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“Look, don’t misunderstand,” Simone said, holding both hands palm out as if ready to push away any misconceptions. “I know my father. He’s power hungry, a control freak, and really doesn’t have much idea of right or wrong.”
Shade had the impression that Dekka was holding herself back from saying something like, Hmmm, now who does that remind me of? Which, Shade had to admit, would be fair.
“So, what is it you want?” Shade demanded.
“He needs to be stopped,” Simone said. “But he’s still my dad . . .”
“You want us to stop him, but not hurt him?” Cruz asked.
Simone sighed and hung her head. “Look, I’m new to this, all right? Yesterday I was being gunned down in a field. Then I could fly. Then my father turned into a cloud of bugs. Now I’m sitting here talking to the Rockborn Gang. I just walked into a room full of people who could kill me.”
“How do we know you’re not a spy for your father?” Shade demanded.
“Because I’m here to help you stop him. He has to be stopped. He can’t . . .” She looked down. “I saw what he did to that policeman.”
“Francis and I saw what he did to some other guys, too,” Dekka said. “I’ve seen some very bad things. I’ve seen children burning. And this was worse. Your father is sending people into unending pain and horror. He’s condemning people to a living hell.”
“You have some brilliant idea for how to stop your father without killing him?” Shade asked.
Simone met her eye coolly, not seeming as overawed as Shade had hoped. “You need to go at him when he’s off guard. Find a way to . . .” She sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe some nonfatal bug spray? Then take him to a cell. A jail. Somewhere he can be held safely until this is all over.”
Shade was ready with a mocking rejoinder, but Malik held up a hand, stopping her. “Simone, there is no ‘all over.’ This isn’t a phase. Or even a FAYZ, F-A-Y-Z: this is life now.”
Simone’s eyes widened as she took that in. “I don’t . . . how would you know that?”
Patiently, like he was giving bad news to a grieving mother, Malik explained. “There are tons of the rock. Each ton is thirty-two thousand one-ounce doses. Say that there is a total of just one ton, just to simplify. Say that governments around the world have control of two-thirds of that, okay? That means there are still more than ten thousand doses of the rock out in the world somewhere. That means a possible ten thousand random people who can become Rockborn. Just one, Justin DeVeere, so-called Knightmare, destroyed a passenger jet, brought down the Golden Gate Bridge, and wiped out a famous lighthouse—and guess what? He’s still out there. It only took one Dillon Poe to nearly destroy an entire city. And if he’d been a bit smarter, he might have literally taken over the country. That’s reality now.”
Dekka decided this would be a good time to sit again, so Shade did as well, signaling the end of their emotional back-and-forth. For now.
“The point is, just a handful of Rockborn, people no worse than we’ve already seen, could do as much damage to civilization as nuclear war.” Malik let that sink in. “And that’s assuming the government—anyone’s government—doesn’t start up another Ranch and start creating their own superpowered soldiers.”
“So . . . so what’s your big plan?” Simone asked.
“We don’t have one,” Malik said softly.
“Whac-a-Mole,” Shade said. “Bad guy causes trouble; we take him down.”
Simone said, “It took the six of you to not quite stop Knightmare, and not really stop Napalm, and not stop that starfish kid, who I guess is dead now, but you didn’t kill him. The six of you barely stopped Dillon Poe, and you had nothing when it came to dealing with my father.”
Dekka nodded. Shade frowned and nodded, too. Then the two of them exchanged a confused look.
“She’s right,” Shade acknowledged. “We don’t have a plan. All we have is Whac-a-Mole. And that is a losing strategy in the end.”
“So your enemies are every clown with a piece of the rock, plus possibly every government on earth?” Simone looked around and saw blank faces.
“Parts of the government, not all of it,” Shade said, then added, “But you’re right: too many of them, not enough of us.”
“Right,” Simone said. “So your plan is to play Whac-a-Mole until sooner or later you’re all dead. And then the world belongs to the bad guys.”
Cruz interjected, “We’re not the only so-called good guys.”
“Exactly,” Simone said. “You need more people. You need more power. And you need to stand for something more than just killing bad guys.”
“More people?” Armo guffawed. “Who’d be dumb enough to join us?”
“Well . . . ,” Simone said. “For a start, me.”
CHAPTER 20
