Page 209 of Johnny

next to me, the prison island only a few miles off in the distance. “We’re going to do this just like we

planned, OK? We’re going to go in there, we’re going to tell them about your secret, make our deal,

and get out.”

She says nothing. Just stares straight ahead.

“It’s a good plan, Megan. It’s going to work.”

“Maybe” she whispers. “I mean, it probably could. But there are consequences and—”

“I get it,” I say. “It’s fucked up. What you and your father did was fucked up. But they’ve backed us

into a corner now. We have no other choice. We have to use that threat.”

Megan’s real secret is a game changer. She and her father have been doing some pretty fucked up

science down in their island laboratory. Not the fucked up shit we saw on that island yesterday. No

one’s getting hurt.

Yet.

But the potential… Jesus Christ. Her secret is a goddamned get-out-of-jail-free card if ever there

was one.

And they can’t kill her and her father. They need one of them alive. They need that so much more

than money at this point. As long as one of them is still alive the Way keeps going. They keep their

power, they keep their money… what they don’t get to keep are the people in those labs. And the

prisons. And the ones they’re experimenting on in the migrant camps.

They have to be willing to kiss their Fountain of Youth project goodbye.

They give us that, they keep all our family and friends safe, and Megan lets the Way live to see

another day.

That’s the deal.

“Listen,” Megan says. “I have to tell you something.”

I turn to her. Find her face lined with worry. “What? What is it? Are you scared? It’s OK. It’s going to work out, I promise. Our threat is a good one. You’ll see.”

No,” she says. “Well, yes. Of course I’m scared. But… there’s a problem. That stuff that girl told

you last night?’

“What about it?” I ask. And that fucking sinking feeling I had last night is back. It’s all I can do to

swallow down the vomit because I feel it. I feel what’s coming.

Defeat.

“She told you that they were already applying my treatment to the kids, right?”