Amanda Panitch - Gone Dark

There are no heroes when the lights go out.

Gone Dark

Amanda Panitch

Damage Done

Never Missing, Never Found

Its My Party and I Dont Want to Go

The Trouble with Good Ideas

The Two Halves of Ruby Taylor

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Childrens Publishing Division

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the authors imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Text 2022 by Temple Hill Publishing LLC.

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Jacket design by Greg Stadnyk 2022 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Interior design by Irene Metaxatos

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Panitch, Amanda, author.

Title: Gone dark / Amanda Panitch.

Description: First edition. | New York : Margaret K. McElderry Books, [2022] | Summary: When a terrorist attack cuts electricity across North America, teenaged Zara and her would-be boyfriend Gabe set out to find Gabes sisterher best friend Estellarelying on skills Zara learned from her survivalist father.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020046390 (print) | LCCN 2020046391 (ebook) | ISBN 9781534466319 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781534466333 (ebook)

Subjects: CYAC: SurvivalFiction. | TerrorismFiction. | Fathers and daughtersFiction. | SurvivalismFiction.

Classification: LCC PZ7.P18933 Gon 2022 (print) | LCC PZ7.P18933 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020046390

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020046391

This book is for Hudson, who lights up every room hes in.

Somebody is going to die tonight.

Preferably, it wont be me or Gabe. Weve worked for weeks figuring out how to stay alive, gathering magical items, stocking arrows of all different status types, and cloaking ourselves in armor that will deflect sword points and turn us invisible if necessary. Now were waiting to get our hands on the boss ruling over this set of abandoned towers in our unnamed postapocalyptic city.

You ready? Gabe asks me over my headset. I flex my fingers, prepping them to dance over my keyboard and punch buttons like theyve never danced and punched before. My character waits patiently in front of me on the center monitor, her shoulders rising and falling in a way more understated manner than mine would be if I were the one about to put my actual life at risk.

Thats not the only difference between us, of course. Shes tall. Strong. She moves as fast as a whip and says funny, clever things in her smoky voice whenever I give her the command to joke or flirt. Meanwhile, Im all business. Ready. Lets go.

Gabe is already moving toward the gaping black hole of a door. Gritty sand rises around his characters combat boots with every step, and the moon shines down on him from overhead, just as it does through my real-life window. If we can pull this off, he says into my ear. It catches me off guard, and I jump a little from surprise, as if he were really standing beside me speaking huskily into my ear. Which he is not, and which he never has, no matter how many times hes driven me home from school. Itll be a realm first. Itll be worth all those nights of skipping out on my friends to train.

I give him an unconvincing laugh. Yeah. Ive been skipping out on my friends too.

What friends? hes polite enough not to say back. Its hard to lie to someone when your bestand onlyfriend is their sister. Thank goodness for headphones, or Estella would be rolling her eyes on the other side of their shared bedroom wall right now.

But whatever. Weve got a boss to kill. I make my character follow his silently, her feet moving so lightly over the dust left behind by a thousand battles that they dont stir any of it up. Thats our party configuration: Gabe is the warrior who charges in and draws all the attention and the attacks, and Im the rogue who slinks in behind him and destroys everybody from the dark. Most parties have at least a healer, as well, and we will too, as soon as we can convince Estella to join us.

I direct my character forward, and we disappear into the blackness of the room. I tell Gabe to hold back for a moment so that anything there can show itself before we stumble upon it. In the void I think I can hear my dads voice in my ear for a moment. Very smart, playing to your strengths. Though I know its in my head, I still jolt, jittery as I am. Youre small and should rely on your speed and your evasiveness, not up-front brute strength.

Those skills were part of the reason I chose to be a rogue in the first place, though much of the reason I love gaming is that I can be anything on that screen. Anything at all.

Besides, who am I kidding? Theres no chance my dad would approve of what Im doing. I picture him back on the compound my mom and I left him at years ago, a self-sustaining home in the thick of the woods, unmarked on any map. Hes shaking his head at me. Frittering your time away on silly games when theres a doomsday coming? Can you shoot a bow like your character can? Can you scale the side of a building? Can you creep soundlessly behind your prey before you cut them down? I dont need to answer him. No. No, you cannot. Youre soft. When doomsday comes, you will fall with all the rest of them.

I realize Im blinking very fast. Zara? Gabe says through my headset. Are we good?

Sorry! Yes! I send my character rushing forward, and for a while I manage to lose myself in the melee, in the spray of digital blood and the crunch of digital bone. Exhilaration floods hot through me. Gabe cheers in my ear.

Ill distract the final guard while you climb up high and attack from above, okay? he says.

Thats just what I was about to say. My character climbs like a spider, digging fingers and toes into almost invisible crevices, and then I settle her on a rafter, where she can peer down on the carnage below. She loads her crossbow. Sets it. Waits. Allows the doubt to creep back in.

Wait. Thats me. You should be exercising more than your fingers, Zara, says my dad, his voice disapproving. Like we used to. Drills with the rising sun. Hunting as that sun beats down on the back of your neck, burning it to a crisp. Falling to bed exhausted and hungry after failing to bag that deer you were hunting, because that is how you learn your lessons.

He wanted what was best for me. I knew that then, and I know that now.

Its just that his idea of what was best for me was different from the rest of the worlds.