Gaia closed her eyes. Her little fists clenched, then released. Every muscle in her body tightened. Her skin took on a glow that Diana had seen before: a faint, sickly green glow.

The two men leaned their ladder against the dome. They didn’t notice what was happening to Gaia. They were discreetly looking away.

Diana risked a small shake of her head: No.

No, you need to run. You need to get out of here.

But the redhead ascended with rope and pitons at the ready. At the top of the ladder he tried attaching a suction cup to the dome. It didn’t work.

He shrugged at Diana, a little comically, like, Hey, I was hoping it would work.

Then he tried banging in a piton. This made no sound within the dome, and it also made no mark.

His partner handed up two more pieces of metal that Red-hair fitted into the existing ladder. This allowed him to climb another twelve feet on a rickety, single-pole structure.

“Not exactly bright, are they?” Diana observed.

Probably Gaia couldn’t do anything. Probably. But the little girl that was no little girl watched with teeth bared, eyes focused far away, seeming to enjoy whatever it was she was doing in that space that Diana could not enter.

“For just a moment, Nemesis,” she whispered.

Despite the growing sense that something was about to go very wrong, Diana found herself fascinated at something she had not seen in what felt like a lifetime: adults. More than that, adults with clean clothing and clean, professionally cut hair. And they were unarmed, not even so much as a crowbar or a baseball bat. When was the last time she had seen anyone unarmed? Anyone over the age of four in the FAYZ had something, even if it was just a pointed stick.

“You’re making me angry,” Gaia whispered. “I’m hungry.”

Gaia’s eyes began to glow like someone had turned on a dim flashlight inside her head so that light bled just a bit around the rim of her eyes. Her fists were clenched tight. Her teeth made a cracking sound as she clamped her jaw.

The redhead was now well over Diana’s height, but in no danger of making any progress. He had gotten himself into position to take some decent video, but he was at the end of his ladder. The dome was ten miles high in the center, and there was no ladder in the world that would cover even a tiny fraction of—

“Ahhhh!” Gaia cried, and the whole world wobbled. It was like a small earthquake, but more, as if the air itself had been stirred.

There was a blast of air in Diana’s face.

A sound of rushing wind.

And the red-haired man fell.

He fell and hit the ground at Diana’s feet. Inside. In the FAYZ.

[...]

It had hit Little Pete in a way that was impossible to explain to someone who lived in the normal universe. Pete had no body, but he had just been punched, very hard. It had hurt. It had sent his mind spinning.

He had never felt anything like it. It could only come from one person: the Darkness. The green, vaporous tendrils that had often reached to touch his mind had this time struck him.

The gaiaphage. Had punched him. Hard enough to make his consciousness blink out for just a fraction of a second.

Light, Chapter 3