Gone Series Complete Collection (267 page)

A place to hide? Drake coiled his arm around his new body. He was stronger than before. His whip was longer, quicker. A better, badder Whip Hand. And ready to go!

“I get Astrid to myself,” Drake said.

“You don’t make demands of me!” Gaia raged.

Drake laughed. His voice was strange now, with portions of Alex’s throat melded to his. He sounded older than he had before. “You’re afraid of the people outside?”

“This body keeps me alive. This body allows me to concentrate my strength. But this body is weak. I had not realized how weak. It makes its own demands. It needs food. It excretes. It hurts.” Gaia shook her long black hair. “It bothers me.”

“You look like her, you know. Like Diana. The way she looked before. Back when she thought she was hot.”

Gaia frowned.

“Yeah,” Drake said. “Yeah. You look hot and nasty. Like her.”

He knew immediately that he had gone too far, said too much.

Gaia’s blue eyes were like lasers. “You want to hurt me,” she whispered.

Drake shook his head violently. “No. No, that’s not what I—”

“You. Want. To
hurt
this body.”

“Not
you
,” Drake said, desperately. “Not the real you.”

“You think you know the real me?”

Drake shook his head again. He didn’t want to go any deeper into this. He just wanted to feel the satisfying slap of his whip hand on flesh. That was all. He just wanted to hear the cries of pain and terror. He wanted to find that blond witch, that smug so-called genius, and watch her fear grow, watch her—

“It comes closer, the fire. In the smoke . . . that’s when we attack.” Gaia looked off toward the wall of smoke in the north.

“I thought you were worried about Nemesis.”

“I worry about nothing,” Gaia said, but there was impatience in the toss of her head, worry in her eyes.

“He has a sister. Someone he cares about. Your Nemesis. Her name is Astrid. She could be a hostage. She could give us leverage over the Petard.”

Gaia’s eyes widened. “A loved one? Does he?” She smiled. She had very white teeth, almost perfect but for a single too-far-forward canine. “But if you kill her she’s useless as a hostage.”

“She’s no fun dead,” Drake said, and then laughed. “Let me go after her. I’ll bring her to you.”

“A hostage,” Gaia said thoughtfully. “A hostage.” She looked at Drake suspiciously. He could feel her dark mind brushing against his, probing for some trick. But there was no trick. He would bring Astrid alive.

Barely.

Eventually.

Drake saw her reach the decision. He saw a frown, a worried look. And then Gaia glanced around as if looking for someone. Then back at Drake.

It struck him that she didn’t want him to go because she didn’t want to be alone. He struggled to conceal his growing contempt. This girl’s body had given the gaiaphage the emotions of a girl. The weakness of a girl.

When he was done with Astrid . . . and done with Diana . . .

Gaia?

“Go then,” Gaia said finally. “Bring her to me.”

Astrid found Sam in the church. What was left of the church. He was sitting on an overturned pew, gazing toward the shards of a stained-glass window in a ruined frame. The cross had been propped up yet again by someone, so it wasn’t lying on the floor but was rather leaning in a corner, its base stabilized by rubble piled there.

He must have recognized something about the sound of her movements, because he didn’t bother to turn around.

“Anything?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Edilio’s losing his mind waiting, I think. He’s got Orc and Jack and Dekka all doing the rounds to try and get kids to stand fast, trying to get some more kids to come back from the barrier. I don’t think it’s working. And Albert’s actually riding a bike out to the fields to try to get kids to keep working.”

They both smiled at the picture of Albert in his chinos and button-down shirt exhorting kids from atop a bike.

“He’s looking for redemption,” Sam said.

“That’s unusually observant of you,” she said.

He smiled. “Occasionally I observe.”

She sat down next to him. “Well, he needs redemption.”

“We’re in the right place to be talking about it, huh?” He looked around the church as if just noticing where he was. “That was the story, right?” He nodded toward the cross.

“Don’t, Sam,” she said.

“You think you can read my mind, don’t you?”

“You don’t need redemption,” she said.

“So what do I need?” he asked, trying to make a joke of it.

“One more win,” she said.

“One more win.” He hung his head. “I’ve had more than my share, haven’t I? I’ve been way luckier than I should have been. I mean, how many times should I have died? I can’t even count them all.”

“Don’t do this, Sam.”

“What was I doing it for? Just so I would survive?” He shrugged. “Mostly, huh? But also sometimes so other people would live. Not meaning to make it sound all self-sacrificing or whatever.”

“Yes. You also kept a lot of other people alive. Yes. So enough, all right? You promised me, remember? You promised me you’d do whatever it took to stay alive.”

He sighed. “Here’s the thing, Astrid. It’s like . . . like a math problem or something, you know? Like if you’re doing an equation or whatever, and there’s an answer, and there’s only one answer, and so you’re stuck with that, aren’t you?”

“This isn’t math. Besides, you’re a math ignoramus. Remember?” She was getting angry because the alternative to feeling angry was to feel desperate.

“I am a math ignoramus, aren’t I?” He smiled as if at a distant memory. Or at something that would never matter again. “But I’ve won a lot of battles. I’ve gone in a lot of times and I’ve figured out the winning move. And that’s worked pretty well so far, right? Well, the problem is that I see the winning move here. I see it just as clear as your very perfect nose.”

“It’s not a winning move if you end up dead.”

“Ah, it hasn’t been before, no. But I keep running the equation, Astrid. And each time I see that maybe we can beat the gaiaphage. But not if she has my power. That’s the trick here. Would that be irony?”

“No, damn it, that would not be irony, Sam. That would be throwing your life away. That would be suicide.”

“I know you’re kind of over the religion thing, but what he did”—he nodded toward the cross—“that was still a big thing to do, wasn’t it? Was that suicide?”

“Really?” she asked with acid sarcasm. “You’re Jesus now?”

He laughed softly.

“You want to know the truth, Sam?” She pulled his face to her. “No, it wasn’t suicide when Jesus did it. It was fake. If he really was the son of God, then he was risking nothing and he
knew
it. He knew he had a couple of bad hours but then it was going to be all over and he’d pop back into heaven and have a really amazing story to tell all his friends.”

“He has friends?”

She would not be distracted with jokes. “You? If you die you’re dead. We’ve seen dead now, Sam, we’ve seen a lot of it, and it’s ugly and permanent.”

He turned to her and she saw the tortured look on his face. “That light, Astrid? That light I shoot out of my hands? It’s like it’s mine. It’s like I invented it. Or at least I own it. And that light killed Brianna. And it’s going to kill a bunch of other kids. You know it and I know it.” He ran a hand back through his hair, slowly, like it mattered that he felt each hair.

“No,” she said. “They’re going to die because Pete won’t talk to me.”

There was a long silence after that.

“I wondered if you would try that,” he said at last.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, brushing it off. “Nothing. I was talking to air.”

Now Sam was mad. “You should have talked to me about it first. What if he had done it? What if Little Pete had taken over your body and your mind?”

“He didn’t, so—”

“What do you think happens if he does it? Whoever does it ends up like her, like Gaia, except that Gaia was just a baby and didn’t even know. What do you think happens if Little Pete does this? What do you think happened to that baby girl when the gaiaphage—”

“We don’t know if it would be like that.”

“You don’t know it wouldn’t,” Sam snapped. “You’re a hypocrite, you know. You tell me to keep myself alive. Well, for what? So I can know that you gave your life instead?”

His words brought no answer. A silence fell between them. A rat ran by. It didn’t scare either of them. In fact it made their mouths water just a bit. Both had eaten rat and been glad for the chance to do it. The bad old days of the FAYZ, back before Albert took over.

“Like these are the good times,” Sam said without explanation. But Astrid knew what he was thinking.

“Don’t go out in a blaze of glory, Sam.”

“Don’t nail yourself to a cross,” he said.

“Listen to us,” Astrid said, and laughed.

He shook his head. “I lost Brianna, Astrid. And she wasn’t the first.”

“Who made you responsible?” He didn’t answer, so she said it. “I did. Didn’t I?”

“Astrid . . .”

“I did,” she said more definitely, accepting the truth of it. “I pushed you to lead. I made it your business. I used you to protect my little brother, and then in the end I was the one who sacrificed him. Now I’m trying to make good on all that. I’m trying for redemption, too, Sam, and instead there you go, once more unto the breach, Sam to the rescue even if he dies doing it.”

“You didn’t make me responsible. You don’t have that power. This”—he held up his hands, and light glowed from his palms—“this made me responsible. Having power made me responsible. I had the power and you had the brains. So we were chosen. That’s the way it works, isn’t it? People who can have to help those who can’t. The strong defend the weak from the strong. I don’t think you invented that, Astrid; all you did was make me see it. Well, I see it. There it is. The FAYZ gave me this light, and the FAYZ made it necessary. And now the light isn’t helping, is it? Now that monster is going to walk into town and kill people I care about and people I love.”

Astrid stood up. She was shaking. “I can’t . . . ,” she said.

Sam stood and tried to hold her, but she pulled away. “If one of us is getting out of here, it has to be you, Astrid. If I get out, it’s trouble anyway, you know that. The world out there is waiting for a scapegoat.”

“You promised me,” she said. “You’ve always kept your promises to me, Sam. Keep this one. I’m holding you to it. You swore. You swore to me.”

From outside there came the sounds of yelling. Someone was crying, “Fire! Fire!”

“Go,” Astrid said, dismissing him. “And keep your word to me, Sam, or you’re a damned liar.”

He left, not sure how to respond to that. He was relieved to have something tangible to do.

It felt good to be running free down the beach. Lying in a box at the bottom of the lake Drake hadn’t expected to ever have it all back. A body. Not his, but his now, and it was in good shape and strong.

And so much more important, he had his whip. He had his whip hand!

Whip Hand!

No one was watching the beach. They were all huddled in terror in town. And the best thing was, they weren’t expecting him, were they? Astrid would have bragged all over town how she had looked down at a helpless Drake and laughed and laughed. She must have thought she was safe from him at last. No more Drake. All Drake’s threats were nothing now, hah hah.

What he would do to her.

The longing for that moment almost made him weak. He wanted it so badly. Had he ever wanted anything as badly as he wanted to hear Astrid beg for mercy?

But no, he couldn’t kill her. He had to keep her alive, which was better. Life meant pain. If there was one thing Drake had learned his entire life—well, at least since his mother had remarried—it was that life was pain. And there was such joy in causing pain.

He had seen the pleasure his stepfather had taken in beating Drake’s mother. And his mother must have almost enjoyed it, too, right? She kept doing things that pissed her husband off. Like she expected it. Like she wanted it. Law of the jungle, his grandfather told him once. The big and strong kill and eat the small and weak. And Drake knew his grandfather was speaking from experience. He could see it in the old man’s eyes. That old man had brought the pain in his life.

Drake climbed over the rocks that separated Town Beach from the much smaller Clifftop beach. He would climb the cliff, sneak past Clifftop, and come into town from the last direction Astrid would expect.

As he climbed, he felt the strength in this new body. He felt the power in his regrown whip hand as it lashed up, finding bushes and ledges and hauling him upward as swiftly as any rope.

Spider-Man! Hah!

Whip Hand!

As he climbed, he looked north and saw the fire. The fires of hell. Hah hah! Perfect. Let it all come down in pain and fire! He felt his ambitions broaden.

He was resurrected. He was resurrected to kill.

He was Jesus with a whip, an unkillable Satan coming with smoke and fire to destroy! In his mind it was a lurid comic-book panel: Drake Whip Hand, wreathed in fire, with Astrid and Diana cowering, whipped and begging for mercy.

And at some point he forgot all about Gaia.

TWENTY-SEVEN

1
HOUR
, 29
MINUTES

ASTRID WATCHED
SAM
go and tried to calm the wild emotions she felt.

He wasn’t wrong. That was the hell of it. He wasn’t wrong. It would be his own light that killed. It was his light that had burned a hole in Brianna’s heart.

But this could not be the answer. Not after everything that had happened. This could not be the answer.

It
is
the answer, Astrid. You know it.

She followed him out as far as the door—well, the wreckage of a doorway—and saw him rushing across the plaza to where a fire had caught somehow in a drifted pile of trash.

A couple of kids were already taking care of it, and Sam wasn’t necessary. The truth was, the cries of “Fire!” almost served as a distraction, something to—