The blast of light threw Zed backward before his hand ever reached Ray, a wave of raw electric force tearing through the room and scattering everyone near it.Ada stood at the center of it, both hands still raised, her whole body shaking, the blue light around her fingers flaring wild and uncontrolled instead of the careful, focused bursts she'd learned to manage. She hadn't meant for it to happen. But Ray would understand that later, once his ears stopped ringing enough to hear anyone properly. In that moment, fear and desperation had simply torn loose from her all at once, faster than she could shape it into anything controlled.The spark caught Zed across the shoulder, sending him skidding hard into the wall of wired equipment, sparks of a different kind showering down from the damaged panels above him.It also caught Ray.He felt it hit like a wave of ice and fire tangled together, every nerve in his body lighting up at once, and then nothing. Darkness swallowed him whole befo

Ray didn't wait to see what the raised hand meant.He was moving before he'd finished deciding to, pulling Lydia back from the window, shouting for his parents somewhere deeper in the house that had never known a threat like this."Get away from the glass," Ray screamed. "Now.""Ray, you're frightening me," Lydia said, but she moved anyway, some old trust in him overriding the confusion on her face.Outside, the rows of infected hadn't moved.They stood exactly as still as they had a moment ago, waiting on something Ray understood without being told wasn't going to come from them first.Zoe moved across the yard alone, unhurried, and stopped just short of the porch steps, studying the house like she already owned everything inside it."You found your way in further than I expected," she said, and her voice carried none of the warmth Ray knew, none of the exhaustion, none of the grief over Charlie that had cracked her open in the street in New York. This voice was cool and amused and

Ray's first clear thought was the smell of woodsmoke, ordinary and sharp, and it grounded him faster than anything else could have."Ray. Ray, look at me." Jane's face moved into focus above him.It was real in a way that felt different now, textured, imperfect, a small scar along her eyebrow he had never noticed before this exact second. "You're back and you're at camp."He tried to sit up fast but Nichole's hand pressed firm against his chest, holding him down."Slow," Nichole said. "Give your body a minute, you've been under a long time.""How long," Ray managed to ask with his throat raw like he had been shouting for hours."Six hours," Priya said, kneeling close, her bandaged hand resting carefully in her lap. "You went still after Ada's spark and just didn't come back. We tried everything. Water, noise, shaking you and nothing worked until about a minute ago, when you started screaming."Six hours. It had felt like days inside the loop, entire seasons of a life he had never l

A red light blinked inside Reeves' skull for few seconds and what followed was an explosion.The detonation was small and precise, and it was over before anyone had finished moving.Her skull scattered on the dirt floor.Ray got Ada back by the arm, Nichole hauling Jane clear a half-second after, and the sound that followed was sharp and final, gone almost as fast as it came. Nobody had time to look away.Then it was quiet.For a long moment, nobody spoke. The fire kept crackling, indifferent, and the camp around them had gone still in the particular way a place goes still after something irreversible happens in it.Ada was the one who came back first, backing away with both hands pressed over her mouth, her whole body shaking."I did that," she whispered. "I made her talk and then….""You didn't do that," Nichole said firmly, moving towards her, gripping her shoulders to make her look at him instead of the ground. "Ada, look at me. That wasn't you, that was already inside her. Wo

They didn't stop to examine the bodies. Nobody wanted to get close enough to find out if whatever had killed them could still be triggered by something nearby."Keep moving," Ray said, and the vehicles rolled past the field of fallen infected without slowing further, Mattias's fighters watching the tree on either side the rest of the way into the city.Kansas looked different than the last time Ray had seen it. It was quieter in places that should have been crawling with movement, the horde thinned out enough that their approach into the warehouse district went smoother than expected. Nobody said it out loud, but Ray suspected they were all thinking the same thing.However many infected Wolfe had just erased on that highway, it hadn't been an isolated incident. Something like it had probably happened across the whole city.******The warehouse still had stock when the group reached there, more than Ray dared hope for after everything. Canned goods, sealed water, a few crates of me