“He’s right,” I add, overcoming my disappointment to speak. “I don’t understand how you can just sit here while people are fighting and dying out there.” I think of Kina, Sam, Pod, Igby, and the others, pinning all their hopes on the Missing, on the army they saw fighting at Midway Park. “They’re relying on you—we’re relying on you. You’re our last hope!”

“Are they winning?” Molly asks, her deadened voice cutting through me.

“What do you mean?”

“Are they winning? The people that are fighting right now … are they going to defeat Happy?”

“Yes,” I reply defiantly.

“How?”

“We’ll figure it out,” I tell her.

She raises an eyebrow. “Do you really think you’re going to defeat Happy?”

“I … I …” I try to tell her that yes, I do think we will win, but without the Missing, I don’t see how.

Once you’re in … get out … get out quickly … These words flash in my mind, briefly interrupting my disbelief at Molly for giving up, but I barely recognize them. Had Molly said those words to me? Why can’t I remember?

“And you,” Molly says, turning to Malachai, “you just had your eyes pulled from your head. Have you ever felt pain like that before?”

“No,” Malachai replies.

“And do you feel any pain now?”

“No.”

“Exactly, there’s no pain here. You’ll never feel pain again.”

“But you can’t feel anything,” I point out. “There’s no sensation at all.”

“Not true,” Molly says. “You can feel love, you can feel happiness, you can feel like you’re home. Luka, the only reason any of us go out into the real world is to check on threats when silent alarms have been tripped, or to go into the city and try to get our loved ones out. Even if they’re Blinkers, they’re cured in here. I’m not planning on saving the world, but I am planning on going into the city and finding our dad.”

My heart jolts at this. Molly had been high on Ebb and unconscious when our father had tackled a Smiler off the roof of the Black Road Vertical. She doesn’t know he’s dead.

Malachai looks from Molly to me, and then lowers his head.

“I know he’s infected,” she continues, “but I’ll get him back to the arcade and put him in a chamber and he can live out the rest of time in here, with us, as himself. Don’t you see, Luka? We could be a family again, it could be the way it was bef—”

“Dad is dead,” I say, interrupting her.