“Like I said, we’re in my special place. I guess all this”—Peter plucked up a marshmallow and stared as if studying a lab specimen— “probably can’t work for you.”

“Why?” Breaking a wedge of chocolate, Chris touched the dark wafer to his tongue. For an instant, he thought of Meg Murry sitting down to a meal that tasted of sand while her brother, lost and already under IT’s control, ate quite happily. The chocolate had no smell and less taste than air. “Why haven’t I been able to come here from the very beginning?”

“Maybe because you were still figuring things out. Digging for the truth, putting together the pieces.” Blowing out his blazing marshmallows, Peter gestured with the stick, chalking streamers of white smoke. “Letting go enough to find a piece of the real me, I guess.”

Truth comes from blood and water. “Letting go of the hammer.”

“Yeah, but we don’t need to get all biblical. This has way more to do with biology and the brain. I’m talking temporal lobe, out-ofbody experiences. Isaac was right about that.”

“And you? Are you really dead, or have you Changed or . . .”

“I think, for me, they’re all related.” Peter let go of a heavy sigh. “There is so much to tell you, and we don’t have time for it all. I’m not sure we can even do this again.”

“How are we doing it at all?”

“Dunno. I built the space a couple weeks ago, when you told me to.”

“Me? How could I—”

“We’re different. All Spared are. Some are really unique, like you and the way your brain’s reacted to that drug Hannah gave you. Me . . . I was Changing before the Change. The boat? Lying?” Peter looked away. “Leaving that girl to drown.”

He’d thought a lot about this. “Peter, there was no time. You couldn’t save them both.” He almost said, Someone had to die, but didn’t. “Peter, she was your sister.”

“But then I made it worse. I said that girl was already dead.” Peter pulled in a shuddering breath. “The good guys don’t lie. They don’t choose. They save everybody.”

That only happens in books. “Hannah said you tried.”

“Yeah.” Peter gave a bleak laugh. “For all the good that did. That one choice ruined Simon’s life, probably Penny’s, too, and then I set up the Zone, I fed . . .” Tossing his stick into the fire, his voice thickened with disgust. “Everything I build, everyone I love, I destroy.”

“I’m still here,” Chris said, quietly. He watched Peter’s marshmallows turn to ash. The throbbing ache in his chest had sharpened and grown much stronger in the last few seconds. “We’re not in a nightmare. No one is here but us, and your eyes are blue, Peter.”

“That’s because you’re seeing the piece that’s”—he tapped the back of his head—“tucked away and still, you know . . . me. The part you were meant to reach.”

And the part I want to save, if I can. The thought popped into his head completely unbidden. “Maybe because you want to reach me, too. You said you were afraid, but I’m here. I found this place, and you. Let me help, Peter.”

“You said that once before. I think you saved me then, a little. You told me to forgive myself.” Peter shook his head. “But I can’t. You shouldn’t forgive me either.”

“But I do, Peter,” he said, then stiffened as his chest flared. No, please, not yet. “You’re not lost, not while I can still find you.”

“But I’m almost gone. I can feel that, too. This space?” Peter cast his eyes around their bubble of light holding off the dark. “I don’t know how much longer I can hang on to it. Yeah, it’s a part he can’t control. I’m not sure he even knows about it. But he’s getting stronger, and my space is shrinking. This fire, the marshmallows? They’re all that’s left.”

“He?”

“Yes. F-F . . .” Peter’s head suddenly snapped back. An arrow of pain shot across his face.

“Peter.” Alarmed, Chris reached for his friend. “Peter, what’s—”

“N-no!” Peter cringed. “D-don’t touch me. M-my fault. To n-name is to control, to ac-access . . .”

“Access? Control? What are you talking about?”

“H-him. He wants to kn-know, but I haven’t t-told . . .” Gasping, Peter pressed the heel of a hand to either temple. “Can’t say names. Goes both ways. N-naming him lets him in.”

“Who? How?”

“F-Finn . . . oh God, that hurts.” Arching against a fresh tide of pain, Peter hissed, “Using a d-drug, not the same as what Hannah g-gave you but cl-close . . .”

“On whom? You?”

“Y-yes, and . . .” Peter snatched a gasp. “And Ch-Changed. Too much to ex-explain. No time. Ask T-Tom. He’s guessed part . . . aahh!”

“Peter!” It took all Chris’s willpower not to touch his friend. “Peter, tell me what to do.”

“N-nothing you can do.” Another wave of pain shuddered through Peter and shook loose a moan. “F-Finn is c-ccoming.”

“Coming.” Fresh sweat glistened on Peter’s forehead and neck but in the light of a fire not as bright as before. Chris tossed a glance at the dimming flames just as that sharp pain grabbed his chest again. No time. Either Finn had found Peter, or he was being pulled away, or maybe both. “Where? To Rule?”

Eyes still closed, Peter managed a nod. “He’s got wuh-weapons. Men and Changed . . .”

“What—” A powerful talon of pain raked his chest. Chris couldn’t hold back the groan. That familiar falling sensation was beginning, his vision fading, but he had to know this, he had to hang on! Don’t call me back, just a few more seconds! “Wh-what does he want?”

“K-kids. M-more experi . . . aaahhhh!” Rolling to his knees, Peter clapped his hands to his head. “Get out, Chris. Pl-please. Before he s-sees, before he really nuh-knows you. Let th-them take you b-back . . . s-save yourself, save . . .”

“No.” Maybe it was because of his pain, or Peter’s terror and his certainty that when and if they met again, things would be very different—or perhaps it was because Jess had sent him from Rule to find his way—that now Chris chose a different path. Clasping the back of Peter’s neck, he pulled his friend close and held him fast. “No, Peter, I won’t.”

“Ch-Chris, don’t!” Peter’s eyes brimmed, and Chris saw their true color beginning to bleed. Peter’s hands clung to Chris’s forearms. “Don’t touch me. You have to—”

“Don’t tell me what to do.” Chris heard his voice break, felt the tears on his cheeks. “I’m going to save us, Peter. I’m going to save us both.”

Then the black tide swept through and carried him away.

104

“Listen to me. I’ve seen this man. I’ve seen those Chuckies . . . the Changed? The ones he’s altered. I know what they have and what they can do.” Tom pointed to the Uzi as well as the contents of the pack he’d spilled onto the table of the hospice conference room. “Finn’s well armed, well supplied, and he’s got troops you don’t. I guarantee you won’t last an hour, much less a day. He’ll wipe you out, then take the kids and call it even.”

“So you’re saying we just give up, let him run over us, and go down without a fight?” Scowling, Jarvis tossed a dark look at the two men—equally old and just as skeptical—who sat to either side of him. “What the hell kind of soldier are you?”

“Hey, hey,” Kincaid rapped from his place to Chris’s left. “Are you deaf, Jarvis? This boy’s trying to help us save what we can.”

“It’s okay,” Tom said, but Chris saw the splash of angry red seep over Tom’s jaw. “You’re scared, you’re starving, things have fallen apart here. I get that. You don’t know me and you certainly don’t trust me, especially when I show up with your Public Enemy Number One.” Tom tilted his head toward Chris. “I get that, too. But you won’t win this fight.”

“We have the right to defend ourselves,” Jarvis said.

“No one’s questioning that. But you have to decide what you’re truly defending.”

“Hell’s that mean?”

“It means that we’re not talking about fighting for Rule,” Chris rasped, and winced. After four hours, all he could manage was a harsh whisper through a throat that felt as if he’d swallowed razor blades. What freaked him out was when he’d glanced in a mirror. A blood-encrusted, blue-black bruise circled his throat like a dog collar. The whites of his eyes were awash in red hemorrhage from broken capillaries, and nearly as bloodred as what he’d seen in his dream of Peter. Breathing hurt, the muscles grabbing with every inhale, and two cracked ribs complained, although Kincaid said busted ribs would’ve hurt ten times worse: You’re just damned lucky that boy knows battlefield medicine. Lucky for him, Tom was very strong, too. After Chris’s heart started up and he was breathing again, Tom had simply scooped Chris up, hustled them all to the perimeter guards, and promptly surrendered.

Although Jayden said there’d been a moment after they’d killed the girl with the corn knife when Tom had . . . hesitated: When I said your name, you could see it in Tom’s face, how surprised he was to find out who you were, and . . . it was so weird. Tom was angry. Like he already knew something about you, and hated your guts. If Ellie hadn’t asked him what was wrong . . .

Jayden hadn’t said the rest, but his meaning was clear. Which made Chris wonder just what the hell Weller had said to Tom. He hadn’t had the time to find out. For the moment at least, Tom seemed to have swallowed his rage at Chris in favor of working together and getting these old men to listen to reason.