She stared at the calendar now. Stared at a note she’d made to give Francis a day off in honor of three months’ worth of great work.
Francis had given himself his own time off.
On the schedule a note from weeks earlier to find “P.” That was code for Prozac. She hadn’t found any Prozac. Dahra Baidoo’s medicine cabinet was just about empty. Dahra had given Mary a couple of different antidepressants, but they were having side effects. Vivid, absurd dreams that left Mary feeling unsettled all day long and made her dread sleep.
She was eating what she was supposed to.
But she had started vomiting again. Not every time. Just some of the time. Sometimes it came to a choice between not eating and allowing herself to stick her finger down her throat. Sometimes she couldn’t control both impulses, so she had to choose one.
And then sobbing, filled with hatred for her own mind, for the little cancers that seemed to eat at her soul night and day and night and day.
Your mother misses you…
On the calendar, Mother’s Day was a mark in red, “15th b’day!” She twisted Francis’s watch around and checked the time. Could it really be that late? Sixteen hours now. Sixteen hours until she would be fifteen years old.
Not long. Had to be ready for that, the big fifteen.
Had to be ready to fight the temptation that came to each kid in the FAYZ as they reached that deadly date.
Everyone knew by now what happened. Time would seem to freeze. And while you hung in a sort of limbo, a tempter would come to you. The one person you wanted most to please. The one you wanted most to be reunited with. And they would offer you escape. They would beg you to come across with them, to step out of the FAYZ.
There were a hundred theories of why it happened. Mary had heard numerological theories, conspiracy theories, astrological theories, every variation on aliens, government scientists…
Astrid’s explanation, the “official explanation,” was that the FAYZ was a freak of nature, an anomaly no one could understand, with rules the kids inside the FAYZ should try to discover and understand.
The weird psychological effect of the big fifteen was just a distortion in the mind. There was no reality to the “tempter” and no reality to the demon that followed it.
“Just your mind’s way of dramatizing a choice between life and death,” Astrid had explained with her usual slightly superior tone.
Mostly kids didn’t think about it. To a ten-or a twelve-year-old, age fifteen seemed a long way off. When your fifteenth started getting closer you started thinking about it, but Astrid-back when they still had electricity and printers-had actually printed up a handy little instruction sheet called “Surviving 15.”
Mary didn’t think Astrid would ever deliberately lie. No matter what Nerezza said. But she didn’t think Astrid was infallible, either.
Mostly Mary didn’t have time to waste on philosophical inquiries. To put it mildly. Mostly she was up to her neck in child-related crises.
But the date kept drawing closer. And then…Francis.
And now, Orsay.
On that day you will free your children so that you can be Mary the child again…
Mary could feel the depression closing in on her. It was a patient stalker. It watched and waited. And when it sensed the slightest weakness, it moved closer.
She had forced herself to eat.
And then she had forced herself to throw up.
She was not stupid. She was not unaware. She knew she was unraveling. Again.
Coming apart at the seams.
And soon she would be in that frozen, timeless stasis that Astrid’s helpful booklet had talked about. And she would see her mother’s face calling to her…
Lay down the burden, Mary…
And go to her…
Mary closed her eyes tight. When she opened them, Ashley stood before her. The little girl was crying. She’d had a nightmare and needed a hug.
A kid named Consuela, one of Edilio’s soldiers, had seen it first.
She had run to find Edilio. She was one of the late-night shift that kept an eye during the wee hours. She’d come across it, screamed, and gone running for Edilio. That’s what she was supposed to do.
And now Edilio was standing over it. Wondering what he was supposed to do. He knew the correct answer: report it to the council. He’d given Sam grief for failing to do that earlier.
But this…
“What should I do?” Consuela whispered.
“Don’t tell anyone.”
“Should I get Astrid? Or Sam?”
Perfectly reasonable questions. Edilio wished he had a perfectly reasonable answer. “Take off,” Edilio said. “Good job. Sucks you had to see this.”
She left, grateful to get away. And Edilio stared down balefully at the thing…the person…the body…that would be like a dagger in Sam’s heart.
In the months since the death of Drake Merwin, the defeat of the gaiaphage and the deal with the zekes, a tenuous order and calm had come to the FAYZ.
Edilio felt that tenuous structure, the system Edilio had worked so hard to build, the system he had just started to believe might last, coming apart in his hands now, like tissue paper in a rainstorm.
It had never been real. The FAYZ would always win.
Sam stood over the body. The sight of it rocked him. He took a stagger-step back.
Edilio grabbed him.
Sam felt panic welling up inside of him. He wanted to run. He couldn’t breathe. His heart was pounding in his chest. His veins filled with ice water.
He knew what had happened.
“Hey, Boss,” Edilio said. “You okay, man?”
Sam couldn’t answer. He took air in little gasps. Like a toddler on the edge of tears.
“Sam,” Edilio said. “Come on, man.”
Edilio looked from the mutilated body to his friend and back again.
He had been there. Sam knew the terrible wounds he was seeing. The body of a twelve-year-old boy named Leonard bore marks Sam knew and would never forget.
The marks of a whip.
The street was quiet. No one in sight. No one who could have borne witness.
“Drake,” Sam said in a whisper.
“No, man: Drake’s dead and gone.”
Sam, suddenly furious, grabbed Edilio’s shirt. “Don’t tell me what I’m seeing, Edilio. It’s him,” Sam yelled.
Edilio patiently pried Sam’s fingers off. “Listen, Sam, I know what it looks like. I saw you. I saw what you looked like that day. So, I know, all right? But man, it makes no sense. Drake is dead and buried under tons of rock in a mine shaft.”
“It’s Drake,” Sam said flatly.
“Okay, that’s enough, Sam,” Edilio snapped. “You’re freaking out.”
Sam closed his eyes and felt again the pain…pain like nothing he’d imagined could exist outside of hell. Pain like being burned alive.
The blows of Drake’s whip hand. Each one tearing strips of flesh…
“You don’t…You don’t know what it was like…”
“Sam…”
“Even after Brianna shot me full of morphine…you don’t know…you don’t know…All right? You don’t know. Pray to God you don’t ever know.”
Taylor chose that moment to bounce in. She took a look at the body and yelped. She covered her mouth and looked away.
“He’s back,” Sam said.
“Taylor, get Sam out of here. Take him to Astrid,” Edilio ordered.
“But Sam and Astrid are-”
“Just do it!” Edilio roared. “And then haul your butt around and get the other members of the council over there. They want to know what’s going on? Fine. Then they can get up out of their beds.”
“It doesn’t go away,” Sam said through gritted teeth. “You know that, Edilio? It doesn’t go away. It’s always with me. It’s always with me.”
“Take him,” Edilio ordered Taylor. “And tell Astrid we need to talk.”