But then I heard a new sound. Above all the turmoil. I heard a bellow and a boom. And then the Harvesters were being peeled off me, one after another. They were being ripped apart and thrown through the air.

I broke free. Spun around, so I could see what was happening.

And it was Crow that was happening. Holy shit, it was Crow.

Bide our time, he’d said. Save our strength. And you best believe he had meant it. Because he weren’t just standing, or walking, and he weren’t just towering ten feet tall. He was spinning and kicking. Mowing down Harvesters and poacher guards with those big purple tree-legs. His wrists were still bound together, but it was like he didn’t even need them—dude moved like a blur, mammoth and tree and man all mixed up together.

And nothing could stand in his way.

I yanked at the straps of the pack, cinching it against me as I raced over to Alpha. Sliding into the dirt and slashing her ropes apart with my knife. She grabbed two machetes off the ground and leapt up beside me.

But there was Kade and Harvest, dragging themselves out of the fire and rolling in the dirt to extinguish the flames. Kade’s robes had gone up in smoke, leaving him all red and singed at the edges. But Harvest’s clothes had just seemed to melt against him, leaving him more smoke-like than ever as he scrambled to his feet and stared into my eyes.

It was Kade I wanted to get a good look at, though. How could we get out of here without him?

“They’ll head for the scaffold,” he yelled, though the poacher lords were too frail to run after us, and all the guards had been beat down by Crow.

Kade stared at me, trying to make sure I was getting the message. “They’ll head for the scaffold,” he screamed. “They’ll head for the fields.”

Didn’t need to tell me a third time.

We bolted through the door as Harvest rallied and the poacher guards and the replicants began squirming upright. I hacked my blade at the ropes on Crow’s wrists, setting his arms free, and he jammed the steel door shut behind us.

“What about them?” cried Alpha, pointing into the sprawling chamber.

The workers had turned still at the sight of us, but slowly they began hoisting up their shovels, flicking open switchblades, brandishing hacksaws and pickaxes. And there were so many of them crowding towards us. A whole mob between us and that tower of ladders we needed to reach.

“Hope you saved some of that strength,” I said to Crow.

“Just stay behind me. Both of you. And give me one of them swords.”

Alpha threw a machete up to the Soljah, and damned if he weren’t something, stepping in front of us, like he was putting us all on his back.

I tugged the pack even tighter to my shoulders, felt the remains of Pop hang against me.

I’ll get you out of here, I wanted to tell him. I’ll get you some water. Show you some sun.

“What about Kade?” asked Alpha.

“He ain’t coming with us,” I said. “But he wants a tree. He told me.”

“No,” Crow said as we inched forward. “I’m not leaving a tree with these scum.”

I had my knife in a white-knuckle grip as the crowd shook their weapons and tools and marched closer. And it weren’t just those poachers ahead of us, neither. The steel door was rattling and clanking. And once it flew open, we’d be surrounded. Too many poachers on too many sides.

And Harvest, of course.

Unless Kade could figure out some way to kill him.

“Give me your knife, bud,” said Alpha, taking one hand off her machete.

“I’m gonna need it.”

“No time to argue. You trust me or not?”

She reached her hand out, and I gave up my blade, just as this battle was about to go down. But if there was one person I trusted, it would always be Alpha.

She pitched the knife at the closest dirt wall. The blade spun through the air, and when it hit the wall, it sparked up and smoked as it sank. She’d cut those red wires. Busted the circuit. And one by one, the white lights that lit up the chamber blinked out like broken stars.

Until every star had turned black.

We plunged forward through the darkness just as the door peeled open behind us. I could smell the smoke from the fire pit. Hear the yells of the poachers. And then I heard Harvest’s voice, too.

I could sense the mess of bodies before us. Blades and shovels, ready to strike. But we kept charging, blind and desperate. Alpha letting out a battle cry that seemed to turn things bright for a moment. Her voice setting the darkness ablaze.

Then we hit the first wave of poachers. I could see their shapes in the gloom. Metal scraped upon metal. Sharp steel clanged and clashed. Crow and Alpha slashed their machetes, fending off the poachers’ tools, hacking a pathway through the mob, until we were swallowed and wriggling inside it.

The three of us kept spinning, punching and thrusting, and we never quit moving. But once we got through the crowd, we weren’t at the scaffold—just a dirt wall, and we were cornered against it.

Crow spun around with one leg out, knocking folk back like they were nothing. Giving us a little time to escape.

“Wait,” I yelled, still at the wall. “Crow, wait.”

I’d hit something. Stubbed my foot on the old iron pipe that ran all the way up here, pumping the water from beneath those upside-down peaks.

“Bust it open,” I screamed, and I kicked at the pipe so it rang out in the darkness.

Crow took two giant strides and was right there beside me, swiping behind him with his machete as he took aim, and then boom, the pipe crunched and crumpled. He kicked it again. Two more times. It punctured, and he smashed it wide open. There was water everywhere, gushing out of that pipe so fast, it damn near smacked me onto my ass.

But I stayed on my feet as the dirt turned to mud. Slippery and thick. I started to try to push through the crowd. Head down. Flailing around with no way to see. I just followed Crow, battling onward. I could hear Alpha behind me. But I lost my footing.

And then I went down.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

I hugged the bag of trees against me as the water pooled all around. Feet trampling and stomping me. I was trapped beneath the mob and the mud. I called out. Screamed. And then Crow was above me. Stooping down and grabbing me up with one hand.

I landed in a pile on his shoulders as he busted through the dark. It was chaos. Carnage. Crow had the machete in one hand and his other hand clenched in a fist. But it was those legs of his that made him unstoppable, whirling and kicking, crunching every bone and skull in our path. Freak of science or force of nature, either way, all I could do was hold on.

I peered back through the darkness. Watching behind me. Searching for Alpha.

“Crow,” I called, but he knew what I was thinking.

“No, man. We gotta go,” he yelled. “We gotta take care of business.”

And that’s what Alpha would do. She’d push on for those saplings, even if it meant leaving one of us behind. That’s what she’d been trying to tell me—that this thing was bigger than me and her being together. It was bigger than all of us in the end.

We hit the scaffold, and Crow was swinging up the side of it. I crawled off his shoulders and made my way onto that column of plastic and steel. And then there I was, climbing upward, my old man on my back, just as I had once been on his back, bundled in a blanket, bouncing around as he worked.