Diana screamed.

In some corner of her mind she knew it was Penny. She knew it wasn’t real, because she saw the mouths but did not feel them, not really, but she screamed and screamed and her fingers let go of the vase. From far off came the sound of shattered crystal.

The red mouths were crawling up her arms, eating her skin, baring muscle and sinew, eating their way to her shoulders.

And then they stopped.

Penny stood there, snarling. Blood streamed from the side of her head. “Don’t mess with me, Diana,” Penny said. “I could send you screaming off that cliff yourself.”

“Let them go,” Diana whispered. “They’re just nice kids. They’re just nice kids.”

“Not like us, you mean,” Penny said. “You’re a stupid idiot, Diana.”

“Let them go. Don’t wake Caine up. You know what he’ll do.”

Penny shook her head, disbelieving. “I can’t believe he likes you, not me. You’re not even pretty. Not anymore.”

Diana laughed. “That’s what you want? Him?”

Penny’s eyes gave it all away. She looked longingly, lovingly at Caine, still passed out. “He’s all there is,” she said.

Penny reached with a trembling hand and gently stroked Caine’s hair. “Sorry to have to do this, sweetheart,” Penny said.

Caine woke shouting.

THIRTY-NINE

29 MINUTES

ASTRID FELL AND fell knowing it wasn’t real, knowing it was all an illusion of some kind. But it was very hard to believe that when her clothing rippled and her hair flew straight up and her arms were reaching for the walls of a tunnel that couldn’t possibly be real but seemed like it was.

But after a while falling began to feel like floating. She was suspended in the air and things no longer streamed past; they floated around.

Symbols, Astrid thought.

She was relieved to see that her brain still worked. Whatever was happening, whatever power was giving her this intense waking dream, it wasn’t frying her brain. Reason intact. Words right there where she had left them.

Symbols. Neon symbols arrayed across a dark landscape.

Not even symbols, she realized: avatars.

There was a monstrous face framed with long dark hair that formed snakes. Dark eyes and a mouth that dribbled fire.

There was a female being with orange rays, like sunset beams spraying out of her head.

A male with a hand held up and a green light formed in a ball. This avatar was far away, at the edge of the dark playing field.

One avatar was neither male nor female but half of each sex. Metal teeth and a whip.

Nerezza. Orsay. Sam. But what was the fourth avatar?

It was this fourth avatar that seemed to be in contention between two manipulators, two players. One player was represented by a box. The box was closed but for one edge that shone so bright it was hard to look at. Like a toy box containing a sun.

Petey, Astrid whispered.

The other player she felt rather than saw. She tried to turn her eyes toward it, to see it, but it was always just out of range. And she realized that the light box was restraining her, not allowing her to see the opponent.

For her own good. Protecting her.

Petey would not let her look at the gaiaphage.

Astrid’s mind flooded with images of other shadow avatars. Dark avatars. Dead. Victims in the game.

All of these were in neat little rows, like pawns lined up before the soul-killing emptiness that was the gaiaphage.

“Astrid!”

Someone was yelling her name.

“Astrid! Snap out of it!”

The game field disappeared.

Astrid’s eyes saw the plaza, her brother just getting to his feet, and Brianna shaking her roughly.

“Hey, what’s the matter with you?” Brianna demanded, more angry than concerned.

Astrid ignored Brianna and searched for Nerezza. She was nowhere to be seen.

“The girl, there was a girl here,” Astrid said.

“What’s going on, Astrid? I just—” She stopped talking long enough to cough ten, twelve times in startlingly rapid succession. “I just stopped Lance from beating some kid half to death. People all running around like nuts down on the beach. I mean, jeez, I take a day off to get over this stupid flu and suddenly it’s craziness everywhere!”

Astrid blinked, looked around, tried to make sense of way too much information. “It’s the game,” she said. “It’s the gaiaphage. It reached Petey through his game.”

“Say what?”

Astrid knew she’d said too much. Brianna was not the person to trust with the truth about Little Pete. “Did you see Nerezza?”

“What? The girl who hangs out with Orsay?”

“She’s not a girl,” Astrid said. “Not really.” She grabbed Brianna’s arm. “Find Sam. We need him. Find him!”

“Okay. Where?”

“I don’t know,” Astrid cried. She bit her lip. “Look everywhere!”

“Hey,” Brianna said, and then interrupted herself to cough until she was red in the face. She cursed, coughed some more, and finally said, “Hey, I’m fast. But even I can’t look everywhere.”

“Let me think for a minute,” Astrid said. She squeezed her eyes shut. Where? Where would Sam have gone? He was hurt, angry, feeling useless.

No, that wasn’t quite right.

“Oh, God, where?” Astrid wondered.

She hadn’t seen him since he had gone off to deal with Zil and the fire. What had happened to make him run away? Had he done something he was ashamed of?