The trouble was, we were behind.

We’d noticed right away when the volcanoes erupted, but we couldn’t abandon our injured and exhausted teammates. Getting them ready to move had taken time. I’d considered splitting up, but decided against it: the injured needed help from our able-bodied.

It took us a long time to get going, and even if we were superhumanly fast, so was everyone else. Sunhat had been given a seat on one of the dinosaurs, and she was riding with her eyes closed, mind cast ahead to monitor the plateau.

She’d given me bad news: we hadn’t even gotten there yet, but we were already too late to prevent violence.

Clairvoyance had let her see Orange Team arrive, Green only slightly afterward. An Orange Mini-Rex blasted fire down the ramp Green Team had been using to ascend. Sunhat didn’t know if that had been accidental or ordered, but it had precipitated a bloody conflict. I initially thought Orange Team’s superior position would make the conflict one-sided, but according to Sunhat, that hadn’t been the case. Someone on Green Team had some kind of defensive ability so strong we assumed it had to be a Specialty, and had led a charge up the ramp while blocking everything the Orange Team could throw at them. When they’d reached the top, things had devolved into chaos, with clouds of gasylosaur mist obscuring Sunhat’s view.

With our scouts focused ahead, George and the kids got fairly close before we noticed them. I dropped my place at the head of the column as soon as I noticed, racing back to lift my boys off the ground in a giant hug.

George tugged on my arm, not letting me stop to enjoy the moment. “Come on! We got turned around in the trees,” he panted. “But then we found your trail… I couldn’t get the kids to slow down, and I’m glad I couldn’t. There are people behind us.”

“I SAW it, Mom!” Micah was wild-eyed, hyperventilating. “The tops of the mountains EXPLODED. Right on top of me!”

I held his hand as I let George hurry us along. I didn’t see anyone. “Shh. It’s okay. The lava isn’t moving that fast. We’ll get to safety, I promise. What’s this about people following?”

George opened his mouth to answer, but Micah shouted over him. “It’s cheating. I know about volcanoes, okay? This is like… a calldura. They get left behind after a big volcano explodes. One! One big volcano in the middle of the calldura. Not a bunch of volcanoes around the edge of the calldura! That doesn’t make any sense!”

“Caldera, not calldura,” I said, and hated myself a little for giving into pedantry in a critical moment. “But that’s not the point. I need to know about the people behind you guys. I don’t see anyone.”

I was so, so glad to have Gavin and Micah back with me, even if our own situation wasn’t very safe. Orange and green teams at the mesa, and more people behind us? We could easily be pinned between two hostile groups.

“More Red Team. I couldn’t see them myself, but Malia,” George nodded toward the young teen from the Arsenal, “has enhanced vision and says they got onto the trail behind us a minute ago.”

“How far back are they?” I directed the question to Malia.

The teen looked uncertain. “Two minutes? Maybe more? They’re going slower than we were, but still pretty fast.”

“Could you tell if they were the ones who attacked us?”

“I didn’t see the people who attacked…”

“Fair enough.” To be honest, we had to respond about the same either way.

I raised my voice. “Halt! Kids to the front, fighters and dinosaurs to the back. Order the dinosaurs to hold still. We’ve got strangers coming up behind us.”

There was a murmur of discontent at my orders. The lava wasn’t in sight yet, but a crackling noise had started a few minutes ago as it hit the edge of the jungle. Flip had taken to the skies long enough to confirm that the noise was hundreds of trees falling, a vast collection of giant slow-motion dominoes.

Micah was reluctant to let go of my hand and head to the rear of the group.

“Do you think they’ll explode the middle of the calldur… the caldera too?” Micah asked.

I shook my head firmly. “Definitely not. They said we could win, and remember what Fluffy said? They won’t lie to us directly. We always have a chance, and exploding this whole area wouldn’t leave us any chance at all.”

Micah’s head quivered in a nod, but he didn’t move away.

Gavin grabbed his older brother. “Come on. The lava was like, super slow. You’re way more fast. Don’t worry!”

“Being fast doesn’t matter if there’s nowhere to run to,” Micah grumbled, but he let his younger sibling pull him away.

The rest of us waited tensely in the stomped-down foliage. Sunhat had diverted her Clairvoyant attention from the mesa to the group behind us. “I think… I think they’re not the people who attacked us. They aren’t, you know, sniffling. They don’t have any dinosaurs with them.”

“They wouldn’t,” I said. “We killed all of Red Team’s dinos.”

“Right. Yes. But, um, they have a man with a purple sash in the middle of them and the people around him have their swords out.”

“Oh shiiiiit,” Flip said. “I was supposed to go back to pick him up, but we hadn’t really finished with the attackers before the volcanoes blew.”

Go back to… I blanched as I remembered. Flip had taken a translator with her to the non-aggressive portion of Red Team when she’d convinced Darlisa to help us out. Obviously she’d had to leave him behind and I had…. Uh… totally remembered that he existed and was in danger. Yep. That’s me. On top of things.

The group marched into view and Darlisa called out a greeting. A member of Red Team shouted back to us, a lengthy speech I didn’t understand. Darlisa argued with her a little before turning to me.

“They don’t want to fight, but they don’t want to give your teammate back. They’re scared of you.”

“Even though you’re doing fine?”

Darlisa shrugged. “I only know two of them by name.”

I could see our brave translator in their midst, clearly anxious as hell. He didn’t deserve to spend the next few hours with a knife to his back.

“Would they be more willing to let him go if I told them there was a chance that they could win this thing?”

Darlisa stared at me like I’d gone crazy. “Purple team has a huge lead. There’s no way that can happen. And anyway, why would you give that up? You have all the dinosaurs, and we don’t.”

I grinned at her. “I’m not planning to give it up. With you guys’ help, I think we can make it so every team here leaves a winner. At least, all the teams willing to work with us.”

Darlisa looked skeptical. “You talk a lot. Emanuel talked a lot too. They did not believe him. Why believe you?”

“What if… what if we let you guys execute one of our dinosaurs? Raise Red Team’s score?”

“You can’t do that!” Sunhat hissed.

I ignored her, and ignored the people around me who were glaring as well.

“One score will not make us win.” Darlisa’s words were dismissive, but her expression was thoughtful.

“No, but it’s proof that I’m serious. I think we might need our dinosaurs, so I can’t let you kill them all… but I can give up something real to get the knives away from our teammate’s back and get you all on our side.”

“I will talk to them,” Darlisa said.

“You can’t be serious,” Sunhat said, the moment Darlisa turned away.

“I am. That guy risked his life to get Darlisa over to help us. We owe him.”

“We really do,” Flip muttered.

“Yeah, but… but… We’ll lose some of our score if you do this!”

“So?” I stared at Sunhat challengingly, then raised my voice. “Let me tell all of you my goal here: I want to get as many human beings out alive as possible.”

“I’m not risking my life for some other team!” Sunhat said.

There was a chorus of agreement at her declaration.

“Oh?” I said. “And you’ll risk your life to win this stupid game? You’ll kill people and let them kill some of us, not to protect yourself, but for some secret reward? You’re okay with some of the people here turning into dino dinners if we get whatever prize the aliens are dangling?”

A man I didn’t know shouted back. “No, but we are winning. Already! We don’t gotta do nothing!”

“Wrong.” I pointed behind me. “Lava is coming toward our position. I can’t stand in that, and neither can you. None of us can. Everyone here is going to be headed to the same tiny area of safety. I’m pretty sure all the humans can fit… but not with all the dinosaurs alive.”

“Still, it’s some kinda bleeding-heart nonsense to kill our dinosaurs just to give some strangers a space.”

There was more agreement this time, but it wasn’t universal.

“You think everyone’s just going to politely move aside to give the mesa to us and our dinosaurs?” I asked.

The stranger adjusted his belt. “Well… no. That’s why we need them to clear the mesa off.”

“Uh-huh. And then what?”

“Pardon?”

“What then? We fight other people and their dinosaurs fifty feet above the ground in a confined area with no cover to hide behind. Or maybe we send our dinosaurs up and the people charge down to fight us hand-to-hand at the bottom. Maybe some of us live through that to take the top of the mesa. Anyone still alive would keep attacking us. We’d have to bunker up, weathering increasingly desperate assaults for hours until we can go home. That doesn’t sound very tempting to me.”

“There’s nothing else we can do!” Sunhat broke in.

“There is. It’s not going to be easy to make it happen but… if we can get the other teams to cooperate, we can distribute dinosaur kills to make sure each team leaves with exactly the same score we started with: 24. Once all the dinosaurs are dead, no one will be able to change the score, so there won’t be any reason to fight anymore.”

My teammates looked at one another. It wasn’t an easy sell, but fighting hundreds of other people to the death wasn’t attractive either.

I decided to give them a push. “Listen, I’m not proposing risking our lives for this. I’m doing this because I think it’s the safest way out of here, not just for the other teams, but for us. And… I’m realistic. If we can’t get them on our side, if we have to wipe another team out, if we have to wipe multiple teams out, we will.”

In the silence that followed my statement, Flip stepped up beside me. “I support Meghan. She’s kept most of us alive so far.”

“Yeah! You go, boss!” I could hear Andy’s voice cheer from somewhere in the crowd.

Darlisa came back. “They are curious. If you let us kill the dinosaur first, they will let your man come back to your group.”

I smiled at her. “Let’s make it happen.”