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  “Never repeat those words, Cog Girl.” He spits. “Forget you ever heard them.”

  I work up a sweet smile. If anything was going to sear those words into my memory, it’s being told to forget them.

  “Goddammit.” He snatches up my bag and arranges himself on the floor next to a bin of sweet potato roots. He starts rifling through the bag’s main compartment, pulling stuff out, sorting it on the dirt next to him. Aside from the tomatoes, we have three bottled waters, five filter masks, a tube of antiseptic gel, a roll of gauze, a bottle of painkillers, a flashlight, and two boxes of protein bars.

  I look around the room. Empty trays and rolls of mesh sit next to pieces of equipment I don’t recognize. There’s something that looks like a radar gun, but smaller, and with bars across its mouth. I pick it up. Where did they get equipment like this? Did they steal parts from R&D? They must have, unless someone there slipped it to them. Maybe that’s not so far-fetched. How many others were doing this? How many more secret rooms beneath homesteads? How many people mistrusting AgraStar enough to throw their lot in with the Deacon and the scavengers?

  But then, maybe I shouldn’t blame them. If Crake is right and AgraStar created the blight as a weapon . . . no. It was an accident. A regular experiment gone wrong. We’re constantly trying to stay ahead of the weeds and pests developing resistance, come up with newer, more powerful herbicides that will kill the invasives and spare the crops. AgraStar would never have created something this devastating on purpose. If I can bring the tomatoes to our scientists, they can fix it. The fruit resisted the blight, which means it might hold the key to protecting the rest of our crops somewhere in its genes.

  “What is all . . .” I look down. Alder is pulling apart one of the Kingfishers’ tomatoes. Juice runs over his fingers and into the dirt.

  “What are you doing?” I lunge for the fruit.

  Alder holds it out of my reach. “I’m saving the seeds. They’ll rot if we leave them in.”

  “Oh.” Of course. Contraband crops have live seeds that can be planted and grown, unlike the varieties AgraStar distributes each year. Ours are robust, high yield, and supposedly disease-resistant, but if you tried to save the seeds and replant them the next year, you’d get nothing. They’re a genetic dead end.

  Alder finds a tray with a fine mesh base and spreads the jam-like insides of both tomatoes over it. I step beside him to watch.

  He uncaps one of the water bottles and raises an eyebrow at me. “You’ve never done this?”

  I shake my head. He shrugs and goes back to work, washing the seeds, collecting the water below, and running it back through the sieve until they’re clean.

  “Hand me that sun gun?” He raises his eyes to the device I was examining earlier.

  I hand it to him. He flips it on, and a glow like perfect afternoon sun pours out of the barred end. He moves it gently back and forth over the thin layer of seeds scattered across the mesh. They’re so small. Vulnerable. Drop them and they’re lost.

  “Here.” Alder hands me one of the de-seeded tomatoes, all skin and meat. He picks up the other one and chews it while he makes another pass with the sun gun. “This isn’t the best way to save seeds, but it’ll have to do.”

  I stare down at the gutted fruit. The last thing I want to do is eat, but I need something if I’m going to keep going. I take a tentative bite and freeze. The tomatoes I’m used to are bland and mealy. But this one has a taste to it. Tart, on the edge of sweet, and juicy.

  “This is smart,” I say grudgingly, nodding at Alder’s work. “We can get them to Atlanta easy this way.”

  “Atlanta?” Alder frowns, eyes still on the seed tray.

  “Yeah,” I say. “They can analyze them, figure out what made them resistant. Blend that into the genetic mix.”

  He looks up at me and switches off the sun gun. A muscle in his jaw ticks. “What?”

  “AgraStar’s headquarters,” I say. Is he dense? “We have the top R and D facilities in all the company-states. They’ll fix this. They—”

  “AgraStar!” Alder explodes. “They just set your whole compound on fire. They tried to kill us!”

  “I didn’t have my tracker on. If you hadn’t taken it from me—”

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Alder stares at me. “Are you that brainwashed? Don’t you think they swept for signs of life? That’s the whole point. You’re expendable. They’re covering their tracks. They’re making sure no one ever finds out what happened.”

  I turn away, face hot. He’s wrong. Someone would notice, ask questions. Wouldn’t they? A whole compound wiped out, a break in production, altered shipping routes? True, there are hundreds of other farm compounds, other facilities exactly like ours spread throughout the southeastern corner of the continent, but . . .

  My head aches. I haven’t slept in over a day and there’s not enough air down here. Would I notice the difference between one shrink-wrapped apple over another? Would I think anything of a delivery delay? I press my fingers against my temples. No. I would assume trouble with jackers or a road washed out—some everyday inconvenience, not a catastrophe like this.

  “You don’t know that,” I say. “Maybe fire’s the only way to stop the blight spreading.” A strategic sacrifice. Like cutting off an arm to stop gangrene.

  “Believe what you want.” Alder shakes his head and turns the sun gun back on. “Like hell am I letting AgraStar get its hands on these seeds. These are heirlooms, not company property. They belong to us.”

  “What are you going to do with them?” I plant my hands on my hips. “Keep them for your little shirk camp and let everyone else suffer? Do you know how many people AgraStar feeds?”

  Alder keeps his eyes on the tray. “They might feed a million people now, but look at the cost. They own everyone. They control what you plant, who gets to eat, who gets to live. And what do you do? You thank them for it.” He shakes his head.

  I roll my eyes. “What do you want? To go back to the old days of nation states? Elect a bunch of idiots who argue all the time and never get anything done?”

  “Does that scare you?” Alder smirks. “Losing your little trigger-happy, power fantasy? Being no different than the rest of us?”

  “I’m nothing like you,” I say. “I work for a living.”

  “You work for a system that has everyone so scared to lose what little they have, they’ll let AgraStar do anything it wants.” He’s shouting now, red-faced. “Any tiny thing we can do to bring them down is worth it.”

  Blood pulses hot in my face. “Oh, so blowing up our R and D facility and killing everyone in the compound is a ‘tiny thing’ now?”

  Alder closes his eyes and rubs a hand over his brow.

  “That’s not . . . it wasn’t supposed to go that way. You know that. It was supposed to be a simple raid.” He opens his eyes again. They’re red rimmed and circled by shadows. “Shake you up. Steal some food. Distract you while we got the Kingfishers out.”

  “Fine.” I look away. I don’t want to see his sad, tired eyes. “Whatever.”

  Alder sets the sun gun aside. “It’s true,” he says quietly. When I don’t reply, he takes a small cloth bag from the shelf and begins brushing the dried tomato seeds into it.

  I clench my jaw. I mean to keep an icy silence, but I can’t. “Why couldn’t you just leave us be and grow your own food if you hate us so much?”

  Alder pauses. He blinks up at me, and then suddenly bursts into laughter.

  I narrow my eyes at him. “What?”

  He stops. “You’re serious.” His eyes go wide and his mouth drops into a grim line. “AgraStar doesn’t tolerate competition, even from small growers. You’re either with them or against them. And you see what happens if you’re against them.” He looks up at the dirt above our heads.

  “That’s not the same. That would never have happened if it wasn’t for—”

  “Isn’t it?” Alder’s gaze drops back to me, and it’s pure fire. “Your eradicat
ion teams, the ones that took out the Kingfishers’ stockpile? You don’t think they really spend all their time fighting off kudzu and honeysuckle, do you?”

  “Yes.” I try to sound certain, but my voice wavers. “And taking down bootleggers.”

  Alder laughs once. “Is that what you call them?”

  I fold my arms across my chest. “That’s what they are.”

  “Or maybe they’re independent farmers.” Sarcasm edges his voice “Maybe AgraStar shows up and claims they’ve been growing AgraStar seed strains without authorization, violating the company’s intellectual property rights. And then maybe they give them a choice: hand over control of their land and contract out with AgraStar, or have their crops burned.”

  I scowl. I’ve been on missions out to farms bootlegging our seed strains, and I’ve never had any reason to think the raids were more than the higher-ups said they were. The bootleggers who didn’t want to contract would try to stop us, of course. Like that one old man who met us on the road with a shotgun. I had to knock him out with a stun charge, and when he came to and saw his crops in flames, he spit on me and cried. Another time, we found a little girl—maybe seven or eight—crawling around under the combine Eradication brought in, trying to sabotage it. Seth thought she was hilarious, at least until she bit him. But isn’t that exactly how criminals act? Wouldn’t an innocent person let AgraStar finish their inspection without fighting?

  “How do you know they weren’t skimming seeds?” I say uncertainly.

  “They could have been,” says Alder. “Or it could be their farms were next to an AgraStar compound, and the wind and bees cross-pollinated their crops with AgraStar’s without them knowing or even wanting it to happen. Could be if AgraStar says you’re guilty, there’s no one who can prove otherwise.”

  I drop my eyes and kick at the floor. It all sounds like ignorant shirk propaganda, except I can’t forget what Crake said about the blight. “Someone had to do it first.” And the new, raw memory of Rosalie with her rifle. “He’s got a whelp with him. Advise.” Maybe AgraStar isn’t all good—no one is all good—but the company can’t be as dirty as Alder says. It can’t be evil.

  “We didn’t always burn them,” I say quietly, still looking at the floor.

  Alder doesn’t answer. He cinches the seed bag closed and tucks it into his pocket. He throws me the backpack. “Load up.”

  “You think the fire’s out?” I glance down the tunnel, back the way we came. We’re too far away to see or hear anything, and it’s hard to tell time underground, with no wrist coms. But the air is getting thin. It’s definitely been an hour, maybe two.

  I repack our supplies while Alder selects a few extra seed jars to add to them. When he isn’t looking, I snatch one labeled TOMATO, CHEROKEE PURPLE HEIRLOOM and wedge it into my pocket. I don’t know if it’s the same kind that survived the blight, but it can’t hurt. Our scientists will want to analyze it either way.

  We make our way back through the tunnel. The heat increases as we go, tendrils of steam escaping the soil around us. I feel like we’re walking through my substation’s crowded showers on an August night.

  I almost don’t see the entrance until we’re upon it. Roof beams and ragged pieces of tin have fallen across the opening, letting in triangles of smoky light. Alder shoves one of the beams, but it doesn’t budge.

  “Dammit.” He drags an arm across his forehead and kicks the wreckage. It shudders, but stays firmly in place.

  “Are we trapped?” My throat is dry. We have only two bottles of water, thanks to Alder’s seed saving, and our masks won’t keep out whatever killed Crake and the rest of the compound forever.

  “I don’t know.” Alder kneels down and looks through a small opening between the beams. “Maybe . . .”

  He lies on his back and tries to fit into the gap. A red flush creeps up his face, and sweat streaks his skin and hair. He lets out a grunt. “No.”

  I crouch down. A maze of wood and debris blocks the way, but I can still see sunlight.

  “Move,” I tell Alder. “Let me try.” I’m smaller.

  I shrug off my pack and maneuver my head and torso through the gap. If I angle right and then left, that will get me most of the way. Nails and plaster shards litter the floor, and some of the wood still smokes.

  “Shit.” I hiss as I put my hand down in hot ash, and my eyes water. My fingers are already raw, and now this.

  “You okay?” Alder calls.

  I realize only then that I’ve cried out.

  “Fine.” I choke. I crawl forward on my elbows, clenching my teeth. Nails and splinters rip at my shirt and scratch my arms, but I barely feel them. I shove a sheet of roofing with my shoulder. It falls away, and I roll out into the rubble. The sky stretches above me, solid gray like winter. Falling ash lands softly on my face.

  I stagger to my feet.

  “Are you out?” Alder’s voice is muffled. “Did you make it?”

  I don’t answer. The stairs are still there, the cinder block scorched and blackened, but standing. The wind kicks up a puff of ashes. I look at the pile of rubble blocking the tunnel entrance, then up at the stairs, then back again. A thought snakes through my mind. I could leave him trapped in there. He would die, and that would be some small revenge for Ellison and everyone else the shirks killed. I could set off on my own for Atlanta or one of the other AgraStar compounds.

  But he could have shot me in the head while I was burying my team, and he didn’t. He could have let me burn up during the quarantine, and he didn’t. Besides, he has my pack. And he has the seeds. I need a new mask, and I can’t turn up at AgraStar’s headquarters empty-handed, with nothing to back up my story.

  “I’m out,” I say. “I made it.”

  “Can you move some of that debris out of the way? I think I can push this beam aside if there isn’t so much blocking it.”

  Not for the first time, I wish I’d found some gloves back at the station. My bandages are charred and smudged with soot and stiff with dried white blood cells yellowing in the air. I’m not even bleeding red anymore.

  “Give me a minute.” I push over one of the roofing sheets. Everything is still hot to the touch, some of it smoking. I squeeze myself behind one of the heavier beams and push back against it with all my weight. It falls to the ground in a flurry of sparks.

  “Keep going,” Alder calls. “Almost there.”

  I shoulder another beam to the side and grunt. “Shut up.” I’m not taking encouragement from a shirk like we’re some kind of team.

  Something comes loose in my lungs. I bend over, hacking wetly. I can’t breathe.

  “You okay?” I barely register Alder shouting. “Hey, Cog Girl, you okay?”

  I touch my mask. Blood. Shit.

  “I can’t—” I swallow. “See if you can push from your end now.”

  The beam blocking the tunnel shudders and slowly bows out. “I think . . . ,” Alder grunts, and all at once, the wood tumbles sideways. It collapses with a thud and another explosion of sparks.

  “Alder?” I start toward him.

  Alder coughs and stumbles out into the open, waving his hand to clear the smoke and blinking at the gray-bright sky.

  My legs waver under me, and I sit down heavily on a chunk of concrete.

  “Jesus, Cog Girl,” Alder says. “You look terrible.”

  “It’s Tempest,” I say. “Not Cog Girl. Now give me my pack.”

  All that’s left of the motorcycle is a twisted hunk of metal, so we hurry across the blackened fields on foot. Ash falls like snow, gathering in the furrows and turning the red dirt gray. We stop only to change our masks and re-dress my hands. The closest exit to the compound is due west, so we head that way, even though it will mean doubling back south later.

  Alder pulls out the sat phone and tries to power it on as we walk. It lights up, but he scowls at the screen.

  “Battery’s low.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “And none of our satellites are in range.”

&nbs
p; “Scavengers have their own satellites?” I snort. “What, did you make them out of twigs and shit? Maybe that’s why they don’t work.”

  Alder gives me a withering look. “No. We hack them.”

  “Who, you?” I scoff.

  Alder turns back to the phone. “Not everybody who wants to see AgraStar taken down lives in the woods.”

  Interesting. If I can keep him talking, maybe I’ll have more than a handful of seeds and a sad story to bring to headquarters.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “The Deacon,” Alder says.

  “So you can tell her about me?”

  Alder gives me a tired look. “It’s not all about you. I know they’re headed south, but I don’t know where they’re stopping. The Deacon herself probably won’t know until they find the right spot.”

  He trudges ahead, staring down at the sat phone’s screen. I jog to catch up with him. “You won’t tell her about me, then? That I’m alive?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.” Alder looks up at the sky as though a satellite might pop into view, then down at the rotting earth. “Right now, I’m more worried about making it out of the blight zone. I don’t think these masks are doing much good.”

  I swallow. Even with a new mask, my throat feels seared. I taste a salty mixture of blood and mucus pooling at the back of my mouth. Alder’s right. If we don’t get clear of the blight, these masks are only delaying the inevitable.

  Alder checks the phone again and grunts. “Still no signal.”

  “Can’t they track us with that?”

  “Who?”

  “AgraStar. Your Latebra Whatever.” I shrug. “Anyone.”

  Alder shakes his head. “That’s why we only hack a few satellites, not your whole network. So we don’t draw attention to ourselves. Besides, it keeps us from getting too dependent on technology. That’s what the Deacon’s all about. Getting us back to the essentials of life. Depending on the God-made, not the man-made.” He says it as if he’s repeating a slogan.

  I frown. “Is that what you’re all about, too?”

  “I’m about staying free,” Alder says. “And alive.”