Page 107 of Anarchy Missing

“It’s like…” Lincoln whispers into the quiet. “It’s like they all just started shooting each other.”

And that’s when the lights go out completely.

My heart is thumping inside my chest. “What’s going on?” I try to whisper, but the fear inside me escapes and it comes out too loud.

“Shh,” Thomas says, next to me.

A chair goes flying off to the right and I can feel the four of us, our bodies all pressed together for safety, collectively turn in that direction.

There is a faint red glow in the long hallway. And it’s moving.

“No,” Thomas says. “This is not happening.”

At first I think he’s talking about the light itself. That it can’t be moving.

But then I see what that light is.

Case.

One minute he’s just an ethereal red outline in the blackness. And then…

And then he’s nothing but red light. His whole body is lit up, glowing. Like he’s red hot. Walking towards us like some kind of supervillain incarnate. He’s still wearing that leather jacket he put on this morning, but his shirt has been ripped open and it’s… his skin is… crawling with…

“Case,” Lincoln says, shaking off Molly’s grip on his arm. “What the hell are you doing?”

Case stops, mid-stride, his hand on the knob of some door, like he’s getting ready to pull it open. He tilts his head. Stares at the four of us. “The city,” he says, his voice deep, and throaty, and wholly unfamiliar.

“Stop,” Thomas says, walking towards him. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

Case leans back as Thomas approaches him and Lincoln whispers something that sounds like begging. “Please, please, please.”

But when Thomas touches Case’s glowing arm, he pulls back, yelling in pain. Smoke rises up in small tendrils from both Thomas’s hand and Case’s leather jacket. Like he just…

He did that to me with his hands. They burned me.

Chief O’Neil’s words at the prison yesterday.

“It can’t be,” Molly says. “He can’t hurt Thomas. It’s not possible.”

“He can now,” Lincoln whispers, yanking on the two of us at the same time. Stepping backwards away from Case and Thomas, dragging us with him.

“The city,” this new, changed, unfamiliar Case repeats.

Every computer in the department suddenly flickers to life and a computerized female voice says, “Finish him.”

Case grabs Thomas again. The sick sound of sizzling skin fills the room as Thomas twists his body to get away. He rips himself from Case’s grip and they stand, just feet apart, sizing the other up. Trying to determine who will win this fight.

“You don’t want to fuck with me,” Thomas growls at him.

“The city,” Case repeats. And then his hand swings up, almost with superhuman speed, and grabs Thomas by the throat.

“Case!” Lincoln yells, pushing Molly and me aside as he takes off to help Thomas.

The disgusting smell of burning flesh and hair makes me hold my breath.

Lincoln hits Case in the chest, but… Lincoln drops to the floor, grabbing his stomach, almost collapsing completely.

“What the hell is happening?” I scream.