Monster (Gone 7)

“It’s like some kind of comic book movie,” Dekka said.

Peaks laughed and sat back. “Believe it or not, we’ve got a team at work analyzing Marvel and DC comics, trying to work out a scenario, trying to work through the implications of a world where—”

“Is it real

ly that bad? I mean, so we’ll have a bunch of Spider-Men running around grabbing criminals.”

“Yes, well, unfortunately comic book writers tend not to work through the negatives. There are core human beliefs being subverted here.” He tapped his keyboard again and a graph appeared. “See this line?” He traced it with his finger. “That’s the number of millennialist cults here in the US. We had seventeen we were tracking before the PBA. We now have eight hundred and nine at last count. Cults, fanatics, lunatics, psychopaths, ambitious dictators, terrorists . . . how do you think they’ll all react when they realize that the PBA wasn’t just a one-time, one-location thing? How well do you think they’ll resist whatever the ASO has in mind for us?”

“I don’t have to imagine,” Dekka said flatly. “I was there for Round One.”

Peaks nodded. “Exactly. Three hundred and thirty-two kids were in the PBA. Forty percent died before the barrier came down. Another twenty percent have died since, mostly from suicide or drug overdoses. Others are in prison for various crimes. And others still are in mental institutions. Far too many to explain just from posttraumatic stress.”

“Why hasn’t that been in the news?”

“Because we’ve been covering it up as well as we can, but it’s all over social media, all over the conspiracy websites. Dekka, human civilization is on the brink. World War Three is coming . . . unless we can find a way to neutralize the effect of the rock. Unless we can stop the most dangerous of those who acquire powers. Unless,” he said with an intense stare that chilled Dekka to the marrow, “we can create a loyal army able to take on and defeat those who handcuffs and prison bars cannot hold. Those who bullets cannot stop.”

“That’s what I’m supposed to be? Part of your army?”

He said nothing, just waited.

“What if I refuse?”

Peaks shrugged. “Then we will ask you to remain here at the Ranch.”

“A prisoner?”

He shrugged again, but added a regretful face, tacked on like an emoji.

“This is nuts.”

“The times we live in.”

“No,” Dekka said. “Like I said: I did this once. I was Sam’s soldier, I did this. I did it and I am not going to do it again.”

“Dekka, we need you. Your country needs you. The human race needs you.”

Dekka looked at the carpet for a long time but saw only memories. And with those memories came pain: the visceral memory of physical agony; the memory of grim decisions that cost lives; the memory of Brianna. And poor Edith Windsor, not a very sweet-tempered cat, but the closest thing to a friend Dekka had.

Had.

“I’m not your girl,” she said at last. “Call me a coward, but no, Peaks, I am not signing up for another tour of hell.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. He tapped his keyboard and six thousand volts blasted from Dekka’s chair. She was unconscious within a second.

Dekka woke hours later. She was on her back, on cold steel. She raised her head but found that a steel band was around her neck so that she could rise no more than an inch, barely enough to let her see what she felt: great, cold weights on her hands.

She saw a cubic foot of concrete, rough rectangular blocks imprisoning her hands, resting on purpose-built additions to the gurney. A jolt of terror went through her.

Cementing!

It was the crude countermeasure Caine and Drake had devised in the FAYZ, once they discovered that most (though not all) powers tended to be focused through the hands.

She had been cemented.

Peaks was there beside her now. “I’m sorry to have had to resort to this, Dekka,” he said. “But you were given a choice between lab rat and soldier. Now you’re a lab rat.”

An IV line was in her left arm at the elbow. Sensors festooned her head. Wires rose from her chest.