Lies

says…” Orsay sagged, almost fell to her knees, and her helper caught her.
    “She says…let them go, Sam. Let them go when their time comes.”
    “What?”
    “Sam, there comes a time when the world no longer needs heroes. And then the true hero knows to walk away.”

TWO
66 HOURS, 47 MINUTES
    Hushaby, don’t you cry,
    go to sleep little baby.
    When you wake, you shall have
    All the pretty little ponies…
    IT WAS PROBABLY always a beautiful lullaby, Derek thought. Probably even when normal people sang it, it was beautiful. Maybe even brought tears to people’s eyes.
    But Derek’s sister, Jill, was not a normal person.
    Beautiful songs could sometimes take a person out of themselves and carry them away to a place of magic. But when Jill sang, it was not about the song, really. She could sing the phone book. She could sing a shopping list. Whatever she sang, whatever the words or the tune, it was so beautiful, so achingly lovely, that no one could listen and be untouched.
    He wanted to go to sleep.
    He wanted to have all the pretty little ponies.
    While she sang, that was all he wanted. All he had ever wanted.
    Derek had made sure the windows were shut. Becausewhen Jill sang, every person within hearing came to listen. They couldn’t help it.
    At first neither of them had understood what was happening. Jill was just nine years old, not a trained singer or anything. But one day, about a week ago, she’d started singing. Something stupid, Derek recalled. The theme song to The Fairly OddParents .
    Derek had stopped dead in his tracks. He’d been unable to move. Unable to stop listening. Grinning at the rapid-fire list of Timmy’s wishes, wanting each of those things himself. Wanting his own fairy godparents. And when at last Jill had fallen silent, it was like he was waking up from the most perfect dream to find himself in a gray and awful reality.
    It took only a day or so before Derek figured out that this was no ordinary talent. He’d had to face the fact that his little sister was a freak.
    It was a terrifying discovery. Derek was a normal. The freaks—people like Dekka, Brianna, Orc, and especially Sam Temple—scared him. Their powers meant they could do whatever they wanted. No one could stop them.
    Mostly the freaks acted okay. Mostly they used their powers to do things that needed doing. But Derek had seen Sam Temple in the middle of a fight. Sam against that other mega-freak, Caine Soren. They had destroyed a big part of the town plaza trying to kill each other. Derek had curled up in a ball and hidden as best he could while that battle raged.
    Everyone knew the freaks thought they were special. Everyone knew they got the best food. You never saw a freakreduced to eating rat meat. You never saw a freak eating bugs. A few weeks earlier, when the hunger was at its worst, Derek and Jill had done that. They’d caught and eaten some grass-hoppers.
    Freaks? They never had to sink that low. Everyone knew that. At least that’s what Zil said.
    And why would Zil lie?
    And now Derek’s own little sister was one of them . A mutant. A freak.
    But when she sang…when she sang, Derek was no longer in the dark and desperate FAYZ. When Jill sang, the sun was bright and the grass was green and a cool breeze blew. When Jill sang, their mother and father were there, along with everyone else who had disappeared.
    When Jill sang, the nightmare reality of life in the FAYZ faded away to be replaced by the song, the song, the song.
    Derek was in that place now, soaring on magical wings toward Heaven.
    When I die, hallelujah by and by…
    A song about death, Derek knew. But so beautiful when Jill sang it. It pierced his heart.
    Oh how glad and happy when we meet…
    Oh how happy, even though they sat in the dark in a house full of sad memories.
    The beam of light was startling.
    Jill stopped singing. It was devastating, that silence.
    The beam of light shone through the gauzy curtains. It played around the room. Found Derek’s face. Then swiveleduntil it had lit up Jill’s freckled face and turned her blue eyes glassy.
    The front door of the house flew open with a crash. The strike plate shattered.
    The intruders spoke no words as they rushed in. Five boys carrying baseball bats and tire irons. They wore an assortment of Halloween masks and stocking masks.
    But Derek knew who they were.
    “No! No!” he cried.
    All five boys wore bulky shooter’s earmuffs. They couldn’t hear him. But more importantly, they