“Taylor, help me,” he said.

“I will,” she said.

“You can talk!”

“Yes,” she said, and she seemed a bit baffled by it.

“Okay, listen, Taylor. I need something to write on. Paper, a pen, a pencil, anything you can get me to . . .”

And she was gone. No nod of the head, not a word.

He dragged himself again, but his arms and shoulders were aching from the effort, cramping from the unusual work demanded of them.

He stopped.

They were all going to die. And he, the big protector, the warrior, wouldn’t even be there for the final battle. Eventually Gaia would come back down the road, find him, and finish him off, kill him as easy as stepping on a bug.

Why hadn’t she already?

Wait a minute, why hadn’t she killed him? It made no sense. She should have.

Taylor was suddenly in front of him. In her hand she had a single Post-it note. Orange. And a pencil.

“Thank you.”

Who should he write to? A last “I love you” for Astrid? She would sneer if he used this final opportunity for a stupid romantic gesture. No, no good-byes. Not yet.

He tried to think clearly. Edilio would have a battle to fight. Dekka would be in it, too, and if Sam asked her, she would come to save him, no matter what. He couldn’t do that to her and the others. It had to be someone resourceful. Someone with no powers necessary for the battle. Someone he could trust.

He began writing. The first word was “Quinn.”

Edilio was in the road, holding an automatic rifle.

It was an ambush. Caine saw it immediately. Not that he saw anyone out there aside from Edilio. But Edilio wouldn’t be standing there in the middle of the road if it wasn’t an ambush.

The leg was in Caine’s arms.

Gaia was behind him.

She was singing. Badly. The song was hard to decipher, not something he had ever heard before, or at least nothing he recognized. Gaia sounded as if she was singing, “Mmmm. Bop. Bop. Bop.”

“Mmmmm. Bop. Bop. Bop. There’s a person up there,” Gaia said. She took out her earbuds.

“Yes,” Caine said. He didn’t dare speak another word unasked. He tried to think, but inside he was cringing, waiting in mortal terror of the pain.

What was Edilio up to? Did he think he could outfight Gaia?

Only Edilio was visible. They didn’t have Sam over there, obviously, which meant they probably had Dekka and Brianna, Jack and Orc. Could they really take on Gaia?

Maybe. If he helped them.

Maybe. If at the right moment he committed: all-in. And if they failed? What she would do to him . . . She wouldn’t let him die; he would beg for it, but she would just go right on and he would—

“Who is it?” Gaia asked.

Would she know if he lied? He couldn’t hesitate. “I think it’s Edilio.”

“What are his powers?”

“None,” Caine said. And thought, Unless you count having the courage to stand out there facing the gaiaphage.

“Then keep moving, Father,” Gaia said.

“He does have a gun.”

“Do you think I fear a gun?”

You should, you arrogant . . . “No, but I do,” Caine said.

“Ah. I see. I can’t have you killed yet,” Gaia said.

Suddenly shots rang out. One, two, three, four, five, six.

Gaia laughed gleefully as the bullets buzzed by. “My leg is sufficiently healed. Stay down, Father, I still need your power. You can’t die just yet!”

She blurred away like Brianna.

Quinn.

Hurt bad. On highway. Reach me from that little cove if u can.

Sam.

Quinn read the note twice. The truth was, this Taylor—this weird Taylor 3.0 standing here—creeped him out. She wasn’t in as bad a shape as when he’d last seen her down the hall from Lana’s room—Taylor 2.0—but she was still pretty strange.

The truth was also that the note moved him. Sam was calling on him. Him. After all the ups and downs he’d been through with Sam. Of course it was because the others were more important for the fight. Of course. Still.

“Worth using a bit of diesel,” Quinn said, trying to sound all cool about it. “Thanks, Taylor. I hope you—” But she was gone. And frankly, he was relieved. Quinn had come a long way since the first days of the FAYZ, but he was still not fond of weird, impossible creatures.

“How is it I got more normal and everything else got weirder?” he asked the night air.

Somewhere fairly far away there was the sound of gunfire.

Dekka waited, heard the sudden burst of gunfire, and saw Edilio running past in staged terror—well, not entirely staged terror; it had to be at least partly very real terror. She herself was quivering with fear. She dared not even peek around the side, could not give away the ambush. One chance to get it right.

Then suddenly gunfire from half a dozen guns.

She popped up and yes! Yes! Gaia had hit her force field. Gaia was still running, but running in the air, flailing, getting nowhere.

The gaiaphage—she refused to think of it as a little girl—was about head height now, orange in the rays of a setting sun. She still hadn’t realized what had happened to her.

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

She saw a chunk of flesh blown from Gaia’s arm. But the bullets were missing. Gaia was rising too fast and too high now to make an easy target. Dekka had to moderate the field, drop her again, bring her back down into range.

Twin beams of brilliant green light stabbed from Gaia’s hands, and the firing from the moving van faltered. No one had been hit, but now Gaia was using the altitude to her advantage: she was able to spot the shooters and was firing back.