Monster Page 12

  “Proving what?” Malik demanded. Then he crinkled his nose. “This shirt smells. Sorry, I haven’t changed since my run.” He rolled off his bed, went to his closet, chose a T-shirt from among about a million, and stripped off his sweat-stained shirt with no sign of modesty.

  Cruz turned a disbelieving look to Shade as if to say, You broke up with that? Beautiful, smart, and rich is not good enough for you?

  Shade’s look was a mix of amusement and perhaps a little regret, an acknowledgment that yes, Malik was a very fine specimen indeed, a sculpture to rival any in his parents’ house, and smart to boot.

  Cruz silently mouthed, You are a moron.

  Shade smiled and gave Cruz the finger in a subtle, underhand way.

  “Proving,” Shade said belatedly, “that there may be more out there, more like him. Like me. The government can try to put the toothpaste back in the tube, but I don’t think it’ll work.”

  Malik sighed. “Maybe. Maybe we are on the verge of a total rearranging of life, maybe Chicago is about to become Gotham and New York is going to be Metropolis. There are three types of supers, Shade: Hero, Villain, and Monster. Superman is a hero and Batman is an antihero, which is a subset of hero. Magneto or Lex Luthor are villains. Hulk and, say, the Punisher are monsters, people dangerously out of control.”

  “Yeah, and who stands up to Magneto?” Shade demanded. “Heroes, that’s who. This character who killed the people on that plane is a bad guy. There will be others. Who stops them?”

  “The government, if they aren’t busy chasing you,” Malik said, exasperated. “Why are you doing this, Shade?”

  Shade stood up suddenly, nervous energy getting the better of her. “And what if the government becomes the villain?”

  Malik leaned back and frowned.

  Shade, sensing an opening, paced back and forth, glancing now at Malik, now at Cruz, like a TV lawyer making her case to the jury. “You don’t think the government is going to use the rock for their own purposes? You don’t think someone at the Pentagon is thinking, ‘Oh, cool: Super soldiers? Super cops? Super spies’?”

  Malik’s silence was acknowledgment. But he rallied. “Now you’re like a gun nut arguing we need guns to overthrow the government.”

  Shade shook her head, thinking out loud, on a roll, looking at the floor. “This is the same government that set off a nuke next to the dome, the PBA, because it was blocking the highway. I’m not saying they’re evil, just saying that the temptation is there and—”

  “The temptation is there partly because they need to find ways to stop people like you!” Malik insisted.

  Shade talked right over him. “—I guarantee you they’re looking for ways to use the ASOs. So are other governments. The ASO is one big, unpredictable weapon. We’re going to have government supers and individuals like the plane guy. The world is changing, Malik. I didn’t make it happen, I’m just saying since it is happening I don’t want to be standing there doing nothing while . . .” She stopped suddenly, knowing she’d said too much. She switched gears. “What if there had been no Sam Temple or Dekka or Brianna to fight back against Caine and Drake and Penny? Not to mention that . . . that creature . . . Gaia?” Shade demanded.

  Cruz did not immediately recognize the names, but she understood what Shade meant. What if only the bad people had powers?

  Shade grabbed her phone and tapped something in. Waited. Then read aloud:

  “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

  Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

  The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

  The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

  The best lack all conviction, while the worst

  Are full of passionate intensity.”

  Malik groaned. “Yeah, I know the poem, we read it in AP English Comp.”

  Cruz again raised her hand, still feeling like she was in school. “I don’t.” Shade handed her her phone.

  “The best lack all conviction,” Shade said to Malik. “It’s the worst who are full of passionate intensity.”

  Cruz read aloud the final lines:

  “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

  Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

  “Well, that’s cheerful,” Cruz said.

  “I saw one rough beast,” Shade said. “Its name was Gaia. Now we’ve seen another. More are coming. The center isn’t holding. Maybe I’m not the best, but I’m not the worst, either.”

  Malik’s stony expression softened. “Of course you’re not, babe. You’re totally obsessed, a bit ruthless, and God knows you’re manipulative, but you’re also decent and basically kind. If you weren’t, I wouldn’t . . .”

  They exchanged a look full of history, a look Cruz envied. Shade and Malik might not be dating, might argue constantly when they were together, but the first time Cruz saw Malik she had known he was still in love with Shade. And if Shade didn’t quite mirror that emotion, she was at the very least fond of Malik.

  “I am what I am,” Shade said to him. “There’s no way to change what’s happened. Anyway, we were talking about Cruz.” She pulled a baggie from her purse and held it up. It contained a small amount of gray powder. “I ground some more.”

  “You’re like a drug dealer offering free samples,” Malik said, but Cruz saw that his eyes followed the baggie with glittering interest.

  “Cruz was there with me in Iowa,” Shade said. “She has a right, if that’s what she wants.”

  “I don’t really want powers,” Cruz said. “I just want . . . You know what I want.” The last part came out in a low, embarrassed mutter.

  “We both had bad luck in life, Cruz, me the day the dome came down, you with, well, parents who don’t appreciate God’s little joke.”

  “They have an operation that can solve that problem,” Malik said. “I get that it’s expensive—”

  “My parents won’t consent,” Cruz said bitterly. “Even if I suddenly had the money. It’s a whole long process, not just some quick operation. And that’s if I even get to the point of being sure, which would be way easier if the whole world wasn’t yelling at me. Aaarrrgh!”

  “Cruz is somewhat conflicted,” Shade said dryly. “Multiple-choice in a true-false world. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Of course I understand,” Malik snapped. “It’s an obvious metaphor.”

  “There you go, Cruz, now you see the condescending Malik. He always has to think he’s the smartest person in the room.”

  “Riiight. Unlike you,” Cruz said, but she whispered it.

  Malik shook his head, but he was already accepting defeat. “Whatever. You’ve got your shovel, and I know you, Shade, you’ll keep digging.”

  “Might dig straight through to China,” Shade said, trying to lighten the mood.

  “The antipode of Chicago is not China, it’s the Indian Ocean, about twenty-five hundred miles south of Sri Lanka.” Malik, naturally, to which Shade responded with a little flourish of ta-da hands, inviting Cruz to witness Malik’s obnoxiousness.

  Cruz ignored Shade and contemplated Malik, who, sadly, was now wearing a shirt. She’d been describing herself as “gender fluid,” and she was most comfortable with female pronouns, but she had resisted defining herself as the clichéd girl-trapped-in-a-boy’s-body. How much of that was her own reluctance to commit, to define herself, and maybe to suffer the consequences?

  Was Malik right? Or was Shade?

  Or was this Cruz looking for another multiple choice in a binary world?

  “Cruz?” Shade asked, sounding concerned, but Cruz did not answer. Cruz sat looking at the baggie, looking at the dust that might give her power after a life of powerlessness.

  What if it makes me a monster?

  It won’t, she told herself. There was no monster inside her just itching to get out. She would never hurt anyone.

  “Got any peanut butter?” Cruz asked abruptly. “That’s how Shade took it.”

  “You two are cra
zy,” Malik said. Then, with a sigh, “Is chunky okay? My little sister likes chunky, so we get chunky.”

  After a while Shade and Cruz left, Shade having a gynecologist’s appointment, and Cruz now having decided to actually finish the paper she had so studiously avoided writing. She walked to the city library and studied there, eyes swimming with boredom, mind not even slightly engaged with the books before her.

  Is it working?

  Finally, reluctantly, she headed home, performing the ritual of defeminization as she went, torn between relief and resentment that the rock had apparently done nothing to her.

  It had long bothered her, this need to disguise herself, to try to minimize the triggers that would set her father off. But now it was more than annoying, it was infuriating. Shade accepted her. Malik accepted her. Much of the world, not all, but much of it accepted her. Why couldn’t her parents accept her? She was still the person she’d always been, the exact same child they loved.

  Why did it matter so much? Why did people get angry at her for the crime of dressing and acting and talking the way she wished? And like a taunt of her own devising, a voice in her head repeated, like a refrain:

  Shade would never be afraid.

  She was halfway up the stairwell to her apartment—the stairwell reeking of pumpkin spice since the seasonal latte was back at Starbucks—when she realized she’d been stomping rather than creeping up the stairs. Cruz slowed her pace, tried to slow her breathing, pushed down on the anger that wanted so badly to explode.

  She opened the door. Normal sounds—the TV, the dishwasher. She crept in, practically tiptoeing now, feeling the flicker of a simple hope that she could reach her bedroom without hassle.

  But there was her father, coming straight toward her, heading for the bathroom. He did not speak, just looked at her. Cruz stepped aside.

  She was hungry and wondered if this was a good opportunity to grab a snack to take to her room. The kitchen was empty, and she was just about to snag a box of Wheat Thins when her mother came in.

  Her mother, too, did not look at her. In fact, it was as if Maria Rojas hadn’t noticed her six-foot-two child at all. Cruz shrugged. If that’s the game they wanted to play, fine. She opened the refrigerator door, looking for cream cheese, and her mother yelped.

  “Aaahh!”

  Maria was staring at the refrigerator, frowning, her face suspicious and wary. Maria pushed the refrigerator door shut and turned away, muttering in Spanish.

  Cruz opened the refrigerator door again and this time Maria screamed. Manny Rojas came at a run, three feet of toilet paper stuck to his shoe.

  “What?” he demanded.

  “The door,” Maria said in a gulping panic. “It open all by itself.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, woman?”

  Something electric was climbing up Cruz’s spine.

  No, impossible!

  She had left the box of Wheat Thins on the counter. She lifted it, making a rustling noise that instantly drew her parents’ attention.

  “What was that?” Manny, Cruz’s father, this time.

  Cruz, feeling as if she was in a dream, held the Wheat Thins directly in her father’s line of sight. Nothing. No reaction.

  Cruz waved her free hand before his face, peering intently at his eyes. Not a flicker. Not a movement of his iris.

  He can’t see me!

  What had been a tingle was now a rush, a thrill that raised goose bumps on Cruz’s arm. She could see the bumps, she could see her arm, she could see the Wheat Thins, she could see everything.

  And they did not see her. Or anything she held.

  She set the box on the counter and stepped back.

  “Whee Tins!” her mother shrieked. “Look, Manny, look!”

  “Okay, Wheat Thins, so what?” he demanded, getting angry at all the strangeness.

  “They were no there and then they there!”

  “You’re crazy, woman, have you been drinking?” But he looked around himself, suspicious, worried.

  Cruz retreated to the hallway. Retreated all the way to the front door. She leaned back against the wall, trying not to gulp air, trying to control the hammering in her chest.

  I’m invisible!

  Bugs or no bugs, she had to see Shade like right now. She bolted, clattering down the stairs, stopped on the street outside, wanting further proof. There was a ponytailed mom leaning over her baby in a stroller. Cruz put her hand directly between mother and child and . . . nothing!

  Oh. My. God!

  She ran toward Shade’s house, just a block away, but as she ran she had the unsettling sensation of being observed. She glanced around: no one. She peered at the nearest windows: no one was staring at her.

  But still she felt it, the feeling of being watched. And more than just watched. There was a feeling of malice, a feeling that someone was not only watching her but secretly laughing at her.

  She shook it off, knocked on Shade’s door, and, when it opened, pulled Shade out onto the rear deck and whispered, “Can you see me?”

  “I haven’t gone blind, Cruz.”

  “I was invisible! I guess I stopped being, um . . . but I was absolutely invisible!”

  “Are we talking metaphorically?”

  Cruz shook her head. Then she focused the swirl of wild emotion inside her and . . .

  “Whoa!” Shade said.

  “You can’t see me now, can you?”

  “Okay, that is amazing. Get inside! Now, before someone sees . . . or doesn’t see you.”

  They moved immediately to Shade’s bathroom and turned on the water for the benefit of any microphones.

  Cruz flickered back into view.

  “How did it feel?” Shade asked, and Cruz knew there was something specific behind that bland question.

  “Fine. Normal,” Cruz said. “Except . . .”

  “Except?”

  “I had this feeling . . . Probably just paranoid.”

  Shade drew breath and exhaled slowly. “Like something was watching you?”

  Cruz nodded slowly.

  “Something you can’t see, something you can only feel. Something dark and . . . and, well, not necessarily nice?”

  “Yes,” Cruz said. It came out in a low hiss.

  “Right,” Shade said, as if she was ticking off a checklist. She shook her head, silently arguing with herself. “It’s probably just paranoia caused by the weirdness of the morph.”

  Cruz was willing to accept that. Wanted to accept it. It made logical sense. But did it feel true?

  No.

  But Cruz told herself she’d worry about that another time, because really what was exploding inside her mind was the fact that she had . . . the power of invisibility.

  “Let’s go somewhere and test this out,” Shade said. “Come on, I have to tell my dad we’re going out. He’s home, so wipe the insane grin off your face.”

  They headed downstairs and into the living room to say a quick, polite hello to Martin Darby.

  And that was when the front-facing windows of the house lit up in flashing blue and red.

  CHAPTER 9

  On the Run

  BLUE AND RED lights flashed against the curtains and the frosted glass of the front door, and instantly Shade knew. She knew what this was, knew what it meant, and knew that a huge gaping pit had opened up beneath her. Her stomach churned, her jaw clenched, her heart beat heavy and slow.

  There was the sound of people knocking on a door, and then there was the sound of police knocking on a door. The one said, “Are you home?” The other said, “Open the door! NOW!”

  Shade and Cruz rushed to the door and arrived in time to see Martin Darby turn the doorknob. He opened the door and all hell broke loose.

  “Back, back, back away!”

  “You, against the wall!”

  Half a dozen men in helmets and black tactical gear, each armed with an automatic weapon, rushed in. One threw Shade’s father to the ground, and another shoved the muzzle of his
gun in Cruz’s face and backed her against the wall, then roughly grabbed Shade’s shoulder and slung her beside Cruz.

  There was a great deal of yelling.

  “Do not move!”

  “Who else is in the house?”

  A bespectacled man who looked like he should be working at the DMV squatted beside Martin and shoved a piece of paper in his face. “Homeland Security. We are serving a search warrant.”

  “What the hell?” Martin yelled into his own Oriental rug.

  Through the open door Shade saw a veritable Christmas tree of police lights, a big black SWAT van, black SUVs, regular Evanston cops, even an ambulance. More men and women poured into the house; they were in white coveralls, crime scene people, technicians.

  Shade sent Cruz a significant look: yes, this is about the rock. And yes, professional searchers would absolutely find it in the heat register where Shade had stashed it.

  “Get him up,” the bespectacled man said, indicating Professor Darby.

  Two SWAT guys grabbed Martin’s arms and stood him up, keeping their hands on him like he was some kind of criminal. Anger and guilt competed within Shade’s mind. There was something simply infuriating in seeing her father treated this way.

  My fault.

  “My name is Tom Peaks, I’m with Homeland Security and DARPA. Let’s get right to it, Professor Darby: turn over the rock. Do it now, do it painlessly, and maybe we can—”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Martin tried to shake off the SWAT guys, but it was like trying to shake off a pair of pit bulls.

  “Professor, this can be easy and quickly over, or it can be traumatic as we tear your house apart,” Peaks said. “I just flew in from the West Coast and I’m tired, so let’s go down the easy path, what do you say?”

  “What I say is I don’t have the first clue where the ASO is. As I’ve been telling my direct supervisor at the task force, Dr. Redeagle—”

  “Yes, I know what you’ve been telling HSTF-Sixty-Six, I read all the reports. I run HSTF-Sixty-Six, Professor Darby, and whether you know it or not, you work for me.” Peaks let that sink in, then motioned to the SWAT guys to release their grip on Martin.