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all the kids from the kidbon standing around and watching her play. And she sketched Samantha, lying facedown on the ground, Cass’s notebook near her outstretched hand. Nick watched her tear that page out and rip it into small pieces as soon as she had finished it.
    By the afternoon of the second day, Nick knew it was time. “Okay, plan B,” he announced, startling his siblings.
    Kevin stood up from where he had been fiddling with the lightsticks on the floor. “Yes. I’m going crazy in here.”
    “So where next?” Cass said.
    “Back to the Freepost, obviously,” said Kevin. “To find Mom and Dad and other survivors.”
    “No,” said Nick. “We’re not going back to Freepost.”
    “So we’re just giving up on them?” Cass said angrily. “How many parents am I going to lose?” She sat down on her sleeping bag, hugged herself tightly, and closed her eyes.
    Nick was too surprised to speak. Nobody in the family spoke of Cass’s birth parents, killed during the Revolution when she was an infant. Kevin and Nick’s parents had adopted her, and, simply, they were her parents; Kevin and Nick were her brothers.
    Nick walked over to Cass and kneeled down. “No,” he said. “We’re not giving up on Mom and Dad. If they had escaped the attack, they would have made it here by now.”
    Cass opened her eyes. “So you’re saying they’re dead?” she said quietly.
    “No! I’m saying they must have been captured.”
    “Or they’re hurt,” said Kevin, “and hiding, and that’s why they can’t make it to us, and they’re waiting for us to come back to them!”
    Nick stood and spun to face him. “So we just wander back and forth in the bot-infested woods? Don’t be an idiot, Kevin.”
    Cass placed herself between them. “So what’s your plan?”
    “Yeah,” said Kevin. “What’s your brilliant plan, then?”
    “We go to the City. If Mom and Dad are alive, they were probably captured and taken there. So we go to the City and find them. And get them out.”
    Nobody spoke. The City. Where humans were taken to be slowly broken, bled, tortured, killed.
    Cass moved first, grabbing three backpacks and tossing them onto Nick’s cot. She slid her new notebook into one of the packs, then began stacking MREs. Kevin gathered up the lightstrips.
    “So you agree …” began Nick.
    “Shut up and pack,” said Kevin. “And figure out how to get us to the City.”

CHAPTER 6
    ALL THEY KNEW WAS THAT THE CITY WAS FAR TO THE EAST. HOW FAR, and where exactly, they had no idea. So they walked. After a day of hiking they were farther away from Freepost than they had ever been on their own. On the second day, the forest abruptly thinned and then opened up onto a wide paved road, six lanes of cratered and warped asphalt with an overgrown grassy median.
    Kevin stood on the pavement straddling a deep crack, with no trees for twenty yards to the left and right. He wanted to follow the empty road, at least around the bend, hoping to find something to scavenge, but Nick and Cass had shot down that idea. Just then a bird flew overhead, and he flinched at the shadow and realized just how exposed and vulnerable he was, away from the trees. He quickly rejoined his brother and sister.
    “I hate it when you’re right,” he said to Nick.
    “Don’t look at me. Cass agreed, too,” said Nick.
    “Yeah, but I only hate it when you’re right.”
    They stuck to the woods, keeping close to a river that ran roughly east–west. They walked and walked, and talked little. The silence bothered Kevin, but what was there to say? That he missed home? That their plan was crazy and seemed crazier every day? They didn’t know where the City was, or even if their parents were actually there. And if they were there—being tortured by the bots, starved, held in cages like animals—what could he and Nick and Cass possibly do about it? Just walk in, open their cage, and walk out?
    Their supply of MREs ran out after four days. “Good,” said