The brightness receded suddenly as the funnel spooled back up. Quiet roared in his ears. He fought to bring his feet beneath him and stumbled toward her. Aria shot toward him at the same time. They collided, slamming together, grasping for each other as they found their balance. Their eyes locked, and Perry saw his own terror mirrored on her face.

An hour passed in a heartbeat. Perry didn’t feel his weight. Didn’t hear his steps as he ran. Brilliant slashes of light surrounded them, and the deafening roar of the storm was constant.

They closed in on the Pod’s massive form, stopping half a mile away. Smoke billowed around them. Perry’s eyes and lungs burned. He couldn’t scent anything anymore. From where he stood, he could see that much of Ag 6, the dome he’d broken into months ago, had collapsed. Flames spewed a hundred feet in the air. He’d hoped to enter Reverie through it again. Now he saw they had no chance.

“Perry, look!”

The smoke shifted with the wind, drawing back like a veil. He saw another dome shimmering with blue light and spotted a vast opening. As he watched, two Hovercrafts streamed out of it, looking small as sparrows against the dome’s massive scale. They cut a seam through the desert, their lights fading into the smoky, flashing darkness.

“That has to be Hess,” Aria said. “He’s abandoning it.”

“That’s our way in,” he said.

They ran closer, huddling together at the side of the opening, which soared hundreds of feet tall. Inside, he saw Dweller ships lined in rows. He recognized the smaller craft from when they’d taken Talon. Bodies shaped like teardrops, sleek and shimmery as abalone shells. Beyond them loomed a ship that dwarfed the others, its form segmented like an earth crawler. Armed soldiers moved in controlled chaos, loading supply crates, directing the flight of one Hover after another in a rush to leave the Pod.

As he watched, a craft nearby sparked to life. Wings spread from its underbelly, a set of four like a dragonfly. Lights shot down their length, and then the air thrummed as the craft lifted off the ground. He flinched as it shot past with a deafening, buzzing sound.

Aria met his eyes. “The airlock into Reverie is at the other end.”

Perry saw it. The entrance was hundreds of yards away. He honed in on a group of men close by, his gaze finding the compact pistols at their belts.

“We can sneak past them,” Aria said. “They’re focused on leaving, not on defending the Pod.”

He nodded. It was their only shot. He pointed to a cluster of supply crates on palettes halfway down the hangar. There was a gap between them and the wall. “When the next Hover powers up, run for those crates. We can take cover behind them.”