Villain (Gone 8)

“The full Shade Darby tape is up on YouTube, and the hit counter is going crazy.”

“Show me,” DiMarco said.

The two of them stood in the blood of slaughtered scientists and techs and security men and watched Atwell’s phone.

DiMarco’s eye twitched. Her mouth was a snarl. She watched the brief videos of the cells. Followed by Shade’s opening of same. The speech by Tolliver. And Shade Darby’s final, arrogant speech to the camera.

“I’m Shade Darby. This horror show is run by the US government, by a group called Homeland Security Task Force 66. Do you see what they’re doing here? Do you see what they’re doing supposedly in your name? So who are the bad guys? Us or them?”

DiMarco and Atwell stood near the spot where Shade had addressed the recently liberated. They were at the center of the great cavern, and now DiMarco turned slowly, taking in the fires, the shattered glass, the twisted steel, the smoke, the bodies. The parts of bodies. It had been a surprisingly deliberate, complete, and disciplined act of annihilation, led by that goddamned marine who had broken into the armory and wreaked the kind of purposeful havoc that only a professional soldier could create. (The bulldozer Shade had leaped atop had been later blown apart by one of Tolliver’s missiles.) DiMarco had barely a handful of uninjured staff still present.

“We are now at twenty-two confirmed dead, ninety-six seriously wounded, another eighty with less serious wounds.”

“That’s half of them,” DiMarco snapped. “Where are the rest?”

Atwell hesitated a revealing few seconds before saying, “Many are chasing the mutants down in the woods.”

DiMarco snorted. “Sure they are. Some. But most are running for their lives from our creatures!”

Suddenly, Atwell noted bitterly, it wasn’t my creatures but ours.

No, you vile woman, they are yours, and the results are yours as well. Though, he knew, his career was now bound to hers. His time in the US Army—which he had expected to serve for thirty years—was just about over.

I’ll go work for Janet’s father rehabbing old homes in Kansas City. I’ll never speak of this to anyone. Ever.

“Well, Mike, we are screwed good and proper,” the general said. She’d been able to change into a clean uniform. Atwell had not had a spare uniform, and the urine stain on the front of his trousers had only just begun to dry.

“We can rebuild . . . start at least some of the programs again . . .” Atwell shrugged.

DiMarco was silent, looking around, feeling her career sliding off the edge of a cliff. She had to act quickly and she knew it. The secretary of defense was not calling to congratulate her.

“How far is it from Fort Irwin to Vegas?” she asked.

He Google-Mapped it. “Three hours, give or take.”

“Okay. Put me through to the commander at Irwin. I’m not relieved of duty yet. And I still have the authority.”

“May I ask what you want from Fort Irwin?”

DiMarco laughed, a short, bitter sound. “What do I want from the national tank training facility? What do you think I want? Tanks. That’s what I want: tanks! And one other thing.”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Darby was briefed. Had to have been. She’s in contact with Dekka Talent. That’s the heart of this: Tom Peaks’s misguided experiment: Dekka. Shade is smart, but Dekka is a leader. She just moved to the number-one spot. I don’t care what it takes, what we have to do, but that . . . young woman . . . needs to die.”

It had been a very close call for Dillon and Saffron. The ease with which Dekka and Armo had taken him down had left him fearful. He had power, amazing power, but it did not seem to work on either of them. Which meant it was likely that his power could not affect any mutant in morph.

Which was very, very bad news.

“I shouldn’t have killed those cops,” Dillon muttered. “I thought it would kind of get a laugh. . . . Now they’re just all going to be focused on getting rid of me.”

“They tried to arrest you,” Saffron said sullenly.

It had been her suggestion that Dillon send a strong warning of his power. That warning had turned into an order to two policemen to leap from the tower to their deaths. So much for his briefly held determination not to kill. Hey, if people wanted to kill him, what was he supposed to do?

Saffron was pale and trembling with either fear or fury or some combination of both, but she did not argue as Dillon announced that it was time to get the hell away from the Venetian. It was not good to be a target and sit in a known location, waiting. The two Rockborn who’d come after him could come back.

They pushed through rampaging tourists and overwhelmed cops who did not yet know what either of them looked like. The Strip was a scene of panic, cars driving up onto sidewalks to get around stalled cars or bodies lying in the street. From time to time the angry, concussive noise of gunfire erupted. A billboard truck advertising a strip-tease show swerved madly and toppled onto its side in a spray of sparks.