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Diana started crawling away. Her mind was spinning crazily: images, memories. Hunger and the smell of Panda’s flesh, and the memory of the taste of it, and the memory of the sickening way it had flooded her with relief at the time, the way it had filled her stomach.

“No, no, no, no, no,” she cried, over and over again, scraping scabbed knees over sharp rock.

Diana stood, so weak she could barely stay up, and tried to run away, but with a flick of Gaia’s finger she was yanked back to land beside the brutalized man.

He screamed, but weakly.

His eyes focused on hers, confused, afraid. Betrayed.

Diana felt herself spinning down a long tunnel, wishing to hit bottom, wishing for death. And, mercifully, she fell unconscious.

“WHERE THE
HELL
is everyone?” Caine demanded. But he was demanding it of no one in particular. He was king in Perdido Beach, but he was a king without a court. Literally the only person with him at that moment was Virtue Brattle-Chance, an African kid—not African American, but literally from Africa.

And literally a kid, though he was strangely solemn. In fact he was downright gloomy. He and his brothers and sisters, the adopted children of very famous, very rich movie-star parents, had once inhabited San Francisco de Sales Island. But when Caine had found his way to the island, they had found their way off it.

There was, to put it mildly, some history between Caine and the Brattle-Chance kids. Some violent, disturbing history.

But Virtue was efficient in his own morose way. Tell Choo, as everyone called him, to deliver a message, and it got delivered. Tell Choo to go see if anyone was working the cabbage fields, and you got a thorough and accurate answer.

But he was no Drake. He wasn’t even a Turk. There was no chance of Choo beating someone up, let alone killing them for you. He wasn’t a henchman; he was an administrative assistant.

Caine missed henchmen.

More, he missed Diana.

It was sad to think that he now looked back on the early days of the FAYZ as the good old days. Once, he had ruled Coates Academy. Once, he had ridden in a blaze of glory—well, an unsteady convoy of inexpertly driven cars—into Perdido Beach. Once, Orc and his bullies, and Drake, and Pack Leader, and even Penny had been his right arms.

Well, Penny had turned out to be a treacherous lunatic. Pack Leader had been killed, and the replacement Pack Leader, too. Drake had gone to serve the gaiaphage. And Orc had cleaned himself up and gotten religion.

If there was one thing worse than a bellowing, roaring-drunk Orc, it was Orc quoting—
mis
quoting, usually—scripture.

The hangers-on like Turk and that sniveling little creep Bug had ended up being more trouble than they were worth. Bug still crept around using his invisibility power to spy on people—yet without ever bringing Caine any useful intelligence—and when he wasn’t watching people pick their noses, he was stealing food and causing pointless conflicts.

Slowly, inexorably, Caine’s control had been diminished. His great ambitions had died. Now he had far more responsibility than power. Some kids still called him king, but it wasn’t the same when they did it ironically rather than fearfully.

Oh, he could still use his telekinetic power to toss kids around randomly, throwing them through walls or out into the ocean, but what was the point? He didn’t need dead kids; he needed someone to go and pick the lousy cabbages. Albert had always taken care of that, but Albert had jumped ship and sailed off to the island with a load of missiles.

Caine missed Albert.

Caine missed henchmen.

But most of all he missed Diana. He could see her if he closed his eyes. He could remember every detail of her body and face. Lips? Yes, he remembered her mouth. The smoothness of her skin? Yes, definitely, yes, he remembered.

“When kids get hungry enough they’ll pick vegetables,” Virtue said.

“Choo, you don’t know people, do you? What they’ll do is panic and freak out. Start robbing each other and most likely burn down whatever is left of town. People are idiots, Choo. Always remember that: people are faithless, backstabbing, weak, creepy, stupid, lazy idiots.”

Virtue blinked and said nothing.

Caine looked around at his current lair—a desk Caine had levitated out onto the landing at the top of the church steps that looked down onto the town plaza. He had a rolling chair. And a desk.

He missed his previous lairs. This lair sucked.

He never should have left the island. He’d been there with Diana and Penny. He could have tossed Penny off a cliff and been fine on the island. Decent food, a beautiful mansion, electricity, and a soft bed with Diana in it.

What had he been thinking, leaving the island?

He missed Diana busting him. He missed her snarky voice. He missed her eye rolls and that skeptical look she had where she’d half close her eyes and look at him like he was too dumb to merit her full attention. He’d have killed, or at least injured, anyone else who treated him like that. But she wasn’t anyone else.

He missed her hair. Her neck. Her breasts.

She understood him. She loved him, in her own way. And if he had listened to her, he’d still be on the island. Somehow he would have found some fuel to keep the lights on there. Probably. And the food would have run out and then they’d have starved, but hey, this was the FAYZ, where all you could really hope to do was delay the pain.

Delay of pain: that was the meaning of life, wasn’t it?

“I’ve made some bad decisions,” Caine said, not really meaning to say it out loud.

Had Diana been there she’d have said something like
Duh
but cooler and funnier and meaner, and he’d have been annoyed but he’d have tried to kiss her and eventually she would have let him, and was it really possible that her lips had been that soft?

Virtue said, “Well, you’re ruthless and narcissistic and totally devoid of morals.”

Caine shot a look at Virtue, wondering if there was any way all of that amounted to a compliment. Probably not. From Diana it would have been a perfect blend of snark and admiration, but Virtue seemed to have decided at some point to take his name seriously. The kid had no sense of humor that Caine could detect. He was a straight arrow. It was baffling.

“If I’m so ruthless, how come I don’t walk down to the barrier and start slamming kids into the ground until they obey me?”

Virtue shrugged. “Because your birth mother or your adoptive parents might be out there watching?”

Caine bit at his thumbnail, a nervous habit when he was feeling thwarted.

“Also TV cameras,” Virtue went on.

“Sam fried Penny’s body in front of his—our—mother,” Caine said, just to argue.

Virtue said nothing.

“What?” Caine demanded.

“Well . . . Sam is stronger than you are,” Virtue said.

Caine considered throwing Virtue into the wreckage of the church. It would be satisfying. But if he did that, it would upset Virtue’s brother Sanjit, and Sanjit and Lana were close, and the last thing Caine needed was trouble with Lana, the Healer. She had saved his life, and despite the fact that he was mostly incapable of gratitude, it wasn’t wise to pick a fight with the closest thing they had to a doctor.

“We have visitors,” Virtue said. Caine heard it, too: a car’s engine. With gas as rare as food it was very unusual to hear an engine running.

A white van drove slowly—as slowly as only an inexperienced and frightened driver could go—down San Pablo Avenue. It came to a stop at a distance, and Caine found himself hoping it was trouble. Trouble he could handle. A fight would be a wonderful relief from the tedium.

Out stepped Edilio, and a second later, Sam.

So. Maybe it was a fight. Hah!

But Edilio was walking ahead with Sam hanging back and looking unusually reticent, even a bit abashed. Then Toto, the weird kid with the Spider-Man fixation, climbed out.

“We’re not here for trouble,” Edilio said, holding up his hand and crushing Caine’s hopes.

“True,” Toto affirmed.

Caine sighed. “Well, that’s just great. Okay. Choo, go grab a couple of chairs.”

“Caine,” Sam said, and nodded.

“Sam. What do you want here? Is the surf up?”

Sam nodded to Edilio. “This is
his
party.”

When the chairs came, they sat down around the large but rather forlorn desk. There was no chair for Toto. Caine didn’t care.

“I’d offer you milk and cookies, but we seem to be out,” Caine said. He put his feet up on the desk just to remind them who was boss here.

“It’s true. He has no milk. Or cookies.” Toto.

Edilio got right to it. “We can’t have this. We need to get food production back up. We need to think through how to deal with the lookers. We need rules and organization.”

“Yeah, brilliant,” Caine said. “I wish I’d thought of that. Choo, make a note: need people to get back to work. That’s genius. That’s what you came to say? Are you asking me to go down there and start smacking kids around?”

Edilio pretended not to notice the sarcasm. “No. In fact, I don’t think you can help, Caine. No one trusts you. No one will follow you.”

“That’s the truth,” Toto said. Then, in response to Caine’s withering glare, he added, “Spidey.”

“Oh, I see,” Caine said. “No one trusts me, but they will follow Saint Sammy here. Well, not to be impolite but—”

Caine’s hand came up fast, and the telekinetic punch hit Sam right in the chest. Sam went flying. In fact he flew straight backward through the air. Ten feet. At least—maybe even a dozen feet. And when he hit, he landed on his butt, and the momentum carried him into a backward roll.

Caine laughed delightedly. This was so much better than just sitting around and—

Sam was up faster than Caine expected, and he managed to leap aside and dodge Caine’s next blow. Sam’s hands were up, palms out. Not ten feet away. And the real problem was that Caine was still seated.

It’s not easy to move quickly when you’re sitting and your feet are up on a desk.

“I’d actually rather not have to kill you,” Sam said. “But if your hand so much as twitches . . .”

Caine let his hands hang in the air, carefully aimed just a bit off target.

He looked at Sam’s face. His brother’s eyes were focused narrowly on his own. Smart boy. Sam had gained experience since the old days when they were an even match. An inexperienced fighter watches the opponent’s hands; a smart fighter watches the other guy’s face.

Caine had to carefully control his eyes, not shift, not look toward—

Sam’s right hand was still aimed directly on Caine’s body. But from his left came the air-sizzling green light. It burned in a flash through the leg of Caine’s chair.

The chair tipped; Caine slipped, landed on his side, rolled fast, and as Sam rushed him pulled one of his newer tricks: he blasted the concrete directly below himself, throwing his own body back with the recoil.

It worked! Sam rushed past, grabbing air. Unfortunately, Caine’s new tactic was not a precision technique. It knocked the wind from him, and he banged the back of his head hard on a stair and saw stars.

“Ow.”

Caine tried to roll to his feet, but something was jabbing him in the crotch. He shook off the stars and saw Edilio standing over him. Edilio had the business end of his automatic rifle in a very sensitive place.

“If you move, Caine, I will shoot your balls off,” Edilio said. “Toto?”

“He will,” Toto said. “Although he’s not sure it will be just your balls.”

Caine glared up at Edilio, murder in his eyes. “You’d get off one round—maybe—and then I’d knock your head right off your shoulders.”

“He believes he could knock your head right off—” Toto began.

“No doubt,” Edilio said. “I guess you have to decide whether one more killing will compensate for your . . . loss.”

“What’s the matter, Sam? You can’t fight your own battles? You have to have your boy here cover for you?” Caine said.

Sam started to respond, then seemed to think better of it and remained silent. He even took a step back.

Edilio said, “Toto. I’m going to say some things to King Caine. You evaluate.”

“I will, Spidey.”

“One: I’m my own man,” Edilio said.

“He believes it.”

“Two: I am sick to death of this tired-ass sibling nonsense between you two.”

“He believes it is tired-ass,” Toto said.

“Three: the gaiaphage and Drake—your daughter and your former partner—”

“Partner? He was my henchman,” Caine said. “Partner would be an equal. Drake was never my equal.”

“Three,” Edilio repeated, “the gaiaphage and Drake are out there, and I don’t think they’re just camping.”

This made Toto hesitate. Then: “He does not believe they are camping.”

“And now, I have a question for you, Caine: Do you believe you can take on Gaia alone? Yes or no?”

Caine’s gaze slid toward Toto. Caine hated the very idea of a truth teller. Control was impossible without some dishonesty. But then his thoughts turned inward. He imagined fighting the gaiaphage alone. He could picture it all too clearly. Fear gnawed at the edges of his mind, and memories of terrible pain, weakness . . . despair.

“Yes or no?” Edilio pressed.

“You know the answer,” Caine muttered.

Edilio pulled the gun barrel away. He extended a hand to help Caine up, but Caine just gave him a hard stare and climbed to his feet. He looked at his now three-legged chair. “That was a nice, comfortable chair.”

He dusted himself off. The admission—even unspoken—that he couldn’t take Gaia on alone left him feeling depressed. From the very start he’d been paranoid that a power greater than himself might emerge. In the beginning there had been only the two “four bar” mutants: him and Sam. Gradually they’d come to realize that Little Pete was somewhere off the scale, but that hadn’t worried Caine too much, because Little Pete was just Little Pete, however godlike his powers.

Now here was Gaia, the physical embodiment of the gaiaphage, and Caine knew too much about that creature to believe it could be beaten by one guy with the power of telekinesis.