Fear: A Gone Novel

him.
    He wondered. Could he fix it? Could he undo the great and terrible thing he had done?
    He felt the answer as a sort of regret. He reached for the power, the thing that had made him able to create this place. But there was nothing there.
    It was in my body , he said. The power .
    “You can’t end it?”
    No .
    No, sister Astrid, I can’t .
    I’m sorry .
    “Can you bring the light back?”
    He pulled away. Her questions made him feel bad inside.
    “No. Don’t go away,” she said.
    He had memories of how much her voice had hurt when he was the old Pete. When he had a body, with a brain all wired crazily so that things were always too loud, even colors.
    He stopped moving away. He resisted an urge to reach inside that mesmerizing avatar and take its sadness away. But no, his fingers were too clumsy. He knew that now. The girl named Taylor, he had tried to make her better, and he had torn the avatar to shreds.
    “Petey. What is the Darkness doing?”
    Pete considered. He hadn’t looked at that thing lately. He could see him, a green glow, tendrils like a writhing octopus reaching out through the placeless place where Pete now lived.
    The Darkness was weak. His power, spread all through the barrier, was weakening. He was the thing Pete had used to create the barrier. In that panic moment with the terrible loud sounds and the fear on all the faces, when Pete had screamed inside his own head and reached out with his power he’d stretched the Darkness into that barrier.
    Now it was weakening. Soon it would break and crack.
    Dying.
    “The Darkness, the gaiaphage, it’s dying?”
    It wants to be reborn .
    “Petey. What happens if it is reborn?”
    He didn’t know. He was out of words. He opened his mind to her. He showed sister Astrid images of the great sphere he had built, the barrier that had pushed all the rules and laws away, the barrier made of the gaiaphage, that had become the egg for its rebirth, the numbers all twisted together, fourteen, and the twisting, screaming distortion when anything passed through from one universe to the other, and now sister Astrid was screaming and holding her head; he could see it in the avatar, funny screaming, like words that popped and exploded around him and—
    He pulled away.
    He was hurting her.
    He’d done it. With his clumsy fingers and his stupid, stupid stupidness, he had hurt her.
    Her avatar twirled away like a snowflake in a storm.
    Petey turned and ran.
    “Oh, God, it’s coming!” Diana screamed.
    She was sweating, straining, on her back with her legs spread wide, knees up. The contractions were just minutes apart now, but they lasted so long it was as if she had no rest in between, just a chance to gasp some super-heated fetid air.
    She had no more energy for crying. Her body had taken control. It was doing what it was supposed to do five months from now. She was not ready. The baby was not ready. But the enormous swell of her belly said different. It said the time was now.
    Now!
    Who was there to help her in this? No one. Drake stared in horrified fascination. Penny curled her lip with contempt. Neither of them interfered or spoke, because it was clear, clear to anyone with a heart or brain, that the only other thing in the room that cared about the baby was the pulsing green monster.
    Diana felt its hungry will.
    Doom for her baby.
    She had known there would be pain. And while it was bad, it was not as bad as the stroke of Drake’s whip.
    It was not the pain that made her cry out, but the despair, the certain knowledge that she would never be the baby’s mother. That she would fail even at this. The deadening reality that she was unforgiven, still an exile from the human race, that she still bore the mark of her evil deeds.
    The taste of human flesh.
    She had been so hungry. So close to death.
    I’ve said I’m sorry, I repented, I begged for forgiveness; what do you want from me? Why won’t you help this baby?
    Penny moved closer, careful of her damaged, bloody feet. She leaned down to look at Diana’s straining face.
    “She’s praying,” Penny said. Penny laughed. “Should I give her a god to pray to? I can make her see whatever—”
    Through a veil of bloody tears Diana saw Penny reel back. Like a marionette she slammed hard, face-first into a wall.
    Drake laughed. “Stupid chick. If the gaiaphage wants something, he’ll let you know. Otherwise it’s best not to spend a lot of time down here thinking about how powerful you are.