Sam took a deep breath. He wasn’t going to freak out; he was sure of that. But the only reason he was confident was that he, himself, had the power to create light. Pitiful little Sammy suns and blinding beams, not bright yellow suns or even moons. But he himself would have light. He wouldn’t have to be completely in the dark.
He couldn’t be in the dark. Not in the total dark.
He realized his palms were damp and he wiped them on his shorts. When he glanced up he knew Astrid had seen, and that she knew what he was feeling.
He tried out a wry grin. “Stupid, huh? All we’ve been through? And I’m still scared of the dark?”
“Everyone’s afraid of something,” Astrid said.
“Like I’m a little kid.”
“Like you’re a human being.”
Sam looked around at the lake, at the sun sparkling on the water. Some kids were laughing, little kids playing at the water’s edge.
“Complete darkness.” Sam said it to hear it, to see if he could accept it. “Nothing will grow. We won’t be able to fish. We’ll… We’ll wander in the dark until we die of hunger. Kids will figure that out. They’ll panic.”
“Maybe the stain will stop,” Astrid said.
But Sam wasn’t listening. “It’s the endgame.”
Sanjit and Virtue found Taylor that morning when they went outside for some exercise: Sanjit running back and forth, circling around a huffing and puffing Virtue, who was definitely not much of a runner.
“Come on, Choo, this is good for you.”
“I know,” Virtue said through gritted teeth. “But that doesn’t mean I have to enjoy it.”
“Hey, we have a nice view of the beach and the—” Sanjit stopped because Virtue had disappeared behind a car. He doubled back and saw his brother bent over something, and then he saw the something he was bent over.
“What the… Oh, God, what happened to her?”
Sanjit knelt next to Virtue. Neither of them touched her. The girl with skin the color of a gold bar and both lower legs and one hand simply gone. Cut off.
Virtue held his breath and put his ear close to Taylor’s mouth. “I think she’s still alive.”
“I’ll get Lana!” Sanjit raced back inside, down the hallway to the room he shared with Lana. He burst inside yelling, “Lana! Lana!”
He found himself staring at the bad end of her pistol. “Sanjit, how many times do I have to tell you not to surprise me!” Lana raged.
He said nothing, just took her hand and drew her along with him.
“She’s definitely breathing,” Virtue said as they ran up. “And I found a pulse in her neck.”
Sanjit looked at Lana as though she might understand what this meant. A girl with golden skin suddenly minus a hand and both legs. But Lana was just staring with the same horror he felt.
Then he saw the flash of suspicion, the hard, angry look she got when she felt the distant touch of the gaiaphage. Followed, as it usually was, by her jaw tightening, muscles clenching.
Moved by a grim instinct, Sanjit peered through the dirty windows of the car. “I found her legs.”
“Get them,” Lana said. “Virtue? You and I can carry her inside.”
“We’re still going out? After what they did to Cigar?” Phil was outraged. He wasn’t the only one.
Quinn said nothing. He didn’t trust himself to say anything. There was a volcano inside him. His head was buzzing from lack of sleep. The sight of Cigar, with those creepy, frightening marble-size eyeballs hanging from snakelike tendrils of nerve inside black crater eye sockets…
He had clawed his own eyes out.
He’s one of mine, Quinn thought, and the phrase went over and over in his head. One of mine.
Cigar had done wrong—a terrible wrong. He deserved punishment. But not to be tortured. Not to be driven insane. Not to be made into a monstrous creature that no one would be able to look at without stifling a scream.
Quinn climbed into his boat. His three crew members hesitated, looked at one another, and climbed in after him. The other three boats all did likewise.
They cast off and shipped oars and began to make their way out to sea.
Two hundred yards out, a distance where people onshore could still easily see them, Quinn gave a quiet order.
“Oars in,” he said.
“But there’s no fish this close in,” Phil objected.
Quinn said nothing. The oars came in. The boats rocked almost imperceptibly on the faint swell.
Quinn watched the dock and the beach. It wouldn’t be long before someone reported to Albert and/or Caine to tell them the fishing fleet was not fishing.
He wondered who would react first.
Would it be Albert or Caine?
He closed his eyes and pulled his hat down low. “I’m going to get some sleep,” he said. “Use the oars only to keep us in position if needed. Let me know if anyone comes.”
“You got it, boss.”
Albert heard about Quinn first. Both Caine and Albert had spies—sometimes the same kids—but Albert paid better.
Albert had around-the-clock bodyguards now. He had come very, very close to dying after the remains of the Human Crew had broken into his house, robbed and shot him.
Caine had executed one of the villains, a kid named Lance. Another one, Turk, had been reprieved and now worked for Caine. It was a message from Caine to Albert, his keeping Turk around. It was a threat.
Albert’s previous bodyguard had been killed by Drake.
Now he hired a total of four. They each worked an eight-hour shift, seven days a week. The fourth guard was on call, living at Albert’s new compound. Whenever Albert stepped outside of the gate he would have whichever guard was on duty, plus the on-call guard. Two tough kids, both heavily armed.
But even that wasn’t enough for Albert’s security. He had taken to carrying a gun himself. Just a pistol, not a long gun, but it was a nine-millimeter in a brown leather holster, a serious, dangerous gun. He had learned how to shoot it, too.
And as a final line of security Albert had made sure that everyone knew he would pay whoever brought proof of a plot against him. It would always pay better to side with Albert.
Unfortunately that still left Caine. The self-anointed king.
Albert knew he could never take Caine on in a fight. So he made sure he knew exactly what Caine was up to. Someone very close to Caine worked secretly for Albert.
And yet, despite all this preparation, Albert had let this new problem sneak up on him.
It was a good long walk from Albert’s edge-of-town compound to the marina. He hurried. He had to resolve this before Caine did. Caine had a temper. People with tempers were bad for business.
What Albert saw from the end of the dock was not good. Four boats and fifteen kids doing nothing. In his head Albert ran the numbers: maybe three days’ worth of food, just two days’ worth of blue bats. If the bat supply stopped, then there was no safe way to harvest the worm-infested fields.
“Quinn!” Albert shouted.
He was furious to see that three kids were on the beach, eavesdropping. Didn’t they have anything better to do?
“Hi, Albert,” Quinn called back. He seemed distracted. And Albert was sure that he’d seen Quinn motion for someone to stay down.
“How long is this supposed to go on?” Albert asked.
“Until we get justice,” Quinn said.
“Justice? People have been waiting for justice since the dinosaurs.”
Quinn said nothing and Albert cursed himself for indulging in sarcasm. “What is it you want, Quinn? I mean in practical terms.”
“We want Penny gone,” Quinn said.
“I can’t afford to pay you any more,” Albert shouted back.
“I didn’t say anything about money,” Quinn said, sounding puzzled.
“Yeah, I know: justice. Usually what people really want is money. So why don’t we get down to it?”
“Penny,” Quinn said. “She leaves town. She
stays gone. When that happens we fish. Until it happens, we sit.” He sat down as if to emphasize his point.
Albert bit his lip in extreme frustration. “Quinn, don’t you know that if you don’t work this out with me you’ll be dealing with Caine?”
“We don’t think his powers reach this far,” Quinn said. He seemed, if not smug, then at least determined. “And we kind of think he likes to eat, too.”
Albert considered. He ran some numbers in his head. “Okay, look, Quinn. I can up your share by five percent. But that’s as much as I can do.” He made a hand-washing gesture, signaling that it was a take-it-or-leave-it.
Quinn pulled his hat—nearly unrecognizable as having once been a fedora but now stained, cut, scratched, torn, and twisted—down over his eyes and kicked his feet up on the gunwale.
Albert watched him for a while. No, there would be no bribing Quinn.
He took a deep breath and blew it out, releasing his frustration. Caine had created a problem that could bring everything crashing down. Everything Albert had built.
No Quinn, no fish; no fish, no crops. Simple math. Caine would not give in—he wasn’t the type. And Quinn, who had once been such a reliable coward, had grown and matured and become what he was now: useful.
One of them had to go, and if the choice was between Caine and Quinn, the answer was simple.
The tricky part was in delivering the news to Caine. The trap he had long since laid for King Caine was ready and waiting. Albert only wished there was some way to get Penny at the same time. Enough with both of them, they were both pains in his butt: Albert was trying to run a business.
Maybe it was time to tell Caine that some very interesting toys were sitting in crates on an unfrequented beach.
It might just be time to kill the king.
In the interests of business.
TWELVE
25 HOURS, 8 MINUTES
CAINE.
I’m writing this because I don’t really have a choice. You’ll probably figure I’m up to something. So when I’m done writing this I will read it out loud in front of Toto and Mohamed. Mo will be able to tell you that Toto testifies I’m telling the truth.
Something is happening to the barrier. It is turning black. We’re calling it the stain. We’re trying to figure out how fast this stain is spreading. No information yet. But it’s possible this thing will just keep growing. It’s possible the whole barrier will go dark. And we will all be in total darkness.
I’m sure you can figure out just how bad that will be if it happens.
If the FAYZ is going dark, I’ll do my best to hang so-called Sammy suns around. They aren’t very bright but they’ll hopefully keep people from going completely nuts until we can figure out—
Sorry, I had to stop myself there. I was starting to sound like I had a plan. I don’t. If you do I’d like to hear it.
In the meantime I’m sending a copy of this to Albert and asking if the two of you will allow me to go to Perdido Beach to create at least a few lights.
—Sam Temple
He read the letter aloud, as he had promised to do. Toto muttered, “That’s true,” a couple of times. Mohamed waited while Sam wrote out a copy for Albert. He took both and stuck them in his jeans pocket.
“Listen, Mo, one more thing. Tell Caine—tell my brother—that I was expecting him to use those missiles of his against us. And I was ready for a war. But we are past that now.”
“Okay.”
“Toto, have I written and spoken the truth?”
Toto nodded, then added, “He believes it, Spidey.”
“Good enough, Mo?”
Mohamed nodded.
“Walk fast,” Sam said. Then in a mordant tone he added, “Enjoy the sunshine.”
“Get me a knife,” Lana said when they had what was left of Taylor laid out in an unoccupied hotel room.
Sanjit had carried her legs, one in each hand, and laid them on the bed beside her.
“Knife?” It was just Lana and Sanjit now; Virtue was watching the rest of the family. He had no stomach for this. And no one wanted the little kids to come in and see this horror.
Lana didn’t explain, so Sanjit handed her his knife. She looked at the blade for a moment, then at Taylor, who was now breathing a little more audibly, a thready, uncertain sound. Lana pushed Taylor’s shirt up a little and drew the blade across her abdomen. The cut was shallow and bled only a little.
“What’s that for?” Sanjit didn’t doubt Lana, but he wanted to know, and to keep up a flow of conversation to keep from thinking about Taylor.
“I tried to regrow eyeballs and got BBs. The time before that when I tried to regrow an entire limb I didn’t get quite what I expected,” Lana said.
“Drake?”
“Drake. I just want to test my powers on Taylor before…” She fell silent as she touched the wound she had made.
The wound was not closing. Instead it was bubbling, like someone had poured peroxide into it.
Lana drew back. “Something is not right.”
Sanjit saw her brow furrow deeply. She seemed almost to be cringing away from Taylor. “The Darkness?” Sanjit guessed.
Lana shook her head. “No. Something … something else. Something wrong.” She closed her eyes and rocked back slowly on her heels. Then, like she was trying to surprise someone, she twisted her head to look behind her.
“I would tell you if someone was sneaking up behind you.”
“It’s not the Darkness,” Lana said. “Not this. But I can feel … something.”
Sanjit was inclined by his nature to be skeptical. But Lana had told him everything about her desperate battles with the gaiaphage. He could understand how even now she could feel the creature’s mind reaching for hers, its voice calling to her. Things that he’d have dismissed as impossible in the old world—things that were impossible—happened here.
But this was something different, or so she said. And her eyes were not filled with the barely suppressed rage and fear she showed when the Darkness reached her. Now she seemed puzzled.
Suddenly Lana grabbed Sanjit’s arm, yanked him closer, and felt his forehead with her palm. Then she released him and placed her palm on Taylor’s forehead.
“She’s cold,” Lana said, eyes gleaming.
“She’s lost a lot of blood,” Sanjit said.
“Has she? Because it looks to me as if all her injuries are sealed off.”
“Then what would make her so cold?” Because now Sanjit had noticed it, too. He touched the severed legs, then Taylor’s forehead, then his own. Taylor’s legs were the same temperature as her torso.
Room temperature.
“Sanjit, turn away,” Lana said. She was already pushing Taylor’s T-shirt up and Sanjit hastily looked away.
Next he heard Lana unzipping Taylor’s jeans.
“Okay,” Lana said. “Nothing you shouldn’t see.”
Sanjit turned back and gasped. “She’s… Okay, I don’t know what she is.”
“I forget exactly what all the signs are of a mammal,” Lana said, voice level. “But there was something about giving birth to babies and then nursing them. And being warm-blooded. Taylor no longer has any of that … those…” She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. “Taylor’s not a mammal anymore.”
“Hair,” Sanjit said. “Mammals have hair.” He touched Taylor’s hair. It felt like a sheet of rolled-out Play-Doh.
“So she’s a freak?” Sanjit suggested.
“She was already a freak,” Lana said. “And none of the freaks have ever developed a second power. Or stopped being human. Even Orc seems to be human beneath that armor of his.”
“So the rules are changing,” Sanjit said.
“Or being changed,” Lana said.
“What do we do with her? She’s still alive.”
Lana didn’t answer. She seemed to be staring at the space a few inches in front of her face. Sanjit reached for her, to touch her arm, remind her she wasn’t alone. But he st
opped himself. Lana’s wall of solitude was going up, shutting her off in the world she shared with forces Sanjit could not understand.
He let her be, just kept his position close by. It made him feel very isolated. His gaze was drawn irresistibly to the monstrous parody of Taylor.
Taylor’s mouth snapped open. A long, dark green, forked tongue flicked out, seemed to taste the air and withdraw. Her eyes remained blessedly closed.
Sanjit felt himself back on the streets of Bangkok. One of the beggars he’d known back in Bangkok had a two-legged dog he kept on a leash. And the beggar himself was legless and his hands were formed into two thick fingers and a stub of thumb.
Other street kids had called him a two-headed monster, as if the man and the dog were a single malformed creature. Sometimes they would throw rocks at the beggar. He was a freak, a monster. He made them afraid.
It’s not the monsters who are so completely different that are scary, Sanjit reflected. It’s the ones who are too human. They carry with them the warning that what happened to them might happen to you, too.
A part of Sanjit was telling him to kill this monstrous body. There was no way to help her. It would be an act of charity. Taylor, after all, was just one manifestation of a consciousness that would go on forever. Samsara. Taylor’s karma would determine her next incarnation, and Sanjit would earn good karma for a charitable deed.
But he’d also heard people of his religion say, You can never take a life because if you do you interrupt the proper cycle of rebirth.
“Do you ever have feelings you can’t really explain?” Lana asked.
Sanjit was startled out of his own thoughts. “Yes. But what do you mean?”
“Like … like feeling that a storm is coming. Or that you’d better not get on a plane. Or that if you turn the wrong corner at the wrong time you’ll come face-to-face with something awful.”
Sanjit did take her hand now and she didn’t refuse him. “Once I was to see a friend in the market. And it was as if my feet were refusing to move. Like they were telling me, ‘No. Don’t walk.’”
“And?”
“And a car bomb went off.”