There was, to put it mildly, some history between Caine and the Brattle-Chance kids. Some violent, disturbing history.
But Virtue was efficient in his own morose way. Tell Choo, as everyone called him, to deliver a message, and it got delivered. Tell Choo to go see if anyone was working the cabbage fields, and you got a thorough and accurate answer.
But he was no Drake. He wasn’t even a Turk. There was no chance of Choo beating someone up, let alone killing them for you. He wasn’t a henchman; he was an administrative assistant.
Caine missed henchmen.
More, he missed Diana.
It was sad to think that he now looked back on the early days of the FAYZ as the good old days. Once, he had ruled Coates Academy. Once, he had ridden in a blaze of glory—well, an unsteady convoy of inexpertly driven cars—into Perdido Beach. Once, Orc and his bullies, and Drake, and Pack Leader, and even Penny had been his right arms.
Well, Penny had turned out to be a treacherous lunatic. Pack Leader had been killed, and the replacement Pack Leader, too. Drake had gone to serve the gaiaphage. And Orc had cleaned himself up and gotten religion.
If there was one thing worse than a bellowing, roaring-drunk Orc, it was Orc quoting—misquoting, usually—scripture.
The hangers-on like Turk and that sniveling little creep Bug had ended up being more trouble than they were worth. Bug still crept around using his invisibility power to spy on people—yet without ever bringing Caine any useful intelligence—and when he wasn’t watching people pick their noses, he was stealing food and causing pointless conflicts.
Slowly, inexorably, Caine’s control had been diminished. His great ambitions had died. Now he had far more responsibility than power. Some kids still called him king, but it wasn’t the same when they did it ironically rather than fearfully.
Oh, he could still use his telekinetic power to toss kids around randomly, throwing them through walls or out into the ocean, but what was the point? He didn’t need dead kids; he needed someone to go and pick the lousy cabbages. Albert had always taken care of that, but Albert had jumped ship and sailed off to the island with a load of missiles.
Caine missed Albert.
Caine missed henchmen.
But most of all he missed Diana. He could see her if he closed his eyes. He could remember every detail of her body and face. Lips? Yes, he remembered her mouth. The smoothness of her skin? Yes, definitely, yes, he remembered.
“When kids get hungry enough they’ll pick vegetables,” Virtue said.
“Choo, you don’t know people, do you? What they’ll do is panic and freak out. Start robbing each other and most likely burn down whatever is left of town. People are idiots, Choo. Always remember that: people are faithless, backstabbing, weak, creepy, stupid, lazy idiots.”
Virtue blinked and said nothing.
Caine looked around at his current lair—a desk Caine had levitated out onto the landing at the top of the church steps that looked down onto the town plaza. He had a rolling chair. And a desk.
He missed his previous lairs. This lair sucked.
He never should have left the island. He’d been there with Diana and Penny. He could have tossed Penny off a cliff and been fine on the island. Decent food, a beautiful mansion, electricity, and a soft bed with Diana in it.
What had he been thinking, leaving the island?
He missed Diana busting him. He missed her snarky voice. He missed her eye rolls and that skeptical look she had where she’d half close her eyes and look at him like he was too dumb to merit her full attention. He’d have killed, or at least injured, anyone else who treated him like that. But she wasn’t anyone else.
He missed her hair. Her neck. Her breasts.
She understood him. She loved him, in her own way. And if he had listened to her, he’d still be on the island. Somehow he would have found some fuel to keep the lights on there. Probably. And the food would have run out and then they’d have starved, but hey, this was the FAYZ, where all you could really hope to do was delay the pain.
Delay of pain: that was the meaning of life, wasn’t it?
“I’ve made some bad decisions,” Caine said, not really meaning to say it out loud.
Had Diana been there she’d have said something like Duh but cooler and funnier and meaner, and he’d have been annoyed but he’d have tried to kiss her and eventually she would have let him, and was it really possible that her lips had been that soft?
Virtue said, “Well, you’re ruthless and narcissistic and totally devoid of morals.”
Caine shot a look at Virtue, wondering if there was any way all of that amounted to a compliment. Probably not. From Diana it would have been a perfect blend of snark and admiration, but Virtue seemed to have decided at some point to take his name seriously. The kid had no sense of humor that Caine could detect. He was a straight arrow. It was baffling.
“If I’m so ruthless, how come I don’t walk down to the barrier and start slamming kids into the ground until they obey me?”
Virtue shrugged. “Because your birth mother or your adoptive parents might be out there watching?”
Caine bit at his thumbnail, a nervous habit when he was feeling thwarted.
“Also TV cameras,” Virtue went on.
“Sam fried Penny’s body in front of his—our—mother,” Caine said, just to argue.
Virtue said nothing.
“What?” Caine demanded.
“Well . . . Sam is stronger than you are,” Virtue said.
Caine considered throwing Virtue into the wreckage of the church. It would be satisfying. But if he did that, it would upset Virtue’s brother Sanjit, and Sanjit and Lana were close, and the last thing Caine needed was trouble with Lana, the Healer. She had saved his life, and despite the fact that he was mostly incapable of gratitude, it wasn’t wise to pick a fight with the closest thing they had to a doctor.