“You figured she was just interested by you as a thug, a bully, and a manipulator?”
“Pretty much.”
Caine was refusing to be provoked, whereas Sam was distinctly uncomfortable. This little mission could take days. It wouldn’t do to let Caine work on him. He had to accept the fact that he was partnered with Caine. And that meant not calling up mental images of the plastering Caine had inflicted on kids who were now Sam’s friends. And the burning down of half the town in a mad plot with Zil and his little bigot brigade. And about a thousand other felonies.
“Felonies.” A legal word. There was a reason that word was popping up in his head.
Caine wasn’t the only killer in the FAYZ. Of course, Sam had done only what was necessary to save lives and defeat Caine and Drake. But would courts see it that way?
To torture himself Sam ran through the laundry list of things he’d done that could be called crimes. Breaking and entering. Destruction of property. Assault and battery. Public drunkenness. Driving without a license. Burning a hole in a nuclear power plant. Theft.
Caine was looking back at him from the top of a rise. “You have a lousy poker face, Sammy boy. What’s in your head is right there on your face. You’re thinking about it, and it’s not the first time.”
“I am still underage,” Sam said weakly.
Caine erupted in disbelieving laughter. “Yeah, that’ll do it. ‘I’m just a kid, Your Honor!’ Hah. They’ll have to find a few scapegoats, and guess who it will be? You and me, surfer dude. You and me.”
“You act like we’re getting out of here,” Sam said.
“Do I? Funny, because I expect we’ll all be dead. Because I’ll tell you what: that girl, that Gaia? We both know who she really is. I don’t think old green-and-gross chose to take on a body for fun. I think it expects to get out of here alive.”
That was way too close to Sam’s own thought process.
“Endgame,” Sam muttered, not really expecting Caine to hear.
“Yep,” Caine said. “That’s right. Endgame. The FAYZ barrier is coming down; at least that’s my bet. But there’s also a ninety percent chance you and me both end up dead. Ten percent chance we both actually get out of here alive. In which case we end up sharing a cell somewhere.” He laughed. “Kind of unfair, really, what with me being evil and all, and you just so darned virtuous and heroic.”
“So why are we doing this?” Sam asked. “Why are we on this mission?”
Caine stopped, turned around, and walked back to him. Sam was struck by the undeniable fact that even now, even after being beaten and humiliated by Penny, his brother could project that hard-to-define thing called charisma. Evil, yes, but a tall, handsome, charming kind of evil.
“Why are we doing this?” Caine asked him. “You know damned well why we’re doing this. Because it’s a fight. It may be the fight. It may be the final fight. And what else are we good at, you and me? What are we going to do if we ever get out there anyway? You going to sign up for some AP classes? Get your college essay started? Take driver’s ed?” Caine laughed, laughing at himself, it seemed. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure Harvard will want me. I mean, how many former kings do they have applying?”
Sam tried to stop himself asking, but in the end he blurted it out. “And Diana?”
“Great body,” Caine said breezily. “And a very open mind.”
Sam didn’t buy it. “It’s more than that, you and her.”
Caine didn’t answer, which was all the answer Sam needed.
“Less talk, more walk,” Sam said.
“Ta-da?” Dekka echoed, staring at Brianna because it was much better than looking at Brianna’s trophy. “Ta-da?”
Astrid knelt down to look at the monstrous object. The temptation to taunt Drake was powerful. Drake had been the bogeyman in her life. Drake had made clear that he intended to kill Astrid, slowly and with every humiliation his diseased mind could conjure up. Astrid had spent almost four months in the forest, and fear of Drake had been the constant. She had spent hours practicing the smooth unlimbering and aiming of a gun just so that when the time came she would at least get in a useless shot.
There was a second effect of seeing Drake helpless: Sam would face one less enemy. His odds of survival had just ticked up.
Dekka was obviously thinking the same thing. “One down,” she said.
As she watched, the object moved, oozed, coming slowly together. The lizard tail remained.
“What are we supposed to do with him?” Dekka asked.
Just then Roger, known as the Artful Roger for his skill in drawing, came up the side. “Is Edilio around? Because—ahhhhh! Oh no. Oh no.”
“Hey, Roger,” Brianna said. “Have you met Drake?”
“Oh, God, no. Oh . . . Oh . . .”
“I know!” Brianna said proudly. “We’re just trying to figure out what to—hey, you know what? You should totally draw him so we can always remember what he looked like.”
Dekka, in as dry and nonchalant a tone as she could manage, said, “Roger, can we help you?”
“Can you . . . ?” He had definitely forgotten why he was there.
“You were looking for Edilio, right? He’s down in PB.”
The Drake head was almost back to being Drake with the addition of the lizard tail, and the larynx was mostly repaired, so he was able to produce a windy, wheezing sound while his tongue and mouth worked furiously.