‘Not Obi,’ says another fighter covering his face with soot-smeared hands. ‘Not him.’

They look dazed and overwhelmed.

‘He was going to get us out of this mess,’ says the first fighter. ‘That bastard can’t die.’ He sounds angry, but his face crumples like a little boy’s. ‘He just can’t.’

Their reactions shake me.

‘Calm down,’ I say. ‘You can’t help anybody if—’

‘That’s just it,’ he says. ‘We can’t help anybody, not even ourselves. We’re not enough to lead humanity. Without Obi, it’s over.’

He’s repeating the words I’ve been saying to myself in my head. It makes me angry to hear the defeat in his voice.

‘We have a chain of command,’ says Martin. ‘Whoever’s below Obi takes over.’

‘Obi said Penryn should lead,’ says a woman who helped carry the injured with me. ‘I heard him. He said it with his last breath.’

‘But the second in command—’

‘We don’t have time for this,’ I say. ‘The angels are coming. At sunset tonight, they’ll hold a hunt that’s a contest for the largest number of human kills.’

I wait for a response, but no one seems surprised. They’ve been beaten, abused, and traumatized. They stand there in their rags, skinny and malnourished, dirty and beaten, looking to me to give them information and a direction.

They’re in stark contrast to my memories of the perfect bodies and the gold and glitter of the angel gatherings. Many people in the audience are injured, bandaged, limping, and scarred. Their wide eyes are a window into their desperation.

A wave of anger hits me. The perfect angels with their perfect place in the universe. Why can’t they leave us alone? Just because they’re better looking and have better hearing, better eyesight, better everything than us doesn’t make them worth more than us overall.

‘A hunt?’ asks Dee. He looks at his soot-streaked brother. ‘So that’s why they did it.’

‘Did what?’ I ask.

‘They set a line of fire to the south end of the peninsula. The only way out is across the bay or by air.’

‘We saw it through the surveillance cameras,’ says Dum. ‘We went down to try to fight the fire, but we spent half our time avoiding angels. It’s completely out of control now. We were coming back to tell Obi.’

The implications hit me.

The bridges are in pieces from the earthquakes. Even if we manage to gather all the working boats and planes, only a tiny fraction of people would be able to get off the peninsula before sunset.

I’d assumed that because the hunt wouldn’t start until tonight, we’d be free to run until then.

‘The fire is moving up north,’ says Dee. ‘It’s like they’re corralling us.’

‘They are,’ I say. ‘They’re herding us for their hunt.’