He nodded, wishing she’d leave him alone. “The Flare has a lot of variants, Jackie. I don’t know as much as you think I do. We all have a lot to learn. We will. But for now, we have to crunch our way out of this Berg and get the hell out of here.”

“You really think we can do it?” Isaac asked. “In time?” The sounds of dozens of Cranks—and worse, the sight of them at the viewports—trying to get inside the machine obviously had him and everyone else on edge.

“Yep,” Minho replied. “It has to.”

He turned back to the controls, certain he had it figured out. He smiled, thinking of how much Roxy had loved driving her truck, how terrible of a driver she was, and how she had refused to let him take a turn. This would be the ultimate revenge. He met her light-filled eyes and wondered if she was thinking the same silly thing.

“Everyone grab on to something!” he yelled.

They moved with a hard jolt, then another, then another. There were crunches and creaks and groans and the scream of engines, the crumpling of metal. Outside the hull, Cranks fell and Cranks were crushed. All around Minho, people held on to anything they could find as the machine’s giant spiked wheels and appendages of terror obliterated the Berg shell that encased them.

The Grief Walker rose from the earth like a resurrected demon.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Future of the Future

Safe.

As much as anyone could be in such a scary part of the world, Isaac and his friends were safe. For now, anyway. And that was a much better situation than they’d had in a long time.

After escaping the scene of the Berg crashes, the Grief Walker had spiked and rolled and steamed its way through forests, across a river, over giant boulders and all manner of terrain, finally settling down in a remote area nestled between two wooded mountains. They had food stores, a stream of fresh water nearby, weapons to hunt if needed. And, most importantly, Minho had no qualms threatening the man named Glane and the odd, headachy priestess, telling them that if the other Bergs showed up, they’d be shot. That was how the thing called a transmitter had been discovered, and promptly disabled.

The sun had set, though the nights were shorter this far north. Isaac and the best friends of his life sat around a campfire, as if they had somehow been transported back to the island they called home. The wood of the fire crackled and spit out sparks, warming them in the cool, windless air, the smoke rising straight up, toward the crescent of the moon. Watching the flames, smelling the charred wood, Isaac thought of the Forge and ached with memories.

“Hell of a week, eh?” Dominic said. After a pause, he repeated the phrase. “Hell of a week.”