Ben helped me gather the supplies before he left to join the others in the diner across the parking lot. Washcloth. Towels. A can of air freshener. Dumbo's field kit. We said good-bye at the stairway door. I told him to be careful, there were some slippery rat guts on the way down.

"I lost it back there," he said, lowering his eyes and scrubbing his foot across the carpet like an embarrassed little boy caught in a lie. "That wasn't cool."

"Your secret is safe with me."

He smiled. "Sullivan . . . Cassie . . . in case you don't . . . I wanted to tell you . . ."

I waited. I didn't push him.

"They made a major mistake," he blurted out, "the dumb bastards, when they didn't start by killing you first."

"Benjamin Thomas Parish, that was the sweetest and most bizarre compliment anyone's ever given me."

I kissed him on the cheek. He kissed me on the mouth.

"You know," I whispered, "a year ago, I would have sold my soul for that."

He shook his head. "Not worth it." And, for oneten thousandth of a second, all of it fell away, the despair and grief and anger and pain and hunger, and the old Ben Parish rose from the dead. The eyes that impaled. The smile that slayed. In another moment, he would fade, slide back into the new Ben, the one called Zombie, and I understood something I hadn't before: He was dead, the object of my schoolgirl desires, just as the schoolgirl who desired him was dead.

"Get out of here," I told him. "And if you let anything happen to my little brother, I'll hunt you down like a dog."

"I may be dumb, but I'm not that dumb."

He disappeared into the absolute dark of the stairwell.

I went back to the room. I couldn't do this. I had to do this. Evan scooted back in the bed until his butt touched the headboard. I slid my arms beneath Megan and slowly lifted her, turned, and then lowered her carefully onto Evan, leaning her head back into his lap. I picked up the spray can of air freshener (A Delicate Blend of Essences!) and saturated the washcloth. My hands were shaking. No way could I do this. No way I couldn't.

"A five-pronged hook," Evan said quietly. "Embedded beneath the right tonsil. Don't try to pull it out. Get a good grip on the wire, make the cut as close to the hook as you can, then pull the hook out-slowly. If the wire comes loose from the capsule . . ."

I nodded impatiently. "Kaboom. I know. You already told me that."

I opened the med kit and took out a pair of tweezers and surgical scissors. Small, but they seemed huge. I clicked on the penlight and stuck the butt end between my teeth.

I handed Evan the washcloth reeking of pine. He pressed the cloth over Megan's nose and mouth. Her body jerked, her eyelids fluttered open, her eyes rolled to the back of her head. Her hands, folded primly in her lap, twitched, became still. Evan dropped the cloth onto her chest.

"If she wakes up while I'm in there . . ." I said around the flashlight, sounding like a very bad ventriloquist: Eh chee wecks uh . . .

Evan nodded. "A hundred ways it can go wrong, Cassie."

He tilted her head back and forced her mouth open. I stared down a glistening red tunnel the width of a razor and a mile deep. Tweezers in my left hand. Scissors in my right. Both hands the size of footballs.

"Can you open it any wider?" I asked.

"If I open it any wider, I'll dislocate her jaw."

Well, in the grand scheme of things, a dislocated jaw was better than being able to pick up our pieces with this pair of tweezers. But whatever.

"This one?" Touching the tonsil gently with the end of the tweezers.

"I can't see."

"When you said right tonsil, you meant her right, not my right, right?"

"Her right. Your left."

"Okay," I breathed. "Just wanted to make sure."

I couldn't see what I was doing. I had the tweezers down her throat but not the scissors, and I didn't know how I was going to stuff both in the tiny mouth of this little girl.

"Hook the wire with the end of the tweezers," Evan suggested. "Then very slowly lift it up so you can see what you're doing. Don't yank. If the wire disconnects from the capsule-"

"Dear Jesus Christ, Walker, you don't have to warn me every two minutes what happens if the freaking wire disconnects from the freaking capsule!" I felt the tip of the tweezers catch on something. "Okay, I think I've got it."

"It's very thin. Black. Shiny. Your light should reflect-"

"Please be quiet." Or, in penlight speak: Pweez be qwiwet.

My whole body was shaking but my hands, miraculously, had become rock steady. I forced my right hand into her mouth by pushing against the inside of her cheek, maneuvering the tips of the scissors into position. Was that it? Did I actually have it? The wire, if that was the wire shining in my light, was as thin as a strand of human hair.

"Slowly, Cassie."

"Shut. Up."

"If she swallows it-"

"I am going to kill you, Evan. Seriously." I had the wire now, pinched between the tines of the tweezers. I could see the tiny hook embedded in her enflamed flesh as I tugged. Slow, slow, slow. Make sure you cut on the right end of the wire. The claw end.

"You're too close," he warned me. "Stop talking and don't breathe directly into her mouth . . ."

Right. So instead, I think I'm going to punch you directly in yours.

A hundred ways it could go wrong, he said. But there's wrong ways, really wrong ways, and really really wrong ways. When Megan's eyes flipped open and her body bucked beneath mine, we went down a really really one.

"She's awake!" I yelled unnecessarily.

"Don't let go of the wire!" he shouted back, necessarily.

Her teeth clamped down hard on my hand. Her head whipped from side to side. My fingers were trapped inside her mouth. I tried to hold the tweezers still, but one hard tug and the capsule would pull free . . .

"Evan, do something!"

He fumbled for the rag soaked in air freshener.

I shouted, "No, hold her head still, moron! Don't let her-"

"Let go of the wire," he gasped.

"What? You just said don't let go of the . . ."

He pinched her nose shut. Let go? Don't let go? If I let go, the wire might twist around the tweezers and pull free. If I don't let go, all the turning and twisting and whipping around might yank it free. Megan's eyes rolled in her head. Pain and terror and confusion, the constant mix the Others never failed to deliver. Her mouth flew open and I jammed the scissors down her throat.

"I hate you right now," I breathed at him. "I hate you more than I hate anyone else in the world." I felt like he needed to know that before I snapped the scissors closed. In case we were vaporized.

"Do you have it?" he asked.

"I have no freaking clue if I have it!"

"Do it." Then he smiled. Smiled! "Cut the wire, Mayfly," he said.

I cut the wire.

41.

"IT'S A TEST," Evan said.

The green liquid-gelcap-looking thing lay on the desk, safely-we hoped-sealed inside a clear plastic baggie, the kind your mom used in the long-gone good old days to keep your sandwich and chips fresh for lunch period.

"What, like human IEDs are still in the R-and-D phase?" Ben asked. He was leaning on the sill of the busted-out window, shivering, but someone had to watch the parking lot, and he wasn't letting anyone else take the risk. At least he had changed out of the blood-soaked, hideous (it was hideous before it was blood-soaked) yellow hoodie and into a black sweatshirt that almost brought him back to his pre-Arrival, buffed-out period.

From the bed, Sam giggled hesitantly, unsure if his beloved Zombie leader was making a joke. I'm no shrink, but I guessed Sams had undergone some transference due to seriously unresolved daddy issues.

"Not the bomb," Evan answered. "Us."

"Great," Ben growled. "First test I've passed in three years."

"Cut it out, Parish," I said. Who passed the law that said jocks had to act stupid to be cool? "I know for a fact you were a National Merit Finalist last year."

"Really?" Dumbo's ears perked up. Okay, I shouldn't make remarks about his ears, but he did appear to be dumbfounded.

"Yes, really," Ben said with a patented Parish smile. "But it was a very weak year. Aliens invaded." He looked at Evan. His smile died, which his smile usually did when he looked at Evan. "What are they testing us for?"

"Knowledge."

"Yeah, that would be the purpose of a test. You know what would be really helpful right now? If you'd knock off the enigmatic alien routine and get the fuck real. Because every second that goes by and that thing doesn't go off"-nodding to the baggie-"is a second that doubles our risk. Sooner or later, and I'm leaning toward sooner, they're coming back and blowing our asses to Dubuque."

"Dubuque?" Dumbo squeaked. He didn't get the reference and that frightened him. What was wrong in Dubuque?

"Just a town, Dumbo," Ben said. "A random town."

Evan was nodding. I glanced over at Poundcake filling the doorway, his mouth hanging open slightly as his big head ping-ponged to follow the conversation.

"They will come back," Evan said. "Unless we fail the test so they don't have to."

"Fail it? We passed, didn't we?" Ben turned to me. "I feel as if we passed. How about you?"

"Failing means we took her in, all fat, dumb, and happy," I explained, "and then got our asses blown back to Dubuque."

"Dubuque," Dumbo echoed, mystified.

"The absence of detonation can mean only one of three things," Evan said. "One, the device malfunctioned. Two, the device was incorrectly calibrated. Or three . . ."

Ben held up his hand. "Or three, someone in the hotel knows about the bomb-children and was able to remove it, put it in a plastic baggie, and conduct a seminar on how to instill panic and paranoia among the dopey humans. The test is to see if we have a Silencer among us."

"We do!" Sam yelled. He jabbed his finger at Evan. "You're a Silencer!"

"Something you absolutely can't know for sure if you vaporize the joint with a couple of well-placed Hellfire missiles," Ben finished.

"Which raises the question," Evan said quietly. "Why would they suspect such a thing?"

A silence settled over the room. Ben drummed his fingers on his forearm. Poundcake's mouth snapped closed. Dumbo tugged on an earlobe. I rocked back and forth in the chair, plucking at Bear's paw. I didn't know how I came into possession of Bear. Maybe I grabbed him while Poundcake was moving Megan into the adjacent room. I remembered his getting knocked to the floor but didn't remember picking him up.

"Well, it's obvious," Ben said. "They must have a way of knowing you're here. Right? Otherwise, you run the risk of taking out your own players."

"If they knew I was here, there would be no need for a test. They suspect I'm here."

Then I got it. And getting it did not bring me any comfort.

"Ringer."

Ben's head whipped toward me. The slightest breath of wind would have toppled him from his perch.

"She's been captured," I said. "Or Teacup. Or both." I turned to Evan, because the look on Ben's face was too much to bear.

"That makes the most sense," Evan agreed.

"Bullshit! Ringer would never give us up," Ben barked at him.

"Not willingly," Evan said.

"Wonderland," I breathed. "They've downloaded her memories . . ."

Ben came off the sill then, lost his balance, staggered forward, knocked against the edge of Sammy's bed. He was shaking, and not from the cold. "Oh no. No, no, no. Ringer has not been captured. She's safe and Teacup's safe and we are not going there . . ."

"No," Evan said. "We're already there."

I slid out of the chair and went to Ben. One of those moments when you know you have to do something but you have no idea what. "Ben, he's right. The reason we're alive right now is the same reason they sent Megan."

"What is it with you?" Ben demanded. "You buy into everything he says like he's Moses come down from the mountaintop. If they think he's here, for whatever reason, then they know he's a traitor and would still send us packing to Dubuque."

Everybody looked at Dumbo, waiting for it.