Monster

by Michael Grant

  “Okay.”

  “Are you happy working at Safeway?” Green asked. She was annoyed by Peaks, thought he was pushing himself into what she, Green, should be managing.

  Dekka gave Green an incredulous look. “No one is happy working at Safeway. It’s a minimum-wage job. Half my income goes for rent.”

  “You never went back to school? No plans for college?”

  “I’m not very smart.”

  Now it was the FBI agent’s turn, talking over his shoulder and watching her in the rearview mirror, which he had tilted for that purpose. “All due respect, Ms. Talent, we have a pretty good idea of your IQ. You’re certainly bright enough to be doing something other than cashiering. You could take the GED.”

  “Maybe I just love touching vegetables.”

  “Or maybe you already got your GED, passed it in the seventy-fifth percentile, and were offered a full scholarship to Cal State San Fran and decided to turn it down and do various dead-end jobs: you delivered flowers, you worked at Toys ‘R’ Us during Christmas, you temped . . .”

  “And again: Why are we talking? Why am I not on my way home to feed my cat?” Dekka was beginning to feel trapped. She glanced at the door handle and saw that it was not locked.

  “We’ve done studies of the PBA survivors, especially the ones who acquired . . . powers, for lack of a better word,” Green said as Peaks and the FBI man watched. “Of the three hundred thirty-two kids initially trapped in the PBA dome—”

  “We called it the FAYZ,” Dekka interrupted.

  “Of those three hundred thirty-two kids, fifty-one developed one supernatural power or another. Most were relatively weak powers. Only nineteen of you developed major powers and survived. You were one. And of those nineteen, seven have since developed serious psychological disorders.”

  “It was kind of stressful, what with the starvation and the violence and the forty percent death rate.” Dekka made no effort to tone down the sarcasm.

  Peaks said, “Yes, there’s that, but we suspect there’s more to it. Some of you adjusted well to life outside the PBA . . . the FAYZ. You among them, even though your parents were not exactly enthusiastic about you rejoining the family. And yet, you were among the most traumatized. Honestly, when I read about some of what you endured . . .” He shook his head in sincere wonderment. “And still, despite having a power, a significant power, and despite suffering terribly, and forming part of the leadership with all the additional stress of that, you seem to be well-adjusted.”

  Emphasis on seem, Dekka thought. You’re not there when I wake up at three in the morning screaming with my bed damp from terror sweat, mister.

  Or maybe they are, Dekka added, mentally scrolling through her memories, looking for any sign that the privacy of her little apartment had been violated. Not that the FBI would leave traces.

  “Yes, I am a great big bundle of happiness and adjustment,” Dekka said. “Are we done?”

  “Ms. Talent,” Peaks said, “may I call you Dekka?”

  “Sure, Tom.”

  “I would imagine you’ve tried to put all that behind you. You’re looking to get back to normal. Four years on, and you’re still trying to find normal.”

  That was too close to the bone for a smart-ass response, so Dekka stayed mum, watching those intelligent, slightly lens-distorted eyes as they stared frankly at her.

  “You are, in fact, among the least affected. Lana Lazar spent time in a mental health facility.”

  “I know, she’s a friend of mine,” Dekka snapped. “She’s fine, now.”

  “Others, like Sam Temple, the supposed hero of the FAYZ, have had—”

  “Hey!” Dekka’s finger was instantly in Peaks’s face. “‘Supposed hero’? Screw you. You don’t disrespect Sam Temple where I can hear it.”

  She reached across Green for the door handle and popped the latch.

  “I apologize,” Peaks said quickly.

  Shaking her head, as if disagreeing with her own choice, Dekka closed the door again and rounded on Peaks. “If you’d lived through one-tenth of what Sam Temple lived through, you might start drinking, too, if you ever nerved yourself up to crawl out from under the bed to start with.” Then, in a calmer tone, “Anyway, he’s on the wagon. Sober for sixteen months.”

  “Fifteen months, twelve days,” the FBI agent said from the front seat. Then, in an actual moment of humanity, he added, “I’ve got nine years, four months, and nineteen days, myself.” He superstitiously rapped his knuckle on a piece of wood trim.

  “So you people do still keep an eye on us,” Dekka accused.

  The FBI’s Agent Carlson and Homeland Security’s Green both nodded. Peaks said, “Of course the government keeps track of you. At one time you possessed extraordinary powers. You, Ms. Talent, were able—by a simple act of will—to cancel the effects of gravity. Incredible! Sam Temple could fire killing energy beams from his hands. There was a girl who had the power to move at speeds just short of breaking the sound barrier. And—”

  “Brianna,” Dekka said softly. Then, with a wistful smile, “The Breeze.”

  “You were friends,” Green said, not quite a question.

  But Dekka was no longer listening. She was seeing Brianna’s wild, reckless grin; hearing her fearlessly proclaim that she was off to this fight or that; feeling a sudden gust of wind and catching just a glimpse of ponytail standing straight back as Brianna blew past.

  Other memories were there, too, dark and awful images, but Dekka brushed those aside. Four years and she still could not think about Brianna without crying. It was an unrequited love, maybe a ridiculous love, but love just the same, and it still warmed Dekka. And sometimes it burned her.

  Dekka took several deep breaths and cursed herself for the need to wipe at tears.

  You were brave one too many times, Breeze.

  “Our point is,” Peaks persisted, “you are almost uniquely normal, stable. No alcohol or drug issues, aside from the occasional joint or beer. No psychological breakdown. No wild or reckless behavior—other than speeding violations on your motorcycle. Of all the people who gained—and then lost—these supernatural powers and endured the PBA, the FAYZ, you, almost alone, seem to have avoided going . . . becoming . . .” He searched for the right word, so Dekka supplied it.

  “Crazy. That’s the scientific term: crazy.” Dekka felt a sudden longing for her dinky apartment and especially its tiny shower. Four years on, the FAYZ had left its marks: she ate too much, a common problem for people who’ve been close to starvation; she still had nightmares, though less frequently; and she took two long, hot showers—drought be damned—every single day, reveling even now in the luxury she’d been denied for that one-year lifetime in the FAYZ.

  Peaks nodded, accepting the word. “You didn’t go crazy. There’s something about you, maybe genetic, maybe psychological, that made you particularly resistant to whatever the powers do to those who possess them.”

  “It’s not about the powers,” Dekka said, “it’s all of us who were there. It was a whole lot of bad things we had to do to survive.”

  “No,” Peaks said flatly. He shook his head by millimeters so that it was more a vibration than a back-and-forth. “The numbers don’t lie. Among survivors of the Perdido Beach Anomaly who did not have any mutations, thirty-six percent have had serious psychological or behavioral problems. Among those with major powers? The number is closer to ninety percent.”

  Dekka stared at him. Then at Green. And at the eyes of the FBI man watching her in the rearview mirror. “What is this? What is this about, what do you people want?”

  “We will be happy to tell you.” Green again. She pulled out her phone and tapped the screen a few times. “There’s a document on this screen. Read it, sign it—thumbprint will do—and we can tell you everything.”

  Dekka took the phone and read, flicking down the page. “This swears me to secrecy.”

  “Under penalty of law, and we are very serious about prosecuting unauthorized statement
s,” the FBI agent said without turning around.

  “Yeah?” Dekka said with a short laugh. “Well, it’s been fun, folks, but I’m sweaty and I smell like the vanilla almond milk some brat spilled on me. So, good night.”

  Again Dekka reached for the door, and when Green didn’t move aside a hard look came over Dekka’s face.

  Peaks leaned into her, to an intimate distance, an uncomfortable distance that conveyed just the hint of threat. “We need one of you, preferably you. But if you refuse, our next stop is Sam Temple. And I think we both know he’ll agree to help us.”

  “Hey, Sam’s sober, and Astrid’s got her head screwed on straight, so leave them the hell out of this. Leave them both alone.” Peaks met her gaze, unflinching, and Dekka sighed. “Ah. So it’s like that.” She shook her head, realizing she was trapped. “You have any idea how many times that boy, that man, saved my life?”

  “Many times.” Peaks again, and now the pitch was lower, lending an almost compassionate tone. “I’ve read all the published stories, Ms. Talent, and many unpublished statements. So I know as well that you saved him. Many times. I know that you were his strong right arm whenever things turned dangerous.”

  Then Green spoke up, sounding disapproving. “You’re a lesbian, and black, and yet you’re inevitably referred to as the ‘strong right arm’ to a white male. Doesn’t that grate on your nerves? Aren’t we supposed to be past that—”

  Dekka let go a snort and sat all the way back in her seat, willing herself to remain calm. “A white male?” she echoed, her voice vibrating with suppressed anger. “He’s not a white male, he’s Sam freaking Temple. You can read all the accounts you want, but you don’t know what he did, and how . . .” Tears threatened to well again. Dekka stabbed a finger at Green. “Every single person . . . every single one . . . who came out of that hellhole alive is alive because of him. Sam Temple’s strong right arm? You can chisel those words on my tombstone, lady, and I’ll be a proud and happy corpse.”

  “We’d rather have you,” Peaks said, and took Green’s phone and held it out for Dekka. The document glowed up at her. “Press your thumb on the button.”

  Dekka did it, because if she didn’t, Sam would. He would of course be furious if he found out she was protecting him. The thought brought a small smile to Dekka’s lips. Sam and Astrid didn’t need more of the FAYZ; they needed college and work and lives and hopefully, someday, a bouncing little baby that they’d name Dekka if she was a girl.

  That was Dekka’s fantasy for them, anyway.

  “Am I going back to work tomorrow?” she asked.

  Tom Peaks shook his head.

  Dekka unclipped the name tag with her cover name—Jean, her middle name—reached across, rolled down the window, and tossed the tag out to clatter on the blacktop.

  “Wherever you’re taking me, my bike had better get there, too, and without a scratch. Oh, and fill the tank.”

  ASO-2

  ANOMALOUS SPACE OBJECT–2 struck planet Earth after its million-year trip, landing precisely where it was expected to land—in a section of the North Sea just off the coast of Scotland that had been surrounded by NATO ships—American, British, and Dutch. Below the water one British and one US submarine were holding the perimeter around a French deep-sea exploration submersible. Ships from the Russian navy and the Chinese navy looked on from a barely discreet distance, their surveillance equipment all atingle.

  But the meteorite played a trick on all of them. The seventeen-pound object hit perfectly in the target zone moving at about ninety thousand miles an hour, but like a rock slung sidearm toward a pond, it skipped.

  The first skip carried it six miles.

  The second skip carried it just two miles, but that two miles took it to the Isle of Islay, where it struck a rock outcropping—still moving at fantastic speed—and broke apart.

  Homeland Security Task Force 66 immediately diverted every resource at its disposal—the international naval force and their marines, land-based police and military forces—and turned the sleepy Isle of Islay—pronounced “eye-la” and best known for sheep and Scotch whisky—into something between a war zone and a bad action comedy. Within an hour, the coast of Islay was beset by dangerous-looking ships, while helicopters buzzed around like bees who thought Islay was their hive.

  All the activity brought the islanders out of their homes and fields and businesses to see what was going on. Once they had deduced that the military and police of several nations were all searching for a meteorite, out came the metal detectors and the sifters and the shovels. The locals might not know what the rock was, but they knew it had value.

  Yet it was not greed that caused the biggest problem; rather it was kindness. It was young Delia Macbeth, fourteen, who saw her little brother, Sean, just four years old, playing with a chip of dark rock. The chip was oddly shaped, in that if you held it a certain way it looked a bit like Mickey Mouse. Sean was sucking on the rock, and at first Delia did the proper big-sister thing and took it from him. Then Sean started bawling, so Delia did the easy thing and gave it back.

  After all, it was just a rock, and if Sean wanted it that badly . . .

  Search teams swept the lower half of the island and eventually recovered 60 percent of ASO-2.

  Sixty percent.

  The other 40 percent was scattered across fields and woods. And about three ounces of it was in the greedy fist and slavering mouth of a four-year-old with a notoriously bad temper.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Committing of Crimes

  DAYS PASSED. HOMEWORK was done. School was attended. But school had ceased to be the center of Cruz’s life.

  They had dinner once with Shade’s father, Professor Martin Darby, just back from Scotland. He was a good-looking man, a silver fox type, formal by nature but trying to be accessible. “Please, call me Darby, everyone does.”

  He tried to play the cool dad, but his interest and attention were elsewhere. He seemed overly formal with Shade, and she returned it in kind. Not that there was any hostility; on the contrary, the affection and mutual respect were clear, and something Cruz envied terribly. But Professor Darby’s mind was not on his daughter, let alone his daughter’s new friend who—even a distracted astrophysicist had figured out—was not a boyfriend.

  Above all, Shade and Cruz planned. Which was to say, Shade planned with ferocious efficiency and relentless logic, as it began to dawn on Cruz that while the scheme might seem wildly improbable, even impossible, it was no such thing for her impressive new friend.

  Cruz had never met anyone like Shade. Not even a little like Shade. It was as if there were two people living in that pretty, scarred body: a high school science nerd and a shark. Sometimes Cruz played a little game with herself, seeing Shade’s unblemished left side as representing an interesting but essentially normal high school girl; and the right side, the side with the scar, as the shark. The girl Shade Darby was funny and relaxed and even moderately empathetic; the predatory fish? Well, as the famous movie line went, the shark had “lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eyes.”

  Yes, there were times when Shade frightened Cruz a little. But that frisson, that sense that she was dealing with a person far larger than could possibly fit within this girl, just added to Cruz’s growing infatuation. Writers—even unpublished ones—loved characters, and Shade Darby was definitely a character.

  Was it the shark that kept Cruz from asking Shade why she was doing this? Was it the invisible but very real barrier that Shade erected around that question and around her past?

  At the very least, Cruz wanted to ask about the scar. It was not subtle, it was like something out of an old Frankenstein movie, a good six inches long and cross-hatched. Shade could have worn her hair in such a way as to hide it, but she didn’t. She could have worn turtlenecks, but she didn’t. She wore the scar proudly, it seemed to Cruz. Or was the right word “defiantly”? It had the odd effect of accentuating her prettiness, but at the same time it gave her an aura of to
ughness and mystery.

  I don’t want to push her. I don’t want to lose her.

  Cruz had thus far in her writing life stuck to short stories and the occasional bit of not-great poetry. But she had enough of the instincts of a writer to recognize that here was a story. Maybe a cautionary tale of obsession. Maybe a weepy rise-above-it tale in which Shade coped with the death of one parent and the emotional absence of the other. But that was certainly not how Shade saw herself, and when Cruz was with Shade she could not help being swept up in Shade’s determination. Shade was like an ebb tide sweeping Cruz out to sea, out to danger, and yet . . .

  And yet, you are willing to be swept, Cruz. Aimless and friendless, you are just so much flotsam on the river of life.

  One thing had become clear: there was no more harassment from anyone at school, and somehow this was Shade’s doing, though Cruz had no notion of how her friend managed it. The student body simply seemed to have figured out that Cruz was under Shade’s protection, and that was all it took. Cruz did not become popular overnight. In fact, if anything she felt people avoiding her, but they did not hassle her, and for now that was enough.

  Cruz sometimes wondered what Shade was like before losing her mother. Had she always had this split personality? Had she always had a gift for ruthlessness and the iron will to go with it? Had she ever just been a normal high school girl? Did whatever it was that took her mother’s life harden her? And was it the kind of hard that was only on the outside, or did it go all the way down?

  Cruz had covered pages of her purple Moleskine with notes about her new friend. Her only friend. She had started by thinking Shade’s plan to steal the rock was fantasy, the kind of desperate nonsense a girl with delusions of grandeur or a simple hunger for adventure might come up with. That mistaken belief lasted only a very short while, for it was clear, absolutely, unmistakably clear, that Shade Darby meant to steal the rock.