She was still Astrid the Genius, the girl who had so intimidated Sam back before the FAYZ that he hadn’t even let himself think about asking her out, or even talking to her. She had been so far above him—at least in his own eyes—that she was practically on a different planet.
The funny thing was that he was still in awe of her, but she was no longer unattainable. She wasn’t the icy, distant Athena looking down at him from Olympus with affection mingled with disappointment. She had committed. She had bought in. And now it was as if an invisible FAYZ barrier of their own encircled just the two of them, defined them, and made each of them hate the idea of being apart.
They spent their days and their nights together, and they still disagreed, and they still argued, and they sniped, and they were absolutely bound together into one.
Unbreakable unless by death.
Which was a very likely outcome, and a thought that wiped the smug, contented look from Sam’s face.
Endgame. That word had quickly become part of conversation in the FAYZ. He had tried to quash it. Edilio had tried to quash it. Down in Perdido Beach, Caine had tried to quash it. It wasn’t good for people to start thinking things were coming to an end.
But Sam was thinking it himself, and he was trying to imagine that ending. Each time he tried, each time he ran the clock forward in his imagination, the fantasy would fall apart. He believed it was the endgame. He felt it in his bones. He just didn’t think he was going to make it out.
When he saw the end, it was always a terrible one. And he always saw himself watching others leave the FAYZ while he did not.
When had that morbid thought first surfaced? Had it been there festering in the back of his mind for a long time? Had it only now broken through to conscious awareness because people were talking about the endgame?
Endgame. It can mean more than one thing, he thought.
But it was all nonsense, all speculation. None of it meant anything. None of it mattered, not really. It would end how it ended.
Edilio and Dekka arrived. They had very sensibly not brought Toto back with them.
Sam didn’t get up, just gave them a wave as they climbed aboard the docked houseboat. Edilio plopped into a deck chair. He was weary and dusty. It would be wrong to say that he looked old—he was still physically a teenager, a sunburned, dark-skinned guy in jeans and boots, with a desperate-looking cowboy hat he’d found somewhere, over shaggy dark hair. He didn’t look old, but in some way it was impossible to define, he looked like a man, not a boy.
That impression came only partly from the fact that he was carrying an assault rifle slung over one shoulder.
“Word from PB is that Caine is trying to get Orc to force people away from the barrier and back to work,” Edilio said.
“Maybe not such a bad idea?” Sam said.
“Except it’s not working,” Dekka said. “Orc won’t go near the barrier. He doesn’t want anyone to see him. You know, the way he is. There’s, like, no produce down in Perdido Beach, not even cabbages,” Dekka went on. “If it wasn’t for Quinn still bringing in fish, they’d all be starving again. I’d almost say we need Albert back, if he wasn’t such a backstabbing little worm.”
Dekka had never looked young; she’d been born with a serious face that over time had become forbidding. When she was annoyed—as she was now—her expression could become downright intimidating. And an angry Dekka was a storm front coming.
“I guess you heard about Breeze?” Dekka asked, changing the subject. There was a mix of exasperation and affection in her tone. Dekka might not be over Brianna, but she had made peace with her rejection. The infatuation had burned out, but the love was still there.
“Oh, we heard,” Astrid said. “You just missed her.”
Edilio wasn’t in the mood for small talk. Something was on his mind. “We’re vulnerable here. We don’t know where Diana and that freak-show baby of hers are. And we don’t know what kind of power Gaia has—except that if she was really a normal kid, she’d be dead. We don’t even know what they want, what they’re after. Maybe they don’t want anything, though most likely . . .” He shrugged. “But the bigger vulnerability is probably down in PB. We got, what, two hundred fifty kids all together, between the lake and PB? Give or take. At least half of them are down there right now where the highway hits the barrier. Waving and crying and writing notes. Especially the littles, man. It’s not just no work getting done; it’s that they’re out in the open with no one protecting them.”
“They’re a target,” Astrid said.
“Big one,” Dekka said.
“That’s Caine’s territory down there,” Sam said, shifting uncomfortably at the temptation to palm off responsibility on his alienated brother.
“Yeah, but a lot of them are our people. Lake people,” Edilio argued. “You notice it’s quiet around here? Half our people walked ten miles down to PB so they can cry looking at their family.” He didn’t say that with a sneer. Edilio didn’t own a sneer.
Astrid said, “We have the same two top priorities we’ve had since the start: keep people fed and stop those trying to destroy us.”
Sam smiled privately at the rather grandiose phrasing.
“We need a plan beyond hoping Breeze finds Drake and Diana and Gaia,” Edilio said.
“I was kind of hoping you had one,” Sam said. He was joking, but Edilio wasn’t smiling.