by Rich Larson
She felt sick. Then sicker, as her doppelgänger slid into her seat at the table. It wasn’t her. It was Ivan the way they’d always wanted Ivan to be. She watched, with a tight kind of panic rising up her body, as her dad slugged Ivan in the arm, but softly, not meant to bruise. Ivan returned it, grinning. Her mom reached across the table to show the clip on her phone to Ivan too, while her dad started dishing food onto their plates. Everyone laughing, everyone smiling.
Violet got to her feet. It wasn’t real. She knew it wasn’t real. They were showing her this to torture her. Her fists balled tight at her sides. She wanted to smash them on the table, dump the pot onto Ivan’s lap, grab a knife, and—
They were happy. Ivan was happy, the way Violet never had been. Trembling, she backed away, then started down the hall, letting their conversation fade. She opened the door to her bedroom. There was a warm-up jacket she didn’t recognize tossed over the chair. A few medals dangling off a hook in the wall. Ivan how her dad had wanted him. Something moved behind her and she turned around.
“Do you get it?” Ivan asked her, his hands stuffed in his pockets. “They would’ve been this happy, if you could have just been fucking normal. Everyone would have been happy.” His voice was deep, almost as deep as her dad’s.
“This isn’t real,” Violet said shakily.
“Yeah, I know,” Ivan said. “But it could have been. Dad wouldn’t have started drinking himself to death. Mom wouldn’t cry herself to sleep every night wondering if it was something she did, something she did when you were little. All that shit, that’s all on you.”
“Shut up,” Violet whispered. “Shut up. You’re only in my head.”
“I’m going to help you, though,” Ivan said, stepping forward. “I’m going to fix you.” He reached forward and grabbed her forearm; she yanked it back.
“Stay away,” she said, but Ivan didn’t try to touch her again. The skin where his fingers had brushed her was itching. Blistering. She rubbed at it, not daring to take her eyes off her doppelgänger, but he just gave a sad sort of shrug and walked out of the bedroom, closing the door behind him.
Violet looked down. Hair was sprouting out of her arms: not the fuzz she was used to, but dark and wiry like the stuff her dad grew on his. She felt the fear like cold black ice in her stomach. Of course they would do this to her. They were in her head. They were in her hell.
She didn’t want to look in the mirror, but suddenly it was in front of her and she couldn’t drag her eyes away. Something between a sob and a scream got stuck in her throat. She couldn’t breathe. Her shoulders were thickening with muscle, her chest widening, flattening.
“No,” she choked. “No, no, no—”
Her voice broke on the last one, braying and dropping. She could feel more body hair creeping up her legs, trailing down her belly, and the thing she sometimes hated even more than she hated her Parasite was growing and thickening against her thigh. Everything she’d worked so hard for, all her hours of careful research, all her months of hunting pills and fighting nausea and adjusting dosages, was being ripped away.
“Not real,” she groaned, her new voice loud and wrong in her ears. “It’s not real.”
But even if it wasn’t real, they could keep her here forever. They could keep her here so long she’d forget what real even meant.
Violet started to scream.
25
Wyatt told Bo he didn’t want Gloom inside the theater yet, so they went to a café patio around the corner from it. Two of the bubbled glass tables were still standing. One was occupied by a pair of wasters, both of them women, curling their hands around invisible mugs and bobbing their heads in pantomimed conversation. They had swollen bloody feet and were stick-thin. Bo figured the one of them was sick with a fever; she had sweat pouring down into her blank eyes and her gesticulating hands kept shaking.
The free table was short a chair, so Wyatt slid it out from under her. She fell and something gave a dull crack that made Bo wince. Wyatt didn’t look. He dragged the chair over to the free table and the three of them sat down. Bo stayed on the very edge of the plastic. His Parasite was crackling and this time, if it came to it, he thought he would be able to vanish Wyatt. Even if that meant him spinning through space as a frozen corpse.
“We didn’t leave things in a great place,” Wyatt said, laying his hands palms down on the table. “But I don’t hold grudges, Bo. That’s what weak people do.” He smiled, and it made Bo almost boil over. “You and me, we aren’t weak people, right?”
“What did you tell the others?” Bo snapped. “What did you tell them happened?”
Wyatt had moved his gaze to Gloom, studying him. “I told them the truth,” he said. “Violet was trying to free the pod. Why else would she have been sneaking around there, right? We tried to stop her. The pod got away and took you and her with it.” His eyes flicked back to Bo. “All the Lost Boys were really getting to like you, Bo. So I made you sound really good. Made you a bit of a martyr. I didn’t know you’d be back.”
“I’m back,” Bo said. “And I’m not scared of you either.” He knew in his gut it wasn’t true. He remembered a story his mom had told him once, about a farmer who made a deal with the devil. He couldn’t remember the ending.
“Why would you be?” Wyatt asked, frowning. “We’re all on the same side, right? Your friend here too, you said.”
“I am called Gloom,” Gloom said. “I am a saboteur.” He didn’t bow this time.
Bo tried to rein in his breathing. Calm his Parasite down. He needed to focus on the important thing, not on Wyatt’s lies. He needed to focus on Lia and Violet.
“Gloom was being held prisoner on the ship,” he said evenly. “We freed him, and he told us what’s going on. He told us what the Parasites are for.”
Wyatt’s eyes gleamed for a split second. “I’d be really interested to hear that.”
Jointly, Bo and Gloom explained about the keys, and the door, and the ships waiting on the other side to come through and do to the rest of the world what had been done to their city. They explained the machine, and the kids in the tanks who needed to be rescued before their Parasites were tuned enough to open the door.
“If the door opens, a hundred ships come through,” Bo finished. “And then we’re all screwed. They won’t need to grow any more Parasites. They won’t let the Lost Boys keep running around. Everyone will be dead, or else clamped. Gloom said they’ll make us slaves.”
“Clamp’s in the head, better off dead,” Wyatt said blandly, staring up at the sky over Bo’s head, pensive. Bo tried not to look at the table beside them. For a long moment the only sound was the fallen waster scritching around on the concrete, still holding up her imaginary drink.
“So, what, you think we just have to get the kids off the ship?” Wyatt finally said, sounding annoyed. “Then they just bring another batch up from the warehouses and start … tuning those.” He looked to Gloom. “How long can they keep us contained?” he asked. “With the fog. We can’t get out of the city, obviously nobody can get in. How long can they do that?”
“A long time,” Gloom said. “A year, perhaps.”
“Then anything we do is just delaying them,” Wyatt said. “Unless you have ships too. Are your people sending ships to help us out, or what?”
Gloom slowly shook his head. “I was the only measure taken,” he said. “Our war is fought on several disparate fronts.”
Wyatt nodded, like he’d expected as much, then leaned forward. “What do you really look like?” he asked flatly.
Gloom glanced over at Bo, questioning.
“Show him,” Bo muttered.
Wyatt flinched backward as Gloom burst into his scuttling black motes. That might have given Bo some small bit of satisfaction, if he wasn’t reflecting on what Wyatt had said. Even if they did rescue Lia and Violet and the others, it was only a matter of time before the door opened. The world was still going to end. In a way, it already had.
“What do you
get out of all this?” Wyatt demanded, looking into the center of the swirling black with an almost enraptured expression. “Why are you trying to stop them?”
Gloom reformed, leaning back in his chair. “I do not know,” he said sourly. “I am a saboteur. They are the enemy. They have always been the enemy.”
Wyatt grinned so wide the cut on his lip reopened. “Enemy of my enemy is my friend,” he said, thumbing away the blood. “Right, Bo?”
“Then what can we do?” Bo demanded, ignoring it. “If they’re going to open the door eventually, what can we do?”
Wyatt shrugged. “We have to do something permanent,” he said. He stared over Bo’s head again, his gray eyes narrowed in thought.
Bo set his jaw and stared down at the dirty glass table, collecting thoughts of his own. Even if they couldn’t stop the other ships from coming, they still had a chance of rescuing Lia and Violet. But was Wyatt going to help him? It would add more Lost Boys to the cause. They would have active Parasites, like Violet’s. Would that be enough to persuade him? He opened his mouth to try.
Then Gloom leaned forward, steepling his pale hands on the table. “I have been thinking,” he said. “Perhaps I could sabotage the machine.”
Bo looked up sharply.
“Destroy it, you mean?” Wyatt asked. “That might work. Can they build another one?”
“Not destroy it,” Gloom said. “It is possible I could reprogram it.” His voice was tinged with excitement. “To bring the ships through, they will open the door in your atmosphere a safe distance from the surface. It will look, to you, like a tear in the sky. But it is possible I could reprogram the machine with new coordinates for where the door opens.”
“So the other ships come out in a volcano, or something?” Bo asked.
“I do not know the coordinates of a volcano,” Gloom said. “And the ship will not know them either. But the ship will know where it is now.”
A beat passed, then Wyatt gave a wolfish grin. “The tear opens right where the ship is,” he said. “Swallows it up. Sends it back to the other side. Is that right?”
“Yes,” Gloom said. “The ship will be pulled through the door to the other side. It may even block the path of the other ships.” His face was stretched out with a triumphant smile. “I can set the door to collapse. They will not have time to use their engines. When the door collapses, they will be trapped on the other side.”
Bo’s mind was racing. “But if we open the door, that means someone’s going to have to be in the machine,” he said. “They’ll get pulled through too. All of us will. Anyone who’s on the ship.”
“The timing will be delicate,” Gloom said. “I can ensure a delay. A small delay. A few minutes. Enough for us to leave the ship before it is pulled through.”
Bo tried to picture it. How many kids had been floating in the tanks? Four. Minus whoever was in the machine, three. They would have to get all three of them out while Gloom rewired the machine, and Violet too. Then, once the machine was set, Gloom would have to drag whoever was inside of it out with him before the door opened and sucked the ship through.
Violet would say it was insane. Bo knew that much. They would have to be lucky, but they’d been lucky before.
“Alright,” he said. “But how will we get back up there? And get everyone back off? Don’t say you’ll fly us.”
Gloom’s expression turned back to a frown. “I do not know,” he said.
Wyatt was still staring over Bo’s head, up at the sky. “I don’t think going up will be a problem,” he said. “They’re landing. Look.”
Bo spun up out of his seat. Wyatt was right. The massive black ship that had drifted over them like a shadow for the past four months was slowly sinking through the sky. Bo watched, his heart pounding his ribs. Scores of pods were circling around and underneath. Was something wrong with it? There was a rumbling like thunder and Bo realized the ship wasn’t coming straight down. It was angled toward the docks. The warehouses.
If the ship set down on top of them, it would crush them and all the kids inside to dust. Bo felt his Parasite squirm at the thought. The ship passed out of sight, hidden by buildings, but Gloom turned to motes and slithered across the street, up the side of an apartment. Bo followed at a jog, careful to be aware of where Wyatt was behind him.
Gloom re-formed near the top of the building, clinging there like a lizard.
“Where’s it landing?” Bo shouted up at him.
“The water,” Gloom said. “It is going to set down in the harbor.”
As he said it, the rumbling cut short, and a moment later Bo heard the distant thump of displaced water. He could imagine the waves of foam rippling out, the boats rocking on their lines. Off the docks, then, and behind the warehouses. Hard to get to, but not as hard to get to as it would’ve been in the sky.
“That’s good, right?” Bo said. “That’s good. We can get to it easier.”
“It is not good, Bo,” Gloom said, still looking out into the distance. “They are setting down to conserve power. They are conserving power because they are preparing to open the door. Another key must be tuned, or close to it.”
He dropped down from the wall, splashed, and re-formed. His gaunt face was worried.
“How soon?” Bo asked, his mouth suddenly dry.
“They will have to test the machine first,” Gloom said. “That should be visible. The testing might take a day. It might take only hours.” An anxious ripple ran through him, his motes separating and melding again. “I do not know.”
“Then we have to get ready,” Bo said, looking to Wyatt now. “We have to tell everyone. Start making a plan.”
Wyatt looked back at him, a smile playing around his lips. “So if Gloom can do what he says he can do, and it all works out, what happens? The aliens go home and everything goes back to how it was before, right?”
Bo knew it wouldn’t be how it was before. Nothing would be. But he didn’t know what Wyatt wanted to hear. He waited.
“What makes you think I want that?” Wyatt asked. “I’m thriving out here, Bo. I’ve kept the Lost Boys safe for this long. I’ll keep them safe when the other ships come through. They’ll have bigger problems than us, right? They’ll be busy.”
“But you wanted to beat them,” Bo said. “That’s what you told me from the start. You hate them.” He remembered back to the things he’d heard at knifepoint and took a careful step back before he spoke again. “Things won’t be how they were before,” he said, gathering his courage, wondering if he was making a mistake. “They won’t take you back to the hospital.”
“They wouldn’t be able to,” Wyatt said calmly.
The lack of reaction was almost more frightening than the outburst Bo’d been readying himself for. He racked his brain for the right thing to say. He wasn’t like Wyatt. He didn’t know how to make people do things. How to make people want to do things. But they needed Wyatt’s help.
Wyatt was still standing there, arms folded, and Bo realized, with a jolt, that he was waiting for Bo to give him a reason. He could have walked away back to the theater already. Wyatt liked plans, he liked danger, he liked damage. He only needed a reason.
“You’ll be a hero,” Bo said, seizing on it at last. “You’ll save the world. Not me.” He clenched and unclenched his teeth. “I’ll make sure everybody knows it,” he said. “Everyone will know it was you. Everyone will love you. Nobody can ever think you’re not good enough, because they’d all be dead if it wasn’t for you.”
Wyatt was still standing, still half smiling. Bo pushed on.
“Whatever you did before, they won’t care about that,” he said. “How could they, right? You saved the world. Just you. If it wasn’t for you, I would’ve been back in the warehouses a day after I escaped. All of us would’ve been. You saved us. You can save the whole world.”
Wyatt grinned. “I like the sound of that, Bo,” he said. “Who wouldn’t?” His eyes hardened. “But we’re going to do it exactly how I say we d
o it. And before we do anything, we have to be on the same page about what happened the other night. About Violet and the pod and all that. I don’t want anyone getting confused.”
“Alright,” Bo said, feeling queasy. “Alright. Whatever you say happened. That’s what happened.” It would mean lying: to Gilly, to Saif, to Jon. To all of them. It would mean making Violet out to be the villain. But if it gave him a chance to rescue her, and to rescue Lia, he had to do it.
Wyatt gave a satisfied nod, clapped him on the shoulder with his unbandaged hand. “Let’s get to work, then,” he said, and set off toward the theater. Bo followed after him, feeling static all through his body, equal parts fear and excitement and uncertainty. Gloom slithered down from his perch and followed along in his wake.
Bo felt a few motes creep along his shoulder as they walked.
“That was clever,” Gloom’s voice came in a whisper. “You are more clever than you seemed at first, Bo. Congratulations.”
Bo swallowed. Shook his head. He didn’t know if it was ever clever to make a deal with the devil.
26
Sometimes it was Stephen Fletcher, running circles around her, taunting her. Sometimes it was her dad, his nose all red with smashed capillaries, clutching an empty Heineken bottle. Sometimes it was Wyatt, torn between disgust and laughter. The worst was when it was her, but the perfect version of her, inhumanly beautiful and sneering at her through pale pink lips.
Violet fought them all. She hooked Stephen’s legs out from under him, not caring how much smaller he was than her now. She shattered the bottle over her dad’s head. She flung herself at Wyatt, hitting him over and over again, trying to break his white teeth. She chased the perfect Violet away.
They always came back, clambering through the windows, knocking on the front door, thumping up from the basement. And they never stopped talking. They said all the things Violet had thought about in the darkest parts of the nights she couldn’t sleep. She clapped her hands over her ears, stumbling up and down the hall, trying to lock herself into one room and then another, but they always found a way inside and she couldn’t stop them.