ASTRID FELL AND fell knowing it wasn’t real, knowing it was all an illusion of some kind. But it was very hard to believe that when her clothing rippled and her hair flew straight up and her arms were reaching for the walls of a tunnel that couldn’t possibly be real but seemed like it was.

  But after a while falling began to feel like floating. She was suspended in the air and things no longer streamed past; they floated around.

  Symbols, Astrid thought.

  She was relieved to see that her brain still worked. Whatever was happening, whatever power was giving her this intense waking dream, it wasn’t frying her brain. Reason intact. Words right there where she had left them.

  Symbols. Neon symbols arrayed across a dark landscape.

  Not even symbols, she realized: avatars.

  There was a monstrous face framed with long dark hair that formed snakes. Dark eyes and a mouth that dribbled fire.

  There was a female being with orange rays, like sunset beams spraying out of her head.

  A male with a hand held up and a green light formed in a ball. This avatar was far away, at the edge of the dark playing field.

  One avatar was neither male nor female but half of each sex. Metal teeth and a whip.

  Nerezza. Orsay. Sam. But what was the fourth avatar?

  It was this fourth avatar that seemed to be in contention between two manipulators, two players. One player was represented by a box. The box was closed but for one edge that shone so bright it was hard to look at. Like a toy box containing a sun.

  Petey, Astrid whispered.

  The other player she felt rather than saw. She tried to turn her eyes toward it, to see it, but it was always just out of range. And she realized that the light box was restraining her, not allowing her to see the opponent.

  For her own good. Protecting her.

  Petey would not let her look at the gaiaphage.

Lies, Chapter 39