Sarah looked terribly, terribly sad.
“We were never in Lifeblood Deep,” she said. “They had to have drugged us at some point—knocked us out after we got in the Coffins, I don’t know—and then Lifted us and dropped us in the Wake, in the real Atlanta. It’s the only explanation.”
Michael’s head started spinning again.
Sarah gave his hand a hard squeeze. “Whatever was in that building, we really did destroy it. In the Wake, Michael. And I don’t know if it had anything to do with Kaine.”
Michael lay on a tiny cot in a cramped room. The floor, ceiling, and three walls were made of stone blocks. A line of thick bars made up the fourth wall. The only light was a single lonely lightbulb, which buzzed and flared every few minutes. Michael stared at the ceiling, overwhelmed by a deep grief like he’d never known. He wished he were dead.
He didn’t know exactly why he felt so despairingly sad. Things had been bad going on worse for a long time now. But being locked away—and worse, separated from his friends, which the guard had done a couple of hours earlier—gave him all the silence and time in the world to think about his problems.
And think he did.
About his Tangent parents, gone forever. About Helga, his loving Tangent nanny, gone as well. Sarah, her parents still missing, accused of being behind their disappearance. Bryson, accused of helping her. Kaine, on the loose and taking over more bodies by the second, for all Michael knew. Agent Weber, the only person he’d trusted besides Sarah and Bryson, betraying him.
He thought about Jackson Porter. The boy’s life, stolen.
Michael, a murderer, whether he’d meant to be or not.
And Gabby. He’d dragged her into this. And all he could see was her crumpled, injured body lying on the pavement.
It was all too much.
Michael had always prided himself on not being the crying sort. That had changed recently. The lights above looked blurry, and when he reached up to scratch his cheek, his fingers came away wet.
He rolled over and faced the wall, curled up into a ball.
And then Michael cried. The kind of crying where his chest hitched and his throat closed up and his shoulders shook. The kind where snot flowed and the sound of sobs and sniffles broke the gloomy silence.
Michael wept.
At some point, he fell asleep. He only realized this when a clanging on the bars ripped him from empty dreams. Disoriented, he sat up on the cot.
A guard stood there, chewing gum lazily, his gun out—that was what he’d used to drag across the metal bars. When Michael was awake and attentive, the man put the gun back into its holster.
“You have a visitor,” the guard said, bored. “Two, actually. A man and a woman. Which one you wanna see first?”
This woke Michael completely. He stood up. “Who … who are they?”
“Don’t know and don’t care. Which will it be?”
Michael thought hard. The whole situation was odd. Who could it possibly be? Finally he just said, “The man, I guess.”
The guard gave a bored nod, then walked away. Michael stayed where he was, heard a clang, a few whispers, then footsteps. Soon a different man came into view, alone, wearing jeans and a black shirt; brown hair, chin stubble, watery blue eyes.
Michael had never seen him before.
“Sure got yourself into a lot of trouble, Michael,” the man said. He didn’t say it kindly, but he wasn’t hostile, either. Just matter-of-fact.
“Who are you?” Michael asked.
“The name’s not important.”
Michael expected more, but the man went silent. He stared at Michael with his icy gaze.
“So …” Michael searched for words. “Just how bad was it? The police won’t tell us anything. We thought we were in the Sleep. Did … did we kill any people?” He’d been avoiding that thought, holding on to hope that everyone had gotten out okay. But they were certainly being treated like they’d at least tried to kill.
“People?” the man scoffed. “You did a lot worse than kill people. You killed the VNS.”
“Wha … what’re you talking about?” Michael’s chest hitched and he struggled to make sense of the man’s words.
The stranger gave a sad smile. “Only, killed is a strong word. Crippled is more appropriate. Severely. For a long time. Whatever that device you planted was … it was a beast, my young friend. It set off a chain reaction throughout all of their systems, like a physical virus, destroying everything as it traveled from station to station. Completely put them off the grid. How you knew where their mainframe was hidden, I’ll never know. And honestly, I don’t care. That’s not why I’m here.”