Gaia nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. Yes, you make sense. I will leave some free so that I can teach them fear and pain.”
Diana stared at her, seeing not the fast-growing girl but the monster beneath. Only now did she truly understand. How had she not realized it before? The sadism. The game playing. The irrational fears and grandiose visions of godhood.
Diana had seen enough of it in the FAYZ; how had she not seen it in this creature? Madness. Lunacy.
The gaiaphage was insane.
Gaia was going to kill everyone: that was her plan. Kill the good and the bad, all of them. Diana grasped the truth of it now. That was Gaia’s mad endgame. The gaiaphage couldn’t allow Little Pete to find a body and survive, and that meant killing every living person in the FAYZ.
And it wouldn’t be a simple act of survival. She would enjoy it. She would enjoy watching people run from her. She would enjoy hunting them down and killing them. Gaia wasn’t ruthless and self-serving like Caine; she was evil, like Drake. A psychopath. A mad and terrible beast.
For some reason Diana’s mind went to Orc. Not a regular kid by any stretch. He’d been a bully, a thug, a drunk, and a killer. Then he’d been a penitent. Like Diana he had come to regret what he’d done. He had irritated her with his Bible reading and his endless questions, but he had found a way to redemption.
Could Orc’s life story simply end in Gaia’s flames, just to feed Gaia’s psychotic ego?
Sinder, who was so devoted to her garden.
Dahra, who had worked herself into a breakdown caring for sick kids.
Computer Jack? He’d been confused and aimless, and in her time Diana had used and manipulated him, but to actually die? To be killed by this . . . this abomination?
Astrid, that sanctimonious bitch . . . and Brianna, who Diana had actually come to like. And Dekka, who had never liked Diana but had forgiven her in her own snarling way. And Lana.
And Caine.
Yes, above all, Caine.
All their battles, hers and Caine’s, all their rages? All of it to end in death so this evil creature could walk out to trouble the wider world?
She remembered the touch of Caine’s skin on hers. Who would have guessed that egomaniacal, power-mad Caine would have such a gentle kiss?
Yeah, and that worked out so well. Pregnant with a mutant child who was sacrificed at the moment of her birth to the needs of the gaiaphage.
It wasn’t like Caine could ever walk free from the FAYZ, Diana knew that. He was a criminal ten times over, a rotten, charming, worthless sociopath, and they would lock him up.
And she would visit him and make fun of him behind the security glass at the prison. And then she would wait for him. Years, if necessary. All her years, if necessary.
You make bad choices, Diana, she told herself. So: one more won’t be a shock.
At that moment Diana felt a change in herself. It surprised her. At some level she had, like Alex, held on to hope: she had somehow still wanted to believe that this was her daughter, that she was a mother, that . . .
But this was no little girl. This was a beast with a pretty face and beautiful blue eyes.
Gaia had let the earbuds and the phone fall as Alex wept and whimpered and implored her. Diana picked them up off the ground.
“Music,” Diana said through gritted teeth.
“Music?” Gaia said, confused.
“You wouldn’t like it, Gaia. It’s only for humans.”
Gaia knew a lot of things. She did not know about child psychology.
“I will hear it!”
It would be close to dark by the time they reached the lake. Diana didn’t think much of her chances: what she was thinking of doing was hopeless, futile, and certainly stupid. But what the hell, was there really anything left for her to lose?
Wasn’t there an old song that went “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”?