But Shade’s face was just as bleak.
“What?” Dekka demanded.
“Look,” Malik said, “you have to bear in mind my limitations Over There. Don’t assume I’m right; all I have is a theory.”
“I’ll take a theory,” Dekka shot back, irritated now.
“Well, let’s just say that the possibility that we are living in a simulation, basically a computer program, a manufactured reality, is not just a possibility. It’s now a probability.”
CHAPTER 16
Superhero Chores, Part 1
DEALING WITH THE rhinoceros mutant was easier than either Armo or Cruz had imagined. They took a cab uptown and got out a few blocks away from the scene of the craziness. Not that they wanted to get out several blocks away, but the cab driver said, “I escape war in Syria. Too much bomb and killing peoples. No more war, me.”
Which was hard to argue with.
Armo and Cruz trotted the several blocks to 116th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard and were recognized more than once.
“Hey, that’s that trans girl! The one from Vegas!”
“Is that Berserker Bear with her?”
“Change into Beyoncé!”
“Hey! Yo! Turn into a bear!”
They both waved and kept moving, but then a gaggle of people started following them and crowding around them and generally getting in the way and slowing their pace.
Cruz’s natural shyness made all the attention very unpleasant, though no one meant to be annoying. Probably. So she took the opportunity to morph into an elderly black woman she happened to spot. The crowd cheered, all but one who said, “Damn, Bey has let herself go!” But after a bit more milling they lost track of Cruz and focused on Armo, who ended up signing autographs until he finally could no longer move forward.
At that point Cruz became a police officer she’d previously added to her repertoire. It happened “he” was a California Highway Patrolman, but an authoritative “Back up there folks, let the man do his work” was enough to free Armo.
As they hustled away, Armo whispered, “Some woman back there offered me a thousand dollars if I would, you know . . .”
“No,” Cruz said, deliberately playing dumb. “I don’t know.”
“You know,” Armo insisted. “Do it.”
“It?”
At that point Armo realized she was playing with him. “Oh, fine, you can just turn into someone else and get away from these people.”
“Poor you, Armo, you’re stuck just being gorgeous.” Cruz had meant it as a tease, but Armo looked pained. “What?”
He shrugged. “Nothing. It’s just . . . nothing.”
“No, tell me,” Cruz insisted.
“Okay, the thing is, that word. I’ve been hearing it my whole life. Gorgeous.” He shuddered.
“And . . . ?”
“You know I’m a person, right?” Armo asked. “I know what I look like, but you know, I’m not just, you know . . . I mean, I have ideas and stuff. I have plans. Well, I used to. I’m just saying, I do have a brain and all. I’m not just nice pecs.”
“And a washboard stomach,” Cruz added, but when Armo didn’t smile, she said, “Oh. Okay. I get it. And Armo, for the record, I know you’re not just your looks.”
In fact, she added, silently chiding herself, if there’s anyone on earth who ought to know better than to judge a person on their looks, it’s a trans girl who can look like anyone. She de-morphed out of her CHP shape and became Cruz again.
“Yeah?” Armo prodded.
It came to Cruz that he was actually fishing for compliments. Six foot four inches of movie-star looks and the kind of body a Ryan Reynolds could only envy, and he was fishing for compliments. From her. The thought amazed her. He was . . . well, he was . . . Armo.
“Well, Armo, you are gorgeous, there’s no better word for it. But you’re also kind. And thoughtful. And you treat people with respect.”
Armo nodded and with stiff dignity said, “Thanks.”
“Everyone in the gang likes you.”
He shrugged, but he was enjoying it.
“Dekka likes you a lot and she doesn’t like all that many people,” Cruz said. “In fact, I’m not a hundred percent sure she likes anyone but you.”
He grinned, displaying perfect teeth. “I love Dekka.” Then he frowned and added, “Not that way. I mean, she’s into chicks. Women, I mean. How about you?”
Cruz nearly swallowed her own tongue and tripped. Armo caught her arm. His hand was so big his fingers completely encircled her bicep.
“Me?” Cruz asked in a way that was intended to sound nonchalant but that came out as an anxious squeak.
“Yeah, I mean, you know.” He made a vague sort of hand gesture that sort of seemed to encompass Cruz’s body and then swept outward to take in the crowds streaming behind them, now following at a discreet distance, cell-phone cameras held high.
“Oh, well,” Cruz said. “I’m, you know.” Now she was stammering like he had. She drew a deep breath and in an overly loud exhale said, “Boys. I like boys.”
“Huh,” Armo said, and Cruz had no opportunity to parse that monosyllable because they had both just heard the sound of shattering glass.
“I think we’re there,” Cruz said.
“There” turned out to be a Rite Aid with the front glass destroyed so thoroughly that they could both see right into the store. Surrounded by destruction in the form of shampoo bottles, tampons, hair coloring, and laxatives all scattered around, stood a massive beast.
It was as big as a rhinoceros, and its armored flesh was gray. It had four stout legs and no arms or hands. But beyond those superficial similarities it was not a rhino. Its head was human, albeit a human head blown up to three times normal size. And rather than a single rhino horn it had stubby antlers, three horns on each side, two of them evidently broken.
The face was that of an old man, African American, distorted, stretched horribly, but still recognizably an old man, with now-oversized, yellowing eyes and a mouth with great gaps between isolated teeth.
“I used to only see things like this in movies or nightmares,” Cruz said.
How has my life come to the point where I’m nonchalant about a mutant beast with a human face?
A crowd of maybe two hundred occupied the other three corners where Fredrick Douglass Boulevard met 117th Street. An Italian restaurant with a closed-down outdoor cafe had waiters on the street selling coffee and bottled water. Police cars had blockaded the streets in every direction. In all, a dozen police officers crouched behind squad-car doors with weapons at the ready.
The beast, the old man, moaned in a loud, heartrending cry of pain and confusion.
“Does anyone know this man?” Cruz yelled.
No answer.
“Please, someone must know this man!”
A police officer yelled, “Hey, you two, get back!”
But someone in the crowd said, “No, Officer, that’s Berserker Bear and the trans chick from Vegas!”
“That true?” the cop asked.
“I’m not crazy about ‘Berserker Bear,’” Armo grumbled. “But yeah.”
“Please, it’s an old man,” Cruz said. “Someone must know him.”
The cop shook his head, but behind him a woman in the crowd waved to get Cruz’s attention. “Yes, ma’am, what can you tell me?”
“His name is Alfred Gordon,” the woman said. “He lives with his daughter and granddaughter.”
“Thank you,” Cruz said. “Do you know them, the family?”
The woman did not, but in response to Cruz’s question she described the granddaughter: about twenty-five, a big woman. “Looked kind of like that girl, what’s her name, the actress who was in that movie. What was it called? Precious! That was it. Such a sad movie.”
“Gabourey,” Cruz suggested. She used her phone to Google pictures of Gabourey as Armo stood by, bemused, keeping an eye on the panting, frightened man-beast. Face. Head. Body. Cruz could not find sh
ots of Gabourey taken from behind, but as long as she faced the old man . . .
Cruz focused her thoughts, and as the crowd oohed and aahed, she became the actress, wearing a brown silk dress with a scoop neckline and a jeweled waist, the outfit Gabourey had worn to an Essence magazine function where the photo had been taken.
“You want me to go all Berserker Bear?” Armo asked.
“No, you just . . .” Cruz caught herself. “You do what you think is right, Armo. But I feel like maybe I can talk to this man.”
Armo made a mock salute and took a step back. Cruz advanced across the street, picking her way through the debris from the destroyed drugstore.
“Grandpa! Papa!” Cruz wasn’t sure what he might be called, and she hoped his eyesight was bad.
The stretched yellow eyes, each the size of a saucer, turned toward her.
“It’s me, your granddaughter,” Cruz said, wishing she knew the young woman’s name.
“That you, Tiana?”
“Yes, it’s me. Tiana. Are you okay?”
All the while Cruz walked steadily forward, like she had every right to, like she was unafraid.
“I came for my pills,” the rhino-man said in a strangled voice.
“Of course. Of course. Which pills, do you remember?”
“My pills?”
“Yes, do you recall what pills you were looking for?”
“I don’t know the name,” the beast-man said irascibly. “Donny’s. Donazzas. Something.”
Cruz looked pleadingly back at the crowd.
“I’m a nurse,” a man said. “He may be talking about donepezil.” Then in a lower voice he added, “It’s for Alzheimer’s.”
Cruz sighed. For weeks she’d been suppressing a growing anger at whoever or whatever was doing this to people. So much death. So much pain. Now a confused old man had been turned into a beast—a beast centered in half a dozen police-sniper gun sights. “Grandpa . . . Listen to me, you need to focus really hard on something.”
“Focus?”
“On yourself. On who you are. You’re Alfred Gordon, right?”
The eerie head nodded stiffly. “Al, mostly. You know that.”
“Of course I do, Grandpa. I just want you to think about who you are. How you look. You need to think about yourself. About your life. Think about Al Gordon. Try to picture your own face, Al. Grandpa.”
The beast blinked. Then slowly, slowly the creature began to shrink. It took minutes longer than it took Cruz or Armo to morph, but finally an old man sat, confused and afraid, amid the wreckage.
“Easy,” Cruz cautioned the police. “If he gets upset, he could morph back.”
“What happened?” Al Gordon wondered. “What am I doing . . . ? Where are my slippers?”
Two NYPD women in plain clothes advanced, guns held low, voices soothing. The officer nodded at Cruz. “Thanks. We didn’t want to have to shoot the thing.”
Cruz de-morphed, resuming her own body. “Happy to help. Probably best to find his daughter and granddaughter. He could go rhino again at any time.”
The crowds cheered—the second time in Cruz’s life she’d been cheered wildly. She heard a name being chanted, a name she’d seen a couple of times on social media. “Trans-it! Trans-it! Trans-it!”
The crowd took up the chorus as Cruz waved and nodded bashfully, and she and Armo went in search of a taxi.
“Transit, huh?” Armo said.
“No,” Cruz said, shaking her head firmly. “Absolutely not. I thought that nickname had died out.”
“It’s better than Berserker Bear.”
“I don’t know. I sort of like Berserker Bear.”
Armo shrugged. “Well, that was easy. All I had to do was stand around and look gorgeous.” He added a wry twist to that final word.
Something you do so very well, Cruz did not say.
By the time they’d found a taxi and reached the brownstone, the New York Post had its online headline: “Transit Strike: Heroes of Harlem,” along with photos and embedded video showing Cruz morphing into a blank-backed Gabourey.
By the time Cruz and Armo had started the coffee machine, the actual Gabourey had tweeted that she was proud her image had helped Transit save the day.
And by the time the coffee was brewed and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches had been made, Shade strolled into the kitchen and said, “Hey, Armo,” then, with a wink, “Hey, Transit.”
Then the doorbell rang.
CHAPTER 17
Superhero Chores, Part 2
THE DOORBELL RANG.
There was no such thing as an innocent doorbell anymore, so Dekka nodded at Shade, who quickly morphed.
Then Dekka opened the door.
“Detective Williams,” Dekka said. “It’s okay, Shade.”
The NYPD detective stepped in and closed the door behind him. He nodded approval. “Good, you were ready for trouble.”
“Yeah, we’ve noticed how trouble keeps happening,” Armo said.
“We think we know the name of the guy, Bug Man.” Williams pulled out his phone and opened a photo. “His name is Robert Markovic. He owns a chain of payday loan companies. He’s rich, as in billionaire-with-a-‘b’ rich. We have a team watching his apartment now, and we think he’s at home.”
“Well, that’s why we’re here,” Dekka said.
“Is this where we say ‘Avengers assemble’?” Malik snarked.
“How about, ‘Rock on, Rockborn Gang’?” Shade proposed.
Dekka shook her head half in amusement, half in irritation, and said to Williams, “We’re still kind of working on how to do this. How to be this.”
Williams nodded. “Ms. Talent, we are all trying to figure things out. No part of this was taught at the police academy. However . . .”
“Mmmm?” Shade asked.
Williams said, “I’m sorry about this, but we need to do something for the sake of maintaining at least some pretense of legality. The mayor says we need to deputize all of you.”
“Say what now?” Armo said, bristling.
“How do you do that?” Dekka asked.
Williams laughed. “No one seems to know. But the law seems to be that you can be deputized so long as you’re not a member of the military. So, look, I know this sounds crazy—”
“The rule of law is not crazy,” Malik said, quite serious. “I’m not sure if it’s much use right now, but you can deputize me, Detective.”
In the end all six of them agreed—Armo only after he made clear that deputy or not, he would do whatever the hell he decided to do—and they raised their hands and swore an oath Williams made up on the spot.
“Do we get badges, at least?” Cruz wondered.
“I was thinking ‘paycheck,’” Dekka said, dryly. “But whatever. Let’s go see about this Markovic creep, and maybe we can go home.”
Home.
Like that was a real thing. Dekka pictured her apartment in the East Bay. It had been her third home after the fall of the FAYZ. There had been a brief stay with her parents, then a shared apartment with Lana Lazar in Oakland, which had lasted until Lana went off to college. Then the apartment in Pinole. No part of that had ever really felt like home, and Dekka realized the closest thing to a real home in her mind was Perdido Beach. A depressing realization.
They were driven in a police van normally used for transporting prisoners and stepped out on Fifth Avenue, which was teeming with cleanup crews.
“Fourteenth floor,” Williams said, gazing up. “See that stone balustrade up there? That’s it.”
“Yep,” Dekka said. “Okay, we go at it three ways. First, Shade? Get to the roof. You can go in through the building next door and hop down to . . .”
By the time Dekka was done explaining what Shade should do, Shade was waving down at them from the roof.
“I am never going to get used to that,” Dekka said, shaking her head. “Okay, is there a doorman or someone Markovic might expect to show up at his door?”
Williams produc
ed an elderly Hispanic man named Julio Cantera. Cruz introduced herself, and they exchanged a few words in Spanish. He had a smoker’s weak voice, and Cruz tried it out a few times.
“Mr. Markovic. It’s Julio. There is a water leak.”
“Not bad,” Armo said, patting her shoulder.
Dekka’s mind was very much on other things, but she could not help but notice that there had been some subtle change in the relationship between Armo and Cruz.
Cruz walked around Julio like he was a side of beef and she was looking to make steaks. After a moment she nodded and began to become the man.
“Okay, this isn’t our first fight, so here’s the beats,” Dekka said. “Cruz goes to the door. Knock knock, water leak. Armo? I’m thinking you and I are just outside the door, out of sight, in morph, and the second Markovic opens the door for Cruz, we go in. Does that work for you, Armo?”
“Yeah, but only if I get to go first. I’ve been like a bystander today.”
Dekka nodded agreement and went on. “Shade jumps down to his balcony and comes in that way. Francis, you bring Malik straight into his apartment. He gets hit from three sides at once. If he’s morphed . . .” She hesitated. “Detective Williams, would you give us some privacy?”
Williams bridled, but acquiesced.
“If Markovic is in morph, if he’s this bug thing, then we have no choice,” Dekka said. Her next words sounded wrong in her own ears. They were the logical move, the inevitable move. Yet that did little to soften Dekka’s loathing of her new role. “If he’s in morph, he has to be killed. Fast. Immediately. No hesitation. His power is . . .” She shook her head, memories of desperate voices begging for death, memories of the smell of every possible disease and corruption. “This man has to go down.”
“If he’s not in morph?” Malik asked.
“If he’s not, then we pin him down, we let Detective Williams handcuff him, and we stay with him until Markovic is in a cell he can’t escape from.”
“There’s an old saying,” Malik muttered. “No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.”
Dekka nodded. “Preaching to the choir, Malik.”
Five minutes later, they were in place.
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