The field of people was silent. They looked up at her with damp, desperate eyes, asking her what to do.

We have to fight, she answered.

Angel winced as a bolt of pain shot through her temples and a vision flashed behind her eyes—a split-second glimpse of this same field, littered with the wounded and the dead. She knew she was leading many of these kids to their deaths, but she had no choice.

The world doesn’t have very many people left, but it has us. You’ve survived. But is just surviving enough?

“No!” a few eager kids shouted, but others still looked uncertain.

The Remedy drops bombs and builds superhuman androids to do his dirty work, but he’s never gone to battle, Angel said, her words gaining force. The Remedy stole our planet, murdered our families, and destroyed our homes, but he’s never seen our faces. Are you going to let him walk away?

“NO!” the crowd roared in unison.

Angel fluttered down until she was just a few feet off the ground. She wanted to see the dirt on their faces. She wanted to be able to meet their eyes. All she had was these kids, and all they had was her, and whatever they’d grabbed from the rubble. Her fighters were armed with barbecue forks, baseball bats, broken crutches, lengths of rusted rebar, pitchforks, tree limbs, junior archery sets… their bravery humbled her.

“The Remedy thinks he has won,” she said aloud, her voice strident and clear. “But he can’t see the future. I can. And I swear, if you follow me, we will see him fall.”

Right there, Kate fell to her knees in the dirt, her dark hair hanging as she bowed her head. Beside her, Ratchet knelt as well. One by one the others followed, until over a thousand kids were kneeling before Angel, ready to serve.

79

ALL I’D WANTED was to fight the Remedy. But as the troops were finally moving out, I was pushing backward against the tide of bodies, searching for blonde hair and white feathers.

I needed to talk to her first.

“Angel!” I yelled, elbowing my way through. “Ange!” I grabbed her hand and turned her around to face me. “What was that?” I demanded. I could still see the imprint of the explosion behind my eyelids, a sudden camera flash. I felt the heat, as real as if it were flaying my own skin. “Tell me what that was.”

In the middle of all this chaos, with people bumping past us and shouting directions, Angel had the stillness of a monk.

“You know what it was, Max. The day the sky caught fire—it was Armageddon.”