Ghost Town

Claire stuck her hands inside the boots like they were giant, awkward gloves. They were warm and a little damp from Eve’s feet. Under normal circumstances that would have been gross, but Claire was kind of over that now.

She went back to the switch, took a deep breath, and clapped the rubber (or plastic) soles of Eve’s boots onto the red-painted lever. She closed her eyes when she did it, half expecting to get zapped into oblivion, but instead, nothing happened. She could still feel the power, but the boots were insulating her, as were her own rubber-soled shoes.

Claire yanked down on the switch, using all of her strength, and for a second it seemed it wouldn’t give—but then it did, snapping to the off position with a sudden, shocking clank of metal.

And it didn’t matter. Nothing happened.

The machine kept ru

Claire stripped the boots off her hands and tossed them to Eve, who quickly bent over to put them on her feet, unfastened.

“I knew someone like you would come,” Myrnin said, and Claire thought he was somewhere behind the machine, hard to see, harder to reach. “Someone who wanted to destroy everything. Someone who wanted to bring down Morganville. I’ve been working for days to be sure you wouldn’t succeed. Save yourselves. Leave now.”

“Myrnin, there’s nothing here to save! It’s just a machine, and it’s broken! Ada’s gone!”

He hissed, and there was fury in his voice when he said, “Don’t you say that. Don’t you ever say that.”

There was a choked cry, and a sudden, violent flurry of motion in the dark where Myrnin was hiding.

Oliver staggered backward and fell into a pool of light. His face was twisted, and there was a silver stake buried deep in his chest. He went limp and stayed that way.

Claire rushed forward, but before she could get to him, Myrnin stepped out of the dark and grabbed her. She hadn’t seen him coming, and couldn’t twist out of the way in time. He had her in a split second, dragging her away from Oliver and off into the shadows with his hand over her mouth.

“No!” Shane yelled, and ran forward to yank the stake out of Oliver’s chest. Oliver convulsed and rolled over on his side, but Shane hardly even paused.

He came after Myrnin and Claire with the weapon.

Frank Collins grabbed his son from behind and slung him out of the way just as Shane hit a trip wire, almost invisible in the dim light.

All Claire could see from her perspective was a brilliant flash of light, which was followed almost immediately by an incredible, numbing roar of sound. She felt stinging cuts open up on her body, even as Myrnin shoved her down to the floor and fell atop her, and a choking wave of dust washed over her. She twisted free of Myrnin, who was lying dazed, and tried to scramble to her feet.

In front of the machine, a huge metal column had tipped over and pi

And Frank didn’t look good. There was a steady, thick stream of blood ru

“Help me!” Michael yelled, and Oliver managed to crawl over and put his shoulder to the pylon as well. “Push!”

“No use,” Frank gasped. “I’m done. Finish this. Claire, finish it.”

She turned toward the console of the machine. It was covered in dust, and the screen was cracked, but it was still alive and working. She reached for a handful of wiring, but stopped just an inch away as she felt the hair on her arms stirring and standing up.

“You can’t,” Myrnin said as he rolled over and stared at her. “You can’t stop it. It’s all right. Once you let go, it feels better. You’ll feel better. Just . . . let go.”

“I can’t do that.” She was crying now, out of sheer frustration and fright. “Help me. Help me!”

“It can’t be turned off now,” Myrnin said. “I made sure. Ada won’t ever be hurt again. Not by you, not by me. She’s safe.”

“She’s killing us!” Claire screamed. “God! Stop!”

“No, she’s fixing us,” Myrnin said. “Don’t you understand? I read the journals, the ones upstairs. Morganville hasn’t been right for years. It’s been changing, turning into something wrong. She’s made us right again. All of us.”

“Bullshit,” Frank Collins said, and coughed blood. “Shut it down, Myrnin. You have to do it.”

Myrnin looked at him over the pile of rubble. “Don’t you want to go back to when you were happy, when we were all happy? You, your wife, your daughter, your son? It can all come back. You can feel that way again. She can make you feel that way.”

Frank laughed. “You’re going to give me my family back?” he said. “Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Not me,” Myrnin said. “Not really. But I can make it all as it was, for you as well as me. You, of all people, should want that.”

Frank’s throat worked, as if he were swallowing something unpleasant. His eyes were bright and very, very cold. “So you’re God now,” he said. “You can bring back the dead.”

“I can give you a new family. This girl can be your new daughter. We can find you a wife. I can make you forget. You’ll never know the difference, and she’ll forget all about who she once was.”

“You really think that’s tempting,” Frank Collins said, very softly. “It’s sick. My wife and daughter are dead, and you’re not going to make me believe a lie. You’re not going to pervert their memories. My son loves that girl, and I’m not letting you take her away from him, too.”

Myrnin looked up, as if he’d sensed something. “It’s too late,” he said. “It’s starting.”

Claire heard the pitch of the machine’s hum changing, shifting to something higher, more urgent. She felt a pulse of power from it, and something went weird in her head. Something she needed.

Something that held her in place in the world, in time, in space.

It hurt. It felt like her brain was being shredded, ripped in half, and memories spilled out in a silvery stream. She couldn’t hold on to them; it was all just . . . noise.

The pain stopped, but something worse took over. Panic. Horror. Fear. She was looking at a room full of strangers. Scary people in a scary place. How had she gotten here? What was . . . what was happening? Where was she?

Why wasn’t she at home?

No, that wasn’t right. She knew them; she knew them all. That was Shane, getting to his feet . . . then everything shifted, and he was a boy she didn’t know, dark-haired, dusty. A stranger. He started toward her, but then he wavered and stopped, and put his hands to his head as if it hurt. Hers still hurt, too. There was a sound, a weird sound that wasn’t really there, wasn’t really a sound at all, and she felt . . .

Lost. She felt so lost, and alone, and terrified.

It was like having mental double vision. She knew these people at some very basic level, but she’d also forgotten them. She didn’t/ did know the man with the scarred face, and the boy reaching out to her, and the girl with the dark hair and the pale face, and the other golden-haired boy. She could see them in one way, with names and histories, but it kept fading out. Disappearing.

No. She didn’t know anyone here, and she’d never felt so vulnerable and horrible in her life. She wanted to go home.

There was another stranger dressed in funky old Victorian clothes, like some steampunk wa

Another older, gray-haired man elbowed her out of the way and slammed the Victorian man into the wall, then dragged him out and down the tu