LITMIR.BIZ

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goodness. I don’t need another stalker. I mean, it’s hard enough to leave my house as it is.”

      Mason looked at me and rolled his eyes, but the smile never left his face.

      “Don’t worry, Janelle,” Cecily said to me. “He’s a little funny looking, but I promise you he’s pretty harmless. In fact, if we let him, he’d probably just go to sleep.” Then she handed me a beaker. “Here, fill this before he manages to spill it and get it all over our clothes.”

      I realized Cecily was funny. She made fun of Mason—and me—constantly. And she loved it when we managed to think of something witty enough to make fun of her right back.

      She was smart and hard-working—like me, if I was less serious and more friendly. When Alex came back, she and I stuck him with Mason on most of the labs and worked together. Though he hated working with Mason, he loved the attention he got from Cecily as a result.

      I’ve already lost Alex. Cecily is the only friend I have left. I can’t lose her, too.

      I try to listen to Cecily’s aunt as she describes what happened. Kate and some others heard Cecily shout, “Fire!”—it’s the one thing you can shout and guarantee that people will come running—and got up and ran to the hallway in time to see her disappear through some kind of black hole. But there’s something wrong with either my ears or my focus—or both. I feel like I’m caught in some kind of air tunnel and the wind is roaring in my ears.

      We’re on the first floor of Qualcomm, where the small children and families with young ones are staying, where the crime took place. Despite the time, handfuls of people are standing around watching Deirdre and me.

      And I can’t stop staring at them, memorizing each one.

      Their faces all ask variations of the same question: What are you going to do about this?

      A young boy is missing, which is tragic enough as it is. But Cecily is missing too—the girl who kept this place together, the girl who gave people hope. Underneath the lines of anger on their faces is a desperation—you can see it in their eyes. Because without Cecily, how will they keep going?

      The faint singed line of a burn on concrete—what I now know is the mark of a portal flaring to life and disappearing quickly—draws my eye, and I squat down to touch the end of it with the tips of my fingers. It doesn’t feel any different. There’s nothing about this soft mark to suggest that two people were just ripped from this world.

      I look a hundred feet south, toward the bathroom. In my mind I see Cecily in pink sweatpants and her I ONLY DATE NINJAS Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles T-shirt coming out of the room where she sleeps and heading toward the bathroom. Her white-blond hair is mussed, probably from tossing and turning, and she has circles under her eyes from not actually sleeping.

      I see her stop and her head swivel at a sound—maybe a shout or a yell, maybe just something unusual and therefore alarming—and then I see her take off running toward us, toward an eleven-year-old boy with sandy-brown hair struggling against one or both of his captors. She shouts for them to stop, and one of them turns to her, grabbing her when she gets close, deciding that taking her is far better than leaving a witness. A girl who just turned sixteen, a girl who’s petite, and thin, with blond hair and innocent doe eyes—she’ll be easily placed as a slave.

      She shouts, “Fire!” as one of the abductors covers her mouth and jabs her with a syringe. Then they’re vanishing through the portal.

      

      

truz is awake but still home when I get there. He’s drinking coffee, black and probably drowned in sugar, one of the few luxuries he’s made sure we still have.

      He opens his mouth, probably to ask about our newest case, but I don’t let him get that far.

      “Don’t leave yet,” I say, walking past the kitchen and toward the stairs. “You and I are going to see Barclay.”

      Deirdre calls after me as I run upstairs, but I don’t stop. My plan has changed slightly, but the dynamic here is still the same. I need Barclay, and I don’t need Deirdre trying to step in and stop me.

      When I get to my room, I move straight for the closet and reach toward the back, grabbing my backpack from the floor. The clothes I’m wearing—jeans, T-shirt, hoodie, and sneakers—are going to have to be good enough, but I can’t walk blindly into whatever Barclay’s planning. I grab my dad’s old hunting knife, his backup gun, and all the ammo we have for it and stuff them into the backpack. And I take my leather jacket because who knows how cold it will be where I’m going.

      With everything in the backpack, I put it on.

      I get up and leave the room without looking back, because it would be easier to stay here and just be upset than try to do something about it. I need to hold on to my anger—I need to wrap myself up in it, in the injustice of everything that’s just happened, and keep it close. I can’t lose my resolve.

      I peek into Struz and Jared’s room before I head downstairs. My brother is still asleep, tangled up in his covers like he fought them into submission, his brown hair sticking out in odd places. I think about before the quakes, when we went to Disneyland and I knew it might be our last time together if the world ended. I remember how much he smiled then—how much he still manages to smile now, despite everything.

      This is my brother, the only member of my family I have left. I have to stop these abductions before they get worse, before these guys start grabbing people out of houses instead of just shelters. I have to do this to get Cecily back and to keep my brother safe, so that I don’t have to worry if he’ll be next.

      I move into the room and touch his shoulder, his skin warm from the blankets. I sit carefully on the edge of the bed. His eyes flutter open and he groans a little, pulling himself tighter into a ball.

      Brushing my fingers through his hair, I whisper, “I love you, Jared,” and then, because I know it’s an X-Files quote he’ll understand, I add, “‘Even when the world was falling apart, you were my constant. My touchstone.’”

      A muffled, “‘And you were mine’” comes out from under the covers. From the sound of his voice, I can tell he’s smiling.

      He’ll be mad when he fully wakes up and finds out that I’m gone, but if this is the last conversation we’re ever going to have, it’s a good one. One that’s true—and worth remembering.

      After kissing his forehead, I get up and head downstairs.

      Both tense and red-faced, Struz and Deirdre pause what is clearly an argument and turn toward me. Again, I don’t give them a chance. I just look right into Struz’s blue eyes.

      “I need you to let Barclay go,” I say. “Because I need to go with him.”

      

      eirdre reacts first. “He can’t let Barclay go.” Her face flushes a shade slightly darker, and her voice, stern and loud, escalates as she keeps talking. “And you certainly can’t go with him. Go where? In the middle of all this?”

      Struz doesn’t say anything yet, so I don’t either. I stand still and straight, with my lips pressed together in a hard line. I let my body language and facial expression tell the complete truth. I let them say that I’ve thought this through, that I can do this, that it’s the only way.

      Struz takes a slow sip from his coffee mug. Then

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