Hero

by Michael Grant

  So there is an upside to this stupid power of mine.

  The time ticked by, each second seeming to last an infinity. Then, she took a deep breath and walked with purposeful stride despite legs that wanted to wobble and collapse, toward the entrance.

  The entrance was, strangely, beneath the overpass. She reached the bank of doors, pulled a door open, and stepped inside.

  “Hey, you, stop right there!”

  Cruz froze.

  The challenge came from a pimply teen armed with a baseball bat. He had a partner, a small, angry-looking older woman who seemed to be doing mime, waving her hands either in a parody of martial arts movies or in the delusional belief that she had powers.

  “I’m here to speak to Markovic,” Cruz said, doing her best to sound like the mayor.

  “His name is Vector,” the boy said smugly. “And unless you got powers or at least some muscle, he ain’t talking to nobody.”

  “Yeah? Well, you listen to me, you little toady, I am the mayor of this city. I want to speak face-to-face with Vector, and if you send me away he will be mightily pissed at you.”

  To Cruz’s amazement, her improvisation worked. The boy took a step back and muttered, “Okay, but it’s on you, lady. If you end up covered in sores screaming for your mommy, don’t blame me.”

  Cruz fought down a wave of nausea and was rescued from collapse by the appearance of the Watchers in her head.

  I won’t give you the satisfaction!

  The boy led the way, baseball bat on his shoulder at a jaunty angle, down a marble ramp beneath too-bright lights in the ceiling. A sort of bridge supporting offices crossed the ramp, and Cruz looked up to see engraved signs indicating the waiting area and pointing an arrow ahead to tracks eleven and twelve.

  Walk like a boss, Cruz reminded herself. You’re the mayor.

  At the bottom of the ramp a broad arch opened on the right, marked as the way to the Dining Concourse, and the pull of that safe-sounding space nearly drew her in. There was a Chase Bank, all blue and shiny on her left, but with a plate-glass window starred and needing only another tap to collapse in shards. They passed an information kiosk with posters of shows that would never happen, and discounts on tickets to places she didn’t recognize.

  Ahead was openness, a sense of a vast space, and then she saw three gigantic windows, each perhaps a hundred feet tall. The setting sun turned many of the panes red or gold, an arrestingly lovely sight, and Cruz wished she could savor it. Cruz had seen the windows—indeed every part of the terminal—in the photos and maps they’d all studied in preparation, but they seemed so much bigger in person, bigger and somehow both beautiful and overawing.

  She marched boldly out into the main concourse. To her right was a long row of unoccupied, beaux arts marble ticket windows topped by a long black tote board now filled with cancellations. The entire concourse was framed by massive square pillars, each seeming as tall as a ten-story building. The pillars rose to support a gorgeous arched ceiling painted blue-green and decorated with a schematic of the galaxy. At the far end, beneath the glorious windows, was a balcony grand enough to host a papal visit. It was the most magnificent building Cruz had ever seen.

  There were maybe a hundred people scattered over the acres of marble floor, some with weapons ranging from crowbars to guns. All, presumably, in service to Vector.

  And then she saw the information booth, a round, ornate gilt kiosk in the middle of the floor. It was topped by a four-sided analog clock, and it was there that Cruz’s gaze stopped. For up there, roped to the clock, was a man . . . a woman . . . it was impossible to say. The person tied to the clock was covered in boils and open sores. Their flesh was like some fever dream of Satan, red lesions and putrefying green-and-purple-and-black flesh. A warning. A demonstration for the benefit of Vector’s enemies but also, perhaps, his friends.

  Someone had taken a cushion and duct-taped it over the victim’s mouth so that their pleas and cries for mercy were muffled to groans. They writhed, the poor person, writhed and struggled and with each muffled cry reminded everyone of Vector’s power. It was medieval, like some baron or king sticking severed heads on poles to remind anyone passing by who had the power. And who did not.

  Then Cruz had a crawling sensation go up her spine. She turned and nearly cried out in shock. There was a matching balcony beneath identical windows just behind her. She had been looking in the wrong direction.

  Markovic, Vector, had stationed himself on the balcony level at the top of a wide set of stairs that Cruz thought she recognized from the movie The Untouchables, so that even as she was trying to quell the panic within and trying to ignore the insistent Watchers, she also was picturing the baby carriage from the movie bouncing in slo-mo down the steps.

  Vector hovered in the air far above Cruz, a swirl like all the wasps and flies and locusts in creation, swarming, twisting, separating, and coming back together.

  He’ll put me next to that poor person on the information booth. And I will scream, scream forever.

  She did not have to try too hard to conceal her fear; the mayor would also have been afraid. There was no way to approach what amounted to a malicious, sentient bee swarm, a swarm with terrifying power to inflict unspeakable pain and despair, and not be afraid.

  Holy Mary, mother of God . . .

  As she walked with measured steps to the base of the stairs, she was watched. Every eye in the place followed her. In addition to the merely human, she saw three people in morphs, one with fantastically wide, completely impractical bat wings.

  He probably thinks he’s Batman now.

  But she also saw two morphed Rockborn who looked more dangerous. One might have been Armo’s evil cousin: a shaggy, seven-foot-tall monster with the teeth of a saber-toothed tiger. But it was the other one that worried Cruz more: a person small enough to be a child but whose entire body was covered in iridescent gray scales, so that she looked like a fish that had grown legs and arms. The scary thing was not the scales, but the way the creature hovered in midair as if gravity simply did not apply.

  Cruz reached the bottom stair, and Vector said, “You can stop right there, your honor.”

  “Markovic?” Cruz asked, looking up at him and trying for defiant body language.

  “You don’t recognize me? I’m hurt. We’ve met three times that I can recall.”

  “I’m not here to talk about old times, Markovic.” Cruz reminded herself to act tough, like a New York City mayor would. “I’m here to see what it will take to get you to stop.”

  “No pleasantries, straight into negotiation.” Markovic mocked her. “So, what are you offering?”

  “I’m not offering, I’m demanding.” Her voice was thready, occluded, the words hard to get out. But all the better, it would explain perhaps why she didn’t sound quite like the mayor.

  Markovic had learned a new and unsettling trick. His component parts swirled together and formed into a rough oval shape. Then holes in the mass appeared where eyes on a face might be. And a slit of a mouth formed below.

  “I’m still working on getting my ‘lips’ to move like I’m talking,” Markovic said.

  “Impressive,” Cruz sneered. Impressive seemed like a mayoral kind of word. Markovic was a massive head floating in the air. He might almost have been a swirl of coins, copper and silver and gold, glittering in the dimming light from the great windows behind him. It was overwhelming, and something about the scene nearly triggered Cruz to cross herself. She was in the Cathedral of Vector, and Vector was playing his part to perfection.

  “So, spit it out, your honor. Get the demands and the threats on the table so I can tell you to go pound sand.”

  “I want you out of my city, Markovic. And I want you to undo the horrors you’ve caused.”

  “No.” He appeared to be trying to shake his “head” but the result temporarily obscured his “eyes.” “Anything else?”

  Cruz had a can of high-power insecticide stuck in the back of her trousers, invis
ible while she was in morph. She calculated the time it would take her to rush that stairwell, pull out her can, and spray.

  Spray what? Maybe 5 percent of the bugs? No, that would be suicide to no purpose. The thing before her would not be terrified by a can of Raid. Anyway, she reminded herself, her job was distraction and delay.

  Well, if it was about delay . . .

  Like a boss, she reminded herself. Like a boss.

  Cruz put her hands on her hips and took a wide stance. “I am prepared to negotiate.”

  CHAPTER 29

  . . . Ever Survives Contact With . . .

  SHADE DARBY WAS already inside the terminal by the time Cruz arrived. So long as you were careful not to let anyone feel your wake, moving at just under Mach 1 made you damned near invisible. Of course, once you slowed down or stopped, you were quite visible, so she had raced up to the balcony opposite Markovic’s stage. Markovic was bizarrely framed by an Apple store, all glittery and sleek beneath the huge windows.

  From the balcony level Shade sprang up to a narrow walkway behind a stone balustrade, nearly missing her landing because of the weight of the flamethrower. The walkway was just below the edge of the Sistine Chapel of a ceiling and ran all the way down the long sides the concourse. From here she could look across to the pillars framing huge chandeliers above the various arched ramps to the platforms, and by leaning out could quite easily see Markovic.

  Beautiful place to die, Shade thought mordantly. It would look great if they ever made a movie of this day. Unfortunately moving along the high walkway was not easy; it was not intended for anyone but maintenance workers, and these had left a fair amount of debris behind. There was nowhere near enough room or clearance to get up to practically invisible speed, and at this level, too, there were half-moon windows against which she did not want to be silhouetted. She had to basically crawl and drag herself along the walkway, keeping her head below the balustrade, pulling the flamethrower behind her. And it was thickly dusty, so she had to fight a raging desire to sneeze.

  This part won’t look so cool in the movie.

  Below and to her left now was the circular information booth. Shade blinked and stared hard, not at first believing what she was seeing. A person in agony, with a comically wrong orange cushion held in place with gray duct tape wrapped repeatedly around his head.

  It will be a pleasure killing you, Vector. A pleasure.

  From her position at least fifty feet above and to Vector’s right, Shade could see everything, but the acoustics and Markovic’s reedy unnatural voice conspired to make him inaudible. She had seen the “mayor” walk in and had to stop herself from racing down to haul her away to safety, until she remembered that, of course, it was Cruz.

  Cruz walking into the jaws of death. She must be terrified. Shade felt competing waves of emotion: pride in her friend’s courage. Guilt for having made that courage necessary.

  Shade retrieved the flamethrower she had set down and adjusted the straps, then flicked a Bic to light the pilot.

  Then she pulled out her phone and waited.

  Waited . . .

  Until . . . ding!

  Time.

  “Time to light up,” Shade said.

  Dekka ran flat out up a set of steel steps and found herself in a bewildering maze of pillars wrapped in posters, stainless-steel turnstiles, and signs that told her nothing useful. She’d already become disoriented.

  “Dammit!”

  Armo caught up to her and stopped short, equally confused, but Simone had been here many times before and led them through ratcheting turnstiles, up another set of stairs, and suddenly they were in a capacious marble-walled hallway. Directly ahead was a posh women’s clothing store that looked as if it had been looted. To Dekka’s left: natural light. Outside! Outside where she could just keep going. And never stop. Find herself some place far away, a beach in Mexico, a jungle, a swamp, anywhere. Anywhere but here.

  She turned her back on the light and followed Simone, who was aloft, gliding ahead just a few feet off the ground. They raced along the ramp, footsteps echoing, past shops with broken windows and scattered goods. Past an optometrist with an unbroken window tagged with a big orange “V” and beside it a cartoon drawing of a hornet with a big stinger and a malicious expression.

  “Almost there!” Simone cried. “Left here!”

  Dekka and Armo scrabbled to keep their footing on the slick floor, with claws not made for marble. Ahead there was an arch through which Dekka could see the main concourse. And between her and that concourse, two men, one in a military uniform, the other in an expensive business suit, both with submachine guns propped on their hips and expressions of smug superiority on their faces.

  Dekka ran straight at them, hands raised. The barrels of the machine pistols rose. And suddenly both men shrieked and fell to their knees and writhed in pain.

  Malik.

  Thank God!

  They burst into the vastness of the main concourse and Dekka spotted Vector—not difficult, he was the only insect cloud, after all—and veered right toward him. She raced past Cruz, headed straight up the steps in great, bounding strides, and without a word, let loose a howl and fired.

  Shade saw the sudden incapacitation of every unmorphed human in the concourse below. They dropped and bellowed and writhed, and she could not help but see the similarity to what Vector had done to the poor man or woman roped atop the information kiosk.

  But Malik’s victims survive.

  Mostly.

  Shade kicked off from the balustrade and fell at normal gravity speed, almost like slow-motion to her morphed senses. As she fell, knees bent to take the impact, she squeezed the trigger on her flamethrower and watched a jet of liquid fire stab at the monstrous swarm. Where the napalm reached, the bugs stopped, crisped, and fell like propeller seeds from a maple tree.

  They burn! Hah! They burn!

  Shade landed hard and staggered under the unusual weight, and barreled ahead trying to keep her feet as she ran beneath Oz the Great and Murderous. She tripped and fell and twisted onto one side so that she could, with some difficulty, fire straight up into Vector. Hot, dead insects rained down on her like ash from a volcano.

  Every one of Markovic’s human tools was out of commission. Dekka had swung the nozzle of her own flamethrower forward and was firing it with one hand while shredding with the other. Armo was beside her. Three flamethrowers now poured death into Markovic.

  It was a massacre. The air stank of gasoline and incinerated insects. Three long light sabers of flame swept back and forth like they were hosing down a car, back and forth, the fiery streams intersecting and sweeping on, and many, many of Markovic’s creatures died.

  Dekka quickly took stock of her battlefield. Everywhere rose the screams of those Malik had hit. And he was keeping it up, not letting them even think about recovering. Cruz had sensibly backed away and now cringed beside a pillar, still in her mayoral guise.

  Armo had reached the top step and aimed his flame straight at the center of the faux face, playing his flame left and right. The air was choking with a smell like burned hair as bugs died in the thousands.

  But then Dekka saw Armo stagger. His flamethrower spray veered wildly, barely missing Dekka herself. He skidded down the marble steps on his back, blistering the air above him, but not hitting the small, iridescent, scaly-fleshed creature that had flown into him and jabbed two Tasers into the sides of his head.

  Dekka, still flaming and shredding, took in the situation. Armo sprawled down the marble steps, feet higher than head, with the fish-looking creature beating at his face with a crowbar, spraying red blood over white fur. Armo was down, but he was not in real danger. Yet.

  “Simone!” Dekka yelled. “On Armo!”

  “On it!” came the reassuring shout.

  Shade was up and moving, not at her full speed but still at a velocity a cheetah would envy, running in a blurring circle, directing her flame at the insect mass in the middle.

  Simone
flew to Armo’s defense, body-slamming the hovering fish creature, who swung the crowbar at Simone but missed. Simone got a grip on the creature and hauled her away, her tiny wings buzzing furiously, and now those two, one armed with a crowbar and one not, were carrying on a bizarre midair wrestling match, punching and grabbing and grunting.

  Armo got up, face and neck red with blood, and aimed his flamethrower again, but it would not light. The pilot had gone out, and bear claws do not flick lighters.

  “Shade!” Dekka roared. “Light Armo!”

  Shade instantly saw the problem and zoomed past Armo, trailing her flame over the end of his flamethrower, lighting it again.

  We’re doing okay. We’re doing okay!

  Another mutant was charging into the fight, the shaggy monster with the improbable saber-toothed-tiger teeth. It chose Armo as its target and ran straight at him, charging like a bull. Armo stepped nimbly aside but the tiger had anticipated that and twisted to grab Armo and spun him around. Armo’s feet got tangled, and he went down with the beast atop him. The creature’s teeth should never have been useful; it couldn’t possibly open its jaw wide enough . . . but Dekka saw that it had done just that, dislocating its jaw to bring its teeth into play.

  Armo swung a frantic paw but missed and left the creature a perfectly exposed upper arm. The saber-toothed jaw widened and the teeth closed, two thick ivory tusks spearing Armo’s flesh.

  “What the hell?” Armo let out a roar, but he was on his back again, with something as big as he was lying athwart him and Armo’s arm shish-kebabed.

  They were too entwined for Dekka to take out the beast without hitting Armo. But now Francis was running flat out across the floor, arms pumping, sneakers squeaking, running straight at the beast. Running straight into danger.

  Like a stab to the heart, Dekka knew where she’d seen something like that before: a wild, slender girl running heedlessly toward destruction.