tunnel, “Can we time OU—?” and Holly replied shakily, “Patrick, hey,” and Patrick went, “Where’s the Game Master?” and Holly asked, “Jopek?” and Patrick said, “The Game Master!” and Holly answered, “R-right,” and paused.
“The Game Master’s out, Patrick,” Holly finally called.
Patrick asked, “Timed out?”
Silence.
“Out out,” Holly replied.
Patrick’s face grew slack. Ghostly. He looked at Michael, his eyes going wide . . . and also, far away.
“Oh no, Michael,” he moaned softly. “Ooooh, what did you do?”
Michael tried to take another step toward Patrick, but he was so sick with adrenaline and fear that the step wound up being more of a lunge, like a kid’s pantomime of a monster.
Patrick ducked back through the saloon doors to the front side of the counter, color draining from his face.
“Michael, there’s something freaky going on out here!” Holly called.
Oh God. “Are the Rapture here? The Bellows?” Michael asked.
“No, it’s . . . I don’t know what it is!”
Patrick paled even more; Michael remembered the Bellows in the city streets with dark bites in their skulls: bites delivered by the new kid, by the changed one, Cady Gibson. How long until the other Bellows came to life, like Hank? How long until all the bitten creatures sat up in the streets, their hollow eye-pits blinking, their skeleton fingers uncurling? How long until their thousands of shrieks raved in the night like sirens on a raid from Hell?
Better question: How long until you change?
“It’s not safe out there!” Michael shouted, panicked, his voice cracking.
“Michael, listen—” she called. “Jopek’s—he’s—something weird is—”
“Now!”
“But—Christ!” she said, frustrated and afraid. “Fine!”
The mountain of rubble clattered as Holly entered the makeshift tunnel.
And what will you do after she gets in here, Gamer?
What are you going to do? Use them magic protectin’ words to make some more cure, Mikey?
“Bub. Listen to me. When Holly gets in, we’re going to have to . . . to . . .”
“We were supposed to work together. You said we could just play. You can . . . you can . . .” Patrick paused.
He’s starting a sentence and hoping I finish it. And with a wave of self-hatred, Michael realized that that was the way it had always been. Patrick would start to feel something and look to Michael to make sure it was okay. That was his world: trusting Michael, playing The Game. ’Cause even if he didn’t know I was the Game Master, Michael thought, he still thought I was in charge. Michael had forged that world for him.
And now the apocalypse had come.
Michael looked toward the sound of the shattering behind the vault door again, and his reflection looked back. He could not tell what he looked like, but he did know the truth.
I . . . I can’t lie anymore.
It won’t work. There’s no secret passage and no code; there are no alternate endings.
I can’t control this, Michael thought. Why did I do this? Why did I think I could do this? Who the hell did I think I was?
“Bub, I’m sorry,” Michael said. “God, I—”
“NO!” Patrick wailed, bringing his knuckles into the soft flesh of his cheeks. “DOOOOON’T TELL ME STUFF! IT WON’T WOOOOOORRRRRKKK!”
“Bub, please—”
Patrick’s face screwed into a vicious mask of anger and desperation. “You said The Game would be fun! The Game Master said I just hadta get the elixir to win—I thought I could WIN IT IF I WAS BRAVE—but I’m nooooot BRAVE, Michael, Daddy’s right, I’m NOOOOOT and I CAN’T BE—”
“Bub, it’s not your faul—”
“NO! BETRAYER, YOU CAN JUST HAVE IT!”
Patrick reared back one tiny fist. For a single second, Michael thought his brother was going to hurl the hand into the marble counter beside him, to strike it hard enough to shatter his small bones as he had done in the psychiatric hospital. And this time there was no Atipax to help him.
But something was glittering in Patrick’s closed hand.
Michael understood what the small silvery object was only as it shot up and out. The vial of cure arced and twirled, catching the semi-strobing light like a comet. It was the last dose, the single vial that Patrick had brought from the vault and kept safe through the battle with Hank. Michael cried out and raised his hands to catch it.
The vial struck him on the chest, the zipper giving a cheery tink! as it bounced off.
The vial struck the stone floor, hard.
But it didn’t break.
Instead, it rolled, back and forth. Settling. Unharmed.