Minho and Roxy made it back. Ms. Cowan was on the woman immediately, asking about her daughter as Miyoko and Dominic stood right behind her, demanding answers. Where was Sadina? Where was Trish? Where was Isaac?

“I don’t know, I’m sorry,” Roxy answered. “They were on my ship but I didn’t see them after the crash. I’m so sorry. I had to run from . . .” She looked back over her shoulder, trembling even as Minho still held her in his clutches. “From them.”

“We have to get over there, now!” Ms. Cowan yelled, her composure cracked.

“Wait a second,” Jackie said. An idea had come to her from nowhere, but she acted on it. After making sure Frypan was okay, she scanned the crashed Berg and saw a path to the top. With more speed and agility than she would’ve guessed she possessed, she scrambled up the side of the vessel, finding plenty of hand- and footholds to help along the way. When she got to the top, twenty or thirty meters above the wrecked forest floor, she steadied herself and examined the view.

“I see them!” she yelled down to the others. “Four of them!”

The group of Cranks stretched out in a haggard line, maybe fifty meters long, the chains slowing them considerably. Much quicker were the four people leaping between tree trunks, skipping over them like rocks on a pond, skirting the long line of Cranks.

Isaac. Sadina. Trish. Someone with orange hair.

“They’re okay!” Jackie yelled. “Going around!” She pointed at the creepy mob, barely resembling humans.

But then she caught another sight. Seven or eight people were approaching the line of Cranks from the opposite side of where Isaac and the others had appeared. They’d come out of an open hatch in the other Berg. Jackie had never seen the new arrivals before, and they looked incredibly strange, despite the distance. Her eyesight had always been good, and now it gave her a very ill feeling.

They were strong, tall, dressed in the similar, worn, haphazard clothing of the Cranks in the field of trees, except for a major difference. No tatters, no rips, no grime, no blood. They walked steadily and soberly, almost mechanical in their carefully laid steps. Heads shaved, faces devoid of expression, their gazes set on the struggling line of Cranks, the strangers each held something in their hands, although it was impossible to discern, from where Jackie stood, exactly what.

She was at a little bit of a loss for words, mesmerized by these new arrivals.

“What’s going on?” Ms. Cowan yelled from below.

Jackie swung her attention to the left, where Sadina, Isaac, Trish, and the fourth person were making excellent progress. They’d already cleared a wide berth around the outermost edge of the Cranks.

She pointed. “There! See them?”

Ms. Cowan did. Others, too. Several ran in that direction to help, to hug, to reunite.