But then something hit him in the back of the head and his brief stint as a warrior ended with him flopping to the ground like a collapsed balloon. He didn’t quite fade from the day around him—could just see Keisha lying on the ground with Dante beside her, panicked and bawling—but a few seconds later Newt vomited all over himself.

Why the bloody hell had he ever left that Berg?

Chapter Four

The next hour was a lifetime of headaches, nausea, and strange movements.

Newt stayed awake for all of it; the hyper-enthusiasm he’d experienced for all of two minutes had completely vanished. Spent. He had no energy whatsoever, in fact, didn’t lift a finger to defend himself as reinforcement soldiers did whatever they wanted with him. At least they didn’t separate him from Keisha and Dante. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing the small connection he had with those two after so short a time.

A truck rumbled up, much smaller than the behemoths they’d seen earlier by the massive walls of Denver. Two people picked him off the ground, with not the least amount of gentility, and threw him into the back of the open bed of the vehicle. He expected to land on a pile of writhing bodies, a dozen Cranks fighting and clawing and trying to get out. Instead he landed on the hard steel of the truck bed and lost his breath for a moment. Keisha came next, still no sign of voluntary movement in her limbs.

But her eyes.

Her eyes were lit with awareness and understanding, the purest panic Newt could imagine. But that eased a bit when Dante was plopped right next to her, offered a little more care than they’d been given. The kid still cried, but it had almost become a constant, a background noise, like the strong flow of a rapid, rocky river nearby. He laid his head down on his mum’s shoulder and wrapped his tiny arms around her neck. Tears leaked from Keisha’s eyes.

“She’s okay,” Newt murmured, though he doubted the kid heard or understood. “She’s just... she’ll be okay soon.” Every word he uttered rang in his head like a broken bell.

A soldier jumped into the back of the truck with them, squatted with his back to the window of the cabin. He held something that looked more like a machine gun than an energy weapon, and Newt figured they had less than one chance left for misbehaving. The next time would be rewarded with a few bullets in the brain to end things.