That’s what Alicia was telling him now; that’s what she had been trying to tell him that night on the roof of the power station, in that last easy hour before everything had happened. That what they did, they did for love. Not just Sara and Hollis; all of them.

“Lish—” he began.

But she shook her head, cutting him off. Her face was suddenly flustered. Behind her, Sara and Hollis were emerging from the shelter, into the morning.

“Like I said, we’re all here because of you,” Alicia said. “Me more than anyone. Now, are you going to wake up the Circuit or am I?”

They broke camp; by the time they were moving downriver, the sun had lifted over the crest of the valley, filling the branches of the trees with a vaporous light.

It was almost half-day when Alicia, at the head of the line, abruptly halted. She raised a hand to silence everyone.

“Lish,” Michael called from the rear, “why are we stopping?”

“Quiet.”

She was sniffing the air. Peter smelled it too: a strange and powerful odor, stinging his nostrils.

Behind him, Sara whispered, “What is that?”

Hollis pointed with his rifle over their heads. “Look—”

Suspended from the limbs above their heads were dozens of long strands of small, white objects, bunched like fruit.

“What the hell is that?”

But Alicia was looking at the ground now, anxiously scanning the carpeted earth beneath their feet. She dropped to a knee and brushed the heavy covering of dead leaves aside.

“Oh, shit.”

Peter heard the groan of the dropping weight. Before he could speak the net had swallowed them; they were rising, lifting through the air, all of them yelling and tumbling, their bodies caught in its weave. It reached the apex of its ascent, everything cradled in suspension for one weightless instant, and then they descended, a hard drop, their bodies jamming together as the ropes compressed them into a single, twisting, captive mass.

Peter was upside down. Somebody, Hollis, was on top of him. Hollis and also Sara and a sneaker, close to his face, which he recognized as Amy’s. It was impossible to tell where one body ended and the next began. They were spinning like a top. His chest was compressed so tightly he could barely breathe. The skin of his cheek was pressed against the ropes, which were made of some heavy, fibrous twine. The ground was twirling under him, a rush of undifferentiated color.

“Lish!”

“I can’t move!”

“Can anyone?”

Michael: “I think I’m going to be sick!”

Sara, her voice shrill with panic: “Michael, don’t you dare!”