By sheer luck, we reach the dam wall. Through the settling dust I can make out the crop fields, hundreds of workers paused in a crouch, frozen with fear, or perhaps uncertain whether they should keep harvesting despite the chaos. Farther beyond, a section of the Backbone sports a gaping hole along its base—evidence of the explosion Reed set off last night. Several floors of residences are missing.

As we scramble over the dam wreckage, the Prime goes down, shouting. I expect the worst as I check her, but there’s no blood, no bullet. It’s her leg. She’s misstepped, gotten her foot wedged between two rocks. She draws it out, cringing. When she tests the joint, drawing an invisible circle with her toes, she gasps.

“Go!” she shouts. “Find the General. End this.”

“I can’t leave you!”

She tucks low behind a boulder as a few bullets ping down on us. The Loyalist rifle shots are coming less frequently now, their powder supplies nearly depleted. “I can’t run,” she grits out, “but I can cover you. Now go, Delta, before our moment has passed.” Sweat coats the Prime’s dark brow, and there’s a ferocity in her gaze, a drive to survive this moment, nothing more. I need to survive it, too.

I bolt to action. No second-guessing. No time for fear. I move, or I’m dead.

I clutch the mag-rifle to my chest and push to my feet, sprinting as fast as I can. Through the fields, finding the straightest path, my boots pounding the dirt. And then I see him among the workers—Asher, crouched low and taking aim, covering me along with the Prime. I nearly lose my footing at the sight of him. When I look again, he’s not there. And of course he’s not. I’m imagining things, my grief conjuring up ghosts.

I shake my head, force myself on.

The Prime’s mag-rifle barks behind me. Over and over. Bullets ping near my feet and whiz past my shoulder. But whoever she is firing at never manages to strike true. Gasping, a stitch forming in my side, I duck beneath the Backbone’s lowest overhangs, entering the storerooms and stables. To the left, destruction, the result of Reed’s work. Sections of ceiling are propped up with haphazard stone and wood planks. To the right, stores of crops and water, wagons and horse stables. I find the nearest staircase and climb.

Memories come back, searing and sharp.

Corridors that are familiar.

Ghosts of moments I’ve already lived. Reed leading me to my room, my jacket clenched to my front as my shirt hung open in the back, my brand bared. Being led to the library, desperate for the Oracle to know how to read an unreadable map.

The halls are eerily quiet, every last Loyalist probably called to the dam wall when they saw our fleet coming.

I take another stairwell. Then another.