Chapter 8

# Chapter 8: The Choice

"Funny thing about dying, Serena. It leaves a smell on a person. I could pick yours out of a thousand."

The thing in the tunnel hadn't moved. It stood in the dark twenty feet away, tall and thin, with its head tilted like a bird listening for worms. Behind me, Marcy's breathing had gone quick and shallow. The boy was crying quietly into Mrs. Alvarez's shoulder.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"A messenger. Nothing more." It sounded almost kind. "You went through the gate and came back early. That isn't supposed to happen. We wanted to see for ourselves."

My mouth went dry. *The gate.* I had never said that word to anyone, in either life.

"I don't know what you mean."

"You do." The head tilted the other way. "Every Maiden remembers the gate. That's how we know she's ready."

The mark on my palm flared white-hot. I cried out and clenched my fist, and a ripple of red light rolled down the tunnel like a wave. The emergency lamps all came back on at once, buzzing and flickering. The creature's outline shivered. It looked, for a second, like a man made of wet black paper.

"There she is," it whispered, delighted. "See you at the harvest, Maiden."

It folded in on itself and poured down into a drain in the floor, like water going out of a tub. The tunnel was empty.

Nobody spoke for a while.

"What was that?" Marcy said finally.

"Something we're not going to talk about until we're behind a wall." I took the pipe back in my right hand. My left was still shaking. "Keep moving."

---

We reached the warehouse at four in the afternoon.

Hank had done his job. Every window was welded shut, and the front gate was a sheet of steel plate with a rolling track and a slot for a camera. Eleven workers were already inside, along with their families. I had told Hank to bring anyone he trusted. He had brought twice what I expected.

I got Marcy to the infirmary I had built in the back, an empty office with a cot and a medical cabinet. She looked at the shelves, at the stacked antibiotics, the sutures, the IV bags, and then at me.

"You planned all this."

"I had a bad dream," I said. "A long one."

She let out a breath that was half a laugh. "Lucky for me."

I stood on the catwalk over the main floor and watched the survivors settle in. Mrs. Alvarez had already taken over the kitchen. The boy, Theo, sat on a crate eating crackers, quiet now. Through the little camera screen by the door I could see the road outside, empty at the moment, strewn with cars and smoke.

At six o'clock, the first knock came on the gate.

It was heavy, frantic, the kind of knock you give when you have nothing left. I climbed down the stairs and looked at the camera.

A black SUV sat crooked at the curb with its front end smashed in. One headlight was out. Standing in front of it, covered in dust and blood that wasn't all his, was Julian.

Behind him, Camille leaned against the door with Oliver in her arms, both of them filthy. Margaret Reed was not with them. Neither was the driver. Neither were the guards.

Julian hit the gate again with the flat of his hand.

"Serena!" His voice cracked, high and ragged. "Serena, I know you're in there! My mother's dead! The guards ran! We've been walking for three hours. Please, open the door!"

I stood very still.

"Please," he said. "I'm begging you. I know I was wrong. I'll sign anything. Just let us in."

I put my finger on the intercom button. It was cold under my skin.

"Julian," I said.

His head jerked up. He found the camera and pressed himself against the steel, so close I could see the sweat on his forehead.

"Serena. Oh, thank God." Tears were running down his face. "Thank you. We just need a place to stay. Just for the night."

"Is there room?"

He blinked. "What?"

"For everyone. Is there room for everyone, Julian?" My voice came out steady. "I thought there wasn't."

His face went slack.

He didn't remember. Of course he didn't. For him, the gate had never happened. He had never closed it. He had never slid a wedding ring into my dying hand.

But he heard something in my voice, because the color left him all at once.

"Serena, it's Oliver," he whispered. "Look at him. He's four years old. Think of Oliver."

Behind him, Camille raised her head. Her eyes found the camera. She did not plead. She did not cry. She only watched, with the flat, steady stare of someone who understood exactly what I was doing and had no way to stop it.

I took my finger off the button.

"Hank," I said. "Open the side door."

He frowned at me. "For them?"

"For the people behind them."

I pointed at the screen. Across the road, half hidden behind a burning delivery truck, a family of five was crouched low, an old man, a mother, two teenagers, and a toddler. They had been following Julian's SUV for ten minutes. They hadn't dared to knock.

The side door opened. I waved, and the mother looked at me with wide, wet eyes, and then they ran. Hank caught the toddler. Mrs. Alvarez had a blanket ready.

Julian watched all of it.

"Serena." His voice broke. "You're letting *them* in?"

"They didn't lie to me," I said through the speaker. "They didn't steal from me. They didn't leave me in the dark."

"You can't just leave us out here!"

"I'm not leaving you anywhere, Julian." I looked at his face on the screen, blotchy and terrified and small. "You're exactly where you put me."

He screamed my name. I stepped back from the speaker, and he went on screaming it, and I let him. Behind me, Marcy came up quietly and stood at my shoulder. She didn't ask. She only looked at the screen and then at me, and I saw her decide not to say a word.

Then the floor shook.

It started as a low tremor, a bass note in the concrete that rattled the cans on the shelves. Dust fell from the ceiling. Outside, Julian's screaming cut off in the middle of a word.

On the camera, the pavement in front of the gate bulged upward in a slow dome. Asphalt cracked and curled back like peeling skin. Camille grabbed Oliver and stumbled backward. Julian fell on his knees.

Something enormous was pushing its way up through the road.

Marcy's hand closed on my sleeve. "That's an evolved type, isn't it?" she whispered. "It's too big."

My blood turned to ice, because I knew what she was looking at, and I knew what the calendar said.

"It shouldn't exist," I said. "Not for another three months."