Gaia was suddenly matter-of-fact, businesslike. “Nemesis may take a body for himself. And then where will I be? I need Nemesis to die, Diana. When he dies, the barrier will fall. When he dies, I will be free to emerge. I am ready. I am seeing this place and realizing that it is small. Look at the world out there.” She waved her arm grandly toward the transparent barrier, toward the desert beyond. “It goes on and on, doesn’t it? How big is it, Diana?”

“What, the whole country? Earth?”

“All of it. Is the earth all of it? Then the earth. How big is the earth?”

Diana shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not exactly honor roll. Astrid would know, down to the mile, I’m sure.”

Gaia turned to her, eyes lit with excitement. “But it’s big. How many humans?”

“Billions.”

That seemed to take Gaia aback. Her mouth dropped open.

“Even you can’t kill them all,” Diana said, enjoying Gaia’s look of consternation.

But Gaia had absorbed the new information. “I won’t need to kill billions, Diana. When Nemesis is gone, there will be no other like me. Just me alone. I will grow and spread, one body and then another, and soon there will be so many of me that it will be impossible to eradicate me. Eventually all will be me, and I will be all.”

“Won’t that be boring?” Diana asked. “You’d be dating yourself. You’ll have no one to discuss your evil plans with. No one left to terrorize.”

Gaia nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. Yes, you make sense. I will leave some free so that I can teach them fear and pain.”

Light, Chapter 12