Hero (Gone 9)

Fear took over then, like a sudden fever. Her mouth was dry. She needed to go to the bathroom. She needed to vomit.

With a thought she could be gone. She could be back out on the street, and from there, who knew how far she could go? A long, long way from here. Mountains, maybe. The Rockies she’d seen from the back of a motorcycle with her arms holding on to the fat waist of her mother’s then-lover.

It was very clean up there in the high passes. Air so fresh and pure, freezing-cold water running in streams, ready to drink. How great were her powers? Could she actually blink out into the Over There and pop up by the side of some road in Wyoming? So very much of her wanted to try. Just an experiment—she would transport herself there and . . .

And be alone. No family. No friends. Nowhere to go. But also, no Vector. No possibility of being trapped in a living hell of pain.

Suddenly Francis realized they were not alone. There was a young man just emerging from a toilet stall.

“What the holy hell?” the man yelped.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to . . .” Malik started to apologize. Then he and Francis both took a long second look, feeling they’d seen the face somewhere before.

The young man, a handsome boy, began to back toward the exit, but at the same time he was changing. Thick armor like a lobster’s shell rippled over a body growing swiftly larger. One arm flattened, like it had been run over by a road leveler, and then stretched and extended. The other hand was forming a heavy pincer.

“Knightmare!” Malik gasped.

“You can’t hurt Knightmare!” said Justin DeVeere. “I know your pain blasts don’t work against Rockborn.”

Francis had worried that when something terrible happened she would hesitate or even run away, had in fact been thinking seriously about it just seconds before. And in the old days she might have done either, hesitate or flee. But Francis had survived Las Vegas, she’d come face-to-face with the Charmer, she’d witnessed the horror at the Triunfo, and she was no longer the little mouse she had once been, at least in her own mind.

“Save me, Knightmare! Malik’s hurting me!” Francis cried. She rushed at Knightmare and before the startled and confused Justin DeVeere could react, she had grabbed his hand.

Ten seconds later Francis popped back into 3-D reality.

She and Malik we

re now alone.

“I guess that works,” she said.

“I guess it does.”

Cruz was lurking under the Park Avenue overpass, just opposite one of the entrances to Grand Central, in the form of a homeless woman she’d seen. Nothing was less visible in a city than the homeless, who most people just sort of edited out of what they saw. Cruz had given careful thought to just how she would enter Grand Central. Through the door, obviously, but as whom? Looking like what sort of person? Her repertoire of guises was heavily weighted toward female pop stars, with a few policemen and even a passable version of Tom Peaks as Dragon.

But would being morphed protect her against Vector’s insect air force? Malik couldn’t cause pain to people in morph, but these new laws of physics were either very complex or just random, and either way, Cruz was not at all certain that she would be safe.

If she sashayed in as Beyoncé or Adele, Vector would know immediately that she was Rockborn. She needed a morph that would make Vector hesitate before attacking, and it occurred to her that she might just have an idea. She’d met the person in question, but her visual memory lacked detail, so she pulled out her phone and Googled images. Front. Close-up of face. From the side. And yes, in a crowd shot, there was the view from behind.

Cruz checked the time. She was to enter the station five minutes before H-Hour as they were calling it. Two minutes to morph and another two minutes to figure out how to act the part. Then . . . walk.

Her job was to move in at two minutes before H-Hour, distract Markovic while the others attacked. Distract for as long as she could. And then?

And then Bug Man finds you inside your illusion and you scream and scream and never stop . . .

Cruz bent over suddenly, hands on her knees, feeling as if she’d had the wind knocked out of her. She felt sick with fear. Dying was bad, but she had faced death. What Vector threatened was so much worse. Unendurable.

Walk in. Just walk right in. Into what they all knew was a trap. Just walk in and . . . distract. Keep Vector busy. Wait for the attack. And then?

And then run, Cruz, run.

Run and hide. Get out of the way of the fight that would be won or lost by the others. At least that was some small comfort: she only had to be brave until the fight started. After that she could contribute very little.

So there is an upside to this stupid power of mine.

The time ticked by, each second seeming to last an infinity. Then, she took a deep breath and walked with purposeful stride despite legs that wanted to wobble and collapse, toward the entrance.

The entrance was, strangely, beneath the overpass. She reached the bank of doors, pulled a door open, and stepped inside.