Monster (Gone 7)

She raised a trembling hand to feel the writhing, questing snakes on her head grow limp, hang, dry now to the touch. Just dreads once again.

Dekka wanted to scream. Wanted to roar in rage. Wanted to run and keep running.

Taylor. Drake. The ones who were physically altered by the power of the rock kept their powers. A physical change preserved the powers within the world outside the FAYZ.

“My God,” Dekka whispered, gazing in fascination at the impossible reality that she had been physically transformed, altered in ways she had not yet fully seen, and might not wish to see. Ever.

What have they done to me?

My God, what have they done to me?

Then, a terrible thought.

“E! E! Where are you?” She searched frantically through the shredded wreckage, calling her cat’s name.

She stopped when she found a small rectangle of fur and flesh.

It took ten minutes for the emergency team to dig through the rubble and reach the still-dusty, slightly flooded open space. Two EMTs pushed past her with the calm, efficient hurry of professionals.

“Anyone hurt?” one asked Dekka.

I must be back to normal, Dekka thought, and when she looked at her hands they were once more her hands.

Not just transform, but transform back.

She didn’t answer, couldn’t answer. She let them look, let them figure it out for themselves. Watched them recoil. Watched one of the EMTs vomit in his mouth and then force it down.

Peaks came picking his way through the rubble. He stopped, took in the open sky above, the shredded mass, the blood, and finally turned triumphant eyes on Dekka, stared at her and then around at the devastation. “It works!”

Dekka was on him in a flash. She grabbed his collar with both hands and pulled his smug face close. “I just killed those people! I just killed my cat!”

“I . . . we . . . we assumed you’d regain your old power. We didn’t think—”

“Yeah, you got that right,” Dekka snarled. “This is your idea of a test? Jesus Christ! I killed people!”

“Yes, the test did get away from us a bit.”

Dekka stared at him in slack-jawed disbelief. “A bit? A bit? I just killed three human beings and my pet. I just killed them! You have no right! You’ve made me a killer!”

“You need to calm down, Dekka,” Peaks said. He pried her hands from his collar. “I’m sorry about those men, I really am. But they were soldiers. Soldiers sometimes die—”

“This isn’t a damn war!”

“Oh, but it is,” he said flatly. “It is absolutely a war.” And then, his voice low and urgent, he said, “Have you . . . Did you happen to look at yourself, your hands perhaps?”

Dekka’s lie came easily. “I was a bit busy being terrified.”

“Mmm,” Peaks said, eyeing her skeptically. “Yes. Well, whatever you did blew out all the cameras. But in the seconds just before . . .” He let it trail off.

She had no choice but to ask. “What?”

Peaks shrugged. “It looked as if you had been transformed. Physically transformed.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Dekka lied again.

“Of course.” Peaks looked around at the wreckage. “You’ll need a new room. We can arrange to get you a new cat.”

Dekka closed her eyes, wanting to weep for her unintended victims.