Disappointment settles in my gut. I pull away from the house. It’s like he wants to stay behind, on his own. He thinks he’s playing both sides, but he’s not involved in the Adelphoi side at all. He’s an Adelphoi, yes—even if he doesn’t know the title—but no one besides me knows who he is. How is that serving anyone?

He turned on Luc. And yet he’s stuck. What does he plan to go back to?

The road curves and the trees sway. I drive at a crawl, roll down my window and breathe in the fresh air, relishing the fact it’s real. Not simulated air. The sky—

Crack. Something smacks the back window of the truck. I hit the brakes, sliding along the gravel. Through the dust behind me comes another rock. This one slams into the metal bed of the truck.

I shove my head out the window. “Hey! I stopped, okay? And this isn’t even my truck!”

Crixus saunters into view through the clouds of dust. It would be a cool moment except one second later he coughs violently until his eyes start watering.

“How else was I supposed to get you to stop?”

“You could have acted like a sane person and come out of the cabin before I left. I gave you a one-minute warning!”

“I didn’t think you’d stick to it.” He hauls open the passenger-side door and climbs in. “And I was right. You waited at least three. First rule of parenting: stick to what you say.”

“Every second counts,” I mutter, rolling up the window now that the dust is billowing into the cab.

“We could have brought the LifeSuPods with us, you know.”

“There’s not enough electricity at the Adelphoi house. If the Adelphoi want it, they can come back.” We merge onto the highway, and I navigate by memory.

“You used that word before—Adelphoi.”

“It’s what they call themselves.”

He glances in the side mirror. “It’s Greek. Means brothers. Or more broadly . . . family.” He seems to ponder it a moment.

“Definitely sounds more inviting than Spore.” We ride in silence, and something niggles at the back of my mind from earlier.

It’s only after several miles that I realize what it is. It’s not about the Adelphoi, it’s about what he said before that. He said LifeSuPods. Plural. Implying we could have brought them both with us.

I glance in my rearview mirror—habit, maybe. Or instinct.

A billow of black smoke rises in the sunset sky several miles behind us. Where the cabin should be. I look sharply at Crixus. He stares fixedly out the windshield.

That’s when I see the blood still drying on his hands. My own goes cold.

“Crixus, what did you do?”

I screech to a halt and whip the truck around.

“What are you doing?” Crixus grabs the dash to keep himself from slamming against the passenger window. “It’s too late to go back for the LifeSuPods!”

“I’m not going back for a LifeSuPod,” I growl. “I’m going back for a life.”

“Galilei?” He barks a short laugh.

My hands tighten on the steering wheel. I don’t expect him to understand because I don’t really understand. Part of me hopes I’m too late, hopes whatever Crixus did has already done its job. Luc betrayed me—surely his father is going to wreak his own havoc. The Adelphoi knew how dangerous he was. He likely deserves to die.

But Galilei has the cure. Supposedly.

“Is that his blood?” I ask, referring to Crixus’s hands.

“It’s from his LifeSuPod. I broke the glass.” He leans back against the seat and folds his arms like he’s settling in for a good movie. I suppose this is what comes from having watched noxiors die day after day in the Arena—a numbness toward life.

There’s a lot of smoke. Surely the fire has consumed the cabin and LifeSuPods by now. I take the turn to the gravel road a bit too hard, and the back tires screech on the asphalt until hitting the gravel and sliding over the edge of the road into the brush. I accelerate to give us momentum out of the ditch and then overcorrect and almost hit a tree.

Crixus’s popcorn-eating nonchalance disappears, and he grips whatever his hands find. “Easy, Cain.”

It’s hard to hear him over the roar of the gravel, but I slow because we’re approaching the smoke. I smell it through the truck grill, and it brings back immediate memories of almost burning to death in The Fire Swamp.

“Why are you even trying to save him?”

“Because I’m tired of killing.”

“So am I!” Crixus shouts. “But isn’t this worth it? Luc’s a killer. Galilei raised him. He’s probably a killer too. You, me, Spores, those kids!”

“We’re still alive, aren’t we?”

“That doesn’t change his heart.”

“But maybe it changes ours.”

We reach the cabin, and the heat of the flames breaches the truck cab. I think of Stranna, and the irony in the full circle of this is not lost on me.

“It’s too late, Cain.”

“I have to try.”

“There’s no way in—” Crixus abruptly cuts off as I gun it.

The truck smashes through the main cabin wall, and I reverse as burning timber falls on us. It smothers part of the flames. I leap from the cab and rush forward while I have a short window.

The heat sucks my breath out of my lungs in seconds. I pull my shirt over my mouth and shield my eyes as best I can.

I duck under a hanging beam half on fire and try to wave away the smoke. Then I see Galilei’s LifeSuPod.

The cover is broken. But it’s also open.

One step closer, and I see something that brings a chill to my body in complete contrast to the surrounding flames.

Galilei’s body is no longer in the LifeSuPod.

A gunshot comes from outside.