Got high enough we could see back over the scrapers and all the way to where the boats still bobbed on the water. I gazed at Harvest’s fleet, wondering if he could see us now, wondering if he was watching us through some magnified lens. And just in case, I quit breathing so hard and looking so bent full of sorrow, though the truth was, sorrow had just about snapped me in two.

“Pass me the gun,” I said to Kade, but he wouldn’t hand it over. Not all the way. He just held it for me so I could peer through the gun’s scope, tracking over the buildings to the place where our boat had disappeared.

I felt like sobbing again. The feeling kept catching me unawares.

“Let’s go.” Kade tried to pull the gun away from me. “There’s nothing to see.”

He was right. There weren’t nothing to look at. But I grabbed hold of the gun’s scope and kept staring at the lake as if Alpha might emerge from it, shaking the water off her golden-white skin.

Kade thumped me in the gut. Snatched the gun away. “I said, let’s go.”

“And you’re in charge now?”

“Even if you were the one with this gun, you’re in no shape to be calling the shots.”

What did it matter? I stared at the landscape ahead. Rocks here, a muddy patch there. Mostly, though, as the hills drifted higher, the ice shone thicker and the snow grew more deep.

And behind us, we were tracking a mess much too easy to follow, leaving footprints and wheel ruts in the mud, and there weren’t any way to clean that mess up. Not unless it rained, maybe. I peered at the cold ceiling of sky. We only had a couple more hours of daylight. And rain would be bad, even if it covered our footprints. But snow would be a whole lot worse.

We stumbled on without speaking. Breath steaming, bellies tight. By evening, a mist rolled inland off the lake, soaking up what was left of the sun and making my GenTech clothes even damper, the wet fuzz binding my limbs together and chafing my skin. The sleeves of my jacket unrolled into gloves, and I shoved my hands inside them, but it didn’t stop my fingers going numb.

End of one hill meant the start of another. The bottom of each slope turned into straight back up. So we made hard work of cresting each ridge, and by the time it got all the way dark, you could even smell the cold getting worse.

The icy air pried at my lungs and pressed at my bones, making everything ache and sting. My face was all snotty and raw, and I started picturing big bags of popcorn bursting with steamy flavor, me shoving my face down into the hot food. But then I forced the image from my mind. Tried to imagine apples instead.

We stopped now and then to peer through holes in the mist, trying to get our bearings, and if he was feeling generous, Kade would hold the gun’s scope so I could stare back the way we had come.

“Give it up,” Kade said, when I asked to stop one time too many. “Please. There’s nothing back there.”

“What? You don’t reckon Harvest’s behind us?” I watched the wind blow across the hills, moving the mist in sheets around us.

“Oh, I’m sure he’ll keep hunting,” Kade said, because he always had to let you know he was so sure about everything.

“You think he’s working for GenTech?” Zee asked him.

“I doubt his allegiance is to the Executive Chief. I’d say he’s more likely biting the hands that feed him. Trying to exploit some weakness in the GenTech Empire he’s been trading with for years.”

“So how did he even know to come up here?” I said.

Kade shrugged. “How did you know?”

“I didn’t. Just got dragged up on that boat. But you know all about what’s out here. Right? You know these wastelands like the back of your hand.”

He pulled up the sleeve of his coat to show me the stump at the end of his arm. “Wrong hand, I suppose.”

“Meaning you’re as clueless as we are.”

“At least I still know which way is south.”

“And how do we even know that’s true?”

“I’m not pretending at anything, bro.” His smile weren’t so fine-looking since I’d smashed up his face. “Look at me. I’m an open book, same as you.”

I just stared at him. Never knew the expression.

“Means he’s honest,” Zee said.

“Great.” I started pushing on again. “Open book. Gets cold enough, we got something to burn.”

Zee started to stagger and shrivel, and Kade had her sit up on the tank, telling her to make sure Crow was still breathing, as if Kade gave a damn about Crow.

And it slowed us down even more, the tank slipping worse in the mud and old snowy patches. I found myself cursing Zee and her skinny ass. Alpha would have still been walking. Hell, she’d have been out there ahead of us, coming up with a plan by nightfall.

But night fell with no plan. Just a black, damp sky clamping around us. And still I stomped and strode and shook.

“She’s going to die,” Kade said quietly, pointing at Zee as she coughed on her fragile lungs, slumped up on the tank, ahead of us. We’d reached a plateau, the hills leveling out into something flatter. For now. “Your friend will, too. If he’s not dead already.”

“So what else can we do?” My voice was as weak as the rest of me. “Stop, and it’ll get colder.”

“There’s colder?” He made a wheezing sound that was meant to be laughter. “You might make it through the night, but she won’t. Can’t you hear her breathing? Crusted lungs, bro. She’s as rough inside as she is good looking.”

“Take it easy,” I said. “That’s my sister you’re talking about.”

“You don’t act much like her brother.”

“And you’re some sort of expert?”

“Could be a little nicer to her, that’s all,” he said. “Soon as you get done feeling sorry for yourself.”

“Guess there’s not a whole lot of nice going around.”

He pointed at his busted face. “You should learn to use your anger in the right direction. I told you before—too many enemies to keep making new ones.”

“Man, you’re just full of advice.”

“I mean it. Your own sister’s scared of you. Good thing I was there to take the brunt, I suppose.”

“Shut your damn mouth.” I quit walking and stared at him, my breath puffing out like white smoke. “I wouldn’t ever hurt Zee.”

“I thought stopping was a bad idea.”

“So is you talking.”

Kade shifted his sub gun from one shoulder to the other. “Meaning you don’t want to hear my plan?”

“Here we go.”

He whistled, and Zee brought the tank to a stop. Then Kade strode up to it and tapped its steel walls. “This thing come off? The metal?”

“Sure. You want to carry it? This walk ain’t been hard enough for you?”

“I’d like to use it as a shelter.”

“You’re crazy. That steel’s keeping the trees safe. There’s just glass underneath.”

“No. Wait,” Zee called out, sliding off the top of the tank. She tried to clear her lungs and breathe easy, but she was all gurgled and filled up with spit.

The air was clean out here, but it was so damn cold, it was hard enough for me to breathe proper. And that meant it was way too hard for Zee, whose lungs had been wrecked by the dust storms and hazard winds that blew across the barren lands we were trying to get back to. And so that was one more reason to feel like a bastard. I’d led Alpha nowhere but down to the bottom of that lake. I’d managed to lose the rest of the strugglers. And now my sister might not make it till morning.

“Take your time,” Kade said to her, shielding Zee from the wind.

“It’s the liquid that protects the trees,” she said after she got done coughing. “Not the metal. The liquid preserves the microclimate.”

“The metal got put on this thing for a reason,” I said, shuffling over to them.

“We won’t move it,” said Kade. “Not during the night.”

“We could get warm, Banyan. Out of the wind.” Zee’s face trembled inside her big purple hood. Her eyes big as fists. Kade reached an arm around her, trying to rub some heat into her, and even miserable as I was, seeing him touch my sister like that sparked something inside me. I mean, it looked a little too damn friendly, if you asked me.