Fear: A Gone Novel

as it should. It’s an illusion but it’s also our only source of light.” She was thinking aloud. The way she sometimes did. The way he had missed.
    “I don’t know, but this seems like some kind of breakdown. You know how sometimes a movie projector—like the one we had at school, remember?—will get dimmer and dimmer until pretty soon you’re squinting to see anything?”
    “You’re talking about it going completely dark?” He was relieved that his voice did not betray him with a tremor.
    Astrid started to reach to touch his leg and stopped herself. Then she twined her fingers together, giving them something else to do. She wasn’t meeting his gaze but looking slightly past him, first to his left, then to his right.
    “It’s possible,” she said. “I guess, yes. I mean, that was my first thought. That it’s going dark.”
    Sam took a deep breath. He wasn’t going to freak out; he was sure of that. But the only reason he was confident was that he, himself, had the power to create light. Pitiful little Sammy suns and blinding beams, not bright yellow suns or even moons. But he himself would have light. He wouldn’t have to be completely in the dark.
    He couldn’t be in the dark. Not in the total dark.
    He realized his palms were damp and he wiped them on his shorts. When he glanced up he knew Astrid had seen, and that she knew what he was feeling.
    He tried out a wry grin. “Stupid, huh? All we’ve been through? And I’m still scared of the dark?”
    “Everyone’s afraid of something,” Astrid said.
    “Like I’m a little kid.”
    “Like you’re a human being.”
    Sam looked around at the lake, at the sun sparkling on the water. Some kids were laughing, little kids playing at the water’s edge.
    “Complete darkness.” Sam said it to hear it, to see if he could accept it. “Nothing will grow. We won’t be able to fish. We’ll… We’ll wander in the dark until we die of hunger. Kids will figure that out. They’ll panic.”
    “Maybe the stain will stop,” Astrid said.
    But Sam wasn’t listening. “It’s the endgame.”
    Sanjit and Virtue found Taylor that morning when they went outside for some exercise: Sanjit running back and forth, circling around a huffing and puffing Virtue, who was definitely not much of a runner.
    “Come on, Choo, this is good for you.”
    “I know,” Virtue said through gritted teeth. “But that doesn’t mean I have to enjoy it.”
    “Hey, we have a nice view of the beach and the—” Sanjit stopped because Virtue had disappeared behind a car. He doubled back and saw his brother bent over something, and then he saw the something he was bent over.
    “What the… Oh, God, what happened to her?”
    Sanjit knelt next to Virtue. Neither of them touched her. The girl with skin the color of a gold bar and both lower legs and one hand simply gone. Cut off.
    Virtue held his breath and put his ear close to Taylor’s mouth. “I think she’s still alive.”
    “I’ll get Lana!” Sanjit raced back inside, down the hallway to the room he shared with Lana. He burst inside yelling, “Lana! Lana!”
    He found himself staring at the bad end of her pistol. “Sanjit, how many times do I have to tell you not to surprise me!” Lana raged.
    He said nothing, just took her hand and drew her along with him.
    “She’s definitely breathing,” Virtue said as they ran up. “And I found a pulse in her neck.”
    Sanjit looked at Lana as though she might understand what this meant. A girl with golden skin suddenly minus a hand and both legs. But Lana was just staring with the same horror he felt.
    Then he saw the flash of suspicion, the hard, angry look she got when she felt the distant touch of the gaiaphage. Followed, as it usually was, by her jaw tightening, muscles clenching.
    Moved by a grim instinct, Sanjit peered through the dirty windows of the car. “I found her legs.”
    “Get them,” Lana said. “Virtue? You and I can carry her inside.”
    “We’re still going out? After what they did to Cigar?” Phil was outraged. He wasn’t the only one.
    Quinn said nothing. He didn’t trust himself to say anything. There was a volcano inside him. His head was buzzing from lack of sleep. The sight of Cigar, with those creepy, frightening marble-size eyeballs hanging from snakelike tendrils of nerve inside black crater eye sockets…
    He had clawed his own eyes out.
    He’s one of mine, Quinn thought, and the phrase went over and over in his head. One of