"Hey, you remember what I said last year, right? We're Zombie Boy and Ghost Boy. I'm not ever gonna leave you."
"Promise?"
"One hundred percent."
***
In which Alistair fights the monster that possessed his friend alongside his friends, while trying...
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Chapter Eighty-Five: Live
(The Piggyback, Pt. 5)
***
Alistair gasped awake.
His eyes flew open as he lunged forward, coughing as he tried to inhale air not tainted by the Upside Down's rot into his lungs, but it was failing because his lungs... they weren't working.
And his heart had stopped beating for the first time in eight months.
Because he... he'd died again. He'd...
Alistair wanted to throw up, but he couldn't, every function of his living body shut off. Instead, he got to his feet, seeing the black void of the limbo he'd been in before.
At least it was quicker, Alistair thought morbidly as his hand ghosted over his neck—his neck, that had been snapped, so violent and quick he'd barely felt it. It might have been a mercy kill, but Alistair knew Vecna didn't deal in mercy.
No, snapping his neck was a matter of convenience for Vecna. That he couldn't bother going with the full curse because Alistair wouldn't be his fourth kill—instead, Max would be.
Alistair froze, his un-beating heart stilling again. Max. She was in danger, Vecna was after her and he'd go through with the curse, make sure she would be his final kill. And with what he'd seen in the flashes Vecna had shown him, he was close to finding her, and she was not the only one in danger. The image of Rowan, Steve, Nancy, Valerie and Robin choked by vines flashed in his mind, warring with the gun pointed at Cami, the terrified look on her face. And with how he couldn't feel the bond, Hugin hadn't died with him—that what he'd done was keeping him alive and able to protect Cami. But Alistair knew time was running out, and what if Hugin died when the gun went off, what if his best friend died?
He needed to get back. He had to get back, to resurrect like he had eight months ago.
Should you go back? a voice whispered. You're dead again—you cheated death once, and now you've died twice. Should you cheat death a second time only to die again and again?
Alistair paused. The voice, it was right—he'd died and come back for eight months, and yet he was back here, heart frozen in his chest and not breathing anymore, dead again. It would be a cruel joke if he kept coming back here after he died again and again, maybe he should stay...
No. They need me. I need to get back, Alistair told himself, trying to shake off the thoughts.
Do they? Do they really need a boy who keeps cheating death, keeps being an unnatural monster? Do they need you?
"Shut up," Alistair muttered—even in death, he couldn't stop hearing the same voices he'd been hearing for months. "Just shut up and leave me a—"
