At some point, mercifully, his mind had decided it was done and fled consciousness, sinking him into a deep sleep. He entered a black void empty of dreams or memories, and it seemed only a few seconds later that Keisha gently awakened him.
She spoke his name several times, and he finally fluttered his eyes open. It was gone. The pain, the noise, the fog. He felt fine.
“Come on, now,” Keisha said. “Sit up. It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”
She grabbed his hands and helped him lift off the hard cement of the parking lot; he swung his legs around and settled into a sitting position. He’d expected a wave of pain or nausea but nothing happened.
“How long was I out?” he asked.
“About an hour. I hated to wake you up but… We’re running out of daylight. I knew you wouldn’t want us caught out here in the dark. I think we can still make it to the meeting spot on time.”
He looked at her, at her kind face. How, in all the big wide world had he stumbled upon someone who could play the role of a big sister? He’d known her for… what? A week? And yet he felt for her some of the same warmth he had begun to feel for his family—his mom, dad, sister—who were coming out of the misty dark of the memory swipe.
“Thanks, Keisha,” he whispered. “You could’ve dumped me here and kept going. You could’ve been there by now, even. Thank you.”
“Nonsense,” she replied with a fake look of reproach. “You promised to get us there, and I don’t wanna screw up your pride in your manly abilities. So we decided to wait and let you pretend to save us.”
He laughed, a scratchy sound that came up through his throat. “No one’s saving anybody. All we’re doing is taking a long walk to the family reunion.”
“Amen,” she said. “Now get your ass up and let’s go.”
* * *
An hour later, they reached a neighborhood of old homes, most of which were in terrible disrepair—broken windows, shutters hanging by one nail, peeled paint, roofs with only half their tiles. The trees were giant—half of them dead—meaning the place had been there for a very long time. Weeds had replaced lawns a decade or so earlier.
“Perfect place for a grandma house,” Jonesy said.
Grandma’s. That’s where they were meeting Keisha’s brother and Jackie. At the entrance to the neighborhood, cracked brick walls still bore signs that said, “Norman Downes.” The place sure didn’t look as fancy as it sounded, even if it had been brand new.
Keisha hadn’t moved since arriving, staring ahead with a blank look. Newt put his arm around her shoulders and gave a squeeze, then pinched Dante on the cheek.
“We made it,” he said. “We actually—”
She shushed him hard. “Are you crazy? Don’t jinx it.” She closed her eyes and bent her neck, putting her chin on the top of Dante’s little head. “I’m so scared to walk in there, Newt. Terrified.”
He didn’t know what to say. He searched for something, anything. “You want me to do it? Tell me which house and I can go check. I’ll run.”
Instead of answering she handed Dante over, almost pushing him into Newt’s chest. Then she slipped her backpack off of her shoulders and lowered it to the ground, bending over it as she unzipped the main pocket.
“Keisha, don’t!” he whispered harshly. She had pulled out the cell phone, suddenly not caring that Jonesy and everyone else would see it. “What are you doing?”
“Checking one last time,” she said with a dead voice. “Then it won’t matter.”
“Where’d you get one of those?” a woman in Jonesy’s group asked. “I didn’t even know those things worked anymore.”
Jonesy was the one to answer since Keisha had ignored the question, waiting for the phone to power up. “Only for special people. Uppity-ups and the like. Looks like Newt isn’t the only fancy-pants we’ve been galavantin’ with.”
The words could’ve been taken as threatening, but Jonesy had a deflecting look of innocence on his face. More than a few of his pals were whispering to each other, however, and that made Newt nervous.
“Let’s just go check,” Newt urged. Why was the thing taking so long to wake up? “We’re practically there, anyway. Come on.”
She didn’t respond. The glow of the phone finally lit up her face in the fading twilight.
“Lord have mercy,” she whispered.
“What?” Newt asked. “What does it say?”
Instead of responding, she started sprinting down the street that lead into the neighborhood, leaving her backpack, her child, and everyone else behind. Newt stood frozen in stunned confusion for a second, then took off after her, Dante held firmly in his arms.
* * *
They passed dozens of houses, dilapidated, roofs falling in, dark as black water on the inside, hovering like another dimension behind broken windows. Keisha turned a corner, then another one. Soon she came to a stop in front of a home that looked in much better shape than its neighbors. There were even lights shining from within, the cough of a generator disrupting the still air of the coming night.
Newt reached Keisha and, gasping for breath, had to put Dante down for a second.
“What did you see on the phone?” he managed to ask.
She looked at him. “It just said, WICKED is here .”
“WICKED?” It was so unexpected and his chest hurt so much from sprinting that he felt nothing when he heard the word. “What the hell? Why would they be here?”
“We’re about to find out.” She picked up Dante and moved toward the front door, which was wide open.
Newt grabbed her arm. “What? No. We… Let’s just think for a second.”
“They have my daughter, Newt. And my brother. There’s nothing to think about.” She glared down at his fingers, gripped tightly around her wrist. He let go; his hand flopped to the side as if it had lost its bones. “What’s there to lose? Maybe you should leave, though. Seriously. You kinda have a past with them.”
Newt shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs. “I was just a control subject. They shouldn’t care about me anymore. Why would it matter? Why are they here?”
Keisha sighed. “That’s a lot of questions. I’m going in.”
“So am I.” When she made to push back, he stopped her. “I’ve got nothing to lose, either. Not one bloody thing.”
“Hard to argue with that one.”
She marched across the lawn toward the open door, which stood above three wooden steps and a rickety porch. Newt fell into line right next to her. Up the steps, which creaked with every footfall. She didn’t pause at the threshold, walked right in, showing a bravery that reminded Newt of some of the things he’d seen in the Maze. Although terrified out of his wits, he followed her.
They stepped into a wide living room, the kitchen behind it. Two lamps warmly lit the air on either side of a couch that had seen better days, lumpy, torn, collapsed in the middle. In that sunken part sat a man and a pre-teen girl. Behind them, dressed in black and shiny armor similar to the people who’d taken them to the Crank Palace, stood two representatives of WICKED, that fine establishment that had stolen Newt from his parents and treated him like crap ever since. To alleviate any doubt, they wore WICKED insignia on their chests.
“Mom!” the little girl cried, leaping from the couch.
“Jackie,” Keisha said almost under her breath; she then rushed forward to meet the girl halfway, pulled her daughter into her arms. The brother then joined them, all four family members squeezing each other in one giant hug. The two guards did nothing to stop the reunion, and they appeared to be staring at Newt through their protective visors.
His heart sank. They were taking him back, weren’t they? Of course they were. But why all the fuss over Keisha and her family? They could’ve taken him at any point. He didn’t know what to say so he only looked at the floor, ashamed that he was thinking of himself when this sweet reunion had just happened right in front of his eyes.
After a minute or so, Keisha pulled back a little from her family and looked up at the strangers in their strange gear.
“Why are you in my grandma’s house?” she asked them. “What were you planning to do with my daughter and my brother?”
For the first time, one of the unwanted visitors spoke.
“His friends are up to no good, that’s why,” he said in that filtered, slightly mechanical voice.
The other one pointed at Newt. “We’re here for a little collateral.” A woman, her voice as hard as the walls of the Maze. “And because the boss said so.”
