Page 152 (1/2)

No Looking closer, forcing herself to look, she saw that it was not rock Her unwilling eyes seean to see not a singleswarons, pentagons, triangles The largest were perhaps half the size of her ser than a period on a page Each sprouted countless tiny legs, so that what Lana saw appeared as a vast ant colony, an insect hive, all green and glittering, pulsing like an exposed heart

Place your hand on me

She resisted But she knew, even as she fought the gaiaphage’s will, that she was doo, it low

She touched it, felt it, and it was like touching rough sand on the beach Only this sand moved, vibrated

For a moment there was only that simple sensation

Then, the gaiaphage showed her what he wanted

She saw creatures A creature of living fire A clockwork snake Monsters

And she saw a Russian nesting doll

One doll…inside another…inside another…and another…

Now she knew hi clarity what he was Now she could feel his hunger And now she sensed his fear

He needed her, this foul creature made of human and alien DNA, of stone and flesh, nurtured on hard radiation in the depths of space and now in the depths of the earth The glowing food had all been consurown and mutated down here in the darkness

It was hungry Food was coh to use Lana’s power to create a body He had used her power to give Drake his whip hand, to make a monster of him He would use her now, once he had fed, to create a monstrous body of his own Bodies inside of bodies, bodies that could be used and then cast aside as another eed

To move

To escape the oal

To walk the FAYZ and destroy all who resisted him