“No, it isn’t,” Astrid said dryly.
“I guess Nurse Temple wanted someone to talk to about it. Sam was gone, Edilio is busy, so it was you, Astrid.”
“Third choice?”
Dahra shrugged, but the motion made her wince. “She’ll meet you at the barrier. Probably thought it would be earlier, sorry, slightly delayed.” She was talking through gasps of pain. “Tomorrow maybe, right? You’ll need paper or something. You know, to communicate.”
Astrid thought about it. “Thanks, Dahra. And thank you, Orc.”
“It wasn’t me,” he said solemnly, and pointed one thick finger upward. “Maybe he has a use for me. You know? Like a plan.”
Astrid smiled at him. “You have become one of the good guys, Orc. If there was ever an example of redemption, it’s you.”
She hesitated only a moment out of fear of touching him, but then gave him a hug. How strange he felt. How alien.
Orc seemed too overcome to say anything. Which was nice, Astrid thought as she drew back, but her thoughts moved quickly on to what she and Sam had been calling the endgame. It wasn’t enough to survive a war: you had to plan for the aftermath.
She was pleased Connie Temple was reaching out to her. Getting ready for the aftermath was possibly the most important thing left to do. It was something Astrid could handle very well, she thought.
Gaia was singing. She wasn’t singing well—her voice was thin and reedy and she had no experience of music—but with the earbuds in she was singing.
She was singing “Mainlining Murder” by Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards.
“Great playlist you’ve got there, Mr. Alex,” Diana said.
They were just beyond a low hill, very near the lake. They had a small twig-and-branch fire going, lit easily by Gaia. Diana had suggested it, hoping the light would be seen from the lake. Hoping that Sam was even now planning a surprise attack that would end this.
Gaia was staring into that fire and singing: “Mainlining Murder” followed incongruously by “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” If she was at all concerned by the proximity of the lake settlement, she showed no sign of it.
“Is that the Miley Cyrus version or the original Cyndi Lauper?” Diana asked Alex. He didn’t seem to know. He was not in a talkative mood; at least, he was not talking to her. He muttered unintelligibly sometimes, and had taken to mumbling, “Melted, man. Melted.” Whatever that meant in crazy town, where Alex had apparently taken up residence.
Diana was hoping he would pass out or fall asleep. She didn’t trust him: he could easily rat her out to curry favor with Gaia.
Diana had seen people break before, just collapse, lose it. But never this quickly. Was he already a mess before he ventured into this particular level of hell? Was he already fragile? Or was it that he was an adult?
She pondered this for a moment. People always said kids were resilient, so obviously adults were less so. She wondered how much differently things would have gone if it had been three-hundred-plus adults trapped in the FAYZ with the gaiaphage and dangerous mutants—human and nonhuman.
But now she was stalling. She had to act before Gaia could. She was convinced Gaia was just waiting to attack until the sky was completely dark, and it was dark.
Enough. Time was up.
Time to die, most likely.
Oh, well. Bad decisions. My secret power: bad decisions.
“I have to go pee,” Diana said through a tense, clenched jaw. She heaved herself up, knees popping, muscles aching, and scabs stretching with the effort.
Gaia didn’t even glance up, and Diana realized her eyes were closed. Somehow she looked less . . . well, evil, with her eyes closed. She could almost be asleep except for the fact that she was back to singing about murder. Or rapping, maybe.
Diana walked away with all the nonchalance she could manage. She was stiff-legged, but she was always stiff now. Nothing new.
Gaia didn’t seem to even notice, and Diana was most afraid Alex would take this as a sign that he, too, could walk away. That would ruin everything. But the man was busy pretending to enjoy Gaia’s singing, obviously in the ridiculous belief that Gaia would like him. And muttering, “Melting, melting.”
Poor one-armed fool, Diana thought. Pray Gaia doesn’t get hungry again. Or bored. Or just wants to see you scream.
They were in an area of low, rolling hills. Boulders jabbed up out of the hard dirt. Desiccated grass edged up to small stands of nearly dead, stunted trees. Diana knew the area: Sinder’s garden was just over the hill. The lake was not a quarter mile away.
As soon as she was out of sight she started to run. The moon—the actual moon, not the simulation they’d seen back in the old days—had just risen, and its light was faint. She stumbled, tripped, but kept running. It hurt each time she fell, but Diana had endured worse, far worse. And she ran now hoping, believing, that Sam and Dekka and Brianna and maybe enough force to fight off Gaia were just over the next hill.
Sam liked her; he’d been kind to her; he could save her. She had to believe that. Absent Caine to play knight in shining armor, Sam could save her.
She heard her own feet on sand. She heard her own gasping breath. She felt the heart pounding in her chest. Running brought hope, and hope was a cruel trick, but she ran anyway.
She spotted a human silhouette and ran to it.
“Hey, who’s there?” a young voice cried out.
“It’s Diana,” she said, not yelling, but urgent. “Keep it down!”