Josin L McQuein - Meridian

“I know.” I nod.

“It’s driving me crazy—and it’s only getting worse,” she says. “Maybe I should invite that Fade over and see if it knows what’s going on in his head— Trey! That’s it.”

“Uh-oh,” Anne-Marie says as her mother runs out of patience. The countdowns are done.

Mr. Pace leans over and whispers something, but it doesn’t help.

“No, what I’m going to do is drag him out of that room and down the hall by his collar. I’ve warned that child. . . .”

She throws her napkin onto her empty plate, storming off down the hall, still demanding her son come out. The shouts stop, replaced by a beep loud enough that we can hear it at the table. Tobin glances down, embarrassed, and the two men snicker.

“Parental override,” Anne-Marie says. “Trey’s too old, but his door hasn’t been rewired, yet. She can still open it.”

Just as I’m debating whether or not to crane my neck and see if Anne-Marie’s mother makes good on her threat to haul Trey to dinner despite her diminutive size, a shriek from the hall stops the laughter around the table. It’s the same sound Anne-Marie’s mother made the night she thought the Fade had taken her children.

“Stay—” Mr. Pace starts.

“Here,” adds Tobin’s father.

They’re on their feet and running in nearly perfect sync, the way the Fade do, and I’m the only one who notices. None of us obey. We rise as though we all have the same disobedient thought at once and race after them, in time to catch the last of what Anne-Marie’s mother tells them.

“His eyes . . . his face . . .”

She’s got her back to the wall, outside Trey’s room, and then slides down so her weight’s on the balls of her feet. Her hands are to her mouth, holding in another scream. She doesn’t move until we try to pass her. One of her hands shoots out to grab Anne-Marie’s.

“Don’t, baby. Don’t go inside.”

Anne-Marie’s the picture of silent terror, probably as sure as I am that her brother’s dead. Dead eyes and a corpse’s face, what else would make her mother act this way? She gives me a panicked look that’s very clear: find out what’s going on.

Listen , Cherish says suddenly. Hear .

But what good is it to listen if no one’s speaking?

They are speaking, she says. You haven’t heard . He hears .

I enter Trey’s room slowly. Mr. Pace, Col. Lutrell, and Tobin stand on the other side of the threshold, with a wide gap between them and Trey’s bed. He looks fine.

Trey’s sitting cross-legged on his bed with a pad of paper in his lap. His room’s full of discarded pages—on the walls and floor, haphazard piles of them on the desk and chair.

He drew home, Cherish says. He sees home. Sick .

She doesn’t mean homesick. Trey’s pictures are all sickened versions of the Dark, even though he’s never seen it. The buildings are strange and unfamiliar, the animals menacing. Fade I don’t recognize with distorted bodies, and horror-stricken people I don’t know. Trey’s still drawing in a frenzy when his mother finally collects herself enough to come inside, holding Anne-Marie behind her.

“Trey, honey, can you look at me?” she asks. “It—it’s dinnertime. Please stop.”

“Almost done, Mom, I swear.” He sounds normal enough. It’s like he doesn’t know he has an audience, and he didn’t hear her scream.

“Trey, are you okay?” Anne-Marie asks.

I’ve crept closer to Tobin, leaning my cheek against his arm; his fingers twine between mine as the air compresses from the weight of worry flowing off so many people. I could choke from the stench of it.

“And . . . done !”

Trey’s answer is the final flourish of whatever he’s working on. He turns to face us, beaming and displaying the image of a ferocious tusked pig surrounded by ominous shadows.

“Any idea what this is?” he asks. “Wait, what are you all doing in here?”

No one answers. No one even breathes.

Trey’s face is swirled with Fade-marks, and his eyes are gleaming metallic gold.

“Get out of here,” Dad orders me.

“What’s wrong?” Trey asks. No one’s told him how he looks.

This pretty much blows Rueful’s “only willing hosts” line to bits. Trey has no idea what’s happening to him. How can that be willing?

So much for neutrality.

Mr. Pace starts stacking Trey’s drawings into a pile, as though that’s the problem.

“Am I in trouble?” Trey tries asking Annie.

“Move!” Annie’s mom pushes her to her room and uses her override to lock the door.

“Let me out!” Annie screams from the other side. She’s beating on the door, but she won’t even make a dent. “Mom, please! Let me out! Mom!”

Nique won’t do it. She’d rather have Annie locked in and scared than free to roam and turning Fade like her brother.

“What are you doing?” Trey asks. “What’s wrong with Annie?”

“Nothing,” Mr. Pace says. He grabs Trey’s wrist when Trey tries to leave his room. “You stay here.”

“But what’d I do?”

“Go.” Dad shuffles me and Marina out the door when we don’t leave on our own. “Marina, you’re welcome to stay with Tobin, but I want you both out of here. And I’m checking the entry alert, Tobin. You have two minutes to get to the apartment and ping me, or I’m coming to find you.”

Marina doesn’t say a word, but I know what she’s thinking, and none of it’s good. When we get to my place, she keeps going. I’m not stupid—she’ll go to him to sort this out.

I go inside and then stop the door so it can’t close all the way. Once I’ve tripped the entry sensor, so Dad will get the ping to tell him I’m home, I head back out, allowing the door to close behind me. Hopefully, he’s too busy to notice my tracker heading toward the Arc.

If Trey turns, I’m next.

No, Annie’s next. She was exposed first.

What am I thinking? Everyone is next.

“How did you beat me out here?” Marina catches sight of me halfway across the quad and crosses the rest at a jog. “How’d you even know I’d be here?”

“Closest crossing point. I took a different route.”

She stops beside me, at the edge of the Arc. The lamps are conserving power right now. They give just enough light so people can see where they’re going and find their way back. No one’s panicking yet, but they will. Then the lights will go completely hot.

“Were you put back on duty because of Trey?” Marina asks. “Are they tightening security already?”

“They wouldn’t start with me, and they wouldn’t put me here.” Sykes would be patrolling the short side. Trainees get dumped in low-priority sections. “The lights would be brighter.”

We’ll be at Red-Wall as soon as our elders declare Trey a security breach.

“How long have we got?”

“As long as Dad and Trey’s parents can buy us.” So, not long.

It’ll only take minutes to get Trey to the hospital, so long as he doesn’t flip out and fight them. Mr. Pace and Nique can stall Dr. Wolff for an hour or two before he either alerts Honoria out of habit or she hears about Trey herself. If they’re lucky, no one will see Trey en route and they’ll be able to lock down the hospital without details circulating.

Crap . I’m starting to sound like Honoria. Worse, I’m starting to understand her.

The only choices are to hide what’s happened or to start a riot with full disclosure. They’ve got to get Trey contained.

And then they’ll come for us.

Marina knows that, too. It’s why she’s here.