Monster

by Michael Grant

  “Hugo Cruz Martinez Rojas.”

  “Hugo Rojas. Yeah, she’s hurt. A couple of our star football players roughed her up. Yes. No. Uh-huh.” Shade hung up. “See? No problem. The school is already dealing with the swastika incident. They don’t want any more bad publicity.”

  “Swastika incident?”

  “Spray paint on the side of the temporary building, the one they use for music. A swastika and the usual hate stuff, half of it misspelled. It’s two ‘g’s,’ not one. One ‘g’ and it’s a country in Africa. Sad times when someone does that, sadder still when they can’t even spell it.”

  Cruz had removed most of the blood from her face and neck, but Shade went to her, took a tissue, and leaned in to wipe a fugitive blood smear from the corner of her mouth.

  The gesture embarrassed Cruz, who turned her attention again to the bookshelf beside her. “Veronica Rossi. Andrew Smith. Lindsay Cummings. Dashner. Marie Lu. Daniel Kraus.” Reading the authors’ names from the spines. “And Dostoyevsky? Faulkner? Gertrude Stein? David Foster Wallace? Virginia Woolf?”

  “I have eclectic tastes,” Shade said. She waited to see what Cruz made of the rest of her collection.

  “The Science of the Perdido Beach Anomaly.” Cruz frowned. “Powers and Possibilities: The Meaning of the Perdido Beach Anomaly. That sounds dramatic. The Physics of the Perdido Beach Anomaly. Way too math-y for me. Our Story: Surviving the FAYZ. I read that one myself—I guess everyone did. I didn’t like the movie, though—they obviously toned it way down.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “You’re very into the Perdido Beach thing.”

  Shade nodded. “Some would say obsessed.”

  Some. Like Malik.

  “And you like science.”

  “My father is a professor at Northwestern, head of astrophysics. It runs in the family.”

  “And your mom?”

  “She’s dead.” Shade cursed herself silently. Four years of saying those words and she still couldn’t get them out without a catch in her voice.

  “I’m sorry,” Cruz said, her brow wrinkling in a frown.

  “Thank you,” Shade said levelly. She had the ability to place a big, giant “full stop” on the end of subjects she did not want to pursue, and Cruz got the hint.

  “My father is a plumbing contractor,” Cruz said. “We used to live in Skokie but, well, I had problems at the school. It was a Catholic school and I guess they like their students to be either male or female but not all-of-the-above, or neither, or, you know, multiple-choice. I started out wearing the boys’ uniform, and they didn’t like it when I switched to a skirt.”

  “No?”

  “It was a bit short,” Cruz admitted slyly, “but they don’t make a lot of plaid skirts in my size.”

  “What do you do when you’re not provoking violence at bus stops?”

  Cruz had a silent laugh, an internal one that expressed itself in quiet snorts, wheezes, and wide grins, sort of the diametric opposite of Malik. “Are you asking what I want to be when I grow up? That’s my other secret. I’ve gotten to the point where I can mostly deal with the gender stuff, but writing . . . I mean, you tell people you want to write and they roll their eyes.”

  “I’ll be sure to look away when I roll my eyes,” Shade promised.

  “Yes, I want to be Veronica Roth when I grow up. You know she’s from here, right? She went to Northwestern.”

  “What do you write about?”

  Cruz shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t know. It’s probably just therapy, you know? Working out my own issues, but using fictional characters.”

  “Isn’t that what all fiction writers do?”

  Cruz did a short version of her internalized laugh.

  Shade nodded, head at a tilt, eyeing Cruz closely. “You . . . are interesting.” Something in the way she said it made it a benediction, a pronouncement, and a small, gratified smile momentarily appeared on Cruz’s lips.

  After that they chatted about books, ate chips and salsa, and drank orange juice; they watched a little TV, with Shade leaving the choice of shows to Cruz because, of course, Shade was testing her, or at least studying her.

  Cruz actually is interesting. And . . . useful?

  The day wore on, and the swelling in Cruz’s ankle worsened until it was twice its normal size but then began slowly to deflate like a balloon with a slow leak. The pain receded as well, beaten back by ibuprofen, ice, and the recuperative powers of youth.

  All the while Shade considered. She liked this odd person, this e) in a true-or-false world, this person who tried to wear a skirt to Catholic school, this smart but not too smart, funny, self-deprecating, seemingly aimless creature who wanted to be a writer.

  Person, Shade chided herself. Not creature, person. She was aware that she had a tendency to analyze people with the intensity and the emotional distance of a scientist counting bacteria on a slide.

  Blame DNA.

  Shade needed help, backup, support, she knew that, and her only currently available choice was Malik, who would resist and delay and generally try to get in her way. Malik was a chronic rescuer, one of those boys—young men, actually, in Malik’s case—who thought it was their duty in life to get between every bully and their victim and every fool and their fate. Had he been at the bus stop, he would have launched himself in between the two football players and gotten a beat-down, and it would be his blood she was wiping away, and him she was making ice packs for, and him here in her bedroom . . .

  And that is not a helpful place to go, Shade.

  They had been drawn to each other from the start, four years ago when Shade had returned to live with her father after the life-changing disaster at Perdido Beach. At first they’d been friends. He had visited her in the hospital after her second surgery, the one to repair the nerves on the right side of her face—she had not been able to feel her cheek. In later years they had become a great deal more, each the other’s first.

  The breakup had been Shade’s decision, not Malik’s. He had wanted more of her, more commitment, more openness. But Shade liked her secrets. She liked her privacy, her control over her life.

  Her obsession.

  Now Shade reached a conclusion: time to pull the pin on the hand grenade, or light the fuse, or some such simile.

  Fortune favors the bold, and all that.

  “My father is actually doing some work for the government,” Shade said.

  “Like for NASA?”

  “Mmmm, well, not exactly. How are you at keeping secrets, Cruz?”

  Cruz waved a languid hand down her body. “I’m a gender-fluid kid who had been passing as muy macho until, like, six months ago. I can keep a secret.”

  “Yeah.” Shade nodded, tilted her head, considered, careful to keep a gently amused expression on her face to conceal the cold appraisal in her eyes.

  She owes me. I rescued her. She has no friends.

  She’ll do it.

  “My dad’s, um, tracking the path of what they’re calling an ASO—Anomalous Space Object. Several, actually. Seven, to be precise, ASO-Two through ASO-Eight.”

  Cruz lifted a plucked eyebrow. “What happened to ASO-One?”

  “Oh, ASO-One already landed on Earth years ago. They think all eight ASOs are pieces from the same source, an asteroid or planetoid that blew up, sending some interstellar shrapnel our way. One of the pieces—ASO-One—managed to catch a ride on Jupiter’s gravity well and got here ahead of the rest. Just about nineteen years ahead. The other fragments took a longer route. But ASO-Two through -Eight are scheduled to intercept Earth over the next few weeks.”

  Shade saw that Cruz had not made the connection, not figured it out, and that was a little disappointing. But then, a flicker and a frown, and Cruz made direct eye contact and asked, “Nineteen years ago? Wasn’t that . . .”

  Shade nodded slowly. “Mmmm. Nineteen years ago ASO-One entered Earth’s orbit and slammed into a nuclear power plant just north of the town of Perdido Beach, California.�
��

  That froze Cruz solid for a long minute. Her eyes searched Shade’s face, trying to see whether Shade was just kidding. Because this wasn’t some little secret, like “I’ve got a crush on . . .” This was a secret two high school kids who barely knew each other should not possess.

  Cruz swallowed a lump. “You’re talking about the alien rock?”

  “The rock that changed the world,” Shade confirmed. “The rock that rewrote the laws of physics. The rock that turned random teen sociopaths into superpowered killers. That rock.”

  “And you’re . . . you’re saying there are more coming?”

  “According to my father’s calculations, and he is very good at his job. He’s tracking the rocks. One lands today off the coast of Scotland. That’s ASO-Two. Another, ASO-Three, hits in just a few days.”

  Cruz shifted uncomfortably, obviously realizing that Shade was no longer making idle chitchat. A message was being delivered. A question hung in the air.

  “It’s supposed to land in Iowa. Or it was,” Shade said. “Now, with some updated numbers, they think it will land in Nebraska. There’ll be a whole government task force there to grab it: HSTF-Sixty-Six: Homeland Security Task Force Sixty-Six. Yes, they’ll be there with helicopters and police escort and various scientists. In Nebraska.”

  The air between them seemed to vibrate.

  “Nebraska,” Cruz said.

  Shade nodded. “Uh-huh.” Time to go all-in, to trust her instincts. “But the truth is it will land in Iowa, as originally calculated.”

  “So, um . . .”

  “So . . . someone changed the inputs,” Shade said, her voice low and silky. “Someone with access to my father’s computer. My dad is a genius, but his memory for little things isn’t great, so he sticks a Post-it to the bottom of his keyboard. You know, for his password.”

  The play of emotion across Cruz’s face was fascinating to Shade. First Cruz thought she was hearing wrong. Then she thought Shade was teasing. And then, finally, even before she asked, she knew Shade was telling the truth.

  Cruz, Shade thought, should never play poker: her face revealed all. She could practically see the shiver go up Cruz’s spine.

  Cruz said, “You.” It was not a question.

  “I’m pretty good at math,” Shade said. “And Wolfram Alpha helps.”

  “You changed your dad’s calculations?”

  Shade nodded and tilted her head to the “quizzical” position. “The question is, Cruz, why did I change the numbers?”

  It was a clear test, a clear challenge, and Cruz passed, saying, “You’re going to try to take the rock.”

  “No,” Shade said. “I won’t try. I’ll succeed.” Then, after a beat, added, “Especially if you help me.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Dropping the Name Tag

  “YOU KNOW . . . YOU look familiar,” the woman said, narrowing her eyes. She was a mother with a two-year-old in her shopping basket and a five-year-old tagging along and playing with the candy in the checkout rack.

  “I get that a lot,” the cashier said.

  “You’re one of those Perdido Beach people! The black one. The lesbian! That’s you! Oh, my God, that’s you!”

  Dekka Talent shook her head, putting on her tolerant smile, not easy in the face of being identified as “the black one” and “the lesbian.” She tapped the Safeway name tag on her chest and said, “I’m Jean. But, like I said, I get that a lot.”

  “I can’t believe you’re working as a cashier! You don’t really look like the actress who played you in the movie.”

  “Ma’am, did you find everything you wanted?”

  “What? Oh, yes, except for the brand of orange juice my son . . . Wait, can I get a selfie with you?”

  “Ma’am, if you’ll just push the green button there on the credit card machine . . .”

  It had been a week since the last “recognition moment,” as Dekka Talent thought of it. Progress. If you graphed it out over the last four years since the end of the FAYZ—what most of the world still called the Perdido Beach Anomaly—the number of recognition moments had definitely declined. Declined, but hadn’t stopped entirely.

  Dekka’s work shift ended without any selfies. She punched out, changed out of her faded blue smock into motorcycle leathers in the locker room, and exchanged a few pleasantries with other employees either coming on shift or going off. She politely refused an invitation to after-work drinks—she was still just nineteen years old, though people assumed she was older. And she was broke besides—she’d had to buy new tires.

  There was a seriousness about Dekka, a metaphorical weight that people could feel, and that, along with her dark skin and dreads and general air of don’t-give-a-damn, left people seeing her as older. Older and tougher because, with some nonmetaphorical weight, with her powerful legs and shoulders, you might pick a fight with Dekka, but only if you were drunk or very stupid.

  Dekka walked outside to the artificially bright, slightly chilly parking lot. Dekka’s pride and joy, her candy fire red and black Kawasaki Ninja 1000 waited under its transparent plastic rain cover. Dekka hated her job, but in decent weather the ride from the Strawberry Safeway, up the 101, and across the San Rafael Bridge to the apartment she rented in Pinole was the best part of her day. Unless it was raining, which was seldom in the San Francisco Bay Area.

  Dekka folded the rain cover and thrust it into one side of the hard plastic saddlebag, and a few groceries she’d picked up into the other side. She settled her helmet over her dreads, relaxed in the reassuring anonymity from the black visor, and was just about to fire up the engine when two very large black SUVs pulled into the mostly empty lot.

  The SUVs came to a stop, forming a sort of loose V directly in front of her.

  Dekka started the engine, feeling the familiar reassuring throb that vibrated all through her body, glanced left to make sure she could turn away, and the passenger window of the second SUV rolled down to reveal an identity card deliberately illuminated by a cell phone light.

  “No, no, no, no,” Dekka said, but in a tone of resignation, not fear. She sighed, killed the engine, and pulled her helmet off. “Really? After an eight-hour shift on my feet?”

  Two men and a woman climbed from the second SUV, each showing ID. They were all dressed in Official Civilian Outfits: dark blue or black suits, ties for the men, an open collar for the woman. They might as well have had the word “Government” tattooed on their foreheads.

  “Ms. Talent?” the woman asked. “Dekka Jean Talent?” She was middle-aged, stocky, with a wide, flat face that suggested Slavic roots.

  “What’s this about?” Dekka asked, guessing at least part of the answer. They weren’t there about the damaged canned goods she may have taken on occasion without exactly getting specific approval. Nor were they there to collect for the speeding ticket she got rocketing down the PCH north of Bodega Bay the week before.

  “I’m Natalie Green,” the woman said, producing a brief spasm that might be a type of smile. “I’m with Homeland Security. This is Special Agent Carlson, FBI, and Tom Peaks.”

  Dekka did not miss the fact that Tom Peaks was not identified by his affiliation, or that his identity card had been very quickly folded away before she could really see it.

  “What?” Dekka asked.

  “We would like a few moments of your time.”

  “Why?” She was not yet worried—this was not her first encounter with authority. From time to time some branch of government would decide to question her, usually about one of the other Perdido Beach survivors. She had steadfastly refused to give any information at all—there were still those who wanted to prosecute some of the survivors, and Dekka would do nothing to help make that happen.

  What happened in Perdido Beach stayed in Perdido Beach.

  Well, aside from about two dozen survivor books, a movie, and a TV series “inspired by” what everyone else called the PBA, the Perdido Beach Anomaly, but what Dekka, like all who were there, would
always and forever call the FAYZ.

  Natalie Green shrugged, tried out her scary millisecond smile again, and said, “Maybe not out in the open in a parking lot? If you would come with us . . .” She gestured toward the second SUV.

  “Really?” Dekka asked again, sounding irritated—which was hardly unusual for her. Patience had never been one of her virtues.

  “Ten minutes. Fifteen, tops,” Natalie Green said. “We won’t leave the lot.”

  Dekka cursed, not quite inaudibly, and said, “Whatever.”

  The driver of the second SUV got out and came around like a well-trained chauffeur to hold a door open for her, and then remained outside as Green and Peaks sandwiched Dekka into the middle of the backseat and Agent Carlson took shotgun.

  “Nice,” Dekka said, looking around at the posh leather interior. The dashboard glowed blue and red. The heater streamed air onto the windshield, holding a line of condensation at bay.

  “Ms. Talent, first of all, it’s an honor to meet you,” Green said. “I’ve read most of the literature that came out of the PBA, and it’s clear that you were very important to the survival of those people, very central to stopping the worst excesses.”

  “Uh-huh,” Dekka said, slow and guarded. “Don’t tell me you want a selfie.”

  Blank stare.

  “Okay,” Dekka said with mounting impatience. “Can you just tell me what this is about?”

  “It’s been four years—well, a little more than four years.” It was the first thing Tom Peaks had said. He had an odd voice, too high to match the serious face. “You’re, what, eighteen years old now, a legal adult?”

  That voice could get grating pretty quickly.

  “Nineteen, and who are you, again?”

  “Tom Peaks.”

  “Yeah, I heard your name, but who are you?”

  He was in his late thirties, wore moderately fashionable glasses, and parted his sandy hair on one side with military precision. His blue eyes were overlarge behind the glasses, intelligent, alert, and almost rude in the directness with which he stared at her. “I’m with DARPA. That’s the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.”