That would be Angel’s broken arm. I got mad all over again.
“Do they have any . . . liabilities?” A woman with dark hair and eyes, wearing a severe navy suit, spoke first.
“Besides our woeful fashion sense?” I asked before the UD could respond.
Every face on the screens looked surprised. No one was expecting us to talk.
“Our lack of commitment to personal hygiene?”
“You will be silent!” the UD hissed at me. But since Gozen stayed where he was, I didn’t take him seriously.
I raised my eyebrows, looking directly at the faces on the screens. “I guess it depends on whether you consider a complete inability to follow orders a liability.”
“Silence!” the UD said again as the people on the screens began to murmur to their unseen partners. He spoke to them: “As you can see, they are functional, with a limited, though useful, intelligence.”
“Limited intelligence?” I broke in, outraged. “Bite me! You’re kind of the last person to talk about limitations! At least I can . . . swim! And fly! And digest by myself!”
“Yeah, or how about this?” the Gasman said, and then he erupted . . . his new skill. I’d been wondering if he would develop one, and what form it would take. Maybe he’d be able to read minds, like Angel? Fly superfast, like me? Feel colors, like Iggy? It could have been anything.
But of course it wasn’t.
I swear to you, it was literally a green mushroom cloud. I mean, he’d always had a messed-up digestive system. Gazzy in a small room with you meant you’d soon have tears in your eyes. And I guess most boys hone their ability to let rip on command to a fine, subtle art.
This was in a completely different league.
I saw eyes widen onscreen. The UD turned to see the flock moving rapidly away from Gazzy, who looked as if he were being enveloped in, well, a cloud of noxious gas, colored a sulfurous yellow green. He was grinning. “Ah, that’s better. Better out than in!”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Total said hoarsely, and ran under the conference table.
“Whoa!” I said, gagging. “What have you been eating? Kryptonite? Nuclear waste?”
“What is that? Who did that? What does this mean?” Voices from the screens mingled together. The UD was looking at Gazzy with confusion and anger.
I pressed my hand over my mouth and nose and got as far from Gazzy as the room allowed. Close to the screens, I spoke through my hand, trying not to inhale.
“It really just depends on your definition of liability,” I said nasally.
“It’s a new skill!” Gazzy announced, sounding excited.
“Good God,” Nudge muttered, pressing herself against the farthest wall. “Why don’t these windows open?”
“You are the man!” Iggy said, and he and Gazzy slapped high fives. It’s a guy thing.
And that pretty much set the tone for the rest of the auction.
Iggy picked his nose. Fang blended into a dark painting that consisted of paint splatters and drips. Nudge kept up a constant chatter — at one point going on about different colors of nail polish and whether something with glitter was really appropriate for day wear — though you could hardly hear it over the rising wind.
Okay, call me alarmist, but it sounded incredibly bad out there, and a Category 4 hurricane with mandatory evacuation did not seem like a good scene. I’d flown in some pretty intense storms, but if we’d been outside now, we would have been splattered against the building like gnats.
Sure, these windows were superstrong, but all the same, the wind was a tad concerning. I motioned to the others to move toward the inside walls, away from the glass.
“Attention!” The UD’s face was that awful blotchy purple color again. Ugh. “Can we return to the business at hand? There’s a bid on the table of half a billion dollars. Can I hear three-quarters of a billion?”
You know, half a billion dollars just doesn’t go as far as it used to.
“One more thing,” I said to the screens, raising my voice to be heard. “We all have expiration dates. If you buy us, you should know that it’s a limited-time offer. We’re probably single-use mutants, pretty much.”
“A single use might be all that’s required of you,” the Uber-Director said silkily, then went back to the bidding.