Gaia is a gifted child.

Gaia is imaginative: she thinks she’s a mass of green slime inhabiting a human body. Isn’t that cute?

“It all happens because of me, Diana,” Gaia went on. She was marveling at her own power, her own uniqueness. “A script written long ago and very far away. Not that they ever imagined that I would be born, but that script, that virus, got a diet of hard radiation and a trace of human and other DNA. That wasn’t their idea; they were just trying to spread life around the galaxy.”

“You’re talking about the meteorite that hit the power plant,” Diana said. This far Astrid had guessed. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the disaster that had given Perdido Beach its nickname, Fallout Alley, was connected to what had happened later. “Wait. Human DNA?”

“One human was in the power plant when the meteorite struck. His code and my code were melded together, fed by the uranium in the plant. And I was born. My real birth,” she added quickly, with a disgusted look at Diana. “My true birth. Not the crude freak show of this body’s birth, but the beautiful accident that made me.”

Gaia’s high-pitched voice sounded excited. But that voice held no true sense of joy or wonder. It was high because her vocal cords were still short: a biological fact, not a reflection of the mind behind the voice.

Or else she really was just a complete egomaniac.

Diana wondered if this creature felt anything real, aside from a high opinion of herself and a lust for power. And she wondered where Gaia had picked up the phrase “freak show.” Whose mind had she ransacked to come up with that?

What exactly did she know?

Not everything, Diana thought, answering her own question. She hadn’t known about Taylor. Maybe that’s why she’s keeping me around and alive: to fill in the gaps in what she knows.

“That crude freak show of a birth nearly killed me,” Diana said a little bitterly. It still made her ache inside, and the trauma to her body sapped her strength.

This is not my daughter, Diana thought. That she looks like me, that she has Caine’s chin and my eyes, all of that is an illusion. Whatever my daughter was, or might have been, this is the gaiaphage.

I am walking and talking with a monster.

“We are near the place where I spent my . . . my childhood,” Gaia said. “I can feel it.”

“The mine shaft? Yeah, I guess we are. We’re not going there, are we? If Sam is looking for you, he’ll go there.”

“I’m hungry, stupid . . . Diana. I’ll go there and call the coyotes, if any have survived. A single coyote would feed us for a while.”

“I don’t think there are many coyotes left. I think—”

“I’m hungry! I’m hungry! I have to eat!” Gaia bellowed like a spoiled child. “This body must be fed! All you do is tell me what I can’t do! I can do whatever I want: I am the gaiaphage!” Her fists were clenched, and her face was white with fury.

Rage. So that’s one emotion she has.

Diana backed away, afraid that Gaia would go after her. She cringed, awaiting the stab of pain. But it didn’t come, because now Gaia was gazing past Diana.

“What is that?”

Diana turned and saw something so improbable it was hard to believe. They were in the hills, far from town, almost at the northernmost part of the FAYZ. But there, just outside the barrier, were two young men, both in their twenties, both outfitted in mountain-climbing gear with pitons hanging from webbing belts.

The men seemed surprised and excited to see them. Diana was suddenly aware of just how odd she and Gaia must look: a bruised, bloodstained teenager and a young girl still partly covered in third-degree burns.

The climbers stopped what they were doing—which was assembling a rickety aluminum ladder—and waved. The red-haired one took an iPhone out of his backpack and started to videotape.

Diana gave him the finger.

Red-hair laughed, a silent show.

“Let’s get out of here,” Diana said.

“No.”

“They’re just a couple of idiots trying to climb up the dome and get pictures.”

“They won’t get far,” Gaia said. “They can lean things against the barrier, but nothing will stick to it, and they cannot drive in nails.”

“So they’ll fall down a few times.”

“Stop talking. I need to concentrate.”

“Concentrate on what?”

Gaia smiled grimly. “On Nemesis.”

Gaia closed her eyes. Her little fists clenched, then released. Every muscle in her body tightened. Her skin took on a glow that Diana had seen before: a faint, sickly green glow.

The two men leaned their ladder against the dome. They didn’t notice what was happening to Gaia. They were discreetly looking away.

Diana risked a small shake of her head: No.

No, you need to run. You need to get out of here.

But the redhead ascended with rope and pitons at the ready. At the top of the ladder he tried attaching a suction cup to the dome. It didn’t work.

He shrugged at Diana, a little comically, like, Hey, I was hoping it would work.

Then he tried banging in a piton. This made no sound within the dome, and it also made no mark.

His partner handed up two more pieces of metal that Red-hair fitted into the existing ladder. This allowed him to climb another twelve feet on a rickety, single-pole structure.

“Not exactly bright, are they?” Diana observed.