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hundred meters ahead of the main group. Once our people are halfway up the ramp, we pace as fast as the tribe can go. Where is Oldest Franwil?”
    â€œShe is with the kowrus.”
    â€œTell her we will have to hope for the best for Moma.”
    Elise watched as Rima scribbled furiously on her chalkboard in shorthand and then sprinted away. The girl had grown up since they first met less than a year ago. For one thing, Elise used to have to look down at her when they spoke. Rima must have hit her growth spurt, because she was now half a head taller than Elise. That wasn’t saying much, since Elise’s nickname on the badminton team had been Low-Hanging Fruit, and yes, it had been ripe with double entendres. Secondary school girls could be bitches. Elise still felt a little self-conscious when she had to speak with the entire tribe and barely reached the neck of most people.
    Rima had matured mentally as well, having been forced to grow up quickly over the past few months. When they first met, she had been an illiterate wild child who only knew how to hunt, fight, and cause the elders headaches. Elise had tapped into the girl’s potential, taught her basic math, and cultivated in her a love for reading. In a short while, under both Grace’s and Elise’s tutelage, she became one of the most literate people in the tribe. Who knew what Rima could have become if she had grown up in a more enlightened time. It wasn’t too late, not if Elise had a say in the girl’s future.
    Elise walked to the foot of the ramp and followed the road with her eyes as it inclined and disappeared into the fog. A few minutes later, she heard gravel crackling behind her. She watched as the front of the caravan passed, the group of vanguards followed by hundreds of men, women, and children. The sound of their footsteps, little pitter-patters, became louder. The creaking of wooden axles and wheels grinding on the road soon joined the chorus. Farm animals came next—several dozen cows, a flock of chickens, followed by pigs, goats, and kowru, a genetically engineered fast-reproducing cross between brahman and giant rabbits bred during the early twenty-fourth century. Oldest Franwil was with this group, watching over some of the flock. She pointed at Moma, the very pregnant kowru, and held up five fingers. Elise nodded. They would have to cart the mare soon.
    ChronoCom and Valta had returned the week after their attack on the Farming Towers with forces ten times larger than the one Levin Javier-Oberon, the former high auditor of Earth, had led against them. Instead of another battle, they came upon an abandoned settlement. By that time, the Elfreth had packed up and gone deep underground, hiding inside Boston’s maze of buildings and old transit systems.
    Elise had initially hoped that they could wait out the Co-op as the enemy scoured the ruins for them. She had underestimated their resolve. The Co-op hunkered down and began to systematically wipe out all the other tribes that lived there. Boston became a graveyard and a prison within a few short days. Dozens of ill-prepared tribes who had survived hundreds of years of famine, pestilence, and disease in the harshest of lands were decimated by a genocidal onslaught. The Co-op was undiscerning as to who fell into their crosshairs. Elise, feeling the guilt of bringing so much death to these people, had ordered the Elfreth to take in all refugees, swelling their numbers from the original three hundred to nearly a thousand.
    The fighting became a slow bleeding game of cat and mouse as the Co-op hunted the Elfreth and the tribes sprung ambushes to pick off the invaders one by one. Eventually, James and Eriao convinced her that they couldn’t win this fight, and that their only chance was to flee the city.
    It was a tough call, but Elise had reluctantly agreed. The weight of her responsibility to her people sometimes made it difficult to breathe. Every victory felt