Plague

evil. What are you even talking about?”
    “Okay, even if he’s evil, maybe we can work out some kind of deal.”
    “You don’t even believe that,” Sanjit said.
    Virtue slumped back, deflated. “Yeah.”
    “We are not going back to the island, my brother. We’ve been voted off. This is our home now.”
    Virtue nodded. He looked like a kid who had just gotten the news that he would be shot at dawn.
    “Cheer up, Choo,” Sanjit said. “There are a lot of good things about this place.”
    “You heard about the zombie, right? The one they’ve got locked in a basement? Half the time it’s this nice Christian girl. And the rest of the time it’s a psychopath with a whip for an arm?”
    Sanjit made a thoughtful face. “I do believe I heard something about that. But really, Choo, it’s not like a basement-dwelling Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde zombie is all that unusual.”
    Despite himself Virtue very nearly smiled. “Fine. Be that way, Wisdom.”
    “Don’t use my slave name.” It was an old joke between them. Sanjit had been born Sanjit, a homeless Hindu street kid in Buddhist Bangkok. When the actors Jennifer Brattle and Todd Chance had adopted him, they’d given him an aspirational name: Wisdom.
    It never had fit. Wisdom meant . . . well, wisdom.
    “You’re not looking at the bright side, Choo,” Sanjit said. He had in fact just spotted the bright side.
    “Bright side? There’s no bright side. What bright side?”
    “Girls, Choo,” Sanjit said, smiling hugely. “You’ll understand in a few years.”
    Lana had come around the back of the hotel and was throwing a tennis ball to her dog. They were outlined against the faint glow of western horizon, and illuminated by the light of the moon just coming from behind the hills.
    “I’m going to refuse to do puberty,” Virtue grumbled. “It makes you stupid.”
    Sanjit barely heard him. He was walking toward Lana.
    “Hi.”
    “What are you doing here?” Lana snapped. “No one comes to Clifftop without me saying so.”
    Sanjit said, “You missed a beautiful sunset.”
    “It’s an illusion,” Lana said. “It’s not the real sun. None of it’s real. The moon, the stars, all of it.”
    “Still beautiful, though.”
    “Fake.”
    “But beautiful.”
    Lana glared at him. And Sanjit had to admit: the girl could glare. The pistol in her waistband definitely added to the tough-girl look. But more it was that hurt-but-defiant expression.
    “So asking you to take a moonlit walk with me, that would totally not work?”
    “What?” Again that glare. “Go away. Stop being an idiot. I don’t even know you.”
    “You’re healing my little brother Bowie.”
    “Yeah, that doesn’t make us friends, kid.”
    “So no moonlight.”
    “Are you retarded?”
    “Sunrise? I could get up early.”
    “Go away.”
    “Sunset tomorrow?”
    “Just what is your problem, kid? Do you know who I am? No one messes with me.”
    “Do you know my name?”
    “Which part of ‘go away’ do you not get? I could shoot you and no one would even say anything.”
    “It’s Sanjit. It’s a Hindu name.”
    “One word to Orc and he’d play basketball with your head.”
    “It means ‘invincible.’”
    “That’s great,” Lana said.
    “Invincible. I can’t be vinced.”
    “That’s not even a word,” Lana said. Then she ground her teeth, obviously annoyed with herself for having been baited.
    “Go ahead: try to vince me,” Sanjit said.
    Just then Patrick came rushing over. He dropped the ball at Sanjit’s feet, grinned his delirious dog grin, and waited.
    “Don’t play with my dog,” Lana said.
    Sanjit snatched up the ball and threw it. Patrick went tearing after it.
    “You don’t scare me,” Sanjit said. He held up a hand, cutting Lana off before she could answer. “I’m not saying I shouldn’t be scared. I’ve heard some of the stories about you. About what happened. You went up against this gaiaphage thing all by yourself. Which means you are the second bravest girl I ever met. So I probably should be scared. I’m just not.”
    He watched her struggle to resist asking. She lost. “Second bravest?”
    “I’ll tell you the story when we go for that walk,” Sanjit said. He jerked a thumb toward the helicopter. “I better get back to town. Edilio wants a report from me.”
    He turned and walked away.

Chapter Nine
54 HOURS, 9 MINUTES

    SAM FOUND HIS little crew where they were supposed to be.
    Dekka was almost smiling. Almost smiling was