You're going south, you idiot! We were south when the signal went out, south is where they'll start—

She screeched east onto Sherbourne. Miri took the bend on two wheels. A great shadow fell across the road before her, the sky darkened abruptly overhead. Her imagination saw great airships, spewing fire—but her eyes (when she dared to look away from the road) saw only overarching trees, brownish-green blurs streaking the world on both sides, leaning over and blocking the afternoon sun.

But no, that's the sun up ahead, setting.

It was a great yellow-orange blob, dimmed by its slanting angle through the atmosphere. It was centered in the bright archway that marked the end of the tunnel of trees. It was setting directly over the road ahead.

How can it be so late? It can't be so late, it's only aftern—

The sun was setting.

The sun was setting the trees on fire.

She hit the brakes. The shoulder strap caught her around the chest, threw her back into her seat. The world grew ominously quiet: no more spitting clatter of rock against undercarriage, no more rattling of equipment on hooks, banging against Miri's walls. There was only the distant, unmistakable crackling of flame from up ahead.

A containment perimeter. They'd started at the outside and moved in.

She threw the MI into reverse and yanked hard on the stick. The vehicle skidded back and sideways, slewing into the ditch. Forward again. Back the way she'd come. The tires spun in the soft, muddy embankment.

A whooshing sound, from overhead, like the explosive breath of a great whale she'd heard in the archives as a child. A sheet of flame flooded the road, blocking her escape. Heat radiated through the windshield.

Oh Jesus. Oh God.

She opened the door. Scorched air blasted her face. The seatbelt held her fast. Panicky fingers took way too long to set her free and then she was on the ground, rolling. She scrambled to her feet, bracing against Miri's side; the plastic burned her hands.

A wall of flame writhed barely ten meters away. Another—the one she'd mistaken for the setting sun—was further off, maybe sixty meters on the other side of the MI. She sheltered on the cooler side of the vehicle. Better. But it wouldn't last.

Get the culture.

A mechanical groan, the bone-deep sound of twisting metal. She looked up: directly overhead, through a mosaic of leaves and branches not yet burning, she saw the fractured silhouette of a great swollen disk wallowing in the sky.

Get the culture!

The road was blocked ahead and behind. Miri would never be able to push through the dying woodlands to either side, but Taka could run for it. Every instinct, every nerve was telling her to run for it.

The culture! MOVE!