Chameleon Moon

by RoAnna Sylver

  Regan opened his mouth, but Cairus’s arms snapped up and the motion was enough to shock him into silence and stillness.

  Then he saw the gun. The young man’s white-knuckled hands held it, tight but unsteadily, and the barrel shook as it pointed at Regan’s head.

  He froze.

  Suddenly he felt like he’d been thrown back to that first night in the alley behind the Emerald Bar, when there had been nothing in his head but a terrifying vacuum and crushing silence. He didn’t know where he was anymore, if there was ground beneath his feet or sky above him, or anyone else around; right now he had even less than he did then, because then at least he knew his name. Right now, all he knew was the gun.

  There was someone behind him, he registered dimly. But that was background noise, faint and nonspecific. In front of him, in brutally harsh relief, was the gun. Held by the one person in Parole who recognized Regan, but not for any of the reasons he wanted.

  “Regan?”

  Someone said his name. He knew the voice. But that was all.

  He could have turned around then, but he couldn’t take his eyes away from the weapon aimed unsteadily at him and the way it pitched in the air as its holder trembled. He could have answered. Or raised his hands in a sign of surrender. He could have done a lot of things.

  Instead, he did the only thing that made any sense in the face of this terror. He faded. Immediately he felt the telltale chill run up his spine like icy fingers as his image distorted into nothing, seeming to fall into some hidden dimension beyond what they could see. As he vanished, he tried to shrink to one side, moving away from the weapon’s aim, hoping his disappearing act would be enough to mask his escape.

  But the young man’s shaking hands followed Regan’s hidden but just-visible movement with one big, jolting twitch. A small thunderclap snapped through the air—and Rose pitched forward.

  Danae whipped around, grin freezing on her face. Rose hung suspended in the air for what felt like hours—then dropped to the concrete, mechanical legs clanking against each other.

  Cairus’s mouth hung open and his shoulders heaved in frantic hyperventilation. Tears immediately spilled from his already-red eyes as he stared at Rose in her tangle of metal limbs and vines and hair and blood.

  “Miss Rose?” he mouthed, face going white in horror. “Why are you—no, no, oh God, no, I didn’t mean to…”

  Before anyone could react, and before his stunned brain had quite caught up with what he was doing, Regan was flying across the driveway, scooping Rose up with a strength he didn’t know he had. Adrenaline would do wonders. He tore back the other way without another thought. Behind him the kid in the hospital gown slumped against the building and didn’t move.

  Regan couldn’t be sure, it might have just been his terrified imagination in all the confusion—but as he ran, he thought he caught a glimpse of bright green cat’s eyes.

  By the time they reached the open street, he was thoroughly visible again. He just barely had time to wonder if this was good or bad, or how he would manage carrying Rose any further, whose metal legs were much heavier than they appeared—when an earsplitting screech made him turn to see the crushed-and-repaired yellow taxi cab screaming toward them. SkEye men leaped or were violently shoved out of the way as the car sped toward them, horn blaring. With every last bit of his terror-fueled strength, Regan charged toward it, and it screeched again, this time to a skidmark and burned-rubber halt directly in front of him.

  “Get in the car, get in the car, get in—” Regan jabbered. He somehow managed to free one hand to wrench the backseat door open and toppled inside the instantly-moving car, shielding Rose from being jostled. Across the seat, Zilch was doing the same thing with Finn.

  “Rose!” Evelyn gasped, seeing the blood. “She didn’t—tell me she’s just unconscious!”

  “She’s alive,” Regan panted. “But we gotta go, go, drive!”

  “Wait, where’s Danae?” Evelyn stuck her head out the drivers-side window. “Oh no.”

  Danae stood perfectly still exactly where she’d stood when Rose had fallen, face sheet-white, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. She didn’t move. She didn’t even breathe. Regan recognized that kind of stillness, that horrible shocked paralysis; he’d felt it often enough.

  “Sweetie, can you hear me? We have to go!” Tears filled Danae’s eyes. Slowly, she began to shake. “Danae, Rose is here! She’s over here, Danae! She’s alive, but you have to get in the car!”

  But before she could, a gargantuan tank emerged into the street, its long metal barrel growing longer and longer until the rest of it rounded the blasted corner. The mechanical one-beast army rolled toward them on massive conveyor-belt treads. It centipede-crawled over cars, crushing the metal like a junkyard compactor while sirens and car alarms wailed. People disappeared down streets and into ruined buildings to escape.

  Everyone but Danae—she stared, unblinking, at the monster approaching.

  The men with the gas masks and riot shields stayed too; the war machine was on their side. The commandos organized into two columns on either side of the street, blocking off escape with the impenetrable wall of ballistic shields. And down the aisle of police shock troops came the tank.

  The shields banged against the ground again. Slowly at first, they crashed against the concrete—then the tempo gained speed, faster and faster until it grew into a deafening drumroll.

  “Not again…” The whisper scraped its way out of Danae’s seizing throat under the noise, and she stood rigid as she faced the tank. The small, vulnerable people in the taxi froze, staring wide-eyed at the metal monster bearing down on them. It didn’t slow down, ready to roll right over the short redheaded woman in the middle of the street, who stood very still and stared it down.

  Evelyn gripped the steering wheel, hands shaking but face resolute. “Regan, when I tell you, get ready to take the wheel.”

  “Me?” He looked up, eyes wide. He was still back in that driveway, fading, seeing the gun, hearing the shot. Rose falling. Danae’s smile, turning to horror. Watch her back. He was supposed to… “I don’t know if—I can’t—”

  “If we want to live, someone needs to drive! Now, I’m letting go of this wheel in about ten seconds, so somebody better take it!”

  The huge central turret rotated with a terrible gear-shift clank, and the enormous gun barrel leveled itself directly at Danae. She stood, rooted to the spot, as the metal monster came closer, quaking from head to toe. Her fists and teeth were clenched, and hot tears streamed down her face. Her breathing came in irregular, ragged gasps and all she could hear was the pounding of her own heart. Her mouth hung open and her eyes squeezed shut as panicked, desperate hyperventilation made her head spin.

  The metal grinding stopped, and the deadly muzzle hung mere feet from her head.

  “No.”

  Something inside her broke—and she roared. Danae threw back her head and stretched her jaws so far open it hurt, a shriek of agony and terror and rage exploding out of her like a detonating bomb. And in reply, the ground fractured. Cracks spread across the surface like shattering glass, and Parole started to uproot itself. Pipes burst out of the concrete, writhing like giant metal snakes; scaffolds and chain-link fence and metal grates twisted themselves into angry tangles, slicing at the black helmets and wall of riot shields.

  “AAAAAAAGGHH!”

  Danae charged forward, running right under the tank’s muzzle and up to the front armor plating, and slammed her hands down onto the metal, digging her fingers in like puncturing claws. The steel screamed, and so did she, absorbing the impact that should have shattered human bones. The tank shuddered and sputtered, the roar of its engine dissolving into struggling grinding and bangs. Metal panels flew off or twisted as if they were melting, and the entire machine began to collapse on itself like a ball of tin foil crumpled in Danae’s fist.

  She gritted her teeth and pushed—and the tank pitched backwards. The behemoth reared up onto its back treads, fron
t coming completely off the ground. And it kept rising. For one long, horrifying moment it hung vertically in the air like the broken Titanic before its final descent into the sea, gun barrel pointing straight up into the sky.

  Then it fell, crashing onto its back on the concrete with an earthquake impact. The ground jumped and everyone in the taxi felt the shock wave—but Danae didn’t seem to notice.

  “Rose…” Tears pouring down her face as she fought for breath, shaking so hard she looked ready to fall over any second. “No, no, no…”

  The tank sat upside-down, treads still rotating in the air like the helpless legs of an overturned turtle. For a moment, shocked silence settled over the street, as everyone, Danae’s friends and the men in the black masks stared at the small woman in the street, and the downed military tank.

  “Holy crap…” Regan whispered, awed and sick and proud at the same time. “She punched it in the face.”

  Then the earth gave way. The hollow concrete of Parole’s street caved under the tank’s impact, and the metal beast slid down. Sidewalk slabs shattered and sank from view, entire chunks of earth and buildings and road started to collapse and tumble into the deepening crater, soon the dead tank would punch a hole right through the ground and fall into the fire.

  Evelyn slammed the struggling taxi into gear, and stepped on the accelerator. The car catapulted forward, and Regan almost swallowed his tongue screaming. Evelyn pointed the taxi right at Danae, and rolled her window all the way down.

  “Regan, now!”

  “What now?”

  “Wheel! Take it! Drive right by her, close as you can, and do not stop!”

  Regan lurched forward and grabbed the steering wheel as Evelyn gripped the window frame, kicked off her shoes—and started to climb through. She gritted her teeth, bare toes curling around the window’s edge as she pulled herself up onto the hood of the car. Evelyn crouched there on all fours, hands and feet splayed across the hood and windshield, as the speeding car screeched across the torn-up pavement.

  Men in body armor ran, scrambling away from the collapsing hole, riot shields forgotten. By the dozens, they dropped their guns and dove out of the way of the wildly swerving taxi.

  Regan was almost to her, coming up on Danae so fast he could see the tears in her clothes, the blood and sweat on her raised arms. That’s when he started to panic, and realize exactly how fast they were speeding right for her.

  “Evelyn, we’re going to—”

  “Closer!” She was standing up now, hanging ten, barefoot on the hood of the taxi with her arms outstretched. “Closer, Regan!”

  He’d just gotten Rose shot and now he was about to mow Danae right down, no, no, he couldn’t let this happen again but it was too late, they were on her—

  Evelyn caught her. She leaned forward and snatched Danae up from behind as the car shrieked past at 70 miles per hour, yanking her up onto the hood of the car and falling backwards into the windshield. Danae slumped against her, limp and shuddering, but alive. Together they hunkered down toward the right side of the car, getting a more secure grip on the moving surface and actually letting Regan see ahead of them.

  “Yes!” Regan pumped his fist in the air out the open window—then happily gave the scattered commandos the finger. “Ev, you did it, we’re gonna be—”

  “Just drive!” He wasn’t sure who yelled it at him; Evelyn still on the hood with Danae, or Zilch from the back seat. He thought it might have been everyone all at once.

  Regan couldn’t believe they were still alive. Alive, and as far as he could tell, free, leaving the chaos of the tank’s crater in the city far behind them. A successful jailbreak. A terrified dragon gripping the wheel with shaky, scaly hands; Finn, burned and traumatized but cuddled in the gentle embrace of the Frankenstein-esque grim reaper in the back; and Danae, the tiny woman whose fearsome strength had just killed a tank, laying on the hood of their speeding car with Evelyn Calliope, superheroine who’d saved them all this time without singing a word. Regan sucked in his tongue and let out a nervous laugh. All of them, together. Damaged, but alive. Somehow, it felt like the way it was supposed to be.

  And then there was Rose, bleeding in the back seat.

  Regan’s smile froze, along with his own blood. He gripped the wheel and drove.

  Danae hated hospitals, and this room came close enough. Since Hans’s room already contained an array of medical equipment, it seemed logical to move some extra beds in here for Rose and Finn. Or it would, if Danae were capable of logical thought. She followed in a half dream state while Evelyn—who somehow seemed to get more energized the worse a crisis became—made decisions, told people to do things, then dashed off to find something or someone, Danae couldn’t really comprehend words. She stood there frozen as the sterile world blurred and rushed around her. Tunnel-vision fixed on Rose, and Danae couldn’t look away or move or think or breathe. Too drained to scream, too battered and exhausted to fight. All she could see was Rose and all she could do was stare, then slowly reach for her hand.

  Lisette’s big brown eyes were calm behind her blue surgical mask as well as she strode confidently into the room; Wren followed her, also in a mask, and tying their long hair back in a ponytail. Danae dimly wondered how a pair of teenagers could be so unworried about all of this, while she held tighter to Rose’s hand, both as an anchor to herself, and to somehow keep her wife from slipping away.

  “Excuse me, Miss Danae,” Lisette’s voice made Danae jump. “She’ll be fine, we know what we’re doing, but you have to give us a little room, okay?”

  “You know what you’re…” Danae forced herself back into the present. Behind the short girl in the scrubs, Wren was gingerly cutting Rose’s favorite T-shirt away from her wound. Her shirt was stained brown instead of pink, and the white gloves over Wren’s small hands were red. Danae’s head spun and when she could form words she was surprised they didn’t come out in a scream. “No. Rose needs actual help! You’re kids, and you can’t be the only ones here. We need someone in charge, a grown up, a doctor, I’m sorry, but—”

  “Listen, if you want a grown-up, I guess that’s Mr. Liam. But if you someone in charge who can help your wife, that’s us.” Lisette’s confident gaze held the unspoken promise that yes, she knew exactly what she was doing. For a kid who didn’t even come up to the never-tall Danae’s armpit, she projected the energy of someone who had the situation under control and knew it. Still, it didn’t do much to quell the barely-restrained panic screaming through Danae’s head and heart.

  “I can’t find Liam, I can’t find anyone!” Evelyn burst into the small room, breathing hard but still maintaining composure with much more success than Danae was feeling. “It’s a ghost town. The security gates are up again. I think he put the place on lockdown.”

  “Like I said. Now will you let us—” Lisette’s voice was steady as her gaze, as Wren’s hands tugged on Lisette’s sleeve. “What?”

  They pointed back at Rose. And there, instead of the terrifying red, Danae saw another color, something that had always been the color of hope, love, and promise.

  Green.

  Something green was emerging from Rose’s wound, poking out its small tip like the first head of a crocus in spring’s thaw. A tangle of vines sprang up before their eyes, actually moving, welling up like a spring’s flow from far beneath the earth’s surface—and like always, there were tiny points of pink, purple and gold amid the greenery. Flowers.

  “She’s healing herself,” Lisette whispered, eyes wide and tone awed. Wren moved to get a better look, staring so intently at the vine it seemed like they were trying to memorize its every inch. Danae and Evelyn just held one another, struck silent and still by the paralyzing combination of pain and hope. “Her circulatory system is made up of vines and flowers, right? So it’s gotta be healing her hardcore. Purging all the toxins, and just… growing and growing and…”

  Something rose up like a seed casing from inside the tiny jungle, pushed out by insisten
t tendrils and leaves. A tiny metal slug rose on a rope of twisting vines that grew from under Rose’s skin like a plant sprouting in time-lapse photography.

  “She’s rejecting the bullet.” Lisette exchanged a glance with Wren, which quickly turned into an obvious huge shared grin behind their masks. For the first time since entering the tension-filled room, the excited teenagers actually looked as young as they were. “This is so cool.”

  Staring, Danae picked up the tiny object between her finger and thumb. A little cylinder of crushed metal, with hair-thin curls of vines still clinging to it. This tiny, insignificant thing could have killed Rose. Danae snapped from her daze and flung it away. It clanged into the sterilized tray. Then, weak and pale with relief, she sank down and rested her head on Rose’s mattress, comforted by the regular, gentle rise and fall of her wife’s chest. Evelyn’s hand was warm on her back and she heard her give a relieved sob. The worst was over.

  “What about him?” Zilch’s voice made them all turn; with a slight pang of guilt Danae realized she’d forgotten they and Finn were even in the room. How she possibly could have forgotten the tall, hooded figure who hovered nervously beside the unconscious Finn, was beyond her. Their patchwork face was, frankly, terrifying, and often hard to read, but nobody would have been able to miss the worry in their reconstructed eyes, or even their distorted voice.

  Now that she’d landed back in the present, she realized Regan was nowhere to be seen.

  Lisette turned her attention to Finn, but didn’t touch him. “Pretty severe burns, but they’re mostly superficial, so what you see is about the worst of it—” Wren interrupted her with a few quick signs. “Yeah, and severe dehydration and shock.” She gave Finn one more look as if she were making sure she was absolutely correct, then nodded in satisfaction, hands on her hips.

  “Skin.” Zilch looked down at Lisette; given their height differences, they had to look down at quite an angle. “Does he need it?”