Hero (Gone 9)

He shook his head violently.

“Oh, sure you have. And me? I’ve dreaded it. Dreaded it!”

Quick as a snake, Drake whipped his tentacle arm at her. It was a well-aimed blow, and Astrid was too slow to react. Hah! I’ll still . . .

Then he saw that she was smiling. The whip hand should have laid a bloody gash across her face but . . . nothing.

“Yes,” Astrid said, nodding with some satisfaction. “It’s fascinating, really, the way the rock works out here in the wider world beyond the FAYZ. It should be random is the thing; you should develop mutations that don’t necessarily function well. Take Shade Darby for example. She could have developed speed but been burned by the heat of air-friction, but no, her mutation came with a sort of armor. And think about the subtle changes that have to take place inside the brain to be able to process visual images while moving at the speed of sound. Frankly, it suggests intentionality.”

“You stalling for Sam to sneak up behind me?”

“Sam? No, he’s away. He had other things to do. And I wanted this to be just for us, you and me, Drake. Our special time together.”

Drake’s eyes darted. Door: no. Window? He’d have to get past her first.

“In any event, along with the super strength I got pretty much invulnerable skin. Yes, indeed. So honestly, you won’t need this old thing anymore.”

She shoved her right hand under his left arm and lifted him effortlessly into the air as he kicked and cursed and tried to whip her. She let him flail, then caught his tentacle in her free hand. Still firmly holding his whip, she threw him across the room. Threw him like he was nothing, and as he flew backward through the air he saw her intent and shrieked in outrage.

She held his whip. Had she not he might have smashed into the wall, but she held his whip and it yanked at him. He fell onto a glass coffee table, shattering it.

“Well, that’s a mess I’ll have to clean up.”

Then as Drake tried to get back on his feet, Astrid yanked his tentacle arm so hard he was thrown against the kitchen counter, then, like he was a yo-yo, she snapped him back the other direction so hard that his head left a dent in the wallboard.

With an impossible leap, Astrid was over him, astride him, looking down at him like he was a worm, the bitch, and she still had his whip arm, and now she had one foot on his pecs, holding him down effortlessly. With her massive left arm she began coiling his tentacle, like she was putting away a garden hose.

He felt the tension in his shoulder, and the horror of her intentions was clear now, and he roared, “No! No! No, you bitch, I’ll make you suffer. I’ll nail you to the floor and drop burning coals on your . . . No, no, nooooo! No! Nooooo!”

Astrid, with a foot on his shoulder, pulled with the strength the rock had given her, pulled and coiled as the whip stretched and then would stretch no more and began to tear as Drake screamed the vilest curses and threats.

And then, all at once, she was holding it, a limp python.

“You see the lack of internal structure, the absence of viscera, tendons, veins. This goes to the . . . I won’t say supernatural because I believe that word to be an oxymoron, but let’s say, the unusual origin of this appendage of yours. It might as well be Play-Doh inside.”

“Let me go!”

“You know, Drake, you tempt me to sadism. But I refuse to

take pleasure in this.”

And yet, she was smiling. She started toward the door, dragging him now by his hair.

“Where are you taking me?” he cried, kicking and yelling and trying to grab the doorsill, all of it futile.

“Down to the garage. Let’s take the elevator, shall we?”

“Let me go or I’ll kill everyone you love! You know I’ll come back! You know I can’t be killed!”

“Well, that may be true, Drake,” Astrid allowed, now carrying him down the exterior walkway to the elevator as easily as Drake had carried the FBI agent’s brat. “But you can certainly be slowed down, can’t you?”

The elevator door opened. Astrid tossed him inside, and Drake saw that she had his precious whip arm looped around her neck like a scarf. He thrashed frantically but pointlessly, trying to claw with his remaining hand, as Astrid calmly pressed the B for basement.

The door opened on the second floor, revealing an elderly man in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, carrying a cooler.

“Might want to catch the next one,” Astrid said. “Sorry.”

In the basement garage, Astrid dragged Drake by the foot, allowing him to flail away, to claw at the concrete, to stretch to try and get hold of anything solid, almost seeming to enjoy it.