Jonny grabbed the rope netting, then sat down next to me on the rock ledge. “I thought she said something about Russia’s betrayal…” My eyebrows shot up at the mention of the very place Angel had gone to, but Jonny shook his head uncertainly. “That day was really crazy, though. Pierpont had all this high-tech equipment, but all it told us was that a few small objects had exploded on contact with the earth’s atmosphere.”

Meteors. That’s what Dylan said, too. But they couldn’t have been small. They must have been huge, and more than just a few of them, judging by the mess we saw.

“We were all in the caves by then, though, so we couldn’t see what was happening outside.”

“The sky caught fire,” I said, remembering how there’d been a huge black hole ringed in flames.

“But here’s the thing: The hits were only reported in the Pacific.”

“So?”

“So the local tsunamis would’ve been caused by the impact, but what about the other reports we heard?” Jonny seemed to catch himself. He focused on the net in his lap, knotting it expertly. “Sorry, you don’t want to get me started on all my theories.…”

“Hey, I asked, didn’t I?” I took a length of rope and mimicked his hand movements. “I’m a big fan of conspiracy theories.”

They line up with my real-world experience: that pretty much everyone I meet is out to get me.

Jonny’s eyes became animated. “Okay. So, the meteor fragments were in the Pacific,” he repeated. “But that first day, we got news blips from all over the world about other sudden disasters—too many global events for coincidence.” He gestured with his speargun on the rock as if marking spots on a map. “I’m talking rumors of nukes being deployed in Africa, several heads of state murdered, a lockdown in the US, a major epidemic in East Asia… There’s a lot we don’t know, but I’m positive it was all orchestrated by people with a lot of money and power. They wanted to destroy the world, and might not be too happy to find out a bunch of mutant kids survived. I’ve been telling Rizal we need to make more weapons.” He stabbed the spear into the sand and looked up as if scanning for trouble from the sky. “We have to be prepared to fight.”

I guessed his theories were more right than wrong. What else did he know? “Right before she died, my mom warned us about a biological weapon called the H8E virus,” I told him. “Did you hear about any connection to the Apocalypticas? Or the Doomsday Group? Or H-men? Or the Remedy?”

If anyone knows her genocidal terrorist flash cards by heart, it’s me. I certainly have enough experience with them at this point.