“No, Turk. We have to get to Core before Vox crosses the Arch. But it’s not just that. The Network is still down.”

“How is that a problem?”

She frowned in a way I had begun to recognize, struggling to find English words for an unfamiliar concept. “The Network isn’t just a passive connection. There are parts of my body and mind that depend on it.”

“Depend on it for what? You seem to be doing okay.”

“The drugs I’ve been giving myself are helpful. But they won’t last forever. I need to get back to Vox Core—take my word for it.”

So she insisted, and I was in no position to argue with her. It was probably true about the drugs. She had dosed herself twice that morning, and it was obvious she was getting less mileage out of the pharmaceuticals than she had the day before. So we bundled up all the useful salvage we could carry and began to walk.

We settled into a steady rhythm as the morning unfolded. If the war was still going on, there was no sign of it. (The enemy had no permanent bases in Equatoria, Treya said, and the attack had been a flailing last-ditch attempt to keep us from attempting to cross the Arch. Vox had launched a retaliatory strike before her defenses went down; the empty blue sky was probably a sign that the counterattack had been successful.) The rolling land offered no real obstacles, and we aimed ourselves at the pillar of smoke still rising from beyond the horizon. Around noon we crested a small hill that allowed a view to the margins of the island—ocean on three sides, and to windward a hump of land that must have been the next island in the chain.

More interestingly, four towers rose above the canopy of the forest ahead of us—man-made structures, windowless and black, maybe twenty or thirty stories tall. The towers were separated from one another by many miles, and heading for any one of them would have required a serious detour—but if there were people there, I suggested, maybe we could get some help.

“No!” Treya shook her head fiercely. “No, there’s no one inside. The towers are machines, not places where people live. They collect ambient radiation and pump it down below.”

“Below?”

“Down to the hollow part of the island, where the farms are.”

“You keep your farms underground?” There was plenty of fertile land up here, not to mention sunlight.