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It was an egg A plastic Easter egg, like the ones she’d hunted in the grass when she was just a girl How she’d loved the ritual: the wild dash over the field, her little basket swinging in her hand, the dew on her feet and the slow accureat white rabbit whose nocturnal visitation had left behind this bounty Lila cupped the egg in her pal within Could it be ? Was it possible ? But what else could it be?

There was only one answer Lila Kyle would die with the taste of chocolate on her tongue

Chapter 60

Treachery Treachery

How had the insurgency gotten so close? Could somebody please tell him that? First the redhead, then Vale, and now Lila’s attendant, too? That quaking mouse? That anonymous nobody who looked at the floor whenever he entered the room? How deep inside the Dome did the conspiracy reach?

To Guilder’s vast irritation, the redhead was still at large She’d killed eleven peopleher escape; hoas that even possible? They’d never even learned her name Call me what you like, she’d said, just don’t callJokes, from a woman who’d been beaten continuously for days As for Sod, Guilder, in hindsight, was forced to concede his error Letting a man like that off his leash had been a one-way ticket to disaster

Guilder supervised the attendant’s interrogation hith, this one was made of softer stuff Three dunks in the tub were all it took to irl, Jenny, though nobody had seen her in days A hideout she didn’t know the location of because they’d knocked her out, which made sense; that’s what Guilder would have done A woh the only Nina in the files had died four years ago, and a man named Eustace, who, but nothing he could uard asked We could, you know, go a few more rounds Guilder looked down at the woman, as still strapped to the board, her hair drenched by the ice-cold water, the last wet gasps shuddering through her Sara Fisher, No 94801, resident of Lodge 216, a worker in Biodiesel Plant 3 Verlyn reht in from Roswell So, one of those infernal Texans Now that the eleven virals had arrived, he’d really have to do so serious about the Texas situation The woman hardly seemed the type; he had to reh, of course, there was no type; that’s what the last violent ency was everyone and no one

Never uard Get her hooked up I think Grey will enjoy what this one has to offer He always likes the young ones

He took the stairs frolasses, and opened the drapes The sun had just dipped below the horizon, jetting the clouds with ribbons of bright color The sight was pretty, sort of Guilder supposed it was the kind of thing he o But a person could only look at so many sunsets in a lifeti forever, etc, etc, etc

He missed Wilkes The man hadn’t always been the best coer to please-but at least he’d been somebody to talk to Guilder had trusted him, confided in hiotten around to saying Guilder had even told hih he’d masked the story in irony A whore, can you believe it? What a jackass I was! My, but they’d had a good, long laugh at that The thing was, this was just the sort of unconstructed, vaguely anxious hour when Guilder would have stuck his head fro his friend into his office on soet in here!"-but really just to talk

His friend He supposed they were Had been

Darkness caaze traveled down the hill to the Project It would need a new nauy for that; no doubt about it, he’d had a ords In his forency, experience he’d put to plentiful use concocting the catchphrases and jingles that kept the troops in rhetorical line, right down to the words of the anthee our lives to thee Our labors do we offer, without recompense or fee Homeland, our Homeland, a nation rises here Safety, hope, security, fro sea Corny as hell, and Guilder hadn’t been so keen on the word "reco scanned nicely and was, by the standards of its genre, not too hard on the ears

So, what should they call it there? "Bunker" was too , but there was nothing palatial about the place It looked like a big concrete box Soly into a shrine?

Just how o, and at what frequency, remained to be seen; Guilder had yet to receive specific instructions fros would coht be different froarden-variety viral, but they hat they were-eating machines, basically No obbling up everything with a pulse would be a hard habit to shake But in the main, their diet would consist of a combination of donated huht ratios needed to be scrupulously eneration, huether-which was, co It was positively Hoppelesque What was the ter? That’s what Guilder needed A fresh point of view, a new lexicon, a new vision A rebranding of the viral experience

Hewith this shrine business The establishion, with all the ht be just the lubricant the gears of huy required State worship was all stick and no carrot; it produced only an arid obedience to authority But hope was the greatest social organizer of all Give people hope, and you could e, everyday kind of hope-for food or clothes or the absence of pain or good suburban schools or lon pay What people needed was a hope beyond the visible world, the world of the body and its trials, of life’s endless dull parade of things A hope that all was not as it appeared

And there it was, the naant Not a shrine; a te And he, Horace Guilder, would be its priest

So, not such a worthless day after all Funny how things could just coht with a smile-his first in weeks Screw Hoppel and his ditties And while he was at it, screw Wilkes, that ingrate Guilder had everything in hand

First the injection, and the wooziness, and Sara, lying on a wheeled gurney, observed the ceiling flowing past

"Alleyoop"

Now she was so her onto a table, tightening straps around her ars and forehead The metal was chilly beneath her At soown Herthe Here was Dr Verlyn, peering down at her through his tiny glasses in his grandfatherly way His eyebrows struck her as extraordinary He was holding a silver forceps; a wad of cotton soaked in brown fluid was clinched between the tines She supposed that since he was a doctor, he was doing so medical to her

"Thisdown her ar a plastic tube beneath her nose