The break-up had been Shade’s decision, not Malik’s. He had wanted more of her, more commitment, more openness. But Shade liked her secrets. She liked her privacy, her control over her life.
Her obsession.
Now Shade reached a conclusion: time to pull the pin on the hand grenade, or light the fuse, or some such simile.
Fortune favors the bold, and all that.
“My father is actually doing some work for the government,” Shade said.
“Like for NASA?”
“Mmmm, well, not exactly. How are you at keeping secrets, Cruz?”
Cruz waved a languid hand down her body. “I’m a gender fluid kid who had been passing as muy macho until, like, six months ago. I can keep a secret.”
“Yeah.” Shade nodded, tilted her head, considered, careful to keep a gently amused expression on her face to conceal the cold appraisal in her eyes.
She owes me. I rescued her. She has no friends.
She’ll do it.
“My dad’s, um, tracking the path of what they’re calling an ASO—Anomalous Space Object. Several, actually. Seven to be precise, ASO-Two through ASO-Eight.”
Cruz lifted a plucked eyebrow. “What happened to ASO-One?”
“Oh, ASO-One already landed on Earth years ago. They think all eight ASOs are pieces from the same source, an asteroid or planetoid that blew up, sending some interstellar shrapnel our way. One of the pieces—ASO-One—managed to catch a ride on Jupiter’s gravity well and got here ahead of the rest. Just about nineteen years ahead. The other fragments took a longer route. But ASO-Two through Eight are scheduled to intercept Earth over the next few weeks.”
Shade saw that Cruz had not made the connection, not figured it out, and that was a little disappointing. But then a flicker and a frown, and Cruz made direct eye contact and asked, “Nineteen years ago? Wasn’t that . . .”
Shade nodded slowly. “Mmmm. Nineteen years ago ASO-One entered Earth orbit and slammed into a nuclear power plant just north of the town of Perdido Beach, California.”
That froze Cruz solid for a long minute. Her eyes searched Shade’s face, trying to see whether Shade was just kidding. Because this wasn’t some little secret like ‘I’ve got a crush on . . .’ This was a secret two high school kids who barely knew each other should not possess.
Cruz swallowed a lump. “You’re talking about the alien rock?”
“The rock that changed the world,” Shade confirmed. “The rock that rewrote the laws of physics. The rock that turned random teen sociopaths into superpowered killers. That rock.”
“And you’re . . . you’re saying there’s more coming?”
“According to my father’s calculations, and he is very good at his job. He’s tracking the rocks. One lands today off the coast of Scotland. That’s ASO-Two. Another, ASO-Three, hits in just a few days.”
Cruz shifted uncomfortably, obviously realizing that Shade was no longer making idle chitchat. A message was being delivered. A question hung in the air.
“It’s supposed to land in Iowa. Or it was,” Shade said. “Now, with some updated numbers, they think it will land in Nebraska. There’ll be a whole government task force there to grab it: HSTF-Sixty-Six—Homeland Security Task Force 66. Yes, they’ll be there with helicopters and police escort and various scientists. In Nebraska.”
The air between them seemed to vibrate.
“Nebraska,” Cruz said.
Shade nodded. “Uh-huh.” Time to go all-in, to trust her instincts. “But the truth is it will land in Iowa, as originally calculated.”
“So, um . . .”
“So . . . someone changed the inputs,” Shade said, her voice low and silky. “Someone with access to my father’s computer. My dad is a genius, but his memory for little things isn’t great so he sticks a Post-it to the bottom of his keyboard. You know, for his password.”
The play of emotion across Cruz’s face was fascinating to Shade. First Cruz thought she was hearing wrong. Then she thought Shade was teasing. And then finally, even before she asked, she knew Shade was telling the truth.
Cruz, Shade thought, should never play poker: her face revealed all. She could practically see the shiver go up Cruz’s spine.
Cruz said, “You.” It was not a question.
“I’m pretty good at math,” Shade said. “And Wolfram-Alpha helps.”
“You changed your dad’s calculations?”
Shade nodded, and tilted her head to the “quizzical” position. “The question is, Cruz, why did I change the numbers?”
It was a clear test, a clear challenge, and Cruz passed, saying, “You’re going to try and take the rock.”
“No,” Shade said. “I won’t try. I’ll succeed.” Then after a beat added, “Especially if you help me.”
| 2 | | | DROPPING THE NAME TAG |
“YOU KNOW . . . YOU look familiar,” the woman said, narrowing her eyes. She was a mother with a two-year-old in her shopping basket and a five-year-old tagging along and playing with the candy in the checkout rack.
“I get that a lot,” the cashier said.
“You’re one of those Perdido Beach people! The black one. The lesbian! That’s you! Oh my God, that’s you!”
Dekka Talent shook her head, putting on her tolerant smile, not easy in the face of being identified as “the black one,” and “the lesbian.” She tapped the Safeway name tag on her chest and said, “I’m Jean. But like I said, I get that a lot.”
“I can’t believe you’re working as a cashier! You don’t really look like the actress who played you in the movie.”
“Ma’am, did you find everything you wanted?”
“What? Oh, yes, except for the brand of orange juice my son . . . Wait, can I get a selfie with you?”
“Ma’am, if you’ll just push the green button there on the credit card machine . . .”
It had been a week since the last “recognition moment,” as Dekka Talent thought of it. Progress. If you graphed it out over the last four years since the end of the FAYZ—what most of the world still called the Perdido Beach Anomaly—the number of “recognition moments” had definitely declined. Declined, but not stopped entirely.
Dekka’s work shift ended without any selfies. She punched out, changed out of her faded blue smock into motorcycle leathers in the locker room, and exchanged a few pleasantries with other employees either coming on shift or going off. She politely refused an invitation to after-work drinks—she was still just nineteen years old, though people assumed she was older. And she was broke besides—she’d had to buy new tires.
There