Hero (Gone 9)

In the air!

Visions of Road Runner cartoons flashed, and she imagined being Wile E. Coyote as he looks down to see he’s run past the edge of the cliff. But Simone did not fall. She had no idea how she was doing this. . . . And then Simone looked down at her legs. The jeans were gone, and her legs . . . She stifled a scream. Her legs were covered with what looked like iridescent scales, like a trout—but no, that wasn’t right, either. Because these scales did not lie flat; they moved. They beat like tiny hummingbird wings. And it wasn’t just her legs. Her entire body was covered, every square inch of it, with hundreds, no, thousands of tiny, iridescent bee wings. She raised a hand and looked in fascination at the furiously buzzing things all down the back of her hand, though not on her palms. She touched her face—no wings there, or on her throat, but her head, her shoulders, her sides were all winged, like some weird insectoid bedazzling.

And she was no longer the color of a white girl who lived in the shadow of tall buildings: beneath the iridescent wings was flesh the color of a faded Smurf toy left too long in the sun.

I can fly!

The rock. There was no doubt about that. Nor was there any doubt that the government had feared just this sort of thing and had tried to solve the problem with bullets.

Simone veered away as the searchlight’s shaft swept nearby. She didn’t have to do anything to fly, just think, go there, or go that way, or faster!

Her duty was to find her father, but the killing field below was dark, and all she saw were twisted bodies and armed men. She spotted a column of vehicles approaching, headlights moving slowly, led by an earthmover, along with two heavy dump trucks and three black SUVs.

Coming to bury the dead!

If she reduced altitude far enough to search faces, she would be shot, and while she could fly and had become significantly stronger, she had no reason to imagine that she could survive being shot.

Simone knew she would feel sadness, terrible sadness, and soon, but right now was all about staying alive. In the distance she heard the air-punching sound of military helicopters and suspected that she would be their main target.

Her mother. That’s what she needed to do: get to her mother. Then she could cry for her dead father.

CHAPTER 8

Uncle Sam Wants You

THE PHONE IN the suite rang at 1:20 in the morning. Shade was the only one awake, and picked up the receiver from the set in the dining room where she’d been sitting in the dark, looking out at the flash and sparkle of the Las Vegas Strip at night, and thinking.

“Hello?”

“This is Jody Wilkes. I’m terribly sorry to bother you; we are blocking all calls to you . . .”

Wilkes was the head of casino security at Caesars and their main contact person. Shade knew from Wilkes’s tone that there was a “but” coming, and knew it would be bad news.

“. . . but this call came from Washington.”

“This is Shade, Ms. Wilkes. Given what we’ve seen from those clowns, I don’t think we want to talk to them.”

“It isn’t from the White House or anyone political. It’s from a General Eliopoulos. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs.”

Shade held the phone out and stared at it as if reassuring herself she was actually awake. The country’s highest-ranking soldier wanted to talk to them? Urgently? At one in the morning? Of course it would be nearly dawn on the East Coast.

“Is he holding or what?”

“He asked me to put him through.”

Shade said, “Okay. Give me ten minutes. And have him FaceTime my cell phone.” She recited the number.

She went to the sideboard and began brewing coffee. She needed to wake the others, starting with Dekka and Malik, and she didn’t intend to wake either without some ready caffeine.

Five minutes later, a scowling Dekka, a distracted Malik, and an oddly perky Cruz were assembled in the living room. Shade had made the executive decision to let Armo and Francis sleep.

“The chairman of the Joint Chiefs?” Malik said, frowned, and then winced as he felt renewed interest from the Dark Watchers.

“I figured you should all hear the call,” Shade said.

“You assume we should take the call?” Cruz asked. The days of Cruz passively taking her lead from Shade were over. They were friends, even close friends, but Cruz no longer blindly believed her brilliant friend was always better able to make decisions. Shade was relieved by the change: the fewer people looking to her for solutions, the better.

“I think we should,” Shade said.