Villain (Gone 8)

Shade blew away, raced through the emergency room, a hellish scene of patients and their doctors and nurses all writhing in torment, crying, roaring, letting go of every bodily fluid. She went on, down corridors where patients dragged themselves out of sickbeds in a desperate need to do something, anything, to escape. She saw a nurse just about to jab herself with a syringe and took a millisecond’s detour to snatch the syringe away.

Finally, Shade arrived at Malik’s room.

And there he was: Malik.

Of all the things Shade expected, this was none of them, because Malik stood. Stood. He had pulled the tubes from his throat and was unwinding gauze and peeling off compresses, revealing his own healthy black flesh, undamaged, unscarred.

Impossible!

From every direction the terrible screams lessened, giving way to moans and cries of shock.

Shade could do nothing but stare as the full horror of what she was seeing came home to her. The rock transformed those who took it. The power the rock granted came with the necessity of a physical transformation—a morph.

This Malik, the one with flesh and muscles, was not Malik, it was a morph of Malik, like some desperately unfunny joke. He had become not himself but a version of himself, a living memory of himself.

“It’s gone,” Malik cried. “The pain’s gone! I’m better, Shade! I’m fixed!”

CHAPTER 3

Veterans of Past and Future Wars

“YOU WERE CLEVER to come in through the back window,” Astrid Ellison said to her guests. “We’ve been under surveillance for the last four years, but it was pretty sketchy. You’d see a cop every now and then, or maybe an FBI car. But the last weeks it’s been more intense.”

“Any chance the place is bugged?” Dekka Talent asked, accepting a cup of tea.

Astrid made a humorless laugh. “Of course it’s bugged, but we found the bug with some help from a guy Albert sent us. He tied the bug into a YouTube channel, and if anyone’s watching or listening they’re probably getting awfully tired of listening to autoplays of Tim and Eric.”

“Albert, huh?” Dekka said with a glance at Armo.

Armo, short for Aristotle Adamo, was very large, very strong, and not terribly bright despite his given name. He was a pathologically oppositional white high school boy who had ended up being thrown together with Dekka. And oddly enough, the partnership between the tough, serious, unshakable African American lesbian and the impulsive, reckless, impossible-to-control straight white guy seemed to work. Neither could have explained why. So long as Dekka was careful to avoid sounding as if she was giving orders and always gave Armo the option of disagreeing, he would mostly end up doing what she needed done.

And there was value in a crazy person who could become a sort of weird, not-quite-polar bear. His power was little compared to Dekka’s, but in a fight it never hurt to have some batshit berserker on your side. And no one was more berserk than Armo once the fighting started.

“Who’s Albert?” Armo asked.

Sam Temple sat opposite them in an IKEA Poäng chair, brown leather and blond wood. “Depends who you ask. Most people in the FAYZ despised him. But they ate because Albert figured out how to feed them.” He shrugged. “The FAYZ revealed unsuspected depths in some. Albert’s what, like, seventeen, eighteen years old now? He’s at very least a millionaire, and if he’s not a billionaire by the time he’s thirty, I’ll be shocked. His company—FAYZco—owns four McDonald’s franchises down in Orange County and one in Oakland. And his second book is number one. Still.”

“Business Secrets of the FAYZ,” Astrid said with a curled lip.

It would be wrong, Dekka reflected, to suppose that time had matured Astrid—Astrid had always been an adult. Dekka pictured Astrid at three years old already delivering lectures and secretly imagining herself to be the smartest person in the room. Then again, Dekka admitted, Astrid generally was the smartest person in the room. Once upon a time she’d been known as Astrid the Genius. Of course, Astrid the Ice Queen, Astrid the Bitch, and even less polite sobriquets had also been used at times. And had also been at least partly true.

Dekka had never much liked Astrid, but Astrid had changed over time, both in the FAYZ and after. On a superficial level she’d grown from quite pretty to stunning. The weight of pain and fear, and a small dose of humility, had added depth to her judgment

al blue eyes. And a diet of something other than rat and cabbage had given her a complexion too perfect to be natural, though Dekka detected no makeup. Astrid was manipulative, controlling, and superior, but also in the end an oddly perfect match for Sam Temple. Dekka was glad Sam had her watching his back—Astrid could be fierce.

The strength of the bond between them even impressed itself on Armo, who quite enjoyed looking at Astrid. Armo had read a book once—just one—and it had been about the Vikings, who he considered “his people,” his heritage. Give Astrid Ellison a sword and a chain-mail coat, and she would be exactly what Armo imagined a Viking shield maiden would look like. But Armo kept his admiration discreet. Dekka had told Armo about Sam, and while Sam could no longer simply raise his hands and burn a hole through you, there was a gravity to him. Armo might be (by his own cheerful admission) all kinds of difficult and headstrong, and he would never pretend to be the smartest person in any room, but he honored warriors, and, if Dekka was to be believed, Sam Temple was the living, breathing incarnation of a warrior king, some combination of Cnut the Great, Cyclops from the X-Men, and George Washington.

Dekka saw that Sam had put on weight. Not fat, but thickness in his shoulders and arms. Sam Temple at age fourteen had had terrifying power and staggering responsibility dropped on him. He had made mistakes, he had failed at times, but he had become a great leader, an inspiration. Dekka had become his strong right arm, his soldier, his advisor. Dekka and Sam were connected in ways that only two combat soldiers who’ve shared a foxhole can be.

For no particular reason, Sam reached across the coffee table and took Dekka’s hand. She squeezed back and held it for a long minute as memories flowed invisibly between them.

“Sammy,” Dekka said, shaking her head.

“Dekka,” he said.

“Bad shit happening, Sam.”

He nodded. “Yeah. It’s the same thing, isn’t it? The FAYZ, I mean.”