Villain (Gone 8)

All fifty feet of him flew forward under the impact. He slammed down hard, crushing a car beneath him like a soda can. He tried to stand, but his legs would not work. He twisted his massive reptilian head and stared at the bottom half of Dragon, twisted, skewed, attached now only by skin and viscera.

And liquid fire spilled from his split gut, bubbling out like a volcano.

No! No! He couldn’t die like this. He couldn’t die with the whole world thinking . . . but his mind . . . his thoughts . . . the Dark Watchers . . . No . . .

He felt the light of his mind flicker and fade.

He formed one last, desperate thought.

De-morph!

Francis Specter stood helpless, paralyzed by the sheer, sickening horror. In morph, Francis’s world was bizarre and twisted, lines of light, geometric shapes, but none of that mattered to her now, because her power had made the dying visible in a way no human had ever seen. She saw at once the outsides and the insides of the burning. She watched fire eat its way into their muscle and tendons. She saw the way steam formed pockets beneath skin and within organs. Saw those organs burst.

Malik was beside her. He stood frozen, watching.

“Fire,” Malik said. Like that one word was everything. He touched his arm. He looked down at his uncanny flesh. Then he looked at her and she saw his eyes and the pink mass of brain behind it. Saw his mouth move and the tongue within and the squeezing and releasing of his esophagus, and the vibration of his vocal cords.

“Take me to him,” Malik said.

“To who?” Francis cried, her rainbow eyes streaming tears.

“Him,” Malik said. “He’s in there. It’s why I asked about your clothing—you can move objects with you. So move me, Francis. Move me!”

Francis looked up at the gold tower. Up and behind and around and through it. There were lots of people still in there, some in the hotel rooms, many on the bottom floor. She saw, too, that the fire was inside the lobby, spreading. The reception desk was already smoking. The art on the walls browned and curled.

“Take my hand,” Malik said.

She did.

“Do you see him?”

She searched her field of view. Everything was exposed to her when she focused. “I don’t know!”

“Take me inside.”

“I don’t know if I can!”

Malik took her shoulders and turned her to face him. “Listen to me. I know what fire is. I know what these people . . . the pain . . . the fear . . .” He closed his eyes, shook his head slightly, as if warding off some bit of bad advice. “If you can carry objects like clothing with you, I think you can move me.”

Francis took his hand again. She targeted a spot within the baffling 4-D maze of her reality, and said, “Here goes nothing.”

For a moment of time, a mere moment, Malik experienced a maze of lines and shapes and bizarre visions. And then, suddenly, he was standing in a restaurant off the lobby.

Smoke hung thick and acrid in the air. A man and his family cowered beneath a table.

“Where is he?” Malik asked the cowering man.

The man could only shake his head, too overwhelmed to think. But his son, who looked to be about ten years old, said, “I heard he was on the top floor!”

“Thanks,” Malik said. “Let’s go, Francis. And whatever you do, don’t drop out of morph!”

Thirty seconds later they exited the elevator into an empty hallway. “Blood trail,” Malik said, pointing at a red smear leading down the carpet.

The door to the suite was open.

Inside, two cheerleaders stood over a writhing reptile in formal wear who had already saturated the bed covering with his blood.

“Dillon Poe?” Malik asked.