Allie gasped at what she saw.
In the bed lay a sallow-faced, sunken-cheeked man. Not a boy, but a man. Beard stubble covered him, four or five days of growth, for regular shaving was not a priority under the circumstances. His lips were stretched, his mouth slightly open, and above his pale forehead, his hairline had begun to recede.
Allie’s first instinct was to think that there had been some mistake, that this couldn’t be Milos—yet she knew it had to be. While Milos had remained sixteen in Everlost, his comatose body had not. He had been in this coma for almost eleven years. Milos was a man pushing twenty-seven.
She had to look away, and when she did, she caught her own reflection in a mirror. But it wasn’t her reflection, it was that of the woman whose body she had stolen. The woman whose son now lay in the bed before her.
Allie looked down to the package in her trembling hands. Before she could change her mind, she ripped the package open and pulled out the syringe.
If someone had told Allie that she would commit a premeditated act of murder, she would not have believed it. She would have spouted off all the reasons how she could never be capable of such a thing—that no matter how dire the circumstances, she would find a better way. She was so naive, so arrogant to think that the laws of necessity and unthinkable circumstance could not apply to her. She could tell herself that this was an act of mercy, but that would be a lie. This was an act of war. An act of terrorism. It was nothing less than an assassination.
If I do this, Allie told herself, I am no better than Mary. I will have sunk to the worst possible place a person can go. After this moment, I will be a cold-blooded killer and it can never be taken back.
So the question was, did Allie Johnson have the strength to sacrifice all that was left of her innocence if it meant she might save the world?
The answer came to her like a burst of courage from a wellspring deeper than she knew she had inside herself.
I would sacrifice everything I am, everything I believe, to save the living world.
And so, with tears filling her eyes, she took the cap off the syringe, found a vein in Milos’s arm, and injected a massive dose of poison into his withered body.
Mrs. Vayevsky opened her eyes to see the delivery girl looking down at her.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” the delivery girl said.
Mrs. Vayevsky was now lying on the couch with no memory of how she got there. She sat up feeling weak and light-headed. “What happened?” she asked. “Have I fainted?”
“You’re fine,” the delivery girl said. “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.” She offered Mrs. Vayevsky the faintest of smiles and a glass of water, which she drank with a shaky hand. “You should rest,” the delivery girl said and she clasped Mrs. Vayevsky’s shoulder a little too hard, for a little too long. “I’d better be going now.”
“The package . . . ,” said Mrs. Vayevsky.
The delivery girl pointed. “It’s on the table there. Like I said, there’s no need to sign for it.” Then the delivery girl left, quietly closing the door behind her.
When Mrs. Vayevsky felt strong enough to stand, she went to the table to find the package had already been torn open. Had she done that before she fainted?
Inside, of all things, was a Russian nesting doll. Its familiar shape—like a squat bowling pin—and brightly painted surface, made her smile. It was the kind of simple wooden toy she had played with in her youth, a reminder of a much simpler time. On the outermost shell was the painted figure of an old man, but each shell opened to reveal a smaller, younger man inside, until finally in the very center was a wooden baby no larger than her pinky. The gift came with no card, no return address, no clue as to who sent it, or why. All the same, she knew exactly where it needed to go.
She headed to her son’s room and set all six shells of the nesting doll side by side, smallest to largest, on Milos’s desk, admiring the colors and the workmanship it had taken to create the lacquered figurines. Then, when she turned to glance at the bed, her expression changed.
Without even touching him, she knew. Without holding a mirror to his lips to check for breathing, she knew.
She sat in the chair beside the bed, wrapped her arms around her chest, and began rocking back and forth, sobbing his name over and over. She wailed with the deepest grief she had ever known . . . and yet somewhere within that grief was secret gratitude that after so many years, she had finally been given permission to cry.
CHAPTER 37
Skinless
It happened in an instant. One moment Milos was skinjacking a worker, preparing to blow the entire gas main, and the next moment, he wasn’t skinjacking at all. He was just standing on the plant floor, slowly sinking into the living world.
Something had changed.
He could sense it—a sudden lightness, a sudden disconnection. The living world, which always seemed a bit blurry and faded, seemed even more so now—one step further removed. There was a panic in Milos, and with it came a sense of irretrievable loss that he could not put into words. He tried to deny it, refused to even think about what it might mean, and he attempted to skinjack the worker again. He stepped right through the man, and out the other side. Milos did not feel flesh, nor did he hear a single thought.
“No!”
He leaped again and again, but it was like leaping at shadows. Finally Jill and Moose peeled out of their hosts, and stared at him.
“What’s wrong with you?” Jill asked.
“Nothing,” Milos insisted. “Get on with the mission.”
But neither of them moved. Now the other skinjackers were peeling out of their hosts as well, wondering what was going on, and Milos was at the center of their attention. He screamed in fury, and leaped at every living blur that moved around him, but it was hopeless.
“I’m stopping the mission,” said Jill.
“No, you can’t stop the mission. I’m the lead skinjacker. I give the orders.”
“Sorry,” said Jill, “but you can’t be the lead skinjacker if you can’t skinjack.”
Mary’s children were overjoyed that the disaster was prevented. Mary, however, was not—but she was wise enough not to show her disappointment. If Milos had been able to rupture the gas main, the resulting explosion would have taken out several residential blocks. The story would have been much different. The fact that he could no longer skinjack posed a whole set of problems she would have to quickly address.
Yet even though this mission had been botched, Mary was a girl with a positive outlook. In spite of her frustration, she couldn’t help but see the glass as half full. She looked out at her huge cumulus of Afterlights, and quickly came to realize that far from being a failure, the morning had, in an unexpected way, been a grand success. Her children all believed that the disaster had been averted because of the skinjacker’s efforts—which meant they now believed fully and completely that Mary had the power to see and to change the future. After today, they would trust her decisions even more than before, and follow her guidance without question. In this case “failure” made her stronger. Thinking about it lifted her spirits, and left her ready to prepare the next mission—which she knew would be a resounding success. She would make sure of it.
For eleven years, Milos had taken his ability to pop in and out of the living world for granted. To do something as simple as grab himself a burger if he wanted to, or, if the whim struck him, to ski down a white, powdered slope in the body of a fleshie who actually knew how to ski.
Deep down he knew it couldn’t last forever, but Everlost has a way of making one dismiss tomorrow as just another version of today. He never considered what existence without skinjacking would be like, so he wasn’t prepared for the shock of his body dying.
For Milos, it was nothing short of horrific. The constant hunger, with so little food to satisfy it. The slow drift of memories being lost. The relentless chiseling away of one’s identity. How could ordinary Afterlights stand it? What made it worse was the speed at which a skinjacker reverts—as if making up for lost time. Memories didn’t just fade, they were sucked out into a vacuum. Milos suddenly realized his mind, which had been so sharp, was now an open box, and if he took out a memory to treasure, or even to just ponder, it was lost by the mere act of thinking about it. In just one day, he had forgotten his last name—which he had remembered all these years—and he quickly came to realize with increasing dread that he had no yardstick with which to measure the depth of the things he had already forgotten.
“Get over it,” Jill had told him, clearly thrilled at the prospect of his misery. “Learn to be ordinary, I’m sure you’ll excel at it.”
But it was more than just being ordinary. When one knew the exhilarating power of dual citizenship in two vastly different worlds, losing connection to one of those worlds was like losing one’s limbs. It had never occurred to Milos before, but to the “ordinary” Afterlight, the living world might as well have been the moon, for it was just as unreachable. How could anyone exist with such disconnection?
Milos went to Mary, knowing that she would have some wisdom and some comforting words for him, as she always did . . . but when he went into the press box to talk to her, he found that she already had company:
Rotsie.
The two of them sat facing one another. Rotsie was all smiles and Mary laughed at a joke that Milos hadn’t heard. A vending machine that had crossed with the arena was still partially stocked, and so the two of them were sharing a can of Coke, passing it back and forth between them. Watching Mary’s lips touch the same can that Rotsie had just drank from made Milos’s afterglow falter. It felt like his body was dying all over again. Rotsie noticed him first.
“Hello, Milos,” he said, seeming both arrogant and self-conscious at the same time. It made Milos feel uncomfortably off-balance. He had to remind himself that Rotsie was the intruder here, not him.
Mary took a moment to gather her thoughts, then stood, smoothing out her shimmering gown. She sauntered to Milos, and took one of his hands in both of hers, clasping it tightly.
“Milos, I am so, so sorry.” She didn’t move to embrace him, she just held his hand. “I know you’re strong, I know you’ll get past this.”
“Yes,” said Milos. “We’ll get past this together.”
Mary’s smile became a little slim, then she squeezed his hand, and let go.
Rotsie, who still hadn’t stood up, said, “I just want you to know, I have every respect for you.”
Milos had no response to this.
“What Rotsie means,” Mary explained, “is that it won’t be the same without you on his skinjacking team, but we’ll all have to manage.”
“His team?”
“Well,” said Mary, turning her eyes to Rotsie and offering him a smile that should have been aimed at Milos. “I had considered putting Jill in charge, but she doesn’t exactly work and play well with others. Then I considered Moose, but he’s much more of a follower than a leader, wouldn’t you agree? Rotsie, on the other hand, already has the respect of the new skinjackers.”