Everfound

Allie took full control of Mrs. Vayevsky, and as she did, the delivery girl collapsed to the ground. Allie had knocked the girl so deeply unconscious, nothing could jar her awake. Allie gathered the sleeping delivery girl, and tried to put her into a chair—but now, in the body of Mrs. Vayevsky, Allie found picking the girl up very hard to do. The woman had knee troubles, she had back troubles, she was weak and worn and carrying a little too much weight. In the end, the best Allie could do was to drag the girl across the floor, and prop her up against a wall.

Allie estimated Mrs. Vayevsky to be in her mid-fifties. She had salt-and-pepper hair, and lined, careworn eyes. Allie had thought she might be a bit younger, but perhaps she had gotten old before her time because of the things she had been forced to endure.

Allie straightened up her stiff back and had a look around. The furniture was modest; worn but still livable. A TV with color issues played a morning talk show. Allie turned it off. A hallway led off toward three bedrooms.

First the master bedroom came into view, with a queen-size bed that had not yet been made. The second bedroom had been converted into a sewing room. And the third bedroom sat behind a closed door at the end of the hallway.

Allie took a deep, shuddering breath, reached for the knob, turned it, and then slowly pushed the door open.

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.

If I do this, Allie told herself, I am no better than Mary. I will have sunk to the worst possible place a person can go. After this moment, I will be a cold-blooded killer and it can never be taken back.

So the question was, did Allie Johnson have the strength to sacrifice all that was left of her i

The answer came to her like a burst of courage from a wellspring deeper than she knew she had inside herself.

I would sacrifice everything I am, everything I believe, to save the living world.

And so, with tears filling her eyes, she took the cap off the syringe, found a vein in Milos’s arm, and injected a massive dose of poison into his withered body.

Mrs. Vayevsky opened her eyes to see the delivery girl looking down at her.

“Are you all right, ma’am?” the delivery girl said.

Mrs. Vayevsky was now lying on the couch with no memory of how she got there. She sat up feeling weak and light-headed. “What happened?” she asked. “Have I fainted?”

“You’re fine,” the delivery girl said. “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.” She offered Mrs. Vayevsky the faintest of smiles and a glass of water, which she drank with a shaky hand. “You should rest,” the delivery girl said and she clasped Mrs. Vayevsky’s shoulder a little too hard, for a little too long. “I’d better be going now.”

“The package . . . ,” said Mrs. Vayevsky.

The delivery girl pointed. “It’s on the table there. Like I said, there’s no need to sign for it.” Then the delivery girl left, quietly closing the door behind her.

When Mrs. Vayevsky felt strong enough to stand, she went to the table to find the package had already been torn open. Had she done that before she fainted?

Inside, of all things, was a Russian nesting doll. Its familiar shape—like a squat bowling pin—and brightly painted surface, made her smile. It was the kind of simple wooden toy she had played with in her youth, a reminder of a much simpler time. On the outermost shell was the painted figure of an old man, but each shell opened to reveal a smaller, younger man inside, until finally in the very center was a wooden baby no larger than her pinky. The gift came with no card, no return address, no clue as to who sent it, or why. All the same, she knew exactly where it needed to go.

She headed to her son’s room and set all six shells of the nesting doll side by side, smallest to largest, on Milos’s desk, admiring the colors and the workmanship it had taken to create the lacquered figurines. Then, when she turned to glance at the bed, her expression changed.

Without even touching him, she knew. Without holding a mirror to his lips to check for breathing, she knew.

She sat in the chair beside the bed, wrapped her arms around her chest, and began rocking back and forth, sobbing his name over and over. She wailed with the deepest grief she had ever known . . . and yet somewhere within that grief was secret gratitude that after so many years, she had finally been given permission to cry.

CHAPTER 37

Skinless

It happened in an instant. One moment Milos was skinjacking a worker, preparing to blow the entire gas main, and the next moment, he wasn’t skinjacking at all. He was just standing on the plant floor, slowly sinking into the living world.

Something had changed.

He could sense it—a sudden lightness, a sudden disco