Light (Gone 6)

For a moment she was gone. Then back. For a moment she felt disturbed, and then not.

Suddenly she gasped. She drew air into her mouth. It was surprising. She hadn’t breathed lately, though she remembered breathing before. That other Taylor.

“I can’t remember what I did to make you this way.”

She heard the voice, though she saw no one here.

“But I’m trying.”

She reached up and touched her hair with a golden hand. “My hair,” she said, the words a shock to her. The voice coming from her thoughts felt alien. “It’s wrong.”

“Like this?” Little Pete asked, because now she knew it was him.

She touched her hair, and it was no longer a single rubbery sheet. It was black hair. Her hair.

“This is better,” she said.

“Your eyes,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Is this better?”

She felt that strange touch, that solidity where she was somehow liquid. And suddenly she saw him. He didn’t look like Little Pete. He looked like a swirl of light, like a thousand fireflies swarming together.

“I can’t do more right now,” Little Pete said. “I am weak, and the Darkness will notice. It looks away from you now. It has forgotten you.”

Some part of Taylor, some reawakened part of her, some fragment of the old Taylor, realized that she was not back to what she had once been. Her eyes saw things and her ears heard things differently than in the old days, before. But there was breath in her lungs. And a heartbeat in her chest.

And she had hair.

“I hurt you, even though I didn’t mean to. I can’t ask you to help me,” Little Pete said.

“You don’t have to,” Taylor answered. “I know the Darkness. I know it hates the Healer. I know what side I am on.”

TWENTY-ONE

18 HOURS, 57 MINUTES

EDILIO HAD HEARD Lana’s warning by way of Astrid. But attack? With what? With who? People were just now coming back in from some of the fields. Brianna was still down. Sam missing, Caine missing, Jack reluctant, Orc willing but exhausted.

Attack? Where?

No, that might be good advice in other circumstances. Not with what he had available. Besides, he had an instinct. If Gaia wasn’t already here, it was because she was waiting for darkness. She might be a monster, but she was a monster used to darkness, not to broad daylight. She had attacked the lake at night, despite having Brianna’s speed. She had waited for night.

She would wait for darkness again.

Edilio was well aware that he was playing a hunch, and playing with all their lives. Like every general since the dawn of time, he was assessing his forces, trying to understand his enemy, putting his bet down and rolling the dice.

He had made his arrangements. He was on automatic now, not thinking about Roger, not thinking about the images of corpses floating on the lake.

If he’d been there, maybe . . .

“Dekka, how long can you maintain a gravity-free zone?”

“As long as you want, Edilio.”

She was being too nice, feeling sorry for him.