Monster (Gone 7)

Oberlin rose to her feet. “Do you have any idea how that looks if it ever gets out?”

“Why should it get out?” Peaks asked, and he allowed just the hint of a threat in his tone. Not enough to get him arrested right then and there, just enough to remind them that he, Tom Peaks, had all the secrets, and people with dangerous secrets needed to be treated fairly. Carefully. Respectfully.

Neither Pope nor Oberlin answered, but rather than feeling vindicated, Peaks could see by their hard looks that he was finished.

Still, he was employed at the moment, and he would continue to do his best.

“There again,” Peaks explained, “there’s the problem that law enforcement can only take things so far. We could ask them to arrest this Shade Darby person, but to what end? The young woman in question has powers that would make it all but impossible for her to be arrested.”

“And do we have any notion of where that person is now?”

Peaks met her eye and tried to conceal his impatience. Why were they making him jump through hoops? If he was to be fired, he’d rather get it over with. “We have some sense that they are moving west. We think they’re stealing cars, switching plates, stealing smartphones as well.”

“No one’s catching them stealing cars?”

“The girl’s power involves speed. She can move faster than the human eye can see.”

Oberlin shook her head and looked disgusted. “Jesus, what a cock-up. We’ve lost control of ASO-Two and -Three and -Four—”

“We have the Mother Rock,” Peaks interrupted. “Or will as soon as the ship docks in LA.”

“Swell,” Pope said dryly. “But we’ve also got this Knightmare person killing citizens left and right; we’ve got your experiment, the Dookie person, whatever her name is, silly name, the girl from the PBA. And this speed-freak girl. And the kid who went berserk. That’s four supers running around loose, here in the homeland.”

“Yes,” Peaks said tightly.

“And none of your countermeasures is ready.”

“We are ready to begin testing additional cyborgs.”

“That’s where you stick a human head on a robot body?” Oberlin asked.

Peaks winced. “In effect, yes, though it’s more complicated than—”

Oberlin waved that off. “What you have ready right now, today, is bubkes, am I right?”

“There are the rapid-response teams . . .”

“No, no, no,” the SecDef said. “I remember the briefings, Mr. Peaks, I remember being in a conference room three, no, almost four years ago, watching your PowerPoint and you telling us that conventional means would be useless against people with enhanced abilities.”

“Not useless,” Peaks said. “Just . . . limited. Justin DeVeere, the one who calls himself Knightmare, is not fast; he moves at normal speeds, and we are confident that we can take him down. Dekka Talent as well, and the Adamo kid.”

“But not the Chicago girl.”

“As you know, we’ve studied powers. Super-speed presents a very tough challenge. The girl in the PBA who called herself the Breeze moved at just under the speed of sound in short bursts, or could travel distances at something like two hundred miles an hour. We think Shade Darby is faster, maybe quite a bit faster. And she appears to form some kind of protective armor over a streamlined shape. It’s a physical impossibility to aim a gun at her—she’s effectively invisible when she’s moving.”

“So how do you stop her?”

“We have to trap her,” Peaks said. “We have to trick her into a trap.” He almost added, Problem is, we don’t know how to do that, but stifled the outburst of honesty.

Pope lifted some papers from the coffee table between them and peered sidelong at one. “This wasn’t strictly your problem, but we have fresh confirmation that the Haqqanis have ASO-Four.”

“As you said, that was not my operation, that was run by CIA. And the Adamo person was Colonel DiMarco’s project, undertaken without—”

“That’s General DiMarco now,” Oberlin said. The last flicker of hope in Peaks’s head was drowned.

“Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to have terrorists with enhanced powers?” Oberlin said, sounding as if she were giving a speech. “We are tasked with the job of keeping the American people safe, and so long as I hold this position, we will keep them safe.”

“I believe I do understand the dangers,” Peaks snapped. She was playing with him, like a cat with a mouse.