She and a few others were locked up, stuffed into a tiny compartment within one of the flying machines they called Bergs, one of only a million things in the last day that were so foreign to her. Things she’d heard from old people and read in books and imagined in her head as a child. Vehicles that defied gravity, fire burning from holes like dragon breath. Machines the size of mountains that walked on spiked wheels. Guns. Bridges. People in strange clothing that certainly hadn’t been made by a little old lady and her loom.

And those freaks. The ones in chains, their eyes full of death and madness, moving in sync as if they were all part of a single organism. Cranks. The word itself conjured nightmarish stories told around a fire and morbid jokes amongst friends on the island. Cranks. They’d been Cranks, though not quite like any description she’d ever heard.

Ms. Cowan squeezed her knee, bringing her back to the current nightmare. She sat directly in front of her, pressed so close they had to interlock legs. With a forced effort that made her want to cry, she smiled. Dominic was there, also, to her left, next to Old Man Frypan. The other two men from the east coast of the island—to whom she’d never said more than three words—were crammed on both sides of Ms. Cowan. Miyoko was to Jackie’s right, arms wrapped around her because she must’ve appeared the most distraught after what had happened.

Taken. They’d been taken. Stolen.

She could barely recall the details without shaking, without her mind pushing it away before shutting down again. But images flashed across her vision, even with eyes open.

The Cranks, stepping closer and closer, as one, tightening the noose of their trap.

The two walking machines—dropped from the globe-shaped Bergs like birthed animals—whirled and clanked, moving in ways she couldn’t comprehend, the wheels and spikes churning in constant motion. There were strangers running around, dressed in black clothing that glinted like quartz in the sun. Then something hard and cold had extended from the bottom of the machine like an arm and wrapped around her torso, gripping her tightly, ripping her from the ground and into . . . inside the monster itself, into its belly of steel and darkness. Soon Miyoko was dropped in, then Dominic and Ms. Cowan, then the three old men. So far there’d been no sign of their other friends.

Dead, she thought. Please don’t be dead.

That was all. There was nothing else. Nothing to think, nothing to say. She didn’t understand what was happening to them, and she’d never felt anything like the terror that shivered inside her. She could only hate herself for ever getting on that damn boat.

The machine purred and clanked and roared as it rolled to destinations unknown.

Like that machine, she trembled.