Light (Gone 6)

“Hear me, Nemesis!” Gaia cried, choking then recovering. “Hear me! I have your sister!”

“I don’t see her,” Sam said.

“Never worry, Sam Temple: Drake will get her.” But Gaia chewed at her thumbnail, a very Caine gesture Sam had seen before.

“You seem scared,” Sam said.

Gaia snarled at him and raised her own hands as if ready to kill him herself. Then she laughed shakily. “Ah-hah. Trying to provoke me?”

But she was rattled. She had felt something. She had felt something she didn’t like.

“Nemesis?” Sam asked her.

Gaia didn’t answer. She was done playing games. She was done enjoying herself. She grabbed Sam’s chain and began dragging him down the road, then broke into a run.

Caine and Diana docked the boat at the marina. The fire, which had been to the north, now seemed to be everywhere at once. Bursts of sparks rose high from the direction of the highway. The air was filled with ash, hard to breathe, hard to keep your eyes open. Impossible to believe that somewhere the sun was still shining.

“Should I tie off the boat?” Diana asked.

Caine didn’t answer. He levitated himself from the boat to the dock. Then, with equal ease, he lifted the missiles in their crates and landed them safely on the wood planks.

“Give me a hand,” Diana said. She held her hand up to him.

He looked down at her. “I don’t think so, Diana.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

He raised one hand and pushed the boat gently away from the dock.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“Going out in style,” he said.

“Caine. Caine. What are you doing?”

“There’s no good reason for both of us to die.”

“Caine, you’re being silly,” she said as firmly as she could. “You know this is the end. I want to be with you. I don’t want our monster child hunting me down and finding me at the end all alone.”

He shrugged. “I know you asked Little Pete to take you. I know you offered yourself up.”

“How? How did you know?”

He shrugged.

“But he didn’t,” Diana said. “He didn’t, which—”

“Yeah. Well. He had a better offer.”

“What?” The word came out as a sob. “Caine . . . No. No. We do this together.”

“Nah, I don’t think so,” he said with strained nonchalance. “I think it will be like it is with Gaia. I think when Little Pete does his thing, well, I don’t think I’ll be around then. So I don’t see how we do this together.”

“Don’t, Caine. Don’t you do this,” Diana pleaded.

“You have to understand, Diana: I’m not trying to be noble. It’s just the only way I have to beat it. The gaiaphage. It thinks it has me. It thinks it owns me. It thinks it cracks the whip and I have no choice but to obey. And the pain . . .” He shrugged again. “So. So, we want old green-and-evil to be surprised when it finds out, right?”

“Caine, this is not what we . . . No. No.”