Connie didn’t wait but took off, laying rubber across the parking lot.

“Hell, yeah,” Abana said, and drove with one hand as the tweets and messages started pinging her phone.

THIRTY-FOUR

4 HOURS, 21 MINUTES

“HE CAN’T CONTROL it,” Astrid said. The first words she’d spoken in what felt to Sam like an eternity.

He’d become aware after a while that she had stopped crying. But she had not pulled away then. And for a long time afterward he wondered if she was asleep. He’d determined that if she was asleep he’d let her go right on doing so.

He knew Edilio and all the rest were expecting him to solve something, everything. He recalled the high of realizing he wasn’t the leader, carrying everything on his shoulders. He remembered the liberation of believing that his role was as warrior. The great and powerful warrior and that was all. And he was that. Yes: he was. He had the power in his hands, and he knew he had the strength and courage and violence to use that power.

But he was also, at least as much, the boy who loved Astrid Ellison. Right now he was powerless to put that part of himself aside. He couldn’t have left her side when she was like this, ever, not if Drake had shown up and challenged him to one-on-one combat to the death.

He was a warrior. But he was also this. Whatever this was.

“Who?” he asked.

“Petey. Pete. It doesn’t feel right to call him Petey now. He’s changed.”

“Astrid, Petey’s dead.”

She sighed and pulled away. He stretched his arm and got pins and needles in payment. His arm was asleep.

“I let him in. In my head,” Astrid said.

“His memory?”

“No, Sam. And I’m not crazy. I was pretty close there, though, and then you came. And I turned it all to you. How weak, huh? I’m embarrassed at how lame it is. But I was on the edge. It messed me up. Twisted my thoughts into… Well, messed me up, that’s all I can say. Words are coming hard to me right now. I feel like I’m bruised in my brain. Again: sorry that’s not more coherent.”

He had let her ramble on, but he wasn’t making any sense of it. Now that she mentioned feeling crazy he wondered if she had, well, become … stressed.

Almost as if she could read his thoughts, Astrid laughed softly and said, “No, Sam. I’m fine. I cried it out. Sorry. I know crying freaks boys out.”

“You don’t cry much.”

“I don’t cry ever,” Astrid said with some of her usual snap.

“Well, rarely.”

“It’s Pete. He’s… I don’t know what he is.” There was a marveling quality to her words, the exalted sound of Astrid discovering something new. “There’s some kind of space, some kind of reality that exists here in the FAYZ. He’s like a spirit. His body is gone. He’s outside. Not in his old brain. Like a data pattern or something, like he’s digital. Yes, I know I’m babbling. It’s not something I understand. It’s like a slippery thought, and Pete can’t explain it.”

“Okay,” Sam said. He couldn’t think of anything better to say.

“Here’s the thing I remember clearly: the gaiaphage, Sam. I understand it now. I know what happened.”

For the next half an hour she explained. It began in a rambling way, but, Astrid being Astrid, the thoughts grew clearer, the explanations more crisp, and by the end she was getting annoyed with him for failing to immediately grasp some details.

Nothing was more reassuring to him than an impatient, condescending Astrid.

“Okay. The gaiaphage is part of the barrier,” Sam summarized. “And the barrier is part of the gaiaphage. He’s the building material Pete used to create the barrier. And now the gaiaphage is running out of energy. Starving for energy. So the barrier is failing—going dark, then maybe breaking open. That’s good news, then. In fact, that’s great news.”

“Yes,” Astrid said. “It would be the best possible news. Unless somehow the gaiaphage escapes the barrier.”

“But how is he or it or whatever going to do that?”

“I don’t know, but I can guess. Listen, Sam, when the gaiaphage gave Drake that disgusting whip arm he needed Lana’s powers to do it. Ever since then he’s tried to lure her back. And all the while, too, he tried to entice Pete. Now that Pete has lost most of his power, he can interfere with what he sees as data patterns—people and animals—but he can’t just perform miracles like he could. Somehow Pete’s power was a function of his body. Like Lana’s power is part of her body.”

“The baby,” Sam said. “The gaiaphage wants the baby. We guessed that much, but didn’t really know why.”

“Diana can read power levels,” Astrid said. “Did she ever…”

Sam nodded. “She said the baby is a three bar. As a fetus. Who knows what it will be when it’s born. Or as it grows. Diana’s only, like, four or five months along. I should know exactly, but I forget. When she would talk about it I would kind of, you know.” He made a shivering move, like it all gave him the creeps.

Astrid shook her head in disbelief. “Really. That’s the part of all this that makes you squirm: pregnancy.”

“She made me touch her, you know, stomach. And she talked about her, um, her things.” He pointed at his chest and whispered, “Nipples.”

“Yeah,” Astrid said dryly. “I could see where that would be devastating.”