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He knew Shade would be back soon, and that they would once again flee the scene, run away to their next illegal, temporary abode.
Shade. He knew she was trying desperately to make things right. And he knew that she could not.
Sad, he thought, that it had taken his own destruction to teach Shade humility. Humility that might have allowed them in an earlier time to remain together, to be still what they had once been: lovers. The arrogance in Shade, the obsession with the FAYZ, and the seething, impossible-to-satisfy thirst for revenge against the creature that had killed her mother were not gone, but now they were tempered by reality. By the brutal reality of unintended consequences.
Unintended Consequences, Exhibit A: Malik Tenerife.
But his thoughts scattered under a sudden surge of attention from the Dark Watchers. They seemed more intrusive than ever, and his anger rose. Whoever, whatever they were, they had no right! They had no right to torture him this way!
He almost didn’t do it. He almost convinced himself it was futile and juvenile and pointless.
He almost did not lash out at the Dark Watchers.
But Malik was controlling himself on multiple fronts all at once, and he was all out of patience.
No answers? Nothing to say to me, Dark ones? Well, I have something to say to you.
He summoned all his will, all his new and unwanted power, and fixed clearly in his mind not the picture of the Dark Watchers, for they had no shape or form, but the idea of them, the concept of the Dark Watchers, the emotion they caused in him. He pictured a data wire reaching down from some extra-dimensional space, a segment of USB cable plugged into his brain, down which came the eyeless spies, the invisible burglars of the mind.
Wires, he reasoned, carry current in both directions. They wanted the Malik experience? Fine.
Enjoy, assholes.
Malik fired a massive wave of pain, targeted on them. He screamed and raged and roared silently at them, directing every ounce of his agony, his sadness, his despair and rage at them, them, them.
“Oh!” Malik cried out. His eyes flew open.
“What?” Cruz asked, knee-walking to him.
“They . . . Oh, my God, Cruz!”
“What? What?”
“I hit them! I sent them pain. And Cruz? I think . . . I think maybe they . . . felt it. It was like, like . . .” He sat up, eyes bright, a weird half smile on his lips. “You know what it’s like when you drop a glass in the lunchroom, and suddenly there’s total silence because absolutely every eye is staring at you?”
“Okay.”
“It was like that, Cruz. They heard me. They felt me. The little bacterium under their microscope just gave them the finger.”
Shade was ready to go. She had done what she came to do. She would upload her videos, show the world what was happening at the Ranch.
But her eye was drawn to that imposing rectangular office above her, perched on the side of the cavern.
No one could stop her. The Ranch was finished. She could see that. The guards might eventually organize some kind of resistance, but how many of them would survive that long?
She spotted a metal staircase and was up it in a blink. There was a heavy steel door to the office. Locked. And not likely to be opened any time soon. She leaped to the roof, then leaned over the edge to see the single long window. It was bulletproof glass, able to withstand a high-powered rifle shot.
But bulletproof was one thing, and Shade-proof was a very different matter.
She pried a large rock from the cavern wall, leaned again over the edge of the roof, and smashed the rock into the glass.
Nothing much.
Then, using the strength her morph gave her, as well as the speed, she smashed the rock into the glass a hundred times in a few seconds. The glass starred and cracked. A small hole, about big enough to push a pencil through.
Given time, she could smash her way in. But was it worth it?
She had to use one hand to shield the reflective light and peer inside. A woman in army uniform was just rising shakily to her feet. That uniform was askew, and her hair was plastered down with sweat. Her face was ashen.
