Rick Yancey

Do you know a way out of here?_ I ask Ben. Sammy__ more trusting than I am, but the idea__ worth exploring. Finding the escape pods__f they even exist__as always been the weakest part of my getaway plan.He nods. __o you?___ know a way__ just don__ know the way to the way.___he way to the way? Okay._ He grins. He looks like hell, but the smile hasn__ changed a bit. It lights up the tunnel like a thousand-watt bulb. __ know the way and the way to the way.

The world is a clock winding down.I hear it in the wind__ icy fingers scratching against the window. I smell it in the mildewed carpeting and the rotting wallpaper of the old hotel. And I feel it in Teacup__ chest as she sleeps. The hammering of her heart, the rhythm of her breath, warm in the freezing air, the clock winding down.

I'm a little panicky when I realize he's not here. It's a lot easier to push down my doubt when he's with me. When I can see those eyes the color of melted chocolate and hear his deep voice that falls over me like a warm blanket on a cold night.

But hope is no less realistic than despair. It is still our choice whether to live in light or lie down in darkness.

This place can't be heaven, it doesn't have the right vibe.

Crazy people. They never think they're crazy. Their craziness makes perfect sense to them.

People die. Love endures.

You haven't heard a damn word I've said. See, this is why I can't stand your kinds. You light your candles and mumble your latin spells and pray to a god who isn't there, doesn't care, or is just plain crazy or cruel or both. The world burns and you praise the asshole who either set it or let it.

We regarded each other across an expanse wider than the universe, within a space thinner than a razor's edge.

I want him to touch me again. I want to feel his hands, as soft as clouds. But I__ afraid if he touches me, all seven billion billion billion atoms that make up my body will blow apart and scatter across the universe.

And John Kearns whispered into my ear: "Do you see it now? *You* are the nest. *You* are the hatchling. *You* are the chrysalis. *You* are the progeny. *You* are the rot that falls from the stars. All of us--you and I and poor, dear Pellinore. Behold the face of the magnificum, child. And despair."Though I was sickened by the sight, I looked. In the bower of the beast at the top of the world, I beheld the face of the magnificum, and I did not turn away.

They were afraid the longer we pretended to be human, the more human we would become.___nd who would want that?___ didn__ think I would,_ he admits. __ntil I became one.___hen you__oke up_ in Evan?__e shakes his head and says simply, as if it__ the most obvious thing in the world, __hen I woke up in you, Cassie. I wasn__ fully human until I saw myself in your eyes.__nd then there are real human tears in his real human eyes, and it__ my turn to hold him while his heart breaks. My turn to see myself in his eyes.Somebody might say that I__ not the only one lying in the enemy__ arms.I am humanity, but who is Evan Walker? Human and Other. Both and neither. By loving me, he belongs to no one.He doesn__ see it that way.

There are some we cannot help but take an instant dislike to.

I've always sucked at games of chance. Always hated them for that reason.

As long as you draw breath anywhere -here or ten thousands miles from here- I will love you. I can't help loving you, so I choose to hate you...to make my love bearable.

She hated him and loved him, longed for him and loathed him, and cursed herself for feeling anything at all

It's hopeless. And it's stupid. It's suicidal. But love is a weapon they have no answer for. They know how you think, but they can't know what you feel.

The answer is they didn't. They aren't here, Razor. They never were it's just us. It's always been just us.