“Well, I guess any family I’m part of will have to be crazy.”
Cruz frowned at the word “family.” Was that what they were? “Hey, where are Shade and Malik?”
Francis arched a brow that was too knowing for her age. She nodded toward one of the bedrooms, where a door that had been open was now closed.
Cruz sighed. “Well, it’s about time.”
She gave herself the simple but wrong pleasure of gazing at Armo, who lay on the pull-out sofa, having wrapped himself in a sheet that, fortunately from Cruz’s perspective, revealed a shoulder and almost too much of a thigh.
“Some family,” Cruz muttered.
“What was it?” Sam Temple asked. He’d just hopped off the treadmill in the breakfast nook he and Astrid had converted to a home gym. He’d been using the treadmill and the weights religiously since the world had gone crazy.
Astrid came from the front door holding the FedEx envelope behind her back. “Nothing. Just some kids collecting money for their soccer team. I gave them five bucks.”
“You’re a patron of school sports, babe. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.”
Astrid said, “You know it’s not like I hate sports, I’ve just never cared what people did with balls.”
“I’m going to pass on the chance to make a crude joke,” Sam said, and laughed anyway.
Astrid moved on through to the bathroom adjoining their bedroom. She locked the door and sat on the closed toilet, contemplating the FedEx envelope on her lap. She was pretty sure she knew what was in it. She knew who had sent it despite the fake name on the packaging slip.
Should she be grateful to Dekka? She had vowed to keep Sam out of it if she could. But the world was disintegrating, so maybe Dekka had thought it was her last chance to send mail and have it reach its destination.
Or maybe Dekka had reassessed the situation and reached this grim conclusion. Astrid knew that Dekka had never liked her, and the feeling was mutual. But like was not the same as respect, and she had deep respect for Dekka’s judgment, a respect born of too many dreadful and dangerous experiences.
If it has to be: me.
It had been all Astrid had time to write on the note she’d slipped to Dekka as she and Armo had left. She wished she could have provided more guidance, more if-then scenarios. But in the end she’d had to leave it to Dekka.
“Well,” Astrid muttered, “if I had to trust anyone . . .”
Drake would come. With the world in meltdown, he would come. He no longer needed to be prudent. He no longer needed to fear discovery.
Sam had bought a twelve-gauge shotgun the day before, a dangerous, matte-black object with no purpose but to kill. But they both knew that Drake could be blown apart, slowed, but not stopped. Not by any weapon they knew of.
There was a plague of monsters loose in the world, and Astrid feared them, but with her usual logic had seen that she and Sam were just two of potentially millions of victims. But she had no such logical defense against Drake, because Drake was not just a monster; he was her monster. Sooner or later, Drake would come for her. And Sam would fight him, but without the power he once possessed, he would fail. And Astrid would be Drake’s to do with as he wished.
She licked her lips, and her fingers shook as she tore away the sealing strip and pulled out the contents: a plastic sandwich bag containing what looked like perhaps a tablespoon of gray powder.
“Hey, can I come in and shower?” Sam was at the door.
“Just a minute.” Astrid slid the baggie back into the envelope and stuffed it beneath the sink, behind the Comet and the Scrub Free.
She opened the bathroom door.
“Sorry, I’m out of shape and sweaty,” Sam said, pulling his T-shirt over his head.
“Well, then, a shower is just the thing,” Astrid said. She held up a fresh bar of soap and smiled. “I could help.”
Dekka was the last to wake, and when teased about it grumbled that she was the oldest one there, after all.
“Yeah, you’re way old, Dekka, practically legal drinking age,” Shade teased. She was in an easy chair, sharing it with Malik, the two of them squeezed together in too little space.
“Oh, so this now?” Dekka said sourly, seeing them. She shook her head, but her disapproval was fake and no one believed it. Francis handed her coffee. “I remember when I didn’t drink coffee,” she said, taking it gratefully.
She glanced at CNN on the TV and read the chyron scroll at the bottom.
Four hundred and nine confirmed dead in Las Vegas.
Death toll expected to mount into the thousands.
Hospitals overwhelmed.
Red Cross urgent requests for blood donations.
But the picture above the crawl was not of burned bodies and hollowed-out buildings. It was of Cruz walking down the Strip with a baby in her arms, followed by a scarred, soot-covered, exhausted band.
“Who’s got the remote? Turn it up.”
“. . . the one bright moment coming when a Rockborn mutant identifying herself as Cruz brought a baby out of the inferno . . .”
“Like you said, Dekka, they need a hero,” Shade said.
“We need one, too,” Malik said. “We have a face now. Something people can hold on to and think maybe they shouldn’t just exterminate us.”
“Cruz is the official face of . . . of whatever we are,” Armo said. He grinned his goofy-sweet grin and added, “At least it’s a nice, friendly face. Not like . . .” He hooked a thumb toward Dekka, who calmly lifted a cushion and threw it at him.
“They’re going to come up with a name for us, you know, and it’ll probably be as bad as Lesbokitty.”
“A name for us?” Francis echoed. “Like the Rockborn Gang?”
One by one, faces turned to Francis. She shrugged and blushed.
“Sorry,” Francis said. “I was living with . . . my mom . . . like a . . . well, it was a biker gang. It was the first thing that popped in my head.”
“The Rockborn Gang,” Shade said, her arm around Malik’s neck.
“There are worse names,” Malik conceded.
Dekka picked up the phone. “Yeah, front desk? Can you connect me to CNN?” She drank more coffee while she waited. “Hello? This is Dekka Talent.” Pause. “Dekka Talent. You know . . . Jesus H. Lesbokitty, dammit, get me the newsroom.” With her hand covering the mouthpiece she said, “If I ever find the Twitter moron who started that, I will . . . Hello? Yeah, this is Dekka Talent. Two things. One: if you call me Lesbokitty I will fly to Atlanta and shred your office. Two: we are the Rockborn Gang. Yes. Gang. And . . .”
Dekka stopped, held the phone away from her ear. “I got cut off. Or something. It’s just static.”
“Look,” Armo said, pointing at the TV. CNN was just snow. Armo took the remote and switched to MSNBC. MSNBC came out of New York.
CNN was in Atlanta. It was two hundred miles from the coast where, MSNBC was reporting, something—something very bad—had happened.
ASO-6
PETTY OFFICER DEB Forte, battered, bruised, bleeding, frantic with dread and certain that she was the only person who could end the Nebraska’s suffering and save the world from whatever monster had seized the boat, made her final connection.
She had been wedged in an impossibly tight space atop the nose cone of a Trident II rocket. She had removed the cladding and uncovered the eight steel cones like baby birds in a nest. And even as the Nebraska was dragged and pummeled, she had used her soldering iron, her tool set, and her knowledge of primitive computer systems.
Then she had climbed down and stretched out on a bulkhead currently serving as a floor.
In her hand she held a switch.
She prayed. Prayed for her husband and her family. She prayed for her little girl, visiting her mother in Kansas.
She prayed for the forgiveness of her sins. Including the sin she had no choice but to commit.
She threw the switch.
In a millionth of a second she, the Nebraska, and eve
ry living thing within ten miles of Savannah, Georgia, was reduced to atoms.
ASO-7
ANOMALOUS SPACE OBJECT #7 passed the orbit of the moon, tumbling toward Earth.
Acknowledgments
I GET TO be the name on the cover of this book, but I didn’t edit it, or market it, or choose the layout, or design the cover. There are a whole bunch of people doing a whole lot of work to turn my words into your book. So, if you enjoyed this book, please know that your enjoyment is the product of an excellent team: VP/publisher and editor, Katherine Tegen, assistant editor Mabel Hsu, senior production editor Kathryn Silsand, executive managing editor Mark Rifkin, senior designer David Curtis, senior art director Amy Ryan, cover artist Matthew Griffin, production coordinator Meghan Pettit, production manager Allison Brown, senior director of marketing Bess Braswell, marketing manager Audrey Diestelkamp, associate director of publicity Rosanne Romanello, copy editor Maya Myers, proofreader Jessica White, and cold reader Mary Ann Seagren.
About the Author
MICHAEL GRANT is the internationally bestselling author of science fiction and fantasy for teens. He is the author of the Gone, Front Lines, Messenger of Fear, and Bzrk series. He lives in California with his wife, Katherine Applegate, with whom he cowrote the popular Animorphs series. You can follow him on Twitter @MichaelGrantBks.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Books by Michael Grant
Gone
Hunger
Lies
Plague
Fear
Light
Gone Series Complete Collection
Monster
Villain
Hero
Messenger of Fear
The Snake: A Messenger of Fear Story
The Tattooed Heart: A Messenger of Fear Novel
Front Lines
Silver Stars
Purple Hearts
Soldier Girls in Action: A Front Lines Novella
The Magnificent 12: The Call
The Magnificent 12: The Trap
The Magnificent 12: The Key
The Magnificent 12: The Power
Back Ad
DISCOVER
your next favorite read
MEET
new authors to love
WIN
free books
SHARE
infographics, playlists, quizzes, and more
WATCH
the latest videos
www.epicreads.com
Copyright
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
VILLAIN. Copyright © 2018 by Michael Grant. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.epicreads.com
Cover art by Matthew Griffin
Cover design by David Curtis
* * *
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018933266
Digital Edition OCTOBER 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-246789-8
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-246787-4
* * *
18 19 20 21 22 PC/LSCH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
About the Publisher
Australia
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower
22 Adelaide Street West, 41st Floor
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M5H 4E3
www.harpercollins.ca
India
HarperCollins India
A 75, Sector 57
Noida
Uttar Pradesh 201 301
www.harpercollins.co.in
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive
Rosedale 0632
Auckland, New Zealand
www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF, UK
www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
www.harpercollins.com