The Unbelievers

Prologue





The streets were dark and frigid, the once bustling metropolis now empty and barren. Snow was falling- it had never done that before. Not in Miami.

Morgan shivered. The internal heating system in her jacket had long ago fizzled out, leaving her to try and keep out the cold with a thin denim sheath that did no good. She was pale, lips blue with cold.

"We're the last, aren't we," she said, words shuddering through the still air. DJ nodded, breath frosting the air.

"Don't worry, Morgan. We'll survive somehow," said DJ, sounding far more confident that he felt. No one would take them in- they were too young. People were afraid they carried the Plague. The fact that only children died of it didn't matter- everyone was terrified of dying in that terrible manner, skin crinkling up and falling away, organs disintegrating within. A childhood nightmare made solid.

Lights skittered by in the sky above. Searchlights. The aircraft were probably hovers, or Morgan and DJ would have heard them. Three years of living like an animal will hone your senses, tune you to the world until you're not sure where it ends and you begin.

"Let's go," said DJ, voice low, hurried. "We'll be shot if they find us."

Morgan nodded absently, barely hearing her brother's voice. She just felt so lost, she was almost drowning in it. She would be fifteen in a week, marking the third anniversary of her life on the streets. Three years lost, hiding from bacteria of all things. A virus that struck without warning.

Only the street rats were saved, and even many of them fell. Morgan thought it might have been a planted virus in the water supply that got out of control- it covered the whole earth now.

Or at least, what was left of it.

"Come on, Morgan."

Morgan took a deep, shuddering breath. "All right. Let's go."

They turned and began searching for somewhere to spend the night, half-certain they wouldn't wake to see the dawn.



* * *



Peter sat bolt upright, hand clutching his chest. He grimaced- it was happening again. A deep, tearing pain in his chest, like someone was tugging on his heart and lungs. He could barely breath- he just sat there wheezing, trying not to panic. This was the worst attack he'd had yet.

"Piotr?"

Peter forced himself to stop hyperventilating. "Mmm?"

"You all right?" Levi squinted at him in the darkness, eyes unfocused with sleep.

Peter nodded, waving off her concern, already feeling the pain slip away. "I'm perfectly fine. Go back to sleep."

Levi watched him a moment longer, then sighed and rolled over, quickly falling back to sleep. Peter waited until he was sure she wasn't awake, then got out of the bed and walked to the window.

He clutched the smooth windowsill with both hands, trying to calm his nerves. These attacks... sometimes he almost thought the Fade was swooping down on him, reaching for him with oh so gentle claws. But that wasn't possible- he was still physically only about nineteen, and the Fade didn't start until one looked to be twenty-seven or so. He was too young.

But if it wasn't the Fade, it was something deep inside the fabric of the island, falling apart with every instant. He was sure that was the cause of it- he was tied into the magic that was Never-Land- he was the anchor, and without him things fell down around their ears. He wasn't arrogant, rather he was weary- he would love to pass it on to someone else and just be a goof-ball all the time.

He rubbed his sternum, wincing at the memory of pain. It had stopped, but the sense that something was wrong still lingered.

"What's happening?" he murmured to himself, staring sightlessly out at the ocean waves far below. Siren song, faint and distant, drifted up from the sea.

Peter honestly didn't know, for the first time in his extremely long life. And it frightened him.