Page 84

NOVAK: What do you want with them?

CARREAU: We need them to open the gate. We’ve searched so long for the right child. There’s somethingspecialabout little Sophie and her shadow, don’t you think?

At the edge of the room, the strange children move among the stones, their eyes gleaming with reflected light.

NOVAK: Stay away from them.

CARREAU: Listen, Joy. Listen to the song. Let go of her.

He jerks his head toward Novak’s kneeling double. The echo-Novak’s throat bobs in a convulsive swallow.

HARDCASTLE: I’m not surrendering to any song. Come on. Let’s get out of here.

NOVAK: We can’t leave them.

She gestures to the kneeling doubles.

HARDCASTLE: Screw them. I’m not sticking around.

KAPOOR: There must be a way to wake them up.

HARDCASTLE: You’re kidding, right? We wake them up and they’re going to panic. Attack us. They won’t let us exist.

NOVAK: We aren’t real.

HARDCASTLE: Speak for yourself.

He looks down at the camera, grunts, and drops it. It hits the ground and rolls, the image going momentarily blank, but the drop doesn’t seem to have done too much damage.

KAPOOR: Will, get back here!

NOVAK: Let him go. We need to— Martin, how do we wake them up?

CARREAU: He’s right, you know. They’d kill you. And I wouldn’t want that, Joy. Oh, how he longs for you, how he loves you. You know, don’t you? And you ignore it.

NOVAK: That’s not true.

CARREAU: You string him along. You take what you need from him. From everyone. You take and you twist and you watch them dance and it makes you feel so good, so very good, that they love you so, but you love no one but yourself.

NOVAK: Stop it. Martin—whatever you are, you’re a copy of him, and there’s too much good in that man to be gone completely. Not if you were a good enough copy to fool us. Tell us how to wake them up, Martin.

CARREAU: I—

His hands clench, release, clench, release, a rhythm like the beating of birds’ wings.

CARREAU: We’re still connected. But it’s like a dream. Like a memory. I—

He jerks his head to the side.

CARREAU: Here, let me show you.

He steps toward the kneeling Carreau. He reaches for his waistband. Novak notices the knife a moment too late—a folding utility knife, just a common-sense bit of gear Carreau has probably used a dozen times in front of her, too small and practical to be remembered as anything but a tool.

NOVAK: No!

She’s too far away. She knows it; she makes no attempt to stop Carreau, instead turning the girls toward her, pressing their faces against her legs so they can’t see as Carreau grabs his double by the hair, pulling his head back, and slashes with the knife.

Blood spatters into the shallow bowl. The real Carreau topples, limbs twitching as he bleeds out without ever regaining true consciousness. The echo steps toward the next person in line—Vanya Kapoor.