Light by Michael Grant

green.
    Lana removed an oval slice and picked it up like a piece of bologna. She held it to the light, inspecting it critically. Then she laid it aside and took a similar slice from the hand. Then she pressed the two newly cut pieces together.
    “Get me some duct tape,” Lana said.
    “Some what?”
    “Some tape,” she said impatiently. “Tape. Staples. Whatever.”
    It took Sanjit twenty minutes, and he came back with a roll of white Velcro.
    “How am I going to Velcro this?”
    “It’s adhesive-backed. It’s like tape. I couldn’t find tape. I found a stapler, but this will be better. Also less disturbing.”
    “Wimp. Get me a cigarette.”
    He pulled another half cigarette from his pocket, stuck it in her lips—she was busy holding the hand and the arm together—and lit it.
    Then he rolled out a foot of Velcro, cut it, and carefully taped the body parts together.
    An hour later they carefully unwound the tape.
    “Huh. It’s adhering,” Lana said. “A little, anyway. Huh. Wow. You think you could manage a trip into town?”
    “Why? So you can try to find your smokes with me out of the way?”
    “Yeah, that, too. But mostly I was thinking you could bring Sinder back here. I saw her in town, down from the lake. Or she might be out at the barrier playing wave-at-the-’rents. Either way, get her: she has a green thumb.”
    “I don’t feel it,” Sam said.
    Caine shook his head. “Me neither.”
    They were at the entrance to the mine shaft. They hadn’t even discussed their first stop; they’d both just known that it had to be here. This mine shaft was where the gaiaphage had lain for years, growing and festering. This had been the nexus of the evil, its home.
    “Should we go in and check?”
    “No,” Caine said. “I’ve been in. It wasn’t enjoyable.”
    “I can imagine.”
    “No, you can’t,” Caine said flatly.
    Caine felt Sam watching him, impatient, ready to move on. But Caine was mesmerized by that dark, blank opening. Once, it had been neatly framed with timber, but now it was more of a gash in the ground, a twisted mouth with stone teeth.
    The memory of it . . . Dread had left a permanent mark on him. Pain. Fear.
    Loneliness.
    “Lana knows,” Caine said at last. “And I guess Diana does now, too.” That thought, that realization, something he should have long since acknowledged, rocked him.
    When he had come crawling away from this terrible place and found his way home, shattered and insane, Diana had helped him. Who had helped Diana?
    “Once it touches your mind, see . . .,” Caine said, “once it really reaches inside you, it doesn’t let go. It doesn’t just stop. It’s like a, you know, like a wound, like you got cut real badly, and you stitched it up, but it won’t really heal.”
    “Lana fought it,” Sam said.
    “So did I!” Caine snapped. Then, more quietly, “So did I. I still do. It’s still in my head. It still reaches out to me sometimes.” He nodded, now almost seeming to have forgotten Sam. “Hungry in the dark.”
    He had fought it. But he hadn’t fought it alone.
    What the hell? He felt tears in his eyes. He tried to shake it off. Diana had spoon-fed him, and protected him, and cleaned him. And what had he done? He’d been sitting in Perdido Beach feeling sorry for himself while she was out there. With it .
    “Is that what you’re going to tell people if we get out of this?” Sam asked. “That the gaiaphage made you do it? Because I don’t buy it.”
    If Sam expected a furious answer, Caine disappointed him. He wasn’t going to let Sam bait him. At the moment he didn’t care about Sam.
    The failing light was casting long shadows. They would need to think about finding a place to spend the night.
    “Won’t make any difference what I say,” Caine said softly. “Won’t be me telling the story. It’ll be a hundred kids if we get out of here. All those kids who mostly just kept their heads down all through this, they’ll be the ones