Plague

each side. Milky light came through a reinforced glass window in the door at the far end of the hallway.
    Sam opened doors, one at a time. The first two opened onto empty private offices. The next opened to a dingy room with a metal table and chairs, facing each other. A screen was on one wall. A clipboard was on the floor.
    Sam picked it up. “‘Project Cassandra,’” he read aloud. “‘Subject 1-01. Test number GV-788.’”
    He placed the clipboard on the table and went to the next room.
    He opened this room and instantly knew someone was inside. Even before he saw anyone.
    This room had a window of regular glass and sunshine poured in. There was a bed, a desk, a large blank TV mounted on one wall. Game players lay dusty beneath the screen.
    Books were piled high on a side table.
    And one book was in the hands of a boy who sat in a reclining chair with his feet up on the desk. He was maybe twelve. His black hair hung down his back almost to his waist. He would probably be tall when he stood up. Thin. Dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a black-and-white Hollywood Undead T-shirt.
    “Hi,” Sam said. He frowned.
    The boy barely reacted.
    “Don’t I know you?” Sam pressed.
    The boy looked at him with eyes narrowed to slits. He smiled a little. He seemed to want to go back to his book.
    “Dude,” Sam said. “Aren’t you Toto?”
    The boy’s eyebrows went up. His lip quivered. He said, “Is he real?”
    He was speaking to a life-sized Styrofoam head of Spider-Man, complete with blue and red cowl, that rested on a shelf.
    “I’m real,” Sam said. Then he yelled, “Dekka! Jack!”
    “Why is he yelling?” Toto asked Spidey. “He could be a Decepticon.”
    “I’m not a Decepticon,” Sam said, feeling a bit ridiculous.
    “It’s the truth,” Toto told Spidey. “He’s not a Decepticon. But maybe he works for the Dementors, for Sauron, for the demon.”
    “What are you talking about, Toto?” Sam asked.
    Jack and Dekka came rushing up. “Whoa,” Dekka said.
    “He knows what I’m talking about,” Toto told Spider-Man. “He guesses, he’s testing. ‘What are you talking about, Toto?’ he says. Right. He knows. He knows the demon.”
    “I don’t work for anyone,” Sam said.
    “Liar, liar, pants on fire. Someone sent you.”
    “Albert, but—”
    “They always try to lie, but it never works, does it?” Toto said.
    Sam turned to Dekka. “I think our boy here has been alone for a long time.”
    “He means I’m crazy.” Toto addressed Dekka directly, not Spider-Man, though he glanced back at the Spidey head and seemed torn between Dekka and the web slinger. “The truth teller, truth teller Toto.”
    “Are you test subject 1-01?” Jack asked.
    Toto didn’t seem to hear. But now tears were welling in his eyes. “One zero one. Yes. One zero two, what happened to her, do you want to hear?”
    “Yes,” Sam answered.
    “Should we say, Spidey?” Toto bared his teeth and snarled, “She used to live across the hall. Darla. She was eight. All her stuff was Hello Kitty. She could walk through walls. She didn’t want to stay, she wanted to go home, so she tried to just walk right through the wall to the outside and the guards tased her as she was going through and you know what happened?”
    “Tell us.”
    “He doesn’t want to know, not really, does he?” Toto asked Spidey. “He’s seen too many bad things, hasn’t he? But I’ll tell him anyway, which is that the Taser froze her halfway through the wall. She died. They had to bust out the whole wall to get her out of there.”
    “Albert’s cat,” Jack said.
    Sam nodded. They’d all heard the story of the teleporting cat that misjudged and solidified with a book inside it.
    “They aren’t surprised,” Toto said. He tilted his head and shook it back and forth, vastly amused by some secret joke. “They know, don’t they?” he asked Spidey.
    “Yeah, we know,” Sam said. He raised his hand, palm out, and fired a brilliant green beam at Spider-Man’s head. The fabric of the cowl caught fire and the Styrofoam within melted.
    Toto’s pale face went paler. He swallowed hard and looked directly at Sam for the first time.
    “Sorry, man,” Sam said. “But honestly we have all the crazy we can stand. And we don’t have all day.”
    “Yes, he’s telling the truth, he’s in a hurry.”
    “He’s still talking to Spider-Man,” Dekka pointed out. “He’s nuts.”
    “Yeah, well, we’re all a little nuts, Dekka,” Sam