Remnants 14 - Begin Again by Katherine Alice Applegate Page B

Billy’s state.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. A heart attack, maybe.”
    “Maybe something frightened her,” D-Caf suggested. “Maybe she died of shock?”
    Noyze frowned. “But she looks so — peaceful. I never saw 2Face look like that when she was —
    here.”
    “Ain’t that the truth,” Jobs murmured.
    “Could she have died of—of a broken heart?” D-Caf ventured now.
    Violet laughed. “She had no heart to break.”
    “Now, come on,” Olga admonished. “She wasn’t all bad….”
    “I didn’t like her, you know,” Violet said, matter-of-factly. “I didn’t at first. I thought she was obnoxious, but I also admired her. She was tough and knew how to take care of herself. She knew how to be strong, and I wanted to learn that from her. But over time … I came to hate her.”
    “2Face changed,” Jobs said. “We all did.”
    “But not everybody changed for the worse, like 2Face did,” Noyze said.
    Violet laughed. It sounded bitter. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” she said.
    Jobs frowned. Now didn’t seem the time for acrimony.
    “Look, I’m sorry,” Violet apologized. “I’m in a bad mood. This isn’t helping.”
    And what also wasn’t helping. Jobs thought, was the very disturbing fact of Billy’s having been — hurt, diminished — in whatever happened between him and 2Face.
     
    Billy was supposed to be infallible. Perfect. Beyond damage or despair. Invulnerable.
    But he wasn’t. He’d survived 2Face’s supposed attack but it had made him weak. Weaker than he needed to be to perform the regreening ritual? Jobs sincerely hoped not.
    As painful as it was to admit, Jobs’s ironclad faith in Billy’s ability to save them all had been shaken. It was the poet in me , he told himself now, looking down at 2Face’s lifeless body. The poet I thought was long gone. The poet who believed in a weird little orphan from Chechnya via Texas.
    Who believed that a kid could save the world?
    Interesting , Jobs thought, as he walked away from the others. After all I’ve been through these past five hundred years, I’m still a romantic at heart.

CHAPTER 19
    “THE END OF THE WORLD IS SOMETHING BEYOND OUR CONTROL.”
    Mo’Steel just wanted to hang with his best bud, Jobs, just for a while, but it looked like that wasn’t going to happen. Because Sanchez and Violet were striding toward them looking all grim and purposeful.
    “I have something to tell j’ou,” Sanchez said when they’d come to a stop.
    Violet took a step closer to Sanchez. “We have something to tell you,” she amended.
    “Something we should have told you before. But we had our reasons for keeping silent. But now, with what’s happened to Billy …”
    Mo’Steel shot a glance at Jobs, who just shrugged. He did not like the sound of this. Couldn’t one moment go by without some sort of crisis exploding in his face?
    “What is it?” he said tensely.
    Sanchez told them. He told them that if the regreening ritual didn’t work, they’d all be dead, instantaneously.
    “At least,” Violet added hastily, when Sanchez had finished talking, “that’s what Sanchez thinks Billy told him. Lately, Billy’s not been so clear.”
    Mo’Steel waited thirty full seconds before losing it.
    “Are you freakin’ insane?” he shouted. He wasn’t a guy who easily lost his temper, but this …
    this was a damn good reason to blow. “There’s only five hours left until Echo’s birthday….”
    Mo’Steel put his hands in the air as if in surrender. “Okay. All right. Let’s just take it easy and figure this thing out.”
    “Could we stop Billy even if we tried?” Jobs wondered. “I’m not so sure. What if he’s committed beyond our fears. Everything’s in place…. Why should he stop now?”
    “Maybe he can’t stop, even if he wanted to,” Violet suggested. “What if he’s, I don’t know, answering to a higher power or something?”
    “The Source,” Sanchez said softly.
    “Billy is not the point