“The op manifest is on the hard drive. I marked who died in the uprising as best I could, as well as who was aboard our ship when they bailed. Lastly, here’s a shot of those bastards leaving. It was the last bit of footage Eden’s topside cam captured.”

The black window changes to a view of the wastes. In the distance, a winged tubelike shape hovers in the air, floating in the most unnatural manner I have ever seen. Unlike a bird, its wings are rigid, and it moves faster than any bird can travel, drawn up by an invisible thread. Something falls from it, moving closer and closer to us, the viewers. It fills the whole window, and everything shutters and splinters, hundreds of colors streaking across the frame. Then it goes dark.

“I think that says just about everything.”

General Amory falls silent.

The window stays dark.

There is nothing else.

I push my chair away from the table, feeling sick. The truth slides into place, Amory’s story reshaping my world.

There is no such thing as the gods touched. The stars the General collects are just tech that was put into the heads of prisoners ages ago to control them. There are no gods either. Amory made them up. He invented them to encourage the people to leave Eden, to eke out a living, to keep surviving.

They must have left Eden and never looked back. They took what they needed, including the jars Amory mentioned, a resource we still use to this day. They left the malfunctioning mag-rifles and took the Old World rifles we’ve since modified to shoot black powder, and they traveled south and east. To the Barrel, Powder Town, Alakali Lake, the coast. They made do and kept waiting for the gods to come back, and somewhere along the way they began to whisper about a paradise—a haven where life was easy and evil could be locked out.

When my pack’s ancestors found a map in a deserted rover, they thought it led to this forgotten paradise. But it just led back here, to Eden. To this bunker. To the truth that died with Amory:

There is no Verdant.

It’s a giant scudding lie.

It never existed.

My heart ratchets wildly. I can’t breathe. I need air.

I turn away from Asher, vaguely aware that he’s calling my name. I sprint past Reed. Bolt into the hall. Climb the stairs. Scramble up the rubble. Tumble out into the setting sun. Heat envelopes me, and the wind whips dirt at my face. Dirt and grit and grime, endless and everywhere, as far as the eye can see.

I was born of this dust, and I am never going to escape it. I’m going to die right here, starved in this barren wasteland, on the threshold of the Verdant that never was.