Sam takes off after Ali, no other words of explanation given. I’m more confused now than I was before I talked to him.

“What is a sixteen-year-old kid protecting a grown woman from?” Ryan muses.

“I don’t know, but your crew is about to leave without you.”

Ryan and Trent follow my eyes to the growing crowd around Crenshaw. They all have backpacks, dark clothing, and the most cautiously excited expressions on their faces I’ve ever seen. This team is purely for distraction. All these guys have to do is follow Crenshaw’s instructions to the letter to light off a series of highly visual, nearly powerless explosions around the gates. They’re giving the illusion of a breach. It’s the truest magic I’ve ever seen Crenshaw wield.

I turn to Ryan, feeling anxiety in every fiber of my body. He’s going to leave me again. He’ll go with Crenshaw, I’m going over the fence, and it’s too much too soon but I’ll never say it.

“How many fingers you got?” I ask him curtly.

He grins as he holds them all up and wiggles them at me. “Ten. Five on each hand.”

“Two hands, two arms, two eyes.”

“Two legs, two feet, ten toes.”

“One liver, two kidneys,” Trent lists off. “One appendix, but you could lose it and be fine. Two lungs, one heart, one gall bladder—”

“Yes, okay,” I snap. “You know organs. Thank you.”

He smiles at my annoyance. “You’re welcome.”

“Two hearts,” Ryan corrects, tapping my chest lightly.

I roll my eyes at the sweetness of the gesture, unable to handle it the way a normal person with real feelings that they can understand would.

“Just bring it all back with you,” I tell him. “Leave no appendage behind.”

“You got it. Be careful in there, Joss.”

I grin. “It’ll be easy.”

He kisses me. It’s quick and firm and right in front of everyone. The most amazing part about it—I like it. Out in the open and everything. I really, really like it.

“Trent.”

Trent nods distractedly, securing his backpack. “Bring him back in one piece. I know.”

“No. Well, yeah, please do that, but I was going to say ‘take care of yourself.’”

He blinks at me, a system error crashing his processor. Finally he blinks again, his eyes clearing. “You too,” he says quietly.

“Thanks.”

And just like that, my Lost Boys are gone again.

***

“Line up,” our commander whispers harshly.

Eight other people and I in Team Three are in position on the outside of the baseball stadium. We line up quickly with our backs against the wall. Then we wait.

I shift the fake gun they gave me around in my hands, unsure how to hold it. It’s carved from wood and stained black, an illusion that will hopefully fool people in the dark chaos we’re about to create inside this Pod. I got a quick rundown on handguns from a Vashon named Todd before we left the forest. Basically I was told I wasn’t trusted to have a real one and I do not blame them one bit. I wouldn’t know what to do with the thing.

As Todd showed me how to use it as a melee weapon, he explained that since their island was founded by a group that was mostly military, the Vashons still have guns and a decent supply of ammo. In fact, he was military once, back before the big collapse and the cure that kicked it off. He was stationed just outside the gates of Ali’s old home, Warm Springs.

Apparently when they helped the farmers of the original Vashon Island clear it of zombies, they mostly used brute force or through ‘strategic strikes,’ whatever that means. I think it boils down to cracking skulls. Bullets, they decided, were better saved for humans. And they were right. With the near extinction of guns these days, the sight of one is pretty horrifying—like seeing a dragon or Bigfoot.

An explosion rips through the night. It flares up, black smoke billowing around it as a sound like thunder cracks through the still air. As quickly as it appeared, it’s gone, leaving my eyes momentarily stunned. Another explosion follows that one, then another. There’s shouting from inside the stadium. I hear cries of terror, some sounding like children. The foreign sound of a baby crying wafts over the walls and blends with the cracks and bangs of Crenshaw’s magic.

Men and women shout muffled commands. We hear them in the momentary return to silence as Crenshaw and his crew wait. They’re drawing the Colonists to them, then they’ll give the sig—

Boom!

There it is. Our commander doesn’t say a word. With the sound of the second round of explosions, he and another member of our team climb like monkeys up the tall fence. We hand up a heavy roll of the thickest fabric I’ve ever seen, which they toss across the layers of razor wire at the top of the fence. The heavy material weighs the metal coils down to make it easier for us to clear them while also keeping us relatively safe from the sharp edges just dying to slice us open.

More explosions are going off in the distance at the other gates, at the other stadium. We’re attacking all at once in a mad rush to confuse and panic them. From the sounds of it, it’s working.

I wait my turn anxiously, then climb over the fence. As I swing my legs over, I get one stuck on a stray piece of metal and take a slice down my leg. I hiss in surprise but quickly pull my leg free and scurry down the other side to the ground. Our commander is waiting there, a man from Vashon Island who I’ve seen only once before in the large tent with Alvarez. He doesn’t ask me if I’m okay. He doesn’t offer me a helping hand because I’m a girl. As I hit the ground he shoves me forward to catch up with the others and get out of the way of the next climber. I was pretty neutral to him before, but I think I’m in love with him now.

I run quickly behind the others as we sprint across the neglected, dusty ground between the outer chain-link fence and the interior concrete walls. According to the plan, these inner walls have doors in them—ones that will lead us into tunnels inside the stadium under the open-air seating. I hope the plan is right, because when I glance up at the dark gray mass beside me, I’m thinking there’s no way of climbing that thing. Without an entrance, we’d have to fly to get in—and I’m all out of fairy dust.

The line I’m following comes to a sudden halt. Our commander goes rushing past me to the front and disappears into the shadows at the base of the wall. I wait anxiously, uncomfortable with the bodies pressed so close at my front and back, not to mention the sound of explosions still going off and shouts echoing from nearby.

Finally the line moves again and we’re racing forward. I follow blindly until I’m passing through a thick doorway into a dark tunnel that makes me cringe. It’s dry in here. There are really low wattage lights spaced out across the ceiling, but it has that boxed-in feeling of the tunnels—the ones where Vin and I fought for our lives and took one in return. The one where I was sure I’d lost Ryan forever.

I take a breath, shake it off, and suck it up. If there’s one thing in this world I can count on, it’s the fact that it’s haunted. Everything has a memory. Everything will remind me of something horrible if I let it.

The tunnel is curving and rising, taking us up and around. We follow them until we see light pouring in from the center of their world: the heart of the Colony.

My first impression when we exit the tunnel and I can see it clearly?

Place is a shit-hole.

I’m stunned by it. It’s nothing like the Pod in the north. Nothing. What used to be a sports field covered in unnaturally green grass is all brown earth farmed to within an inch of its life. There are pens filled nearly to bursting with animals of all different kinds, all mixed in together. Tents and badly constructed, tiny buildings are built into the stairs and seats. Hundreds of them. Small fires burn at regular intervals around the base of the seating, just outside the reach of the overused fields. They have power but it looks like none of it is being used on the inside. All of it is being spent on the huge, barely working spotlights that were meant to light night games but have now been redirected to watch the perimeter. If a large portion of their guard wasn’t up north fighting the cannibals, we never would have made it as far as we have tonight—they would have seen us coming a mile away—but as I look around I wonder what they would have done about it. The Vashons had trebuchets and God knows what else to defend themselves. As far as I can tell, these people have chickens. Mangy ones.