And he kept spinning under the water and whirling back out as we unloaded into the last place we’d seen him. Not a damn one of us conserving our bullets. And not one of us even slowing him down.

“This way,” a woman screamed from the far side of the boat. “They’re this way.”

But they were every way, and everywhere. Their jet pods drilling through the water and diving beneath it as our bullets rained down.

Chaos clawed through our voices. Everyone shrieking and spooked. But then our hollering got drowned out by the sub gun opening fire above us, and when I glanced up at the gun tower, I saw Alpha working in a new line of ammo and crackling a fresh round loose.

She made a hit. Showering up a bloom of red in the water. Sending up a plume of smoke. The pod she’d hit reared up with no rider and bounced itself to a halt.

“They’re frontside,” Crow was yelling, sliding down the ladder to join us. “The bow. Get to the bow.”

He hit the deck and crumbled, his legs collapsing. And I ran to him, the sound of the jet pods screaming in my ears.

“Get off me.” Crow shoved me away. “They’re almost onboard. And we’re almost into that city.”

“Then do something,” I shouted, sprinting for the front of the boat. “Get the tank ready. Get Zee.”

Before I reached the bow, I spotted the grappling hooks spinning onto the railing. Two of them. Three of them. Then there was hands. Heads. Whole bodies climbing up. And I was running towards them so fast, I couldn’t aim my pistol straight.

I hit one of them, though. Got lucky, I guess. But the other two Harvesters kept coming. Raising up guns of their own and opening fire.

I hung back by the door to the cargo hold, ducking against the wall. Alpha was trying to swivel the sub gun down on the two replicants, but she couldn’t point it low enough. Thing weren’t built to shoot up its own boat.

So I charged back out with my gun blazing. Kept low and kept firing.

Until I got thrown in the air.

The boat had hit something. No time to hold on as the front end plowed downwards, the howl of steel tearing apart somewhere below me as I slammed back onto the deck.

And then I was rolling and sliding, and I never stopped moving. Just kept bouncing all the way to the edge.

CHAPTER NINE

There was whole seconds when the wind rushed and gusted and I spun in the air with my eyes sealed shut. Then I hit the lake like an explosion. The sound of water smashing into my brain as my legs snapped at the surface and dragged me below.

First time I’d nearly drowned, in a river too deep, my old man had been there to save me. Second time, in a muddy pool, it had been Sal who’d hauled me back out. But I knew the third time, I’d not be so lucky.

Unless I could save myself.

I thrashed my arms around, kicked my legs. Clothes dragging at me, heavy boots pulling me down. Everything was muted. Distant. Couldn’t hardly see nothing. Just bubbles. Brown and green and blue. But a clear light wobbled above me. And below was a blackness that kept tugging me closer.

I was moving my arms in frantic circles. Swinging about, getting nowhere. Losing the frothy last gasp in my lungs. But when I felt something at my shoulder, I spun around till I had my hands on it. Heavy steel, spiky in my fingers. I peered through the swirling murk and realized I’d found a damn hook, one of the grapplers the Harvesters had slung up to the railing. I caught the hook between my knees and grabbed at the steel wire floating behind it, pulling the wire down, making it taut. And that meant it was attached to something above me.

So I used it to pull myself up.

One breath, not even a full one, was all I had to go on. And it was like it had seeped out already, I was so empty and aching. My brain throbbed and my chest got stiff. But I didn’t stop putting one hand over the other, following the wire back to the surface. The water so cold, like it might freeze me inside it, as I kicked at it and kept reaching higher, crawling my way to the light.

My senses all shattered as I broke through the surface. I burst into the air and coughed and spluttered and damn near swallowed the lake. But I held onto that steel wire as I held my head out of the water. And I found what the wire was fastened against.

A jet pod. Black and steel and slippery. Its engine was still warm, and there weren’t no one on it.

Not until I hauled myself up.

You had to lay flat on your stomach on that Harvester machine. I hooked my feet at the rear, stretched my hands to the front, then tried to get my bearings.

The flooded city lay straight ahead and not fifty yards off, all decayed walls, broke-glass windows, and rusted steel-bone frames. And our boat was spinning into that city, about to disappear in the shadows. Smoke and screams poured out of the hull, and I could see as many Harvesters as survivors on the deck, their bodies all wrangled together.

Then the boat was gone from view. Lost between the towers.

I jabbed a thumb at the pod’s ignition. Flipped a red switch and grabbed on tight, revving the engine beneath me with the grips in my hands. The pod shuddered as it bounced forward, and I thought it might stall, but pretty soon I was getting the hang of it, racing across the water and skipping through the boat’s wake, engine shrieking like a chainsaw and spewing smoke.

I clamped the pod with my thighs, throwing a glance over my shoulder as I bucked and thrashed towards the city.

Behind me, Harvest’s fleet had stopped a safe distance from the buildings, the troops on deck peering at the old world remains. I glimpsed a figure among them dressed in long gray robes, and I reckoned it was their leader, their king.

No sign of agents, though. No purple. No GenTech logos. So was Harvest working for GenTech or working for himself?

Didn’t matter, I told myself. Either way, he was after our trees.

When I spun back around, I had to bank left. Hard. Just missing a clawed rod of steel. I needed to pay better attention, damn it, now I was inside the maze.

I shook the spray from my face and spotted the boat up ahead, its entire bow under the water. So I cranked the throttle as throaty as the jet pod could muster, catching up to the boat and pulling alongside it, throwing glances up at the deck and hollering out.

Looked like the Harvesters onboard were losing the battle. But it wouldn’t matter who won if the whole boat sank. We needed to get that tank into the buildings and up to a rooftop. We needed to get the trees to those bridges and find some way to reach land.

I swerved to the right of a rusted steeple. Plowed through a floated-up pile of junk. Still, the boat spun. Still, it bounced at the buildings, slowing down a little more with each shudder and crunch.

Biggest damn tower was straight ahead, though. And I reckoned I had to get to that scraper before our boat hit it. It was the only way I might get back onboard in time and get to the trees.

I wouldn’t have long inside the building—once the boat rammed into it, I’d have minutes at best before the boat finished sinking. So I pulled away from the boat and sped faster. Took aim at a shiny column of windows in the tower ahead, hammering at the front end of my pod to get the thing slapping at the water. Faster. Harder. Then I was kicking down, launching up—and not ten feet from the building, I was airborne, arcing upwards and driving the pod through a great wall of glass.