to where a shaken, bruised, and seriously angry Dekka was
picking herself up off the concrete.
“What happened?” Sam demanded, leaping from the front
seat.
The adrenaline was finally kicking in. But even now he felt
strangely disconnected. Even now, rushing toward trouble.
Like it wasn’t really his trouble. Like it was some other part of
him that was doing this.
“I tried to fly,” Dekka said in a low growl. She shook her
head and bent over to squeeze her knee. “Ow.”
“We heard something louder than gunfire,” Edilio said.
“Like thunder. Or like an explosion.”
“Sorry, I wasn’t noticing thunder,” Dekka said.
Orc came loping over from one direction and Howard
from the other.
“Orc, man, that was a seriously cool move,” Howard
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enthused. He ran to his friend and slapped the monster on
the shoulder repeatedly.
“I owe you, Orc,” Dekka said.
“What just happened?” Sam repeated.
Howard answered. “Drake, man. He took a shot at Dekka.
Dekka goes zooming up. Then, bam, comes down hard. Orc,
man, Orc snatches up this motorcycle, right? He yanks the
wheel off it and throws it at Drake. Like a Frisbee.” Howard
actually clapped his hands in glee. “Right through the hole you
burned in the wall, Sammy. Like sinking a full-court shot.”
“Gonna cost you,” Orc grumbled.
“Oh yeah,” Howard seconded. “Gonna cost. Orc doesn’t
save the day for free.”
“No one else heard a really big sound?” Edilio pressed.
“We kind of had guns going off, Edilio,” Dekka snapped.
“You okay, Dekka?” Sam asked.
“I’ll live,” she said.
“Dekka: what do you think would happen to a cave or a
mine shaft if you turned off gravity?” Sam asked.
“Is this a quiz?”
“No.”
Dekka nodded. “Okay. I guess if I hit it a few times, on-off,
on-off, like that, I guess it would start to crumble. Probably
collapse.”
“Yeah.” Sam put his hand on her shoulder. “I have to ask
you to do something.”
“I’m going to guess that you want me to crash a cave or a
mine shaft. So?”
“So it’s not just some mine shaft,” Edilio said darkly.
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1
“There’s a thing inside it. It’s . . . I don’t know how to explain
it. It gets inside you. It makes you scared.”
“I need you to go with Edilio. Seal this thing in,” Sam said.
“Howard? I need you and Orc to get back to town. I can’t
believe I’m even saying this, but I need you two to keep an eye
on things in town.”
“That’s going to cost—”
“Yeah. I know,” Sam interrupted Howard. “How about we
negotiate later?”
Howard shrugged. “Okay, but I’m trusting you.” He
pointed at his own eyes, then at Sam, making an “I’m watching you” gesture.
“What are you going to do?” Dekka asked Sam.
“I’m going to deal with Caine. I have to stop him here.”
“You don’t want to go at Caine and Drake by yourself,”
Edilio objected. “No way. I’m not letting you kill yourself.”
Sam forced a laugh. “I wouldn’t dream of it. Howard, as
soon as you get to town, find Breeze if you don’t pass her
on the way. If you don’t find Brianna, find Taylor. Tell them
to send help. And tell them I need someone to let me know
what’s going on with you guys at the mine.”
“Maybe should have turned on the phones, huh?” Edilio
said. He winced, realizing too late that it sounded like
sniping.
Sam said, “Yeah. Add that to the list of mistakes I’ve made
lately.”
“Yeah, here’s one not to make, Sam: don’t go in there by
yourself.”
“Didn’t I just say I wouldn’t?” Sam said evenly.
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Edilio looked him in the eyes. Sam looked down and said,
Edilio.”
Dekka nodded solemnly.
“Do not do that to me,” Edilio said. “Do not die on me,
Sam.”
The fuel rod. Twelve feet long. Sheathed in lead now, but still
so dangerous, so deadly.
Jack held what looked like an oversized remote control.
His eyes bulged. He swallowed convulsively. He tapped a button on the remote, and the rod stopped moving. He let go a shaky sigh.
The fuel rod hung from the crane, swinging just slightly.
Caine found himself drawn to it, wanting to touch it. But it
was hot. From twenty feet away it brought beads of sweat out
on Caine’s forehead.
Caine heard footsteps coming up from behind. Without
turning to look, he said, “You jumped the gun, Drake.”
“Not me,” Drake said, panting. “Howard spotted me.”
“And Sam?” Caine asked, mesmerized by the dull gray fuel
rod, by the contrast between its devastating killing power and
its featureless exterior.
“He just pulled up with the Mexican.”
Caine glanced at the hole he’d made in the dome. A loose
chunk of concrete came loose, fell a long way, and clattered
noisily down on some unseen equipment. Through the hole
he could see the hillside, purple in the dying light of the sun.
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It would take Jack another ten, fifteen minutes, to maneuver the fuel rod to the loading dock. In ten minutes Sam could be here.
“We can’t have Sam on our butts as we move,” Caine said.
An idea occurred to him. Beautiful in its simplicity. Kill two
birds with one stone.
“Time for you to prove you’re as tough and mean as you
think you are, Drake,” Caine said.
“I don’t have to prove anything,” Drake snapped.
Caine met his lieutenant’s furious gaze. He moved close
to Drake. Close enough to whisper if he wanted to, but no,
he wanted this to be very public. “Drake, when I sent Diana
to get Jack, you know what? She got me Jack. Now, someone
needs to stop Sam, or at least slow him down. Should I ask
Diana to take care of that? Because she might just find a way.
Sam is a guy, after all.”
Diana, bless her twisted heart, immediately saw what
Caine was doing.
“Oh, Sam?” She laughed in her knowing way. “You know
he’s got to be frustrated with his ice princess. It shouldn’t be
too hard for me to . . . slow him down.”
The line would have worked better before Diana had
shaved her head and dressed to look like a boy, but Caine saw
that Drake immediately took the bait.
“That’s what you want?” Drake asked. “You want me to
take Sam down? Either he kills me or I kill him, right? Either
way, that’s good for you and this witch here.”
“You’re stalling, Drake,” Caine said.
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Caine could practically read the psyc
hopath’s mind as the
gears in his head turned over the possibilities. No way Drake
could refuse.
No way. Not if he wanted to go on being Whip Hand. Not
if he ever hoped to replace Caine.
“I’ll take Sam down,” Drake said in a voice he intended to
be menacing but that came out sounding just a little wobbly.
He must have been less than satisfied with the effect. So
with a low growl he repeated, “I’ll stop Sam right here.”
Caine nodded, offering just the slightest acknowledgment.
He turned away from Drake and winked at Diana, who kept
her expression carefully blank.
Poor Drake. It wasn’t enough to be ambitious. A leader
had to be smart. A leader had to be ruthless and manipulative, not just a thug.
Great leaders had to know when to manipulate and when
to confront.
Most of all, a great leader had to know when to take great
risks.
“Let’s hope they built that fuel rod strong,” Caine said.
He raised his hands and the fuel rod rose, floated in the
air, tethered at one end to the crane.
“Hit the release,” Caine ordered.
Jack said, “Caine, if it breaks open—”
“Do it!” Caine roared.
Even Drake took a step back. And Jack hit the button that
released the robot crane’s hold.
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5
flew like the bolt from a crossbow.
His aim was good. But not perfect. The cylinder scraped
the concrete as it shot through the hole.
“That’s the quick way to do it,” Caine said.
“If we find it and it’s broken open, we’re all dead,” Jack
moaned.
Caine ignored him. He turned to Drake. He saw shrewd
calculation in his lieutenant’s eyes.
“I’ll take care of Sam,” Drake said.
Caine laughed. “Or he’ll take care of you.”
“I’ll catch up with you, Caine,” Drake said.
It was a warning. He left little doubt that if he survived the
encounter with Sam, he’d be ready to take Caine down next.
“Tell you what,” Drake said. “I’ll bring you your brother’s
hand. He took mine: it’s time I paid him back.”
Sam watched Edilio and the others drive off. He felt strangely
peaceful. The first time in days.
The only life he was risking here was his own. And in his
mind, he had a plan: If he did this, he was done. Done.
He’d made too many mistakes. He’d overlooked too many
things. It wasn’t him who’d thought to try fishing, it was
Quinn. And it wasn’t Sam who’d thought of using SUVs to
keep harvesters safe from the zekes. It was Astrid.
Sam had been too late, too slow, too distracted, too unsure.
He hadn’t moved in time to ration food. He hadn’t motivated
enough people to help out. He’d let the resentment between
freaks and normals get ugly. He hadn’t protected Ralph’s
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from Drake, or the power plant from Caine.
Kids were sitting in the dark in Perdido Beach, thinking
thoughts of cannibalism. And he was in charge, so it was
on him.
Even now, Sam had the nagging feeling that he had missed
something vital. Something. A resource.
A weapon.
Well, if he survived this day, he was finished. Let Astrid be
in charge. Or Albert. Or Dekka. Best of all, probably, Edilio.
If he won this day, if he stopped Caine, and if Dekka closed
the mine shaft, then that was enough. More than enough.
And if one of them failed? If Caine got through and Dekka
did not kill the gaiaphage? It had Lana. It had been inside
Caine’s mind. It knew what Lana knew, what Caine knew.
Drake as well, no doubt. It knew all their strengths and all
their limits. And if it became what it wanted to become, then
what?
He was missing something.
But what else was new? Soon, it would be someone else’s
problem. He was going surfing.
He didn’t need waves, not really. He could just paddle his
board out and lie there. Just lie there. That would be fine.
But first . . .
Sam crossed the parking lot to the door of the turbine
room. He expected to be challenged. He expected to be shot.
But he reached the door and found it unguarded.
A relief. But not a good thing. Caine would have someone
watching the door. If he was still inside.
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7
He stepped through into the eerie and unexpected silence.
The plant was shut down. The turbines were no longer turning. Normally you couldn’t hear anything. Now he could hear his own footsteps.
He found the passageway to the control room with the
door forced inward. It took him a moment to make sense of
the tools driven into the floor and bent back.
The control room itself was empty and darker than usual.
Emergency lights glowed. The instruments and computer
screens were all still on. But there was no sign of life.
A puddle of sticky, drying blood had been tracked all over.
Red footprints.
It was not what he expected, this silence. Where was Caine?
Where was Drake?
The power plant was a vast complex and they might be
anywhere. They could wait for him in a hundred different
locations, wait in ambush until he stumbled onto them. Caine
could hit him before he had a chance to react.
Sam stood poised, uncertain. What was going on? He
wished he had asked Edilio to send Brianna here. She could
search the entire plant in two minutes.
Think it through, he ordered himself. They were here to
steal uranium. They were going to take their prize to the
mine. So how would they do it? Where would they be?
The reactor, of course. That’s where the deadly metal was.
“Not a happy thought,” Sam said to the empty room.
He headed down the hallway, following the helpful wall
signs.
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A massive steel door guarded the entry to the reactor.
Caine had not bothered to close it behind him.
Down a long, echoing, dimly lit, long hallway. A second
massive steel door, this one open as well, though there was a
security keypad beside it and surely it must normally be kept
closed and locked.
It had been deliberately left open, Sam realized. For him.
Was it because Caine had released radioactivity into the area?
Was that it? Was his body already absorbing a fatal dose?
No. Caine wouldn’t be shortsighted enough to contaminate the whole place so that the power could never be turned back on. The one thing he was sure of was that Caine would
want the electricity back on someday, if only so that he could
control it.
That made sense. It did not, however, put an end to Sam’s
fears. If Caine had contaminated the place, then Sam was a
dead kid walking.
He stepped into the reactor room. It was hot and airless
despite the
vast, arching dome overhead. It was impossible
not to be frightened by the reactor core itself, that too-blue
swimming hole full of pent-up power. Impossible not to know
what it represented.
He walked around it, poised, ready, alert. He came around
the far side of the reactor, and there, waiting, was Drake Mer-
win, his whip hand waving lazily at his side. He was leaning
calmly against an instrument panel.
“Hey, Sam,” Drake said.
“Drake,” Sam said.
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489
“You know what’s cool, Sam? I never paid that much
attention in school, but that’s because I never saw how I was
going to use any of that stuff.” Drake pulled what looked like
an oversized remote control from his pocket. He tapped a
button.
An urgent alarm blared.
“Walk away, Drake,” Sam yelled over the sound of the
klaxon.
“I’m going to hurt you, Sam. And you’re going to take it.”
“What are you doing, Drake?”
“Well, the way I understand it, Sam, there are these control rods. Stick them in, and the reactor goes dead. Pull a few out, and it starts up. Pull them all out at once, and you get a
meltdown.”
Something was rising from the ominous blue of the pool.
Dozens of narrow poles that hung from a glowing circular
collar.
“You’re bluffing, Drake.”
Drake grinned. “Keep thinking that, Sam. What do you
think pretty Astrid will look like after her hair starts falling
out in clumps?”
He turned the remote around so that Sam could see. “This
button right here? It drops the control rods back in. And
everyone lives. If no one hits the button . . . well. According
to Jack, we’ll die pretty quick. Everyone else in the FAYZ dies
slow.”
“You’d die, too,” Sam said, knowing he was just stalling,
mind whirring crazily, trying to figure out a way to stop this.
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Was Drake crazy enough to . . . Yes. Of course he was.
The alarm redoubled in volume and intensity. It was an
electronic scream now.
“I’m not worried, Sam, because you won’t let it happen,”
Drake shrieked to be heard over the alarm.
“Drake . . .” Sam raised his hands, palms facing Drake.
Drake held his hand out over the glowing, throbbing pool.
Held the remote now with just two fingers.
“If I drop it . . . ,” Drake warned.
Slowly Sam lowered his arms to his side.