Just like old times.
“Have to think about it, you being the Betrayer,” Jopek replied, nodding reasonably. “But y’all know, I’m a generous man.”
“Will it even . . . work on me, though?”
He realized that the question was really for Holly.
Holly’s mouth set, like a doctor about to give bad news. Her gaze flicked to Jopek, and she said, “Yeah. Of course it will.” Michael understood, from her uneven tone, that she did not know if that was true. He wondered fleetingly whether Holly was trying to deceive Jopek (by making him think that Michael was safer than he really was), or deceive himself (by encouraging Michael with the false hope of a cure). Then he realized that it didn’t affect the facts of the cure, anyway. And also, he thought, I’m pretty damn tired of trying to figure out Holly’s lies.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Michael walked into the jetliner with the point of Jopek’s AK-47 pressed into his back, Patrick and Holly somewhere behind.
He had always wanted to go on a plane—there had been class trips; he couldn’t afford them—but he didn’t want to be on this one, because it reminded him of those pictures of the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean. It was a dead place. Oxygen masks in the darkness dangled like nerves; snow hissed through the crimson-stained seats on a breeze that stank of smoke and flesh. It was easy to imagine Cady pouncing from the floor . . . or the ceiling.
“So it’s scary. Be scared. Use it,” Michael tried to pep-talk himself. His breath fogged the front of his space-suit faceplate. He tried to wipe the fog away; couldn’t; it was on the inside. Claustrophobia enwrapped his chest.
“Say somethin’?” asked Jopek.
Michael shook his head. He hadn’t tried to yes-yes himself outside the jet; he did not know if it would help. But now, as he walked through this dark, Michael understood that he was either going to grasp yes-yes or fall totally into despair. He was either going to believe that there was some truth to the Game Master’s promises that such a thing as salvation existed. This is the last chance I’ve got to save Patrick.
Yeah, keep tellin’ yourself that story, Mikey. But if any of that yes-yes crap worked, you’d be out of here by now.
Michael pinched his leg through his space suit, hard, forcing himself into the moment.
The captain’s gun light found the door to the airplane cockpit. He prodded Michael with the barrel of the assault rifle. Michael opened the door. Wire and copper tubing sprang from the ceiling of the cockpit like Medusa hair. The nose of the plane had been chewed off in the crash.
The pilot seats were situated not in front of instruments, but in front of nothing. Where the controls should have been, there was a new world.
The enormous lobby of a great bank.
High ceiling.
Marble floors.
Framed posters showing smiling people.
Brick walls soaring with stained-glass windows, through which daylight streamed.
As his eyes adjusted, something else became clear: the bank had been divided into two sections by the airplane’s unplanned touchdown. The collision had brought down a section of wall, maybe fifty feet from the airplane, so that the ceiling of the higher floors had collapsed inward.
Rubble rose, floor to ceiling. The ruins were stacked so tall and tight that they had effectively sealed off the rest of the bank from the entrance area.
“So you see why this was last on the list,” said Jopek, his voice hushed. “But there’s a tunnel to the other side, sorta.”
Emphasis on “sorta,” Michael thought. He saw the entrance: a small mouth in the rubble at floor level, dark and jagged with debris. Just big enough for him, the tunnel shot way through the ruins to absolute blackness.
Just big enough for him, Michael thought. By “chance.”
But he suddenly had a dreadful feeling. It was that clockwork-syncing feeling again, yes, that sense of the world aligning for him. But this time, it felt like a dark clockwork, a wicked clockwork, conspiring against him. It was irrational but Michael thought: Cady’s in there.
No. No, there was a whole city of other places for Cady to be.
Michael felt his breath and tried to look back at Patrick, but Jopek pushed the gun into Michael’s cheek and forced his gaze front again.
“Time’s a-wastin’,” the captain said.
Michael nodded, and said, “Yeah. Okay. Here I g—” But then he realized that Jopek had not been speaking to him, because Patrick replied, “Yes, sir,” took a little flashlight from Jopek, crouched