now that he was pressed down to the mattress. Thunder
stepped in too, and he felt like he was looking up from the
bottom of a deep pit. Their pajamas were gone. They were
all nude, but their skin was red all over, the same red as the
pajamas.
“Where’s Sasha?” Gonzalo said. He could hear his voice
trembling. “She was just here. I saw her.”
Multicolored light sprang from Zeus’s head, as if Gonzalo
were viewing him through a series of prisms. He tried to
focus on the guy’s face, but again, he only saw his own fright-
ened reflection, small and stretched.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” Zeus said.
“Will he bring others?” one of the Thunder asked.
“Yes,” Gonzalo said, panting, trying to swallow his fear.
“There are others. If I’m not back outside in five minutes, the
rest of my teamwill come in. They’ve got guns. You hand Sasha
over, and you’ll never see me again.”
Zeus stared at him again, reflecting Gonzalo’s confusion
back down at him. He’d never felt smaller in his life. Zeus sang
a high, clean note. Other Thunder kids sang in harmony, and
then more. Gonzalo heard the sound of their chorus travel
around the whole Coliseum, like the wave at a football game.
Eventually, it became softer and more distant, until he could
barely hear it. All the Thunder looked off, as if they were wait-
ing for something. A moment later, the sound traveled back
through the room, except lower now, voices picking it up and
273
