Astrid’s fingers ached, she was clutching the gun so hard. There was nothing else to hold on to. Her heart beat so loud she was sure Cigar must hear it. She shivered.
Anything else. Not that. Not madness.
She could get all the answers she needed by way of Cigar. Except that Cigar was coherent for only snatches of time before he spiraled down into lunatic rantings and shrieks.
“No,” Astrid said. “Not taking the risk. No. Let’s get going.”
Like she knew which way to go. She’d been following Cigar, who had been following—or so he said—Little Pete.
Panic. It tickled her, teased her. There was something smothering about the darkness. Like it was thick and hard to breathe.
The darkness was so absolute. She could walk in circles and never know it. She could walk into a zeke field and not know it until the worms were inside her.
“Just turn the damned lights on, Petey!” she yelled.
Her words seemed to barely penetrate the blackness.
“Just fix it! You’re the one who did this. Fix it!”
Silence.
Cigar started in again, moaning and giggling, talking about Red Vines and how good candy tasted.
She had a vision of herself back at the lake, lying in the bunk with Sam. She had loved touching his muscles. What an embarrassing, juvenile thing. Like the girls she despised, always mooning over some rock star, some movie star, some guy with hard abs and yet, and yet, hadn’t that been her all along?
She recalled with intimate detail having her hand on his biceps when he flexed to pick her up and the way the muscle had just doubled in size and become hard as if it were carved out of oak. He’d lifted her up like she weighed nothing. And set her down again, so gently, with her hands sliding to his chest to balance and…
And now, she was here. With a ghost and a lunatic. In the dark.
Why?
Risk your sanity and maybe know something. But maybe not. Maybe just be destroyed. And what would she know then, if Petey scrambled her mind?
Scrambled brain, full of things she needed to know, but wouldn’t really know if her brain was twisted in the learning.
“Fix it! Fix it!” she screamed at the dark.
“My leg, it’s not my leg; it’s a stick, a stick with nails poking through,” Cigar moaned.
A dark, terrible urge to turn the shotgun around and end Cigar’s misery had Astrid breathing hard and clenching her jaw. No. No, she’d already played Abraham to Petey’s Isaac, not that ever again. She would not allow herself to take an innocent life, not ever again.
Innocent, a derisive voice in her head taunted. Innocent? Astrid Ellison, prosecutor and jury and executioner.
There’s nothing innocent about Petey, the voice teased. He built this. All of it. He made this universe. He’s the creator and it is all his fault.
“Let’s go,” Astrid said. “Give me your hand, Cigar.” She shouldered the shotgun. She felt around in the dark until she found Cigar, and then fumbled some more before she had his hand. “Get up.”
He got up.
“Which way?” Cigar asked.
Astrid laughed. “I have a joke for you, Cigar. Reason and madness go for a walk in a dark room, looking for an exit.”
Cigar laughed like it had been funny.
“You even know what the punch line is, you poor crazy boy?”
“No,” Cigar admitted.
“Me neither. How about we just walk until we can’t walk anymore?”
OUTSIDE
CONNIE TEMPLE SAT sipping coffee at a booth in Denny’s. Across from her sat a reporter named Elizabeth Han. Han was young and pretty but also smart. She had interviewed Connie several times before. She reported for the Huffington Post and had been on the Perdido Beach Anomaly story from the start.
“They’re setting off a nuclear device?”
“The so-called chemical spill is a trick. They just want everyone away from the dome. They must have deliberately left it for the last minute so it would seem like a real emergency.”
Han spread her hands wide. “A nuclear explosion, even underground, will show up on seismographs all over the world.”
Connie nodded. “I know. But—” At that moment Abana Baidoo came into the restaurant, walked past the hostess, and slid into the booth beside Connie. Connie had called her but told her nothing. Quickly, and without revealing Darius’s name, she backed the story up to the start.
“Are they out of their minds?” Abana demanded. “Are they insane?”
“Just scared,” Connie said. “It’s human nature: they don’t want to just wait, feeling powerless. They want to do something. They want to make something happen.”
“We all want to make something happen,” Abana snapped. Then she put a reassuring hand on Connie’s arm. “We’re all worn-out with worry. We’re all sick of not knowing.”
Elizabeth Han barked out a laugh. “They can’t do this without approval from very high up. I mean, all the way up.” She shook her head thoughtfully. “They know something. Or at least they suspect something. This president doesn’t go off half-cocked.”
“We have to stop it from happening,” Connie insisted.
“We still don’t have any idea what caused this,” the reporter said. “But whatever it is, it rewrote the laws of nature to create that sphere. They didn’t just decide this overnight; there must have been a plan in place for a long time. They wanted this as an option. So why suddenly, now, use that option?”
“The dome is changing,” Connie said. “They briefed us. There’s some change in the energy signature or whatever.” She looked at her friend. “Abana. They don’t want our kids coming out. That’s why. They think the barrier is weakening. They don’t want our kids coming out.”
“They don’t want whatever made this coming out,” Abana said. “I can’t believe they’re targeting our kids. It’s whatever made this happen.”
Connie hung her head, aware that she was bringing conversation to a halt, aware that Abana and Elizabeth were exchanging worried glances.
“Okay,” Connie said, wrapping both hands around the ceramic coffee mug and refusing to look at either woman. “What’s happened inside… I mean, the kids who have developed powers… I never shared this, and I’m so sorry. But with Sam…” She bit her lip. She looked up sharply, her jaw set. “Sam and Caine. Their powers developed before the anomaly. I saw them both. I knew what was happening. The, whatever they are, the mutations, they came before the barrier. Which means something caused them besides the barrier.”
Elizabeth Han was thumbing frantically into her iPhone, taking notes, even as she said, “Why would this scare the government any more than—” She frowned and looked up. “They think the dome is the cause of the mutations.”
Connie nodded. “If that’s the way it is, then when the dome comes down the mutations will stop. But if it’s the other way around, if the mutations came before the barrier, then maybe they caused the barrier. Which means this isn’t all just some freak of nature, some quantum flux or whatever, or even an intrusion from a parallel universe, all those theories. This means there’s something or someone inside that dome with unbelievable power.”
Elizabeth Han looked grim as she went back to taking notes. “You have to give me the name of the person who told you about the nuke. I need to source this.”
Out of the corner of her eye Connie saw Abana pull back. A cold distance opened between them for the first time since the anomaly had begun. Connie had lied to her. All this time, as they had suffered together, Connie Temple had been holding something back.
And now, Connie knew, Abana was wondering if somehow her friend could have kept this from happening.
“I can’t give you his name,” Connie said.
“Then I can’t run the story.”
Abana stood up abruptly. She banged the table hard and rattled the cups. “I’m stopping this. I’m calling the parents, the families. I’m going to get around that roadblock, and if they
want to blow up my child, they’ll have to blow me up, too.”
Connie watched her go.
“What do you want me to do?” the reporter asked Connie, angry and frustrated. “You won’t tell me who gave you this information; what am I supposed to do?”
“I promised.”
“Your son—”
“Darius Ashton!” Connie said through gritted teeth. Then, quieter, more calmly, but hating herself, she repeated, “Sergeant Darius Ashton. I have his number. But if you leak his name he’ll end up in prison.”
“If I don’t get this out, and right now, it sounds like all those kids inside may die. What’s your choice?”
“Sergeant Ashton? Sergeant Darius Ashton?”
He froze. The voice, coming from behind him, was unfamiliar. But the tone, the repetition of his name, that told him all he needed to know.
He forced a pleasant smile and turned to see a man and a woman, neither smiling, both holding badges so he could read them.
His cell phone rang.
“I’m Ashton,” he said. Then, “Excuse me.” He held the phone to his ear.
The FBI agents seemed momentarily uncertain as to whether they should or could stop him taking the call.
Darius held up a finger to signal just a minute. He listened for a while.
He was, he knew, destroying himself. With two FBI agents watching he was going to commit what might as well be suicide.
“Yes,” he said into the phone. “What she told you is one hundred percent true.”
The FBI agents took his phone then.
THIRTY-TWO
7 HOURS, 1 MINUTE
DIANA CRAWLED AND fell. She was cut and bruised in so many places she couldn’t even begin to keep track. Her palms, her knees, her shins, her ankles, the soles of her feet, all ripped and torn. And the cuts from Drake’s whip were on her back, shoulders, the back of her thighs, her bottom.
But she felt little of the pain now. That pain was something far away. Something that happened to a real person who was not her. Some shell she’d once inhabited, maybe, but not her, not this person, because this person, this Diana, felt something so much more awful.
It was inside her.
The baby. It was inside her and pushing and kicking.
And it was growing. She felt her belly grow each time she reached to hold it. Bigger and bigger, like someone was filling a water balloon from a hose and didn’t have the sense to stop, didn’t know that it would burst if you just kept making it—
A spasm went through her, seizing her insides, drawing on every ounce of her strength and concentrating it in that one spasm.
Contraction.
The word came to her from the depths of memory.
Contraction.
Was her stomach really growing? Was the impatience of the baby inside her real, or was it Penny playing some game with her reality?
She felt the gaiaphage’s dark mind. She felt the fear that squeezed the air from her lungs. And more horrible still, she felt that evil mind’s eagerness. It strained to hurry her on. It reached for her from the depths. Like a little kid impatient for the ice cream. Give me, give me!
But worse by far was the echo that came from the baby.
The baby felt the force of the gaiaphage’s will. She knew it. It would be his.
How long had she crawled like this? How many times had Drake grabbed her roughly with his whip hand and lowered her down some sheer drop to cling with torn fingernails to the rock wall?
And blind. Always blind. A darkness so total it reached into her memory and blotted the sun from the pictures there.
Then, at long last, a glow. At first it seemed like it must be a hallucination. She had accepted that light was gone forever, and now here was a faint, sickly glow.
“Go!” Drake urged her. “It’s straight and level now. Go!”
She stumbled forward. Her belly was impossibly big, the flesh stretched like a drum. And the next contraction now racked her, a vise inside her that tightened so hard it seemed it must break her very bones.
It was hot and airless. She was bathed in sweat, her hair sticking to her neck.
The glow brightened. It stuck to the floor and walls of the cave. It revealed the contours of rock, the stalagmites rising from the floor, the tumbled piles of broken stone like waterfalls rendered with a child’s blocks.
And then, beneath her bare feet, the electric zap of the barrier, forcing her to climb for safety up onto pieces of the gaiaphage itself.
She could feel the gaiaphage move under her, like stepping on a million ants all packed tight together; the cells of the monster seethed and vibrated.
Drake cavorted across the chamber, snapping the air with his whip, shouting, “I did it! I did it! I brought you Diana! I, Drake Merwin, I did it! Whip Hand! Whip! Hand!”
Justin. Where was he? Diana realized she hadn’t seen him in a long time.
Where was he? She looked around, frantic, amazed to have eyes to see with. Her vision blurred green. No Justin.
Penny caught the frantic look. Her face was grim. She, too, now realized they’d lost the little boy somewhere along the bloody miles leading them here.
Penny, too, had not fared well. She was almost as battered, bruised, and bloodied as Diana. The trip down a jet-black tunnel had not been good to her. At some point she must have hit her head very hard, because a gash in her scalp bled down into one eye.
But Penny had already lost interest in Justin. Now she looked with narrow, jealous eyes at Drake in all his joy. Drake was ignoring her. He hadn’t introduced her. Gaiaphage, meet Penny. Penny, gaiaphage. I know you two will get along.
The image would have made Diana laugh if not for a contraction that forced her to her knees.
It was in that position that Diana felt a sudden wetness. It was warm and ran down her inner thighs.
“Impossible.” She wept.
But she knew in her heart, and had known for some time, that this baby was no normal child. Already it was a three bar, an infant with powers not yet defined.
The child of an evil father and a mother who had tried, had wanted to … had tried to … but somehow had failed.
Repentance had not saved her. Burning tears had not been enough to wash away the stain.
The water that had gushed from inside her had not washed away the stain.
Diana Ladris, beaten and scourged and crying out to heaven for forgiveness, would still be the mother of a monster.
Brianna had a little roasted pigeon in her backpack. She had a more than healthy appetite, and she liked to always keep food handy. A history of starvation did that to people: made them nervous about food.
Now she tore a piece of the pigeon breast away from the bone, felt through the meat with dirty fingers for any fragment of bone or cartilage. Then she found the little boy’s hand and put the meat into it.
“Eat that. It’ll make you feel a little better.”
They were deep inside the mine shaft. She’d almost laid into Justin with her machete before realizing he was sniffling, not snarling.
Now what, though? She could walk him out to the mine shaft entrance, but what difference did it make? It was dark in here, and it was dark out there. Although at least out there that oppression of the soul that came with proximity to the gaiaphage might be lessened.
“What can you tell me, kid? Did you see the thing?”
“I can’t see anything.” He sniffed. But he was cried out. More like shell-shocked, that was how he sounded. Brianna felt an unaccustomed stab of sympathy. Poor kid. How was it right that this kind of stuff happened to a little kid? How was he ever going to forget it?
He’d forget when he was dead, Brianna thought harshly, and that wouldn’t be too long from now, most likely.
Then, surprisingly, Justin said, “There’s a really long drop.”
“Up ahead, you mean?”
“That’s where they forgot about me.”
“Yeah? Right on, kid, that helps me to know tha
t.”
“Are you going to save Diana?”
“Kind of more thinking about killing Drake. But if that means I save Diana, I can live with that.” She tore off another piece of her precious pigeon meat and gave it to him. What did it matter? This was a suicide mission. She wasn’t coming back. She wouldn’t need much to eat.
Not a happy thought.
“The lady. Diana. I think her baby is going to come out.”
“Well, that would make everything just about perfect,” Brianna said with a sigh. “Kid. I have to keep going. You understand? You can keep heading back to the entrance. Or you can just sit tight right here and wait for me.”
“Are you coming back?”
Brianna gave a short laugh. “I doubt it. But that’s me, little dude. I’m the Breeze. And the Breeze doesn’t stop. If you get out of this somehow, and you get out of the whole FAYZ and get back home to your mom and dad and everyone out in the world, you tell people that, okay? Maybe find my family some—”
Her voice choked. She could feel tears in her eyes. Wow, where had that come from? She shook her head angrily, pushed her hair back, and said, “I’m just saying: you tell people the Breeze never wimped out. The Breeze never gave up. Will you do that?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Ma’am,” Brianna echoed in an ironic tone. “Anyway. Later, okay?”
She began to make her way down the tunnel. She had worked out a way to move a little faster than a normal person might. She used her machete, twirling it ahead of her in a variety of different patterns to avoid getting too bored—figure eight, a five-pointed star, a six-way star. She could swing the machete maybe two, three times as fast as a regular person. Nowhere near her usual speed, but one had to adapt.
When the machete struck something, she slowed down until she found an open way. It was like a blind person using a cane, but so much more badass.
From time to time she would feel for a rock and throw it ahead, listening for something that might be, as Justin had called it, “a really long drop.”
She was very much against really long drops.
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