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apartment for Lifeblood Deep, pictured his parents, who’d been gone on their stupid trip
for ages, it seemed. He remembered being a little kid—baseball, ice cream, playgrounds.
Michael realized he was completely disoriented. Enveloped by darkness, he squeezed
his eyes shut and focused, throwing all his mental eort into pooling every bit of his
consciousness into one place. Bryson had told him what to do—something about its eyes.
Sarah was nearby, maybe trying to help.
They’d figured something out.
He had to fight back.
This thing was going to kill him.
Michael gathered his energy and screamed, then jerked his arms away from the
shadow paws that held them down. He pulled free and groped blindly above him,
nding the head of the KillSim, searching with his ngers until he found the place where
those yellow lights had glowed. Michael could feel that the creature was trying to pin
him again, but he rolled to evade its grip. His hands found two warm orbs, almost hot.
He instantly took hold, clamping his ngers into tight sts around what had to be the
KillSim’s eyes.
With every last drop of strength left in his body, Michael squeezed as hard as he could.
The eyes felt hard and smooth as glass but gave way like gel. As his sight cleared, he
watched the eyes begin to ooze between his ngers. The creature let out an anguished
shriek and thrashed against Michael, struggling to get loose.
Then its eyes burst.
7
It was as if two eggs had imploded in Michael’s hands. The instant it happened, he felt a
charge of electricity scorch his palms and run through his arms and chest. He screamed
at the pain coursing through his body and pushed until the KillSim fell o him and
thumped on the oor. Light swarmed back into Michael’s vision, and nausea hit him like
a punch to the gut.
The room seemed a dierent color, duller than before, and his head ached like nothing
he’d ever experienced. His thoughts were still jumbled, his mind in a haze. The KillSim
lay in a heap at his feet, its outline distinguishable once again. Everything about it
seemed to have shrunk; lying there on the ground, it looked like nothing more than an
eyeless black dog.
“If we’d just known that from the start,” Bryson said.
Michael snapped his gaze away from the creature and toward his friend. The
movement sent a spike of pain through his entire skull.
Bryson and Sarah knelt next to Ronika, another dead KillSim only inches away. Two
other creatures had been killed as well—one at the bottom of the stairs and one halfway
up. Both of Michael’s friends were still breathing heavily, and a quick glance showed
him that their hands were burned raw. He looked down at his own and saw the same
thing. Only at the sight of them did the pain hit him.