Several minutes passed after the flying machines arrived, no further action, no sounds other than the overwhelming roar of their engines. A couple of the airships were indeed far larger than the others, cumbersome and clunky, their hulls almost like giant, dented globes—where the others were relatively flat, more streamlined for movement. Isaac waited along with the others, wondering what could possibly be in store.

  “They’re called Bergs.” Minho had stepped close enough to say it directly into Isaac’s ear.

  “I’ve heard of those.”

  “I knew my people had such things, but . . . not this many.”

  “How do you know it’s them?”

  Minho pointed at a spot on the bottom edge of the airship—the Berg—that was directly above them. A simple depiction of a person had been painted there, neither man nor woman, raising their right arm, elbow bent at a right angle. A wide circle of red encircled the hand, which was open with fingers splayed as wide as possible. Jagged points rose above the circle like spears, maybe a dozen in all, making it look like the wall of an ancient fortress, or perhaps a crown.

  “It’s definitely them,” Minho shouted, having pulled his head back. “It’s them and I think they let me go, followed me here. I’m . . . sorry. I don’t really understand.”

  Isaac pointed at Letti, still prone on the ground. “Did it have something to do with her? Have you ever seen her before? Or him?” Now he pointed at Timon, gawking at the ship-spotted sky just as much as anyone else.

  “Never.”

  They might have talked more, but things changed as soon as the word came out of Minho’s mouth. The Bergs began to move, shifting their positions in a coordinated effort. The two spherical behemoths floated to the center of the group, the flatter, smaller ones creating a perimeter around them. The roaring sounds of the blue flames and the mechanical clanking of machine workings that Isaac didn’t understand—the noise of it all slammed into the tiny holes of his ears and pierced his brain. He thought of all the good times he’d had in the Forge, making such things as nails and hammers and plows. How outrageously primitive it all seemed now.

  A crack of light appeared along the bottoms of the two globe-ships, then expanded as doors slowly, really slowly, began to spread open. At the same time, three of the escort Bergs on the outside of the group dropped toward the ground, stopping several dozen meters above the whipping grass. Cracks of light appeared in these, too, but of a different sort. Half of their bottom surfaces lowered away from the ship like a ramp, angling down until their edge thumped to a stop, hovering open in mid-air.

  Things appeared in the light from within, shadows moving upon shadows, all of them human-shaped. And then . . . and then they were tumbling out of the ships, from all three of them. Bodies, chained together, clothing in tatters, flopping like discarded trash on top of each other when they hit the soft, grassy earth. It happened in three spots, together forming a rough semicircle on their side of the bridge, trapping Isaac and his friends. The bodies were moving, pushing and pulling on each other, struggling to stand up. They were human enough, for certain—except the eyes. The eyes had almost no life in them at all.

  That voice, which had grown quiet in recent days, once again screamed inside Isaac’s head.

  CRANKS!

  Could it be? Could it really be possible?

  “The bridge!” Old Man Frypan shouted. “Everyone head across the damn bridge!”

  But then he noticed what Isaac was just now seeing. A fourth Berg had dropped a pack of bodies on the other side, and they were already stumbling onto the rickety skeleton of steel. Isaac looked back at the other groups. Somehow they’d stood up, stopped fighting each other, and seemed to be coordinating without words. They spread out, chains linking their hands and feet together, forming a fence that soon stretched in one continuous arc around Isaac’s friends, bank to bank in a half circle, the bridge entrance at its core.

  Trapped. They were really trapped.

  By Cranks. By the boogeymen of every scary story he’d ever been told.

  He grabbed Minho by the shirt. “What can we do? What . . . what do we do?” He was shouting, throwing all the fear he’d ever felt in his life into the words.

  Minho shook his head, his expression pained, but empty of fear. The guy wasn’t scared.

  “Tell your friends!” he shouted. “Tell them not to fight or they’ll be killed!”

  Isaac was ashamed to admit it, but he’d never once considered fighting. Not against an army of Cranks and a sky full of flying machines, shooting blue flame like the power of a thousand forges. After everything, he’d never felt so completely hopeless as he did in that single moment.

  He looked up at the hovering globes of metal, their doors now completely open.

  From within their hulls, lowering to the ground like ancient gods, giant machines descended—all steel and glass and wires and hoses and four attachments that extended downward like legs but looked like giant wheels with spikes protruding in all directions. They descended to the sound of grinding, angry, screaming metal, until they landed with a rumbling boom of thunder that seemed to shake the entire earth.

  All the while, unconsciously, Isaac and the others had slowly stepped backward to make room for the inexplicable vessels, to avoid being crushed. There was nowhere to run and there was nowhere to hide.

  He looked at Sadina. At Trish. At Dominic. At Jackie. At Miyoko. At Old Man Frypan, Carson, Lacey. He looked at all of his friends, even Timon, even Letti, even Minho and Roxy. He looked at all of them and wondered, simply and with surprising peace, if it was all over. If, like for many of his ancestors, the world had come to an end.

  The machines made a horrible screeching sound, the wheels and spikes moving in a coordinated, horrifying dance, then headed toward them.

  PART FOUR

  Old World, New World

  I’m in a truck. On a road. A road scattered with the remnants of a world.

  My life is over.

  But I don’t feel sad. I feel worry and hope for Keisha and her kids. It’s enough to push the sorrow aside. I’m so glad I met them before the end. I feel loss for Thomas, Minho, for all of them. But I worry and hope that they’ll succeed, that they’ll win. That they will survive and be happy. It’s enough to push the sorrow aside.

  What does it matter? The madness is knocking. The madness is creeping in, under the door.

  They say that some things are worse than death. That might be true. Probably is.

  But life and death are the beginning and end of beauty. You can’t have one without the other.

  I feel like maybe I’m rambling.

  —The Book of Newt

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Belly of the Beast

  “Are you okay? Are you okay?”

  Miyoko had her arms wrapped around Jackie, speaking those lines repeatedly into her ear. She nodded each time in response, but it must not have been convincing. Jackie herself wasn’t convinced. In fact, she knew it not to be true.

  She wasn’t okay. Not at all.

  She and a few others were locked up, stuffed into a tiny compartment within one of the flying machines they called Bergs, one of only a million things in the last day that were so foreign to her. Things she’d heard from old people and read in books and imagined in her head as a child. Vehicles that defied gravity, fire burning from holes like dragon breath. Machines the size of mountains that walked on spiked wheels. Guns. Bridges. People in strange clothing that certainly hadn’t been made by a little old lady and her loom.

  And those freaks. The ones in chains, their eyes full of death and madness, moving in sync as if they were all part of a single organism. Cranks. The word itself conjured nightmarish stories told around a fire and morbid jokes amongst friends on the island. Cranks. They’d been Cranks, though not quite like any description she’d ever heard.

  Ms. Cowan squeezed her knee, bringing her back to the current nightmare. She sat directly in front of her, pressed so close they had to interlock legs. With a forced effort that made her want to cry, she smiled. Dominic was there, also, to her left, next to Old Man Frypan. The other two men from the east coast of the island—to whom she’d never said more than three words—were crammed on both sides of Ms. Cowan. Miyoko was to Jackie’s right, arms wrapped around her because she must’ve appeared the most distraught after what had happened.

  Taken. They’d been taken. Stolen.

  She could barely recall the details without shaking, without her mind pushing it away before shutting down again. But images flashed across her vision, even with eyes open.

  The Cranks, stepping closer and closer, as one, tightening the noose of their trap.

  The two walking machines—dropped from the globe-shaped Bergs like birthed animals—whirled and clanked, moving in ways she couldn’t comprehend, the wheels and spikes churning in constant motion. There were strangers running around, dressed in black clothing that glinted like quartz in the sun. Then something hard and cold had extended from the bottom of the machine like an arm and wrapped around her torso, gripping her tightly, ripping her from the ground and into . . . inside the monster itself, into its belly of steel and darkness. Soon Miyoko was dropped in, then Dominic and Ms. Cowan, then the three old men. So far there’d been no sign of their other friends.

  Dead, she thought. Please don’t be dead.

  That was all. There was nothing else. Nothing to think, nothing to say. She didn’t understand what was happening to them, and she’d never felt anything like the terror that shivered inside her. She could only hate herself for ever getting on that damn boat.

  The machine purred and clanked and roared as it rolled to destinations unknown.

  Like that machine, she trembled.

  After they’d been captured, literally lifted by the claws of the Grief Walker, he’d been placed in a cell, all by himself, enraged to be separated from Roxy. He was as confused as he was angry. Nothing made much sense to him. Well, except for one thing. He was a naive, gullible, reactionary fool. To think he could outwit the Grief Bearers, the priests and priestesses, the entire Remnant Nation. How could he have believed that one young man, raised and trained by a people that killed strangers on sight, by a people that had established a brutal, survivalist regime that devoted their lives and civilization to preserving their own and destroying the Godhead . . . How could one man fight against that?

  What had he been thinking? That question was all he could . . . think about.

  A door opened with a metal shriek. A man stepped inside. The door closed with a metal shriek. The man wore a mask, an oval of hard metal with slits for eyes and mouth.

  “Orphan, bow your head,” he commanded. Nice fellow. “I’m Griever Barrus. From this moment on, you have no room for error. One more mistake, no matter how small, and you’re going to Hell.” He smiled at the double meaning.

  Minho knew that phrase was used as an insult in the very old days. But this man, this man with the mask, he meant it in a very literal way. Hell—the floor below the lowest floor at the fortress. So near to the place where he’d saved the boy, where he’d saved Kit’s life.

  He was brave enough to speak. “Griever Barrus, am I allowed to ask questions and be honest? I can still help with whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish. What I did isn’t what it seems. If you’ll let me explain . . . present my case.” He despised having to grovel and beg like this, though he was no stranger to it. “Please, just hear me out.”

  The man, slightly stooped, wearing the mask and rough robe that showed his humility, took a seat on the other side of the small room, crossed his legs, then stared straight at the Orphan.

  “You were never this talkative back home in the fortress.” The man’s voice came to him muffled and distorted, an electric charge oddly buzzing and sparking against certain sounds and consonants. Almost . . . robotic, though Minho had rarely seen such marvels of science. “I’m certain I heard you say more words just now than in your entire previous life.”

  Minho leaned forward, against the restraints clasped around his hands and ankles. He closed his eyes and forced a few deep, penetrating breaths, holding them inside of his heart and lungs for a spell then blowing it all out again.

  He decided to get right to the point. “My goal was to infiltrate the Godhead. Any way possible. No matter what. I knew that mission would never be approved by the Great Master in the Golden Room, and so . . . I took a risk. I’m sorry for the deceit. But it was working. Those people you captured can get us into the Godhead city.”

  The Grief Bearer coughed. “You do realize that we’ve been aware of your location since the second we left you to wander the wilderness? That we were in league with the woman named Letti? That this was all a plan for us to get these people?”

  Minho nodded. “Yes, sir. I know it’ll be hard to believe, but I suspected it. I had no choice but to continue on the mission, knowing our goals were aligned.” I’m talking too much, and not very naturally, he chided himself. Every lie was only making the one before it more obvious.

  “Is that so?” The man chuckled; his laugh sounded like the buzz of a cracked lightbulb, his mask bouncing along with the forced mirth. “Enough of this. I honestly don’t care what you intend or don’t intend. Say nothing else of our order, of our nation, but we are certainly the most pragmatic of pragmatists. Do you understand? All that matters is accomplishing what lies ahead. Are you willing to help us, or not?”

  Minho had truly become the Orphan again. For now. He simply nodded, and resolved to ditch the hastily concocted plan of talking his way out of things.

  “Wise choice, son. The only choice, really. Now, are you ready to listen?”

  The Orphan nodded once more.

  The man shifted in his seat, changing which leg was crossed over the other. The movement looked like large snakes rustling beneath his robe. “In the last hour, I would hope that you’ve asked yourself some questions. For one, why did we let you go on the wilderness-wandering in the first place, and why did we feel the need to have you involved?”

  The Orphan opened his mouth to respond on instinct but quickly shut it.

  “Also, why bring our entire armada of Bergs and Grief Walkers, just to capture you and a dozen other people? It’s taken a full three decades of effort to bring those Bergs back to working condition, to find the resources to make it happen. It’s taken the most recent decade to design and build just two functional Grief Walkers. We only have two, Orphan. And yet we brought both to that river, that bridge. Doesn’t that make you wonder? Doesn’t that make you question?”

  The Orphan nodded. He was doing a lot of that.

  “It’s called a trial run, boy. Make sure things work in a real-world setting before the true test comes. And what about the infected? You may have known about the machinery and the Bergs, but certainly not the infected. It seems blasphemous to our teachings and our ways, does it not?”

  The Orphan didn’t nod. It seemed a question that had no good answer.

  “In the fight against evil, you must sometimes use the evil against them. I want you to ponder these things, boy. The more you realize on your own, the more valuable you’ll be in the coming days. Locked up in here, you can’t see the outside world as we fly. Think about that as well. We’ve sent all but two of our Bergs ahead to scout and make preparations.”

  A few seconds passed, neither of them saying a word. The Orphan felt a trickle of sweat slither down his cheek, leaving an icy trail.

  The Grief Bearer stood up. “I’ll give you a hint, lad. We’re not going home, not for a very long time. So settle in and we’ll talk more soon.”

  The door opened with a metal shriek. Griever Barrus, the man in the mask, stepped outside. The door closed with a metal shriek.

  Belatedly, the Orphan nodded.

  He was lying down, on a thin mattress—a bit narrow and a little bumpy. His hands and feet were chained to the railings of the bed, maybe to protect him in case he had a bad case of the sleepwalks. Or, another idea might be that he’d been captured by a giant dinosaur of a machine with wheels and spikes and claws—someone had called it a Grief Walker—and was now imprisoned in a Berg with a bulbous belly and modified containment cells.

  Sadina had a cot of her own, right next to Isaac, only a few centimeters of a gap in between. She lay on her side, watching Isaac, not taking her eyes off him even if he closed his own for a while. Trish was on the other side of her, pressed close, arms wrapped around her stomach. It was a sweet sight within the rattling, clanking, jostling, impossibly loud hellhole of unsweetness that was this Berg. No one else was in the room.

  All of it, all of it, made for a very unpleasant day. With every twitching muscle in his body he wanted to be back home, back on the island, squirreling his way through the streets and down to the beach, to the Forge, where he could singe his hair and soak his skin with sweat and beat the living daylights out of red-hot, very large things.

  “What are you doing, Isaac?” Sadina asked him in a slightly irritated but mostly kind voice.

  He’d drifted off a bit, or maybe he’d been hoping she’d think him asleep, but it hadn’t worked either way. He opened his eyes and saw that she glared at him as if they were having a staring contest, a nice remnant of the old days in primary school.

  “Answer her question.” This was Trish, peeking over the edge of Sadina’s right shoulder. “Be sure it’s a good enough answer to shut her up or we’ll be seeing dawn or death before she finally does.”

  “Oh, what a sweet pumpkin,” Sadina responded with all the sincerity of a half-starved rat.

  Isaac figured he better start talking before the mushy stuff really got into full swing.