“I dropped one on Mama Mathers and I dropped another on someone with a gun.”

“It worked,” I said. “I don’t know how you aimed that without looking through the camera—”

“I didn’t. My cameras were already fritzing out, so I sent them a slice of program, with facial recognition. I centered it over them, accounted for wind, and when things sounded worst I had my cameras stop hovering.”

“You weaponized… cameras?”

“I told you not to get on my case about it,” Looksee said.

“Am not.”

“I didn’t weaponize the cameras, just so you know. I’ve said I’m not good at making my cameras function like weapons.”

“I remember,” Chris’s snakelike voice came through the phone.

“I weaponized the off switch, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Capricorn said. “Send your camera. If Mama Mathers is out—”

“Pretty sure she is,” I said.

“We can use all the help we can get.”

“It’s not like Tattletale is responding,” Looksee said.

“Victoria, can you give us another set of eyes from above?” Capricorn asked.

I nodded, taking back my earphone from Vista.

“I really hope he’s okay,” I heard Capricorn, the tail end of the sentence almost inaudible as I was already flying.

The weather seemed to be easing up. I noticed the precipitation wasn’t as sharp as I flew up into it. Not like it had been minutes ago.

Capricorn’s walls to the southern end of the camp had served to funnel the Fallen in other directions. The road seemed untouched, the settlement was almost half and half for buildings that had been abandoned and leveled, and the fighting seemed concentrated at the north end, Crowleys and Advance Guard, and where I’d been helping the Patrol block to the northeast.

The northeast was a starting point. I imagined they would want to go to where there was help. That meant they’d either head for the center, through open space where I would have to be able to see them, or they’d cut north. The latter would let them move through the trees.

I reported it to the others.

I spotted the first of the animals. A man with a hunched back and the head of a pig, his body heavy with muscle that didn’t match an ordinary person’s. There was a horse, too, but its normal long face had been replaced with a human’s, folding around at the sides in a way that distorted the mouth and made the eyes bug out. Mama Mathers was draped over the back of the horse.

My pulse pounded as I approached. I turned sideways to appear less threatening and held my good hand up for the animals, trying to get them to ease up. My only experience with horses had been at Dean’s family’s place.

The pigman made noises, and I winced. It sounds like a stuck pig. An animal in pain.