Gaia seemed startled. She raised one hand and froze them in place. “Look at this,” Gaia marveled. “Are they brave or stupid, Sam Temple?”
Sam blinked tears from his streaming eyes.
“Let them—” he started to say, but began to cough.
“I couldn’t quite hear that,” Gaia taunted.
Sam closed his eyes. Through his eyelids he saw a flash of green light. There were no cries. Just the wet-sandbag sound of bodies hitting the ground.
“Open your eyes, Sam Temple,” Gaia said. “I cut them in half. With your light. With your power.”
She pushed him with her foot to send him rolling.
“On to the rest. On to—” She fell silent suddenly. He opened one soot-streaked eye and saw that Gaia was looking around, nervous. Like she felt someone watching her.
“Where is the whip hand with my hostage?” she asked aloud. Then to Sam, as if he might have the answer: “Where is Drake with the sister of Nemesis?”
“Astrid!” Sam gasped.
“Hear me, Nemesis!” Gaia cried, choking then recovering. “Hear me! I have your sister!”
“I don’t see her,” Sam said.
“Never worry, Sam Temple: Drake will get her.” But Gaia chewed at her thumbnail, a very Caine gesture Sam had seen before.
“You seem scared,” Sam said.
Gaia snarled at him and raised her own hands as if ready to kill him herself. Then she laughed shakily. “Ah-hah. Trying to provoke me?”
But she was rattled. She had felt something. She had felt something she didn’t like.
“Nemesis?” Sam asked her.
Gaia didn’t answer. She was done playing games. She was done enjoying herself. She grabbed Sam’s chain and began dragging him down the road, then broke into a run.
Caine and Diana docked the boat at the marina. The fire, which had been to the north, now seemed to be everywhere at once. Bursts of sparks rose high from the direction of the highway. The air was filled with ash, hard to breathe, hard to keep your eyes open. Impossible to believe that somewhere the sun was still shining.
“Should I tie off the boat?” Diana asked.
Caine didn’t answer. He levitated himself from the boat to the dock. Then, with equal ease, he lifted the missiles in their crates and landed them safely on the wood planks.
“Give me a hand,” Diana said. She held her hand up to him.
He looked down at her. “I don’t think so, Diana.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
He raised one hand and pushed the boat gently away from the dock.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Going out in style,” he said.
“Caine. Caine. What are you doing?”
“There’s no good reason for both of us to die.”
“Caine, you’re being silly,” she said as firmly as she could. “You know this is the end. I want to be with you. I don’t want our monster child hunting me down and finding me at the end all alone.”
He shrugged. “I know you asked Little Pete to take you. I know you offered yourself up.”
“How? How did you know?”
He shrugged.
“But he didn’t,” Diana said. “He didn’t, which—”
“Yeah. Well. He had a better offer.”
“What?” The word came out as a sob. “Caine . . . No. No. We do this together.”
“Nah, I don’t think so,” he said with strained nonchalance. “I think it will be like it is with Gaia. I think when Little Pete does his thing, well, I don’t think I’ll be around then. So I don’t see how we do this together.”
“Don’t, Caine. Don’t you do this,” Diana pleaded.
“You have to understand, Diana: I’m not trying to be noble. It’s just the only way I have to beat it. The gaiaphage. It thinks it has me. It thinks it owns me. It thinks it cracks the whip and I have no choice but to obey. And the pain . . .” He shrugged again. “So. So, we want old green-and-evil to be surprised when it finds out, right?”
“Caine, this is not what we . . . No. No.”
He stretched out his hand and she rose through the air, almost as if she was flying to him.
They were in each other’s arms, Diana shaking, Caine strangely calm.
“Sam’s probably out there somewhere being his usual heroic self,” Caine said. “I can’t let that boy save the world all alone. I’d never live it down.”
“Don’t do this, baby, don’t do this,” Diana begged as she stroked his face.
“Listen to me. I wrote something, back on the island. Two somethings, actually. One is for you to give to Sam, if he makes it out somehow, or Astrid, or someone, you know, trustworthy. And the other is for you. If you get a chance, you know, go and get them from the desk in that room.”
“We’re not beat yet, Caine,” she pleaded. “We haven’t lost yet.”
“I was a king for a while. I wasn’t a very good one. I wanted all kinds of things. I wanted, well, you know. Power. Glory. To be feared. All that good stuff. But you know what? When the gaiaphage did it to me, when she made me cry and grovel and beg for mercy, I realized: There’s no end to this for me. There’s no end to the FAYZ. If we get out alive, there’s still no end. And what happens to me out there in the world?”
“No, you’re wrong: they can’t blame you for everything that happened.”