Villain (Gone 8)

“Jesus H. Christ, Shade!” Cruz erupted once she had patted herself frantically as if she expected to be missing some bits.

Shade slowed her answer, taking forever to say a “sorry” that could be heard and understood by people living in real time.

Where the trees ended was a wide greenbelt perimeter that preceded a double chain-link fence topped with razor wire.

Shade de-morphed, the better to communicate. Back on the road above, the military helicopter was rising to search for its suddenly disappeared prey. One of the news helicopters had captured the whole thing on video, and now the military craft was hovering near the news chopper and a male voice was yelling through a loudspeaker. “You have violated secure air space. Leave the area immediately!”

“Look!” Cruz yelled, pointing at a file of vehicles hastily loaded with armed men and women, some still frantically buttoning uniforms over bulletproof vests. The vehicles were driving into the band of cleared ground between the woods and the compound’s fence.

“I’ll take care of them,” Shade said. “Keep Malik moving!”

“Wait!”

Shade heard him just in time, halfway back to morph. “What?” Malik had been almost mute, like having a zombie along for the ride.

“Let me try,” Malik said.

She had not nerved herself up to ask him. She had thought of asking him, but some lingering shred of normal decency had stopped her. The shark’s ruthlessness was not for Malik.

“You don’t have to do this, Malik,” Shade said.

“You’re safer if I do it, Shade,” Malik said.

Cruz yelled, still very keyed up from having essentially flown through dense forest at speeds that had nearly blown her T-shirt off. “What? What, are you psychic now, Malik?”

Not entirely impossible given the world as it now existed post-rock, Shade had to admit.

Malik looked at Shade, who could not quite bring herself to meet his gaze. “I’m not psychic. I just know how unprepared you are for feelings, Shade. Normal people feel guilt and self-doubt pretty often, but you, Shade? You have no coping mechanism for this. And I’m afraid what you’re trying to do now is end it all.”

Shade froze. Cruz blinked at Malik, then nodded, understanding.

“I’m not . . . ,” Shade said, but found no words to complete the thought.

“Not consciously,” Malik said. “But you’re being reckless. You have a weapon. You have to use it. You do not have my permission to get yourself killed.”

Shade shook her head, but only barely. Her denial would have carried more conviction had she been able to look at him, but she kept her eyes aimed away, at the woods, at the sky, at Cruz, only long enough to see that Cruz agreed with Malik.

“No, Malik, I can do this. You don’t have to—”

Suddenly Malik pushed his face close to Shade’s. “It’s all I’ve got now,” he snarled. “It’s all I have, all I can do to help. So shut up and let me do it.”

Shade stepped back from his rage. But a part of her was almost relieved. Open anger was easier than Malik’s vacant, silent suffering.

Shade nodded, not trusting her voice.

Malik closed his eyes and said, “You both need to be morphed.”

CHAPTER 12

Semper Fi

I AM MASTER Sergeant Matthew Tolliver, United States Marine Corps. Semper Fi!

The words were silent, in his head alone, because to speak them aloud risked getting a ve

ry nasty, very painful shock.

His space was a cell, not small as cells went, but far from the open skies and endless horizons of his Montana childhood. He had served aboard naval vessels, of course, six tours in the Mediterranean, and aboard ship the accommodations were tight to say the least. But on a ship he still had the sea and the sky and a cold breeze on his face.