“WAKE UP!
“Wake up! Wakeupwakeupwakeupwakeup.
“Patchless Alex, run away!” The Voice is in my ears. Ghostly and hollow. She’s whisper-loud again like when I first heard her. She’s talking over a steady rumble of guitars that leak out of the Jungle under me.
YOU’RE BACK?
“Days are still strange. I’m back up your patchless drain and in your brain.”
“Wake up!” I hear it again, but it sounds different, more real. “Jesus, Alex, wake the hell up!”
I open my eyes. It’s too bright at first but things fade almost immediately to gray and then the pain starts again, this time behind my eyes and I squeeze them shut.
Corina’s standing over me.
“Hi,” I manage. The guitars are loud inside in a way they never were before the patch. Constant noise, a gathering storm.
“The patch is gone and your drain’s unplugged, Plugz, brace yourself. Patch made changes to you and the Silly Juice’ll be closer than ever before.”
“Jesus, man, you scared the hell out of me,” she whispers. “I thought you were dead.”
I shake my head. It’s not clearing up. It’s not getting easier to think.
“My patch is off, isn’t it?”
Corina shakes her head. “It’s off, but you don’t wanna look.”
I look. My upper arm is wrapped tight in one of my shirts, but the blood is already starting to soak through. There’s something on the ground next to me. It looks like a sickly gray Pop-Tart with tentacles. It’s the patch. I feel sick. I know I’m going to vomit, so I turn to the other side and manage to spray the dumpster and not Corina.
“Girl’s got a patch, boy. Got to get her patch—get her patch off, boy. Snatch her patch!” I can barely hear her over the noise.
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “Your turn.”
My voice is hoarse.
Corina shakes her head wildly. “Nuh-uh. They can have me before I let you do that.”
I shake my head. It needs to come off.
“Patch got your tongue? Girl’s patch has got to go. Snatch the patch!”
“Girl’s patch has got to go.” I look at Corina. “I have to snatch your patch.”
“Snatch her patch!”
“I’m going to,” I tell the Voice. “Shut up for a minute.”
“Who are you talking to?” Corina asks softly. I look at her. She’s scared of me. I try and flood her with reassurance, but nothing happens. I reach for her in my mind, but there’s nothing to reach for.
Without the patch, we aren’t connected.
I shake my head. “The patch has to come off, Corina.”
She pulls the knife from her pack, opens it. “Get back.”
“Silly girl. Use knife girl. Slice the top and the patch falls off. Slice the top and off it falls. Tell her, scared boy.”
I nod my head. “Corina, listen to me.” I try to sound as calm as I can, but my adrenaline is pumping. I hope my Voice isn’t screwing with me. “Don’t pull at the patch. Just take the knife and cut across the top—not deep or anything—just a line across the top.”
She looks at me and shakes her head. “How do you know that? That doesn’t make any sense.” She waves the knife at me. “Why would you think I’d believe you—that’ll just hurt like hell and then you’ll get the knife.”
I shake my head back at her. “I have a voice.” She looks confused. “Inside my head. It’s been talking to me. It’s been helping me, but the patch made it hard to hear. Now that my patch is off, I can hear her outside the Jungle again and she’s telling me how to take yours off.”
Corina’s shaking her head. “How the hell do you expect me to believe that?” She laughs at me. “Any of it. You’re the one who says they’re going to kill us—there’s no proof of that.” She’s not afraid of me now. She’s disgusted.
It’s written all over her face.
It’s too loud in my brain for thinking. I shake my head again, one last time to try and clear the guitars. It works a little bit. They’re down to a level that doesn’t rattle my mind.
“Please. Just try it—if it hurts, stop.” I wait for a second, but my Voice doesn’t correct me or tell me I’m an idiot. I hope that means I’m right that it won’t hurt.
“Uh-uh.”
“If it doesn’t work, then go back. Tell them I used mind control to convince you to come with me. I won’t hurt you and I won’t stop you.”
She starts to look nervous again, unsure.
“Keep talking, runaway. She’s listening.”
“The Voice is real, but I can’t prove that to you unless you try this out. Corina, I love you,” I tell her for the first time since we’ve lost our connection. It’s weird because I know it’s true, but it doesn’t feel the same. It feels like it did before the connection, but it’s half love. It’s just normal human love. I feel very alone. “Please.”
She looks down at her patch and then at the knife. I hold my breath while she considers it and then she nods. “If it hurts, that’s it. I’ll know you’re crazy and I’ll go back to the compound.”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
“Okay.” But she doesn’t make any moves toward her patch.
“Okay.”
“Okay.” She starts to move the knife. She flinches when it touches the patch, and then she turns it so the blade touches the front surface at the top.
“Top edge. It’s got to be the top edge.”
“The top edge, not the front. Not between the patch and the skin?” I add but it’s as much a question as an instruction. I don’t hear anything, so I nod. “The top edge of the patch, not between the patch and the skin.”
She turns the knife. She places the blade against the top edge and pushes against it. I can see the patch dimple, but she doesn’t stop. She pushes harder and the knife penetrates the skin of the patch.
She stops.
She looks surprised, but not like it’s hurting her. She draws the knife forward across the patch to the front edge. She moves it slowly, like she’s waiting for the pain, until she reaches the front of the patch and pulls the knife up slowly.
Nothing happens at first, but then the cut edge begins to curl in and the patch starts to change color from the dark brown of her skin to the same dull red that my pod turned when I deactivated it way back when at the compound. The change happens slowly, like the color is bleeding out of it, dripping back into Corina’s flesh.
When the patch is completely red, it falls off, leaving only a series of four circular scars where the blood vessels were in its place.
“Holy hell,” Corina whispers. “Your voice is real.”
“Yeah. My Voice is real.”
She examines her patch on the ground where it fell. She seems frozen.
“Corina?”
She shudders when I speak and then looks up at me. “They’re all really dead?”
“Who?”
“Calvin? Marcus? Everybody?” She’s shaking. I reach for her. At first she pulls away, but then falls in against me. “They’re all dead, aren’t they?”
“They might still be frozen.” It doesn’t sound very helpful.
“And that’s what’s gonna happen to Paul and the rest, too?”
Flashes of Paul. Playing guitar, laughing in the kitchen. Damon and me drinking in Vegas. Maddie. But then I’m back to Paul, unconscious on the floor of the room after I dropped him. I shake my head. “No. I’m gonna get them out. I promised Paul.”
She looks around at the alley we’re in, the patches on the ground, the blood, my vomit on the Dumpster. “Why don’t we finish rescuing us first.”
I shrug, and turn to start walking.
“Alex?” Corina asks. The guitars are in my head. I can barely hear her.
“Yeah?”
“You trust this voice of yours?”
“She’s been right so far.”
She looks at me. “She?”
“It sounds like a girl.” I shrug.
She shakes her head. “You shrug too much.”
“It’s just a voice.” Then I shrug again. My head’s too loud to do much else.