“Athena!” Crenshaw shouts to me from across the camp. “It is time!”

I jog toward him, making sure to keep up my routine of looking busy.

“Time for what?”

Crenshaw’s eyes are bright and wild with excitement. His face is flushed, his mouth pulled taught in a manic grin. He looks the maddest I’ve ever seen him and for some reason, I love it. Crazy suits him.

“Magic,” he whispers dramatically, his eyes going wide.

I chuckle, shaking my head. “I’m not in the magic show, Cren. Alvarez told me it was tunnels or crowd. I chose crowd.”

“A wise choice. The tunnels are fraught with danger. Men will die in there tonight.”

“That’s chilling.”

“I wish you to join me,” he says, falling serious. His smile is gone but the light is still wild in his eyes.

“Why?”

“For protection.”

I fight the urge to sigh. To roll my eyes and tell him I can take care of myself, that I don’t need protection from anyone or anything. It’s Vin pushing me behind him at the first sign of danger. It’s Ryan sleeping between me and doors. How does everyone so easily forget that I lived alone and survived for years without any help from anyone?

No one but Crenshaw.

And that’s how I manage to keep my eyes steady and my breathing even. I remind myself that Crenshaw has always been there for me. He took care of me when I was sick, he gave me medicine when I was hurt, he kept me company when I craved it and let me walk away when I couldn’t handle it anymore. And I didn’t realize it until now, but he let me take care of him too. He took meats from me, he listened when I warned him about outside dangers creeping close. He kept me talking when there was no one to hear me. He saw me when no one else could.

Cren kept me from being a ghost.

He kept me alive.

“All right,” I agree with a smile, trying to bring his smile back. “I’ll stick with you. Thank you for protecting me.”

I don’t understand it when he doesn’t smile like I hoped. In fact, he frowns, his face looking suddenly so long and tired that I worry I’ve made some serious social error. If I have, I have no clue what it was.

“Come,” he says, turning to go and repeating softly, “it is time.”

He leads me through the camp until we stand at its edge underneath the long shadow of the trebuchet. It dances over us as the fire from the torches flickers in the wind. It’s cold here by the water. I pull my coat tighter around myself, my hand accidentally slipping through the rip in the sleeve—the one I got when a wolf nearly took a chunk out of my arm thanks to Ryan.

He’s there on the other side of the machine. He, Trent, Bray, and the Vashons helping them work the thing are standing patiently, watching Crenshaw and I approach. They’re waiting on orders from the wizard.

My wizard.

“Gentleman,” Crenshaw greets them heavily. “Are we ready?”

Ryan bows slightly. “We wait on your signal, Master Crenshaw.”

Cren nods slowly, looking at each of them. I expect him to give a speech or offer some words of wisdom or encouragement—something about courage, bravery, honor, intelligence, peanut butter. Anything. But they get nothing.

“Load it.”

I watch as the guys snap into action. I lock eyes with Ryan for a small second, and while he smiles at me confidently, I feel cold inside. The sick feeling that’s haunted me all day is back with a vengeance, slipping under my skin and chasing away the warm fuzzies I was just feeling a second ago. I don’t know what’s changed. Maybe the wind shifted or I’m registering the magnitude of what’s happening. I don’t know. All I know for sure is that I’m grateful Crenshaw asked me to come here with him.

You cannot be separated , Athena. To succeed you must remain together. It is how I have seen it.

Seen what?

The End.

Do I believe Crenshaw can see the future? No. I’m not nuts. But do his ominous words sink into my brain and make me nervous? Maybe even paranoid?

I wish you to join me.

Why?

For protection.

Yeah, they sure as shit do.

I watch Ryan closely as he works with the other men to prep the weapon. His hands move quick and strong as they bring the arm down to the ground, a large net of bulky stones rising into the air across from it. He’s slow and gentle as he helps load a small, dark ball of deadly into a basket at the opposite end of the arm. As I watch him handle the explosives my sight goes fuzzy at the edges and I can see my pulse vibrating my vision. I realize I’m holding my breath.

I let it out in a loud burst of air, gasping a little after.

“Are you okay?” Trent asks, looking genuinely concerned.

I nod. “I forgot to breathe.”

“Maybe biology will be our first lesson?”

“It’s beginning to sound like I’ll be going to school for the rest of my life.”

“It’s not unlikely.” He gestures to the trebuchet standing between us. “Do you want to know how it works?”

“I’ll wait and see.”

“Seeing something is one thing. Knowing the mechanics of how and why it does what it does is completely different.”

I shrug. “I don’t know why it rains but it still does. The world is doing fine without me poking around in its underwear drawer.”

“Ready!” a Vashon cries loudly.

I take a few steps back from the machine. Trent is right—I don’t know how it works and I’m suddenly worried I’m about to get my head snapped off.

“Fire!”

There’s a sharp snap! followed by a groan. I watch the net of stones drop rapidly, forcing the arm to shoot up into the air. It drags a long rope behind it, arcing it up and over the machine. At the end of the rope is the bag of explosives. It swings out high above us. At the tip of the arc, I watch in amazement as a small, round shadow flies out of the bag and soars far down the shore. It’s headed straight for the gates.

I lose sight of it in the dark. I’m worried it missed its mark and hit the water, but then I find it again. I catch it for just a split second as it’s haloed against the lights around the Colony gate. I don’t even have time to process that I’ve seen it when it explodes.

It’s immediately very clear that these are not flash grenades.

The night lights up in a blaze of angry red and orange, but it doesn’t fade out immediately the way the grenades did. This is meant to burn. It’s meant to destroy and it does its job. They haven’t hit the gate. We’re waiting on that. We’re drawing them out and bringing them running the way we did with the stadiums to make it easier for the cannibals to do their job on the inside. This was their signal. Right now they should be running around like the phantom ninjas they are, slipping through shadows and leaving behind lit fuses at every corner of the Colony. They’ll destroy a lot of buildings, but the important thing is that they’ll send people running into the open. Then they’ll disappear back into the tunnels, blowing the exit behind them and heading home.

That’s when the boys will hit the gates.

“How long do we give Elijah and his people?” I ask.

Ryan’s brow shoots up in surprise. “They’re people now, huh?”

“People who eat people, but yeah.”

“They have thirty minutes,” a Vashon guy tells me. He’s probably in his forties, short and stocky. He reminds me of Taylor. “We’ll launch two volleys while we wait. Hopefully they remember to stay away from where we’re firing.”

“What’s a volley?”

“It’s like buckshot,” Trent says.

I stare at him, waiting.

He stares back.

“Buckshot,” Ryan begins mercifully, “is scattered fire. Comes from one source, smaller ammunition. It’s less precise but it can be more damaging. We’re gonna do a mix of small explosives along with stones. We don’t want to blow the whole place up right now, but we want to keep them scared.”

“What if we hit someone with a stone?”