“Sarah!” Michael yelled, unable to do anything else. This couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be. “Weber!” he screamed, throwing all his fury into the name. “Weber!”

But she wasn’t there—just Agent Scott. The man stood in the same place as before, the gun still in his hand but now at his side. His face had gone white, but his eyes were cold. He turned them toward Michael.

“You should have listened to Agent Weber,” he said. “You should have listened! May this girl’s death teach you a lesson!”

“I’ll kill you, you…”

Walter dragged him out of the room and into the hall, Bryson following, stunned into silence. Gabby was there, too.

“Give her a chance, boy,” Walter whispered to him. “She knows things you don’t.”

Michael didn’t care that Scott had pulled the trigger. Agent Weber had just killed his best friend.

The last thing he saw was Helga, hunched over Sarah’s lifeless body.

CHAPTER 9

UP IN THE NIGHT

1

How could the world continue to turn? It was the question Michael couldn’t stop asking himself over the next few hours. Their car sped along the freeway, the other two following just as before. It was silent except for the hum of the engine and the bumps of the road under them. Gabby sat in the middle up front, between Amy and Walter, who was driving as if he were on a family vacation instead of fleeing the scene of a murder. Michael had insisted Gabby sit up there, refusing to allow her to take Sarah’s place in the back. It was wrong. Everything in the world was wrong.

Michael’s heart ached more than he could bear. He sat with his head against the seat behind him, eyes closed so that no one would talk to him. The countless questions he had would have to be worked through later. They demanded answers and filled him with hate and anger. Had Gabby been forced to trick them, or was she a part of the scheme? And why had Helga acted so strange?

He pushed the questions away for now.

Sarah had told him she loved him. Him, a Tangent.

She was his best friend.

And he’d seen her die twice now. Well, much more often than that while gaming, but that day on the Path, in the caves, with the lava, had felt so real.

This was real.

Sarah was dead.

Dead.

Shot and killed by a man who was supposed to work for the good guys. A group the world was supposed to trust. Though, really, it was Weber who’d caused all this. The woman who’d made him drag Sarah into the chaos of Kaine and his Mortality Doctrine in the first place.

Sarah was dead.