Hero (Gone 9)

Convenient, Cruz thought as she balanced a cardboard drinks carrier and a paper sack of muffins and set them in front of the serious young Honduran. He sat at an ornate walnut desk beneath oil portraits, looking like he might be playing an updated Bob Cratchit role in A Christmas Carol, a hunched, focused person with a phone wedged against one ear and a laptop open on the ancient desk.

“Weapons. Yes, weapons,” Edilio said into the phone. “Guns. Stun grenades.” He was nodding as someone at the other end of the line read off a list. “No, no body armor. Tasers, sure. But what I really want are flamethrowers.”

Every day it gets weirder, Cruz thought, and walked down the corridor and into the echoing drill hall where Malik sat at a long card table with a police officer at his side with her own laptop open, taking names and running criminal background checks. There was a short line, very short, six people. And only two bore the telltale marks of ASO-7.

Cruz handed Malik a latte and the police officer a chai latte.

“How’s it going?” Cruz asked.

Malik rolled his eyes.

Word had gone out that the Rockborn Gang were talking to anyone who had acquired powers following the fall of ASO-7. So far, Cruz knew, Malik had interviewed eight aspiring supers, though only one had had actual power, and that power had been the ability to become translucent. Not invisible, just translucent.

Malik had gently suggested that the ability to show people your internal organs might not be quite what they were looking for.

Another had insisted he could freeze time, but it turned out all he could really do was stand still and hold his breath while time marched on.

“I saw Macbeth here.” Simone had come up behind Cruz and accepted a hot tea. “It was good.”

“Here in this giant space?” Cruz asked.

Simone nodded, and gazed up at the arched honeycomb ceiling. “It was impressive.”

“The good old days,” Cruz said sadly.

“Yeah. New York is a city full of survivors, but what’s happening now . . . Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

“If you walk with me to find Dekka. I am not bringing that girl cold coffee.”

They walked back across the endless floor, steps echoing.

“You’re trans, right?”

“Yep.” Cruz braced for something stupid and told herself not to overreact.

“And everyone’s okay with that?”

“You aren’t?”

“Oh, no, no, no,” Simone said quickly. “No. I just was wondering how they’d react if I told them I was a lesbian.”

Cruz laughed. “Simone, half of us are from Chicago, Armo’s from Malibu, and Francis has been living with her meth-head mother and a biker gang out in the Mojave. We’re none of us real judgmental. Not to mention Dekka.”

“What do you mean about Dekka?”

Cruz heard something in Simone’s voice that Simone probably did not intend on anyone noticing. A bit too much interest, concealed poorly by a bit too much nonchalance. She resisted the urge to smile and said, “Well, you know she’s a lesbian, too, right?”

“Is she?”

That was a palpably false question, Cruz thought. “Yep.”

They reached a stairwell and began to climb. “She’s impressive, isn’t she?” Simone asked.

Cruz stopped mid-flight of stairs, turned, and said, “Dekka Talent is impressive in just about every way a human being can be.” She started trudging back up and out of sheer mischief added, “Lonely, though, I think.”

“Oh?”

Oh, she says, like she doesn’t really care?