Malachai and Wren are walking arm in arm toward us, Wren leading Malachai. I tell them to follow Pander, Igby, and Pod into the tunnels, and Kina and I run through the ever-growing pool of water that is slowly flooding the library.

We run to the periodicals room, where Sam is lying on her back, soaked in sweat, breathing rapidly as Akimi holds her hand and Dr. Ortega gives her instructions.

“We have to go,” I say.

“Oh yeah, great,” Dr. Ortega replies. “Let’s just go on a lovely jaunt. It’s not like there’s a human being coming out of another human being or anything!”

“What’s going on?” Akimi asks, her eyes following the stream of water as it snakes into the room.

“Happy has found us. If we don’t leave now, we’re all dead.”

“Fuck!” Dr. Ortega yells, so loud and so suddenly that it startles me. “Why now?”

She leans forward and asks Sam if she can stand.

I know that we won’t make it all the way to the arcade with Sam in this condition, I know that Apple-Moth can’t hide us from the Mosquitoes, I know that it’s over. We can’t escape.

Sam swears a lot as she is helped to her feet and led through to the main room of the library, where the water is now at ankle level.

I glance up to the smashed glass roof, and see raindrops bouncing off the shells of dozens of attack drones that loom over and track our movements.

Why aren’t they firing? I wonder. They have us, it’s over. Why aren’t they firing?

I look toward the bathroom door to see Pander, Igby, and Pod walking toward us, dejected.

“What are you waiting for?” I call out. “Let’s go!”

“The tunnels are filled with Alt soldiers,” Igby says. “Hundreds of them. We’re dead.”

And just like that we’re trapped, cornered like hunted animals.

I look around: Apple-Moth frantically circles the torrent of rainfall; my friends stand together; Sam lowers herself down into the water and cries in pain as the baby comes, and above us, thousands of attack drones hover above the library.

“Well,” Malachai says, “things are not going so well.”

“You could say that,” I reply.

“All right,” he replies, “get me a gun. I may be blind, but I’m going out fighting … just nobody walk in front of me.”

“We have to take our chances in the city,” Pander says. “We have to run, and split up, and hope that they can’t track all of us.”

I look toward the front door of the library. It won’t work, I think. There are thousands of drones, thousands of soldiers—we’d be dead in seconds, and even if we wanted to try, Sam is in labor. We couldn’t—