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Beside him, in the passenger’s seat, Shay’s breathing thinned out.

She’d spotted the planes, too.

“Come on, Travis,” Roman murmured. “Come on, come on, comeon.”

He had to make it.

Travishadto make it. Had to survive.

If he didn’t, if Roman lost his brother once and for all, he would never forgive himself.

“Everyone ready?”Dominic asked as they threw their needles aside, the injection sites in their necks glowing with faint teal light.

Everyone answered the Angel with nods and murmured confirmations.

Where he’d set up the missile by the edge of the roof, Dominic took aim.

Travis and the others lay down flat on their stomachs in a row just behind Dominic.

“Three,” the Angel began. He squinted one eye shut, his focus fixed on the Control Tower—on the top half that was barely visible through the otherworldly murk. Had they taken any longer to get here, they would not have been able to see it.

Had they taken any longer, this would not have worked.

A loud whir drew Travis’s attention west. To the starless sky above the dark and stormy ocean. Those red lights that were barely pinpricks from here…

Those were navigation lights.

The planes were already here.

Travis’s heart started to pound.

Jewels reached over and clasped his hand, squeezing his fingers hard enough to bruise. He could hear her heart pounding, too.

“Two,” Dominic said. “One.”

Travis whispered, “Boom.”

Shay sat forwardin her seat. “Roman?” she whispered.

Roman glanced her way as he prepared to reduce speed behind the lines of traffic on highway I-5.

In the time since Tanner had restored communications, it seemed word had gotten out about the bullshit that was happening in Yveswich. News reporters were here. And so were the family and friends of the people who were still trapped beneath the forcefield. People were protesting. Enraged.

“Pup?” he asked.

“It might be a good idea to stay back?—”

It all happened so quickly.

The Control Tower came down with a BANG that lanced through the air.

The forcefield rushed outward like a popped balloon.

Seismic waves buckled the pavement. Hot light and a grit-choked gust that stank of saltpeter swallowed the road, and before Roman could so much as blink, the car was flipping. Shay and Paxton were screaming. And then?—

He smacked his head against a hard surface, and everything went black.

When Roman came to,it was to the sound of distant screaming and crying.