Simone could not sneak out of her room without walking right past her father’s office. But she could open a window, fly two windows across, and open the window to her father’s bedroom. He never locked his window—who did, fourteen floors up?
Inside that darkly masculine space with its greens and browns, she went to the Francis Calcraft Turner painting of a traditional English fox hunt that hung over the fireplace. She swung the painting aside on its hinges. Behind it was a wall safe with a six-digit code Simone had long since memorized. Inside the safe were important documents, a handgun, and neat stacks of currency. Each bank-banded stack of hundred-dollar bills was half an inch thick and represented ten thousand dollars. She took five.
Then she contemplated the handgun, her other unacknowledged goal. She had never before had any interest in guns, but at the same time, given her father’s paranoid-yet-giddy state of mind? Leaving him a gun could only make matters worse. And in this Looney-Tunes world, a gun seemed like a good idea.
Close-up on Simone’s face. She’s conflicted. She touches the gun cautiously, hesitates, turns away, then turns back, decisive.
Simone slipped the gun, the extra clips, and the money into her backpack. She was closing the safe when she heard her father approaching, a clicking, scraping, buzzing sound very unlike his usual purposeful stride.
Simone raced for the window, climbed onto the sill, took a deep breath, and zoomed effortlessly across Fifth Avenue.
CHAPTER 14
Astrid Does Amazon
“HEY, YOU’RE THAT girl.”
Astrid Ellison was often recognized. She’d been the unofficial public voice of FAYZ survivors and had given numerous interviews over the last four years, starting with the famous interview where she’d first been reunited with Sam Temple. Then, too, she’d had a bestselling book that had spawned a hit movie. The whole country knew the name Astrid Ellison, and knew she was the girlfriend—now wife—of the hero of the FAYZ.
Astrid Ellison nodded at the UPS driver. “Yes, I am.” The direct gaze of her blue eyes and the chill in her voice ended the chitchat. She signed for the delivery, a long cardboard box. In the box was a forty-nine-inch-long galvanized-steel tool box of the sort that fits in the back of a pickup truck. It was way too heavy for her to lift, so she dragged it to the elevator that led down to the basement of the apartment building.
Astrid rode down with the box while checking her find-a-phone feature for Sam’s whereabouts. Good, he was still at Costco. Using a box cutter, she stripped away the cardboard box and shoved it into a recycling bin. Each apartment had a storage space in the underground parking garage, chain-link enclosures lit by bare bulbs, half of them burned out. She wiped sweat from her brow, opened the lock of the storage cage, and pushed the box inside. Then she carefully covered it with plastic containers of mementos and cartons of her Perdido Beach book so that a casual glance wouldn’t reveal it.
The steel box had come from Amazon, and she was sure the government was watching her, but it was just a box, after all, and might mean anything or nothing. Still, for caution’s sake, she would buy the rest of her list at various stores, using cash, and leave no digital trace.
When she was done in the storage cage, she opened her Notes app and scanned her list. Six items left to obtain.
Chain
Locks
Chain saw
Machete
Heavy-duty plastic
If she spread her purchases around, they shouldn’t attract too much attention from the government. The government was rather busy at that moment with various major disasters, after all.
The final item on her list was more concerning. There were not that many innocent places to obtain hydrofluoric acid. There were easier acids to find, but the beauty of hydrofluoric acid was that it did not eat plastic or most metals.
It did, however, dissolve flesh.
Drake would come for her soon; Astrid was convinced of it. Ever since she had learned that Drake was still alive—if you could call it life—she’d thought about how to prepare, how to defeat the unkillable, tentacle-armed sadist.
She now had a heavy steel box. She would soon have chains and locks. And a chain saw. And heavy plastic. And acid.
All of which was good, but nowhere near enough.
Astrid was studious by nature and had gleaned everything she could from a brief earlier meeting with an old ally, Dekka, as well as from news accounts. She had a fairly clear idea how these new and even more dangerous mutations worked, how it manifested—the physical transformations that accompanied the acquisition of powers. The FAYZ dome, she hypothesized, had acted in lieu of physical morphs, protecting what was inside from the laws of physics outside. She suspected the physical transformations that were now part of the development of superpowers did something similar—exempting the mutant from the ordinary laws of physics.
Or not. It was just a theory.
But her research could not tell her what would happen to her. If there was rhyme or reason to the effects of the rock, she had not discovered it.
She retrieved from its hiding place the FedEx envelope Dekka had sent her. The baggie holding two ounces of powdered rock was still inside.
Astrid had never developed a power in the FAYZ. At one point she’d thought she had, but no, she had remained merely herself. She’d never regretted that fact; she had never wanted any power beyond her own native intelligence and whatever courage she could summon. The idea of seeking such a power now was deeply unsettling. Astrid was happy being Astrid. She had never wanted physical power.
But that was then, and this was now, and she no longer had Sam’s power to protect her. Her husband, brave, resourceful, determined Sam, was a mere human now, and no kind of match for Drake. Whatever Drake did to her, he would do it where Sam would be forced to watch. It would break Sam. The unbreakable boy was now a vulnerable man.
Dekka had addressed the package to Astrid, not to Sam. But she had included two doses, despite the fact that Astrid and Dekka shared a fervent desire to keep Sam out of this new fight. Sam had done enough. Sam had suffered enough. And Sam now had his PTSD-driven substance abuse under control, sober for many months. The two women who loved him in different ways both wanted to protect him.
But Dekka had seen the dark possibilities and had been the one to give them the news about Drake. So she had sent some of the rock to Astrid, knowing that no natural power could stop Whip Hand.
And more than enough. Just in case.
Not for the first time, Astrid considered recruiting an ally. Edilio? Quinn? But Quinn was weak, and Edilio was in Honduras, deported by immigration despite testimonials from virtually every living FAYZ survivor, an injustice that still burned inside Astrid. At least Albert had helped him out with money so Edilio wouldn’t be destitute.
Albert.
There was an ally she could use. She pulled out her cell phone, scrolled through contacts, and dialed Albert’s personal line.
“Astrid?” Albert answered, recognizing the number.
“Listen, Albert, I hate to do this.”
“What do you need?”
“Drake is alive.”
The silence on Albert’s end lasted for a while. Then a long, low stream of curses.
“I think he may come after us.”
“What do you need?” Albert asked again.
“I need to buy something. It’s something that may set off whoever is still monitoring us. It’s a big ask, Albert. And I would need you not to ask questions. So if—”
Albert cut her off. “Anything you want, any amount of money, anytime, Astrid.”
Astrid felt her eyes filling with tears. In the FAYZ Albert had never been liked, let alone loved. But his tough-love business sense had kept people fed, and without him many more would have died. Still, she had not expected unquestioning support. Albert was not exactly known for throwing money away, one reason he’d done so well after the FAYZ, making deals with McDonald’s and other companies to exploit his fame.
“
Thanks, Albert. That’s . . .”
“I watch the news, Astrid. I know what’s going on. I also know the only reason I have what I have, including my life, is because of your husband. So, down to my last penny if you need it, Astrid.”
She texted him the name of the product.
She had most of what she needed and would soon have the rest. There was only one thing left to do.
Astrid went to their small, tidy kitchen and poured herself a glass of orange juice. She weighed an ounce of the ground rock on her digital kitchen scale. Then she mixed the powder into the juice.
She heard the sound of a key at the front door. Sam.
“Here goes,” Astrid said, and quickly drank the juice down.
CHAPTER 15
Over There
“IT’S TERRIFYING,” DEKKA said. “I’ve seen bad things, way too many bad, bad things, but . . .” Words failed her. She shook her head.
Francis sat silent, as usual, watching the people she irrationally thought of as “the grown-ups.” Or maybe it wasn’t so irrational; after all, they were each more “adult” than the adults in the biker gang she and her mother had lived with.
Their borrowed brownstone had a small yard, and they all felt like they’d spent way too much time in casinos and hotels and planes. They were craving fresh air and sunlight, and at the moment the sun was peeking through clouds, so four of them sat on lawn furniture while Dekka paced back and forth across the brick patio and Armo did chin-ups on a child’s rusting swing set.
“Social media is in a panic,” Cruz reported, looking up from her phone.
“Over this Pine Barrens thing?” Dekka asked, frowning.
“Someone streamed video.”
They all huddled together to watch a fifteen-second video play. It was nothing but wildly blurry images and screams, all set to the soundtrack of machine guns.
“Don’t read the comments,” Cruz warned. “Half the people are like, ‘good, kill them all.’”
Shade said, “Not that I usually follow the stock market, but they had to close it down because people are freaking out and selling everything.”
“It’s worse in some places,” Malik said. “There’s video of something that looks like a slug three miles long slowly eating Shanghai. They’re evacuating the city—twenty-four million people—because the Chinese may have to drop a nuke on their largest city to kill the thing. People in Afghanistan and Pakistan are being inverted, turned inside out, if they disobey some character who calls himself the Supreme Caliph of the Universe. They’ve stopped the London Tube because something—no one knows what—is down in the tunnels spraying sulfuric acid on anyone who comes within fifty feet. A bunch of countries have been taken over by their own armies, and Rockborn are being rounded up.” He shook his head dolefully. “I don’t see the endgame. I don’t see how we ever get back to normal.”
“Normal is dead,” Shade said harshly.
Francis liked Malik. He was always very kind to her, always deferential when he wanted her to do something. Shade Darby was a different story—she was not mean or cruel, but neither was she exactly warm and cuddly.
“The rest of the world will have to take care of itself,” Shade said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “We’ve got enough on our plates.”
Cruz sighed. “People are saying there’s someone up in Harlem who looks like some kind of human-rhinoceros hybrid who’s just destroying storefronts for no reason. They’re also saying there’s some blue girl flying around, and a woman who grew thirty feet tall and started tearing open liquor stores and drinking gallons of booze. They say she’s passed out drunk in front of the Flatiron Building. People are taking selfies.”
She turned her phone around to show Francis a picture of a massive woman’s head, easily six feet from chin to crown, eyes closed. On her forehead someone had used a thick Sharpie to write Fee, Fie, Fo, Fum. Someone else had plastered a bumper sticker over her upper lip so that it looked like a bad mustache. The bumper sticker read, I was an honor student—I don’t know what happened. And those were some of the more polite ways passersby had amused themselves.
Francis was shocked, though she knew her reaction was silly. There were about a thousand more important things than worrying about a giant unconscious woman. But the sight of a woman passed out reminded her of her mother, and of her old life. Francis missed nothing about that old life, but she’d had no time to begin to cope with the reality of her mother’s death. Her mother had once been loving and kind and concerned before the meth addiction had relentlessly stripped away so much of her humanity.
Not for the first time, but with special urgency now, Francis realized that she was alone in the world, but for the Rockborn Gang. She had nowhere else to go. No one else to be with. This gaggle of strangers was the closest thing she had to family.
Dekka said, “You know it’d be easier to think about playing superhero if people weren’t such tools. But giant naked drunk women aren’t our problem, at least not right now. We could probably take care of the crazed rhino, but the bug guy is on a different level.”
Armo sauntered over from the swing set. “I got this Rhino dude. You want to come, Cruz?”
“Me?”
Armo shrugged. “I don’t need to be here for the strategizing. I’d rather, you know, do some superheroing.”
“And you don’t think I’m really necessary for the strategizing part, either?” Cruz asked him archly, before nodding and admitting, “Actually, you may have a point.”
With Armo and Cruz gone, Dekka and Shade both looked to Malik. Shade said, “Okay, Francis tried to look at bug man’s victims Over There. There may be something to what she described, some kind of strange laser link or whatever.”
Malik shook his head. “Over There is a jumbled world I can’t make sense of with 3-D eyes and a 3-D brain, so whatever Francis saw we can’t understand it. The truth is, it might all just be some kind of sensory distortion, an illusion.”
“Great,” Dekka muttered, still pacing in her slow, deliberate way, like she’d thought carefully about each step.
“But,” Malik said with a sigh and a significant look to Francis, “I still want to explore more, if Francis is willing.”
Francis had been momentarily distracted by a crow that had landed on the garden wall, but snapped back to awareness on hearing her name. “I’ll do whatever you guys think I should do.”
Dekka stopped, turned, and made a sideways karate chopping motion. “No, no, no, Francis. We each have to decide what our limits are. You have to stand up for yourself.”
“Okay,” Francis said doubtfully. “But I want to help.”
“You have something in mind, Malik?” Shade asked.
He nodded. “Yeah. I want to go Over There while one of you is in morph. I want to see what that looks like from Over There. I saw Francis there, but she’s some kind of outlier, an exception.”
Shade shrugged. “No problem.”
“Not yet.” Malik took Francis’s hand. “Once we disappear, morph.”
Francis was more prepared for the sensory weirdness this time, but still it was like stepping inside a kaleidoscope filled with the contents of a hardware store instead of colored stones. Malik had some kind of theory, she knew, but to her it was like what she’d heard some of the bikers say about LSD: jumbled shapes and colors and things that made no sense.
But now she saw Shade in the disturbing 4-D way, a series of bits and pieces, sometimes forming a whole, sometimes a tangle of floating, inverted body parts.
“I should not have to see a deconstructed version of my ex-girlfriend’s liver,” Malik muttered in paisley balloons, while Francis wondered at the prefix “ex.”
Back in the normal world Shade began to morph. The parts began to shift and move in no discernible pattern. Then, suddenly, like a Transformers toy snapping into place, Shade appeared as a coherent whole. But a very different whole—a human, yes, but wreathed in a kind of glowing field of fireflies or charged particles. Fr
ancis saw her chitin armor and her human flesh all as the same thing.
And then . . .
“Ah!” Malik cried.
Because out of nowhere, black cables shot into Shade’s head.
Each was as thick as a thumb; there were dozens, and as Francis gazed along the length of the cables, she saw that they branched and split, like a bush, a tangled mass disappearing into distant haze.
“Take us out,” Malik said, and a moment later Francis had moved them back to regular space. They appeared before a startled Dekka and a vibrating, morphed Shade.
“Shade!” Malik yelped in excitement. “Count to ten and run back and forth real fast.” Then he reconsidered. “Wait, have Dekka count to ten, not you; your seconds are too short.”
Francis once again moved them into the Over There.
Malik waited, and then Shade moved, as fast as she could within the confines of the backyard.
Malik held his arm out. The cables passed through his arm.
“Wow,” Malik said, and asked Francis to bring them back.
Shade de-morphed and said, “So?”
“I saw them,” Malik said. “I mean, not them them, but their connection. It manifests as a series of cables that go straight into your brain. And when you move, no matter how fast you move, they stay attached.”
Shade unconsciously smoothed her hands over her head. “Cables?”
“They manifest that way, but I doubt they’re what they look like to me,” Malik added.
“Then what are they?” Dekka demanded.
Malik shrugged. “Wi-Fi?”
“Wi-Fi?” Dekka echoed skeptically.
“I just mean they have some kind of connection that probably isn’t cables or wires but looks that way to a 3-D mind. I tried interrupting one but couldn’t touch anything.”
“You’re thinking the cables are the Dark Watchers,” Dekka said, and both Shade and Malik nodded. “And the cables only appeared once Shade was morphed. Okay. So, you two are the big brains: What does that tell us?”
Malik sighed and sat down in a lawn chair. He shook his head slowly, side to side, and almost pleading, said, “Shade?”
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