Her words seemed to barely penetrate the blackness.

“Just fix it! You’re the one who did this. Fix it!”

Silence.

Cigar started in again, moaning and giggling, talking about Red Vines and how good candy tasted.

She had a vision of herself back at the lake, lying in the bunk with Sam. She had loved touching his muscles. What an embarrassing, juvenile thing. Like the girls she despised, always mooning over some rock star, some movie star, some guy with hard abs and yet, and yet, hadn’t that been her all along?

She recalled with intimate detail having her hand on his biceps when he flexed to pick her up and the way the muscle had just doubled in size and become hard as if it were carved out of oak. He’d lifted her up like she weighed nothing. And set her down again, so gently, with her hands sliding to his chest to balance and…

And now, she was here. With a ghost and a lunatic. In the dark.

Why?

Risk your sanity and maybe know something. But maybe not. Maybe just be destroyed. And what would she know then, if Petey scrambled her mind?

Scrambled brain, full of things she needed to know, but wouldn’t really know if her brain was twisted in the learning.

“Fix it! Fix it!” she screamed at the dark.

“My leg, it’s not my leg; it’s a stick, a stick with nails poking through,” Cigar moaned.

A dark, terrible urge to turn the shotgun around and end Cigar’s misery had Astrid breathing hard and clenching her jaw. No. No, she’d already played Abraham to Petey’s Isaac, not that ever again. She would not allow herself to take an innocent life, not ever again.

Innocent, a derisive voice in her head taunted. Innocent? Astrid Ellison, prosecutor and jury and executioner.

There’s nothing innocent about Petey, the voice teased. He built this. All of it. He made this universe. He’s the creator and it is all his fault.

“Let’s go,” Astrid said. “Give me your hand, Cigar.” She shouldered the shotgun. She felt around in the dark until she found Cigar, and then fumbled some more before she had his hand. “Get up.”

He got up.

“Which way?” Cigar asked.

Astrid laughed. “I have a joke for you, Cigar. Reason and madness go for a walk in a dark room, looking for an exit.”

Cigar laughed like it had been funny.

“You even know what the punch line is, you poor crazy boy?”

“No,” Cigar admitted.

“Me neither. How about we just walk until we can’t walk anymore?”

OUTSIDE

CONNIE TEMPLE SAT sipping coffee at a booth in Denny’s. Across from her sat a reporter named Elizabeth Han. Han was young and pretty but also smart. She had interviewed Connie several times before. She reported for the Huffington Post and had been on the Perdido Beach Anomaly story from the start.

“They’re setting off a nuclear device?”

“The so-called chemical spill is a trick. They just want everyone away from the dome. They must have deliberately left it for the last minute so it would seem like a real emergency.”

Han spread her hands wide. “A nuclear explosion, even underground, will show up on seismographs all over the world.”

Connie nodded. “I know. But—” At that moment Abana Baidoo came into the restaurant, walked past the hostess, and slid into the booth beside Connie. Connie had called her but told her nothing. Quickly, and without revealing Darius’s name, she backed the story up to the start.

“Are they out of their minds?” Abana demanded. “Are they insane?”

“Just scared,” Connie said. “It’s human nature: they don’t want to just wait, feeling powerless. They want to do something. They want to make something happen.”

“We all want to make something happen,” Abana snapped. Then she put a reassuring hand on Connie’s arm. “We’re all worn-out with worry. We’re all sick of not knowing.”

Elizabeth Han barked out a laugh. “They can’t do this without approval from very high up. I mean, all the way up.” She shook her head thoughtfully. “They know something. Or at least they suspect something. This president doesn’t go off half-cocked.”

“We have to stop it from happening,” Connie insisted.

“We still don’t have any idea what caused this,” the reporter said. “But whatever it is, it rewrote the laws of nature to create that sphere. They didn’t just decide this overnight; there must have been a plan in place for a long time. They wanted this as an option. So why suddenly, now, use that option?”

“The dome is changing,” Connie said. “They briefed us. There’s some change in the energy signature or whatever.” She looked at her friend. “Abana. They don’t want our kids coming out. That’s why. They think the barrier is weakening. They don’t want our kids coming out.”

“They don’t want whatever made this coming out,” Abana said. “I can’t believe they’re targeting our kids. It’s whatever made this happen.”

Connie hung her head, aware that she was bringing conversation to a halt, aware that Abana and Elizabeth were exchanging worried glances.

“Okay,” Connie said, wrapping both hands around the ceramic coffee mug and refusing to look at either woman. “What’s happened inside… I mean, the kids who have developed powers… I never shared this, and I’m so sorry. But with Sam…” She bit her lip. She looked up sharply, her jaw set. “Sam and Caine. Their powers developed before the anomaly. I saw them both. I knew what was happening. The, whatever they are, the mutations, they came before the barrier. Which means something caused them besides the barrier.”