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“You’re making me angry,” Gaia whispered. “I’m hungry.”

Gaia’s eyes began to glow like someone had turned on a dim flashlight inside her head so that light bled just a bit around the rim of her eyes. Her fists were clenched tight. Her teeth made a cracking sound as she clamped her jaw.

The redhead was now well over Diana’s height, but in no danger of making any progress. He had gotten himself into position to take some decent video, but he was at the end of his ladder. The dome was ten miles high in the center, and there was no ladder in the world that would cover even a tiny fraction of—

“Ahhhh!”
Gaia cried, and the whole world wobbled. It was like a small earthquake, but more, as if the air itself had been stirred.

There was a blast of air in Diana’s face.

A sound of rushing wind.

And the red-haired man fell.

He fell and hit the ground at Diana’s feet. Inside. In the FAYZ.

The man lay stunned. He looked at them in amazement, looked back at his friend, who just stood with his mouth open, then grinned and said, “Whoa! This is cool!”

Gaia made her little teeth-baring smile and said, “Food.”

It had hit Little Pete in a way that was impossible to explain to someone who lived in the normal universe. Pete had no body, but he had just been punched, very hard. It had hurt. It had sent his mind spinning.

He had never felt anything like it. It could only come from one person: the Darkness. The green, vaporous tendrils that had often reached to touch his mind had this time struck him.

The gaiaphage. Had punched him. Hard enough to make his consciousness blink out for just a fraction of a second.

It was shocking. He had not known such a thing was possible. No one could hit him! It wasn’t okay. It was not okay to hit. His sister had told him that a lot of times. So had his mother.

It was not okay to hit. Even if you were mad or frustrated.

If it could happen once, it could happen again. The dark mind that had touched him very early on, that had shaped him in some ways, that had manipulated him at times, that had scared Pete at times—and feared him always—that constant if faraway companion had just
hurt
him.

Pete had begun to accept his own fading, the almost pleasurable sense of giving up and letting go of a life that had been short but painful. He was ready to go away. He was ready to fade out.

But that sudden attack . . . it was wrong. He hadn’t done anything to deserve it.

It was wrong.

And it made Pete angry.

Don’t hit me again, he thought.

Or else.

THEY CLOSED
THE
door on the cabin. There wasn’t room enough for them to stand, so they fell into each other’s arms on the bunk.

Sam kissed her and tried not to think that it was for the last time.

He was happy. That was the hell of it. He was finally happy. Right here, right now, in this place, with this girl in his arms, he was happy. Was that why he felt the hammer about to fall on him? No, that was crazy. He was happy. Happiness didn’t mean that tragedy was coming around the corner. Did it?

“He shouldn’t ask you to do this,” Astrid said.

“Sure he should,” Sam said. “Who else is going to go if not me?”

“You’ve done enough. You’ve done more than enough. A hundred times more than enough.”

They were only inches apart, so close that Sam could feel her breath on his face when she spoke. So close he could hear her heart beating too fast.

“It’s the endgame, Astrid,” Sam said softly.

“You’re supposed to survive the endgame,” Astrid pleaded.

“What am I going to do? Hide here with you and hope it all blows over?”

“Maybe, yes. Maybe just don’t go out looking for a fight this time. Maybe just let it be on someone else.”

“Gaia ran off with Drake and Diana, but I don’t think it was because she was weak. If she is weak, great, let’s find out now and maybe end this easily.”

His words made sense. She wouldn’t be able to dispute them.

“And if she’s not weak? If she’s exactly what we think she is and just as dangerous as we’re afraid she is? Then what, Sam?”

“Then better to move on her before she’s ready. Better not to let her choose the time and place.” He tilted his head to rest against hers, sharing the pillow. “Edilio’s right. You know he is.”

He was a little disappointed when she didn’t have a good counterargument. A part of him had been hoping that he was wrong. Her silence was his doom.

Another fight. Another battle. How many could he survive? He was living on luck. Was he supposed to believe that the world meant him to be happy with Astrid? That didn’t sound like the world he knew.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you too, for all the good it does.” She sounded bitter. Angry. Not at him, but at the universe. Then, in an intense whisper: “First, isolate her. Take out Drake. And Sam, if you need to, take out Diana.”

That cold-blooded advice shocked him. “Diana?” Since when had Astrid used a euphemism like “take out”? And since when had she ever counseled him to be so hard?

“Gaia seemed to be relating to her. If you find Diana’s still alive, it will be because Gaia needs her or maybe even cares for her. That’s a vulnerability. Exploit that vulnerability.”

He tried to treat it lightly. “You’re kind of ruining the mood.”

“I’ll recapture the mood,” she said. “But first, you promise me, Sam: whatever it takes to win, whatever it takes to survive.”

“Astrid—”

Suddenly she grabbed his face with one hand and squeezed too hard. “You listen to me. I’m not losing you because you played fair. You’re
not
getting killed. You’re
not
dying. This
isn’t
some doomed last mission. Do you understand me? This does not end with me crying and missing you every day for the rest of my life. This ends with us walking out of this nightmare together. You and me, Sam.”

There was silence between them for a long moment. Sam didn’t know what to say.

Astrid found the hem of his T-shirt and pulled it up over his head. She unbuckled his belt and shoved his jeans to the deck. She pushed him, gently but insistently, onto the bed. Then she undressed herself and stood in the faint light, looking down at him as he gazed up at her.

“You’re giving me a reason to live,” he said, half joking.

“I’m just recapturing the mood,” she said, trying to make it sound light and sexy.

“You captured me a long time ago.”

She climbed atop him. “We walk out of this together, Sam. Whatever it takes. You and me.”

“You and me,” he said.

She would not yet let him have her. “Whatever it takes,” she insisted. “Say it.”

“You and me,” he said at last. “Whatever it takes.”

“Swear it.”

“Astrid . . .”

“Swear it. Say the words. Say ‘I swear.’”

“I swear,” he said, saying it too easily. Saying it even though he didn’t feel it. Saying it because he wanted her and wanted to be happy right here and right at this moment.

He rolled a condom into place and she gasped as he entered her. “This is not the last time, Sam,” she said.

“This is not the last time,” he said, knowing that neither of them believed it.

Lana Arwen Lazar woke suddenly, and as she often did when startled, she grabbed for the big pistol beneath her pillow. She sat up and leveled the automatic, all in one easy motion.

Sanjit Brattle-Chance dropped to his belly and, in a surprisingly reasonable tone of voice, considering his face was in the ragged carpet, said, “If you shoot me, I can’t tell you where I hid your cigarettes.”

“You what?” Lana snapped. It was still fairly dark in the room. Clifftop Resort, where she had lived since the coming of the FAYZ, had excellent, thick curtains that blocked out the sun. The only light getting in came from a hole that had been burned in the curtains by one of said cigarettes.

“I think you need to cut back,” Sanjit said, bravely getting back to his feet despite the fact that Lana had not dropped the gun.

Patrick, Lana’s faithful dog, had an instinct for dangerous situations and took the opportunity to jump off the end of the bed and crawl behind the sofa.

“Cut back?”

“Quit, actually. But cut down for now.”

“Give me my cigarettes.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Do you see this gun?”

“I noticed it, yes.”

“Give me my cigarettes.”

“I don’t want you getting lung cancer. You’re very good at healing injuries, but you know as well as I do you aren’t much use against disease.”

Lana stared hard at him. “See this bed? Do you ever expect to be back in this bed? With me?”

Sanjit sighed unhappily. He was thin, not very tall, dark-skinned with dark hair and darker eyes, all of it generally lit up by a devil-may-care smile. However, he knew better than to smile at this particular moment. “I’m not going to even respond to that, because the day will come when you’ll be ashamed of yourself for even suggesting—”

“Give me my cigarettes.”

Sanjit reached into his pocket. He handed something to Lana.

“What is this?”

“It’s half a cigarette.”

Without putting down the gun she reached for her lighter. She lit the half cigarette and filled her lungs. “Where’s the other half?”

“On a completely different topic,” Sanjit said, “there’s something kind of disturbing going on.”

“This is the FAYZ, there’s always something disturbing going on, and right now it’s the fact that I’m calculating whether I can shoot you in the eyeball.”

Sanjit ignored her and opened the curtains.

“Yes, daylight is disturbing,” Lana said, blinking. She had smoked the half cigarette down to a length of about five millimeters and was still determined to get another puff, even if it burned her fingers.

Finally curiosity got the better of her, and she swung her feet out of bed, stood up with a groan, and walked to the sliding glass door. Sanjit opened the door and stood aside. Lana stepped out and froze.

The balcony provided an amazing view of the ocean. But since moving into Clifftop the left side had been nothing but the pearly-gray FAYZ wall. Two days earlier that wall had gone transparent, so she’d been able to see the rest of the ocean, and of course the rest of the hotel. But there had been no one in sight, and that was how Lana liked it.

Now, however, there were six people standing together on the balcony just to the left of hers. They were no more than six feet away.

Cameras—ranging from cell phones to full-on Canons with huge lenses—rose in unison and aimed at her.

Lana’s hair was sticking out in multiple directions, she was wearing a ragged purple T-shirt that read “FCKH8” over boys’ boxer shorts, and she was sucking a cigarette butt down to the ash.

And then there was the automatic pistol in her right hand.

Lana went back inside and said, “Okay: now where are my cigarettes?”

“How did that happen?” the red-haired man demanded. He looked at his friend, still on the other side. He reached over and banged on the barrier and got zapped in payment.

His friend was miming the same look:
How
did
that happen?
Then he whipped out his own phone and began to shoot video.

“How did that happen?” a stunned Diana asked Gaia.

Gaia did not look surprised. She did look troubled. “I hit Nemesis,” Gaia answered, as though it was obvious. “But it wasn’t good, really.” She suddenly bit at the cuticle of her thumb, a nervous gesture Diana recognized: Caine.

“He was stronger than I expected,” Gaia said. “I think I just made him realize . . . Never mind. I may have to move faster than I’d thought.” She sighed and seemed surprised to have made the sound. Then she said, “But at least I have food to feed this body you made for me. Diana.”

“I can’t believe this happened,” the red-haired man said. He stood up and extended his hand to Diana. “Amazing, right? Am I the first guy in?”

Gaia stepped in, grabbed the man’s hand, then shifted her grip to his wrist, put her other hand on his bicep, and with one swift, sudden movement tore his arm off at the shoulder like she was ripping a drumstick from an overcooked turkey.

“Gaia!” Diana cried.

The man screamed, an eerie, awful sound.

“Ahhh! Ahhhh! Ahhhh!”

Blood sprayed from both the arm and the shoulder. The man fell onto his back, screaming, screaming, screaming as blood sprayed like water from a cut garden hose.

Diana dropped beside him, crying, “Oh God, oh God!”

Gaia casually slung the arm onto a flat rock. She raised one hand and played a terrible, burning light—just like Sam’s light—up and down the arm.

She wasn’t destroying, though: she was cooking.

“No, no, no!” the man screamed. “Ahhh! Ahhh!”

“He’s going to die, Gaia!”

“Possibly,” Gaia said, evaluating the cooked arm. “A lot of blood—”

“Gaia!”

Outside the dome the other man was screaming silently, his eyes wide, his mouth a horrified O. The phone in his hand tilted crazily.

Diana tore the man’s small backpack open, found a T-shirt, and tried to stuff it into the gruesome, shredded wound that had been his shoulder. The man’s eyes rolled up into his head, and he passed out as blood continued gushing, making mud of the dirt.

“Gaia! Save him!” Diana begged, and looked up to see Gaia ripping with her child’s teeth at the charred and smoking bicep.

“Yes, I should save him,” Gaia said through her chewing. “He’ll be easier to move if he’s alive.” She ripped another chunk, a long, stringy piece of muscle, and while she chewed and sucked it into her mouth, she knelt beside the unconscious man and put her hand on the bloody mess of shoulder.

Diana scooted backward, pushing violently away.

Gaia held the cooked arm out toward her carelessly as she focused on the wound. “You should also eat. There is enough for both of us now.”

Diana rolled to her knees and retched. There was nothing in her stomach to come up. But she retched, tears flooding her eyes.

The man’s eyes fluttered open. He looked up at Gaia and screamed again, but more weakly. The one outside was banging on the dome with a piece of the ladder, yelling and threatening without making any sound.