A noise had rustled up out of nowhere. Weren’t just sound, neither. A scrappy picture was beaming in through the static, crackling like flames in a snowstorm. And as the blur turned into an image, the noise became words, and the voice weren’t just talking, it was talking right at me.

“I see you, tree builder,” the man said. “I see you.”

The whole place ground to a stop. And I just stood there. Staring at the face that hovered and flashed on the monitor. A face I recognized, even though it had changed.

A dead man’s face that was all too alive.

King Harvest’s scalp was as pale and hairless as it had been, but below it, his cheeks and nose were now twisted and curled, as if the flesh was trying to drip off his skull. He’d been burned. Scarred. But he was still alive, all right. Hell, he was right there on that monitor and staring straight at me.

“Yes.” Harvest’s voice cracked through the static. “I remember you, boy.” He reached a hand to his melted cheeks, pinching at the bloodless skin. “You left me with this souvenir, after all.”

Had thought I’d seen him shot down. Knew now it had only been one of his damn replicants, those pale King Harvest copies he surrounded himself with. Meanwhile, the king himself must have escaped his slave ship and scuttled away—though not before the explosions tore up his face.

“Should’ve stayed out of Old Orleans,” I said, glancing around, trying to figure out how he was able to see me. Had to be some sort of camera somewhere, hooking into the transmission.

“And you should have stuck to making trees out of metal,” he said, before a bout of interference severed our link.

I turned to the others. Crow was staring at the monitor, just jumbled there in a pile on the floor. And Alpha was trying to arc her head around so she could see the screen—but I figured if she could see him, then maybe Harvest would see her, and I felt an urge to shield her from his gaze, as if that might keep her safe.

“Keep him talking,” Kade whispered, and I turned back to the monitor as the fuzz broke clear. I looked into the pits of Harvest’s eyes. The black-and-white image became color, but it didn’t make much difference, since everything about that man was some shade of smoke.

“So what’s up, Candlewax?” I said.

His melted face attempted a smile, but the scars wouldn’t let it happen. “I’ll let you keep the boat, tree builder. And everyone on it.”

“Bastard wants a trade,” Alpha said, and suddenly Harvest’s eyes started to dance around, like he was trying to peer out of the screen.

“All we got is the boat,” I said, grabbing back his attention. “Don’t know what else you’d be after.”

“Oh, I’m quite sure you do know. Glass tank. Roughly six feet high and five feet across. Illuminated by golden lights, and full of clear liquid. Something very special floating inside.”

“You still working for GenTech, old man? What they giving you to come out here?”

“Don’t presume to know anything about why I’m here, boy. I’m offering you a chance. And I suggest that you take it.”

“Does sound like quite the opportunity.”

He nodded. “I’m glad you see reason.”

“Except I’d rather see you in hell.”

Harvest’s face disappeared for a bit, washed out in a sea of gray splinters. And when he came back, he looked neither angry nor surprised. “Very well,” he said, like he was distracted by something. Like he was too busy all of a sudden to play any more games. “I’ll take what I came for, then blow your boat from the water.”

“You’ll have to find us first.”

“My dear tree builder,” Harvest said, “I already have.”

The image shrank off the screen like it had been sucked down a drain. But before Harvest’s face spiraled all the way gone, me and Kade were peering out through the windows, our faces pressed up against the glass. I strained my eyeballs, but there was no sign of nothing. Not to the south, anyway. I peered west—nothing but the endless water and sky. I stared east—empty. Then I ran back through the cockpit, swung outside over the ladder, and gazed behind us, my eyes turning watery in the wind.

“We can expect company,” Kade called after me. “Just a question of when.”

I leaned back inside and watched as he untied the knife from the end of his arm.

“Cut your friends loose.” He threw the blade in my direction, and it jangled onto the floor. “Then fetch us our guns.”

“You’re letting us go?”

“I’m doing what you should have done to begin with,” he said, pushing past me as I picked up the blade. “There are enough enemies out there. We can’t afford to make more of them.”

I weren’t ready to trust this smooth-talking redhead who’d put a knife at Crow’s throat. But I reckoned he did have a point.

“If we’re working together, you should know that tank seems to be running out of power,” I said. “And it’s all that’s protecting the trees.”

“All right. I’ll see if there’s someone who knows how to rig a charge to it.”

I grabbed the tank’s control pad from where Alpha had left it, handed it to Kade. “This might help.”

He coiled the control pad’s wires around his shoulder. “Anything else I should know?”

“The boat’s steering is locked. Keeps heading south, no matter what.”

“Some escape plan this was. Man, you really thought things through, didn’t you?”

I pointed at the steps that ran up through the ceiling of the cockpit and into the gun tower. “There’s a scope up there. Big old sub gun. Your weapons. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“Then let me know what you see through that scope. I’m heading below.”

“That’s it?” Alpha called after him. “Face on a screen, and you run off and hide?”

“Oh, I’m not hiding.” Kade swung outside, gripping the ladder with his one hand and waving his damn stump in the air. “I just think we’ll need all hands on deck.”

“Thought I saw Harvest die,” I told Alpha as we climbed to the top of the gun tower, moving as fast as we could. “I thought Jawbone shot that freak full of lead.”

“Bastard’s been slippery a long time, bud.”

“You see that scar on him?”

“Could only hear him. Heard that voice every year of my life, remember?”

And I did remember. He’d come trading with the pirates at Old Orleans for slaves he could sell to GenTech. He’d snatched Crow and Zee off the road, and Hina—Zee’s mother, who’d been such a perfect copy of my own mother that I reckon Pop had fallen in love with the same woman twice.

I remembered dragging Hina out of the wreckage of Harvest’s slave ship. I’d saved her then. But I hadn’t been able to save her in the cornfields, when the locusts had come.

“Zee’s gonna take it hard,” I said as we reached the bundle of guns we’d tied in plastic and stashed out of sight. “I saw how Harvest had them locked up in cages.”

“You want me to tell her?”

“No,” I said, figuring I should be the one to do it. “You better get folk ready for battle. Don’t want them shooting themselves in the foot.”

“They did all right getting out of that bunker.”

“But it’ll all be for nothing if we all die out here.”

“You meant that about the tank running low?”

“That’s what it looks like,” I said, picturing those red lights flashing like some sort of alarm. “I’m hoping maybe the controller can fix it. Or that we can charge it back up.”

“We can do that?”

“I don’t know.”

She began to lower the bundle of weapons down towards the cockpit. “I’ll teach people how best to use these things. You keep a lookout for Harvest. And keep your eyes on Red, too.”

At the top of the tower was the meanest sub gun you ever seen. Whole buckets of ammo fed into the gun’s belly, and its mouth was fixed to point out off the boat. You could swivel the gun all the way around, and I sat in the control seat and pushed my eye to the scope. Started north, then turned my way to the east.