It took only a day or so before Derek figured out that this was no ordinary talent. He’d had to face the fact that his little sister was a freak.

It was a terrifying discovery. Derek was a normal. The freaks-people like Dekka, Brianna, Orc, and especially Sam Temple-scared him. Their powers meant they could do whatever they wanted. No one could stop them.

Mostly the freaks acted okay. Mostly they used their powers to do things that needed doing. But Derek had seen Sam Temple in the middle of a fight. Sam against that other mega-freak, Caine Soren. They had destroyed a big part of the town plaza trying to kill each other. Derek had curled up in a ball and hidden as best he could while that battle raged.

Everyone knew the freaks thought they were special. Everyone knew they got the best food. You never saw a freak reduced to eating rat meat. You never saw a freak eating bugs. A few weeks earlier, when the hunger was at its worst, Derek and Jill had done that. They’d caught and eaten some grass-hoppers.

Freaks? They never had to sink that low. Everyone knew that. At least that’s what Zil said.

And why would Zil lie?

And now Derek’s own little sister was one of them. A mutant. A freak.

But when she sang…when she sang, Derek was no longer in the dark and desperate FAYZ. When Jill sang, the sun was bright and the grass was green and a cool breeze blew. When Jill sang, their mother and father were there, along with everyone else who had disappeared.

When Jill sang, the nightmare reality of life in the FAYZ faded away to be replaced by the song, the song, the song.

Derek was in that place now, soaring on magical wings toward Heaven.

When I die, hallelujah by and by…

A song about death, Derek knew. But so beautiful when Jill sang it. It pierced his heart.

Oh how glad and happy when we meet…

Oh how happy, even though they sat in the dark in a house full of sad memories.

The beam of light was startling.

Jill stopped singing. It was devastating, that silence.

The beam of light shone through the gauzy curtains. It played around the room. Found Derek’s face. Then swiveled until it had lit up Jill’s freckled face and turned her blue eyes glassy.

The front door of the house flew open with a crash. The strike plate shattered.

The intruders spoke no words as they rushed in. Five boys carrying baseball bats and tire irons. They wore an assortment of Halloween masks and stocking masks.

But Derek knew who they were.

“No! No!” he cried.

All five boys wore bulky shooter’s earmuffs. They couldn’t hear him. But more importantly, they couldn’t hear Jill.

One of the boys stayed in the doorway. He was in charge. A runty kid named Hank. The stocking pulled down over his face smashed his features into Play-Doh, but it could only be Hank.

One of the boys, fat but fast-moving and wearing an Easter Bunny mask, stepped to Derek and hit him in the stomach with his aluminum baseball bat.

Derek dropped to his knees.

Another boy grabbed Jill. He put his hand over her mouth. Someone produced a roll of duct tape.

Jill screamed. Derek tried to stand, but the blow to his stomach had winded him. He tried to stand up, but the fat boy pushed him back down.

“Don’t be stupid, Derek. We’re not after you.”

The duct tape went around and around Jill’s mouth. They worked by flashlight. Derek could see Jill’s eyes, wild with terror. Pleading silently with her big brother to save her.

When her mouth was sealed, the thugs pulled off their shooter’s earmuffs.

Hank stepped forward. “Derek, Derek, Derek,” Hank said, shaking his head slowly, regretfully. “You know better than this.”

“Leave her alone,” Derek managed to gasp, clutching his stomach, fighting the urge to vomit.

“She’s a freak,” Hank said.

“She’s my little sister. This is our home.”

“She’s a freak,” Hank said. “And this house is east of First Avenue. This is a no-freak zone.”

“Man, come on,” Derek pleaded. “She’s not hurting anyone.”

“It’s not about that,” a boy named Turk said. He had a weak leg, a limp that made it impossible not to recognize him. “Freaks with freaks, normals with normals. That’s the way it has to be.”

“All she does is-”

Hank’s slap stung. “Shut up. Traitor. A normal who stands up for a freak gets treated like a freak. Is that what you want?”

“Besides,” the fat boy said with a giggle, “we’re taking it easy on her. We were going to fix her so she could never sing again. Or talk. If you know what I mean.”

He pulled a knife from a sheath in the small of his back. “Do you, Derek? Do you understand?”

Derek’s resistance died.

“The Leader showed mercy,” Turk said. “But the Leader isn’t weak. So this freak either goes west, over the border right now. Or…” He let the threat hang there.

Jill’s tears flowed freely. She could barely breathe because her nose was running. Derek could see that by the way she sucked tape into her mouth, trying for air. She would suffocate if they didn’t let her go soon.

“Let me at least get her doll,” Derek said.

“It’s Panda.”

Caine rose through layers of dream and nightmare, like pushing his way through thick curtains that draped his arms and legs and made his every move tiring.

He blinked. Still dark. Night.

The voice had no obvious source, but he recognized it, anyway. Even if there had been light he might not have seen the boy with the power to fade away and almost disappear. “Bug. Why are you bothering me?”

“Panda. I think he’s dead.”

“Have you checked his breathing? Listened to his heart?” Then another thought occurred to him. “Why are you waking me up to tell me someone’s dead?”

Bug didn’t answer. Caine waited, but Bug still couldn’t say it out loud.

“Do what you gotta do,” Caine said.

“We can’t get at him. He didn’t just die. He got in the car, right? The green one?”

Caine shook his head, trying to wake up all the way, trying to make the trip back to full consciousness. But the layers of dream and nightmare, and memory, too, dragged at him, confused his brain.

“There’s no gas in that car,” Caine said.

“He pushed it. Till it got rolling,” Bug said. “Then he jumped in. It rolled on down the road. Until he got to the bend.”

“There’s a railing there,” Caine said.

“He went through it. Crash. Bumpety-bump all the way down. It’s a long way down. Me and Penny just climbed down, so I know it’s a long way down.”

Caine wanted this to stop. He didn’t want to have to hear the next part. Panda had been okay. Not a horrible kid. Not like some of Caine’s few remaining followers.

Maybe that explained why he would drive a car off a cliff.

“Anyway, he’s totally dead,” Bug said. “Me and Penny got him out. But we can’t get him up the cliff.”

Caine got to his feet. Legs shaky, stomach like a black hole, mind filled with darkness. “Show me,” he said.

They walked out into the night. Feet crunched on gravel now interrupted by tall weeds. Poor old Coates Academy, Caine thought. It had always been so meticulously maintained back in the old days. The headmaster would definitely not have approved of the big blast hole in the front of the building, or the garbage strewn here and there in the overgrown grass.

It wasn’t a long walk. Caine did not speak. He used Bug sometimes; Bug was useful. But the little creep was not exactly a friend.

In the pearly starlight it was easy to see where the railing had been ripped apart. It was like a steel ribbon, cut then left half curled, dangling over the side.

Caine peered through the darkness. He could see the car. It was upside down. One door was open.

It took a few minutes for him to locate the body.

Caine sighed and raised his hands. It was near the limits of his range, so Panda didn’t come flying up off the ground. He sort of scuffed and scooted along at first. Like an invisible predator was hauling him away to its lair.