“I am the gaiaphage,” Lana said.
The transformation had begun when the gaiaphage touched the first of the scattered uranium pellets. Lana felt the surge of power, like grabbing an electrical wire, like grabbing every electrical wire in the world.
She had cried out in the shared ecstasy of that moment.
Food!
The gaiaphage’s terrible hunger was gone. In its place a rush of power. Rage unleashed.
Now! Now it would become!
The billions of crystals that formed the gaiaphage’s shapeless, random form began to rush like ants. Rivulets became streams, streams became rushing rivers. What had been little more than scum on the surface of rocks formed into mounds and peaks. Here and there, sharp points. Here flat and there peaked, here pliable and there stiff.
Crystals folded in endless dimensions, layers within layers. Even at this wild speed it would take days to finish, but already the barest outlines were beginning to reveal themselves.
The gaiaphage that had been spread through a thousand feet of the subterranean cavern now condensed, came together, like stars drawn into a black hole.
Lana could feel it all, as though her own nerves were part of the gaiaphage. And maybe they were, she thought. Maybe there was no longer a line between them. Maybe she was part of it now.
It was all around her. In her ears and nose, in her mouth and hair. Swarming insects covering every square inch of her.
And yet, she had begun to feel a sickness inside her. A feeling that was her own and not the monster’s.
What fed the gaiaphage was blasting her apart, cell by cell.
She had to hide it. Couldn’t let it see. She had to die to stop it, had to die of the radiation that churned her stomach.
Around her the crystals were hardening, forming a thick shield. And the surface of that shield began to shine, like steel. No, like a mirror.
A tremor of fear shook the gaiaphage.
Lana opened her eyes and saw the reason. Three dark shapes. Frail, afraid, but standing before the gaiaphage.
Too late, Caine. Your power will not shatter the gaiaphage.
Too late, Sam, she thought. Your burning light will not work.
The third . . . who was that? She felt the question in her own mind take on terrible urgency in the gaiaphage.
The gaiaphage held her like a fly in amber. It revealed her now to the gasps of the humans.
“I am the gaiaphage,” Lana’s mouth said.
•••
Caine stared in horror. Lana’s face floated, suspended within a seething mass of what might have been mirrored insects.
“Sam! More light!”
Sam had slipped. He was on his knees. Glowing hands down on the stone floor as he moaned.
Duck was staring, awestruck, at the glittering, shifting monstrosity with the face of a girl in torment.
Caine could not see the extent of the creature, but it felt huge, like it might go on forever.
He reached his hands over his shoulders. Reached back behind him. The bent fuel rod slid from the jumble of rock and debris.
Caine threw his hands forward with all his might. The fuel rod smashed into the monstrous glittering mass. It bounced off and clattered to the ground, spilling more pellets.
Nothing. No effect. Like hitting the gaiaphage with a Q-tip.
“Sam? If you’ve got anything left, now is the time,” Caine cried.
“No,” Sam whispered. “It’s ready for me. Duck.”
“What about him?”
“Duck . . . ,” Sam said, and fell, facedown. He did not move.
“You got something besides falling into the ground?” Caine shrilled at Duck. “You got some nuclear bomb in your pocket?”
Duck did not answer.
“Sam?” Caine cried, and now the gaiaphage was moving, shifting its weight, undulating toward Caine, with Lana’s weeping, twisted face, her mouth speaking but Caine unable to hear from the sound of blood rushing in his ears, knowing it was over, knowing . . .
The gaiaphage poured liquid fire into Caine’s brain, overwhelming every sense, crushing consciousness with pain.
You defy me?
Caine rocked back, barely kept his feet.
“Throw me!” Duck cried.
I am the gaiaphage!
“Throw me, throw me!” a voice kept shouting.
“What?” Caine cried.
“Hard as you can!”
The gaiaphage thought nothing of the soft, human body that flew toward him.
Up into the air the human flew. Toward the roof of the cavern.
Down he came.
The gaiaphage would never even feel the slight weight as it . . .
. . . hit with the force of a mountain dropped from the edge of space.
Duck hit the gaiaphage and drilled straight through its crystalline mass.
And straight through the cave floor beneath it.
Into the vortex, like grains of sand in an hourglass, fell the gaiaphage.
FORTY-FIVE
0 MINUTES
KIND OF LIKE the first time, Duck thought.
At the pool that day. Like that. Falling and the water rushing down with him.
Only this water was more like sand. A billion tiny crystals all sucked down the drain that Duck had made in the earth.
He could see nothing as he fell. The crystals filled his eyes and ears and mouth.
He couldn’t breathe, and this panicked him and he fell even faster, trying to outrun the monster that fell with him.
No air.
Mind swirling, crazy, not even afraid now, just . . .
Memories flashed like a jerky video. That day when he fell off a pony at his fifth birthday party.
That time he ate the whole pie . . .