I run over to the crow’s nest chair and hoist myself up until I’m inside the domed window. I look out over the city. It’s now in complete darkness as the drone cloud becomes one solid, dark curtain stretching out as far as I can see.

And then the whole city is lit up as if it’s daylight for a fraction of a second as lightning forks down from the sky. And again, another fork of lightning, and another, and another, every few seconds. It starts to rain, drops pattering loud against the glass roof.

“Apple-Moth, what is this?” I yell down to the ground floor.

The drone darts up beside me and scans around, analyzing the lightning. “They’ve found us,” the drone replies.

Then, suddenly, the cloud is shrinking and moving, growing darker as it does.

I look down to see Kina, Pod, Pander, and Igby standing together, silently looking up at me and Apple-Moth.

I look out again at the clouds and the rain, which is growing heavier by the second. I watch the lightning flicker and fork. I see sparks fly up each time the bolts of electricity strike something. And then, finally, the boom of the lightning stops and becomes only a rumble as it occasionally lights up the black clouds.

And now, among the illuminating clouds, I see thousands of Mosquitoes and thousands of attack drones.

“It’s over,” I say.

The rain is unnaturally heavy now, a battering stream falling from the sky. I watch in horror as the glass of the dome begins to crack under the weight of the enormous raindrops.

“Luka,” Kina calls, “get down from there.”

I begin to lower myself down, feeding the rope through my hands, but then the glass above me shatters under the weight of the rain and I’m falling, fast, toward the floor.

The chair hits the ground hard.

It hurts like hell—I think my collarbone is broken—but there’s no time to dwell on it. The rain falls so hard and so fast that I can’t breathe.

Kina, Pander, and Igby run into the deluge and pull me out.

“We have to go back into the tunnels,” Kina says, “back to Purgatory. It’s the only way.”

We all head toward the tunnels, none of us choosing to point out that if the scramblers can’t hide us from the drone cloud, a low-battery Apple-Moth certainly won’t be able to.

Pander is the first down, followed by Pod and Igby. I usher Kina toward the ladder, but she can see in my eyes that I don’t intend to follow.

“Where are you going?” she asks.

“Go,” I say to Kina. “I’m going to get the others.”

“No way,” she replies. “I’m coming with you.”

I nod, and we run back into the main room of the library.