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dark shapes. Frail, afraid, but standing before the gaiaphage.
Too late, Caine. Your power will not shatter the gaiaphage.
Too late, Sam, she thought. Your burning light will not work.
The third…who was that? She felt the question in her own mind take on terrible urgency in the gaiaphage.
The gaiaphage held her like a fly in amber. It revealed her now to the gasps of the humans.
“I am the gaiaphage,” Lana’s mouth said.
Caine stared in horror. Lana’s face floated, suspended within a seething mass of what might have been mirrored insects.
“Sam! More light!”
Sam had slipped. He was on his knees. Glowing hands down on the stone floor as he moaned.
Duck was staring, awestruck, at the glittering, shifting monstrosity with the face of a girl in torment.
Caine could not see the extent of the creature, but it felt huge, like it might go on forever.
He reached his hands over his shoulders. Reached back behind him. The bent fuel rod slid from the jumble of rock and debris.
Caine threw his hands forward with all his might. The fuel rod smashed into the monstrous glittering mass. It bounced off and clattered to the ground, spilling more pellets.
Nothing. No effect. Like hitting the gaiaphage with a Q-tip.
“Sam? If you’ve got anything left, now is the time,” Caine cried.
“No,” Sam whispered. “It’s ready for me. Duck.”
“What about him?”
“Duck…,” Sam said, and fell, facedown. He did not move.
“You got something besides falling into the ground?” Caine shrilled at Duck. “You got some nuclear bomb in your pocket?”
Duck did not answer.
“Sam?” Caine cried, and now the gaiaphage was moving, shifting its weight, undulating toward Caine, with Lana’s weeping, twisted face, her mouth speaking but Caine unable to hear from the sound of blood rushing in his ears, knowing it was over, knowing…
The gaiaphage poured liquid fire into Caine’s brain, overwhelming every sense, crushing consciousness with pain.
You defy me?
Caine rocked back, barely kept his feet.
“Throw me!” Duck cried.
I am the gaiaphage!
“Throw me, throw me!” a voice kept shouting.
“What?” Caine cried.
“Hard as you can!”
The gaiaphage thought nothing of the soft, human body that flew toward him.
