alpha when I bumped into her back one too many times.

“Just move up beside me.”

I quit grabbing at the pipe, started holding her hand instead.

“Hey, Kade,” I called. “Get up here.”

I reached behind me. “It’s easier like this,” I said. “We’ll form a chain. You hold onto me.”

“You’re not gonna ask me for a poem, are you?” he said, taking my hand. His voice was bitter and coarse, but I thought I could hear a smile in there somewhere.

“Would if I thought you actually knew one.”

“Hey,” called Alpha. “You seeing this?”

I peered into the depths. Straight ahead and nowhere at all. But then I did glimpse it. A white light flashing. And right away, we were all slipping through the mud towards it.

We peered up at a small plastic lantern that had been stuck in the dirt. The light was faint and flickering, but it marked an entrance to a tunnel that led out of the cavern. The iron pipe we’d been following ran all the way inside.

The tunnel was wide. High, too. Enough space we could cram Namo through it. And as we traveled deeper into the tunnel, the walls became almost sandy in places, the mud of the cavern giving way to something closer to the dust I’d spent a lifetime breathing in.

But the tunnel weren’t just dirt walls and a high ceiling. This tunnel was something folk used.

There were footprints running down it. And it was lit up. Every ten yards or so was the same sort of plastic lantern that had called to us through the dark. Each one of the old lanterns was dim and fluttery. And each one was connected to the next with thin red wire.

So there was power running down there. And you could hear water rushing in the iron pipe that ran along the wall next to us, whooshing and sloshing as it got pumped up from the pool beneath those upside-down peaks.

Juice. And water, and footprints. So, somewhere, there’d be people. It was just a question of when we might find them.

And who they might be.

We rounded a couple more bends, then slid down against the walls, exhausted. Our skin full of mud, but our bellies so empty, our muscles so weak.

Namo knelt down, and Crow crawled off the beast, carefully lowering himself to the dirt. Then he clawed his way over so he was next to me, his head in his hands once he leaned back on the wall. Alpha and Kade were slumped opposite, against the water pipe, the pale, plastic light chattery above their heads.

“Don’t worry about it,” Alpha said to Crow. She kicked gently at one of his splinted wooden legs, and the limb looked pretty solid now, purple thread all bound up with the bark, but that leg just wobbled when Alpha kicked it, and I don’t think Crow even felt it at all.

“Hey,” she said to him. “It’s all right. We all saw crazy beneath those peaks.” Alpha rubbed her wrist where the skin was bruised from him gripping it.

I glanced at Kade and wondered what he might have seen beneath the Speak It Mountains. And had it really been madness? Is that what it had felt like?

No. Not for me, anyway. Those mountains had shown me something I needed to see.

“Looks like we made it.” Kade gazed at the dirt above us. “I’ve heard of tunnels like these under the Steel Cities. People hid down inside them in the Darkness, mining for a place to stay warm.”

“I thought them was sewers,” I said. “Concrete.”

“Well, we’re not near Niagara.” Crow ran his hand along the wall behind him. He flitted his gaze quick between us, as if seeing if we’d still listen to him at all. “This dirt be too dry.”

“Someone’s got these lights running for something.” Alpha had never looked so pale, her skin painted white by the flickering glow. “Should keep our voices down.”

I scrambled forward so I was between the three of them. Then I began to sketch out a big square in the dirt.

Namo was rolled up on his side, flicking his trunk at my drawing and making these little sighing sounds. And the mammoth’s breathing was the only noise in that tunnel, apart from the soft pulse of the water as it gushed through the pipe on the wall.

“What’s this?” said Alpha, looking at the lines I had drawn.

“I been thinking things through.”

I pointed at the top edge of the square. “Above this line is the Rift,” I told them, then I scratched all the way across the bottom edge. “And here’s the South Wall. East and west, we got the coasts, the Surge,” I pointed, “here and here. So if we’re under the northern Steel Cities,” I marked a spot inside the northeast corner of the square, “then we’re somewhere around here. And if we get out of this tunnel, I say we head straight for the Salvage Guild’s headquarters.”

“You want to go to the Guild?” Crow said. Maybe it came out louder than he’d wanted.

“Yeah. All those old world machines. Gadgets and tools. Weapons. I figure they’d be good in a fight.”

“What fight you talking about, little man?”

I pulled the pack of trees off my shoulder. Laid it next to the map I had made. “For the first time in a hundred years, we got something to grow that ain’t owned by GenTech. Right?”

With my finger, I drew a thick line right down the center of the map, showing GenTech’s cornfields, running all the way from top to bottom. And to the west of the fields, I marked the only thing out there—Vega. The Electric City. The place GenTech called home.

“This is what they did with their power,” I said, pointing to Vega. “They put it all in one place. Built themselves up by keeping other folk down. And now GenTech’s gonna take these trees from us. They’ll find us, no matter where we try to hide, and they’ll take control of the apples like they control the corn. Then they’ll keep control over everything. Keep us squashed and squabbling in the dirt. Keep us trading with them no matter how high their demands. It’ll be business as usual. Unless we show them we’re willing to stand up and fight.”

“Us against the Purple Hand,” Alpha said, nodding.

“Yeah,” I said. “Us. All of us.”

“Then we head to Waterfall City.” Crow pushed himself from the wall and jabbed a finger in the dirt map, marking another spot in the northeast corner, further inland than the Steel Cities. “I know what it comes down to, man. Known it all along. But if we gonna start a war against GenTech, we gonna need warriors. Not old world machines.”

“We’ll head there,” I said. “Right after we head to the Guild’s headquarters and get them on our side.”

“We should head to whichever one’s closer,” said Kade.

“No.” Alpha folded her arms across her chest. “We should head to Old Orleans, bud. Like you said that we would.”

“It’s too far,” I said, my eyes pleading with hers. “We’ll get there, though. Later. I promise.”

“You already promised. You and me, that’s what you said.”

“But it’s like Kade’s saying, we should go wherever’s closer.”

“So you lied to me.”

“I didn’t lie.” I struggled to keep my voice down. “I just know now what we gotta do.”

“And what do you know about starting a war?” she said. “We need to gather the armies from across the plains. Anyone got a score to settle with the Purple Hand, it’s the pirates.”

“We all got a score to settle,” said Crow. “Not just your people GenTech beat down to nothing.”

“That’s it,” I said. “That’s what I’m saying—we don’t need an army, we need every army. All of them. We have to share the weight.” I pointed at the bag full of trees. “And then we all share the wealth.”

Alpha shook her head. “There’s only six of those saplings, bud.”

“But they’ll grow tall and they’ll spread, and they’ll keep on going. A forest for everyone. A forest growing apples for people to eat. It’s like Zee said, we work together. Give people roots and branches, and it’ll bind us as one.” Wasn’t that why Pop had taught me to build trees in the first place? To show people the world could still be something special?

And now I knew what sort of builder I had to be.

“I saw it,” I told them. “Beneath the mountains. I saw what would happen if one tribe’s more powerful than the others. Hell, we’ve all seen it happen, for the last hundred years. And I saw it happening all over again.”

“Because of some vision?” This was Alpha. “That’s what you’re telling us? That’s all you got?”

“What did you dream?” I stared right into those brown eyes of hers.

“It’s not important,” she said, looking away.

“Then why can’t you say it?”

“Because it’s crazy.”

“And you’re afraid it’s the truth.”

I needed her to believe me. To trust me. And I stared at the pack with a hole in my chest, knowing what it would come down to now. Knowing what I would have to do. Because they’d all need a sapling. Every last tribe. So I’d have to rip each tree from the others, breaking up the last of my father’s remains.

It was Crow who finally said something. He stared at the pack, and he glared at me. And then he rocked himself closer to the map.

“We’ll need the bootleggers,” he said, drawing a squiggle to show the southern stretch of the Steel Cities. “If we all be going up against GenTech together.”

“Bootleggers?” Kade frowned. “They’ve no weapons. No troops.”

“True that,” said Crow. “But they could feed our armies.”

“The poachers could do that.”

“Poachers?” Crow made a snort, and Namo got spooked behind me. “They can barely feed themselves.”

“One for the Salvage Guild. One for the pirate armies. One for the Soljahs, and one for the bootleggers.” Alpha still wouldn’t look at me as she spoke. “That’s two left. Two saplings.”

“One left,” I said. “I ain’t letting the last one out of my sight.”

“But what makes you so special?” Kade’s green eyes flickered in the white light. “I thought it can’t be anyone more than the next.”

“I keep the last tree. The sixth tree. And if I die, you can pry it loose from my fingers.” I didn’t dare look at Alpha as I said it. I just thought of that patch of bark on her belly. Because I’d pinned my last hope of a remedy to that sapling. It was the last trick I had up my sleeve.

“So what about the fifth tree?” Crow stared at Alpha and Kade as he spoke, but he was talking to me. “You got that figured out, too, man?”

“Yeah,” I said. Because I did have it figured. Crow was right—we’d need corn for our armies, at least until our apples could grow. But of course, GenTech had plenty of corn of their own. Plenty of food for their troops.

“GenTech needs crystal,” I said. “The field hands and agents are all hooked on the stuff. So I say we take their supplier. The fifth tree we give to the Samurai Five.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Alpha shot me a stare, confusion on her face. But Crow had anger in his eyes.

“The Five?” he said. “The Samurai Five?”

“Tell them.” I nodded at Kade. “Tell them what you told me.”

Kade had hunched inward, as if bracing himself against a cold wind that no one else could feel.

“They make the crystal,” he said, and he started scratching the back of his arm. Guess he weren’t keen to talk about the poison he’d been hooked on. “Samurai Five make all of it.”

“I know what they do,” yelled Crow. “I want to know why the scum deserve one of our trees.”

“Keep your voice down,” I said. “Just listen.”

“I was a field hand,” Kade whispered, rubbing his fingers over his stump. “GenTech used the crystal to make slaves of us. All of us. They use it to make slaves of the agents, too.”

“You think I don’t know this, little man?” Crow turned to me, his eyeballs bulging out of his head. “I worked for GenTech, remember? I know more about them than any of you.”

“Corn and crystal,” I said. “That’s how they keep their armies in line. And we can’t control the cornfields, but we could cut off their drugs.”

“Weaken ’em,” said Alpha, nodding. “It’s the first smart thing you’ve said.”

“No.” Crow sat back against the wall. Leaned his head on the dirt. “The Five are crooks.”

“I heard they got honor.” Alpha looked at Kade. “That they live by a code.”

“They don’t touch the crystal,” Kade said. “I know that much.”

“And that’s it?” Crow ignored the others. Just kept staring at me. “Soljahs and salvage and the Samurai Five?”

“And bootleggers,” I said. “And pirates.”

“Not pirates.” Alpha scratched a big X on the map, marking the plains, west of the Steel Cities but east of GenTech’s fields. “The Army of the Fallen Sun, they called it. And we’ll ride as that again.”

“The Soljahs fought, too.” Crow pointed at where he’d marked Waterfall City. “We made our stand against GenTech.”

“Drop it,” I told them. “The past don’t matter. All that matters is what we do next.”

I reached down and scratched out the map we’d drawn in the dirt.

“A blank slate,” I said, glancing at Kade. “Remember?”

“All right, bud,” said Alpha. “We’ll do it your way. For now.”

Crow might have gotten fired up about my plan for the fifth sapling, but he didn’t look too tough when I was helping him climb back up onto Namo.

“Better hope these walls don’t get any tighter,” I said to him as he gripped the mammoth’s fur.

“Keep hoping, Banyan. Seems like that’s what you’re best at.”

Couldn’t blame him for doubting me. Crow probably reckoned the trees would be safe in the hands of the Soljahs, and maybe he thought all the power would be safe with them, too.

Heading up those tunnels, Namo had to squeeze himself along where the walls got narrow, and Crow kept a tight grip as the mammoth wriggled and pushed, pressing down tight in its fur. Got so that big, shaggy beast was plugging up the passage behind us. But I strode out in front, the pack full of trees strapped to my back.

“Zee’d have been proud,” Kade said, coming to walk beside me.

I pictured her bony shoulders, her long hair and pretty face. But then I remembered her being riddled with bullets. I remembered her shriveled and lifeless in my arms.

“I don’t know,” I said. “She wanted all the fighting to stop.”

“Only one way to stop it. We rise up together against GenTech.” Kade lifted his stump between us. “All hands on deck, right? I told her you could be a leader. I told Alpha, too. In the mountains, after you’d fallen off that ridge. I said people would follow you to the ends of the earth.”

“Ah, you’re feeding me a line.”

“It’s true.”

“And what did Zee say?”

“This is the nicest thing I’ll ever do for you, bro. She said you were the only one of us who was more important than the trees. You know, your sister was even more beautiful than she looked.” Kade’s voice had started falling apart a little. “She was strong inside, even if her lungs were broken. She was strong where it counted.”

“I didn’t know her, though. Not enough. Not like I should.”

I turned to Kade, and the plastic lanterns strobed up and down the tunnel, painting him white and then black. And I wanted him to give me something more about my sister. Another missing piece.

“But why would she say that?” I asked. “About me being important?”

“Because she thought you could bring people together, if you ever got your shit together first.”

I wasn’t sure if I believed him. After all, Kade was the one who was so good at talking to folk. Not me.

But then Crow started hollering, and we peered back at him. Not much room to move in there, but he had his hands up, brushing the ceiling, showing us he could steer Namo just by moving his legs.

He veered left a little. Swung to the right.

“Look at you,” Alpha said, and she gave him a whoop.

Crow tapped his chest, then he scratched Namo behind his big ears. “You know, this mammoth reminds me of I and I. Two big freaks, no?” He kicked his legs, and Namo sped up to a trot.

But then Crow slowed the beast all the way down, and he was twisting up at something. Fidgeting at the ceiling.

“Come on,” I said. “Quit fooling around. And quit making so much noise.”

“Still think we’re under the Steel Cities?” Crow threw down a small clump of something he’d yanked out of the ceiling.

I bent down, scrabbling in the dirt till I had my hands on it.

“Roots,” Crow said. “Reaching down from above us. We ain’t under no Steel Cities. We be under the corn.”

I peered at the dirt walls. The crumbly ceiling. Everything seemed to shake in the throbbing white lights. Then I stared at the mess of roots in my fists. Felt like tangled strips of plastic.

I remembered Pop showing me the corn’s roots, when we’d been together in the cornfields, his hands digging into frozen dirt to reveal the wrinkled fingers of GenTech’s crop. And it struck me that Pop had always been careful to show me the ends of all things—the Surge that rips at the coasts and keeps us landlocked, the twisted tips of GenTech’s twisted plants, groping at the earth. Pop had wanted me to know I had nowhere else to go, so I’d better try to make this world better. Ain’t no grass greener, he’d once told me. Since there ain’t no grass left at all.

And now here we were, under the ground, and under the cornfields that kept the GenTech Empire fueled and well fed. The fields that run down the middle of everything, from up near the Rift all the way to the South Wall. The towering rows of thirty-foot plants and the huge purple dusters—steel machines blading down one crop and reseeding for the next. Up above us would be agents and field hands and the place Kade had told me about, the Stacks, a cornhusk kingdom full of junky slaves.

“If we’re under the cornfields,” said Alpha, “then this is a GenTech tunnel.”

“Irrigation.” Kade tapped at the iron pipe. “The corn hardly needs much water, but it still uses some.”

“You think it’s some kind of maintenance passage?” I turned to him. “I mean, you was a field hand. Where do you think it comes out?”

Kade shrugged. “It probably runs up somewhere.”

“It’ll put us right in the thick of things,” said Alpha. “Surrounded by GenTech.”

“Surrounded by plants, maybe.” Kade frowned. “The crops could give us cover.”

“It’s winter,” I said. “Too cold for the locusts.”

Crow stared down at us. “There be no point heading backwards.”

“We move then.” Alpha fixed me with a look. Fear in her eyes. “Quiet and quick. Ain’t got one weapon between us.”

“We have him, though.” I pointed at the mammoth, and Namo curled his shaggy trunk towards my hand. “His hide’s damn near bulletproof. And those tusks can do some damage.”

“But then what happens? If we do find a way out?” Alpha reached up to Namo’s belly, stroked his fur. “We take him out in the corn?”

She was right to sound worried. What would we do with the mammoth? Could hardly sneak him out through the fields. And even if we did, there weren’t no way to ride him across the plains. Might as well drag a big old flag over our heads and wait for GenTech agents to hunt our ass down.

Cross that bridge when we come to it, though. That’s what I told myself. Because before we could worry about Namo, we had to find an end to this tunnel. I glanced at the water pipe, wondering where it led to. I shielded my eyes from the flash of the lantern.

But then I quit moving at all.

I held up my hand to the others, held myself still.

Up ahead, I’d heard voices. And now there were footsteps. Creeping towards us through the dirt.

All I could think was how we should have Namo in front of us. We had to get behind him and use him like a shield.

I grabbed Alpha. Trying so hard to be quiet as I shoved her behind me. Then I turned to Kade. Reached for him, too.

But Kade wouldn’t move.

He just stood there, his green eyes glittery, his whole body seeming to pulse in the busted white lights. I reached for his arm. Not sure what was happening. But he pulled it away from me.

And then he swung his stumped arm at me like a club.

He used it as a weapon. Clobbering me with it, like he was hammering me into the ground. And when I hit the dirt, Kade started grabbing at me with his hand. No, not at me—at the pack on my back. He was hoisting it off me. Yanking the straps from my shoulders. And as the footsteps pounded closer, the whole tunnel seemed to shake and spin.

I was face down in the dirt with blood in my eyes, and behind me, I could hear Namo wailing and Crow cursing. I rolled up and saw Alpha standing above me, her legs wide and fists clenched.

Kade was bounding down the tunnel away from us, his head straight and high. He had the pack held above him. And he was shaking it, spilling the saplings out of the plastic and into the light.

There was confusion for a moment. Hesitation on the faces of the approaching crowd.

“Kade?” one of them said, coming forward to grasp his hand. And then they all gathered around him, talking. Giving him a little space as he stood there, cradling the saplings to his chest.

And then there was cheering. Voices raised, loud and righteous. Shocked. But happy as a damn jubilee. And these weren’t field hands.

They weren’t GenTech agents, neither.

I knew what they were from their cornhusk clothes and their underground faces.

The crowd moved closer, and I heard them gasp at Namo, and still freaking out at the trees. And then they were descending on us. Jabbing at Alpha with hacksaws and knives and forcing her backwards. And Kade was above me, sticking his foot on my chest, a machete gripped in his fist.

“I trusted you,” I whispered, peering up at him.

“Did you, though?” Kade’s mouth hung open, his teeth all sharp and spitty. And then that poacher kicked my head so hard, my brain snapped loose as my eyes snapped shut.