In the shocked quiet, Sam said, “Brittney, can you tell us—”
“I think I’m sleepy,” Brittney said, dropping her arm back down to her side.
“Okay,” Sam said. “I’ll, um…we’ll find someplace for you to stay the night.” He looked at Taylor. “Bounce over to Brianna’s. Tell her we’re coming.”
Howard almost laughed. Brianna would not be thrilled by this. But Sam was reaching out to someone who was unquestioningly loyal to him.
“This doesn’t leave this room,” Sam said.
“More secrets, Sammy?” Howard said.
Sam winced. But he held his ground. “People are scared enough,” he said.
“You’re asking a lot, Sammy boy,” Howard said. “After all, I’m on the council. You’re asking me to keep this from my fellow council members. I don’t need Astrid mad at me.”
“I know about your little booze-and-drug operation,” Sam said. “I’ll mess up your life.”
“Ah,” Howard said smoothly.
“Yeah. I need some time to figure this all out,” Sam said. “I don’t need people talking about…about anything.”
Howard laughed. “You mean…”
“Don’t,” Sam snapped. “Don’t even say it.”
Howard laughed and crossed his heart. “I swear. I won’t be the first to use the ‘Z’ word.” Then in a stage whisper he said, “Zom—beee.”
“She’s not a zombie, Howard. Don’t be an idiot. “She obviously has some kind of power that lets her regenerate. If you think about it, it’s not that different from what Lana does. After all, she’s physically back together, and she was torn up when we buried her.”
Howard laughed. “Uh-huh. Except somehow I don’t remember Lana ever crawling her way up out of a grave.”
Sam headed toward Brianna’s house. Brittney walked along behind him. Perfectly normal, Howard thought, watching them go. Just another stroll with a dead person.
Little Pete woke up.
Dark. Dark was good. Light filled his brain with too much.
It was quiet. Good. Sounds made his head hurt.
He had to be quiet himself or someone would come and bring light and noise and touching and pain and panic and it would all come at him like a tidal wave a million feet high, spinning him, crushing him, smothering him.
Then he would have to shut down. He would have to turn it all off. Hide from it. Go back to the game, back to the game, because inside the game, it was dark and quiet.
But for now, with no light and no sound and no touch, he could hold on, for just a moment, to…himself.
Hold on to…to nothing.
He knew where the game was. Just there, on the nightstand, waiting. Calling to him so softly so as not to upset him.
Nemesis, it called him.
Nemesis.
Lana had not slept. She had read and read, trying to lose herself in the book. She had a small candle, not much, but a rare thing in the FAYZ.
She lit a cigarette in the candle and sucked the smoke into her lungs. Amazing, really, how quickly she had become addicted.
Cigarettes and vodka. The bottle was half empty, sitting there on the floor beside her bed. It hadn’t worked, hadn’t helped her sleep.
Lana searched her mind for the gaiaphage. But it was not with her. For the first time since she had crawled up out of that mine shaft.
It was done with her, for now, at least.
That fact should have given her peace. But Lana knew it would return when it needed her, that it would still be able to use her. She would never be free.
“What did you do, evil old troll?” Lana asked dreamily. “What did you do with my power?”
She told herself that the monster, the gaiaphage…the Darkness…could only use the Healer to heal, and that no evil could come from that.
But she knew better. The Darkness did not reach out through the back doors of time and space and siphon off her power for no reason.
For days it had been inside her mind, using her to heal.
To heal who?
She dropped her hand to the vodka bottle, raised it to her lips, and swallowed the liquid fire.
To heal what?
FOURTEEN
30 HOURS, 25 MINUTES
ON THE FIRST day of the disappearance—or, as Sanjit secretly thought of it, the deliverance—he and his brothers and sisters had searched the entire estate.
Not one single adult had been found. No nanny, no cook, no groundskeepers—which was a relief because one of the assistant groundskeepers seemed like kind of a perv—and no maids.
They stayed together as a group, Sanjit cracking jokes to keep everyone’s spirits up.
“Are we sure we want to find anyone?” he’d asked.
“We need grown-ups,” Virtue had argued in his pedantic way.
“For what, Choo?”
“For…” This had stumped Virtue.
“What if someone gets sick?” Peace had asked.
“You feel okay?” Sanjit asked her.
“I guess so.”
“See? We’re fine.”
Despite the undeniable creepiness of the situation, Sanjit had been more relieved than worried. He didn’t like having to respond to the name “Wisdom.” He didn’t like being told what to do just about every minute of the day. He didn’t like rules. And then, suddenly, no rules.
He’d had no answer to the repeated questions from the others as to what had happened. All that seemed clear was that all the adults were gone. And the radio and phones and satellite TV were dead.