Michael Grant - Hero

Of course Las Vegas also knew the advantage for tourism in having the most Facebooked, Instagrammed, tweeted, YouTubed, reported, loved, hated, praised, reviled group of people on Planet Earth in residence. Just two days after what was being called the #CasinoWar, #MadMaxVegas, and #Vegapocalypse, among many other names, flights and room reservations were already coming back strong after having been shut down entirely.

The Rockborn Gang had saved Las Vegas billions of dollars, and now their presence was bringing the gamblers back. There was already serious talk of erecting a statue, which was fine, Dekka supposed, and certainly better than being hated and hunted, but it all made her nervous. A black, lesbian FAYZ survivor would never be able to relax as completely as Armo who, upon exiting the bedroom, Dekka found sprawled across a couch and a coffee table wearing pajama bottoms, with a bagel resting on his bare left pectoral and a little tub of cream cheese balanced on the right side.

“Unh,” Dekka said to Armo, the limits of her pre-coffee small talk.

“There’s coffee in that carafe,” Armo said, pointing with his cream cheese–smeared knife.

Cruz sat off to one side of the fabulously luxurious room with her battered purple Moleskine open on her lap, a pen in her hand, making notes and casting subtle glances at the ever-oblivious Armo.

Dekka poured. Dekka drank.

“Holy Communion in the Church of Caffeine?” Cruz teased.

Dekka nodded. “Damn right.” There was an expectant air that made Dekka frown. “What? What are you two waiting for?”

“We’re kind of . . .” Cruz tilted her head, hearing something, and held up a hand. “Never mind, you’ll see.”

Shade Darby, a white girl with blunt-cut dark hair—she’d hacked away at it herself—and the kind of eyes that drilled holes into you, opened the door to her bedroom, stepped through wearing a Caesars bathrobe, closed the door casually behind her, and said, “Any coffee left?”

“See, Dekka, what we’re doing,” Cruz said as though continuing a conversation, “is waiting to see how much time Shade and Malik have decided to allow before he comes out.”

“Out?” Dekka looked at Armo, who shrugged, causing his cream cheese to tumble down his chest.

Cruz answered with a significant nod toward the door Shade had just closed.

“Huh? Oh. Ahhh,” Dekka said. “I assumed you and Shade would share a room.”

“She got a better offer,” Cruz said.

“No, no, no. Just stop, right now,” Shade warned.

Dekka was not a jovial person, not much given to banter or teasing, but this was too easy to pass up. In a mock-severe voice she said, “You know, Cruz, just because Shade and Malik shared a room, that doesn’t mean anything, you know . . . happened . You shouldn’t jump to conclusions.”

“Well, something happened,” Armo said. “I know Malik’s power is causing people pain, but the noises I heard last night didn’t sound like pain.”

“Oh it’s going to be like this, is it?” Shade said, shaking her head. “You realize if I morph I’m fast enough to smack the shit out of all four of you, right?”

At which point Malik came out of the bedroom and Cruz said, “Hah! Three minutes on the dot.”

“Good morning,” Malik said. Malik was African American, a college freshman with adorable ringleted hair, sleepy eyes, and a scary IQ. He and Shade had dated long ago, and broken up because . . . well, because by Shade’s own account she had been obsessive and driven and not above manipulating friends.

Or as Dekka put it: a ruthless bitch.

The person Dekka and the others now spoke to was in some ways not Malik. It was Malik’s morph of himself. The real Malik, the Malik who would emerge if he ever left morph, was a boy who’d been burned so badly doctors had been about to put him in a medically induced coma and allow him to die. The rock had saved him, but at a terrible price. Each of them—with the fascinating exception of Francis—felt the intrusive, overbearing presence of the unseen Dark Watchers whenever they were in morph. Malik lived with that twenty-four/seven so long as he was in morph—and leaving morph would mean an excruciating death.

But at the moment, Malik looked unusually cheerful. So uncharacteristically, stupidly happy that Cruz giggled out loud and the others could not help but grin. It wasn’t prurient leering, Dekka told herself . . . well, okay, in part maybe it was . . . but each of them liked Malik, admired him, and each of them knew that of them all, he was the one who had suffered the most terrible harm. Seeing Malik smile was . . .

Like watching the sun rise.

Malik made a point of saying, “Good morning,” to Shade in an overly formal way, as though they hadn’t seen each other since yesterday.

“Plausible,” Cruz commented, dryly. “Totally plausible. I know I believed it.”

Dekka drank her coffee and went to the floor-to-ceiling window to look out, and to hide the sadness that had welled up inside her. She was nothing but pleased to see Malik happy, and frankly she enjoyed seeing the eternally cool and self-possessed Shade looking abashed and embarrassed. Served her right. But it inevitably brought personal memories to the surface, memories of her own doomed, lost, one-way love for a girl named Brianna. The Breeze, she’d called herself. Crazy fearless, reckless, Breeze.

Crazy, fearless, and reckless one too many times, my love. One too many times.

Cruz, the girl whose rescue of a baby had become the iconic photo of # ArmageddonVegas, had spent the night alone because the alternative would have been sharing with Armo, and that was not on the agenda, though Dekka had spotted more than one longing look from Cruz directed at the boy who could pass as the fourth Hemsworth brother.

It made Dekka sad seeing Cruz crushing on Armo. Dekka had detected no nastiness or hate in Armo, but that did not mean he would fall for a six foot-tall transgender Latina. Dekka’s own life had been shadowed by lost love, and she didn’t wish that ache on anyone.

Francis came in, hair wet and face alight with wonder. “There’s like . . . like . . . in the shower,” she began.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s nice,” Dekka muttered.

But Francis was not put off by Dekka’s puritanical gloom in the face of luxury. “There’s, like, six shower heads! Six! There’s this big wide one in the ceiling and then there are . . .”

Dekka tuned her out as the description of the wonders of the shower went on. Truth was, it actually was an amazing shower. It was the shower Dekka might have expected when she got to heaven. She was momentarily distracted by the notion of Saint Peter, like some real-estate guy on HGTV, saying, And wait till you see the shower!

Armo stood up, adjusted his pajama bottoms and announced, “It’s already ten thirty and unlike you people I’ve been up since eight. I’m going down to the pool. Who’s with me?”

No one was interested aside from Cruz. Dekka saw her dark eyes zeroing in on a dab of cream cheese clinging to Armo’s chest and thought, You poor kid .

Finding no takers, Armo disappeared into a bathroom and re-emerged in a bathing suit. “Call me if something happens.”

“Cruz, I thought you liked sunbathing,” Shade said once Armo was gone.

Cruz shrugged. “I don’t know what to wear. It’s a problem.”

“Oh, right.” Shade winced.

“You could always do what I do,” Dekka suggested. “T-shirt and shorts. That’s kind of gender non-specific.”

Cruz looked uncomfortable, and Dekka hoped she hadn’t said anything stupid. She’d had years of people assuming various things just because she was gay, or because she was black, and even the innocently curious inquiries got to be tedious after a while. Or in Dekka’s case, instantly.