‘No,’ said Rozalia, her voice taut. ‘You saw what happened. It didn’t just crash – it aimed itself at the control rig.’ She turned to look at the second drone, still sitting on its charging mount. ‘It’s got to be Casey. Somehow he programmed the drone to do that. He knew we’d try to find him. Nothing else makes sense.’

We’d walked into a trap, I thought numbly. Like blind men stumbling into the mouth of a lion.

Oskar staggered back over from the SUV, wiping his mouth before grabbing hold of his rifle from where he had dropped it. He lifted it to his shoulder and fired at the surviving drone, still parked on its charging station. The drone tilted backwards, then slid off its mount before falling to the hard-packed soil. A small trickle of greasy smoke rose from a bullet hole in its ventilator grille.

I heard a click, and Yuichi stepped forward. He had taken the safety off his own rifle and now had it aimed straight at Oskar’s belly. There was a look in his eyes I had never seen before.

‘You idiot,’ Yuichi seethed. ‘You stupid, asinine, trigger-happy, moronic fucking idiot.’

Oskar stared back at him in fright and confusion.

‘Yuichi, don’t,’ I said.

‘I could have reprogrammed that drone from here,’ Yuichi continued, ignoring me. ‘I could have rebooted it, cleared out its memory, then sent it back up to search that whole damn city for Casey. But no. You had to fucking destroy it.’

‘Yuichi. Stop. Please.’

It was Rozalia this time. She had lifted her own rifle to her shoulder, and aimed it at Yuichi.

‘We can’t do this,’ she continued, and I could tell she was fighting to keep her voice steady. ‘We’re all in this together. Trying to kill each other isn’t going to help us figure a way out of this mess.’

‘For all we know, Casey could have been watching us through the damn thing’s cameras the whole damn time we’ve been here!’ Oskar screamed. He threw his rifle to the ground and fell to his knees, and I saw that he was weeping. ‘Don’t you understand?’ he wailed, tumbling to his knees. ‘We’re dead. Dead!’

‘Is it possible?’ I asked. ‘Could he have been watching us from somewhere else in the city?’

‘I don’t know,’ Rozalia said quietly. ‘The drones broadcast their data back to us, so I guess it’d be possible to rig up some kind of portable control unit. Except Casey doesn’t have the brains or the know-how to do any such thing.’

‘But if anyone could, Wallace could,’ said Yuichi.

‘What does it matter any more?’ Oskar shouted hoarsely. ‘There’s no point looking for Casey any more, not if we can’t get home, not without—’