Penny screamed, hysterical, flailing wildly, staring down in terror at the flashing blades below her.
“Let them go, Caine,” Diana pleaded.
“Why, Diana? Why do you betray me?”
“Betray you?” Diana laughed. “Betray you? I’ve been with you every day, every hour, from the start of this nightmare!”
Caine looked at her. “But you hate me, anyway.”
“No, you sick, stupid creep, I love you. I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t. You’re sick inside, Caine, sick! But I love you.”
Caine cocked an eyebrow. “Then you must love what I do. Who I am.”
He smiled and Diana knew she had lost the argument. She could see it in his eyes.
She stepped away from him. She backed toward the cliff. Felt with her feet for the edge as she held his gaze.
“I’ve helped you when I could, Caine. I’ve done all of it. I kept you alive and changed your filthy crap-stained sheets when the Darkness held you. I betrayed Jack for you. I’ve betrayed everyone for you. I ate…God forgive me, I ate human flesh to stay with you, Caine!”
Something flickered in Caine’s cold gaze.
“I won’t stay with you for this,” Diana said.
She took another step back. It was meant as a threat, not meant to be final.
But it was one step too many.
Diana felt the sudden horror, knowing she was going to fall. Her arms windmilled. But she could feel that she was too far, too far.
And in the end, Diana thought, wouldn’t it be better?
Wouldn’t it be a relief?
She stopped fighting and toppled backward off the cliff.
Astrid ran, pulling Little Pete behind her.
No way she could have known, she told herself as she panted and yanked and her heart pounded from the fear of what she would see when she reached Clifftop.
No way she could have known that the game was real. That it had become real when the last battery died. And that Little Pete’s opponent in the game was no program on a microchip, but the gaiaphage.
It had reached Little Pete. It wasn’t the first time. Somehow, in some way she might never be able to grasp, the two greatest powers of the FAYZ were linked.
The gaiaphage had tricked Little Pete. It had used Little Pete’s own vast power to give life to its avatar, Nerezza.
Orsay, too, had once touched the mind of the gaiaphage. It was like an infection-once you had touched that restless evil mind, it had some kind of hold over you. A hook buried in your mind.
Sam had said Lana could still feel the gaiaphage inside her. She still wasn’t free of it. But Lana had known it, been aware of it. Maybe that had given her a defense. Or maybe the gaiaphage simply didn’t need her anymore.
They reached the road to Clifftop.
But the way forward was blocked by what looked like a tornado. A tornado named Dekka.
Dekka raised the whirlwind before her and walked steadily.
BLAM!
A stab of fire barely visible through the flying, swirling debris.
“Get her! Get the freak!” Zil bellowed.
Dekka kept moving, ignoring the pain in her legs, ignoring the slosh of blood filling her shoes.
Someone was running up behind her. She yelled back over her shoulder without looking, “Stay back, you idiot!”
“Dekka!” Astrid’s voice.
She came at a run, yanking her weird little brother along behind her.
“Not a good time for you to yell at me, Astrid!” Dekka yelled.
“Dekka. We have to get to the cliff.”
“I’m going wherever Zil is,” Dekka said. “I have a right to defend myself. He started this fight.”
“Listen to me,” Astrid said urgently. “I’m not trying to stop you. I’m telling you to hurry. We have to get through. Now!”
“What? What’s happening?”
“Murder,” Astrid said. “We have to get through. You have to get through!”
Someone came running at them from the side. He stepped too close to the weightless zone and went flying up, head over heels, spinning slowly.
He fired as he rose. Gun banging in random directions.
But now they were circling around behind her. They moved cautiously, far outside her field. She could see them scurrying from bush to hillock to cactus.
A bullet whizzed so close by her ear she thought it might have hit her.
“Get back, Astrid!” Dekka said. “I’m doing all I can.”
“Do whatever it takes,” Astrid said.
“If I take Zil out the rest will run.”
“Then take him out,” Astrid said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Dekka said. “Now get out of here!”
Dekka had last seen Zil off the road to her right, ahead, just out of range.
Dekka dropped her hands.
Thousands of pounds of dirt and debris that had headed skyward fell. Dekka ran straight into the storm, eyes closed, hand over her mouth.
She almost barreled into Zil. She had emerged from the pillar of falling dirt and practically ran him down.
Zil, startled, swung a shotgun barrel toward her, but she was already too close. The barrel hit her like a club, smashing against the side of her head but not hard enough to stun.
Zil tried to back off, the better to take a shot, but Dekka’s hand shot out, grabbed his ear, and yanked him toward her.
Now he managed to jam the barrel up under her chin, hard enough to snap her teeth together. She jerked back and he pulled the trigger. The blast was like a bomb going off in her face.
But she did not lose her grip on him. She yanked him closer still as he whinnied in pain and terror.
Dekka aimed her free hand down at the ground. Gravity simply disappeared.
Locked together now in a frantic, wrestling embrace, Dekka and Zil both floated upward. The dirt and debris came with them. They were the struggling center of a tornado. Zil yanked free at the cost of a ripped, bloody ear.
Dekka punched him. Her knuckles hit him squarely on the nose. She punched again and missed. The first punch had spun her away from Zil. Zil was trying to bring the gun around, but he was having the same problem she was with moving and fighting in zero gravity.
Dekka’s eyes were closing, clotted with flying sand. She couldn’t see for sure how high they had risen. Couldn’t know for sure that it was enough.
Zil twisted and shouted in triumph. The shotgun barrel was inches from her.
Dekka kicked wildly. Her boot connected with Zil’s thigh. The two of them flew apart from the impact, floating now ten feet apart. But still Zil kept the shotgun aimed at her. And the distance wasn’t enough for Dekka to be able to drop him without dropping herself as well. Not yet.
“Look down, genius,” Dekka snarled.
Zil, his own eyes squinting, glanced down.
“Shoot me and you fall,” Dekka yelled.
“Filthy freak!” Zil shouted.
He pulled the trigger. The blast was deafening. Dekka felt the wind of buckshot flying past her neck. Something hit her, like a punch.
The recoil of the shotgun blew Zil back five feet through the air.
“Yeah. Far enough,” Dekka said.
Zil cried out in terror. A single vowel that went on for the ten seconds it took Zil to fall and smash into the dirt.
Dekka wiped dirt from one eye and squinted down.
“Higher than I thought,” she said.
FORTY-TWO
MARY TERRAFINO CHECKED her watch. Minutes.
It was coming. Coming so soon.
“I just want you kids to know that I love you,” Mary said. “Alice, back from the cliff. It’s not time yet. We have to wait so that you can go with me.”
“Where are we going?” Justin asked.
“Home,” Mary said. “To our real homes. To our moms and dads.”
“How can we do that?” Justin asked.
“They’re waiting.” Mary pointed. “Just outside the wall. The Prophetess has shown us the way.”
“My mommy?” Alice asked.
“Yes, Alice,” Mary said. “Everybody’s mommy.”
“Can Roger come, too?” Justin asked.