I suppress waves of nausea and pull harder, harder; Malachai’s scream turns into a bloodcurdling screech. I grit my teeth, breathing heavily through my revulsion. Finally, there’s an audible snap, and it’s over.

Malachai falls silent as I vomit into the foul water. Tears run down my face, my vision blurred and graying out at the edges as I struggle to maintain consciousness.

I turn back to my friend. I look to see if his chest is rising and falling. It isn’t.

“No! No, Malachai, don’t you dare die!”

I crawl over to him and begin to pump at his chest.

“He’s not dead, friend,” Apple-Moth says, hovering beside my left ear.

“But his heart …” I start, and then I remember what Igby had said: They’ve already taken their eyes. They’ve replaced their lungs and their hearts.

Malachai now has an MOR and an APM system: no lungs and no heart. I press my newly fixed ear against his chest and hear the mechanical hum of machinery.

He’s still alive.

I’m distracted by a noise, a quiet, mechanical whirring, and I realize that it’s coming from my hand.

I look down. Malachai’s eye is moving, the pupil contracting. I see that the second-to-last light around the iris has come on—I’m almost out of time. And then the pupil begins to revolve until it’s looking right at me.

Without thinking, I smash the blood-covered eye against the floor of the pipe, shattering it.

I clamber back to Malachai. The other eye continues to upload and I don’t have time to hesitate. It’s easier now that he’s unconscious.

The final light comes on and a rapid beeping sound comes from the eye just seconds after it is liberated from Malachai’s socket. I’m about to destroy this eye too when something stops me. I think of the eye that Igby uses to hack into Happy’s mind, and I push it deep into my pocket.

I survey the scene before me. My friend, lying still in the sewage water, face streaked with blood, two bruised and bloodied holes where his eyes should be. And me: hands red with gore; exhausted both mentally and physically.

Apple-Moth moves slowly around us both. The drone’s movements are sluggish, as if it is somehow queasy too.

I pull the T-shirt covering Malachai’s forehead down to cover his wounds too. Now that his eyes are out, Malachai’s Panoptic is the only way Happy has of tracking us, other than the Mosquitoes, but Apple-Moth will be taking care of them.

What now? I think, sitting on my heels and putting the body armor back on, but there’s no time for careful planning as the voices of the soldiers come again, far away, echoing down the pipeline, but close enough for the adrenaline to flow back into my body.