He looked a lot like a Drone, but a closer examination revealed some differences. His space suit was charcoal rather than black, matte instead of shiny, and it looked scuffed and battle-worn. His powerful appearance may have been enhanced by the flexible armor that formed his suit. His position, slouched against the inside of the tree, one hand pressed to his gut, indicated that he was hurt. And he sounded hurt, too, light bars flickering with each labored breath, altering the volume of some of his words.

My breathing couldn’t have sounded much better, my chest still lurching from the scare. It took a moment for me to find my voice. “Who are you?”

“My name will make no sense to you,” he said.

As I watched the amplitude bars flicker, I understood the helmet to be translating.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

He raised a sheathed arm and pointed through the hole in the tree toward the dagger of blue sky. “Same as the Harvesters. But we oppose them.”

I shook my head, half expecting him to disappear as if he were a hallucination. “So you’re, like … rebels?”

“You can call us that.”

“How … how did you get here?”

“We travel by asteroid. Like them. And, like them, we have to prepare the way.” The glow from his mask flickered. “We are not as good at this nor willing to be as ruthless.”

“How do you know who I am?”

“We are capable of mapping and identifying—”

“No, I mean how do you know my name?”

Outside, the screeching started up again, scaring birds from the treetops.

“There is no time for that right now,” he said. “Listen to me carefully.” The glowing contour lines in his mask fuzzed, then regained their clarity. “You and your brother are the key to everything. Is he alive?”

“Wait,” I said. “What?”

The words came through the helmet, more intense than before. “Is your brother alive?”

“Yes.” Even as I answered, I wondered how much longer that would be true.

The head tilted back, a gesture that conveyed great relief. “It was all I could do to try to reach the nearest Hatch site to look for you two amongst the cages. I scanned them and searched the Husks as well.”

Husks. The kids floating on slabs, their bodies stretched beyond recognition.

But I was still stuck back on the prior revelation. “What do you mean, Patrick and I are the key to everything?”

“For the planet. For survival.”

“We’re the key? Us and who else?”

“Only you two.”

My head buzzed. “What are we supposed to do?”

“A mission. That only you or your brother can carry out.”

“A mission?”

“You have accomplished something extraordinary. You killed a Queen and shut down a Hatch site. That’s never been done before—”

“Wait—before where?”