“But . . . but I can still lead the team,” Milos insisted.

“Denial doesn’t help anyone,” Mary told him. “Circumstances have changed. Your body has died, and we all need to face that.” Then Mary sat back down, took the can from Rotsie, and took a long sip of soda, savoring the flavor. That’s when Milos realized that this was more than just a shared can of soda. It was like a champagne toast between the two of them, to celebrate a decision that had already been made in Milos’s absence.

“Why don’t you go down to the arena floor with the other Afterlights?” Mary suggested, indicating the endless basketball game below. “You could watch the game—maybe join in if you like. You’ve been so busy for so long, it’s been forever since you’ve played anything at all. Why, I bet if you thought about it, Milos, you could find something you’d like to do more than anything else. One special thing that would keep you content.”

“Think of it as retirement,” Rotsie said. “I’m sure you’ll find something useful to do.”

“That’s right,” echoed Mary. “Useful and fulfilling.”

“No,” insisted Milos feeling his last ounce of hope fading away. “Please, Mary . . . you still need me. . . .”

Mary sighed and rose again as if it was an effort. Finally she gave him an embrace and a kiss, but none of it held the passion it did before. The embrace was perfunctory, a mere requirement of common courtesy. And the kiss was a peck on the cheek. He felt the way a beloved pet must feel the moment before being “put down.”

“Please, Milos,” she said. “There’s no need to make this so . . . awkward.”

Finally Rotsie stood. “Why don’t I escort him out?”

But Milos would not allow the humiliation of being kicked out by Rotsie. Milos backed away, holding Mary’s gaze, hoping she would look away in shame, but she didn’t, because Miss Mary Hightower wasn’t ashamed of anything she did. Ever.

“I will go,” Milos said. “I will go and make myself . . . useful.” And he left, turning all his attention to the supreme task of remembering his name.

CHAPTER 38

Blame It on Mavis

One by one, Jackin’ Jill had teased out the real names of Mary’s new skinjackers—even though Mary had insisted they all take on nicknames to keep their identities secret. Mary was shrewd, but Jill was far more cunning, and she was already feeling the thrill of the hunt—a different kind of hunt, but, in its own way, rewarding. She knew who they all were within a few days, and then she memorized their names, knowing that even if she found a way to write them down, she could not take the list with her when she skinjacked.

AmberAguilar

Now all that remained was getting the information to Allie. Jill hated the fact that she was on Allie’s side now, and she had to remind herself that she was on nobody’s side but her own. This next part turned out to be harder than finding out their names. There simply was no way for Jill to sneak off and send the information to Allie. She was under the constant scrutiny of Rotsie and the other skinjackers. She couldn’t get away from Mary’s structured little world without raising suspicion. Finally she came up with a plan.

“These skinjackers are pathetic,” she told Mary. “They need more training, or they’ll be useless—and they need more skills to make up for the loss of Milos.”

Mary, who was preparing to march west from Odessa with her horde, was aggravated by anything that might delay them. “You’ll train them as we go,” she told Jill.

“How? There’s nothing west of Odessa for miles. We need fleshies to train them, and the only fleshies around are in this town.”

Finally Mary relented, allowing them a training day, and the next morning they went to downtown Odessa.

JonathaN goldstein

Although Moose and Jill were the most skilled skinjackers among them, Rotsie insisted on taking charge. “We’ll practice soul surfing,” Rotsie said, “and increase the distance we can jump.”

“You can do that, but I want to teach partialing.”

“What’s that?” Rotsie asked.

Jill gave an exaggerated roll of her eyes. “Don’t you know anything? It’s when you take over just a part of a fleshie. A mouth, or a leg, or an arm.”

“What good is that?”

“Sometimes it’s all you need, and it’s faster when you’re in a hurry, moron!”

Then he grabbed her wrist angrily. It would have hurt if they were skinjacking. “I am your superior,” Rotsie said. “You will treat me with respect.”

Jill saw all the other skinjackers, including Moose, looking at her to see what she would do. A battle of wills would not help the situation, so she gave him a salute, just exaggerated enough to be defiant, but just real enough for him to have to accept it. Then she made a mental note to list his name in all caps for Allie, so she’d go after him first.

DAMON McDANIEL

Rotsie and Moose went off with the four kids who had the most trouble soul-surfing, and left Jill with the boy who always raised his hand, earning him the nickname “The Teacher’s Pet,” or just “The Pet,” and a Korean kid they called “Seoul-Soul,” but that quickly became “SoSo.”

Luke Nguyen

The problem with having these two was that they were too focused. As Jill explained partialing, they watched, and listened, and Jill suspected they would constantly be peeling out of their practice hosts, seeking her approval. What she needed were a few solid moments with nobody watching her.

“We need to get out of the street,” Jill told them, “and find a place where people aren’t moving so much.” She looked down a row of shops, and said, “There—that gift shop. It’s the perfect place.”

But The Pet raised his hand. “Uh, excuse me, but won’t it be easier if people are sitting down? Like maybe in the Starbucks next door?”

“Why would I want to make it easier?”

They walked right through the glass front of the gift shop, a store full of china figurines, and leftover Christmas decorations at half price. The floor was thin, and they had to struggle to keep themselves from sinking. Jill pointed to two fleshies in line. “Half-jack those two,” she told them. “Hide behind their minds without taking them over, then focus on one hand, and make that hand take something and slip it into their pocket without them knowing.”

“That’s shoplifting,” said The Pet.

Sebastian Var]ner

“Are you a skinjacker or aren’t you?” snapped Jill.

“I hate to tell you this,” said SoSo, “but I stink at half-jacking. Most of the time they know I’m there, and they freak out.”

“Practice makes perfect,” said Jill. “Now do it before you sink!”

SoSo looked at the fleshie, clenched his fists, and leaped inside. The Pet did the same to his fleshie, and both disappeared.

The moment they were gone, Jill made her move, jumping right through the wall into the Starbucks—which wasn’t just full of people sitting down, it was full of people with computers. Without a second to lose she jumped into the closest one—a fat guy with way too much facial hair, and the instant she was inside—

—Down twenty points, stupid stock market, sell sell sell—

Jill knocked him unconscious and took over his body. It had been a long time since Jill had used a computer, and they had changed considerably. The keys were smaller, the screen bigger, and the maddening touchpad was nothing like a mouse.

She managed to close the stock market window, and found a mail icon. She clicked it, played around with the menu until she opened a new blank e-mail. Then she got to work typing out the names—but when she looked at her hands, she saw only her two index fingers extended, and she couldn’t make her other fingers touch the keys. This idiot didn’t know how to type! He could only hunt-and-peck, and although Jill knew how to type—she had learned as a child from an old Mavis Beacon typing program—her own ability could not override the fat guy’s lack of muscle memory.

C’mon! Faster! Faster! But no matter how quickly she tried to type, she kept having to correct errors, and find the right keys. Jill calmed herself down and concentrated, knowing that frustration would only make it worse.

Maril;ou DiLuzio

Six names. Twelve words. And yet it took almost two minutes to type them. Finally she was done, and she went to the top of the screen, filling in the e-mail address.

[email protected]

Then she hit send, made sure that the e-mail uploaded, then peeled out of the fat guy, jumping back through the wall and into the gift shop.

In the living world SoSo was having trouble with his fleshie. The poor woman was screaming and flailing her arms, knocking things off shelves and breaking them like the proverbial bull in a China shop. Finally SoSo pulled out. “See,” he told Jill. “I told you I suck at half-jacking.”

The Pet peeled out a moment later. “Maybe we should try this in a place where things won’t break.”

“Forget it,” Jill said. “You’re a couple of screw-ups. We’ll try partialing some other time.” Then they left, with Jill confident that her mission was accomplished—and it would have been, had there not been a typo in the e-mail address.

CHAPTER 39

Ghost Town

Bad luck, bad karma, and plain old human error.

There was no other way to explain what happened in Eunice, New Mexico, just west of the Texas border. Until today, the town was little more than a spot on the map: a quiet and unremarkable place, with a population of about twenty-five hundred. In terms of industry there was a single factory that employed more than half the population: a plastics facility that manufactured lightweight components for fighter jets and smart bombs.

Protests were occasionally staged by activist groups who claimed that the people of Eunice were complicit in the creation of machines of death, and that the town would eventually get what was coming to it. Karma, the protesters said, would come a-calling.

Of course, no one took the protests seriously. It wasn’t like the people of Eunice were warmongers—and besides, the plastic fittings the plant produced were not destructive in and of themselves: They were just small parts of larger puzzles assembled a thousand miles away.

Under the circumstances, it was very difficult to piece together the unlucky string of events that befell the town of Eunice, but it all began with a tanker truck. Such trucks rolling in from Odessa were a regular site at the plant, since the plant needed regular shipments of trimellitates, polybutane, and other raw materials needed to make their particular type of plastic.

One tanker truck, however, never made it to the plant. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, the driver lost control of the wheel while approaching the town. A heart attack was suspected. The tanker truck plowed into an electrical station and ruptured, and as the electrical station blew, a dense cloud of fumes billowed into the air. While burning polybutane would have been a health hazard and general nuisance, it would not have been deadly. However, due to some clerical error back at the chemical company in Odessa, the tanker was full of methyl isocyanate instead, a chemical used in pesticides that’s only marginally safe to begin with, and when tossed into a fire, the resulting gas cloud would be lethal to anything downwind . . .