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The podkids gathered closer, Ella included, smiling and trying to touch Iggy.
“If Iggy’s the future, I guess we’re all going to need spray-on tans and sunglasses,” I muttered to Total.
“I am the answer!” Iggy’s voice boomed.
Total giggled. “That ham!” I poked him with my foot.
“He’s the answer! He’s the answer!” they chanted.
“Prove you cherish the One Light!” Iggy yelled, which I thought was a tad dramatic. “Do you want to be like the Igster?”
“Yes! Yes!” they said feverishly, and I shuddered, remembering how one of them had offered to gouge out his eyes back at the rally so he could be blind like Iggy.
Iggy crouched down and grabbed a handful of dusty dirt from the ground and spit into it. Then he walked over to Josh, who looked a little uncertain, and wrote his name on the guy’s face with his finger. One by one the brainwashed kids spit into their dirty hands and smeared “IG” on their own cheeks. It was freaky. And kind of amazing.
“And… this is why Iggy’s not the flock leader,” I whispered to Nudge.
The kids all started flapping their arms and shrieking, and since they looked a bit distracted, Iggy pulled Ella over to the side, near where the rest of us were hiding.
“Iggy?” Ella said, turning to look at him. “How did you find us?”
“Um… my heart… led me here,” Iggy said, thinking fast. “Now we just need to convince the rest of the flock to join the group. Gee, look—there they are!”
I took that as my cue and stepped out of the darkness toward Ella. She looked surprised to see me and even more surprised when Dylan sidled up next to her. But then her programming took over, and she needed to share the message with us.
“We must embrace the One Light.” Ella beamed.
“The One Light?” I asked. “Oh, yeah, the One Light. Remind me of its glory.”
“The One Light will show us how to become less and how to become more,” Ella said with conviction.
“What the heck does that mean?” I whispered to Dylan.
“Like, they’ll have genetic material stripped away and then replaced?” Dylan guessed quietly. I met his eyes and nodded, and then I remembered the last time I was out in the desert with him, at night. I turned away so he wouldn’t see me blush.
“Right, right,” said Iggy. “And when will this happen?”
“In five days,” Ella told him. “When the Doomsday Group calls us home, all across the world. The world will end, but we’ll go on living.”
My eyes widened. Not good news.
“You got it, El,” I said. “But first we’re just going to take a detour for a little therapeutic deprogramming session.”
“No,” Ella’s face darkened. “I want to stay here. Everyone needs to stay right here.”
But Dylan moved in quickly, grabbing her under one arm. Iggy got a grip under the other. They flew off into the night, with Ella shrieking between them and the Doomsdayers wildly flapping their arms down below.
45
AFTER THE FIRST five minutes at the convention center hosting Comic-Con, Fang thought he’d seen it all:
Attendees ranging from nine-year-old geeks to ninety-year-old scenesters in costumes featuring tentacles that moved, wings that moved (but were too small to actually support anyone’s weight), and antennae that moved, and even a pair of blinking eyes in the back of one guy’s head
Short, short skirts on hundreds of girls dressed as anime characters, Haruhi, and Lara Croft, with complimentary, as Ratchet put it, “boob salad”
Lots and lots of Trekkies
People dressed up like him and Max and the rest of the flock
