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Sanjit’s s to try, Choo That’s all I can do"

THIRTY-FIVE

1 HOUR 27 MINUTES

SAM WAS FINALLY where he’d known all along he would end up It had taken hi toward the false horizon

The Perdido Beach nuclear power plant was eerily silent In the old days it had kept up a constant roar Not froiant turbines that turned superheated steas were as he’d left them A hole burned into the control room wall Cars smashed here and there by Caine or by Dekka All the evidence of the battle that had taken place a few short h the turbine roo as houses, hunched, coiled metal monsters turned to so much scrap

The control room, too, as Caine and he had left it The door ripped froes by Jack Dried blood--Brittney’s, most of it--formed a flaky brown crust on the polished floor

The ancient cohts were all dead, except for a fading pool of illuency beam The battery would be exhausted soon

No wonder Jack had refused to come back to this place It wasn’t fear of radiation It was fear of ghosts It hurt Jack deep down inside, Saht, to see machines rendered useless

Saoing, where he had to go

There was a badge on a desk, one of the warning badges that turned color when radiation levels were high Sam picked it up, looked at it, not sure whether he cared

Safe or not, he was going to the reactor

Sunlight shone through the hole Caine had blown in the concrete containment vessel But it was faint: sunset reflected off the ht It didn’t reveal anything but shadows

He reached the spot Right here Drake had shown Sa thing in the FAYZ

Right here Drake had named the price

This was the floor where Sa

Sae that Brianna had stuck into him Here, too, the floor was coated in a flaky brown scum

A noise! He spun, raised his hands and shot brilliant beaain and swept the killing bea it touched

A catwalk ladder crashed to the floor A cohtbulb

Sa

"If someone’s there you’d better tell me," he said to the shadows "Because I’ll kill you"

No voice spoke

Sah overhead Now shadows crossed each other, cast by two coht and another and another He for them in the air like Japanese lanterns He saw no one