“Don’t talk like that.”

“They deserve them saplings.”

“You’re getting way ahead of the game.”

“Promise me, Banyan.”

“Promise what?”

She kissed me then. She was as warm as the air was freezing, and it bloomed me up on the inside, filling me with feelings that weren’t born out of fear.

“You and me,” I whispered to her. “We’ll grow that forest together. And I’ll build us a home in the treetops, you’ll see.”

But the moment was over. Alpha weren’t even listening. She just pointed across the water, and I could see the five boats, creeping out of the void like bad-luck stars.

We found the girl in the cargo hold and took the gun off her. And she was tiny, all right. All elbows and ears. Alpha took the extra pistol. Rounded up a couple other kids we thought were too young to be fighting. Then we herded them to the back of the boat so we could send them down the ramp that led into the hull.

Top of the ramp, we ran into Kade and the Salvage Guild woman he’d found. Her purple rags were covered in oil, her knuckles all torn.

“Any luck with the rudders?” I asked them.

“Luck’s got nothing to do with it.” The woman looked like a piece of salvage herself, useful but rough at the edges. She rubbed her big hands together and grinned. “But if we get up in that cockpit and start steering, this old beauty will point wherever you want it to go.”

It did, too. And by the time the sun rose, we were heading southeast and really hauling ass about it, the boat’s engines hollering and grinding, the air stinking of burning juice.

But no matter how fast we moved, Harvest’s boats moved faster. They were still a mile or so behind us, but closing the gap much too quick.

The Salvage Guild woman had fallen asleep in the corner of the cockpit, and Crow had joined me and Alpha, peering out through the glass. Kade was there, too, of course. Hanging around like a bad smell. We all squinted through the cockpit windows, watching land appear on the horizon, silhouetted against the searing dawn sky.

As we got closer, we could make out those floating points I’d spotted through the scope. Looked like pillars now. Taller than our boat. Stony islands, maybe, scattered between us and the shore.

“What are those things?” Kade said, shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun. “Rocks?”

“I don’t know. But I reckon I should see if the trees are set for moving,” I said. “We hit land, that tank needs to be ready to roll.”

“You want me to come down there?” Alpha put her hand on my arm. “Talk to Zee?”

“It’s all right. I’m done talking to her, anyway.”

“Don’t see no lava.” Crow was still focused on the horizon, his eyes squinting a little less as the sun inched up. “Them hills be brown. Snow in the distance. No steam. No ash.”

“So we’re a ways above it,” I said. “The Rift’s further south.”

“Ain’t just that,” he said. “Look at them rocks now.”

We leaned over the controls and out through the window, peering into the brand new day.

“What about them?” Kade said.

“They ain’t rocks.”

And Crow was right. They weren’t.

They were buildings.

CHAPTER EIGHT

It was a city. What was left of one, anyway. Sticking up out of the water were buildings as tall as the ones they still have in Vega and the northern Steel Cities. And those old scrapers were blocking us from the shoreline. The jagged remains were too thick to travel through, and they stretched too far for us to try to cut around.

“It’s a mess,” said Alpha, peering over my shoulder.

“Aye,” Crow said. “And there’ll be more of it below water.”

Sure enough, there’d be other, shorter buildings just below the surface. A hidden sprawl, waiting to puncture us if we tried to weave through the maze.

Crow was bending back on the throttle, easing our speed.

“You insane?” I turned to him. “Harvest’s fleet’s right behind us.”

“No way we can make it through that city,” he said, and I figured it was like Alpha had said, Crow was just giving up. Hell, I should have had him run down there and hide in the hull with Zee and the rest of the cowards. Maybe he could watch over her like old times, when Frost was beating her ass and Crow never did a thing to stop him.

I stared back out at the city. Looked like concrete fingers reaching into the sky. And as I peered at those old world towers, I could see the tops were connected—thin bridges dangled between the scrapers, stretching from rooftop to rooftop, suspended in the air and stitching the skyline together.

“If we can get in there,” Kade pointed at the buildings and then up at the bridges, “those could be our escape route. Get inside a building and get to the rooftop, then we follow the bridges toward land. Unless one of you has a better idea?”

“You be as crazy as Banyan,” Crow muttered, but he limped aside so that Kade could ramp back the engines.

There were a couple dozen folk lined up along the back of the boat, and there weren’t much to their formation. They just stood there and fiddled with their weapons, ammunition counted out in buckets beside them, near-empty packets of corn in their fists.

At first, those strugglers had all looked the same to me, their shaved heads stuffed inside purple hoods, their thin bodies wrapped in fuzz and GenTech logos. But I realized now that each one of them was as different as they were desperate. Different shades to their skin and their stubble, whole different worlds in their eyes.

Kade told them we’d soon come crashing into a sunken city, and he outlined his vague plan for what we’d have to do next. And once he got done, I didn’t head to the hull like I’d planned, to make sure that tank of trees was ready for moving. Instead, I stood with the rest of the crew and stared at the four silver boats and the black one in the middle, glinting in the harsh morning light.

The fleet was so close now, I could see the glass of their cockpits and their towers of guns. None of those boats were GenTech purple. But nor was the boat I was standing on. These were old world machines, the same color as when they’d been salvaged. And whatever color his boat, I reckoned Harvest had to be working for GenTech. How else would he know to be out here, in this forgotten, frozen part of the world?

I saw the shiny bald heads of the king’s replicants, lining up on their boat decks, all dressed in gray and brandishing guns. And there were so damn many of them. Got close enough and I could see they didn’t have Harvest’s burned face—they looked just how he used to. Each one of them, a perfect dead-eyed copy.

And then those replicants weren’t just lining up across from us, they were down in the water and hurtling towards us—riding on the back of one-man pods shaped like missiles, sleek and slippery machines that soared through the waves.

“Hold your fire.” Kade’s voice rang out and took charge. “Wait till they’re in range.”

I was supposed to be seeing if the trees were ready for moving.

But I pulled out my pistol instead.

The Harvesters’ gleaming skulls zipped across the lake, the pods trailing dirty foam in the white wake behind them, the wail of their engines growing loud in our ears.

“Now,” Kade yelled from the far side of the boat, and as the rifles boomed and busted, I took aim myself.

The first Harvester was maybe forty yards from us, but as we fired at him, he drove his pod under the water and stayed down. Submerged. For maybe three seconds. Then he broke free, arcing out of the lake and skimming across the surface, speeding towards us.