Free Lies by Michael Grant

though she hadn’t heard him. “Then he dropped a glass and I…I almost killed him. Did he tell you? I grabbed the gun and I had it pointed right at his face, Sam. And I really, really wanted to pull the trigger.”
    “You didn’t, though.”
    “I shot Edilio,” Lana said, still looking down toward the water.
    “That wasn’t you,” he said.
    Lana said nothing, and Sam let the silence stretch. Finally, she said, “I thought maybe Quinn and I…But I guess that was enough for him to decide to move on.”
    “Quinn is working a lot,” Sam said, sounding lame. “He’s out there at, like, four in the morning, every day.”
    She slid open the balcony door and flicked the cigarette butt over the rail. “Why did you come, Sam?”
    “I have to ask you something, Lana. Something’s going on with Orsay.”
    “Yeah.” She pointed toward the beach below. “I’ve seen her down there. It’s been a couple times. Her and some kids. I can’t hear what they’re saying. But they look at her like she’s their salvation.”
    “She’s saying she can see through the FAYZ wall. She says she can sense the dreams of people outside.”
    Lana shrugged.
    “We need to try and figure out if there’s any truth to it.”
    “How would I know?” Lana asked.
    “One of the possibilities…I mean, I wondered…I mean, if it’s not a lie, and maybe Orsay really believes it…”
    “Go ahead, Sam,” Lana whispered. “You want to say something.”
    “I need to know, Lana: Is the Darkness, the gaiaphage, is it really gone? Do you still hear its voice in your head?”
    She felt cold. She crossed her arms over her chest. Squeezed herself tightly. She could feel her own body, it was real, it was her. She felt her own heart beating. She was here, alive, herself. Not there in the mine shaft. Not a part of the gaiaphage.
    “Don’t ask me about that,” Lana said.
    “Lana, I wouldn’t if it wasn’t—”
    “Don’t,” she warned. “Don’t.”
    “I…”
    She felt her lips twist into a snarl. A wild rage swelled within her. She spun to face him. Stuck her face right in his. “Don’t!”
    Sam stood his ground.
    “Don’t ever, ever ask me about it again!”
    “Lana—”
    “Get out!” she screamed. “Get out!”
    He backed quickly away. Out into the hallway, closing the door behind him.
    Lana fell to the carpeted floor. She dug her fingers into her hair and pulled, needing the pain, needing to know that she was real, and here, and now.
    Was he gone, the gaiaphage?
    He would never be gone. Not from her.
    Lana lay on her side, sobbing. Patrick came over and licked her face.

NINE
54 HOURS, 42 MINUTES
    ZIL SPERRY WAS feeling very good. He’d spent the day waiting for the blow to fall. Waiting for Sam and Edilio to show up at his compound. If they had, he could have made a fight out of it, but he wasn’t crazy enough to think he would have won. Edilio’s soldiers had machine guns. Zil’s Human Crew had baseball bats.
    He had more serious weapons, too, but those were not in the compound. Not with that freak Taylor able to pop in anywhere, anytime and see whatever she wanted.
    And then, there were the other freaks: that glowering lesbian thug Dekka, the brat Brianna. And Sam himself.
    Always Sam.
    The compound was four houses at the end of Fourth Avenue, past Golding. The street dead-ended there in a sort of cul-de-sac. Four not-very-big, not-very-fancy houses. They’d set up a roadblock of cars to form a wall across Fourth Avenue. The cars had to be pushed into place—the batteries wereall dead, all except the few vehicles Sam’s people kept in running condition.
    At the center of the roadblock was a narrow gap, an opening. A square and blocky once-white Scion was in position to one side of the opening. It was light enough that four kids could push it across the opening to block the gate.
    Dekka could of course simply lift the thing into the air. That and the rest of Zil’s defenses.
    But they had not come after him. And