I didn’t see what happened next, only the aftermath. Clancy went flying back into the shelves, hard enough that there was an audible crack as his head connected with the back wall. His body tore down the shelves of pasta and flour, landing in a messy pile on the floor.

Chubs’s upside-down face appeared over mine. His glasses were scratched and bent, and his face and shirt were stained with soot, but he didn’t look like he was hurt.

“Ruby! Ruby, can you hear me? We need to run.” Why did he sound so calm? Gunfire roared in my ears, an endless stream of tiny pops and explosions. “Can you move?”

I was still too stiff to do anything other than shake my head.

Chubs gritted his teeth and slipped his arms around me, making sure he had a good hold. “Hold on, I’m getting us out of here. Move when you can.”

Outside the safety of the Office, there was no escaping the noises. My heart lurched to life, pounding against my rib cage.

Tear gas and smoke coated the air in thick layers. Everywhere there was fire—on the ground, climbing the trees, dropping onto cabin roofs. My face and chest felt like they had caught, too. The wind blew the fire so close to us that Chubs had to pat my jeans down so I wouldn’t go up in flames. He grunted, and I knew he was struggling to keep us going under my weight. I wanted to tell him to drop me, to take the letters in Liam’s jacket and run.

Liam. Where is Liam?

Through the swirling ash I saw the lines of black uniforms marching the kids from camp down the path to the cabins. I saw a girl thrown out of her cabin and into the dirt, only to be yanked up by her hair. Two kids I recognized from the camp’s security detail raised their guns at the PSFs, who blew them away in a cloud of fire.

“STOP WHERE YOU ARE!”

The air was knocked from my chest as Chubs dropped me to throw that same soldier up into a tree. When his arms circled my chest again, we were moving faster than before.

And then we were falling, tumbling down the hill. Chubs let out a surprised croak as we rolled, picking up brush and embers along the way. The back of my hand smacked against a tree, but I couldn’t see where we were going. The smoke blinded me.

I came to a slow stop at the base of the hill, sinking face-first in the muddy bank. My hands and legs all convulsed as the feeling began to return to them.

I felt hands on the back of my jacket. Chubs dragged me on my back, choking and coughing.

We are going to die. We are going to die. We are going to die.

Rabbits need to accept their fate, rabbits need dignity and above all the will to accept their fate, their fate, their fate, their fate—