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"That’s great, Nix," Benny said, stroking her back

But she shook her head and kept shaking it

"Nix? What is itwhat’s wrong?"

And then he understood

Then he remembered

The memory was a knife in his heart

"Nix," he whispered, and his voice broke on that single word "Nixwhere’s Chong?"

She clung to hi Buthe’s so sick He’s already so"

Nix couldn’t say another word

Benny wouldn’t have been able to hear her anyway

They clung to each other, and together they dropped brokenly to their knees

-3-

IT WOULD BE HELL

Lilah knew that

Hell was so the Lost Girl knew She had lived it all her life

She was a toddler on First Night, but she reht The endless screanantinto the world She reees, filled with terror and confusion, at first recoil from her o and only the soulless return from She remembered what they did--what they had to do Lilah had screamed herself raw Those screams had smashed down the doorway into hell

She ree and then laying rough hands on her and Annie Dragging the back to Ga earing the disguise of beautiful little Annie

Lilah remembered what she had been forced to do

And she remembered every moment of every day of every month of the lonely years that followed

Hell?

Lilah knew hell

It had nothing to teach her, no new tricks it could play on her

She sat on the edge of Chong’s bed and watched the strangeBut each beep was farther apart, each ping closer to a whisper

Lilah held Chong’s icy hand in hers His eyes stared up at the ceiling, but they were milky, the irises transforreen and black The pupils were pinpricks, the whites veined with black lines as thin as sewing thread

Bags of che pendulously fro’s veins His arm was covered with the black marks from needles So many needles

Lilah had refused to wear a hazmat suit The doctors had warned her that if she didn’t put one on, she could never leave this building Even they couldn’t guarantee that she wouldn’t carry a disease out with her that would do what the Reaper Plague and all the other plagues had failed to do Wipe everyone and everything out The people inside the labs lived in isolation, never touching flesh to flesh, not even a handshake They wore their hazmat suits all day until they sealed themselves into their private bedrooot sick and died, so what?

She would not be alone in death’s kingdo to fight

To fight

Fight

"You darowled

But with every rew fainter and fainter

Until all she could hear was a long, continuous scream from the heart monitor

It was almost the loudest sound in the world

Only her own, endless keening cry of grief was louder

Hell, it seemed, had one last trick to play

-4-