Up. Left. Eat the big white ball. The hairy things turn blue. Eat the hairy things until they start to blink. Run away.

Over and over. The repetition wasn’t so much soothing to Lief as it was compulsive. He couldn’t stop. He didn’t want to stop. Ever.

In the forest he had surely been a creature of habit. He had swung from the trees, playing his games alone—the same games day after day—but that was somehow different. There was no urgency to it. But the endless stimulation from this new-fangled machine demanded his focus in a way the forest never did. Other kids told him it was an old machine—but he didn’t care. The games were all new to him.

Up. Down. Left. Right. Eat. Run.

“Lief, what are you doing? How long have you been here?”

He was barely aware of Allie’s voice. He didn’t even turn to look at her. “A while,” he told her. Up. Left. Down.

“I think you’ve been at that machine for five days straight.”

“So?”

“This is wrong. I’ve got to get you out of here! We’ve all got to get out of here!”

But Lief wasn’t listening anymore, because the funny little hairy things had turned blue.

It had been a long time since Greensouls had had such an effect on Mary. Lief was not a problem. He simply brought out in Mary the maternal feelings she had for all the children in her care, but Allie, with her incessant questions and her neurosis of hope, brought up feelings in Mary she would much rather have forgotten, and thought she had. Feelings of doubt, frustration, and a sense of remorse as deep as her towers were tall.

And then there was Nick. The feelings he brought out in her were of a different nature, but just as troubling. He was so very much alive. Everything from his anxieties to the flush of his face in her presence. His bodily memory of life was so charming, so enticing, Mary could spend every minute with him. That was dangerous. It was almost as dangerous as being envious of the living. There were whispered tales of Afterlights whose envy of the living had turned them into incubuses—souls helplessly, hopelessly attached to a living host. This was different, but still, it was a weakness, and she was not in a position to be weak. Too many Afterlights relied on her for strength. With all this on her mind, she found herself distracted, and uncharacteristically moody. And so, when no one was watching, not even Vari, she descended to the fifty-eighth floor, the place she went when she needed silence and solitude.

The fifty-eighth floor had no tenants on the day the towers crossed into eternity. For that reason there were no walls or partitions subdividing it, and so, with the exception of the elevator core, the entire floor was nearly an acre of hollow space.

And still Nick found her.

“One of the little kids said you might be here,” he said as he approached.