The old woman had been reading romances. The day she poofed out of the FAYZ she was probably thinking, I wonder if spunky Caitlin will find true love with handsome Pirate guy?

That’s how I should reach out to Jack, Diana thought. Play the beautiful damsel in need. Save me, Jack.

Would Computer Jack respond to her now? Would he buy the act? Would he be her pirate?

“Just call me Caitlin,” Diana said, and smirked.

She tossed the book aside. But that felt wrong, somehow. So she picked it up and placed it carefully back where the old woman had left it.

She went out into the night looking for a kid who was very strong—and, she hoped, very weak.

Astrid plugged the cable into her computer and the other end into the camera Edilio had brought at her request. He’d told her a number of kids had taken pictures. The best of the photographers was an eleven-year-old named Matteo. This was his camera.

iPhoto opened and she clicked import. The pictures began to open, flashing through the viewer as they loaded.

The first half dozen or so were of kids standing around. Shots of the field. A greedy close-up on some melons. Sam with the look of cold anger he sometimes wore. Orc slouched against a car hood. Dekka self-contained, unreadable. Howard, Edilio, various people.

Then the moment when the ground rose up.

The moment when Sam fired.

Once the photos had loaded, Astrid began to go back over them, starting with Dekka’s suspension of gravity. The boy had used a good camera and he’d gotten some very good shots. Astrid zoomed in and could clearly see individual worms suspended in midair. Or mid-dirt.

Then came a spectacular shot that captured the first blast of Sam’s power.

Several more, taken in just a few seconds, snapped quickly, some shaky, but some perfectly focused. Matteo knew how to use a camera.

Astrid clicked ahead, but then she froze. She backed up. She zoomed in tight.

A worm was turned toward the camera, twisted around so that its toothy mouth was aimed at the camera. Nothing unusual except that the next worm she panned over to was doing the same thing. The same direction, the same expression.

And the next worm.

She found nineteen separate images of worms. All were turned toward the camera. Pointing in the direction of the attack.

Aiming their devil grins at Sam.

With shaking hand she moved the mouse to an earlier album. She opened the photos she had taken of the dead zeke Sam had brought her. She zoomed in on the ugly thing, scanning carefully over the head.

Sam came into the room. He stood behind her and put his hands on her shoulders.

“How are you, babe?” He had started calling her that. She was still deciding whether or not she liked it.

“Rough evening,” she said. “I just got past a two-hour Petey meltdown. He noticed Nestor.”

“Nestor?”

“His nesting doll, remember? The little red things in his room, one doll fits exactly inside the other? The other night you stomped on it.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry.”

“Not your fault, Sam.” She wasn’t sure she liked him calling her “babe,” but she did like the feel of his lips on her bare neck. But after a few seconds she pushed him away. “I’m working.”

“What is it you’re seeing?” Sam asked.

“The worms. They were looking right at you.”

“I was the guy cooking them,” Sam said. “For all the good it did.”

Astrid twisted around to look up at him.

“Oh, I know that look,” Sam said. “Go ahead, genius, tell me what it is I missed.”

“With what are they looking at you?” Astrid asked.

Sam took a beat. Then, “They don’t have eyes.”

“No. I just checked again. They don’t have eyes. But somehow, in the middle of being levitated in midair and getting hit with blasts of light energy, they all twist around in midair to stare—at least it looks like they’re staring—in the same direction. At you.”

“Great. So somehow they can see. I think what matters is that I killed a bunch of them and they didn’t get the message.”

Astrid shook her head. “I don’t think you did anything to them. I’m not sure it’s ‘them.’ What if they’re like ants? I mean, what if there really aren’t individual worms? What if they’re all part of one superorganism? Like a hive.”

“So there’s a queen worm somewhere?”

“Maybe. Or maybe it’s not so hierarchical, less differentiated.”

He kissed the nape of her neck, sending pleasant shivers down her spine. “This is all great, Astrid. How do I kill them?”

“I have two ideas on that. One is a practical suggestion. You’ll like it. The other is crazier. You won’t like the crazy idea.”

It was time to get Little Pete ready for bed. She stood up and called to him, using the trigger phrase he understood. “Beddy boody, beddy boody.”

Little Pete gave her a hazy look, as if he had heard her but had not understood. Then he got up from his chair and headed obediently up the stairs. Obedient not to Astrid’s authority, really, but to what was, in effect, programming.

“I have to go do a walk-through in town, and you have to get Petey to bed,” Sam said. “So give me the short version.”

“Okay,” Astrid said. “SUVs running just on their rims, no tires. The zekes can’t eat through steel. That’s the practical suggestion.”

“That could work, Astrid,” he said excitedly. “Four-by-fours, on their steel rims, use hooks on poles to snag melons or cabbages or whatever. It would take practice, but unless the zekes can fly, the pickers would be pretty safe riding in the truck.” He grinned at her. “This is why I keep you around, despite your annoying superior attitude.”