Hero (Gone 9)

“Hey, you, stop right there!”

Cruz froze.

The challenge came from a pimply teen armed with a baseball bat. He had a partner, a small, angry-looking older woman who seemed to be doing mime, waving her hands either in a parody of martial arts movies or in the delusional belief that she had powers.

“I’m here to speak to Markovic,” Cruz said, doing her best to sound like the mayor.

“His name is Vector,” the boy said smugly. “And unless you got powers or at least some muscle, he ain’t talking to nobody.”

“Yeah? Well, you listen to me, you little toady, I am the mayor of this city. I want to speak face-to-face with Vector, and if you send me away he will be mightily pissed at you.”

To Cruz’s amazement, her improvisation worked. The boy took a step back and muttered, “Okay, but it’s on you, lady. If you end up covered in sores screaming for your mommy, don’t blame me.”

Cruz fought down a wave of nausea and was rescued from collapse by the appearance of the Watchers in her head.

I won’t give you the satisfaction!

The boy led the way, baseball bat on his shoulder at a jaunty angle, down a marble ramp beneath too-bright lights in the ceiling. A sort of bridge supporting offices crossed the ramp, and Cruz looked up to see engraved signs indicating the waiting area and pointing an arrow ahead to tracks eleven and twelve.

Walk like a boss, Cruz reminded herself. You’re the mayor.

At the bottom of the ramp a broad arch opened on the right, marked as the way to the Dining Concourse, and the pull of that safe-sounding space nearly drew her in. There was a Chase Bank, all blue and shiny on her left, but with a plate-glass window starred and needing only another tap to collapse in shards. They passed an information kiosk with posters of shows that would never happen, and discounts on tickets to places she didn’t recognize.

Ahead was openness, a sense of a vast space, and then she saw three gigantic windows, each perhaps a hundred feet tall. The setting sun turned many of the panes red or gold, an arrestingly lovely sight, and Cruz wished she could savor it. Cruz had seen the windows—indeed every part of the terminal—in the photos and maps they’d all studied in preparation, but they seemed so much bigger in person, bigger and somehow both beautiful and overawing.

She marched boldly out into the main concourse. To her right was a long row of unoccupied, beaux arts marble ticket windows topped by a long black tote board now filled with cancellations. The entire concourse was framed by massive square pillars, each seeming as tall as a ten-story building. The pillars rose to support a gorgeous arched ceiling painted blue-green and decorated with a schematic of the galaxy. At the far end, beneath the glorious windows, was a balcony grand enough to host a papal visit. It was the most magnificent building Cruz had ever seen.

There were maybe a hundred people scattered over the acres of marble floor, some with weapons ranging from crowbars to guns. All, presumably, in service to Vector.

And then she saw the information booth, a round, ornate gilt kiosk in the middle of the floor. It was topped by a four-sided analog clock, and it was there that Cruz’s gaze stopped. For up there, roped to the clock, was a man . . . a woman . . . it was impossible to say. The person tied to the clock was covered in boils and open sores. Their flesh was like some fever dream of Satan, red lesions and putrefying green-and-purple-and-black flesh. A warning. A demonstration for the benefit of Vector’s enemies but also, perhaps, his friends.

Someone had taken a cushion and duct-taped it over the victim’s mouth so that their pleas and cries for mercy were muffled to groans. They writhed, the poor person, writhed and struggled and with each muffled cry reminded everyone of Vector’s power. It was medieval, like some baron or king sticking severed heads on poles to remind anyone passing by who had the power. And who did not.

Then Cruz had a crawling sensation go up her spine. She turned and nearly cried out in shock. There was a matching balcony beneath identical windows just behind her. She had been looking in the wrong direction.

Markovic, Vector, had stationed himself on the balcony level at the top of a wide set of stairs that Cruz thought she recognized from the movie The Untouchables, so that even as she was trying to quell the panic within and trying to ignore the insistent Watchers, she also was picturing the baby carriage from the movie bouncing in slo-mo down the steps.

Vector hovered in the air far above Cruz, a swirl like all the wasps and flies and locusts in creation, swarming, twisting, separating, and coming back together.

He’ll put me next to that poor person on the information booth. And I will scream, scream forever.

She did not have to try too hard to conceal her fear; the mayor would also have been afraid. There was no way to approach what amounted to a malicious, sentient bee swarm, a swarm with terrifying power to inflict unspeakable pain and despair, and not be afraid.

Holy Mary, mother of God . . .

As she walked with measured steps to the base of the stairs, she was watched. Every eye in the place followed her. In addition to the merely human, she saw three people in morphs, one with fantastically wide, completely impractical bat wings.

He probably thinks he’s Batman now.

But she also saw two morphed Rockborn who looked more dangerous. One might have been Armo’s evil cousin: a shaggy, seven-foot-tall monster with the teeth of a saber-toothed tiger. But it was the other one that worried Cruz more: a person small enough to be a child but whose entire body was covered in iridescent gray scales, so that she looked like a fish that had grown legs and arms. The scary thing was not the scales, but the way the creature hovered in midair as if gravity simply did not apply.

Cruz reached the bottom stair, and Vector said, “You can stop right there, your honor.”

“Markovic?” Cruz asked, looking up at him and trying for defiant body language.

“You don’t recognize me? I’m hurt. We’ve met three times that I can recall.”

“I’m not here to talk about old times, Markovic.” Cruz reminded herself to act tough, like a New York City mayor would. “I’m here to see what it will take to get you to stop.”