Hero (Gone 9)

One down! Now for the black bitch.

His swarm raced back as an enraged Dekka ran forward. So much the better. Let her come all the way to the passenger car, and there he would present her with a stark choice: surrender or watch helpless people writhe in undying agony.

Hah! That was the problem with virtuous, heroic types: they lacked ruthlessness. Rather than allow the passengers to come to harm, they would leave him to annihilate all opposition and rule the country. The world!

Wait . . . where was Shade Darby’s body?

Dekka fired, and Vector registered dozens, hundreds of his eyes going dark, but no matter: he had hundreds of thousands of eyes to spare.

Then, still searching for the crumpled remains that had made him too happy, he spotted the curious object on the floor. Green. With scratched letters.

And a timer.

And the glowing, red number . . . 00:02 . . .

No!

Dekka and Armo disappeared. The shell . . . did not.

But no explosion would kill him. His swarm would be diminished, scattered, but not annihilated.

Unless . . .

NO!

Markovic ordered his swarm out, out through the shattered windshield of the energy car, out through the broken side window of the first-class car.

Then Vector’s world came apart, as the hurtling train came to a sudden and total stop. His parts swirled in a tornado of crashing steel and flying hostages.

Sam Temple focused his mind, the same mind that had learned to manipulate light itself during the FAYZ. It felt like old times, but not in a good way.

The timer on his phone counted down. 00:03 . . . 00:02 . . .

Armo, Dekka, and Francis appeared, their weight causing the helicopter to yaw, nearly throwing Sam out through the door.

“Now!” Dekka yelled.

Sam focused, and a split second later, the Acela train, now moving at a relatively sedate fifty-five miles an hour, smashed into the interior wall of a transparent dome. This was not a derailment. This was not a sideswiping of another train. This was a collision like nothing any train had ever endured. This was train vs. brick wall. Irresistible force meeting unmovable object.

The deceleration was shocking to see. The energy car accordioned, swung left, breaking away from the first car, smashed sideways into the barrier, and bounced back. The second car, the one containing the hostages, plowed into the engine, T-boning it, and split open. Bodies flew from the jagged tear, one flying so fast it smashed into the dome’s interior, splitting the body open like it had just been autopsied.

The remaining cars cascaded in a jumbled pile, like some terrifying game of pickup sticks.

Malik was yelling something that Sam barely understood at first.

“Shade! De-morph!”

Sam heard but could not take his eyes off the destruction he had just caused. He could imagine all too easily the carnage inside, the bodies suddenly hurled around a steel tube, smashed, broken, split open, spilling their intestines . . . He could not stop looking because to stop looking was to avoid taking on all the pain he knew he deserved. He owed it to the people—the people he had just killed—to look, to acknowledge.

And he thought, as the helicopter swerved away to avoid hitting the exterior of the dome, that it would be a sort of justice if he simply let go and fell to his death. The alternative was living this moment over and over again in his mind. And he already had so many terrible moments that his nights would never be safe from nightmares.

It was Dekka who pulled him back inside and pushed him gently into a seat. Sam now saw the nearer horror, right at his feet: Shade, a gory mess, and Malik and Cruz shouting and Simone crying and he was back in it all, back in all that he had escaped.

The helicopter made a wide turn, having run past the dome, which was little more than an eighth of a mile in diameter. The dome that had appeared at Sam’s command and had cut through buildings and cars and people.

How many dead? Oh, God, how many had he killed?

Vector had no warning. The dome was perfectly transparent. No warning. Just a catastrophically violent impact that sent bags, seats, glass, and bodies flying through the air. An impact that twirled the cars like cheerleaders’ batons. Through tens of thousands of eyes Vector witnessed the wild madness of annihil