Light (gone, #6)

The sixth and final installment of the Gone series takes place inside the FAYZ (Fallout Alley Youth Zone), a barrier that trapped over 300 children near Perdido Beach, California, cutting them off from the outside world. The barrier was created involuntarily by Little Pete (Peter Ellison), a boy with severe autism who possesses immense reality-warping power. Within the FAYZ, many children developed supernatural mutations, and a malevolent alien consciousness called the gaiaphage, born when a virus-bearing meteorite struck a nuclear power plant and merged with human DNA, has manipulated events from the beginning. Two days before the novel opens, the barrier turned transparent, allowing children and outsiders to see each other for the first time.

Diana Ladris, a 15-year-old, travels with Gaia, the child she bore to Caine Soren. Though Gaia looks like a rapidly aging little girl, the gaiaphage has seized her body completely. Diana clings to a fading maternal instinct but recognizes Gaia as a monster. Gaia whispers to "Nemesis," her name for Little Pete, who died physically but persists in a disembodied form. The gaiaphage wants Pete to fade away so no rival power remains. When Gaia psychically strikes Pete to hasten the process, the attack makes him angry and resolves him to resist.

At the lake settlement, Sam Temple, a mutant who can project deadly green light from his hands, and Astrid Ellison, his girlfriend and Little Pete's older sister, confront the approaching endgame. Sam's co-leader Edilio Escobar lays out the crisis: Food production has collapsed because children have abandoned work to press against the now-transparent barrier. Edilio proposes that Sam team up with Caine, Sam's estranged fraternal twin who declared himself king of Perdido Beach, to hunt Gaia, while Edilio manages logistics. Their core allies include Dekka, a mutant who can cancel gravity, and Lana Arwen Lazar, the Healer whose touch can mend any wound. In a tense negotiation, Caine agrees to join Sam, partly because Diana, the only person he loves, is still with the gaiaphage.

Diana discovers that Gaia borrows her powers from living mutants through a psychic connection; if a mutant dies, Gaia loses that power. When Gaia's psychic attack on Little Pete briefly destabilizes the barrier, Alex Mayle, a young man from outside who had been attempting to film the barrier, falls through into the FAYZ. Gaia tears off his arm and eats it. Meanwhile, Brianna, the super-fast mutant known as "the Breeze" and one of Sam's core allies, ambushes Drake Merwin, Gaia's whip-armed enforcer, decapitating him and scattering the pieces. The defenders sink Drake's severed head in a weighted cooler at the bottom of the lake.

Sam and Caine seal the mine shaft that served as the gaiaphage's former lair, then hunt for Gaia. Diana discovers that Gaia intends to kill every human in the FAYZ to prevent Little Pete from inhabiting a host body. She escapes under cover of darkness to warn the lake settlement but arrives too late. Gaia descends with devastating force, sweeping twin beams of killing light across the settlement. Boats explode, trailers incinerate, and children die by the dozens. Brianna counterattacks at super-speed, wounding Gaia enough to force a retreat, but is herself grievously burned. Approximately 70 children die, including Dahra Baidoo, the FAYZ's self-taught nurse and caretaker, who was injured on a bicycle journey to the lake and had been sheltering on the houseboat when it explodes. Astrid leads the survivors toward Perdido Beach.

Outside the barrier, public opinion turns against the FAYZ children as media coverage focuses on images of violence. Albert Hillsborough, the FAYZ's chief businessman who had fled to an offshore island, returns at Edilio's request and stages a dramatic intervention, throwing food to the crowd and ordering kids back to work. Sam and Caine arrive at the ruined lake too late but realize from a makeshift flag that Astrid survived. They pursue Gaia, who kills Alex and grafts Drake's severed head onto Alex's body, resurrecting her enforcer.

In Perdido Beach, Diana reveals Gaia's plan to the leaders. Edilio learns that his boyfriend Roger was killed in the lake attack and is devastated. The group confronts terrible options: find a sacrificial host for Little Pete, or kill Sam and Caine to strip Gaia of her most dangerous powers. Edilio refuses to commit murder and prepares defenses. Caine and Diana sail to San Francisco de Sales Island, where Caine confesses his love and reveals his intention to offer himself as Little Pete's host, a sacrifice that will destroy his consciousness. Diana pleads with him, but Caine insists. He leaves two letters on the island, places Diana back in the boat with his telekinetic power, takes Albert's missiles, and heads toward Perdido Beach alone. Before he arrives, Gaia intercepts and psychically breaks him.

Edilio sets up an ambush at the edge of town. Gaia approaches with the broken Caine ahead of her as a human shield. Dekka traps Gaia in a gravity-free zone while shooters open fire, but Gaia adapts and retaliates. Brianna, still half-healed, rushes in and blasts Gaia, but her final shell is a dud. Gaia grabs Brianna and burns a hole through her heart. Sam walks out alone to confront Gaia but is captured, wrapped in red-hot chains with his hands bound, and dragged toward town. Gaia forces him to watch as she kills fleeing children with his own light power.

Drake ambushes Astrid in the ruined church and drags her to a nearby house. Astrid fights back ferociously, and Taylor, a teleporting mutant whose form had been transformed by Little Pete and partially restored, helps her escape. Lana engages the gaiaphage in a psychic battle, preventing Gaia from healing her wounds. Computer Jack, the group's super-strong ally, snaps one link of Sam's chain before being fatally shot. Dekka drops tons of debris on Gaia in the church ruins, but Gaia survives.

Orc (Charles Merriman), one of the FAYZ defenders whose body has transformed into living gravel, charges Gaia near the barrier, reciting scripture as she fires both beams through his chest. A missile strikes behind him, and his body absorbs the blast. The human boy beneath the gravel tries to rise one last time before dying. Gaia staggers forward, bleeding and stripped of skin. Caine rises from behind a wrecked car with a second missile and calls out to Little Pete.

Pete accepts and inhabits Caine's body. Caine feels warmth and peace before his consciousness fades. Speaking in a child's voice, Pete faces Gaia. Both fire simultaneously: Gaia's killing light meets Pete's omnidirectional blasts of shifting color. Both combatants burn until they collapse into heaps of ash. The barrier falls instantly. Survivors stumble out into the arms of waiting parents and paramedics. Sam encounters Drake in the smoke, but his light power no longer works as the mutations fade. Drake disintegrates, and Sam throws his remains into the burning church and walks free.

Of the 332 children originally trapped, 196 survive. Prosecutors target Sam, but one of Caine's letters contains a false confession claiming he alone had a power to compel others to commit crimes, making prosecution nearly impossible. A private letter to Diana tells her he loved her always. Public opinion shifts through celebrity support, a legal defense fund, and Astrid's decision to write the full story. Sam escapes his hospital, contacts his friend Quinn, and arrives at Astrid's press conference, where their reunion kiss is broadcast worldwide. Edilio, in hiding with his undocumented family, discovers from a television report that Roger survived and rushes to find him.

Three months later, no prosecutions go forward. A public memorial at Pismo Beach honors the fallen, though three survivors have died by suicide and others struggle with the aftermath. Sam and Astrid, legally emancipated, share an apartment in Santa Monica and invite Diana to live with them. Sam tells Astrid what his mother, Connie Temple, revealed: Genetic testing confirmed that he and Caine shared the same biological father, the man who died in the power plant when the meteorite struck, whose DNA became part of the gaiaphage. Caine grew up without love and fell under the gaiaphage's influence; Sam, raised by their mother, did not. At the very end, Caine found love and chose redemption. Astrid tells Sam to turn out the light. He does.