The curtains were half-closed and a wide swath of morning light cut across the room. There were pictures on the wall, each one featuring a smiling boy whom Allie recognized, although the pictures all showed him younger. There was a desk clean of all dust which held several books between marble bookends: Catcher in the Rye, Ender’s Game, and all three Lord of the Rings volumes. It proved that this room once belonged to a very real, very normal boy, before that boy became what he became.

Allie continued to let her eyes move around the room. Concert posters on the wall. Trophies on shelves. She forced her eyes to look everywhere but at the center of the room. Then, when she had nowhere else to look, she zeroed in on an intravenous stand which held a bag of milky fluid. She lowered her eyes from the bag and followed the tube which snaked down into an arm. The hand at the end of that arm was bent back at the wrist, with fingers that curled in on themselves, fully atrophied from years of disuse. Then she took a deep breath and raised her eyes to see his face.

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.