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Why do I care?
She knew the question was important, and her answer crucial—but she couldn’t think about that right now.
One-two-three, one-two-three, guard-guard-warden. The three men were drenched in sweat but she kept them under her firm control for almost an hour, making sure she gave Seth a substantial lead. Then, when she could juggle no more, she let all three men go.
One guard began to scream, the other began to pray, and the warden pounded the steering wheel in frustration. Allie knew these three men would face the full wrath of the judicial system, and their claim of being spiritually possessed would be laughed at. Perhaps, Allie thought, I could skinjack the judge at their trials, and get them off. And it occurred to her that every event changed in the living world through skinjacking required even more skinjacking to offset the consequences.
Allie didn’t linger to watch what the men made of their experience. Now that she was back in Everlost, she felt as if her soul had been shredded. She was so weak, she could barely lift her feet and found that she was beginning to sink deeper and deeper into the living world because she couldn’t move fast enough to keep it from taking her down. She knew she would sink over her head if she didn’t do something soon, so she made her way to the nearest home, practically crawling, and skinjacked the first person she came across, just to escape from sinking. A woman, home alone, watching the home shopping network. Once Allie was inside, and had taken control, she instantly knew that the woman was drunk. Very drunk.
Between the fleshie’s blood alcohol level, and all the turmoil in her own soul, it was more than Allie could stand. She stumbled into the bathroom and retched into the toilet. She could have found a neighbor to skinjack, but she didn’t. She stayed there retching until there was nothing left to purge. . . .
. . . Because now that it was over, now that she had done the deed, she knew why she had to free Seth.
Seth had no memory of the fire—but it was more than that. He also had no memory of leaving the gas station and going into the school. Somehow all the evidence pointed to him, and there were witnesses who swore they saw him start the blaze.
How was that possible?
How could a person have no memory of something their own body did?
The answer had been in front of Allie all along, but she had refused to see it until now.
Seth Fellon had been skinjacked.
There could be no denying it. So Allie heaved over the porcelain bowl, hoping she could flush away the truth.
CHAPTER 22
A Balance of Power
It had taken two weeks of endless tweaking and tinkering until Mikey McGill finally picked the lock on the cage he was trapped in. Then, once he was free, he immediately set off on the railroad tracks, following Nick’s prints. If nothing else, Nick was single-minded; each footprint was spaced exactly the same distance apart. Nick had marched like a machine, slow and steady, but he had a two-week lead on Mikey now.
When Mikey reached Little Rock, he ventured into the city, hoping to find Afterlights he could convince to join him. His ability to become a monster was impressive enough to get their attention, and if he played it right, they would respect him instead of fear him. Fear was easy, but it had gotten tiresome. He would much rather have Afterlights who joined him because they wanted to, not just because they were afraid not to.
Mikey found no Afterlights in Little Rock, or anywhere else west of the Mississippi, for that matter. He pondered this as he rested on a sizable deadspot in a hotel lobby. He didn’t even want to guess how the deadspot had gotten there. In the living world, a TV played a twenty-four-hour news network. Someone was being interviewed about a car wreck. Mikey didn’t pay much attention until he heard—
“It’s bad, it’s bad. I’d never seen so many cars piled up!”
Mikey’s eyes snapped to the TV. There was something familiar about that voice. The focus was blurry, like everything else in the living world, but he could make out two middle-aged men being interviewed.
The second man said, “Yeah, I never shaw shush a bad crash.”
o;All right,” said one of guards. “Back to your cell.”
But Allie handed him a clipboard. “Not until you fill out the accident report.” Then she excused herself to the restroom where she promptly left the nurse’s body asleep in a stall.
In the examining room, Seth watched as the guard filled out the report. “See,” the guard said. “Doing that to yourself was a waste of time.”
“And,” added the other guard, “it’ll hurt even worse in the morning.”
Seth kept waiting for Allie to return, but she didn’t. Then as the two guards led him out of the infirmary, the one on his left said, “You’d better not try anything funny; this place goes into computer lockdown the second you try to escape. With technology like that, who needs snipers in high towers?” Then he said, “Come on. The warden is waiting.”
The other guard looked at him strangely. “We’re taking him to the warden?”
“You know our orders. If anything unusual happens to the Benson Burner, we’re supposed to take him straight to the warden.”
The other guard wasn’t convinced. “That’s not protocol.” He pulled out his walkie-talkie. “Let me call it in.”
Allie leaped out of the left-hand guard, through Seth, and into the right-hand guard just before he pressed the button to talk—but she had leaped so suddenly that the first guard—who she had put to sleep while skinjacking him—was jarred awake. He didn’t even stumble.
