The avatar that was his sister had within it an amazing complexity of lines and designs, signs inside of mazes inside of maps that were part of planets and…
He pulled himself back. Inside her was a game of such beautiful complexity.
This was what it was to be the girl with the yellow hair and the stabbing blue eyes. It took his breath away. Or would have if he had breath and body.
He mustn’t play with those complex swirls and patterns. Each time he had tried he’d broken the avatar and it had come apart. He couldn’t break this one.
It’s me, Petey, he said.
The avatar shuddered. Patterns twisted around his touch, feeling for him like tiny light-snakes.
“Can you fix it, Petey? The FAYZ. Can you make it stop?”
He could hear her voice. It came straight up through the avatar, words of light floating to him.
He wondered. Could he fix it? Could he undo the great and terrible thing he had done?
He felt the answer as a sort of regret. He reached for the power, the thing that had made him able to create this place. But there was nothing there.
It was in my body, he said. The power.
“You can’t end it?”
No.
No, sister Astrid, I can’t.
I’m sorry.
“Can you bring the light back?”
He pulled away. Her questions made him feel bad inside.
“No. Don’t go away,” she said.
He had memories of how much her voice had hurt when he was the old Pete. When he had a body, with a brain all wired crazily so that things were always too loud, even colors.
He stopped moving away. He resisted an urge to reach inside that mesmerizing avatar and take its sadness away. But no, his fingers were too clumsy. He knew that now. The girl named Taylor, he had tried to make her better, and he had torn the avatar to shreds.
“Petey. What is the Darkness doing?”
Pete considered. He hadn’t looked at that thing lately. He could see him, a green glow, tendrils like a writhing octopus reaching out through the placeless place where Pete now lived.
The Darkness was weak. His power, spread all through the barrier, was weakening. He was the thing Pete had used to create the barrier. In that panic moment with the terrible loud sounds and the fear on all the faces, when Pete had screamed inside his own head and reached out with his power he’d stretched the Darkness into that barrier.
Now it was weakening. Soon it would break and crack.
Dying.
“The Darkness, the gaiaphage, it’s dying?”
It wants to be reborn.
“Petey. What happens if it is reborn?”
He didn’t know. He was out of words. He opened his mind to her. He showed sister Astrid images of the great sphere he had built, the barrier that had pushed all the rules and laws away, the barrier made of the gaiaphage, that had become the egg for its rebirth, the numbers all twisted together, fourteen, and the twisting, screaming distortion when anything passed through from one universe to the other, and now sister Astrid was screaming and holding her head; he could see it in the avatar, funny screaming, like words that popped and exploded around him and—
He pulled away.
He was hurting her.
He’d done it. With his clumsy fingers and his stupid, stupid stupidness, he had hurt her.
Her avatar twirled away like a snowflake in a storm.
Petey turned and ran.
“Oh, God, it’s coming!” Diana screamed.
She was sweating, straining, on her back with her legs spread wide, knees up. The contractions were just minutes apart now, but they lasted so long it was as if she had no rest in between, just a chance to gasp some super-heated fetid air.
She had no more energy for crying. Her body had taken control. It was doing what it was supposed to do five months from now. She was not ready. The baby was not ready. But the enormous swell of her belly said different. It said the time was now.
Now!
Who was there to help her in this? No one. Drake stared in horrified fascination. Penny curled her lip with contempt. Neither of them interfered or spoke, because it was clear, clear to anyone with a heart or brain, that the only other thing in the room that cared about the baby was the pulsing green monster.
Diana felt its hungry will.
Doom for her baby.
She had known there would be pain. And while it was bad, it was not as bad as the stroke of Drake’s whip.
It was not the pain that made her cry out, but the despair, the certain knowledge that she would never be the baby’s mother. That she would fail even at this. The deadening reality that she was unforgiven, still an exile from the human race, that she still bore the mark of her evil deeds.
The taste of human flesh.
She had been so hungry. So close to death.
I’ve said I’m sorry, I repented, I begged for forgiveness; what do you want from me? Why won’t you help this baby?
Penny moved closer, careful of her damaged, bloody feet. She leaned down to look at Diana’s straining face.
“She’s praying,” Penny said. Penny laughed. “Should I give her a god to pray to? I can make her see whatever—”
Through a veil of bloody tears Diana saw Penny reel back. Like a marionette she slammed hard, face-first into a wall.
Drake laughed. “Stupid chick. If the gaiaphage wants something, he’ll let you know. Otherwise it’s best not to spend a lot of time down here thinking about how powerful you are. There’s only one god down here, and it’s not Diana’s, and it sure isn’t you, Penny.”
Diana tried to remember what she had read in the pregnancy books. But she’d barely glanced at the sections having to do with birth. Birth was months away, not now!
Contraction. Oh, oh, a hard one. On and on.
Breathe. Breathe.
Another.
“Ahhhh!” she cried out, earning a jeer from Drake. But even as he laughed he was changing. Bright metal wire crossed his exposed teeth.
Hold on, hold on, Diana told herself. Don’t think. Just wait for—
Another contraction, like her guts were being squeezed hard by a gigantic fist.
And then Brittney was there, kneeling between Diana’s legs.
“I see its head. The top of its head.”
“I have to—have to—have to—” Diana gasped. Then, “Push!” she yelled, urging herself on.
A sudden motion. Something very fast. Brittney’s head rolled off her neck. It landed on Diana’s belly and then rolled heavily to one side.
BLAM!
Penny’s left arm took a partial hit. A chunk the size of a small steak was vaporized, leaving a divot in her shoulder, a divot that sprayed blood.
Brianna’s face appeared, looking down at Diana. “We’re out of here!”
“I can’t … can’t … oh, oh, aaaaahhhhhh!”
“You’re doing this right now?” Brianna asked, incredulous and offended. “It has to be right now?”
Diana grabbed Brianna’s shirt in an iron grip. “Save my baby. Forget about me. Save my baby!”
Sam found her, not by sight but by sound. By her weeping and her giggling.
He hung lights, more than one, illuminating a patch the size of a suburban lawn. He saw Astrid, crumpled and unaware.
He saw a skeleton just a dozen feet away, still seething with zekes.
Sam sat down wordlessly beside Astrid. He put his arm around her shoulder.
At first it was as if he wasn’t there. Like she didn’t notice him. Then, with a sudden, loud sob, she buried her face in his neck.
The tenor of her sounds changed. The wild flights of giggling stopped. So did the keening, heartbroken wail. Now she just cried.
Sam sat there perfectly still, saying nothing, and let her tears run down his neck.
The warrior who had gone out from the lake to save his people by slaying the evil one was now just a boy sitting in the dirt with his fingers in a mane o
f blond hair.
He stared at nothing. Expected nothing. Planned nothing.
Just sat.
Brianna picked up Brittney’s head. It was surprisingly heavy. She threw it as hard as she could down the tunnel.
Brittney’s body got up, swayed a little, and seemed as if it was ready to go after its head, so Brianna shot it in the leg at close range. The loss of one bloodless leg caused the whole body to topple over.
Penny was obviously in shock, staring at the terrible wound that was draining her life away, squirt, squirt, squirt.
Got to finish her off, Brianna told herself. But she hesitated. Penny was a human being. Not much of one, but an actual human being. Whereas the Drake/Brittney thing, well, whatever it was, it wasn’t human, because humans pretty much never stood up and tried to walk away after their heads were chopped off.
Brianna jacked a round into the chamber and aimed at Penny.
Then the gun blew apart in her hands. Exploded!
Brianna dropped it, but even as she let go she realized it was a trick. An illusion of Penny’s making.
The girl was spraying blood like a Super Soaker and still able to mess with Brianna’s head.
Brianna bent down to get the shotgun, determined to ignore any further interference, but Diana gave a huge cry of pain, and suddenly there was a head sticking almost all the way out of a place on Diana that Brianna had never wanted to see.
“Yaa-aahh-ah!” Brianna said. “Oh, this is wrong.”
But it just kept coming out as Diana grunted like an animal, and if Brianna didn’t get down there and do the right thing, the baby was going to land on the floor, on a rock.
Brianna snatched up her shotgun, snapped off a quick, poorly aimed, one-handed shot in the general direction of Penny—BLAM!—and cupped her hands beneath the emerging head.
“It’s got a snake around its neck!” Brianna cried.
Diana sat up—amazing that she could even think about sitting up—and yelled, “It’s the umbilical cord. It’s around the neck. It’ll choke!”
“Oh, man, I hate slimy stuff,” Brianna moaned. She pushed the baby’s head back a little, which wasn’t easy, because it was really ready to come out, and yelled, “Ewww!” a couple of times as she stretched and wrestled the umbilical cord over the baby’s head, freeing it.
And now in a rush the baby came out. It spilled out with liquid sounds and a hideous translucent sac attached and a pulsating snakelike thing leading to its belly button.
Diana shuddered.
“I am so never doing this,” Brianna said fervently. She shot a look to see if Penny was dead or alive and couldn’t see her at all.
The Brittney body was gone as well, no doubt crawling off to look for its head.
“You have to cut the cord,” Diana said.
“The what?”
“The cord.” Diana gasped. “The snake thing.”
“Ah. The snake thing.”
Brianna took her machete in hand, raised it up, and chopped through the umbilical cord. “It’s bleeding!”
“Tie it off!”
Brianna tore a strip from the waist of her T-shirt, twisted it to make it easier to handle, and tied it around the six-inch stump of the umbilical cord. “Oh, man, oh, it’s all slimy.”
Brianna worked her hands beneath the baby. It was slimy on its back, too. Then she looked down and saw something that made her smile.
“Hey. It’s a girl,” Brianna said.
“Take her,” Diana cried.
“She’s breathing,” Brianna said. “Isn’t she supposed to cry? In a movie it cries.”
She frowned at the baby. Its eyes were closed. Something strange about it. The baby wasn’t crying. She seemed perfectly calm. As if this was all no big thing, being born.
“Take her away from here!” Diana yelled. Her voice was coming from far away.
Brianna lifted the little girl up and oh! Her eyes opened. Little blue eyes. But that couldn’t be, could it?
Brianna stared into those eyes. Just stared. And the tiny little girl stared back, eyes focused so clearly, not the squinty little eyes of a newborn baby but the eyes of a wise child.
“What?” Brianna asked. Because it almost sounded like the baby was saying something. She wanted Brianna to take her over and lay her down in that crib.
Well, of course, who wouldn’t want to lie down in that nice, white crib?
There was a siren going off here at the hospital, an insistent screech that Brianna just ignored. As she laid the baby down and…
But wait. No. That wasn’t a siren.
It was a voice.
Run. Run. Ruuuun! the siren said.
But now Brianna’s breath was short; she was choking because the baby wanted to be put down in that nice crib with the green sheets.
Green? Hadn’t they been white?
Green was a nice color, too.
Brianna was so incredibly weary holding the baby. She must have weighed a million pounds. So tired, and the green sheets, and—Ruuuun! Ruuun! Nooooo!
Brianna blinked. She gulped air.
She looked down and saw the baby lying on rock covered with a sickly green that looked up close like a billion tiny ants.
The green swarmed up onto the baby’s chubby little legs and arms.
“No, Brianna! Noooo!” Diana cried.
Brianna, paralyzed with horror at what she had just done, watched as the seething green mass flowed onto the baby’s arms and legs and belly and then poured like water into her nostrils and mouth.
Penny, holding a rag to the bloody hole in her shoulder, staggered back, laughed, and suddenly collapsed to the ground.
“What did I do?” Brianna cried.
A noise. She spun, ducked, and barely avoided the whip.
She snatched up her shotgun—BLAM!—fired into Drake’s belly. He smiled his shark grin.
Too much. Too much!
Brianna ran.
OUTSIDE
ABANA BAIDOO WAS shaking as she reached her car outside Denny’s. She could barely take a breath.
No. No way she was letting this happen. But if she was going to stop it she had to focus. And not focus on how angry she was at Connie Temple.
Liar!
She pulled out her iPhone and, despite her fumbling, shaking fingers, found the mailing list of families.
First, email.
Everyone! Emergency! They are blowing up the dome. I have solid proof that they are blowing up the dome. All families immediately call your senators and congressmen and the media. Do it now. And if you are close to the area come! The chemical spill story is a lie! Don’t let them stop you!!!!!
Then text. The same message, but shorter.
Nuclear explosive is being used to blow up the anomaly. Call everyone! This is not a joke or a mistake!!!
Then, without delay, she opened her Twitter app.
#PerdidoFamilies. Nuclear explosion planned. Not joke or mistake. Help now. Come if u can!
Facebook app, same message, but a little longer.
There. Too late for anyone to cover up now.
Connie was coming from the restaurant at a run. She raced to her own car, hopped in, started it, and pulled up, tires squealing beside Abana. Abana rolled down her window.
“Hate me later, Abana,” Connie said. “Follow me now. I think I know a dirt road.”
Connie didn’t wait but took off, laying rubber across the parking lot.
“Hell, yeah,” Abana said, and drove with one hand as the tweets and messages started pinging her phone.
THIRTY-FOUR
4 HOURS, 21 MINUTES
“HE CAN’T CONTROL it,” Astrid said. The first words she’d spoken in what felt to Sam like an eternity.
He’d become aware after a while that she had stopped crying. But she had not pulled away then. And for a long time afterward he wondered if she was asleep. He’d determined that if she was asleep he’d let her go right on doing so.
He knew Edilio and all the rest were e
xpecting him to solve something, everything. He recalled the high of realizing he wasn’t the leader, carrying everything on his shoulders. He remembered the liberation of believing that his role was as warrior. The great and powerful warrior and that was all. And he was that. Yes: he was. He had the power in his hands, and he knew he had the strength and courage and violence to use that power.
But he was also, at least as much, the boy who loved Astrid Ellison. Right now he was powerless to put that part of himself aside. He couldn’t have left her side when she was like this, ever, not if Drake had shown up and challenged him to one-on-one combat to the death.
He was a warrior. But he was also this. Whatever this was.
“Who?” he asked.
“Petey. Pete. It doesn’t feel right to call him Petey now. He’s changed.”
“Astrid, Petey’s dead.”
She sighed and pulled away. He stretched his arm and got pins and needles in payment. His arm was asleep.
“I let him in. In my head,” Astrid said.
“His memory?”
“No, Sam. And I’m not crazy. I was pretty close there, though, and then you came. And I turned it all to you. How weak, huh? I’m embarrassed at how lame it is. But I was on the edge. It messed me up. Twisted my thoughts into… Well, messed me up, that’s all I can say. Words are coming hard to me right now. I feel like I’m bruised in my brain. Again: sorry that’s not more coherent.”
He had let her ramble on, but he wasn’t making any sense of it. Now that she mentioned feeling crazy he wondered if she had, well, become … stressed.
Almost as if she could read his thoughts, Astrid laughed softly and said, “No, Sam. I’m fine. I cried it out. Sorry. I know crying freaks boys out.”
“You don’t cry much.”
“I don’t cry ever,” Astrid said with some of her usual snap.
“Well, rarely.”
“It’s Pete. He’s… I don’t know what he is.” There was a marveling quality to her words, the exalted sound of Astrid discovering something new. “There’s some kind of space, some kind of reality that exists here in the FAYZ. He’s like a spirit. His body is gone. He’s outside. Not in his old brain. Like a data pattern or something, like he’s digital. Yes, I know I’m babbling. It’s not something I understand. It’s like a slippery thought, and Pete can’t explain it.”