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“Ten minutes.”
“What if the calculations are off?”
“Then it won’t hit here. It will smash into some other field, maybe even a town. Could be miles away, could be on another continent.”
Shade touched the scar on her neck, drawing a finger along it, feeling the raised flesh, feeling the cross-hatching of the stitches. Cruz had noticed the gesture before, as she had noticed the faraway look that came with it.
They tried to stay cool and nonchalant, but the tension rose minute by minute. They made small talk, but it was pitiful, distracted stuff. They would start in on some teacher and lose the thread. They would start again on some fashion or celebrity, and again lose the thread.
Cruz asked her to dish on Malik: nope. Still, she did not ask the question her mind was screaming at her: Why are you doing this, Shade? What is the connection to the scar?
“This probably won’t work, not without the dome,” Shade said. It was the first negative thing she’d said, the first expression of doubt, and that tiny admission of worry, of fear, of vulnerability added new layers to Cruz’s affection.
Shade might be tough, determined, and at times perfectly ruthless, but there was a human in there.
“Or it will work,” Cruz said. “In fact, I bet it does.”
“Hope is the best form of torture,” Shade said dryly.
There was a persistent lump in Cruz’s throat that she could not swallow away.
“Three minutes,” Shade said, and there again Cruz saw the predator: the focus, the fearlessness, the hunger. No more stroking of scars, no more dreamy, faraway look.
Cruz felt herself teetering on the edge between hope and fear. That nervousness finally gave her the courage to ask. In a rush she blurted, “Shade, why are we doing this?”
Shade sighed and looked out through the windshield, more profile than detail in the gathering gloom. Finally, she said, “Like the man said who climbed Mount Everest, Cruz: because it’s there.”
“What’s there?”
Shade turned to look at her friend. The shark looked, too. “Okay, you have a right to know. I was there the day the PBA barrier came down. I was right there, inches away. I saw that creature, the one they called Gaia. I saw what she did. It was . . . awful. The worst thing I’ve ever seen. You have no idea. People, little kids, cut up like pigs at a butcher’s shop. But the power . . . It was like watching a god, Cruz.” Then, after a beat, she pointed at the scar. “It’s where I got this. A scared little girl with a great big knife.”
Cruz, confused and alarmed, said, “Wait, Gaia was evil, not a god.”
“Mmmm. They won’t be able to capture all the ASOs, Cruz. And if the rock has the same effects outside the dome . . . well, the world may be about to become a very strange place. A very, very strange place. And what I saw that day . . . well, no one could stop that monster. No one could stop her but someone with an even greater power. Gods aren’t always good or kind. Some are monsters.”
“I’m not—”
“If it works, there will be other monsters, Cruz. Other Gaias. And more people will be hurt. More people . . .” And for a moment Shade seemed unable to go on. Then, her voice abruptly steely, she said, “Thirty seconds.”
No, Cruz thought, that wasn’t quite the whole truth. It was related to the truth, but it was just the story Shade told herself.
“Time,” Shade announced, tension almost choking the word off. “Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .”
“I hope this works for you, Shade.”
“I know, Cruz. Four . . . three . . .”
And there it was in the night sky to their left, a spark, not very bright, like someone tracing a laser pointer across the sky. It was a tiny missile—the estimate was four kilos, just under ten pounds—moving at thousands of miles an hour, a shooting star come to bring them hope. Or to dash that hope.
“Two . . .”
For the first time since Cruz was a very little child, she wished upon a shooting star.
“One,” Shade whispered, and the meteorite hit the ground. There was no explosion, just a dull, flat sound, like someone dropping a big sandbag. A puff of gray dust rose, barely visible in the darkness, but just exactly where Shade expected it to land.
“Wow,” Cruz said.
“Mmmm,” Shade agreed. Her casual act was not even slightly believable.
