Hunger (Gone 2)

36 HOURS, 47 MINUTES

“SHE’S BEEN LIKE this ever since.” Bug—the visible Bug—waved his hand at Orsay, who sat knock-kneed and slump-shouldered on the front steps of Coates Academy.

Caine stared down at her with more than casual interest. He touched the top of Orsay’s head and noted the way she flinched. “Been there. I think,” he said.

Diana yawned. She was still dressed in her silk pajamas with a robe pulled around her as if it was cold. It was never really cold in the FAYZ.

Bug swayed back and forth, barely able to stay awake.

“What was happening when she started zoning out?” Caine asked Bug.

“What?” Bug snapped his head forward, jerking himself awake. “She was in one of Sam’s dreams. Something about cans of food. Then all of a sudden ther

e’s this, like, creepy light show going on in one of the other rooms in the house and then it was like Orsay was on drugs or something.”

“What do you know about drugs?” Diana asked.

Bug shrugged. “Joe junior, my big brother, he got high a lot.”

Caine knelt down in front of Orsay. Gently he lifted her face. “Snap out of it,” he said.

There was no response. So he slapped her once, hard but with no malice. His palm left a pink stain on her cheek.

Orsay’s eyes flickered. She looked like a person waking up many hours too early.

“Sorry,” Caine said. He was very close to her. Close enough to inhale her breath. Close enough to hear her heart pounding like a cornered rabbit’s. “I need to know what you saw.”

The corner of her mouth turned down, like a crudely drawn cartoon of fear and sadness and something else.

“Come on,” Caine cajoled. “Whatever dreams you had, I’ve had worse. Terrible stuff you don’t even want to know about.”

“They weren’t terrible,” Orsay said in a small voice. “They were…overpowering. They made me want more.”

Caine shifted his weight away from her. “Then why are you all freaked out?”

“In his dreams…in his dreams the world…Everything is so…” She formed her hands as if trying to make a shape out of something that defied definition.

“Sam’s dreams?” Caine demanded, half skeptical, half angry.

Orsay looked sharply at him. “No. No, not Sam. Sam’s dreams are easy. There’s no magic in them.”

“Then tell me about them. That’s what I sent you to find out.”

Orsay shrugged. “He’s…I don’t know. Like, worried. He’s distracted,” she said dismissively. “He thinks he’s screwing up and, anyway, he just wants to get away from it all. And of course, he thinks about food a lot.”

“Poor baby,” Diana said. “All that power. All that responsibility. Boo-hoo.”

Caine laughed. “I guess being the boss isn’t what Sam thought it would be.”

“I think it’s exactly what he thought it would be,” Diana argued. “I don’t think he ever wanted any of this. I think he just wanted to be left alone.” That last sentence she spoke pointedly.

“I don’t leave people alone when they screw with me,” Caine said. “Useful information, Diana.”

He stood up. “So. Sam is running scared. But not scared of me. Good. He’s worried about his silly job as mayor of loserville. Good.” He tapped the top of Orsay’s head. “Hey. Anything about the power plant in Sam’s dreams?”

Orsay shook her head. She was off again, off in some zombie trance reliving some strange hallucination of her own or maybe someone else’s.

Caine clapped his hands together. “Good. Sam isn’t obsessing over the power plant. The enemy,” he said with a grand flourish, “is looking inward, not outward. In fact, we could strike at any time. Except.”