The Gift

Chapter 82

Wisty

The downside of changing yourself into any flying creature is that you just might be a couple of hundred feet up in the air when your spell wears off. Fortunately the unfortunate happened when we were only a dozen or so feet off the ground, dipping down toward our final destination: the entry to Garfunkel's.

We're greeted on the ground floor of the department store with deeply pained faces. Something really bad has been going down here, I can feel it. When Whit comes back from a near-death adventure without being greeted by cheers and Janine throwing herself at him, you know something's wrong.

At least Emmet's got his arms around me before we can even say, "Hey."

"I can't believe you're alive!" he chokes out, uncharacteristically emo.

"Since when do I make a habit of dying?" I try a bad joke.

"But it's been… months!" He absently runs his fingers through my now-longer hair, as if to emphasize the point. "What happened to you guys?"

Whit and I look at each other, thoroughly confused about the timing for a moment. "The portal?" he guesses, referring to the mysterious time-warp quality of some portals.

I look around at the group and nod at Whit. Yes, more than just a few weeks have passed. Definitely. It's almost as if everyone's gone pale somehow. More unkempt, slouched. They all have sunken cheeks and eyes. Emmet looks as if he should be holding a tin can and asking for loose change.

"Where's Janine?" Whit sounds alarmed.

"Back in Ladies' Shoes. Running therapy sessions for some of the messed-up kids. Jamilla's back there, too. But she's a patient instead of the doctor this time. It's been hard around here, guys," he reports grimly.

"Let's head to Accessories and get caught up," Whit says to us.

"Why's it so dark?" I ask as we move toward the back of the store.

"Brownout," Emmet explains. "Too many bombs, every day, all day and night."

Sasha's back in Accessories strumming a particularly gloomy tune on his guitar. As he comes over to greet us, I notice that the zealot's confidence is gone from his stride. In the next few minutes, the stories he and Emmet tell make it pretty clear why.

The past month saw the beginning of the next stage in the New Order's plan for domination. The first wave of kids who were kidnapped and reprogrammed in facilities-those that weren't vaporized anyway-were just then being released back into society so that their little 'bot brains could take root and flourish. Meanwhile, a second wave of intensive kidnappings began, and the New Order's scout teams probed deep into Freeland. At least a dozen kids from Garfunkel's had been captured when they were out on food-collection missions, including some of the kids we'd already saved once from other facilities.

Talk about three steps forward and one huge, megastep back.

We've lost our homes, friends, families-an entire world. And now we're losing one another.