It turns out the ambush was planned around a group of large trees, felled in the path of the train. While a small force, much smaller than when I left them, tackles the removal, Poppy fills me in on what's happened to them since Duet and I went our own way.

"We didn't make it far," she says as I bend over one of Chime's boys. His leg is bleeding, a rent gaping flesh to the bone. Tears track down his cheeks, but he doesn't move or flinch from me as I touch him as I feared he ...