“Igby, drop it!” I scream as the light gets closer and closer to his hands.

“Wait, wait, wait!” he screams, frantically typing as he runs into the corridor.

“Igby, if that light touches you, it’ll kill you,” I call after him.

We carry Sam down the wooden stairs and into the short, dim corridor below. Water is pouring down here from the open library ceiling, cascading down the steps. Apple-Moth’s green light illuminates the corridor in an alien glow.

The soldiers’ footsteps grow louder behind us as they discover the trapdoor and begin to descend the steps.

Igby taps away at the keys of his disappearing laptop and the circular door unwinds, opening up in front of us. Once he has pressed the last key, he shouts, “Duck!” We all drop and Igby throws the laptop over our heads toward the soldiers, missing them by a few inches.

Igby’s eyes dart from us to the approaching soldiers and back to us as he stands against the wall. When Kina and I have carried Sam across the threshold, Dr. Ortega, Malachai, Wren, Pander, and Pod stumble in after us. Igby slams his fist against a big red button on the wall and the door crashes shut, just as the lead Alt soldier sprints for the gap.

We take Sam to the far end of the metal room and lay her down on the floor, and other than her cries of pain and effort, there is silence in the room.

“Can Tyco’s gun burn through that door?” Pander asks.

Igby shrugs. “I don’t think so. It’s Deleter-proof, and that looks like Deleter tech to me.”

“Well,” Malachai says from among the crowd, “what now?”

I look to the Natural—Wren is holding on to his hand as she breathes in short gasps. “Honestly, I don’t know,” I reply, and I can still hear Akimi’s panicked voice as she disappeared a bit at a time. I feel anger burning in my heart and I want nothing more than to kill Tyco Roth. I calm myself, knowing that this is far from over.

“Friends! Friends!” Apple-Moth cries, zipping around our heads. “What’s going on, friends?”

“Apple-Moth, calm down,” I say, but the drone won’t listen—it’s so frantic now that it’s started crashing into the walls.

“I don’t like small spaces!” Apple-Moth says.

“Apple-Moth, power down!” I say, and—for once—the drone doesn’t argue. I don’t know if it’s because it was panicking, or if it could hear in my voice that I meant it, but the drone powers down immediately and I grab it out of the air before it hits the floor.

I turn to Wren. “How are you doing, Wren? You seem better?”

She nods, moving even closer to Malachai.