Who could stand against them? They had brushed Caine and Sam aside like they were nothing.

And Gaia had yet to even reveal the extent of her own power.

Diana wanted to laugh aloud and dance around with her baby. But even as the high of joy washed through her, Diana felt the falseness of it. The strained edginess of it. She wanted to shout for joy and scream for joy and then stab the baby, her baby, her beloved little daughter, stab her with a knife. For joy.

Gaia was looking at her. Her eyes held her. Diana couldn’t look away. They cut right through her and saw the truth. Gaia could see the fear inside Diana, the fear of Gaia.

Gaia laughed and clapped her hands and her blue eyes shone and Diana felt weak inside, and sick, and all the suffering her body had been through all felt as if it was still there and only concealed from view. She was hollow. An empty nothingness tottering along on stick-figure legs that would snap and collapse.

Screams of burning children pursued Diana as she held her baby close and looked fearfully into her glittering eyes.

There was no way the suspension on Connie’s car was built for this road. The Camry kept bottoming out with a sound like chain saws ripping through steel.

But the time for hesitation was over. Now was the time for her to behave like a mother. A mother whose child—whose children—were in danger.

In the rearview mirror she saw Abana keeping pace. Her SUV was doing a little better. Fine: if they survived this day they could drive home in that.

If Abana ever talked to her again.

The road came perilously close to the highway when they were just half a mile from the barrier. The dust trail they were putting up would be obvious.

Sure enough, as the awful blank monstrosity that was the Perdido Beach Anomaly filled the entire field of view, Connie heard a helicopter overhead.

A loudspeaker blared, audible even over the chop-chop-chop of the rotors.

“You are in a dangerous, restricted area. Turn around immediately.”

This was repeated several times before the helicopter sped ahead, pivoted neatly, and began to land in the road a quarter mile away.

In the rearview mirror Connie saw Abana’s SUV take a sharp, bouncing, crazy veer into the rough terrain. She was angling toward the highway where it met the barrier. It would lead straight through the remains of the hastily moved camp.

There were still a few trailers there. Still a satellite dish array. Dumpsters. Porta Pottis.

Connie swore to herself, apologized to her car, and veered after Abana.

It was no longer a case of the car just bottoming out. Now the car was flying and crashing, flying and crashing. Each impact jarred Connie’s bones. She hit the ceiling so many times she quickly lost count. The steering wheel tore itself from her grip.

Then suddenly she was on tarmac, blistering through the remains of the camp.

The helicopter was after them again and it blew overhead.

It executed a daring, almost suicidal maneuver, and landed way too hard in the final feet of pavement before the intimidating wall of the barrier.

Two soldiers jumped out, MPs with guns drawn.

Then a third soldier.

Abana slammed on her brakes.

Connie did not stop. She aimed the battered, disintegrating car at the helicopter and stood on the accelerator.

The Camry hit the helicopter’s skids. The air bag exploded in her face. The seat belt jerked back against her. She heard something snap. She felt a jolt of pain.

She jumped out of the car, stumbled over the twisted metal remains of the skid, saw that the rotor had plowed into concrete and stuck fast.

And Connie ran, staggered, realized she’d broken her collarbone, ran on toward the barrier. If she could reach it, if they couldn’t stop her, couldn’t drag her away, then she could stop it all from happening.

One of the soldiers snagged Abana as she ran, but Connie dodged, and only as she ran past him, only when he called out, “Connie! No!” did she realize that the third soldier was Darius.

She reached the barrier.

Reached it. Stopped. Stared at it, at the eternal gray wall.

Darius was behind her, breathless. “Connie. It’s too late. It’s too late, babe. Something’s happened to the device.”

She turned on him, somehow believing he was reproaching her, too emotional to understand what he was saying. “I’m sorry,” she cried. “It’s my boys in there. It’s my babies!”

He took her in his arms, squeezed her tight, and said, “They tried to stop the countdown. It worked, the message got out, and they tried to stop it.”

“What?”

Abana came running up then. The MPs had given up holding her back. The soldiers wore identically strained expressions. Neither seemed interested in the two women anymore.

“Listen to me,” Darius said. “They can’t stop it. It’s this place. Something went wrong and they can’t stop the countdown.”

At last his words penetrated.

“How long?” Connie asked.

Darius looked at the MPs. And now Connie understood the passive, strained look on their faces. “One minute and ten seconds,” the larger of the two MPs, a lieutenant, said. And he knelt on the pavement, folded his hands, and prayed.

Sam was torn between spreading light with abandon and being seen coming, or going without light and moving much more slowly. He chose a compromise. He tossed off Sammy suns at a run as he and Caine made their way to the beach, and then along the beach until they were hidden from view beneath the cliffs.

The ocean had a faint, very faint phosphorescence that seemed almost bright. It could be seen not as particular waves or even ripples, but as a fuzzy mass that was only dark as opposed to utterly black.