Thirty-Seven
Jack

I sat straight up, gasping for breath at the pain in my head, and Chloe slapped a hand across my mouth. She stared at me, her gray eyes wide as she pointed across the room to the doorway on the opposite wall. She lifted one finger to her lips to signal me to be quiet.

Then I heard them. There were Takers inside the haunted house with us. I climbed silently to my feet, my head pounding, and Chloe mimicked my motions. From the amount of noise the Takers were making, it was clear they didn’t know we were here. Reaching back for Chloe’s hand, I led her into the next room. Thankfully, it was empty.

We made our way silently through a couple of additional creepy rooms, but when we got back to the one we needed to leave through, there was a single guard posted in the doorway. Chloe tapped me on the shoulder and handed me the blade I’d given her to protect herself.

Then she whispered, “Please don’t use it unless you have to.”

I nodded slowly before peeking out again into the outer room. The guard stood there looking bored. He seemed pretty young … younger than us. I had to find a way to get us out of here without killing him. Gesturing for Chloe to stay behind me, I crept out. The guard didn’t realize I was there until I had my knife at his throat. I placed my other hand over his mouth and his eyes went wide.

“I don’t want to hurt you … but I can’t let you stop me,” I whispered low in his ear. Chloe came around in front of him and pulled his gun from his belt, pointing it at him. She looked like she knew how to use it. I put my knife away but kept my hand over his mouth.

“Do you have something we can tie you up with?” Chloe asked him.

He didn’t respond immediately, but apparently decided he’d rather be tied up than dead. He pointed to a pair of zip ties he had in his belt. Chloe took them out and we walked him back to the room where we’d just been hiding. We moved him to a corner and secured his hands and feet.

I leaned down close. “I need you to give us thirty seconds. If you start yelling before we get far enough away, then she might have to come back and shoot you. Neither of us wants that. Okay?”

The poor guy looked terrified as he nodded his head furiously. He didn’t make a sound when I removed my hand—and he gave us a full minute, at least, before we heard the commotion and knew he’d alerted the others.

Smart kid.

By that time, Chloe and I had run across the amusement park and were circling around to the funhouse entrance. I desperately hoped that all the friends we’d left here a few hours earlier were still alive.

As we crossed the park, I filled her in on what had happened in Parker’s mind.

“So you were just thrown out?” she whispered, her face pale. “Do you think he … do you think Cooper is dead?”

I shook my head and squeezed her hand. “I don’t know yet, Chloe. I feel like we did a whole lot of damage … but I won’t know until I see him myself.”

“Do you think Parker is okay?” She squeezed my hand back.

I held my breath and pulled her low to the ground as one of the guards passed twenty feet ahead of us, heading into the funhouse. Climbing to my feet, I shook my head without speaking. The fact that I couldn’t answer that question was eating me alive. How could I have asked Parker to do something so dangerous? What if it killed him too? What if I’d lost him—not because of what Cooper had done, but because of what I did?

As soon as the coast was clear, we made our way to the funhouse entrance and slipped in, hiding in the shadows. There was a big crowd on the other side of the room but they all had their backs to us. No one saw us slip in.

I scanned the area, looking for an opportunity to somehow get to my brother. But then my eyes stopped and my gut wrenched with unexpected pain. There, on the same spot where we’d been shot at earlier, I could still see a red tinge to the ground. Libby had been shot right there. She’d died there.

I hoped Finn hadn’t met the same fate.

Then I heard Cooper’s voice, and all the blood drained from my head down into my feet.

“I need to talk to all of you. Something has to be done, whether you like it or not … ”

I knew that his voice alone would make these people afraid enough that they would agree to anything he demanded. As long as he was leading them, it would be nearly impossible to build up an opposition.

Then I saw him. What we’d done in the dream hadn’t worked. I released Chloe’s hand and slipped out my knife. Taking a few steps closer, I waited for the right angle.

This time I wouldn’t miss.

Cooper kept talking, but I was so focused on his movements that I didn’t listen to his words. I raised my hand to throw the blade just as he turned to face me. His eyes widened, and I realized I’d stepped up into the light. I pulled back my hand—and Chloe hit me hard from behind.

My blade fell to the floor as I staggered forward, but I immediately picked it up before spinning to face her. I couldn’t believe she’d just betrayed me after everything we’d been through. Guards rushed over and pinned my hands behind my back.

Chloe’s eyes were huge. She kept looking back at where we’d seen Cooper, and then at me like she was trying to signal me in some way. I didn’t understand. How could she have stopped me? I knew he was her brother, but I’d thought she’d agreed this was the only way. Then she gave me a hard look that seemed to question my intelligence and mouthed one word: Listen.

I whipped my head around, trying to see Cooper again, but there were guards blocking my view. What was she talking about?

“Bring them up here.” Cooper’s voice rang out above the noise, and everyone quieted down.

The guards pushed us up to the front of the room and then released us once we were surrounded. Cooper stared hard at each of us, but I saw that his hands were trembling. Up close he looked more like an animated skeleton than a person.

“As I was saying”—his gaze fixed on me like he was trying to pierce through me with his eyes—“I’m near my limit. I can feel it. And we’ve lost too many people.”

I felt my eyebrows raise until Chloe kicked my foot, and I forced myself not to respond. I didn’t understand how or why, but either Cooper had had a change of heart, or …

“Joey has been helping me come to a decision, and I’m going to put him in charge. I think he and my sister, Chloe, should work together to come up with the best solution to avoid even more of our kind dying.” Cooper looked hard at me again, and I thought I caught the slightest twitch as the corner of his mouth. “Unless you just want to keep fighting, Jack, because this truce has to come from both sides.”

It was an expression that was so clearly Parker’s that I felt like the wind had been knocked from my lungs. Parker had taken over a Taker? How?

Then I realized that was exactly what had happened when we’d destroyed Cooper. Parker was now a Taker, so he’d been sucked into what was essentially an empty shell. Now he was using it to our advantage—brilliant.

And I’d almost killed him with my blade.

Thank God for Chloe.

I realized Parker was still waiting for my response. “I will agree,” I said, “if you agree to release my brother and the others you’ve been holding captive.”

“And give me the chance to talk to you and the rest of your people about a new drug called Spectrum,” Chloe added before Cooper had a chance to respond. “I honestly believe it can save us all.”

Cooper looked like he was considering this for a moment before he let out an exhausted sigh. “Fine.” Then he looked over at Joey and his guards. “Get his brother and friends.”

Joey stepped up beside him as the guards walked off, confused expressions on their faces. Joey’s face betrayed one other emotion, though—sadness. He looked at Chloe and she gave him a slight nod. He knew.

And he’d helped us anyway.

“I think I need to go rest for a little while.” Cooper looked up at Joey, his legs shaking beneath him. “You know what to do.”

“I do,” Joey said, and Cooper gave me a look before Joey helped him toward the door.

It was surreal to watch this walking, talking, living person and know that in reality he was just a shell. He disappeared from sight, and I knew that as soon as Cooper went to sleep, his heart would stop. It would only be minutes until his tired and sick body would be as empty of life as Parker and I had made his mind.