The house was almost shockingly cool after the patio. I dropped Mandy’s hand as I charged across the living room. The door to the room I shared with Graham was still ajar; he wasn’t there. That left Lucas’s room at the end of the hall, which we had all been avoiding out of courtesy since our time in Arizona had begun. He’d made no bones about how unhappy he was to be there, surrounded by aliens, or how much he resented needing to pay for his safety with blood. If it hadn’t been for the discreet bars on all the windows, he would probably have made a break for it long since, and been punished accordingly.

Lucas and Graham were sitting on the bed when I shoved the door open. They turned, eyes wide, to behold the spectacle of me and Mandy filling the doorway, winded and frantic.

“Now,” I gasped, between great gulps of air. “We go now.”

Graham, to his credit, didn’t argue. He just stood, crossing quickly to join us.

Lucas was more difficult. “Go?” he asked, not rising. “Go where? I’m done following you, Stasia. I think I’ve already done enough.”

“We’re getting out of here, you ass,” snapped Mandy. She stepped forward, grabbing Lucas by the wrist and hauling him to his feet. “Or did you want to wind up buried in the backyard? Because we’ll leave you if that’s what you want.”

Lucas paled. “Don’t leave me.”

“Great. Come on.”

Graham’s hand clutched in mine, I turned and ran back down the hall. The house seemed suddenly too big, filled with an echoing silence that would have been terrifying if there hadn’t been so many more concrete things to be afraid of. Where were the others? Where were the aliens who shared this house with us, where were the human collaborators willing to throw their own species under the bus for the sake of being proven right among the ashes? It couldn’t be this easy.

It was. The door was unlocked; the car keys were hanging on their hooks next to the mail slots. I grabbed the keys to the van they’d used to bring me here from the NASA stronghold. I wasn’t clear on who owned it—I wasn’t clear on who owned anything around here, except that a rental agency owned the house, and the bills were in the senator’s name—but whoever it was could use one of the other three cars parked on the property. I was getting my people out.

No one stopped us as we made for the van. I tossed the keys to Graham, who slid into the driver’s seat and turned the engine on, relaxing slightly. “We have a full tank,” he reported, turning to me …