Angel glanced at the silo girls standing near Gazzy, ammunition draped across their chests.

… And others came because you were afraid.

She nodded at Lucas and Matthew Morrissey.

But I know all of you want to understand what happened. You want to know the truth.

She saw Max’s face twitch, her eyes narrow. Angel nodded.

Let me show you.

Angel stilled her body until her feathers were barely moving. She relaxed her breathing and closed her eyes. She let the connection open up.

Her brain flooded with thoughts from thousands of other minds—worries, doubts, judgments, memories—all blurring together until the din was like a swarm of locusts buzzing inside her skull, furious and deafening.

Then she took her own vision, her own terrible knowledge, and she pushed it into that space. She made them see.

Angel showed them the round, perfect globe as only astronauts had seen it, blue and naked and seeming to glow.

She showed them the enormous asteroid and its fiery tail, roaring through the darkness, pulled like a magnet. Closer, closer.

The smaller pieces breaking off as it entered the earth’s atmosphere, scattering throughout the Pacific.

The many shooting stars that got brighter and brighter until it felt like your eyelids were peeled back, unable to shut out their light.

The moment the biggest chunk hit on the western coast of Morocco, there was too much to see at once, too much to know. The images flashed faster and faster, like a flipbook of drawings:

The main meteor, almost a mile wide, smashing against the earth, creating a new, gigantic crater where Morocco had once been.

The ring of fire that circled the massive crater, burning for months.

The jolt after the impact that rippled though the water within moments, churning into tsunamis.

Angel showed them the blinding flash that North Africans saw just before their bones vaporized in the heat. The mile-high tidal wave of water arcing over New York and most of the East Coast of the United States, Venezuela, and Spain just before it sucked everything back to sea. She showed them forests from Eastern Europe to the western US that burst into flame all at once as hot ash pelted down. And the shudder of shock waves racing underfoot around the globe, toppling cities, causing a domino effect of volcanoes to erupt with devastating results.

Angel showed them everything she could, and when she was done, she opened her eyes with a gasp, severing the connection.

Angel saw Nudge right below her, tears spilling down her cheeks. Many others were weeping, too. Just as Angel had.

Angel didn’t show them what had happened days and weeks after—the death and famine, the raids. They already knew all about that. There was just one more thing they didn’t know.

The Remedy did this, she told them. This, and much more. He dropped bombs, unleashed a virus. He tried to wipe all traces of humans off the earth.