Nine Read online

  Dedication

  For all those who feel like they’ve already given up more lives than they even knew they had

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Part Two

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Zach Hines

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  IN THE SUMMER OF 1808, IN A WORLD PARALLEL TO OUR own, the sun flared, the sky turned orange, and the clouds gathered. It rained torrentially for months straight. After this “summer of storms,” society emerged forever changed.

  People discovered they had not one life, but nine. In order to avoid overpopulation and famine, governments devised a system of elimination in which people are rewarded for shedding their extra lives, bit by bit . . .

  . . . until they are left with one.

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  JULIAN HAD NO IDEA WHAT IT MEANT TO DIE.

  Of course he didn’t. How could he?

  And yet, here he was.

  Molly had to practically drag him to this party. To this beautiful house up on the hill, which was, tonight only, filled with teenagers. Apparently it was Gloria Merriweather’s second house. Her parents never left their primary home in Magnolia Crescent, so it was all theirs tonight.

  It really was the perfect place to die. It was isolated. There was a pool. There was a good breeze. You could see stars.

  The party was a few hours old, and everyone, apart from Julian, was a few drinks deep; loose enough to get on with the main event. The Burners—dressed in white, as always—organized everyone into stations. One of them, a pudgy-faced boy in a white blazer with a red streak in his otherwise jet-black hair, directed Molly to the fireplace, where they were playing Kiss or Cap.

  “Your last chance,” Molly said to Julian. “Are you sure you’re not going to join me?”

  Molly was a good friend—Julian’s only friend, really. He looked at the Two tattooed on her neck, and unconsciously touched the One on his. He dreaded the thought of having to navigate the party on his own, but he was definitely not going to join her at Kiss or Cap. He was even more certain of that now that he could see the unrestrained, perverse glee in every Burner eye.

  “I’m sure,” Julian said. “I don’t even know why I came. And now I’m just making it weird for you.”

  “It’s all right,” Molly said.

  Julian knew Molly wouldn’t push. She got it. She got him, or at least Julian always assumed she did. Even so, he felt a sliver of shame at leaving her like this.

  “Just promise to pick me up, okay?” Molly said.

  “I’ll be there,” Julian said as the red-streak boy led Molly away to the fireplace. Julian waited a moment, then followed a few steps behind them. He found a quiet spot in the back of the room. He watched as Molly joined a group of six or seven kids in front of the fireplace. They were sitting on a thin plastic sheet spread out on the white carpet.

  A beautiful Burner girl in a sharp white blazer—Constance—looked Molly up and down. “You’re just in time for the next spin.” She lit a stick of incense and put oddly serene electronic music on the stereo. She brushed her long, black hair over her shoulder in an unnecessary theatrical flourish, and then led Molly to a spot among her disciples.

  “This is my circle, which means my rules,” Constance explained. “Fortunately, I only have one: leave your inhibitions behind. Because no matter how dark your secret desires are, I want you to face them and embrace them. That’s the way I host Kiss or Cap.” Her red lips curled into a smile.

  Constance’s audience was arranged as if for spin the bottle, but instead of a bottle sitting between them, it was a 9mm handgun. Constance picked up the gun. She produced a full clip of bullets from her handbag, then slid it into the magazine well. In sure, confident movements, she cocked the gun to chamber a bullet, turned off the safety, and handed it to Molly. “Your turn.”

  Julian watched as Molly gingerly sat the gun on the floor in front of her, took a nervous breath, and spun it. It landed on Constance. A sly grin snaked across her face.

  “Well, well,” Constance said. The kids in the circle suppressed nervous chuckles. “Your first spin, and you’ve landed on the mistress. So . . . ,” she said, staring Molly down.

  “Will you kiss me? Or are you going to cap me?”

  Molly picked up the gun and put it to the center of Constance’s forehead. Molly closed her eyes. She swallowed, and the corners of her mouth twitched, betraying her nervousness in that Molly way that Julian instantly recognized.

  Molly, he thought. You know you want to kiss her. So what are you doing?

  Julian was suddenly struck with the feeling that, somehow in the last five minutes, Molly had become capable of social grandstanding.

  He watched as Molly bit her lip, blushing. Her hand on the pistol was trembling.

  Julian found himself holding his breath. He did not want to see what happened next. He left for the bathroom down the hall.

  Inside, sitting in a full bathtub, he found Clayton Maxwell, from the back row of the calculus classroom. He was wearing goggles, a swim cap, and was drinking his own bathwater from a long straw.

  “Don’t worry,” Clayton said. “It’s just vodka. I’m drinking until I drown! Want a shot?” He laughed and sucked down a gulp of bathwater.

  “No thanks,” Julian said, and he backed out of the room.

  What a complete and utter waste of time this was. What a waste of life. Of course, Julian understood that stupidity was the entire point of the evening; this was, after all, a Burners party, which by definition meant lives were to be wasted. But no matter how he looked at it, he could not see the humor. How is it even a joke when there is no one left at the end of the night to laugh at it?

  So why not leave? he asked himself. Then he decided—

  Yes, I should leave. I gave it a fair shot, and it was even worse than I expected.

  Julian pulled his collar up to hide his One and weaved through the house full of giddy kids. They were all drunk, high, and ready to do something incredibly, ridiculously dumb. A junior in a white T-shirt, his hair dyed black in the Burners style, limped into the living room with a machete proudly sticking out of his stomach. Everyone cheered. He fist-bumped his bros, and two girls in short shorts reached for the blade, but he playfully slapped their hands away. His eyes were large and delirious, his pupils dilated.

&nbs
p; “Careful now,” Julian heard him say. “If this falls, I’m gonna bleed out. It slid in real smooth and easy too, just like . . . butter.” He winked. The girls giggled. The kid’s face was turning pale, and he was covered in a shiny film of sweat. A ring of blood had oozed out around the puncture wound, darkening the hole in his white shirt. He must have been heavily anesthetized.

  Julian winced and slipped through the crowd for the exit.

  At the door to the porch, he got cornered by a kid in glasses—Logan—who was hopped up on some kind of amphetamine. He intensely ranted to Julian about his plan to hire a hot-air balloon to perform the ultimate high dive into the Lake. “From. One. Mile. High!” he said, practically shouting the last word into Julian’s face. The kid’s eyes bulged from behind his glasses to emphasize his cleverness.

  “Uh, cool,” Julian said flatly. “Good luck with that.” He slipped away when Logan found another person to inflict his genius upon.

  Julian crossed the yard, heading for his car parked in the driveway. But he lingered for a moment in the garden by the pool. Strung up above the water, dangling threateningly from extension cords, were dozens of toaster ovens, blenders, and other electronics.

  Boys in trunks and girls in bikinis were standing on the roof, ready to jump. They were shivering in the night air, all of them holding a part of a long cable that kept the electronics aloft above the water.

  In the middle of them stood their signal-master, their conductor, Nicholas Hawksley. His jet-black hair was slick in a perfect swoop, the number tattoo on his neck—a Five—bold against his pale flesh.

  Julian felt a shiver go up his spine. The painful lengths that some people will go to for a DeadLinks post. . . .

  On the roof, shots were passed down the line. The kids were becoming heavily drunk—as they would need to be. Even as they tilted their heads back, finishing their drinks, their eyes never drifted from Nicholas. He paced before them with a twisted smirk on his face—angelic but shifting and dangerous—his white jacket flapping stiffly in the wind. His audience awaited his word, rapt.

  Julian just wanted to disappear behind the hedges, head down the driveway to his car, and get out of there. But something about Nicholas commanded even his attention.

  Nicholas shouted so everyone could hear, inside and out.

  “And so, we come to the centerpiece of the Night of the Terrible Twos! Being Twos, you’ve already popped your death cherry. So that’s a start. Good for you!”

  Cheers rippled through the crowd.

  “But Three is a much bigger milestone,” he said. “When you hit Three, you will have proven yourself worthy of the Burners. And the first thing you need to learn . . . is how to burn with style.”

  Bang!

  A gunshot rang out from the house. Everyone flinched at the noise, and Julian grimaced, thinking of Molly. Nicholas let the ring of the gunshot settle into silence, and then continued.

  “We embrace death, and we make a mockery of it,” he said. “Death. She is our bitch!” The crowd roared in approval.

  Nicholas then held a hand in the air until the cheers died down.

  “On my mark,” he said, surveying his audience. He balled his hand into a fist and looked into each and every nervous face. Then he brought his arm down with a swift, strong motion. “Banzai!”

  Everyone shouted “Banzai!” in return and leaped into the pool, the electronics plunging in with them, electricity dancing over the water in skeletal blue fingers.

  Screams of horror, gasps of pain, the hiss of extermination. Julian watched from the shadows, his pulse quickening, his mouth becoming dry.

  Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!

  Staccato gunshots erupted from the house like firecrackers. Julian covered his ears. There was a pause, and then another, final bang from the pistol.

  After that, a silence descended upon the house and the yard. Only moments before, it was alive with activity, with stupidity. Now it was still and motionless.

  Then a moaning gurgled up from behind the pool.

  Julian crept from his spot in the shadows. Dead kids bobbed to the surface of the pool as Julian approached the source of the sound.

  A kid in board shorts missed the target—Jeffrey from World History. He had cracked his head on the concrete ledge beside the pool and lay like a crumpled doll. Julian caught a slimy glint of something he should never see, and quickly turned away. Jeffrey was moaning, choking on himself, struggling to get out some final words. Words of regret? Some kind of dark, unspeakable ecstasy? Julian couldn’t tell, and he didn’t want to know.

  He caught a whiff of the metallic smell of blood and felt nauseous, but he resisted the urge to vomit.

  Molly.

  Maybe she didn’t go through with it. Maybe she said, Julian is right, this Burning thing is stupid. Maybe she was waiting for him to come back and get her.

  Julian hurried across the yard back toward the parlor. A cloud of smoke, a mixture of incense and gunpowder, escaped as he opened the door. Everyone around the Kiss or Cap ring was on the floor now, eyes closed, lights out. The backs of some heads were missing. Julian quickly looked away, but his eyes landed on the dark blood pooling on the plastic sheet. The blood was everywhere he looked. Inescapable. The oddly chill electronic music was still playing.

  He crept over the bodies. He saw Constance in the middle of the circle, lying faceup, her eyes wide open, a gunshot through her temple, a fan of blood spread out on the opposite side. The pistol was still clutched in her hand.

  He turned away from her and caught sight of Molly but quickly looked away. She was lying on a beanbag.

  Julian couldn’t make himself look at her again. He closed his eyes and stood for a moment, just feeling his heart thudding in his chest. “Molly?” he said, his eyes still closed. There was no answer.

  You have to see, he thought.

  Why else have you not left yet?

  Just look.

  Julian opened his eyes.

  There was a red dot in the center of Molly’s forehead leaking a thin stream of blood. Julian breathed a sigh of relief. It could have been much worse. Thank god he didn’t have to see it from the back.

  Julian turned off the music and sat down on the floor beside Molly’s body. After a moment, the death rattle of the kids outside subsided, and utter silence fell over the room.

  There was no one left to laugh at anything.

  Just like that, the party was dead.

  Chapter 2

  MOLLY TERRA FELT THE MOST AMAZING MOMENT OF PERFECT, incandescent bliss. She was floating in a soft, cleansing jelly, suspended and separated from who she used to be. Ecstasy radiated through her in waves. Then her eyes snapped open and filled with water. The pleasure vanished instantly, replaced with animal instinct. With terror.

  She thrashed around. By reflex, her mouth opened to scream, but water rushed into her, filling her lungs. She choked, panicked. Then she realized: she was in the Lake.

  Calm down—you know what to do. You’ve been through this before.

  Molly started kicking, clawing her way up. She broke the surface and spat out water, replacing it with huge gulps of air. She centered herself, treading. The pleasure that had been coursing through her had already faded into a strange emptiness. Molly wiped her eyes and looked around.

  An eerie mist cloaked the Lake. Up ahead, a bright light in the fog strobed twice, followed by a heavily amplified signal tone, like a foghorn. Molly remembered—Follow the light, follow the signal. As her faculties returned, she tried to reach back into her memory for what had happened—to find the grim turn of events that had delivered her here. But there was nothing specific. Her last memory was Julian picking her up for a party. What was it? How did she go from there to here?

  This gap in her memory frightened her, but she had her wits enough to recall the rebirth sickness phenomenon. Few very rarely remember the moments leading up to their demise. A fog shrouded any recollection of the actual moment.

  That moment did
n’t matter now, anyway.

  What mattered was that she was reborn in the Lake. The same as it was the first time, and the same as it would be for each time afterward: trudging, wet and disoriented, through lukewarm water toward the shore, toward higher life numbers, and, inexorably, toward the future.

  Molly was growing up.

  Eventually, her toes reached the silky mud of the lake bottom. She was able to stand, her neck and shoulders rising out of the water. She pushed the rest of the way to shore, more and more of her naked body emerging. She tried to hide herself, but it was difficult. Soon she gave up on the idea totally. Naked was fine, she decided. She was being reborn, after all.

  Other people emerged from the mist around her. There was Constance. Molly caught her eye, but Constance looked away from her. Molly felt ashamed. Did she do something wrong? Molly could feel her face flush, but she kept steady. Kept trudging toward the shore.

  When she reached the beach, Molly was met by the nurses in their distinctive powder blue robes. Their movements were clinical and professional. Saying nothing, a nurse handed Molly a towel and a paper gown.

  “Is it crowded?” Molly asked as she wiped her face. The nurse didn’t respond. She just directed Molly toward an imposing white brick facility. Inside was a throng of people organized into lines. Some were young, some were old, but they were all clad in paper gowns—all newly reborn. Processing.

  Molly could feel herself slowly returning, like an image on a TV resolving from static. Officers read instructions: “Stay in your line. Please be patient. Be considerate of your fellow citizens.”

  Molly looked at the wet faces around her. Many of them, she was starting to realize, were fellow students. They were chatting, laughing—

  The party. Terrible Twos. They all had to be coming from there. Watching the others laugh, Molly was suddenly struck with the feeling she’d missed out on something.

  She rolled her eyes at herself. FOMO because you’re dead. That’s a new one, Moll.

  The line snaked back and forth across the floor like the security line at a busy airport. A podium was raised above the crowd at the front of the room, where a man stood in a purple robe, his head covered in the ceremonial wrap that bunched around his face in thick folds of fabric. Over his eyes, a set of intimidating black goggles protruded.