“What the hell are you talking about?”

  I had to admit, Marshall’s astonishment made it worth sitting through Hutch’s explanation of what happened.

  We’d arrived at the Barracks with a cover story locked in: two Bees had chased us through town, we’d escaped into the warehouse district, and we’d lost our guns and bags in the process. All three of us were alive. We told Marshall exactly where we’d seen them last and warned that they might still be patrolling.

  Then Hutch threw the entire plan away.

  “Shit got bad,” he said flatly as we stood in Marshall’s tent. An antique desk sat between us, buried under maps and notebooks—I couldn’t tell what he was trying to sketch. Marshall loved planning, but he had no actual plan beyond sitting around all day, so he was probably just pretending to look busy.

  It was one of Hutch’s main gripes about Eden: he was the only one with military experience, and now he held the lowest rank in whatever civilian force Marshall had invented because we were the newest arrivals. The whole guard structure came straight out of Marshall’s obsession with historical action novels.

  “Shit got bad,” Marshall repeated, shaking his head in disgust. “Shit got bad?”

  “Yes, sir.” I cut in before Hutch could respond—because he wasn’t going to say sir to Marshall, and that would only make things worse.

  Marshall studied his maps carefully. They were outdated; nobody used physical maps anymore, and the Flying J hadn’t updated its inventory this year. But I recognized the highway cutting through Texas like an arrow: I-35. We were north of Austin, halfway between there and Dallas. Every small town had been marked with either a red X or a circle—mined for supplies or not yet.

  Many people in Eden came from these towns, and they weren’t particularly concerned about the big cities. They’d seen the ships, but as far as they knew, that was someone else’s problem. None of us knew when the invasion would reach us, but Marshall considered us well-prepared.

  “So you’re saying one of those Bees is walking around town, close to here.”

  “Two,” Hutch corrected.

  “They travel in pairs,” I added.

  Marshall nodded slowly, picking up a Sharpie—then wrote the information on a napkin instead of the map.

  A used one.

  I recognized the signal: he wanted us out of his tent. He wouldn’t act unless the Bees came directly to Eden, which they probably wouldn’t. They were stationed near the warehouses, monitoring them for some reason. Without better intel, I couldn’t push harder, but I suspected the Mastodons hadn’t ventured this far because the population was thin. They were focused on dense clusters of people first.

  “We need to do something about this,” Hutch snapped.

  “I thought you said these things were unbeatable by human standards.”

  “With what we had at the time.” Hutch’s jaw clenched, a small vein surfacing on his forehead before his curls covered it again. Thank God for that, or Marshall would’ve seen what was coming.

  I nudged Hutch and stepped in. “We know how to paralyze them with a well-aimed shot. A squad could probably take one down.”

  “We’re just two humans,” Hutch muttered through gritted teeth. “Two. With a squad and some training—”

  Marshall set down his marker and crossed his arms, cutting him off. “No.”

  Both of us froze.

  No wasn’t a word either of us liked. My eyes went wide like Marshall had just announced he could do a backflip. There was no way he was telling me no, and absolutely no way he was telling Hutch no.

  “No?” We said it together.

  “It’s too risky. I can’t send our men to train with you two just to lose more weapons, more armor—”

  “What armor?” I asked. “We only have shirts—”

  He plowed ahead like I hadn’t spoken. “—more planning. We have only what’s in this parking lot, do you understand? Nothing else. How am I supposed to protect Eden if I lose everyone to a skirmish? We’re only a few months in. We don’t know what comes next.”

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  “Sir.” Hutch’s voice dropped to a warning tone. A fist could fly through Marshall’s skull any second.

  I gave Hutch a look, silently urging him to step back. We could figure this out later—just the four of us. Maggie and Eleanor wouldn’t let this slide either. I just needed to convince them to meet tonight.

  He glared at me for three burning seconds before finally looking away toward the tent wall. I had seconds before he shut us down completely.

  “Sir,” I said carefully. “Please. These Bees being this close is a real threat. We need to fortify Eden and plan for an attack. If they find us, the tents won’t stop them—they can walk right through. And we’re a target, Marshall. All they want is people packed tight. We’d be lucky if the Mastodons themselves don’t show up once they learn we’re here.”

  Marshall gave me a flat, uninterested stare. This wasn’t what he cared about. He wanted to go back to doodling on his maps and letting Dex slack off while the rest of us took guard duty seriously.

  “You really think they’re a threat?” Marshall asked.

  “We need to at least…” I racked my brain for a plan. “We need to at least divert them closer to the city. It wouldn’t take long, just catching their attention. Once they see a human, they go berserk to find one of us. The squad just has to stay out of their reach, but we can keep Eden safe.”

  And we can go back to the warehouse, I thought, thinking of the mystery girl.

  If we showed back up with a force, perhaps she would be able to escape without concern. I didn’t care if I never saw her again. I just wanted to make sure that she was okay. It was hard even standing here, so far away, doing absolutely nothing to help.

  Marshall mulled over his thoughts, running a thick finger across his mustache. He glanced between me and Hutch before his beady little eyes began to narrow, and I had a sinking suspicion as to why.

  “Alright,” he said. “So we might not be able to kill them, but we can lead them away from Eden?”

  “We can try. If not, killing them is preferable.” I felt my chest tightening the longer he looked at us like that. “It takes a bullet between the wings on their back to disable them. Imagine a bit of concentrated fire.”

  “Imagine.” He huffed.

  Hutch glanced back at me. “Is the plan making sense now?”

  “It’s making sense.” He smiled at both of us, and it was not welcoming and cheery. I knew better than to trust Marshall in the first place, but we needed him. Eden was a place to stay, and it was full of humans under his thumb. I would not let him waste their lives because he was greedy. Someone needed to be here to keep him accountable.

  And it seemed like he knew that, because his next words were our death sentence.

  “You two,” he said, pointing between Hutch and I. “You two make a formidable pair. And as far as I know, you’re the only two guards who have seen one of these, besides my son. Dex has never fought one close-range before.”

  Or in any range, I thought acidly.

  Marshall continued, “Take Dex with you. Just you threw, and head over to those warehouses. Train him in the art of disabling these bots, and he can report back here when you three are finished. We need to make sure this intel is useful, after all. I can’t have the two of you plotting to seed me bad information to act on.”

  “Why would I even do that?” Hutch snapped at him.

  Marshall shrugged. “Why would an EMP take out the entire world’s infrastructure? I don’t know. All I know is that the two of you come in here with big talk, and all I see is you keep to yourselves. That’s suspicious to me. I understand that you formed a close bond, you and those two others, but that’s not integration in a community.” He knitted his fingers together and thrust his fists out as us as an example. “We let you in, but you could be anyone. All you might be doing is talk me into sending forces outside of here just so your people can come in and attack from behind.”

  “Our people?” I asked flatly.

  “Raiders,” Marshall answered.

  Raiders. He thought this was like one of his stories. Raiders.

  I wanted to flip the table and shower him with his stupid maps and notebooks and pens, hoping that something sharp goes through his eyes, but I balled my fists up at my sides. He was still sending us out. I just didn’t know at what capacity. All I knew was that Marshall was not doing this for the good of Eden. He was not even doing this because he thought it was a good idea.

  No doubt Dex would have some very different rules to play by.

  “We want to take Maggie and Eleanor,” Hutch told Marshall immediately.

  Marshall shook his head. “No can do. Maggie needs to report back to her post with the school, and Eleanor’s needed here.

  She’s our only nurse.”

  She’s a nurse practitioner, I wanted to say. She’s a provider.

  It didn’t matter to him. Nurse or no nurse, her practice in Eden was just out of convenience for whatever show Marshall and Alice were putting on. If the Mastodons came right this second, she could do nothing but glassed with the rest of them.

  “Eleanor comes with us,” I told him firmly. “So does Maggie.”

  “Nope.” Marshall relaxed back into his foldout chair. “I know you two think you’re hot shit, coming in here with experience and all. But this is my town. And I think it’s time you get along with others in your community instead of keeping to yourselves. Maggie can stay here. If the Mastodons come, she can give us good advice. And Eleanor would be needed here, wouldn’t she?”

  I grit my teeth, trying to come up with another angle to bring them.

  Hutch, though, looked resigned. We got what we wanted: we were going back for the warehouses, and hopefully we could help the girl. The bonus was that we would be able to convince Dex of the danger. He said he saw one before, and he was correct, but now we could shove him right between two Bees and succinctly explain what was wrong with his father’s plan.

  It didn’t help that I hated Dex, and I was glad to put him in the line of fire if possible.

  “Okay,” Hutch said for the both of us. “That sounds sensible.”

  “Good.” Marshall smiled at both of us. “You leave tomorrow morning. Rest up, and give Alice a list of requested supplies. I will make sure that you and Dex are in the best possible hands, soldiers.”

  I exchanged a look with Hutch. There was no way that everything we wanted would be on the list. Maybe a quarter of it, or a tenth. But we’d be lucky if we got guns this time.

  “Thanks, Marshall,” I said, and he tipped me a small salute with two fingers before gesturing for me to get the fuck out of his tent.