The Search for Sam by Pittacus Lore Read Free Book Online

decent rank after my first hour. But with exhaustion
     creeping up on me, I can feel my productivity beginning to slip. By the fifteen-minute
     mark of the next hour, I know I’m headed back to the bottom of the pack.
    So I come up with a little trick.
    For every five or so sources I legitimately review, I automatically throw another
     one in the Discard directory. I know my provisional accuracy percentage will take
     a hit, but from what I can tell it carries a relatively low weight on overall ranking
     compared to Discard and Investigate totals.
    Using this technique I’ve climbed all the way to number six by the next hourly rankings,
     with seventy-three Discards and seventeen Investigates. My provisional accuracy is
     73 percent, lower than the hour before but not bad enough to raise any red flags.
    I can feel Serkova sneering at me. I don’t bother to hide my smile.
    I pass the day like this, racing against Serkova. Giving up on finding time for research,
     I use the task in front of me to distract myself from everything: from One’s perilous
     condition, from Zakos’s strange work in the lab, from my hateful father, from what
     the work I’m doing even means. My only goal is to get ahead of Serkova in at least
     one hourly ranking.
    My last rank of the day is number two. Right ahead of Serkova at three.
    “Better luck tomorrow, Serkova,” I say, wearing a bright, fake-friendly smile.
    He curses me and heads out of the lab.
    After work, I head upstairs to my room to wash up before dinner. My mother told me
     Kelly’s skipping dinner again for her afterschool program in the Nursery. Yeah, right.
     I know the real reason: she doesn’t want to share a table with me.
    But not even that can get me down: beating Serkova, even just the once, was too big
     a victory. I find myself racing up the stairs to my room, three steps at a time.
    I open the door to my room, hoping to find One. I can’t wait to crow to her about
     kicking Serkova’s ass. When I enter, I see her feet peeking out from behind the corner
     of the bed.
    “One?”
    I step closer.
    She’s flat on her back on the carpet. Mouth and eyes open. She looks glazed, and her
     skin is doing that milky flickering thing that it did back under the baobab tree.
     Only much, much worse.
    “What happened?” I crouch beside her on the floor. She’s silent. “One?”
    After a moment’s silence, she speaks. “Nothing.” Her lips barely move and her voice
     is raspy. “It’s just that each time it’s darker than the last time. It hurts more,
     it’s more … obliterating.” Her eyes swim around in her head, searching for me.
    Her gaze finally finds mine. “It’s like, what’s blacker than black, you know?”
    “Yeah,” I say.
    But I don’t know. She’s going through something I have no experience with. She’s going through
     the End.
    I hear my mother call me for dinner.
    I turn back to One. “I’m going to stay with you.”
    She shakes her head, almost imperceptibly.
    “No,” she says. “You should go.” Her eyes drift back to the ceiling as she lies there,
     flickering in and out of view.
    Heartbroken, I leave.
    My father joins my mother and me for dinner. He barely speaks, except to ask my mother
     for seconds—he has a true warrior’s appetite—and to give us an update on Ivan. “His
     superior officer says Ivan is doing excellent work. Says he has the makings of a general,
     himself.”
    “That’s wonderful,” says my mother, beaming approvingly. “Does he know the good news
     about Adamus?”
    My father and I exchange a quick, uneasy glance.
    The General wipes his mouth with a napkin. “No.”
    “Why not?” she says, looking back and forth between the two of us. “I think he’d be
     happy to hear his brother is alive.”
    “Adamus is not Ivanick’s brother,” my father says, silencing her.
    Technically that’s true—I’m their biological son and Ivanick was adopted, raised by
     my parents—but I catch the General’s