Fear (Gone 5)

Lana said nothing. She said nothing for so long, Quinn began to wonder if she had left silently. Then, in a voice so low it didn’t even sound like her: “In the dark like this I can feel it. So much closer. It’s more real to me than you are because I can see it. I see it in my head. There’s nothing else to see, so I see it.”

“You’re not telling me why I should hurt anyone, Lana.”

“It’s alive. And it’s scared. It’s so scared. Like it’s dying. Like that kind of scared. I see… I see images that don’t really mean anything. It’s not really reaching for me anymore. It doesn’t have time to reach for me anymore. It’s the baby it wants. All its hopes are on the baby.”

“Diana’s baby?”

“It doesn’t have the baby yet, Quinn. Which means it’s not over yet. Even here in the dark, with all of us so scared. It’s not over. Believe that, okay? Believe that it’s not over.”

“It’s not over,” Quinn said, feeling and probably sounding puzzled.

“Those kids back there, if they start to panic they’ll hurt themselves. I won’t be able to find them and help them, so they’ll die. And see, that’s what I’m not going to let him do. The gaiaphage, I mean. I can’t kill him, I can’t keep him from getting the baby. What I can do, and what you can do, too, Quinn, is keep as many of us alive as possible, for as long as possible. Maybe because it’s the right thing to do. But also … also…” He felt her touch his chest, fumble from there to find his shoulder, then down to take his hand and hold it with a surprisingly strong grip. “Also because I’m not letting him win. He wants us all dead and gone, because as long as we live, we’re a threat. Well, no. No. We’re not going to give up.”

She let go of his hand.

“It’s the only way I have left to fight him, Quinn. By not dying, and by not letting any of those kids back there die.”

THIRTY-ONE

8 HOURS, 58 MINUTES

PENNY HAD NEVER felt like this before. She’d never experienced a sense of awe. Never even known what people were talking about when they went on and on about some sunset or the sweep of stars in a clear night sky.

But now she was feeling something.

She couldn’t see. It was as black as if her eyes had been gouged out. (A thought that made her smile at memories of Cigar.) And yet she knew where she was going.

Her cut foot no longer mattered. When she stubbed her toe on a rock it didn’t matter. That she had to feel her way along the narrow path with her hands out like a blind person, it didn’t matter, none of it, because she could feel … feel somethin

g so great, so, so magnificent.

She’d never been here before, but it was a homecoming anyway.

She laughed out loud.

“You can feel it, can’t you?”

Penny was startled by the voice. It was coming from where Drake had been but it was a girl’s voice. Of course: Brittney.

“I feel it,” Penny confirmed. “I feel it.”

“When you get closer you’ll hear his voice inside you,” Brittney said. “And it’s not some dream or something; it’s real. And then, when you get all the way down to the bottom, then you can actually touch him.”

Penny thought that sounded weird. Not that she had a big problem with weird. But Brittney was not Drake. Drake she could respect. The Whip Hand—and even more, the will to use it—made Drake powerful.

And attractive, too, as she remembered from former days. She hadn’t ever paid that much attention to him back then because Caine was the one for her. Caine had the dark good looks and the brain—so smart. Drake had been a very different boy: like a shark. He looked like a shark, with dead eyes and a hungry mouth.

Well, she’d been wrong about Caine. Caine was totally under the thumb of that witch Diana. Drake, though, he sure didn’t love Diana. In fact, he hated her. He hated her as much as Penny did.

Maybe Drake was better-looking after all. Anyway, good luck to Diana trying to steal him away like she had Caine.

Brittney was bringing up the rear. Then Penny. Diana and Justin stumbled and wept and fell down in front, feeling their clumsy way along.

Unfortunately Penny could not sustain the illusion that had paralyzed Brianna from this distance. It would have faded by now. Which meant Brianna was free to come after them.

Penny grinned in the dark. Good luck catching them. Let Brianna come back in range again. Her speed was useless now. She was nothing now. The Breeze? Hah. If she came within range, Penny would make her run, run real fast, run until her legs broke. Hah!

“He’ll speak to me; he’ll speak to you,” Brittney said in a singsong voice. “He’ll tell us what to do.”