Villain

by Michael Grant

  Is it like that for you, too, Dark ones? Do you have DNA? Are you shaped by experience?

  All the while he played on. His 2,309th game. He held the phone in both hands, almost at arm’s length, thumbs tapping. He had a streak going, six winning games.

  “Ah, okay,” Francis Specter said, and nodded.

  Are you bored watching me play game after game?

  “I’m Francis.”

  Malik saw her hand extended. It hovered in the air. He looked at it, trying to figure out what it meant. Then it came to him, almost as muscle memory, and he reached out and shook the hand.

  “Malik Tenerife,” he said.

  “Cruz said that you can . . .”

  “Cause pain,” Malik said quickly. “Yes.”

  Your gift to me, eh? A life of living under your eyes, with you in my head, and the only escape is into agony and death.

  “Yeah. This is all so weird, isn’t it?”

  Malik said nothing.

  “The thing I can do . . . you know, my power—which just sounds crazy, doesn’t it? My power?”

  You don’t like her, do you? You don’t want me talking to her.

  “What is your power?” Malik asked. He wasn’t feeling especially curious. More he was curious about this vague feeling that they didn’t like Francis.

  Francis shrugged and looked at the seat beside Malik. Malik looked at the seat beside him as well, slowly trying to guess the significance and . . . Oh, of course. “Want to sit?”

  She did.

  “I’ve never been in a real fight before,” she said. She twisted her fingers. She was afraid.

  “I was,” Malik said. Then, with a hint of his old, dry humor, added, “It didn’t go well for me.”

  “Cruz told me.”

  Malik said nothing.

  “I don’t know what to call the thing I do,” Francis went on. “I can go sort of . . . around things. Through things.” She shrugged. “It’s hard to explain. Normal words don’t work.”

  Words don’t work so well in describing you, either.

  Malik turned to look at her. She was just a kid. Kind of tough-looking. Dirty, secondhand clothes, but with some style, some panache.

  “Try,” he said.

  “Well, it’s like . . .” She took her time thinking about it. “Okay, it’s like if you’d never seen blue and I was trying to describe it. Only this isn’t colors, it’s shapes. Things that should be solid aren’t. Things that should be square, like a wall, are kind of . . . flat. That’s kind of it. It’s like I’m still me, but everything else is flat. And I can see inside things. It’s kind of gross, actually. I mean, when I see a person I see everything at once, their face, their eyes, but also their lungs and their guts and, well, everything.”

  Malik stared hard, his game forgotten. “You see inside people?”

  “Inside, outside, all at once. I know they’re people, I see their faces, but at the same time it’s like they’ve been turned inside out.”

  No, Malik, no excitement, not yet. No hope. Nothing . . . yet.

  Malik said, “Cruz. Can I borrow your Moleskine?”

  Cruz hoped someday to write. She did at times, bits of this and that, which she noted in neat handwriting in her purple Moleskine.

  “Don’t read my stuff,” Cruz warned, handing over the Moleskine open to a blank page.

  Malik drew a square. He drew two eyes on the edge of the square. “His name is Frank. Flat Frank.”

  “Okay,” Francis said cautiously, like maybe Malik was nuts.

  “Frank is two-dimensional. He can’t see us because we are ‘up’ and he doesn’t have an ‘up.’ But we can see all of him at once. His edges and his inside.”

  “Right.”

  “Real people are three-dimensional. But a four-dimensional person would see inside of us as easily as we see inside of Frank. A 4-D person would see your face and your brain, your body and your heart.”

  “Ah. Okay. So . . . when I do the thing I do, I’m like a 4-D person?”

  Malik looked at her.

  No, Dark ones, I won’t push her away.

  “When you morph, how do they feel to you?” Malik asked.

  “They?”

  Malik felt something. Hard to name it. It was like the feeling of a jigsaw puzzle piece snapping into place. The feeling of something fitting.

  “The Dark Watchers,” Malik said. “When you morph.”

  “I don’t . . .” She frowned, half convinced he was teasing her.

  “When you morph, when you change, when you are able to go through solid objects, do you feel like you’re being watched? Like there’s someone in your head that isn’t you?”

  The old Pink Floyd lyric came to him. There’s someone in my head, but it’s not me.

  Francis shook her head and her frown deepened.

  Malik felt his heart skip, flutter, then settle. Don’t get ahead of yourself, Malik.

  Are you hearing this? Of course you are. I know you felt the wave of pain I sent you.

  Malik said, “Cruz.”

  Cruz came over and stuck out her hand for her Moleskine. “You done?”

  Malik met her gaze. “Francis doesn’t feel the Dark Watchers.”

  “Lucky her,” Cruz said, took the notebook, and returned to her vigil at the window.

  “Lucky,” Malik said, and smiled. “When you do your thing, Francis . . . this will sound wrong, but, anyway, do you keep your clothing? I mean, you can do this with your clothes on?”

  Francis shifted a bit farther away on the couch. Malik couldn’t blame her.

  “It’s not a creepy question, there’s a reason,” Malik said.

  “Yeah, of course I keep my clothes on.”

  Well, well.

  Well, well, well, well, well.

  “Of course you do,” Malik said, nodding. There was a change in his voice. He was still dreamy and distant, almost without affect. But something with sharper edges was taking shape in his mind. “Of course you do.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you may be more powerful than you can imagine,” Malik said. “You may even be too powerful.”

  Francis, completely perplexed, just nodded and said, “Okay, I’ll be careful then. I’d better . . .” She nodded toward the group at the window, got up, and left.

  I don’t know if you have DNA, Dark ones, don’t know whether experience shapes your lives, but you have free will. And you have random chance, don’t you? Oh, hell yes, you do. And I think maybe it will bite you in the ass.

  “But are you watching, or are you playing?” Malik muttered under his breath. “That’s the mystery. Is this a show? Or is it a game?”

  Tom Peaks had much the same problem as Dekka: it was hard to plan a battle when you didn’t know who you were fighting. But it seemed to him that the safe bet was still to back the military. They would see his usefulness, his power, and if not welcome him back, at least not try and kill him.

  Maybe.

  In a perfect world, he would sneak into Vegas unnoticed, spy out the situation, and get the lay of the land before revealing himself. But given what he’d gleaned from the car radio, the situation was chaotic, violent, and completely unpredictable.

  The one thing Peaks was pretty sure of was that in the end, the superpowered villain, Dillon Poe, would be taken out by the awesome might of the military.

  It still amazed him how painless it was to morph. It seemed impossible that a human body could grow horned, armored skin and rise to fifty feet, let alone have a belly full of liquid fire, and yet feel only a certain . . . itchiness. But he supposed the alien virus engineers had realized that the powers wouldn’t be much use if the pain killed you in the process.

  From fifty feet up, his view of the city was much improved, his morphed eyes shifted all colors toward green. His ability to travel without a road was even more improved. Each step was twenty feet, and Dragon could move quickly when he chose.

  Fwoo-WHUMP! Fwoo-WHUMP! Fwoo-WHUMP!

  Each st
ep was a rush of air and an impact that shook the ground. He loped through the dark desert, crushing desperate shrubs and badger burrows, startling jackrabbits into sudden flight, shaking the ground as his many tons of weight landed on feet that were more like talons.

  No news helicopter spotted him. No drone popped off a Hellfire in his direction. The highway was off to the right, a row of streetlights, flashing emergency lights, flashlights, interior car lights. Ahead the much more enticing lights of the city.

  It was glorious stomping through emptiness, feeling his huge muscles contract and release, feeling within him the killing fire.

  Who could stop Dragon? I am mighty! I may be the mightiest creature ever to walk the earth!

  Peaks knew these kinds of thoughts were absurd, but when he was Dragon he felt such a power high it was hard not to revel in it. Let them all come at him, Dekka, Shade, Knightmare, what did he care? He would destroy them. He took particular pleasure in constructing an imaginary confrontation where he faced Dekka and burned her to ashes.

  Of course, the eyeless eyes were on him, inside him, above and behind and through him. Their attention tempered his giddiness. They were a constant reminder that human power, even Rockborn human power, was a product of some far superior intelligence.

  What did they want, those Dark Watchers? What did they gain from this? Was it all some needlessly elaborate ruse to destroy humanity? But if that was the goal, surely they could have engineered the rock virus to simply wipe people out.

  Drake had said it was all TV. But Drake, while clever enough in his own vile way, did not even have a high school diploma, let alone an advanced degree. Of course Drake would seize on a simplistic analogy.

  Well, he would make short work of Dillon Poe, save the day, then humbly offer his services to the army. The army might now be more open to a giant fire-breathing reptile than the contemptible DiMarco—if she had even survived the attack on the Ranch.

  And then? Return to his family?

  That thought stabbed him in the heart. He had barely thought of his wife or kids because, well, he’d been . . . what? He’d been sitting in a torture chamber with Drake Merwin?

  He had avoided thinking of his family, Peaks knew, because it hurt. For all the—in his mind necessary—ruthlessness he’d shown in building the Ranch, for all the violence he had committed as Dragon, he did still love his kids.

  Tom Peaks, fifty feet tall and breathing fire, still conjured up images of kissing his kids good night. Right about now they would be in bed. Had they brushed their teeth? Had they done their homework?

  Was there anything he could do, ever, that would allow him to see his family again?

  Saving the day. Being a hero. Redeeming himself. Somehow.

  Somehow.

  Here I come to save the day, Tom Peaks thought as he marched toward the lights.

  They could no longer see the action from the window of the suite at Caesars. What they had now was just what came from the news chopper, and whatever video the networks picked up. Jerky, choppy videos that might be minutes old.

  “This isn’t good,” Dekka said.

  “No,” Shade agreed.

  Cruz was not so sure. She was relieved to have the horror farther away. If she never saw another human being crushed beneath a tank, it would be too soon. She was sickened by it all, sickened by the violence and the pure malice that must fill the mind of Dillon Poe. What kind of a human being did this? What kind of human being thought he had a right to take over people’s lives, to use them like puppets? To send them to their own deaths with murder on their consciences and innocent blood on their hands?

  “We need eyes closer up,” Dekka said. Cruz glanced at her and felt something off. Dekka was carefully not looking at her. Too carefully. Shade, too, did not look at Cruz. The two of them let the silence stretch.

  “Oh,” Cruz said.

  Now they turned sad eyes on her.

  Cruz nodded slowly. “Oh,” she said again. Feeling like she was announcing her own death sentence, she said, “I can do it.” The words weighed tons. She had to push them out.

  Neither Dekka nor Shade wasted time pretending to disagree.

  “How should I . . . how should I look?” Cruz asked, wishing she didn’t sound so scared. But, dammit, who wouldn’t be scared?

  “Like anyone but yourself,” Shade said. “But not someone famous, that might get his attention. But, come to think of it, why be visible at all?”

  Cruz nodded, too fast, a nervous gesture that went on for too long.

  “You’ll be fine, Cruz,” Shade said gently. “You were amazing at the hospital. You can do this.” She took Cruz’s hand and squeezed it. Shade had once felt an almost parental affection for Cruz, automatically seeing herself as the leader and Cruz as the led. Malik had changed all that. Malik was the living, breathing, unmistakable proof that Shade was not as clever as she’d thought. Malik’s existence was a big finger of doubt pointed straight at her. With the arrival of Dekka, Shade had felt herself willingly assuming a subordinate role. It was a relief not making every decision.

  A part of Cruz—a big part—appreciated Shade’s kind words. But another part was silently screaming, You got me into this, you crazy, obsessed head case!

  “Okay, so . . . now?” Cruz asked.

  “Listen,” Shade said. “You’re going to have your phone connected to me, all right? I’ll be downstairs, and I’ll be ready. Anything goes wrong and I’m on you in a heartbeat.”

  Cruz nodded again. “Yep.”

  Can you outrun a bullet, Shade?

  “I guess I’ll go invisible.” She tried for a joke. “I’m too nervous to think of looking like anyone.”

  “I’d go with you, Cruz, but I guess I’d be kind of noticeable.” Armo made a sad smile. “But look, if anything goes wrong, I won’t be as fast as Shade, but I’ll get there.”

  Cruz nodded, not trusting her voice. Armo didn’t really know her, might not even know quite what she was. But she believed he would try to save her.

  On stiff legs she walked from the room, with Shade for once walking behind her. The casino staff—many bandaged, with torn uniforms and haggard looks—nodded respectfully as they passed. Strange, Cruz thought, how quickly people could adjust to the impossible, when they had motive enough.

  “I live in a world where lots of people hate me for not being what they want me to be,” Cruz said as they rode down in the elevator. “But now they’re tipping their hats to a pair of Rockborn monstrosities.”

  “Mmmm,” Shade said. “I don’t mean to disillusion you, Cruz, but there are a lot of idiots in the world.”

  “Two of them in this elevator.”

  Shade blew out a breath. “It’s hard to argue with that.” She leaned forward and pushed the stop elevator button.

  “What?” Cruz asked.

  “You don’t have to do this, Cruz. You don’t have to play hero; that’s not what you signed up for.”

  “No, I signed up to be a sidekick,” Cruz replied, trying and failing to make it a joke.

  “Well, Robin, I think you picked the wrong damn Batman.”

  A few minutes one way or the other, and we would never have met. A roll of the dice.

  Perfect for Las Vegas.

  Their eyes met. It’s different now, Cruz thought. Something is different. When life was more normal, Shade and I would talk like friends, like equals, but there was always something in Shade’s gaze that marked her as dominant. In charge. After the rock, that became even more pronounced. Shade almost craved battle, each confrontation a rehearsal for the revenge she could never achieve against a creature long dead.

  And there had always been something in Cruz’s own eyes, no doubt, that signaled her submission. Her willing, even eager submission. Shade was smarter. Shade was stronger willed. Shade was a “real” girl. So defined, so definite.

  So different from me.

  What am I? What the hell am I? Even my power is about concealment—proof that the alien rock had
a sense of humor?

  Yet, when she looked in Shade’s eyes, she saw herself reflected now as an equal.

  Suddenly Cruz laughed. “Malik’s list. His, what do you call it?”

  “His superhero taxonomy?” Shade said, and curled her lip.

  “Monster, villain, hero,” Cruz said. “There’s no category called ‘sidekick.’”

  “Well,” Shade said almost tenderly, “you are not a monster, Cruz. And you are definitely not a villain.”

  Cruz pushed the emergency stop button and the elevator began to descend once again.

  “I’m scared to death to go out there,” Cruz said, fighting back tears. “But I’m doing this.”

  “Kind of the definition of a hero, isn’t it?” Shade said. “Scared to death; doing it anyway.”

  CHAPTER 26

  The Hero Thing

  CRUZ WAS USHERED past casino security and stepped out into the world.

  Cruz disappeared. Completely.

  The first thing she focused on was a dead body.

  Since being swept up in the madness, Cruz had seen more violence and death than she had in her previous seventeen years of life, by a factor of a thousand times. But she was not inured. The body was a middle-aged woman. Her clothing was twisted, her blouse exposing white belly. Her mouth was twisted into a look of horror and pain. Someone had stabbed her in both eyes, then left the knife sticking from the side of her neck.

  Cruz stepped around her. Down the long driveway past other dead. Past wounded who still crawled and snapped at the air, still trying to obey the Charmer, even as blood loss and now thirst and hunger dragged them to the arms of the Grim Reaper.

  It was a long walk to the Triunfo. Cruz stuck to the sidewalk. A man bumped into her, spun, blinked, and seeing nothing, shrugged it off.

  People are all about vision. They will dismiss touch, smell, scent, hearing unless their sight confirms.

  She walked quickly when she focused, slowed when she did not. Once or twice she broke into a trot, but her limbs were leaden with dread and she couldn’t keep it up.

  And the oppressive attention of the Dark Watchers was on her. She had dealt with them during her protracted time at the hospital, but it had made her less, not more, immune to them. It felt wrong, unjust, for them to be watching from safety. It felt somehow sacrilegious that they enjoyed slaughter and pain and fear, and Cruz was convinced that’s what they were doing: enjoying.