No.
I am the gaiaphage.
You are mine.
I am Lana Arwen Lazar. My mother named me for…For something. Someone…My…
I hunger.
You will help me feed.
Leave me alone, Lana protested feebly as her arms and legs kept moving, her head hung down like a dog. Like…like someone…
I am the gaiaphage.
What does that mean? Lana asked.
She had more sense of herself now. She could reach into her memory and remember who she was and why she was here. She could recall the foolish hope she had nurtured of destroying the Darkness. The gaiaphage.
But now she saw its hand in everything she had done. From the start it had been calling to her. Twisting her thoughts and actions to its will.
She’d never had a chance.
And now she crawled.
Superman’s other girlfriend, Lana. Aragorn’s true love, Arwen. Lazar, shortened from Lazarevic. Lazarus, who rose from the dead. Lana Arwen Lazar. That’s who she was.
She was unable to stop crawling. Down and down the mine shaft.
Come to me.
I have need of you.
What need? Why me?
You are the Healer.
You have the power.
Are you hurt? A flicker of hope at the thought that the creature might be wounded.
Lana’s limbs were so heavy now, she could barely move. Barely slide her knees two inches across rough stone. Barely push her palms forward. But her eyes now registered the faint green glow she had remembered always from her first trip down this awful mine shaft.
A glow like luminescent watch dials. A glow like the glow-in-the-dark stars Lana’s dad had pasted to her ceiling when she was little.
The thought of her father tore at Lana’s soul. Her mother. Her father. So far away. Or dead. Or, who knew? Who would ever know?
She imagined them seeing her. As if she were bacteria on a slide and her mother and father were looking down through a gigantic microscope. Seeing their daughter like this. Crawling in the dark. Terrified. Hungry. So afraid.
Crawling toward the Darkness. Slave to the gaiaphage.
She stopped moving, commanded by the voice in her head. She panted, waiting, sweat pouring off her.
Place your hand on me.
“What?” she whispered. “Where? Where are you?”
She swung her weary head around, peering into the radioactive dark, seeing nothing but faintly glowing rock.