Mister Impossible, Maggie Stiefvater [uplifting novels txt] 📗

“Very stable at this age.” One of the other Moderators mimicked Farooq-Lane’s crisp way of speaking, which, to Farooq-Lane’s surprise, sounded a lot like Nathan. “She’d be more stable if she’d turn that stuff inside. Like every. Other. Visionary. Until Miss Carmen here.”

Just a few weeks before, Farooq-Lane would have spent time wondering what she could possibly do to prove her loyalty to the Moderators. But not anymore. No longer did she find them the all-knowing righteous arm of the law. The failures of the past few weeks had changed all of them. The Moderators had all separated neatly into Team Discouraged or Team Cagey or Team Angry.

Carmen Farooq-Lane was Team Restore Order.

This was no longer only about a possible future apocalypse. The Potomac Zeds had pushed this into a new realm for her. Using dreams to mess with people’s minds was a system-breaking, society-ending weapon, and there was no longer any doubt in her that something had to change.

So she didn’t let the Moderators’ needling rattle her. She shone her flashlight slowly over the mannequins they’d just walked through. She had a funny thought that there were twenty-three of them. She counted them.

Twenty-three.

But Nathan was dead, and they were chasing three entirely different Zeds who had nothing to do with him. It was coincidence, not magic. Her subconscious had taken in information about her surroundings while her active mind was doing something else. There was a term for it. Unconscious cognition? Priming? One of those. She’d taken some courses in college.

This is your guilt, Farooq-Lane told herself, letting herself acknowledge it. Guilt for not stopping Nathan. Guilt for getting him killed. Guilt for feeling guilty. Guilt for killing so many Zeds over the last several months.

Guilt for not asking questions.

They had come to an enormous ruined space, a tree bursting through the collapsed roof, the night sky visible overhead. Farooq-Lane shivered in the suddenly brisk air. This ruin was what they were trying to prevent. Humanity wiped out. Every human accomplishment reduced to rubble and vines. Civilization was so tenuous. This museum had been important to someone, once. If a Zed had made this, she thought, it could have been made supernaturally permanent. This was the real danger of Zeds, she thought. The scale of it. Humans could only do so much. Zeds could kill infinite people, start infinite fires, create infinite destructive legacies.

A gun went off.

Everyone jumped; Farooq-Lane hit the deck. As the ferns tickled her cheek and her palms pressed the cold rubble beneath her, she wondered, Is this real?

It felt real. But she’d seen what the Potomac Zeds could do to perception.

A moment later, Lock rumbled, “That was very unprofessional.”

Farooq-Lane lifted her head. One of the Moderators—Ramsay, of course—was holding a pistol, the barrel still visibly smoking in a flashlight beam. In his other hand he held half a limp black snake. The other half of it had been shot away. As Farooq-Lane watched, the ruined end of the snake slowly twisted in a muscle memory of life.

She had to look away.

Nathan’s words about clubs came back to her. She didn’t need them, he’d said. They needed her.

Did they?

“Weapons discharge only when I deem it necessary,” Lock intoned. “This area is obviously clear. Let’s move on.”

The Moderators found themselves in an old hay barn illuminated by a dozen naked lightbulbs high in the rafters. It was entirely filled with both old, dry hay bales and wheels of all kinds. The wheels were clearly a Zed’s work, but there did not seem to be any Zeds in evidence. Were they a by-product of dreaming? Were they a message?

Farooq-Lane made her way slowly through the wheels, spinning them here, turning them there. Each had the word tamquam on it, although she didn’t know the significance. She stepped out the other side of the barn. Cold air whipped across her cheeks, smelling of wilderness.

She stopped in her tracks.

Lock was leaning up against the exterior of the barn, his bald head slumped to one side.

It was not the real Lock, of course.

The real Lock was emerging to stand beside Farooq-Lane. The real Lock was exhaling noisily. The real Lock was putting his hands on his hips and saying nothing.

This other Lock was dead. Or rather, he was simply not alive. He had never been alive. He was just another mannequin, but with Lock’s exact face. He wore Lock’s usual track pants and sneakers, but the matching jacket was missing. Instead he wore a white T-shirt with words handwritten across it. Thirty pieces of silver.

Farooq-Lane felt something thrill inside her. “What does it mean?”

Lock said, “It means we need to find a different way to kill these three Zeds before this gets out of hand.”

Hennessy couldn’t really fathom what it was like to be bad at art.

There was evidence that she had been, of course. Somewhere in the closets of her father’s Pennsylvania suburban home were journals full of her early drawings. Languishing in some English rubbish heap were grotty canvases she had painted over again and again. That old art was wrong in all the ways non-artists tended to notice: mismatched eyes, physically impossible nostrils, incorrect rooflines, broccoli-shaped trees, dog-nosed cows. And it was also wrong in all the ways artists noticed: poor use of value, inattention to edges, uneven line weight, lazy composition, muddy colors, sloppy palette choice, impatient layers, derivative stylization, tentative brushwork, overuse of medium, underuse of planning, unintentional fugliness.

Even her art-making process had been bad. She remembered what it was like to not be sure if a drawing was going to “turn out.” She’d sit down with a clothing catalog or a photograph of a model pulled up on her father’s laptop. Then she’d sharpen her pencil and think, I hope this works. She’d fuss over the likeness for hours. Hours! She couldn’t even imagine now how she’d been spending all that time. What took her so long on a casual pencil sketch? She remembered