Hero (Gone 9)

The pieces fell into place quickly: it was the rock. Clearly. Obviously. He’d been hit with dozens of tiny pieces of the meteorite as well as the larger one that had ripped his hand nearly off, and the pebble that had lodged in his chest.

I’m one of them. A mutant.

Rockborn!

Again his daughter’s name floated up in his consciousness. Simone. Had she been killed? Probably easier that she . . . No, no, no, she was his daughter. He loved her. It’s just that she was not relevant to his current situation. He would worry about Simone, and if it came to it, he would grieve for her. But right here and now he had very pressing issues. In point of fact he was deep underground and moving at speed, moving for the sheer joy of speed, moving for the thrill of dirt scraping his thousands of shells.

Like an ant colony, he thought. I am many, but with one mind over all.

But he was not alone. He felt a different consciousness, not a will, really, just a mind other than his own. A strange sensation, like he was being watched. Like he was a curiosity. Like he was a specimen under a scientist’s microscope.

What have I become?

Markovic moved on, heedless, reckless, pushing doubt aside and reveling in this incredible ability. Then, all at once he was hit head-on by a wall of cold water. It flowed over and past him, through him, bringing icy cold.

The thousands of compound eyes he looked through were blinded by bright light. He felt a panic seize him—he was exposed! Vulnerable!

But slowly he felt his parts adjust, swimming with churning insect feet, assembling into a swirling mass in gloomy, chemical-green water pierced by slanting early-morning sun. His thousands of eyes adjusted to the light, and his panic subsided as slowly the picture of his surroundings became comprehensible. This was no river, nor a natural lake. The sides were too steeply vertical. And he saw ramps wide enough to accommodate big trucks, spiraling down the sides of those submerged cliffs, and knew what this was. He had dug his way right into what must have been a gravel mine, now filled with water to form a lifeless lake. Far below him, on the floor of the pond, were two vehicles, old cars that had probably been pushed in so the owners could claim insurance.

He brought himself together—like a consolidation, his business mind thought—and breached, a densely packed cloud of insects swimming so fast that Markovic came almost all the way up out of the water. Before he settled back again, he saw two young boys standing at the edge of the flooded quarry, tossing rocks. The boys yelped and pointed. One fled; the other drew out his phone to take a picture.

Markovic let him. Who cared? There might be people to fear, but the boy with the camera was not one of them. So Markovic used the sunshine to examine himself. He was multitudes seeing through thousands of eyes at once, seeing in every direction. It was overwhelming, too much, like trying to watch a hundred televisions at once. Again panic threatened, but he did not give in, would not give in. He was Bob Markovic, and he would not be terrified.

Gradually he realized that he could control his visual feed, that he could mute the cascade of sights and sounds, and narrow his focus to those things he needed to see. And the most pressing need was to see and understand himself.

This was a nightmare of images, insect faces swirling around like they were caught in a tornado. He was within that tornado, able to see inside what he now was. He saw nothing human, no slight shred of his body, nothing solid or fixed. Nothing but the swarm of mismatched insects, things like dragonflies but with bright-red wings, things like cockroaches but with wings like moths. Bugs crawling on other bugs, as if they were hitching a ride. There were centipedes, but each ending in a circular, gnashing mouth full of tiny, sharp teeth; there were things that looked like common houseflies, but seen at close range they had canine muzzles—tiny, winged dogs.

He knew he should be horrified, disgusted, panicked, and he felt some of that emotion, but the urge to surrender to fear was gone. He had never been one to overly concern himself with risk—not when there was also opportunity. Power was opportunity, by definition, and he was powerful. Powerful in a way that even money had never given him, a physical power, a real power. The power to be shot and yet be unhurt. The power to move through dirt like it was water, and water like it was air. And he had only just begun to explore the possibilities.

Besides, he knew enough about the so-called Rockborn that they could move easily from human to morph and back to human. This was not him, this was not Bob Markovic, his essential self remained. Somewhere. This was just a brand-new, absolutely amazing ability. He felt like he had when he’d bought a Bugatti Veyron and stepped on the gas on an empty stretch of the Long Island Expressway.

The power!

Bob Markovic had not become the man he was through whining and self-pity, let alone panic. He was curious, however, especially about whether his swarm could move on the surface of the land as easily as beneath it. He spotted a low bank, a grim gravel beach of sorts, where one of the ramps emerged from the water. To his relief, he had no difficulty at all gliding up onto the narrow gravel beach. After that it took a few tries to stand up like a man, or at least like a buzzing, vibrating, clicking facsimile of a man.

He had a sudden image of addressing his board of directors in this guise.

Hah! That’d shake them up!

The kid with the camera phone had run off, presumably to upload his video to YouTube.

What was that?

He felt the odd, back-of-the-neck tingle that warned someone was watching him, and not the strange observers he seemed to feel in his head. Sure enough, when he looked around—something he could do without moving his man-shape, merely by choosing to focus in that direction—he spotted three men in black tactical gear carrying assault rifles at port arms. They were on the far lip of the quarry, and they’d spotted him. They were pointing, their faces twisted by confusion and growing fear.

Could they kill him?

Hah. You can’t shoot a swarm of insects.

But now a fourth man appeared, straining under the weight of big steel tanks on his back. A short hose connected the top of the tanks to a sort of nozzle, something like a fireman’s hose.

Flamethrower!

Markovic was definitely not sure he would survive that.

He began to dig again, experience and growing confidence making him faster, but he had failed to see the true danger until a military helicopter swept in just above treetop level and wheeled around to bring its weapons to bear.

A tail of flame shot from the helicopter’s weapons pod.