Asher bites his lip. “I want to save them too, Delta. I do. But I’m not sure giving the General the most easily fired rifle the wastes has ever seen is the smartest way to go about it.”

“He’ll give them to his Loyalists, arm them all.”

“Right. It makes him too powerful.”

“But Powder Town will know our plans. And when the Prime sees an aurora on the horizon, she can head for Bedrock and attack the very next day, during the height of the silent storm—when the General’s new weapons won’t work.”

“It takes more than a day to get from Powder Town to Bedrock,” Asher points out.

I jerk my head toward the Gods Touched below us. “Not on a wind wagon.”

Asher’s brow peaks. Now he sees what I do.

The wind wagon fleet Powder Town can build.

The Loyalist army whose weapons will fail when they need them most.

A chance to truly overthrow the General.

“And then Bedrock is just there for the taking,” he murmurs.

I nod. “We’re going to steal it from him. It can be our Verdant, Asher, at least for a little while. The Oracle said the water supply is fading, but I’m sure it can be stretched further. We’d stop wasting it on ilkcorolla crops, for starters. And we could explore above the Backbone, too. See if there’s more fertile land that way. Partner with Powder Town through it all.” I turn toward him, my pulse pounding. “The wastes won’t be so bad once the General’s gone. There’s enough to go around if the right people are put in charge.”

Asher looks away from me toward the green tendrils of light on the horizon. “We should sleep. At least until the next test.”

I’m not sure how much time has passed before I wake. The sharp lines of Eden’s rooms make me uneasy, and I lurch upright in the bed. Asher’s arm dangles in my view, hanging over the edge of the mattress above me.

I’m reminded of my time spent on Zuly’s tanker—the beds stacked on top of each other in those windowless gray rooms.

I slide from the bed. The excitement of my plan has faded, and I’m left with the aching throb of a moonblitz fog. Asher’s sleeping on his stomach, head turned toward me. He looks younger in sleep, his features relaxed and his lips slightly parted. It’s a face I remember from Alkali Lake, a shadow of the boy I once knew. I consider waking him, but if he had anywhere near what I did to drink, he could do with sleeping off the blitz. I guide his hand back onto the mattress and tuck it beside his body.

Then I snatch the rifle from where we’d left it beside the bed and slip from the room.