Jackie took a breath, was relieved and surprised to feel how cleanly and fully the air filled her lungs. Her heart had slowed. The pressure on her chest had eased. They could outrun these Cranks and the more stable newcomers. They had a chance, now, especially bright compared to what she’d felt when first captured by that awful machine—the machine that now lay curled up and silent within the ship she stood upon. She was about to climb down when she noticed a shift in movement and purpose by the newcomers from the other Berg.

Their actions became more deliberate and less rote. There were eight of them—she could see that clearly, now—and they split up, walking to different sections of the Crank line, deftly leaping over broken tree trunks and branches. The first of these strange people came to the far-right end of the line as the others made their way toward the left, spacing apart. Jackie crouched down, throwing all her effort into focusing on what that first strange person was doing.

It reached the chaotic tussle of Cranks without showing any fear. They stilled at its presence, deferentially kneeling or bowing. In unison they raised their shackled hands as if offering some kind of religious sacrament, these ragged, barely human animals who’d seconds earlier seemed completely without sense or reason in their movements. The stranger reached toward the first of them, making use of whatever he, she, or it had been carrying.

Keys, apparently.

The encouragement Jackie had felt vanished, and the air she’d so easily breathed seemed suddenly toxic. She stood up and shouted at anyone who would listen.

“They’re unlocking the chains! They’re unlocking the Cranks’ chains!”

Without the slightest caution, she started climbing down the side of the broken Berg.

It had seemed an impossible thing, to shift so quickly from one emotion to another. Seeing Roxy had filled him with a relief and joy like he’d never experienced, not once in his life, and it was as if his body had filled with sunlight and sugar and music, almost unbearable. And then he’d seen the Cranks, right behind her.

All those emotions, all that feeling, had vanished, like the life of a crushed beetle.

And in its place, flooding in like the greatest of waterfalls, came the training of his existence.

He was the Orphan. The Orphan named Minho.

The world around him a noisy blur, he had sprinted across the field of crushed logs, his feet barely tapping them before leaping into the air again. He’d reached Roxy, saw the supernatural way she was able to smile despite a horde of infected lunatics at her back, and that smile completed the circuit of his purpose. He would not, could not rest until she was safe.