Prologue
The Rot Spreads
The Bronx was alive.
He was alive.
For now.
Cisco shot forward with a desperate urgency.
The hospital. Get there. Go.
The thought felt foreign to him, as though someone—or something—was whispering it into his ear, but he didn’t fight it. He couldn’t fight it. He was busy fighting something else, something that was working its way through his body and blackening his veins. Sweat coated every inch of his skin, and confusion clouded him, making him question where he was and why.
He tried to shake it off, fight it off as he walked-stumbled-ran. Desperation ebbed and flowed. Like a rubber band, he felt his body snapping between worlds.
SNAP!
Even in his daze, he knew something was wrong. The streets weren’t supposed to be turning this way and that. That person wasn’t supposed to be peeling half their face off. Was that building always abandoned? Always smoking? Always on fire?
He dug inside himself for answers, only managing to earn a half second of clarity.
His name was Francisco Cruz, he was eighteen years old, he was a student at Fordham University, where he met some people, played a game—or was it a challenge?—and then he…he…
He snapped his head up, sure he heard it.
Skittering.
An insect-like pitter-patter that was almost certainly getting close. He didn’t know what it was, but he knew fear when it crawled up his spine.
Cisco pulled out his phone. No bars. No bars? He was in the Bronx. Why was there no signal?
He stared at the screen wallpaper, a picture of himself with a dark-skinned girl whose curls looked like springs. Her smile was bright and calming. Tears pricked his eyes as he thought about his cousin and his
promise before he realized what he’d done.
“Charlize—”
SNAP!
A deep shiver ran through his core. A car honked, and he realized it was because he was suddenly in the middle of the street. He tripped—there was the curb. The streetlights were on, which meant it was night. He checked his phone again and finally had signal. Full bars meant he was safe.
The hospital. Get there. Go.
Cisco stumbled again and fell forward to grip a wrought iron fence. Missing-persons posters stuck loosely to some of the bars. He squinted. Some of these faces looked familiar. In fact, he was sure he had seen them at some point during the hellish night, but here they looked too…healthy. Alive.
The people he’d seen were neither.
There was a misshapen urban garden just beyond the fence with small compost bins. Brook Park. Not too far from Lincoln Hospital.
He held on to that knowledge like an anchor as he groped along fences and brick walls. A sea of confusion raged all around him, but as long as he made it to the hospital, things would be fine. The doctors would help him. That was their job, wasn’t it? They would see Cisco, see the black veins coursing through him, touch his clammy skin, and know just what to do.
They would get it out of him—the rot—before it was too late, before it could take any more of h
im and his thoughts and memories.
Finally, he got to the emergency room. After scribbling through whatever paperwork they handed him, he found himself in an isolated room, a plastic bracelet sealed on his wrist. The nurse who came to see him had long dreadlocks and a familiar face. She stared at him like she knew him.
Did she?
“Okay, Cisco, why don’t you walk me through what happened tonight?” She stood just a few feet away. “I promise you, you aren’t going to be in trouble. We just need to find out if you took anything that could be making you sick. Was it Molly? Did you drop some acid?”
Even her voice sounded familiar, Cisco just couldn’t place it. Still, he shook his head, eager to get the rot out of him. He just needed to explain, if only he weren’t so confused—
“I br-broke the rules.”
The nurse blinked, waiting for him to go on. He opened his mouth again, brain trying to put the words in a correct sentence, but all that came out was an agonizing screech. His entire body felt engulfed in flames, and when he looked at his arms, he could see his veins blackening again.
“Francisco!” The nurse jumped as he threw himself over the bed. “We need some help! Security!”
The room exploded with security guards and another nurse. They pulled at him and tried to flatten him against the bed, but he pushed back, tossing the other nurse against the wall and kicking a security guard in the stomach.
“What is this?” the first nurse yelled, finally getting a look at his veins.
Cisco’s hands shook against his will before wrapping themselves around her arms. His nails pierced through her scrubs, and she screamed.
“I’m sorry!” he cried, vision blurring with tears. As she tried to claw his hands off, he felt the black rot pulsing out of him and into her.
The security guards descended on him. Cisco threw himself away from the nurse and into the wall. Then he turned and ran.
Forget the hospital, he decided. Between the rot and the snapping between worlds, nothing was making sense. Maybe his cousin could help him. Once he put a few blocks between himself and the hospital, he turned into in an alleyway and squatted for air.
Cisco shook with a quiet sob that made him sink to the ground. The game—the stupid game with stupid rules that he and his friends broke. It all went to shit in less than an hour and he was going to pay for it.
He sucked in a breath so deep, it hurt, and focused on his surroundings instead. The squeal of rats fighting for food, the pulsing red and blue lights of cop cars going by—was that for him? Probably. He had no way of knowing how many people he injured on his way out of the hospital.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
Cisco froze. He knew he heard it: a flurry of legs skittering around in search of its prey.
“Fuck!” he hissed, pressing himself farther into the shadows. Eyes darting around, he looked for signs of decay and ruin only to find the buildings around him still intact.
Cisco stilled his breathing and his shaking body. The skittering was suddenly gone. Or maybe it was never there. He hadn’t snapped back yet.
But he would.
Cisco jabbed his hands into his pockets and pulled out his cell phone.
The ringing went on forever, and he whispered prayers into the receiver for his cousin to pick up.
“Cisco?” Charlize yawned. She sounded half-annoyed and half-sleep-deprived.
“Ch-Charlize!” He choked back a sob. “I need he-help. Please—”
“What are you doing calling me? It’s like four a.m.”
“Th-the game—” He tried his best to explain, to communicate that everything was thoroughly and deeply wrong. Words tumbled out before he could even process them, and he hoped he was making a crumb of sense.
“Whoa.” Charlize hushed him. A spring mattress creaked from shifting weight. “What are you talking about, Cisco? What game?”
“Don’t leave th-the train before f-four, don’t-don’t talk to the Passengers, don’t touch the Passengers, don’t turn around—” The rules shot off his tongue like firecrackers, sharp and all at once. “The game—the challenge, Ch-Charlize—”
“What? Cisco, I can’t hear you. You’re cutting out.”
“Li-listen, I’m coming over to you now, Charlize, okay? And I ne-need you to bring a wea-weapon—a knife, bat, something, ju-just anything, okay?”
Cisco ended the call and shoved the phone deep in his pocket. The confusion was hanging low on his mind again, washing him in panic. He only had a vague idea of where he was. Just up the street was Rite Aid, and if he crossed it, there would be McDonald’s. There was a train passing over him, which meant he had to be somewhere uptown.
Even more pressing was the familiar build of the snap before it happened. It was like something inside his chest began to stretch and when it reached its limit—when it snapped—he’d end up somewhere hellish.
Paranoia seized Cisco as the skittering returned. He screamed and took off toward Charlize’s house. He could only hope he made it before the creature caught up.
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