Hero (Gone 9)

“Dekka is one of these people who had one great love in their life. The girl died in the FAYZ, and Dekka still carries her picture wherever she goes.”

“One great love,” Simone muttered under her breath.

“Yep. I don’t think she’ll ever get over it, either,” Cruz said. “Although, I think if the right girl came along . . .”

Simone’s answer was a grunt. Then she snapped her fingers and said, “I just remembered, I have a thing to do. Downstairs.”

“Ah.”

Simone fled down the steps, and after a bit more climbing, Cruz emerged on the walkway that circled most of the building, a walkway defined by the raised roof of the drill hall on one side, and the crenelated redbrick front wall on the other. Dekka was on the north tower roof, a rectangular space that looked down on Park Avenue and Sixty-Seventh Street.

“Here you go,” Cruz said, and handed her a coffee.

“Thanks.”

“Whatcha doing up here?”

Dekka let go a long sigh. “Trying to think of something brilliant.”

“Might help to talk about it.”

“What are you, the resident therapist now?” Dekka affected a growl, but by now Cruz knew when Dekka was really annoyed and when she was just playing tough chick.

“Three hundred bucks an hour,” Cruz said.

Dekka was silent for a while, sipping her coffee. “I’m out of my depth,” she said at last. “It’s been what, like, twenty-four hours since we even decided we’re a group? Now we’ve got a mission statement, and a headquarters—”

“I like to think of it as a lair.”

“Uh-huh. And Malik is interviewing people like we’re Macy’s loo

king for some temps. Edilio’s organizing and hunting for weapons. Shade is downtown taking care of some lunatic who morphs into the image of Jesus and says he’s Jesus and he can heal the sick. Last I heard, he was offering to cure cancer for ten thousand dollars a pop.”

“White, blond, blue-eyed Jesus?” Cruz asked.

Dekka gave her a wry look. “Of course. Swedish Jesus. Just like all the paintings. Crazy, but since he’s a mutant, I guess he’s our business.”

“Where’s Francis?”

“The Statue of Liberty. Her and Armo. They wanted to play tourist.”

Cruz was immediately hurt that Armo had not asked her to go with them. Then again, she’d been running errands, and Armo was not known for his patience. If he’d decided to go, he would go. Immediately.

Still . . .

“The Jesus thing, it’s all over social media,” Cruz reported. “Not this particular guy, but several people who were sprayed by ASO-7 and think it’s stigmata.”

“Stig what a?”

“Stigmata. It’s when people have markings that look like Jesus’s crucified hands.”

“Oh, good,” Dekka said dryly, “because I was worried we might be running short of crazy people.”

Cruz lingered, sensing that Dekka still wanted to talk, an event about as rare as Halley’s Comet.

“The thing is, I don’t know what we’re doing,” Dekka confessed. “We’re six, well, seven people, with weird abilities, but it’s like suddenly people are looking to us to fix things. I got news for those people: we aren’t that strong. We do not have the power to save the world. We barely saved Vegas.”

A long, thoughtful silence. Cruz let it build.