Immediately, Chi Boy began pulling against his cuffs, straining so hard his neck was a bundle of cord and blood. He grunted with the effort.

“Chi Boy, stop, you’ll pop your arms right out of the sockets!” Rania warned. Miig struggled to sit up, but she pushed him back down. “And you, you stop that now.”

“We’ll get it, the lock,” I yelled. “We have to be close!”

“Hurry, French.” Wab was pleading now, and the panic in her voice shot adrenaline into my limbs. “Before they come back and take Ishkode. Oh my god, please hurry! I can’t believe they know now.”

“Wait.” I was confused. “You knew about the baby farms?”

“Rania told us. That’s why we left in such a hurry,” Miig answered. “We wouldn’t have left Rose and your dad unless it was urgent. You have to know that.”

“Dammit, Miig, you popped a stitch,” Rania chastised him, opening the cookie tin sewing kit to repair her work. “Just lie still for a minute.”

She rummaged around in the tin and then pulled her fingers back. “Oh my…”

“What? What is it now?” Miig tried to twist his head to see what was wrong.

The nurse lifted her hand to eye level as if to confirm it was real. A pair of shiny silver sewing scissors. They had been right at the bottom, under the packets of needles. Kelsey and Shirley-Rachel had been too drunk or too scared to check the tin, and now Rania was holding sharp, narrow sewing scissors.

Isaac exclaimed in Cree and laughed. “Wab, you see that? You see what we have? Scissors!”

Wab, who was cooing to the baby, rocking back and forth, looked up for a second. “Do something with them, and now. My baby will not die that way, not by their hand.”

“Just hold on,” Chi Boy called across the room, still trying to pull his blood-and sweat-slick hands through the metal cuffs.

“Leave the stitch for now and try to get free, hurry!” Miig hissed.

Rania opened the blades and used them like a saw, furiously running them up and down her ropes. After a minute, the rope began to fray. “It’s working!”

“Okay.” I pulled to the end of my reach. “Tree, I can get to the lock easier. You take the scissors after she’s done. We’re the only three with rope ties. Cut yourself free while I do this.” He nodded, eyes glued on the nurse and her thinning bonds.

“Wab, we got this, you hear me?” I shouted over the din of everyone talking and shouting encouragement at once. She didn’t answer me. Her face was smashed up against the sleeping baby’s, rocking back and forth, eyes closed.

I pushed the combo dial one notch.

“Go!”

Zheegwon pulled his elbows wide. “Nope.”

Another notch. “Go!”

“Nope.”

“I got it! I got it!” Rania scrambled to her feet, the coils of rope dropping to the cement. She hobbled on stiff limbs to Tree and started sawing.