The crater was still smoking.
It was a perfectly circular wound in the earth, five hundred feet wide. The bottom was fused glass, glowing a dull, angry red where the kinetic rod had impacted.
Jason stood at the main gate of the Rouge Complex. He leaned on a railing, watching the smoke drift.
The Deacon's siege camp was gone. Vaporized. The only evidence that an army had ever stood there was the smell of ozone and the occasional twisted piece of black iron train track jutting from the mud.
"Clean," O'Malley grunted, standing beside him. "Physics doesn't leave a mess."
"It leaves ghosts," Jason said quietly.
He wasn't looking at the crater. He was looking at the figure walking through the smoke.
A man. Alone.
He walked with a heavy, limping gait. He wore a coat made of bear fur, the hide thick and matted with dried blood. A rifle was slung over one shoulder. In his hand, he dragged a sledgehammer.
Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.
The sound of the iron head dragging on the asphalt echoed in the silence.
Jason felt a cold knot tighten in his stomach. He knew that walk. He knew the set of those broad shoulders.
"Contact," O'Malley raised his rifle. "One target. Armed."
"Stand down," Jason ordered.
"He's got a hammer, Boss. He looks feral."
"He is feral," Jason said. "But he's not an enemy."
The man stopped ten yards from the gate. He didn't smile. His beard was thick and gray, wilder than it had been on the train. His eyes were sunken, shadowed by exhaustion and violence.
Ernest Hemingway.
The last time Jason had seen him, he was standing on the rear platform of the Behemoth as it uncoupled in the Cascade Mountains. Jason had left him behind to save the train.
Hemingway looked at the crater. He spat on the ground.
"You dropped a mountain on my head, Jason," Hemingway said. His voice was gravel. "And now you drop stars. You're a noisy neighbor."
"I did what I had to do," Jason said. He didn't apologize. Apologies were useless in the wasteland. "To save the train."
Hemingway laughed. It was a dry, rasping sound.
"The train," Hemingway shook his head. "Always the machine. Never the man."
He lifted the sledgehammer. For a second, O'Malley tensed, his finger tightening on the trigger.
But Hemingway didn't swing. He reached into a burlap sack tied to his belt.
He threw something at Jason's feet.
It rolled across the pavement and stopped against Jason's boot.
It was a head.
But not a human head. It was made of brass and steel, with a human face stretched over the metal skull. The eyes were camera lenses. The jaw was a hydraulic piston.
"A Timber Baron," Jason realized. "A cyborg."
"A trophy," Hemingway corrected. "I didn't come for revenge, Jason. I came to trade."
He walked past the guards, ignoring their guns. He walked straight to Jason and clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder.
"I need a drink," Hemingway said. "And you need to hear about the Sawmill."
The Boardroom smelled of expensive whiskey and unwashed fur.
Hemingway sat at the head of the table, drinking Alta's best scotch straight from the bottle. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
Alta watched him with thinly veiled disgust. Sarah watched him with curiosity.
"The mountains are gone," Hemingway said. He placed the bottle down. "The Cascades are burning. The Barons are harvesting the forests."
"We know," Jason said. "They want the timber for fuel."
"Not for fuel," Hemingway corrected. "For the city."
He pulled a crumpled map from his coat pocket. He slammed it onto the table. It was a map of the Pacific Northwest, but red ink covered the entire coastline.
"They built a machine," Hemingway said. "They call it The Sawmill. It's a mobile fortress. A factory on treads, ten stories high. It eats the forest in front of it and leaves a desert behind it."
"A mobile factory?" Howard Hughes leaned in, his eyes wide. "How is it powered? You'd need a massive reactor to move that much steel."
"They have a reactor," Hemingway looked at Jason. "A Tesla Reactor. The same one you used on the Icarus."
Jason froze.
"The Icarus crashed," Jason said. "We scuttled it in the bay."
"And they dredged it," Hemingway said. "They pulled the core from the water. They plugged it into their monster."
He took another drink.
"They didn't build the Sawmill, Jason. They salvaged it. From your airship."
The room went silent.
"So I funded the enemy," Jason whispered. "Again."
"You have a talent for it," Alta said dryly.
"It gets worse," Hemingway continued. "The Barons are marching East. They aren't coming for Detroit. They're coming for Chicago."
"Gates," Sarah realized. "The AI."
"If they take Chicago," Hemingway nodded, "they get the drone army. They plug the AI into the Sawmill. They become unstoppable. A self-replicating, self-driving war machine."
"We have to stop them," Jason stood up. "We have to hit the Sawmill before it reaches the Great Lakes."
"We can't," Sarah said sharply. "Jason, look at us. We just survived a siege. The robots are gone. We have a militia of starving workers. We can't go on a crusade across the Badlands."
"If we stay here, we die," Jason argued. "If the Barons take Chicago, Detroit is next. We'll be crushed between the AI and the Loggers."
"It's not a crusade," Hemingway interrupted. "It's a rescue mission."
He pointed to a circle on the map. A location in the Badlands of South Dakota.
"The Barons have a prisoner," Hemingway said. "Someone who knows the codes to the reactor. Someone who can shut it down."
"Who?" Jason asked.
"Your pilot," Hemingway said.
Jason looked at Hughes. But Hughes was right there.
"Not Hughes," Hemingway said. "The one who flew the Icarus into the sea. Amelia Earhart."
Jason frowned. "Amelia Earhart disappeared in 1937. That's impossible."
"In your timeline, maybe," Hemingway shrugged. "In this one? She didn't disappear. She was captured. And she's been flying for the Barons ever since."
Jason stared at the map.
A legendary pilot. A mobile fortress. A stolen reactor.
It was a trap. It had to be.
But it was also the only play left on the board.
"We go," Jason said.
"Jason, no," Sarah stood up. "We can't leave the city undefended."
"You stay," Jason said. He looked at her. It wasn't a request. It was a command structure. "You run Detroit. You're the Warden. Alta handles the logistics. The Scientists handle the defense grid."
"And you?" Sarah asked.
"I take the strike team," Jason said. "Me. O'Malley. Hughes. And the old man."
He looked at Hemingway.
"Can you lead us to her?"
Hemingway smiled. It was a terrifying expression.
"I can lead you to hell," Hemingway said. "Amelia is just on the way."
Jason turned to the window. He looked West. Toward the setting sun. Toward the new war.
"Prepare the vehicle," Jason ordered. "We leave at dawn."