Justin found a terrified Erin, holding on for dear life to a twitching cable end.
“My God, Justin, my God!”
“Isn’t it awesome?” he rumbled. “Come on!”
Justin swept Erin into the crook of his left arm, nearly crushing the air from her lungs, and leaped out into the void.
They fell at the same time as a CHP SUV, the black-and-white vehicle tumbling beside them through the air, lights still flashing, the driver clawing madly at his door handle, as if getting out would help. Car, cop, monster, and screaming socialite fell in a hail of concrete chunks and flailing bodies, accompanied by a soundtrack of howls and screams, racing engines that turned wheels in the air, and twanging cables that cracked like bullwhips.
Justin saw the water rushing up at them. This fall—this identical fall—killed about forty suicides in any given year, but he knew it wouldn’t kill him; he was Knightmare, and Erin was in the crook of his mighty arm, where she would be protected by the chitinous armor.
Even for Knightmare the impact was shocking, a sudden, massive deceleration that tore Erin from his grip and the air from his lungs. Down, down he went. Down and now swept away by the current went Erin. Down through gray water, down and down, impossibly down, and all around Justin like depth charges the police and civilian vehicles, the pedestrians, and the debris plunged, tearing bubble columns in the water. A massive slab of something hit Justin in the back, bounced away, and caught Erin in a glancing blow that expelled the last of the air from her lungs.
Justin sank downward, eyes raised to the horror show. A boy, no more than ten, hit the water directly above him, facedown, a disastrous belly flop that sprayed blood from his ears and mouth and rammed his eyes into his brain.
Justin tried now to swim upward but his sword was less than useless, and he was not quite buoyant. He fell past Erin, past all the bodies that now hung suspended, down to where the trailing end of the great cable sank like a vast orange snake.
Finally, he saw the murk of sand and seaweed and bunched his legs up, timing it with precision. He kicked with all his might, feet slamming mud, and shot upward through the water like a breaching whale. Up right beneath Erin. He reached for her, snagged her ankle with what gentleness he could manage, and dragged her with him to the surface.
“Aaaah! Aaaah!” Erin cried as she gulped air.
Justin had no words. The scale, the amazing, appalling scale of it all, overwhelmed him. He had done all this! He, Justin DeVeere, art student. He . . . Knightmare!
Justin kicked his legs, used an awkward stroke of his sword, swung back and forth like a ship’s propeller, and tilted his head back to look up. That glance was not reassuring—the bulk of the roadway, thousands of tons of steel and concrete, had not yet come down, and if it did while they were still beneath the bridge, they would very likely die.
But escape was at hand, as it so often was for superheroes, Justin thought. A ship piled high with faded containers and with too much momentum to stop was racing to clear the bridge and reach the safety of the open sea, but it would pass them a hundred yards off.
Justin yelled, “Grab my neck!” He seized a length of cable with his claw and pulled hard, and they shot through the water. Another cable end, another pull, like some aquatic Tarzan swinging from vines, and they were at the ship, the tall steel wall rushing past. The ship’s hull rang like a bell as the flailing main cable slapped it, leaving a dent a foot deep, scarred with rust-red paint.
At the last possible moment, Justin stuck his sword into the side of the ship and felt the sudden jerk and then the steady drag as the ship’s momentum carried them out from beneath the bridge.
Justin dug his claw hand into the steel as if it was no more than cardboard and climbed the side, stabbing with his sword, biting into steel with his pincer, Erin O’Day clinging to him like that blond girl in the King Kong movie. They spilled, wet, freezing, numb, and stunned, onto the deck of the ship between two stacks of containers. A black Prius lay upside down, its windshield shattered, the small Uber sign still in place.
Erin, on hands and knees, vomited seawater and stomach contents, retching until there was nothing left.
Justin stood unharmed, looking back at the Golden Gate Bridge twisting and tearing itself apart in spectacular death throes. The center section of roadway fell at last, more than a mile of roadway, and hit with the impact of a bomb, sending up a geyser of green water as high as the still-standing towers.
“Wow,” Justin said in his huge rumble. “Cool.”
And far away, or perhaps very near, the dark watchers silently applauded.
CHAPTER 12
Being Used
“ARE YOU READY?” Peaks asked.
“Beyond ready. Are we finally doing this?” Dekka asked.
“We are,” Peaks confirmed. “I apologize for the delay, I had to go to Chicago for . . . for an event.”
Dekka felt the return of an old, old friend: fear. It was not a panic fear, not a horror movie fear, more a nervous uncertainty, a combination of hope and worry, anticipation mixed with a dread of disappointment mixed with a countervailing hope that nothing at all would happen.
And I can go back to being Jean from Safeway.
Funny, Dekka thought, how much she had come to accept that life. Fifteen dollars an hour, thirty hours a week. Plus ten long hours at the customer desk of an auto body shop every other Saturday.
When she had a little money to spend, she sometimes drove her motorcycle down to Oakland to Club BnB, had drinks, danced, and occasionally hooked up—not that this ever resulted in a real relationship. In the four years since the end of the FAYZ, Dekka had dated half a dozen women once or twice, and for two months lived with a very nice young woman whose only real failure was that she was not Brianna.
Brianna: Dekka’s crush, her love, her obsession. As a legal adult now, she was well aware that it was bizarre, even a little creepy, to still be hung up on a straight twelve-year-old girl. But her love for Brianna had never been physical. It had never been Brianna’s body that drew Dekka, not even when she was just fourteen or fifteen herself; it was the fact that Brianna, the Breeze, had been the funniest, most reckless, and bravest person Dekka had ever met.
Brianna had set an impossibly high standard for any normal woman to meet. Unrealistic? Yes, Dekka knew that, just as she knew her obsession was dooming her to a life of disappointment and loneliness.
All that time with Brianna, that whole mad world of the FAYZ, was a million years ago. Sometimes. Other times it was like it was all still happening. Dekka had thought it was all in her past—not just Brianna, but love itself. Where would she ever find the friendship she had known? She was like a combat veteran who welcomed peace but knew that his wartime experiences would make the rest of life dim by contrast.
But now . . .
She’d been five days at the facility, playing along with the tedious physical and psychological tests, playing along though it galled her, remaining compliant, biddable, and in every way not like herself.
Why?
Because I hate being Jean from Safeway. Because I miss . . . I miss . . .
. . . the power!
Now, as Peaks, a doctor named Amanta Malireddi, a nurse, Jane Prettyman, and two blank-faced, unobtrusive security people accompanied her down a long hallway, Dekka knew where she was going: the Secure Lab, shortened, in the argot of the facility, to the Slab.
At first glance, the Slab was an effort to disguise an austere laboratory as something more humane. There was no strange machinery, just the usual computers, nothing at all that suggested ray guns or lasers or interdimensional portals, or any of the things a Hollywood set designer might have included. The center of the Slab was a simple room, about the size of a suburban living room, with three gurneys, each covered in crisp white sheets. There were the usual small, wheeled, stainless-steel tables holding medical instruments, a cabinet with a multitude of small drawers, and a steel desk.
It was all fairly innocuous.
Except. Except that the walls were formed of sections, like panels, which suggested there might be things behind those panels. And there was a bank vault feel to the air, an undefinable sense of massive strength to walls and ceiling and floor, which itself was stainless steel.
The whole place just felt . . . wrong.
As much a prison cell as a lab.
Nurse Prettyman indicated the nearest table, and Dekka hopped up onto it, feeling the fifteen pounds she’d put on since the FAYZ.
I’ve gotta stay off the Ben and Jerry’s.
The nurse attached EEG lines to Dekka’s head, so that she looked like a disgruntled but colorful porcupine, black dreads sprouting multicolored wires. A blood oxygen monitor clamped Dekka’s right index finger and a blood pressure cuff went around her wrist. Finally the nurse inserted an IV line and hung a small, clear plastic pouch full of what looked like nothing more than distilled water.
“Nine oh three a.m.,” Dr. Malireddi said. Then, to Dekka, “I want at this time to reiterate that your participation is wholly voluntary and that you have been informed of the risks.”
“Yep.”
“All right then, nurse,” the doctor said, and the nurse turned the little plastic toggle on the line and the liquid began to flow into Dekka’s arm.
“Let us know if you feel any discomfort,” Dr. Malireddi said calmly, like a dentist about to start drilling. Peaks was leaning against a far wall, arms crossed over his chest. He was doing his best to seem nonchalant, but Dekka was not buying it. What was happening was a long, long way from nonchalant-land, and Peaks looked tense, unsettled. Worried?
“I feel a little cold,” Dekka said. Then, when Prettyman bustled away to grab a blanket, she amended, “No, I mean the . . . the stuff . . . whatever you call it, going in my arm.”
“That’s normal.”
“Glad something is,” Dekka said under her breath.
It took five minutes for the liquid carrying the powdered rock to enter her system. Prettyman pulled the needle, made a gauze square, and asked Dekka to hold it in place with a finger as she wrapped a pressure bandage around her arm.
The doctor stared at the EEG readout. “Nominal.”
Peaks said, “Nothing?”
“Well, we didn’t expect it to be instantaneous,” Malireddi said a little defensively. “Nurse, let’s put the mobile monitor on her.”
This turned out to be a piece of machinery about the size of a compact hard drive that rested in a belt that Dekka buckled around her waist. Wireless electrodes were pressed into the bare flesh at the back of her neck.
“Don’t shower with those on,” the nurse said in her professional nurse voice. “Call us and we’ll send a tech to remove them and replace them when you’re done.”
“What fun.”
It was a complete anticlimax. Peaks and his silent guards walked her back to her quarters.
“You’ll let us know if anything happens,” Peaks said as they paused at her door.
“Well, me plus the electrodes, plus the cameras you’ve got watching me, plus, I would guess, various other sensors and monitors you’ve got built into my room.”
Peaks’s smile was equal parts rueful and annoyed, but he knew better than to deny it. “Just so you know, we do not surveil the bathroom.”
The day passed with unusual leisure for Dekka. There were no more tests, no more probes, no more anything, just a tense air of expectation.
Dekka binge watched Vikings.
She interrupted this important work to eat lunch in the cafeteria—lasagna, a green salad, and chocolate pudding—which she finished more quickly than usual, since she could feel dozens of sets of eyes on her.
Back in her room she watched more sword fighting, sailing, and Danish sex, then switched to YouTube for a random wander through cat videos, Amy Schumer stand-up, music videos from promising but definitely not famous bands, news bloopers, Russian dash-cam videos, a cop beating up a student, and more cat videos.
At six thirty came dinner, which she had delivered to her room. General Tso’s chicken, dan-dan noodles, and a fortune cookie. The fortune read: Great changes are coming your way. That seemed a bit too spot-on, and she grinned at the image of Peaks or his people carefully culling fortune cookies, checking to make sure there were none reading, Run! Get the hell out of there!
At eight o’clock she pulled a beer from her mini-fridge and drank it slowly while listening with eyes closed to Brody Dalle, whose husky voice Dekka found wonderfully sexy.
Inspired, she tinkled away at the grand piano in the living room but discovered no hidden talent for music in herself and gave up, acutely aware that her pitiful efforts were stored on some hard drive somewhere.
At ten she turned out the lights and lay with eyes open, staring at the ceiling, her emotions in turmoil. She’d done her best to self-medicate her anxiety with TV, music, and beer, but with the TV off she was left alone with reality, a reality that could be changing drastically.
Or not.
And which was more frightening? she asked herself. The outcome that had her once again in possession of powers? Or the outcome that had her wandering around the Safeway parking lot looking for her discarded name tag?
Which life do I want?
She drifted off with that thought running around and around in circles in her head.
She woke at seven thirty a.m. She made coffee, toasted an English muffin, and spread butter and orange marmalade on it.
She took a deep breath, felt the caffeine kicking her nervous system awake, and tried to cancel gravity and make the coffee machine float through the air.
Nothing.
She tried to cancel gravity beneath herself, something that four years earlier she’d have done with almost no effort. But she remained resolutely seated.
“Okay then,” she said aloud, and considered calling to have her electrodes removed so she could shower. But now she heard a sound, a noise, a metallic sort of shriek that grew louder like some poorly wired speaker system blasting feedback and coming down the hall outside.
Screeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
“What the hell?” Dekka asked, talking to the unseen microphones.
The noise grew louder and she covered her ears; not that this helped much, as the sound penetrated, rising, falling, picking up harsh percussives.
Screeeee-clang! Screeee-Rrr-Rrr-Rrr-Screeee-thump!
“Hey, are you people hearing this?” she shouted. “Peaks! What the hell?”
There was no answer, and if anything that awful, brain-ripping noise just redoubled in volume. Dekka went to the door and hesitated, with one hand covering an ear and the other hand on the knob. Should she open it and see? Or should she do the sensible thing and—
Wham!
Something massive slammed the door with such force that it bruised her hand on the knob.
“Hey!” Dekka yelled, though her cry was inaudible in the metallic howl of noise that jacked her pulse and blood pressure up through the roof.
Wham!
Dekka backed away from the door fast, looking around for a weapon, any kind of weapon, but she couldn’t focus, couldn’t think, rage and fear and the pain of the noise and . . .
Wham!
Hardest yet. The jamb splintered! The brass strike plate stuck out. One more hit and it would fly open and . . .
And what? What was happening? What kind of—
Wham!
The door burst inward, revealing three people in steel-gray jumpsuits bulging with body armor. Three faces were concealed behind helmets with black plastic visors.
And there were three automatic weapons, leveled at Dekka.
Dekka yelled a curse word, backed away, stumbled over the piano stool, and—
Bap-bap-bap-bap-bap-bap-bap-bap-bap!
The three automatic weapons erupted as one, little starbursts flashing from the muzzles.
Dekka’s body was spasming, seeming to twist from the inside, but she had no time to observe, no time to think, no time to feel. There
was only time to react, and she raised both her hands defensively and opened her mouth to scream, an inhuman scream.
MmmmrrrrRRRROOOOOWWWW!
There was a flash of light like the sun itself and a vast shrieking of timbers and wallboard.
And the guns no longer fired.
The three masked intruders were no longer in the doorway, or in the hallway beyond. In fact there was no hallway beyond, nor any walls to left or right. Nor was there a ceiling—a patch of cloud-edged blue was visible above. A crow flew past, unconcerned. A semicircle of utter destruction fanned out ahead of Dekka, thirty or forty feet, so that part of what had been the far wall of the building was open to daylight.
Everything that had seconds before filled the semicircular blast radius had been reduced to shreds: walls, ceiling, wires, pipes, furniture, the piano, everything—reduced to shattered bits, bite-size chunks, and blasted up the hallway in both directions. It was as if everything around her had been run through a blender set on chop: wallboard in pieces the size of a packet of gum; copper pipe ripped into segments no longer than an inch, edges sharply torn; wood studs reduced to the sweepings of a carpenter’s wood shop; black keys and piano wire; and here and there, like decorative sugar confetti sprinkled on a cake, the bright bits of lacquered black piano cabinetry.
Dust filled the air. Water poured from a ruptured pipe in the ceiling. A tangle of fiber-optic cable glowed electric blue.
At first she did not see the three gunmen. And when she did, her mind at first refused to accept it. It couldn’t be real. Nothing in her experience had prepared her to see this.
“No,” Dekka whispered, knowing the answer was yes.
The three body-armored gunmen were shredded. They had gone through the same blender as the walls and ceiling, been torn into the same bite-size chunks, and those bloody bits, those fragments of bone and muscle and organ and brain, and above all blood, blood, blood . . . were everywhere.
Stunned, shocked, paralyzed, Dekka saw a bit of gore hanging from the end of a shattered wooden beam. An eye.