I stayed perfectly still while the sound echoed in my ears. I would know that noise anywhere. It was definitely the mechanical chk-chk of someone pumping a shotgun, and it sounded like it was very close.

Jace stood a few inches ahead of me, as motionless as I was. I wondered if we should turn and run back into the airship. We were only a few feet away from the open hatch, and if we hurried, we might both make it in.

But these suits weren’t bulletproof. And a blast from a shotgun, and from as close as it had sounded, would make short work of them.

“Hands up,” a croaking female voice said from directly in front of us.

I scanned the tree line. I could see empty huts and lean-tos that reminded me of the shantytown back in Millville. I could see the back of the apartment building through the strip of woods on the edge of the meadow. But I didn’t see an agent, or any other person. Nonetheless, my hands began to slowly rise into the air. Not seeing our captor made her even more dangerous.

Jace’s hands rose as well. He was staring intently at a point in the trees slightly to our right, and I craned my neck to follow his gaze.

An old woman was standing beside a hut, brandishing a shotgun. No wonder we didn’t see her at first. She was draped in a dirty brown shawl that was flecked with twigs and leaves like homemade camouflage. Her bare hands and face were tanned a deep brown that matched the tree bark around her. Her hair was a graying and tattered nest all around her face. She looked very old and very frail.

But she was holding the shotgun straight and steady.

I looked to Jace for guidance. Was he going to try to make it back to the ship? Were we going to run? But Jace was still and quiet.

When the silence was broken again, it was the old woman’s rasping voice.

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she growled, her shotgun still aimed squarely at us.

I furrowed my brow. What did that mean?

“We’re not here to take you anywhere,” Jace said in a calm and gentle tone.

The old woman’s aim swung at him as he spoke. She narrowed her eyes and studied him.

When my brain began to process again, I started to understand what she was accusing us of.

“We’re not agents,” I said in a small, weak voice. It was all I could muster through my fear.

The shotgun swayed to point at me. I couldn’t help but stare down the double barrels and imagine the destruction they could cause.

The old woman’s stare was sharp and unforgiving as she looked me over.

“So they’re just handing invisible ships out to citizens, then?” she asked bitingly.

She had seen us exit the airship. I couldn’t blame her for assuming that we were working for the government. I would’ve thought the same thing if two strangers walked out of an invisible airship in an abandoned town. And after our close call in Millville, we knew that agents were returning to these towns to look for people who had been left behind. She may have been evading them regularly.

“Please,” Jace started, but the old woman’s gun was pointed at him again so quickly that he stopped talking. What could he say at this point to make her believe him?

I took a deep breath. I didn’t come all this way to stop now.

“We’re not agents,” I said, watching the gun turn its angry maw back to me. “We’re just like you.”

The woman laughed mockingly, the gun dipping briefly in her grip.

“Like me?” she asked angrily. “How are you like me?”

I had a plan, but its execution required a boldness that I wasn’t sure I was capable of. I’d need to lower my hands. And as heavy as that shotgun probably felt in her thin and withered hands, she didn’t strike me as having bad aim.

But I had things to accomplish. And I wasn’t going to get anywhere as someone’s prisoner.

My hands began to drop slowly.

The woman braced the butt of the shotgun tightly against her shoulder and refocused her aim.

“Keep your hands up!” she spat.

“I just want to show you something,” I said gently, my hands pausing briefly where they were. When the woman didn’t speak further, I began to slowly lower them again.

When my hands were level with my face, I took my right hand and began to curl it inward until my palm was flush against my face. Every breath I drew felt like my last in the face of the shotgun. But I had to show her how we were like her. I had to make her believe me.

My fingers found the edge of the latex disk and peeled it back. I briefly lost my vision as the mask detached, but I heard the woman gasp. I knew the latex features were sinking back into the malleable disk. It was probably a very disconcerting sight if you weren’t expecting it.

When the mask had completely returned to its disk shape, I raised my hands back up in the air and met the woman’s gaze with my real face. Her eyes had softened some in confusion.

“We’re on your side,” I said resolutely. “We’re hiding from the government, too. We’re fighting them, not working for them.”

The woman’s eyes widened out of their suspicious slits. Then, slowly, the shotgun lowered until it was pointing at the ground. The woman stumbled briefly before catching herself, and I realized how much effort it must have taken for her to stay still and upright for so long.

Jace and I lowered our hands when the shotgun was safely pointed away from us. Jace removed his latex mask as well, revealing a circle of his true face visible through the hood.

For a few anxious seconds, no one spoke or moved. Then the old woman broke the silence.

“Well, if you’re not here to capture me, then leave me alone,” she said flatly. “You’ve given me enough of a scare, and I’d like to continue my day without the threat of a heart attack.”

She turned and walked away, dragging the shotgun behind her. Jace and I turned to look at each other in confusion. What did we do now?

The woman walked a few steps and reached a ragged hut. It didn’t have a door, but she pushed a curtain aside with her hand to let herself in. Then she was gone.

Jace and I exhaled together as the tension dissipated.

That was our second brush with artillery in as many stops. It wasn’t boding well for the rest of our mission.

I was staring after the woman, hoping she was going to be a trove of information. She had probably seen what had happened to Ironfield. She probably knew where the townspeople had gone or at least who had taken them. After all, this was her home on the outskirts of Ironfield. And she had somehow managed to evade whatever fate had befallen everyone else. She must’ve known something. But we had to convince her to talk to us.

Jace was on the same wavelength. “Think you’re up for another interrogation?” he asked cautiously.

I shook my head. “I don’t think you interrogate a woman with a shotgun,” I replied. “I think you ask nicely.”

I began to walk toward the woman’s hut.

There were a few bare plants growing in the dirt around her home. A tomato vine sagged under the weight of measly green tomatoes. Mushrooms grew in cloudy bunches. Small whitish cabbages peeked through heavy leaves.

“Ma’am?” I ventured softly. I could see into the hut through holes in the curtained door, but I couldn’t see the woman herself.

Jace lingered a few feet behind me. He was probably thinking what I felt: that poking around the lodgings of someone who had just been pointing a shotgun in your face wasn’t the smartest idea. But we had to speak to her somehow.

The woman didn’t respond. I heard the crackling of fire inside the hut, and caught a warm, familiar scent.

The woman yanked back the curtain and suddenly stood directly in front of me. I gasped in shock. Her weathered eyes bored up into mine, and I noticed how aged her skin truly was. Tiny wrinkles spread out from her mouth, the sides of her nose, and the corners of her eyes. Deeper wrinkles creased her forehead and chin. I was relieved to note that she wasn’t holding her weapon.

“Well?” she asked impatiently. “You’ve already interrupted my breakfast once. What do you want now?”

I was taken aback. “I-I’m sorry,” I stuttered. “I was just wondering if we could talk to you.”

The old woman looked over my shoulder at Jace, before turning her eyes back to me. She seemed to be mulling over being kept from her breakfast any longer.

She turned on her heel and stepped back into her hut.

I looked back at Jace briefly, feeling utterly dejected. But then the woman’s voice sounded again from inside.

“Let’s get this over with,” she yelled out to us.

Jace smiled encouragingly at me and reached around me to hold back the curtain. I stepped inside.

The inside of the hut was quaint, but cozier than I had expected. It was better cared for than the other makeshift homes we had found on the outskirts of Millville. Straw padded the floor and kept the inside dry. And a thatched roof overhead covered half of the small enclosure. A circle of rocks inside the hut ensconced a small fire. Smoke was rising through the open portion of the roof. The three of us barely fit inside.

A small clay pot steamed beside the fire, a thin stew of what smelled like root vegetables and forest-grown herbs bubbling inside. Its scent filled the tiny room wondrously.

The woman grabbed her pot and sat down on the straw beside the fire. She picked up a dingy metal spoon from the ground and began to slurp.

Jace and I sat opposite her across the fire. The straw was itchy and dry, but it provided a nice cushion from the hard ground.

A few long seconds passed as we awkwardly watched the woman eat.

“Get on with it,” she said abruptly, a thin line of stew dripping down her chin. I could’ve laughed at her tough, no-nonsense attitude if she hadn’t been recently pointing a shotgun at me.

“Why are you out here by yourself?” I asked.

“Ha! And you said you were like me. You don’t know the first thing about factory living, sweetheart, if you don’t know what happens when you can’t work anymore,” she said. “When you’re too old to work the line, you stop getting paid. That means you stop paying rent. So you either die or you move out here into these woods and try to scrape by.”

I felt abashed. I did know what it was like to slave away as a factory employee, but she was right—I had never had it this rough before. At least in Trenton you had access to a train station so you could try your luck in another town if you were no longer fit for work in your particular factory. In these isolated towns it seemed like you worked until you couldn’t any longer, and then you were reduced to living in huts and begging for scraps.

“Where is everyone else?” Jace asked.

I nodded after he spoke. It was as good a place to start as any.

“I don’t know,” she replied matter-of-factly.

My spirits sank. “Didn’t you see anything?” I asked in disbelief. How could someone live so close and not know where her thousands of neighbors had gone?

“If I had seen too much, do you think they’d have just left me here?” she asked in return.

That was a fair point. She was out here away from the city and the apartments. She would’ve been somewhat removed from the situation. But still, how could you just miss an entire evacuation? We could see the apartments from these woods!

“But you must’ve seen something,” Jace added.

The woman stopped eating and looked at Jace. “Yes, I did. I saw a line of trucks drive into the city. And then I saw a line of trucks leave. And then everyone was gone.”

I pondered the statement. So they had carted all the townspeople out? But why did the townspeople agree to leave? Why would they all go so suddenly, and without a fight?

“Do you know about a group called Helping Hands?” I asked.

The woman furrowed her brow. “Does it look like this?” she asked. She cupped her hands together and thrust them toward me.

I looked down at her hands, puzzled. “I don’t understand,” I said.

“Trucks were coming in and out before the big trucks came for the people. They had hands like this”—she repeated the gesture—“on the side, with a cornucopia of food inside.”

“Like a logo?” Jace asked quickly.

Then it clicked. She was describing the image from the poster we saw back in Millville.

The woman nodded.

“What were those trucks doing?” I asked.

“They were handing out food. I tried to talk to one of their volunteers once to see if I could get something from them. They told me to register. I said I would, but I never did. Never got any food, either.”

I thought back to the poster on the wall of Millville’s factory. People were asked to register to receive unemployment benefits after the factory closed. This woman hadn’t registered… and then she’d been left behind.

“Did they say anything about the townspeople leaving?” Jace asked.

The woman bit her lip as if in deep thought. “They were inspecting lodgings. The woman volunteer told me to register and said they’d inspect my home for possible repairs. But I didn’t register, and so they never came.”

“But why didn’t you register?” I asked. “I mean, if they were giving out food and offering home repairs.”

The woman looked at me like I was a moron.

“Young lady, nothing good ever comes from registering with the government. You’d be smart to learn that now,” she replied.

“But they said they were a welfare group, right? Not the government,” Jace added.

The woman rolled her eyes. “I didn’t see much difference, despite what they said.”

I considered the sentiment. She might’ve been more right than she knew.

“Anyway, more of those Helping Hands people came and made announcements in the city with a megaphone. I could hear them from here. Said the whole city failed the property inspection and that they were going to have the city streets repaved and the apartments patched up. They said they were going to rebuild the factory so people could go back to work.”

I thought about all the implications. People had to register, and then they had their homes searched, and then they all went missing. It sounded like Helping Hands had a noble-sounding cause for the evacuations, but why hadn’t the townspeople come back?

The woman continued.

“A few days later, those trucks drove up, and then everyone was gone,” she finished.

“Did they come looking for you?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I guess they only came for the people who registered. Probably assumed everyone would. But I can get along just fine without help from the government or anyone else. So they weren’t going to get me on some registry.”

“Where were you when this happened?” Jace inquired.

“Foraging,” she replied. “Picking berries out in the woods. I saw the trucks drive past while I was out there. Then I saw them leaving when I was on my way back. But I guess they didn’t see me.”

“Did they ever do work on the factory or the roads or the apartments like they said they were going to?” I asked.

The old woman laughed. Obviously she wasn’t buying Helping Hands’ reasoning.

“The government doesn’t care about getting poor people back to work. And this factory hadn’t been doing well anyway. It’d been on the brink of bankruptcy even back when I was still working. Why would anyone pay money to gussy up a town like Ironfield when they can just cut their losses and start somewhere new with a government subsidy?”

We sat silently for a while in quiet unease at the woman’s insinuations. But she herself seemed unperturbed and quickly turned back to her soup.

“Did Helping Hands ever come back to look for people who had been left behind? Or did Authority agents patrol through here?” I asked.

She looked up at me, her face suddenly looking much older.

“They’ve come back a few times,” she said fearfully. “I’m always hiding.”

“But why wouldn’t you want to leave this place now?” I asked. Why would this old woman stay out here all by herself with barely any food and no guarantee of surviving through a cold winter?

The woman’s eyes softened.

“I can’t leave,” she said simply.

“But why?” I pressed.

She put her stew down completely and folded her hands into her lap. Her eyes met mine and held my gaze.

“My children,” she replied. “Three children were stolen from me. They’re adults now. But if they ever find out about me and come looking, I want to be here for them.”

Tears formed against the rims of my eyes. How many years had this woman been waiting for her children to return to her? How much blind faith did she have to have to fight hunger and the elements in the hope that they would ever find out about her, much less come looking for her?

But I understood the feeling. If I never found Hope, I would still spend the rest of my life waiting for her. And I would pray that she would look for me, too. Suddenly I felt a kinship with this old woman.

“I understand,” I said simply.

She smiled at me in a motherly way, and I stood up.

“I hope your children come someday,” I said. “And thank you for your time.”

I turned, pushed open the curtain, and stepped out.

Jace was by my side a few seconds later.

“We need to call Jackie with this information now,” I said softly. We had so much news to share with the Edgewood team.

My watch buzzed suddenly against my skin.

“Just headquarters again,” I said quickly, glancing down at it.

I pressed a button on the side of the watch and answered. It was Nelson this time.

“We have a lot of new intel,” I told her excitedly, continuing to walk toward Ironfield.

“Good. You can tell us in person,” Nelson replied tensely. “We have new intel, too, and Nathan wants you back now.”