I CLOSE MY EYES and drop my head in my hands, suddenly exhausted. A pocket of silence consumes me and a chill squeezes into my bones. I thought I was getting to know Arself. I was starting to trust her and even to like her in a way, but now she’s grown sinister again, and huge. She’s been watching all the viewers! I didn’t understand before that she meant spying on them. How could she think that’s okay? What I don’t know is if she’s been manipulating them.
Of course she has, I realize. She brought me here. She didn’t exactly brainwash me, but she brought me to Grisly Valley and the vault. And now she’s in me. She’s part of me. Despite what she promised, she can take over whenever she wants. I’m revulsed by the idea.
Dimly, I become aware that Lavinia is talking over the speakerphone.
“Okay. Yes. We’re on it,” Linus replies. He swivels my chair toward him and grips my shoulders. “Rosie?”
I lift my gaze to find his face close to mine, and his concern snaps me out of my horror.
“Can you hear me?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say.
I glance up to see Burnham is watching me, too. Behind him, the computers are reset to the original array of security shots, maps, and The Forge Show. I want to tell Linus and Burnham about Arself, about how she, not Berg, is running the surveillance on the viewers, but it’s too horrifying. I have too many questions of my own.
Linus gives me a little shake. “I need you to listen to me. Lavinia says two people are climbing around the front gate,” he says.
Burnham reaches past me to the main console and starts typing. “Check this out,” he says.
He points to a flicker of motion on one of the screens, and then he expands the view. I straighten slowly.
Near the entrance to the park, two men are walking side-by-side down the center of the Main Drag. My heart constricts as they step under the glow of the first security light. On the left is Ian Cowles, lanky, hunched, and as scruffy as ever. His baggy camo pants are tucked into his black boots at the ankle, and he’s wearing a black jacket that bulges with pockets and zippers. His left hand is wrapped in a bandage: a memento from Doli. Beside him, Sandy Berg carries himself with natural authority, even here, and I cringe at the familiar sight of his solid build and tidy blond hair. He wears a tan, short-sleeved safari shirt over dark trousers, and his watch glitters gold.
“That’s Berg for sure,” Linus says. “Who’s with him?”
“That’s Ian,” I say.
“The guy from the Onar Clinic?” Burnham asks.
“Yes,” I say with loathing. “He’s the most repulsive, revolting, putrescent person I’ve ever met, besides Berg.”
“Don’t hold back,” Burnham says.
I step closer to the screen, staring as the men walk under some trees. Burnham shifts around with the touchpad, and the next shot shows a closer image of them from another angle as they continue walking up the Main Drag.
“They must know we’re here at Grisly,” Linus says. “It can’t be a coincidence they’re coming now.”
“But do they know we’re in the keep?” I ask.
Berg and Ian walk out of view of the security camera, and Burnham works the touchpad again. The screen remains on the empty street where they just were.
“Sorry,” Burnham says. “I don’t exactly know how to work this.”
“Check where their car is,” Linus says. “Let’s see if they came alone.”
Burnham pulls up a few more camera angles, all wrong. My fingertips itch like wild again.
Get him out of the way, Arself says. Let us in there.
Fat chance.
Don’t be dense. We’re on your side.
Not enough, you’re not.
Burnham pulls up a few more security angles, all empty, and finally locates the handicapped parking area beside the main gate. A white sedan is parked in the glow of another tall security light.
“See the car?” I ask.
“Yes,” Linus says.
In another screen, Berg and Ian show up again. They’re still walking down the Main Drag, taking their time.
“They’re awfully confident,” Linus says. “Why aren’t they coming faster? Do they want us to see them?”
“Maybe they don’t know we’re here,” Burnham says.
“None of that matters,” I say. “If they come into the Keep of Ages, we’ll be caught.” There’s only one way down from where we are: the staircase that leads back to the main hall.
“We have to go,” Burnham says. “I’m not fast.”
“Wait. Look,” Linus says.
Berg and Ian have slowed before a gift shop, the last one on the Main Drag, right before it meets Scylla Square. I turn to the window in alarm, and I can actually see them out there talking. Berg adjusts an earpiece in his right ear. Ian takes a gun out of his pocket, turns it over in his hand, and nods. Then Berg backtracks a couple paces and goes into a door while Ian resumes walking toward the keep.
“We seriously have to leave,” Burnham says. “Come on!”
He doesn’t bother turning anything off and bolts toward the doorway. Linus and I hurry after him, down the dark stairs and out into the hall with the fireplace. We reach the big double doors of the keep and look out the gap just as Ian starts up one of the outer stairway bridges, the one to our left. We can’t get out without being seen, and Ian has a gun. We’d be vulnerable just trying to get through the tight gap of the doorway. Burnham, beside me, seems bigger and slower than ever.
“What do we do?” I whisper.
“Back,” Linus says, yanking my arm.
I turn and run with him across the hall toward the downward staircase. Burnham’s right behind us. We descend into the dark. Half a dozen steps down, after the first turn, I can’t see a blasted thing. I bump into Linus’s back. Burnham bangs into me with his brace, and I bite back a gasp of pain. Linus’s arms come around me, steadying me, and Burnham goes motionless on my other side. Silent, with my heart beating, I turn my gaze up the staircase to where a faint gleam of reflected moonlight touches the wall. I can feel my pupils expanding, begging for more. A scratching noise comes from above. Then silence. Then a creak of pressure. Then a distinct footstep.
I wait, hearing only silence, and then another footstep, softer than before.
“He’s going up,” Linus whispers.
We listen, straining our ears.
“He’ll find all the computers on,” Burnham whispers. “He’ll be able to see anywhere we go through the surveillance.”
We should have turned them off or busted them, but it’s too late now.
“Come on,” I say. “We have to run for it.”
“Where to?” Linus says. “Are we going after Berg?”
I scramble for a plan. Even with Ian after us, I still need to find my parents. If I can do that, I’ll be in better shape dealing with Berg. “I’m going to keep looking for my parents. The next place is the garbage area by the juice stand in Zombieville. That’s down the right-hand staircase to the south, past the Giant Cesspool.”
“You can’t be serious,” Burnham says.
“I still have to find them!” I whisper viciously.
“We should go now,” Linus says.
Burnham nudges an elbow into me. “Okay,” he says.
He starts up the stairs, moving silently, and I’m right behind him. The hall is empty, and I glance at the upward staircase before I dart across to the door. Burnham motions me through first. I edge my way out and take a quick look around the deserted square. Linus is right behind me. I glance over my shoulder for Burnham, but the black gap of the doorway is empty.
“Where’s Burnham?” I whisper.
Linus grabs my arm, pulling me out toward the stairs. “We have to go! He’s coming!”
I hesitate, anxious. Linus tugs me again, and I run with him down the right-hand staircase, but my heart is ten steps behind me, protesting all the way. At the bottom of the steps, Linus takes a hard right, hauling me with him, and we don’t stop until we’re crouched into a dark corner beside a fence.
“What about Burnham!” I say, craning my neck to see toward the keep. The stairs are still empty. “What does he think he’s doing?”
“He’s okay. He’s smart,” Linus says. “He’ll get out when he can.”
“You knew?” I say, incredulous. “You talked to him, didn’t you?”
“He said if we got in a tight spot, I should get you out of it,” he says.
I lurch upward, fully intending to go back for Burnham, but Linus yanks me down again.
“Do you want to find your parents?” he asks.
“Yes, but Ian has a gun!”
“Trust Burnham. He’s fine,” Linus says.
He is not fine. I try to imagine a fight between Ian and Burnham, and it’s a disaster.
“I mean it. Burnham can take care of himself,” Linus says. He points back toward the Main Drag. “I’m going to try and follow Berg.”
“We were going to stay together,” I remind him.
“Then do you want to come with me? Berg could be going to your parents.”
But he might not be, too. “I still want to check the places on our list,” I say.
“Then you do that,” Linus says. “Try to stay away from the lights so Ian can’t track you.”
An involuntary shiver of fear runs through me.
“You can’t try to kill Berg without me,” I say.
“I’m not going to kill anybody if I don’t have to,” Linus says. “I’m just going to see where he goes. He probably knows a way down to the vault of dreamers, right?”
Linus is right. But it feels dangerous to be separating. Anything could go wrong. “Where should we meet up again?”
“Call me,” he says.
“Your phone won’t work underground,” I say. I instinctively pat my pockets, which are now too soft and empty. “My phone! I left it up in the keep!”
“It’s here,” he says, passing it into my hand. “I’ll call you when I get back up.”
I grip the solid little shape and take a deep breath, striving to be calmer, to think. I don’t have my earphone anymore, or my hat, so rigging up the phone again for Lavinia and Dubbs to see from is out. But at least I have the phone.
“We need a backup plan,” I say. “If I can find my parents, I’ll bring them here. No, I’ll bring them to the gift shop in the Backwoods Forest, near where we came in.” It scares me to think what shape my parents could be in, and the van is back a quarter mile outside the wall. “What if they’re unconscious or something? I’ll need your help. Or Burnham’s.”
“So then you’ll call me or text me where you are,” Linus says, taking his phone out of his pocket. “The gift shop is only a backup if we can’t call each other. Okay? The first thing to do is find your parents, one way or another.”
I know what he’s saying makes sense. I guess I’m just afraid, and that’s why I’m rattled and doubting everything. He’s typing into his phone.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Texting Burnham so he knows where to meet us, just in case.”
I look back at the keep’s stairs, wishing Burnham would appear there. He doesn’t.
“He’d better be okay,” I say.
Linus glances up. He pockets his phone and pulls me near for a hug. “We’ve got this. You hear me?”
“I know,” I say, holding him tight. “Just please don’t do anything stupid. I couldn’t bear it if you got hurt.”
He smiles. “I won’t. You be careful, too.”
The next moment, he’s gone.
I take another look back toward the keep and realize I haven’t heard a gunshot. Then again, I’m not sure I would hear it through the stone walls of the keep. A soft layer of fog is collecting in the bottom of the moat now, and I frown.
Are you making me see that? I ask Arself.
No, she says. That’s real fog.
Instinctively, I lift my gaze to the dragon on the roof of the keep and discover its eyes are red again.
What’s going on? I ask.
Somebody’s playing with the special effects, Arself says.
I recall that Whistler said Ian liked to play with the special effects when he was here. I don’t know what this indicates about Burnham, but I have to hope he’s still okay.
I gather my courage and hurry past the Giant Cesspool and farther into Zombieland. More rides and derelict shops line the streets, and I stick to the shadows as much as possible. At the juice stand, I find the garbage area surrounded by a concrete wall. The metal door is locked with a chain and a rusty padlock. Because the garbage area is open to the air, it doesn’t look likely as a place to stash my parents, but I scale the wall to look inside. Old, industrial-sized dumpsters for garbage and recycling line the far side, and they look like they haven’t been opened in ages.
If someone has stuffed my parents inside the dumpsters, I don’t think I can take it. They have to be somewhere better. Berg wouldn’t have any leverage over me if he actually had them thrown away.
I drop back outside the wall, landing low on my feet, and run east through Vampyre Graveyard. Next on my list is the Lost and Found, so I aim toward the front of the park where the Lost and Found is located. Please be there, I think as I run. Always looking for the darkest path, I pass the End of Daze spiral tower and wind through another set of shops and freestanding kiosks. Then I spot the East Depot of the train and sneak past a long row of outdoor lockers. I must be getting close to the main entrance. Debris clots the grid of a storm drain where I leap across.
A sudden, deeper darkness makes me pause and look up. A silver-edged cloud has moved over the face of the moon, casting a shadow over Grisly. I listen to the motionless air, wary for a sound of anyone chasing me, but all I can hear is the far-off fading of a plane. Rounding the next corner, I find the main entrance with the turnstiles, and beyond them, the statue of the Grim Reaper. Lavinia watching through her camera there should be able to see me if I move into some light.
I scan the nearest row of buildings for the Lost and Found and find it attached to the security office. It’s a small building, clearly marked, with a large plate-glass window. I pull out my phone and quickly give Lavinia a call.
“Hey,” I say. “We’re all separated. Burnham’s in the keep and Linus went to find Berg. I’m at the Lost and Found.”
“I see you,” Lavinia says, her voice staticky. “The dragon’s shifting a bit. Otherwise, nothing’s changed by the keep.”
I peer inside the Lost and Found, seeing only darkness, and my heart dips. I don’t want Dubbs overhearing if I get inside there and something bad happens.
“I’ll call you later when I know something,” I say.
“Dubbs and I are coming to the park,” Lavinia says.
“No, don’t,” I say, alarmed. “You can’t help. You have to keep Dubbs safe.”
“Then I’m calling the police,” Lavinia says.
“No!” I say. “We’ve got this under control. I mean it. Just let me find my parents. I’m close, I just know it.”
A burst of static comes over the phone. “Promise you’ll keep us informed,” she says. “If you’re not out of there in an hour, I’m making the call.”
“I will be. Just take care of Dubbs,” I say, and disconnect.
Seriously, the last thing I need is my sister here with Lavinia. I’m not calling them again until we’re all safely out of here. I test the handle on the Lost and Found, but it’s locked, with no code box. I’m getting good at shattering glass with my flashlight. Next, I wrap my sleeve over my hand, reach in to find the inside knob, and carefully unlock the door.
I push it open. My ballet flats brush over broken glass as I enter, and I’m careful to step wide.
“Ma?” I call.
The place smells of rubbish and rain, but also of something sharper, a hint of chemicals. I glance up to see a sagging ceiling, and a cricket chirps. Knowing this place is devoid of working security cameras, I take a chance with my flashlight and cast the beam around. A moldy mural of a tree with cheery woodland animals stands behind a short table shaped like a ladybug. An inner door along the back wall is closed. I step softly over and try the knob. This one is locked, too, and the door has no window. I press my ear to the door and hear a faint hum. I have to get in there.
I throw my shoulder against the door. It holds, but it creaks enough to give me hope. A splintered seam has appeared near the hinge side. I back up a couple paces and rush at it again, barreling into the wood with all my might. The door bursts inward, its hinges busted, and I stagger into the next room.
Two sleep shells are parked along the far wall with pale blue lights illuminating their curved glass lids. A sourness laces the air, and even as I hurry close, I’m thinking, Please, no. Don’t let them be dead. I stare anxiously into the first one and my heart stops.
It’s Ma. Her pale profile is a motionless mask.
As I push open the lid, the ghastly sourness is even stronger.
“Ma,” I say, leaning close to hug her.
She’s warm. That’s the first miracle. Her cheeks and arms are warm to my touch. I nearly start to cry. Her eyes are closed, but she’s breathing. That’s the next miracle. She’s breathing. She’s alive! My heart zigzags with joy.
Rapidly, I check her over. She has an IV line going into her hand, but the pouch of fluids above her has gone dry. No catheter is coming out of her, and no pads are on her temples. She’s still in street clothes, a summer dress and sandals, with no restraints on her, as if she were dumped there carelessly with no concern for her comfort or fear of her resistance. I stare again at her wan features, her dry lips. Has she been left like this for six days? Seven now?
How can she still be alive?
“Ma!” I say again, gripping her shoulders. She doesn’t respond. I look over at the next sleep shell, where Larry’s burly form gleams in the blue glow. I shove up his lid, and he’s in the same condition as Ma: unresponsive but breathing. They’re both alive. But sour, so sour, like they’re spoiling.
I check for poop but don’t see any. There’s some dried urine on Larry’s pants, maybe, but the odor is different, more like raw garlic. People can’t decay when they’re still alive. Can they?
I have to get them out of here. I hurry back to Ma and try holding up her eyelid and shining my light inside. Her pupil contracts slightly, but she doesn’t respond otherwise.
“What has he done to you?” I whisper, as cold anger replaces my first relief.
Whatever sick way he’s managed it, Berg has drugged my parents into a long-term sleep. I have to believe it’s not something worse.
I try calling Linus first, but he doesn’t answer. He must be underground. Burnham doesn’t answer, either.
How am I going to get them out of here? Ma probably outweighs me by fifty pounds. Even if I could drag her out of here, I’d still need help with Larry.
“Ma,” I say again, giving her another shake.
Her head lolls limply on her neck. I can’t think why Berg would leave her and Larry here like this, in this dark hole. Why didn’t he put them down in the vault with the rest of the dreamers where they could at least be watched over by the doctors? His cruelty shouldn’t astound me anymore, but it does.
Arself, I say sharply in my head. Where are you? We need help.
We told you. We need to connect again. We can’t do anything like this.
I need Linus and Burnham, I say. Do you know where they are?
We would if we were connected.
I gnash my teeth in frustration. Take a guess, I say.
Burnham is probably still in the keep. Linus was following Berg, who was heading down to Negative One. This is nothing more than I know myself, I say. Can’t you help me at all?
We can optimize your path to VIP Portal Number Twenty-two, factoring in the darkness to avoid detection.
Is that where Berg went?
Yes. Then we want to connect to the dreamers again.
I assume she means getting back on a computer, like we did in the keep when she took over my fingers and raced my eyeballs over the screens. I have no desire to put her in charge again.
Still, I can’t exactly lie to Arself with a false promise.
“We’ll see,” I say aloud. “Okay? That’s the best I can do. We’ll see.”
Deep silence widens for a moment in the back of my brain. Then I feel a tingle in my right palm. I lift my hand, and as I watch, a faint, glowing, gold line appears in the soft skin of my hand. The light has a slight heft to it, like a string, and as I give a slight tug, the line of light extends out of my hand to the floor in front of my feet and travels forward, out the door and around the corner.
I know the string of light can’t truly exist, but that doesn’t matter. Arself has created it in my mind and superimposed it onto my palm so that it leads into the landscape of Grisly.
I take another look at my parents. They’re still breathing, still sleeping. They have no idea I’ve found them, and somehow that twists me up.
If I leave them, will I see them again? I ask.
We don’t know the future.
It’s up to me. I’m the only one who can decide. With an ache of fear, I close Larry’s lid again, and then my mother’s.
“I’ll be back,” I promise.
Then I lift my palm before me and follow the string of golden light out the door of the Lost and Found.
The night is cooler than before, and a breeze rustles the leaves of a tree to my right. I reach the corner and look left, along the Main Drag. The nearest security lamp illuminates the unicorn statue as before. The others drop their cones of light on the pavement, making blurry circles of gray, while the rest of the park is black. My string of light gleams faintly up the Main Drag, swerving into the deeper shadows. If I shift my hand away from it, the string disappears, but if I direct my hand back in the right direction, it lights up again, and my palm feels a trace of weight.
Following my string, I sneak along the left sidewalk close to the storefronts. Then I cross the street through a patch of darkness and take the right sidewalk until I near the gift shop where Berg and Ian parted. The string of light runs under an unmarked door between the gift shop and a cookie bakery.
This must be VIP Portal Number Twenty-Two, I think.
When I push the door open, the string of golden light continues down a hallway toward a landing with an elevator and a staircase. I follow, and when the string veers right, toward the stairs, I descend a couple of flights to a VIP green room, barely visible by the red glow of an exit sign. A shadowy shape makes me jump before I realize it’s a pair of fake ficus trees. A sagging couch, gray with dust, is the only other furniture.
Trying the next door, I peek cautiously out to a large, quiet food court. Chairs are clustered around tables, and many still have trays, as if the evacuation twenty years ago was a spell that froze everything in its wake. A curving bank of dirty windows faces into a dark, oddly shaped void, and it takes me a second to realize it’s the underground level of the moat, now empty of water.
Spooky hallways lead off in various directions, and I scan them quickly for movement. I can’t help worrying that Berg or someone else might jump out at me. A detailed directory lists rehearsal rooms, the grand assembly, security, tech headquarters, archives, press, costumes, makeup, and future idea development. This place is huge.
I slowly wave my hand in an arc, left to right, expecting the string of light to catch on my palm again.
This is where the pathway bifurcates, Arself says. We can’t guide you any farther.
I shine my flashlight onto the floor to where a trail of scuff marks in the dust leads around the moat. I follow them to a door that is slightly ajar, and inside, I find a janitor’s closet. A faint whirring noise comes from behind a plastic curtain, and where a large sink or tub might typically be, I find instead a narrow spiral staircase leading down.
I was expecting something different, I say. Bigger. For the bodies.
There must be another entrance for them.
Yet this must be the way Berg came, and Linus must have followed. Uneasy, I aim my flashlight along the stairs and creep down. Already, I miss the guidance of Arself’s golden string. Two dozen steps down, the whirring noise grows slightly louder, and the spiral ends at a straight, narrow, stone staircase. When I reach the bottom of the next flight, I’m at a small landing with a round window, and it looks out over the vault of dreamers.
With a hitch of relief, I recognize where I am.
I’ve reached the upper ledge of the dome, the circular hallway with the eight round windows. The oculus is dark at the apex, and I can feel air pushed by a nearby vent into the vast space. When I look back behind me, the staircase is dark and indistinguishable from other warrens I saw down here before. I can’t afford to lose it, so I check my pockets for something I can use as a marker.
My fingers close on the smooth black stone Dubbs gave me. I set it in the nook of the bottom stair. Then I look more carefully down into the vault, hoping to spot Berg without being seen myself. The sleep shells, hundreds of them, are still arranged in concentric circles in the cavernous space below, but now the floor shifts with a thin layer of purple fog. A dozen scattered sleep shells have their red distress lights on.
Two dozen others have gone dark completely, and they stand out as black voids in the expanse of blue.
A wail starts up in the back of my mind. I press my fingers to my ears, but the inner lament only grows louder.
Arself! Stop! I say.
No! she says. This can’t be happening!
Anxiety barrels through me like boulders in an avalanche.
Go! she says. Get down there! Go, go, go!
I turn to race down the steps. What is it? What’s happening?
But she doesn’t answer. She’s transformed into a wordless, high-pitched keening, and it’s all I can do not to hyperventilate with her fear.
I sprint out of the twelve o’clock archway to the nearest dark sleep shell, half hoping it will simply be empty, but when I look inside, a body lies stretched out, a boy with dark hair and eyebrows. Arself howls in my mind. At my feet, the purple fog shifts silently.
“How can this be?” I whisper.
Instinctively, I push up the glass lid to get a closer look, and a noxious reek wafts out at me. It’s different from the sourness that clung to Ma and Larry, more ominous. I hold my breath. The kid’s gray skin is stretched paper-thin, and his gelled eyes are unnaturally sunken into his skull. His dry lips are slightly pulled back from his little teeth in a rotting grimace. Desperate, I inspect the line that goes into the child’s port, but I don’t know how to tell if it’s flowing right.
Close the lid! It’s no use! Arself says.
I obey her, sealing the boy back inside his coffin.
“Is he dead?” I whisper.
Of course he’s dead! she says.
“But what happened?” I say. I stare at the cadaver through the glass, bewildered and horrified. “These dreamers were alive just two days ago.”
I look around again at how many sleep shells have gone dark. It’s more than a dozen. I can see close to twenty, just from here, and the magnitude is bewildering. Nothing before ever convinced me so completely that the dreamers are alive until now, when I’ve found one dead.
It’s all my fault! Arself says. Her agonized cry starts up again.
I press my ears again and bend over with the pain of her noise in my head.
Arself, stop! I think at her. This isn’t your fault. You weren’t even here.
They died because I left!
Eyes closed, I shake my head. “You have to stop! I can’t think!”
She stops so abruptly I feel like I’ve lost my hearing. I open my eyes. All the nearest sleep shells have red lights above them now. The soft whirring of the fan in the oculus is the only sound. Another red light goes on nearby, and another.
The dreamers know I’m here. I’ve disturbed them. We’ve disturbed them. A dull thump comes from my left, and when I look over, a hand is pressed to the glass lid of a nearby sleep shell, one with a red light. I step over to look inside just as the hand slips down, leaving a sweaty smudge. Inside, the dreamer’s face is slack. He’s a young man, not much older than me. He has the same gelled eyes and blank expression as all the rest, but I have to believe he was signaling to me.
“We have to help them, Arself,” I say. “What can we do? Tell me.”
Her anxiety buzzes inside me like a subterranean swarm of bees, but I can’t decipher a clear train of thought.
Then I hear a popping noise, and a sharp pinch stings my neck.
My head whips toward the sound, and near the nine o’clock arch, Berg is lowering a small tranquilizer gun. My fear skyrockets. I touch my fingers to the sting and pull a small dart out of my skin, along with a smear of blood. I duck behind the nearest sleep shell, but it’s already too late. A fizzing slowness is invading my blood.
No! Arself says. Not this. Run, Rosie! Don’t let him get us!
A rush of jacked-up adrenaline courses through my veins. For a moment, it seems to negate the effects of the tranquilizer, but when I try to take a step away, I sag to the floor, landing on my hands and knees. A fluff of purple mist drifts away from my hands.
“She’s over here,” Berg calls.
His footsteps grow louder, and then he’s standing above me, a grim, loathsome man. His sandy blond hair is haloed in blue by the light from the nearest sleep shell. His glassy, piggish eyes seem paler than ever, and the fine ridges of his lips and nose stand out in sharp detail.
“You should have answered my calls,” he says.
I cringe, trying to crawl away from him under the sleep shell, but he moves nearer, planting his shoe in front of my face. I am not going to be in Berg’s power again. I can’t let this happen. I’d rather die.
As my cheek slumps against the floor, I breathe in the vinegary taste of the mist.
Help me! I say to Arself, pleading.
Whatever you do, don’t tell him we’re here, she says.
I can barely answer her. I might not have a choice.
We’ll have a choice. Be strong.