HOW MANY ANSWERS YOU SEEK ARE JUST A PART OF YOU, WAITING TO BE FOUND?
The game has changed.
Fresh from her first brush with mortality, a fragile Sadie Matthau is playing human in New York while the Survivors endure unimaginable tragedy. Wrought wit...
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AFTER MY ENCOUNTER, I WENT BACK TO THE PLAIN OUTSIDE THE INVISIBLE gates of the city. I waited for hours, my hopes dwindling.
My brief repartee with Alexander replayed itself in my mind. Sorcerer. What did that mean? Did this to herself. And ever since she did what she did to you and those other two, she's been a Sorcerer. Me and who? Ben and Noah? And what? What did she do?
Ben and Ginny came to find us as the afternoon sun sank toward the hilltops. Ben could still see the city, a Survivor on whom no one had cast a spell. Ginny, who only came to the city because I'd brought her, could see it no longer. We could not permit Ben to reenter the city. I was too afraid he'd never make it back out.
They returned with the body not long after. It had been hidden under the floorboards of a house that had stood empty since the rogue Survivors abandoned the City. Lizzie's skin was withering further, looking closer and closer to her true age, bringing her nearer and nearer to dust.
"We need to get her blood out," I said.
"Why?" Ben asked, horrified.
"Because Andrew said so."
This was enough reason for Ben, who produced a knife. "How do I do this?" he asked as he dropped to his knees beside her.
"The jugular is your best bet for quick expulsion," Mark said. So casual, I noticed.
"Is that the way you do it?" Ben asked, a quiet coldness in his eyes.
"That's how they get it out when they embalm people," Mark said, not even entertaining the real question. "Do you want me to do it?"
Trying to prove his valor, I suppose, Ben didn't answer him but only stuck the knife into Lizzie's neck. The blood was thick like mine, clotted and immobile. Mark began chest compressions, and then it began to burst out.
Mark, Everett, and Ginny held their breath, but not for the reasons I expected. Dead blood smells the worst, Ginny said in her mind. Can't stand it.
I grabbed my makeup bag out of the suitcase and emptied out a canister of powder. I put the empty vial up to Lizzie's neck and collected some for my purposes. Assuming this would be the only sample of an elder Survivor's blood I'd ever get, it seemed worth keeping.
We sat there in silence as coagulated blood formed a mass next to her body. Ben's emotions flew from bravery to devastation, then anger at the men who were tearing our family apart. First, Alexander Raven, whose part in this seemed obvious though unconfirmed. And second, John, who betrayed us in our home.
In a move I couldn't have expected, he thrust his hand into Lizzie's blood and then walked up to the invisible wall of the city. It took me a moment to understand what he was doing, as he smeared his hands against the walls he could see but we could not. But finally I realized he was writing words.
