Hero (Gone 9)

Shade made a show of thinking it over and said, “We’re here to see some Broadway shows. Next question?”

“Can you morph for us?” came a shouted question.

“I could, but then I’d have to answer questions in a high-pitched buzz. I’m told it’s hard to understand.”

Then Shade made eye contact with Armo and jerked her head. Meaning . . . What? And then it dawned on him. He climbed in, closed the door, and said, “Drive. Go! Now! Trust me.”

The SUV started moving, and instinctively the reporters and their cameramen shifted attention to it, some breaking into a run to try and keep pace.

The driver looked in the rearview mirror and said, “What about your friend?”

“Shade? Oh, she’ll be along. Drive on.”

Just as they were reaching the gate, the SUV’s back left door flew open and slammed shut so fast it only seemed to make a single sound. And Shade sat vibrating and resuming her normal human form.

“Sweet,” Armo said.

Shade winked at him. “Enh, it’s what I do.”

Armo was in the seat next to Cruz, careful not to sprawl into her. He had a tendency to take up most of whatever seat he was in, and he didn’t want her to think he was being “handsy.”

“Paparazzi,” Malik said with a droll grin. “We’re the new Kardashians.”

“Maybe I’ll start a fashion line,” Shade said. “Sell a Shade Darby perfume that evaporates superfast so you only have half a second to smell it.”

“Smell me now ’cause you won’t smell me later?” Cruz suggested, and Armo laughed appreciatively. He usually got Cruz’s jokes, while he often had the sense that Shade had said something funny that he just didn’t get.

The limo pulled onto a four-lane road and passed first a KFC and then a Taco Bell, reminding Armo that he was hungry. He’d slept most of the flight and not taken full advantage of the omelet bar.

Then he spotted an IHOP sign and followed it longingly with his eyes.

“Waffles or pancakes?” Cruz asked him.

Armo gave it some thought. “Pancakes. Waffles are great, but only in, like the first minute after they come out of the griddle. Pancakes hold up better.”

Cruz laughed, and Armo smiled in response. He remembered being on a movie set his father was stunt coordinator for, and overhearing Jim Carrey talking about how getting a laugh was the best drug ever. Armo hadn’t meant his answer to be funny, in fact he’d been going for thoughtful, but that didn’t make Cruz’s grin any less infectious.

According to Malik’s phone, the drive was normally forty-five minutes into Manhattan, but the bombardment had made a hash of the city’s already impossible traffic, and the ride took three hours, the last hour and fifteen minutes with Armo in agony from needing to pee. He’d considered peeing into a water bottle and decided no, that was not going to go over well, especially with a young girl like Francis in the car.

Armo would have distracted himself by talking more to Cruz, but she was asleep now, with her head lolling back and forth with each turn, until he let her head come to rest on his shoulder. Now he couldn’t move, had no one to talk to, and he still had to pee.

Stuff that never happens to the X-Men.

Finally they arrived at what Armo had heard Malik call a brownstone, a five-story brick townhouse on the Upper West Side. It belonged to the grandparents of the baby Cruz had rescued from fire in Las Vegas.

Cruz woke with a start, wiped drool from her mouth, and stared at Armo in horror. “Oh, my God, I slobbered on you!”

There were probably witty things to say in response to that, but all Armo came up with was, “No damage.”

A maid let them into the brownstone. The grandparents were in Idaho with extended family, dealing with the tragedy that had cost them their daughter and son-in-law.

The gang were exploring the brownstone and choosing rooms when Francis, looking through the sheer curtains hanging over the front windows, yelled, “Something’s happening!”

Armo leaned over Francis’s shoulder and saw four black SUVs and a big SWAT truck screeching up in front. Dekka moved beside him.

“What the hell?” Dekka snarled.

“We’ve been sold out!” Armo shouted, and began to morph, white fur sprouting from his body, puffing up the legs of his jeans and the sleeves of his shirt.