Dark Eden by Patrick Carman

Publishers
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    EDEN 3 & 4
    CONNOR AND ALEX
    I didn’t worry as much about Kate as I had Ben, and I expected to worry even less about Connor. In that way, the cures were like a video game. I played mostly old games—Berzerk, Donkey Kong, stuff like that—but once in a while I’d wander into Keith’s room. He had an Xbox, but I called it his Death-box. If I hadn’t been in there for a while, say a couple of weeks, I’d find myself stunned by the blood and the guns, the ridiculous body count in the games he plays. Funny thing, though. If I hung around for a few minutes, it started to bother me less. A half hour later, if I was still in the room, I wouldn’t care anymore. The blood and the bodies were meaningless.
    When I saw Ben Dugan get cured, I felt real pain, as if a person had been snuffed out of existence. And I was afraid. If Ben was dead, I could be next, and I wasn’t ready to be dead. Plus, whatever he’d gone through had looked painful and terrifying.
    With Kate, I knew the truth. She’d been scared, but not literally to death. Knowing this took the sting out of the proceedings and, frankly, not in a good way. I was turning numb to it all. This feeling would deepen, I knew, with Connor and Alex. But what would happen when Marisa put the helmet on? That one I would feel.
    Maybe I’d even get back what the cures were taking from me.
     
    Something very important happened while I was waiting for the central monitor to kick back on again. It happened because I was in a state of extreme boredom.
    I’d finished reading The Pearl , a short book I was keen to talk about with Marisa, and had begun The Woman in the Dunes . But I wasn’t a big reader, and I’d already read quite a lot. With nothing else to do, I ate a Clif Bar and dumped out the entire contents of my backpack. I emptied every single zipper compartment, for no other reason than it was something to do besides stare at the walls. Inside one of the small pouches I found a crappy little MP3 player I hadn’t packed, which I recognized immediately as Keith’s. The thing was tiny and ancient, the only kind my penniless brother could afford. It wasn’t even made by Apple. He’d stuck a yellow Post-it Note to the player, but it had fallen off and lay in the bottom of the pouch. I picked it up and stuck it to my finger.
    I am playing Berzerk. Get well. Keith.
    He was a huge punk; but for some reason, the note made me choke up inside, my throat tightening as it had in the van on the way to Fort Eden. I missed his competitive goofiness. And it was kind of a big deal, him sending the player. He was always walking around the house with earbuds in, listening to classic rock and roll, which he claimed made him smarter. By sending the note and the player, he was trying to help me in his small way, even if he’d never admit it. Going without his music would be a sacrifice. He’d have to listen to my mom nag him all day.
    The white earbuds he’d sent along were caked with earwax, so I stuffed them back in the side pouch of my backpack and got my own. Mine were black and perfectly clean. If I wore them under my hoodie, it was hard to tell I had them on at all, which I liked very much. I pulled up the hood and cranked up the volume.
    I did not recognize the first song or the second, but the third was Kiss—“Detroit Rock City,” which told the tale of someone hitting a semitruck head-on. Coincidence? I don’t know, but it connected me to Kate and the others in an unexpected way. I clicked back and played it again, listening for words I’d missed, and walked out into the basement. It was dark out there, but a shaft of light from the bomb shelter poured into the shadows as I started aimlessly looking at cans and boxes. I let one earbud dangle at my side and listened through a single ear, just in case Mrs. Goring arrived unexpectedly. Around the corner where the electrical panel was, it was too