because they’re insane, Michael. Because they’re freaking insane.
The neighboring roof on the other side of the alley was clear. There was no one in the alley. Go now, Michael thought. Game time, final round, you bet it is.
“Michael, ohhh, I’m quitting, I want to time out. . . .” His brother’s eyes were going glassy and he shivered, like a freezing puppy in a towel. He’s going to throw up. He’s going to start screaming. And then the fun really begins.
“I know you do,” Michael reassured calmly. He stroked Patrick’s hair, and had an image of a ticking bomb inside the soft case of his brother’s skull. “But there’s no reason to cry, dude. We just got tricked. He knew this was going to happen.”
“Wh-what?” said Patrick. “Who knew?”
Michael listened to his heart thuds. “The Betrayer knew,” he said.
Patrick’s eyes went wide.
Just his eyes going wide, that was all . . . but they weren’t glassy. They were interested. Michael, for the moment, had stopped the bomb.
“The what?” said Holly.
Several motorbikes sped past the mouth of the alley, perhaps fifty feet away. Rapture people. Firing with the army’s guns, entering Walgreens through the front doors, boot steps on the shattered windows, shouts of confusion, coordination—
—and then Michael’s play at redirecting Patrick’s anxiety and remaking his world didn’t matter.
Patrick struck himself on the ear with a tiny, terribly mean fist. It sounded like it hurt a lot. He whimpered and scrunched his face and began to sob, powerful and hoarse. Patrick was through trying to hide it: he was five years old, and exhausted, and Freaking.
Michael felt fury at everything.
This isn’t supposed to happen.
Use the rage, thought Michael. Just use it!
Something inside him told him to look back at the corpses the captain had killed in the stockroom. On the edge of the light, Michael saw the one with dark-blue trousers. He went back and felt for the cop’s waist. Found something metallic and cold. A silver revolver, six-chamber, pebble grip, blue in the twilight.
“Oh please, let’s go,” Patrick said urgently. His brow was feverishly popped with sweat. “Pleeeease.”
“Holly, hold my brother for me.”
“What? Where are you going?” she replied fearfully.
“To get the Hummer.”
The shopping center was being raided, yes, but the raiders hadn’t set up a perimeter, hadn’t even blocked the exit at the traffic lights. Haven’t you assholes ever played Halo? If he could just sneak through the lines of tanks, he could bring the Hummer back here and drive away. He began to jog. “And then you’ll get all the time-outs you want, Bub, I promise—”
“Don’t lie to him anymore, Michael.”
Michael stopped, turned back to her, feeling a hideous wonder that the girl he’d ever come closest to having a date with was now a second away from imploding his brother.
“We cannot leave. Michael, they will k-i-l-l the captain.” She looked at Patrick, then back to Michael and hissed, “They will kill him in real li—”
“Holly, shut the hell UP!”
He might have given away their position to the Rapture.
“Look at Patrick,” he spat, leaning to her. “I don’t understand it, I don’t, but stay here if you want. I just want you to know something: Jopek will keep doing pointless ‘missions.’ Jopek knew someone was coming. He’s doing it for a couple reasons, maybe, take your freaking pick. One: he’s an idiot and a bad soldier, which is probably true. Two: he hates me, which is ridiculously true.
“Either of those is enough to make me want to haul a-s-s, but there’s also the biggie:
“I think Jopek is insane.”
For a second, he thought he’d convinced her. He truly did.
“But—” she began.
“Then I’m sorry, I can’t help you,” said Michael. He picked up the quivering collection of nerves that was his brother. I didn’t even get Atipax in there. Stupid, so stupid.
And Michael was almost to the end of the alley when a thought, a simple thought, stopped his boots in their snowy tracks: Mom wouldn’t get in the car.
I . . . I can’t do this, he thought. I can’t leave her. Oh God, I just can’t.
What Michael did next did not come from yes-yes: it came from the desperate roar of his mind that was telling him, hurry, leave, now. Something inside seemed to slap back, No!, but the gun rose in slow motion.
Holly went stone faced, the desperate venom in her eyes snuffing out: a jack-o’-lantern, smothered by a gust.
“Come on,” he said.
“You’re kidnapping me?”
“Holly, it’s—it’s for your own good, okay?” Out loud, that sounded so grossly