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over so they were all the right way up.
    The four men with guns watched through the glass, yawned with boredom, then retreated to lean against the wall by the door.
    The town Sandwood Seven was now part of a war it knew nothing about. Dozens of soldiers dropped into the streets and herded people back to their homes. The residents peeked through their blinds, trying to see what was happening, but all they saw was litter blowing down the streets, and the black slabs of freighters against the sky. They would wake up in the morning and wonder what they’d missed.
    Meanwhile, thousands of children were trying to reach them. Thousands of children in dirty wet gowns, with bleeding hands and feet and implants. Some of Sandwood Seven’s own children were among this ghastly flight, and their parents would never know.
    The rain fell hard, pelting their skin. Tom ran with the rusting bar slipping through his hands. It was heavy andawkward, but he would not put it down. The Creeper Nets were everywhere, lurking in shadows and swarming over the buildings. Sometimes they dropped from the rooftops and almost landed on their heads. It would have been safer to run in the middle of the road, but because the freighters were above them, they were forced to cling to darkness, and wherever there was darkness, the Creeper Nets were waiting. By the time they reached the center of town, three of his friends had been caught, and the remaining three knew it was more luck than anything that had kept them running.
    It was strange being in the center of a deserted town. All the shops were familiar, but there were no people, and every window was dark. There were no pods or hover cars zipping through the streets.
    On the outskirts of the shopping zone, they saw a reflection move across the window of Sneaker World. They dropped back and listened as a pod whined past, and they felt a pang of hope. Perhaps there were some people here after all. When they emerged again, they ran past the shop and found themselves in the town square, facing Sandwood Seven’s arcade. It was dark now, the blue fountain of light turned off and the great glass doors shut. They walked toward the arcade, drawn to the place even though it had gotten them into this mess.
    A heap of litter had settled against the doors, cups from the Ra Ra Shake Bar and wrappers from Tank Meat Express. Tom crouched down to pick one up, then two things happened in quick succession: They heard the whine of another pod and they were grabbed by the arms and dragged into the alley between the arcade and a shop. They struggled,not understanding what was happening, then realized they had been dragged away by children and allowed themselves to be pushed down into the litter. They listened to the whine of the pod as it flew slowly around the square.
    “They’ve sent out snipers,” one of the children whispered. “They’ve started shooting at us. We think they’re trying to kill us before we get too close to the towers.”
    They were quiet while they absorbed this news. When they were sure the snipers had left, they stood up and waded through the litter toward the back of the arcade. They now formed a group of eleven: six girls and five boys in tattered, bloody gowns that clung to their skin in the rain.
    There was a small yard behind the arcade, full of air-conditioning units and refuse containers. They felt like rats skulking in the debris of their old world.
    The arcade was on the top of a hill. When they looked south, they could see the refugee towers, spread out in the distance like rows of concrete crops. In these towers were normal people, like their parents; refugees of The Animal Plague. If they could reach these people, they would help them, but above the towers hung more freighters and between them was a maze of streets filled with Creeper Nets and snipers.
    They had progressed to a new level of the game. One they would be lucky to survive.
    They leaned against the arcade and wiped the rain from