"We're going to see him again," Molly said. "He said we were."
"But he wasn't really Oliver when he said that," Anna said. "He was obviously being controlled somehow."
"We know, Anna. We were there," said Molly.
"He was like a zombie. Like the walking dead."
Leave it to Anna to say what they were all trying not to think.
"Enough!" Molly snapped. "Oliver is alive, period. Now let's head in the direction of the music we heard."
"Birds," Yoshi said, because he wasn't about to change his mind.
Javi didn't even know if Molly meant what she said. She had made the decision to stop searching for Oliver in the first place. Now she didn't even look sad. She looked as though she'd just designed a gyro gear program for a robot and it hadn't worked. Like your friend getting sucked under blood sand was an annoyance you could fix if you just put your head down and worked harder.
Did he still know his best friend? She was so into being their leader now, so intent on their mission to get to the end of the valley, that he had a feeling she'd say anything just to keep them moving.
Before the plane crash she'd just been Molly--smart, funny, intense, maybe a little bossy sometimes. They'd shared a love for robotics and double chocolate milk shakes. After her dad died, Javi's family had drawn her in, the way you'd fold your little brother into your coat to keep him warm. Sometimes on Saturday mornings he'd stumble-bumble his way into the kitchen, still half-asleep, and Molly would already be there, kicking the table leg and on her second helping of pancakes.
When they'd crashed into this insane valley, he hadn't even wondered who should be the leader. Molly had taken charge right away. By the time she got to the bottom of the emergency slide she had probably cooked up three scenarios on How to Fix This.
Except it wasn't fixable.
Was Molly? She'd been bitten by a prehistoric-looking bird with a long razor beak that had torn the flesh on her shoulder. The wound was strange and Molly had nearly died. Now she was as strong as ever, but . . . different.
He could feel it. Something was missing, or maybe something had been . . . added? And it kept getting worse. The horrors they'd seen here had changed all of them, he knew. Molly most of all. He didn't want his best friend to change too much.
Leaves rustled around them. There was a narrow path to follow, overgrown in places. The path wasn't straight; it ran up and down the slight hills and, from what he could see, it twisted through the woods. Occasionally, a narrower path would run off in a different direction. They came to several forks and Molly just plunged on.
"Where are we going?" Yoshi asked. "The sound came from the left."
"We did go left," Molly said.
"Yes, but then we turned right again," Anna said.
"We came from that direction. See?" Molly turned and gestured.
"No," Anna said. "You're wrong."
Anna never said, "You might be wrong," or "I think it's this way."
They stopped.
Molly held up a hand. "Wait. I hear that sound again."
Now Javi could hear it, too, something high and piping.
"Birds," Yoshi said. He adjusted the Japanese sword he wore strapped to his back.
"No bird." Akiko smiled. "Mozart," she said.
Jennifer A. Nielsen is the celebrated author of the New York Times and USA Today bestselling Ascendance Trilogy: The False Prince, The Runaway King, and The Shadow Throne. She also wrote the Mark of the Thief trilogy; the stand-alone fantasy The Scourge; the historical thriller A Night Divided; and Book Six of the Infinity Ring series, Behind Enemy Lines. Jennifer lives in northern Utah with her husband, their three children, and a perpetually muddy dog.
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Jennifer A. Nielsen, Deadzone
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