Because now I am shivering and I am running and I am not paying attention to anything because there she is ahead of me at the base of the mountain, walking back and forth, then standing still like she is waiting for me, like she has been waiting for me my entire life.

Ify.

The ground is exploding with light. Something shining from above us. Then grass is being whipped around me. It is blinding my regular eye, but I am seeing with my other eye helicopter and drone, and my heart is thump-thumping in my chest because I am not needing to strain my ear to hear stomp-stomp of juggernaut. And I am turning back to Ify and I am wanting to scream at her to get away and I am running fast fast.

My brother and sister are running out of the way, and some are being captured in electrified net that is short-circuiting them and making them to lie still, and some of them is vanishing back into the forest. But I am the only one running to Ify because she is real and I must tell her that I have been looking for her all my life. And I am thinking that she is in danger and I am coming here just in time to save her.

CHAPTER

25

Everything happens at once.

A series of small shapes breaks free of the forest behind them. Then helicopters and large drones burst out from over the tops of the trees. Police vehicles zoom into view out of nowhere. And lights shine from the aerial assault vehicles to show that the moving shapes on the ground aren’t animals at all but children. Children moving unnaturally fast.

Ify’s minders grab her and Grace by the arms and try to hustle them into the back seat of their jeep. Grace, too stunned to resist, is swept into the vehicle, but Ify breaks free and stares at one of the children, who bounds straight for her, heedless of the bullets that have started zipping around her, heedless of the way the earth explodes into columns around her with each detonation. Slipping through the legs of the police that try to capture her, vaulting over another officer, wrapping her legs around its neck, and twisting on the way down. Rolling into a sprint. Flicking a knife from out of nowhere into her palm and slicing and stabbing at whatever comes for her, never once taking her eyes off of Ify.

Ify should be scared, should be terrified that this is coming for her, this thing so efficient at killing, but it is a child. A girl no older than fourteen or fifteen. And there is something about her that compels Ify to stand still.