جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 40

The beach was empty when I walked down at sunset.I had told everyone to stay inside the volcano. Leo argued. Jaden cried. Astra threatened to freeze my feet to the ground. But I made them stay.This was my fight. Not theirs.The sand was cold between my toes. The waves whispered. The sky turned orange and pink and purple — beautiful, like nothing bad had ever happened in the world.I stood at the water's edge and waited.She came from the fog.A small boat, white and silent, gliding across the flat sea. No engine. No sails. It moved like a ghost.At the bow stood a woman.She looked like me.Same height. Same shape. Same dark hair, though hers was streaked with gray. Same eyes — gold, like mine. But where my gold was warm, hers was cold. Like coins. Like a snake's.The boat stopped at the shore. She stepped off. Her feet didn't sink into the sand."Rose," she said."Evelyn."She smiled. It didn't reach her eyes. "You can call me Mother.""I can call you a lot of things. Mother isn't

The ground split open.Not the sand. Not the beach. The earth itself. A crack ran from the water's edge to the volcano, wide and deep and black. Hot steam burst from the gap, smelling of sulfur and something older. Something rotten.The children screamed. Collectors fell into the crack and did not come back.I stumbled backward, pulling Jaden with me. "Leo! Get everyone to high ground!"Leo was already moving, pushing children toward the volcano tunnels. Astra threw ice across the crack, trying to bridge it. The ice melted before it touched the other side.Miro surfaced in the shallows, his black eyes wide. "It's coming. The thing from the trench. It's coming."Dr. Reinhart stood at the edge of the crack, looking down. Her scarred face was calm. Almost happy."You woke it," I said."No," she replied. "You did. Your resonance. Your little beacon. You called every Variant on the planet. And you woke the thing that eats them."The ground shook again.A hand emerged from the crack.Not a

The pack didn't trust Wren.I saw it in the way they moved away from her. The way mothers pulled their little ones closer when she walked by. The way whispers followed her like a shadow.She sat alone at meals. Slept alone at night. Trained alone in the morning.No one spoke to her except Jaden.He didn't understand the politics. He just saw a sad girl who needed a friend. So he sat with her. Shared his food. Showed her how to tie knots.I watched from a distance. Leo stood beside me."He's too trusting," Leo said."He's nine.""He's your son. That makes him a target."I knew he was right. But I didn't have the heart to tell Jaden to stop. He had lost so much already. If being kind to Wren made him feel whole, I wouldn't take that away.But I watched. Always watching.---Garrett was in the prison cave.We had carved it out of the volcano's lower tunnel — a small room with thick stone walls and a single iron door. No windows. No escape.I visited him every morning.He sat in the corne

The ship flew for six hours.I clung to the hull, my fingers wedged into a seam between two metal plates. The wind screamed past my ears. The cold bit through my clothes. My arms ached. My hands went numb.But I held on.Below me, the ocean turned to land. Mountains. Forests. Then more ocean. Then ice.We were heading north. Far north. Colder than the Arctic vault. Colder than anywhere I had ever been.The ship began to descend.I looked down. Ice stretched in every direction. White and blue and endless. No trees. No animals. No signs of life.Then I saw it.A crack in the ice. Wide and deep. The ship aimed for it.We dropped into darkness.---The tunnel was carved from ice and stone.The ship moved slowly now, its lights reflecting off frozen walls. I could see pipes bolted to the ceiling. Cables. Cameras.This wasn't a natural cave. Someone had built this. Years ago. Maybe decades.The ship stopped.I heard voices. Guards. Commands. The ramp lowered.I let go of the hull and droppe

The island felt different with fifty new children.There was more noise. More crying. More fights over food and blankets and who got to sleep next to the fire. Leo ran around putting out small fires—literal and metaphorical—while Astra tried to organize the older kids into helping.By the third day, I had stopped counting heads. There were too many. They moved in packs, like fish, swirling from the beach to the caves to the volcano tunnels.Lily followed me everywhere.She was the girl from the white room. The one who had screamed when Dr. Marsh pressed the button. The burn on her neck was healing, but she still touched it sometimes, like she couldn't believe it was real."You don't have to stay so close," I told her on the fourth morning. I was trying to meet with Leo about supplies. Lily sat at my feet, drawing in the sand with a stick."I know," she said. She didn't move.Leo raised an eyebrow but said nothing."Food is the biggest problem," he said, pointing at a list on his table