Isaac could tell he’d been on the cusp of making a joke but then faltered, remembering that lives had been lost. Carson. Lacey. Wilhelm. Alvarez. There’d been no sign of Letti or Timon so they were probably dead, too. Six friends, probably dead. But maybe not. Maybe not.

With a little shame, Isaac was grateful for the ones who’d survived for certain, that they were the ones he’d cared about the most, those who sat there with him. Black-eyed Sadina and Trish. Miyoko and Dominic and Jackie the Crank-Slayer. Ms. Cowan and Old Man Frypan. Isaac had lost his family in a freak storm, lost them in the terrible waves. But all these crazy people sitting in a circle had made that loss a little more bearable. Even Minho, Roxy, and Orange were well on their way to worming themselves into the fold.

“So what’s next for us?” Sadina asked, cozied up with Trish. “Kletter was the whole reason we came here and she’s not around to tell us what to do.”

Miyoko was poking the logs with a stick. “I think we should go back to Los Angeles and find that Villa she kept harping about. We were almost there.”

“No way,” Dominic said. “We should go back home. Forget the old world. This place sucks.”

“It definitely sucks,” Jackie agreed. “I’d love to go home. Maybe we can find us a nice Berg and avoid that whole boat thing.” Isaac remembered her throwing up on the voyage. A lot.

“What do you think, Ms. Cowan?” Trish asked.

The woman who’d once been the leader of the island’s Congress just shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know, you guys. I can’t pretend to have the slightest idea. But I’m glad we’re together.”

Isaac didn’t have much of an opinion—at least not yet—but he knew someone who did.

“Unless we want to walk back to the ocean,” he said, “we’ll do whatever Minho says. He’s pretty much the captain of our big machine over there. And he says we’re going to the Godhead city. At least that’s where he’s going.”

Old Man Frypan spoke up for the first time that evening. “Isn’t that where all the other Bergs from his damn country went? To set up for an attack or some such nonsense?”

“I think so, yeah,” Isaac replied.

The man sighed, looking wistfully at the fire. “You’ve all heard my stories a million times. I won’t bore you with any, now. But let’s just say I’ve had my fill of battles in Alaska. I think I’ll just stay right here and eat plants and rabbits until my heart calls it quits.”

“Yeah, right,” Jackie said. “You’re gonna outlive us all, old man.”