Fear: A Gone Novel

looked at one another, puzzled.
    The major frowned and whipped out his iPhone. He tapped it a few times. “FAYZ Wiki,” he explained. “We have two ‘Pete’ or ‘Peters’ listed.”
    “What are the ages?” Dr. Chandiramani asked.
    “One is twelve; one is four. No, sorry, he would have turned five.”
    “Do you have children, Major? I do. No twelve-year-old would be happy to be called ‘Little Pete.’ It must be the five-year-old she’s talking about.”
    “Delusional,” Dr. Greene said. “A five-year-old did not create the anomaly.” He frowned thoughtfully and scribbled a note. “Darkness. Maybe she’s afraid of the dark.”
    “Everyone’s afraid of the dark,” Dr. Chandiramani said. Greene was getting on her nerves. So were the major and his horrified stare.
    The monitor above Mary’s bed suddenly beeped urgently.
    Dr. Chandiramani reached for the call panel and yelled, “Code blue, code blue,” but it was unnecessary, because nurses were already rushing in through the door.
    At the same time Major Onyx’s smartphone began chiming. He didn’t answer it, but he did open an app of some sort.
    A tall, thin doctor in green scrubs swept in behind the nurses. He glanced at the monitor. He put his stethoscope in his ears and asked, “Where is her heart?”
    Dr. Chandiramani pointed to the unlikely place. But she knew it was useless. All lines on the monitor had gone flat. All at the same time. Which was not how it happened. Heart, brain, everything suddenly and irreversibly dead.
    “You’ll find the other one’s gone, too,” Major Onyx said calmly, consulting his phone. “Francis. Something pulled his plug, as well.”
    “Are you going to tell me what you’re talking about?” Dr. Chandiramani snapped.
    The major jerked his head, indicating that the other doctor and the nurses should get out. They didn’t argue.
    Major Onyx closed the app and put his phone away. “The people who were ejected when the dome was created? They came out clean. So did the twins. The rest, the ones who’ve appeared since? They’ve always had a sort of … umbilical cord … connecting them to the dome. J waves, that’s what we call them. But don’t ask me what they are, because we don’t know. We can detect them, but they are not something encountered in nature.”
    “What does ‘J wave’ stand for?” the doctor asked.
    Major Onyx barked out a laugh. “Some smart-ass physicist at CERN called them ‘Jehovah waves.’ According to him they might as well come from God, because we sure don’t know what they do or where they come from. The name stuck.”
    “So what just changed? Did something happen with these J waves?”
    The major started to answer but, with a visible effort, and a last appalled look at Mary, stopped himself. “The conversation we just had? Never happened.”
    He left and Dr. Chandiramani was alone with her patient.
    Four months after her ghastly appearance, Mary Terrafino was dead.

ELEVEN
26 H OURS , 45 M INUTES
    SAM WOKE TO a feeling of utter, profound, incredible relief.
    He closed his eyes as soon as he opened them, afraid that being awake would just invite something terrible to appear.
    Astrid was back. And she was asleep with her head on his arm. His arm was asleep, completely numb, but as long as that blond head was right there his arm could stay numb.
    She smelled like pine trees and campfire smoke.
    He opened his eyes, cautious, almost flinching, because the FAYZ didn’t make a habit of allowing him pure, undiluted happiness. The FAYZ made a habit of stomping on anything that looked even a little bit like happiness. And this level of happiness was surely tempting retaliation. From this high up the fall could be a long, long one.
    Just yesterday he’d been bored and longing for conflict. The memory shocked him. Had that really been him grinning in the dark at the prospect of war with Caine?
    Surely not. He wasn’t that guy. Was he?
    If he was that guy, how could he suddenly do a 180 and now feel so different? Because of Astrid? Because of the fact of her in his bed?
    Without moving he could see the top of her head—her hair looked as if someone had cut it with a weed whacker—part of her right cheek, her eyelashes, the end of her nose, and farther down a long, shapely, much-scarred and bruised leg entwined with his own leg.
    One of her hands was on his chest, just over his heart, which was starting to beat faster, so fast and so insistently he was afraid the