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Sa off in class He sat up straighter and unconsciously lowered his voice half an octave "You’re right, Edilio What is it you want to do?"

At some point, and Sam could not really pinpoint quite when, Edilio had stopped being his sidekick and becoe had permeated the consciousness of the population at the lake, had beco to announce it No one anymore told Edilio they’d have to "check with Sae

Sam could not have been more pleased He had discovered about hi And it was a wonderful thing to be able to lie in bed with Astrid and not feel the whole world was depending on hi up at her noith her sleeveless T-shirt gapping at the side, and the as, andHe forced his First, while we have time, I want to prepare for the worst," Edilio said "We don’t havethe last of the Nutella and Cup-a-Noodles I want to put that stuff on a boat we’ll anchor out in the lake Also so, the stuff that won’t spoil I don’t want us getting caught flat-footed again Froet their butts back to work"

Sam nodded "Yeah" Up above, the sky was cloudy But they were not quite nor to slide by, swifter close in, slower off in the far northern distance Toward the southeast the sky turned dark blue It was all part of the dome effect

The newly transparent sphere that contained the FAYZ enty miles in diameter, with the nuclear power plant at its center That meant that directly over the power plant the top of the sphere was ten miles up At that point the top of the sphere approached the stratosphere, up beyond clouds, beyond en It was quite a bit lower here at Lake Trae This close to the barrier they could be seen from the outside by anyone with a decent set of binoculars

Just forty-eight hours after the barrier had gone clear it was still very strange to Sam to be able to look across Lake Tramonto and see the rest of Lake Tramonto There was a marina over there, probably not aThere were boats, and people, too, though not more than a handful Soainst the barrier and look in, like people staring at the aniuys pretending to fish but actually shooting video Saed

As if to make that point, Astrid shaded her eyes and looked off to the north "Helicopter"

There was a helicopter with soo, maybe a news station or a police depart above the "out there"a ca, as well as they could froht a sudden childish i, and for the second time Sam felt like a distracted student in class

"What we need"What are Drake and Diana and that kid going to do? And what can they do? Right noe’re blind"

"Irony," Astrid said When everyone just stared at her blankly, she sighed and explained, "For the first time we can see the real sky, and the world outside of this fishbowl, and we’re still blind"

"Ah," the three said in unison "Yeah, right"