When I arrived at the scene, the car had been taped off and the driver’s-side door was hanging open. The sun had started to melt some of the snow that was covering the windshield, and I could see the woman’s stark white face through the gap. Shanks was standing by the car, holding two paper cups with steam coming off them.
“You’ve got something on you,” he said, pointing to my sleeve. I looked down and saw a series of reddish-black splotches smeared near my cuff; blood from the revivor. It had taken some scrubbing to get it off my hands, and I still couldn’t get rid of that tar smell.
“Footage of the truck fire is streaming everywhere,” he said, handing me one of the cups. “That was a hell of a thing.”
“Yeah.”
“You actually touched one, huh?” he asked.
“What was left of it.”
“What was it like?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that, mostly because I wasn’t exactly sure how the whole thing had made me feel. I didn’t want to think about the revivor. I didn’t want to think about the fire or the call I made. Wachalowski hadn’t been there. They said he was in the field and wouldn’t forward the call. I had to settle for his office voice mail, leaving the information and asking him to call me. Now I wished I could take the last part back.
“Are you okay?” Shanks asked.
“It’s not our problem,” I said. “I called the FBI; they can handle it. I’ll probably just have to make a statement.”
“Lucky you.”
FBI always meant first tier, and government-employed, first-tier citizens were pretty much golden boys. Wachalowski had served not just his minimum tour, but for years after that. When he’d left me behind, he’d done so in more ways than one.
“Yeah, lucky me.”
I approached the vehicle and looked inside. It was the same as the other crime scenes; Mae Zhu had a single puncture wound to the chest that drove right into the heart. Death was almost instantaneous.
The woman had been in the car for hours and she was starting to freeze up, her white blouse stained almost completely red. She was a small woman, with pale skin and tiny hands. Her head lolled forward and her eyes were just barely open, still staring almost wistfully at the hole beneath her chin.
I crouched down, leaning in for a closer look. Her seat belt was unfastened. Her keys were lying on the floor near her feet, as if they had fallen there from her hand. Her purse sat on the divider between the driver’s and passenger’s seats, and an expensive leather wallet lay open on the dashboard. The driver’s license was there, along with a few top-shelf credit cards.
“Mae Zhu,” I said, reading off the license. “Do we know who she is?”
“First tier, but never served.”
I nodded. So far, that was the one thing the victims all shared in common. None of them shipped off, and none of them were wired for reanimation, but they were all first tier. That didn’t happen unless you had special skills or connections, but I hadn’t been able to determine what either of those might be.
I looked down the street at the people moving past the barricade. They all wore expensive clothes. The cars on the street were all like Mae Zhu’s vehicle: high- end, and built for luxury. The building faces were all glass and marble, towering to impressive heights. There were security cameras everywhere.
“A lot of people have money and connections,” I said. “What’s he going to do? Kill all of them?”
There was a faint depression in the leather of the backseat where someone heavy had sat for a significant period of time. The person sat in one spot and didn’t move. He would have been visible in the rearview mirror when she got in, so he attacked right away. The mirror hadn’t been flipped, so the victim arrived during the day and was killed before she adjusted it.
I looked at the wound. In all the cases so far, the wound to the chest was always the cause of death and it was always the same: a single penetration through the sternum and into the heart. The blade struck with enough force that it always went clean through on the first shot. It penetrated without fracturing, so it was also very sharp. The fact that there was never any bruising around the wound implied that the hilt never impacted, and so it was also fairly long. No metal traces were ever left in the wound, so it was most likely made of some kind of superhard plastic.
None of that narrowed it down much. A lot of blades fit that description, but the exact weapon was just another mystery in a case that was full of them. The dimensions of the wound didn’t seem strange at first, but I had been so far unable to match them to anything, and that was unusual. The weapon was significant to the killer, most likely. Something he may have crafted himself, or that wasn’t commonly available.
What now?
What Dr. Pyznar called my voice and what I called my intuition seemed to get more talkative the more tired I got. I still believed it was just that internal self we all spoke to at one time or another, that entity we consulted when we wondered if we were doing the right thing, or when we were alone and talked to ourselves. Mine was just louder than most.
Now we look for clues, I answered.
I looked at the rearview mirror; she would have seen him there after he grabbed her from behind. With her head pinned, she would have seen his face in that mirror as he leaned forward, bringing the knife around.
“CSI has to have picked up something,” I muttered to the dead woman.
He doesn’t leave hair, sweat, or skin flakes. Is that even possible?
Apparently.
Nothing obvious was missing from the wallet, and the glove box hadn’t been tampered with. He never took anything, and he never left anything.
There’s something unique about him, my inner voice said. He’s not like other people. That’s why you draw such a blank with him.
That was true; a blank was exactly what I was drawing. It was truer than I would ever admit out loud, even to Shanks. Killers were usually passionate if nothing else, and the passion of their crimes, whatever they happened to be, were imprinted on their victims and their families forever. They left trails, even when they weren’t physical ones. Even when they thought they planned well, they left trails, and every killer, no matter how far out there, had a reason for killing.
If I could just understand why, I thought, that would connect them. It doesn’t matter if the reason is typical or completely insane, but I can’t figure it out.
That scares you, doesn’t it?
A little.
Let me do what I need to do, he had said. He had a reason.
You can understand why someone might want to kill a first tier, can’t you? Especially one who never had to crawl through a trench to get it. You can feel that, can’t you?
Yes.
People killed for jealousy all the time. They killed out of resentment, out of a sense of injustice, all the time. People who didn’t have things resented people who did, even if it was only secretly. Sometimes they hated them. Sometimes it drove them to violence. Every one of the victims so far would most likely have looked down on me in life, so I could understand how the thing that seemed to connect them all might drive someone to kill.
I also knew that wasn’t it.
It’s because he’s different, the voice said.
Well, if you know something, then clue me in.
Maybe I will, but not yet.
Backing out of the car suddenly, I had to grab the door to keep from slipping on the ice. The scene shifted in front of me like I was going to nod off right there, and I shook my head to clear it. Feeling a little dizzy, I took a deep breath and stood there for a moment, trying to focus.
“This is crazy,” I said under my breath. Maybe Pyznar was right; maybe I was pushing it too hard. It was one thing to bounce ideas off yourself; it was another thing to suspect your inner voice of withholding information from you.
When I looked back at the crowd, no one seemed to have noticed, but everyone was filming. Every move from every angle was being streamed live and would replay on the news channels for the rest of the night or until something better came along. A crime scene was no place to start exhibiting strange behavior.
“You getting anything?” Shanks asked. He was hanging back by the curb, giving me room.
“There’s a lot more to this story,” I said.
“Drink it before it gets cold,” he said, nodding at the paper cup. I took a gulp of the hot, bitter liquid.
“Something else is still bothering you,” he added.
“That call this morning.”
“He wants to rattle you.”
Whoever it was, he was smart; the trace had failed to find the source of the call, and even the voice analysis had been a bust. He was using some kind of electronic filter that not only altered his voice to mask any accent or even any clue as to his age or ethnicity, but even canceled out all background noise. The techs couldn’t get anything, not even traces of breathing or heartbeat. He was very careful before placing his call. He wanted to tell me something.
Shanks watched me, his eyes a little concerned.
“Never mind,” I said. “It’s just been a hell of a morning, you know?”
“I know.”
I signaled to the coroner that it was okay to move the body.
What about Wachalowski? the voice wanted to know. What are you going to say when you see him?
I’m not sure.
What made you decide to call him? Who is he to you?
He can help.
How do you know?
I felt my head nod again and pinched the skin on my arm, twisting it until it hurt. I breathed in the cold air and focused, inwardly coaxing my body like it was an old car threatening to stall. On the one hand, I did wonder why I thought that, but on the other hand, I was sure that he could. I didn’t even know how or why, but I felt sure of it.
That was going to have to be enough.
“It got split,” the dead woman said, holding out the heart. I was back in the green concrete room, sitting at a folding table that was set near one end. She walked over to the switch on the wall and pushed it into the up position.
A single light snapped on at the far end of the room, shining down on a figure standing there. This time it was a man with leathery brown skin, dressed in an Army soldier’s uniform. He looked part Asian, maybe in his thirties or so, but it was hard to tell. His hair and even his eyebrows had been shaved off, and his eyes were pale and silvery, glowing faintly in the dim light.
“A revivor?” I asked. The dead woman didn’t answer; she just watched as I got up and moved closer to the figure under the light.
“Do you know who he is?” she asked.
“No.”
His jaw looked like it had been wired shut, and even under his brown skin I could see black veins standing out. It was definitely a revivor. Leaning closer I looked at the name patch on his chest.
ZHANG
“He’s dead,” I said. “Who was he?”
“A piece of history few will ever know.”
Looking away from the man, I turned my attention back to the dead woman to find her staring at him intensely.
“Why are you showing him to me?” I asked.
Just then a phone rang, startling me. The dead woman turned to the wall next to her and touched her fingers to a metal panel that I’d seen before but never paid any attention to. She pushed it and it swiveled outward, revealing a handset inside. The call light on the handset flickered as it rang again.
“Answer it,” she said, and I woke up.
Cracking my eyes open, I found myself in stuffy darkness, and realized I was in my bed, under a pile of blankets. When I heard the ring, I thought it was a remnant from my dream.
A second later, I heard the ringing again. I thought it might actually be my cell phone.
Groping around under the covers, I felt it under there with me and rolled over, twisting myself into the blankets. In my hand the little call light flashed. Was this another dream?
Answer it, she had said. My hands trembled in front of my face like they did usually in the morning as the light kept flashing. I pried it open and answered it.
“Hello?”
There was a pause, and a man answered.
“Zoe Ott?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Who is—”
Usually I forgot chunks of the previous night; that wasn’t that strange. More often than not the memories never came back to me, and the only reason I knew they happened was because I’d left some kind of evidence behind. Sometimes, though, they’d come back to me in a flash.
“Shit.”
“Excuse me?”
All at once I remembered the bitter cold, the monorail ride, and the snow banks bordering the sidewalk. The lights and the sounds all came rushing back to me.
I hadn’t just left the apartment; I went all the way across town. I went all the way to …
“Is this Agent Wachalowski?” I asked weakly. I waited, hoping I was wrong.
“Yes, it is,” the voice said. “How did you know?”
I had actually done it. I had actually gone and really done it. At some point during the night, after I thought I had safely passed out, I had gotten back up, found the FBI building, and left a note. No, not a note—a card. I left a little card.
My ears were burning. He must have thought I was a complete idiot.
“Ms. Ott?” he prompted.
“Yes?”
“I got your card. I’d like you to come in so I can talk with you. Is that okay?”
“You want me to come in?”
“Yes.”
I needed a shower, and I couldn’t remember the last time I shaved my legs or my pits. I hadn’t done any laundry in as long as I could remember, and even washed I probably looked like a train wreck. My mouth tasted like sour puke, and when I held up my hand to check it, my fingers were shaking. I tried to concentrate on them, but I couldn’t make them stop.
“Ms. Ott, is that okay?”
When he calls, go to him.
“When?”
“Can you come down now?” he asked. “I promise I won’t keep you long.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“No, ma’am, you’re not in any trouble. I’d just like to speak with you.”
“Why?”
“Because you indicated on your card that you could help me,” he said, “and I’m hoping that’s true.”
My mind was racing and I felt like getting out of bed was going to be difficult, never mind getting across town. A million reasons why I shouldn’t go came at me in a blur, and I answered before one of them could take root.
“Sure. I’ll come.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Just give me an hour.”
“I look forward to meeting you.”
Folding the phone shut, I struggled out of the blankets and jumped onto the floor, which was freezing. I pulled off my nightshirt and threw it away in a pile, trying to get it together. On the bed next to the pile of blankets was an overturned glass in the middle of a big sticky stain, an open spiral notebook, a crumpled cardboard box, and a ton of sugar cookie crumbs. He couldn’t see me like I was.
I took a shower so hot the bathroom filled with steam, then gargled and brushed the life out of my teeth. I washed my hair three times and started to shave my legs, but ended up nicking myself so many times I just gave up and put on pants instead.
I scrubbed my face, my hands, and combed my hair until it was completely straight, which it hadn’t been in a long time. Pulling some clothes out of one of the unopened dry cleaning bags, I got dressed, drank a few shots until my hands stopped shaking, then gargled and brushed my teeth again.
A little over an hour later, I was standing on the sidewalk, facing the steps leading up to a big building and feeling self-conscious. I sort of remembered standing there the night before, but barely. The steps and the area extending out toward the sidewalk in front of them were polished marble, and the building itself looked big and imposing. The whole front of the place looked like black glass divided into panels, and in the center were two doors made of the same glass. It was pretty much the most unwelcoming building I had ever seen.
Taking a deep breath, I marched up the steps and right up to the doors. I grabbed the right one and pulled, but it didn’t budge. I pulled again and it still didn’t open, so I tried the other one, but it was stuck too.
“Name, please?” a woman’s voice said, making me jump. It took me a second, but I realized it was coming from a speaker mounted in the glass. Someone was watching me from inside.
“Zoe,” I said. “Zoe Ott.”
There was a pause; then the woman spoke again.
“Identification?”
“Sure …”
I dug around inside my bag until I found the black laminated card with my picture and the worn gold emblem on it.
“It’s kind of old—”
“Hold it up to the reader please,” the voice snipped.
I found the scanner mounted near the speaker and held the card up to it. A little yellow light blinked on the front of the reader and began to flash.
“Ott, Zoe,” the computer interrupted, loud enough to hear on the sidewalk. “Third class. Violations including public drunkenness place you as security risk: low.”
“Thank you,” the voice chimed back in. “You’re expected. You may enter.”
“Great.”
I stuffed the card back into my purse and pulled the door handle again. It opened smoothly, and I stepped through into a small area where there were another set of doors leading in. I pushed those open and found myself in the lobby.
“Wow.”
The lobby wasn’t huge, but it looked impressive. The floors were polished marble inside too, with a big round seal etched into the center of it and ringed with brass. There were big potted plants and flags, and everything looked very clean and expensive. As soon as I stepped inside, there was a guard station with a metal detector, where a stern-looking bald man in uniform sat.
“Step through, please,” he said.
I passed through and immediately a bell went off. Everyone who was milling through the lobby turned to look as the guard stood up and stopped me.
“I’m sorry—”
“It’s okay, ma’am.”
He took my purse and jacket as I set it off two more times before I made it through. The guard scanned my things, the contents displayed on a screen as he passed his wand over them. He paused for a moment when he saw the flask, but he didn’t say anything and he didn’t hold me up any longer. Instead he picked up a phone and spoke into it.
“Sir? Yes, your visitor is here. I will, sir.”
He hung up and handed me my things.
“Take that elevator,” he said, pointing across the lobby. “Head on up to the fifth floor, then take a left. You want conference room B. Someone will be with you shortly.”
“Thanks …”
I shrugged back into my coat and took my purse. The guard had already turned his attention to something else, so I walked away and headed to the elevator, pushed the button, and waited.
When the car came, I got in and stood between two tall men in suits who looked at me like I was a bag lady. The inside of the elevator was polished brass or something, and I could see my reflection in it as well as those of the two men. Neither of them said hello. The car moved so smoothly I didn’t even notice it had started up at first, and it didn’t make any of the noises the one at my apartment made. By the time we reached the fifth floor, I was so uncomfortable my heart was beating fast and my face was red and blotchy. Fortunately, neither of the men got off when I did, and I quickly left the car, turned left, and walked until I saw the room marked B.
I slipped in and leaned back against the big conference table inside, trying to get control. I took the resume I’d printed up out of my pocket and smoothed it out. I was still self-conscious about the wording, and I wasn’t sure if “clairvoyant” was misspelled. I started to crumple it up, then smoothed it out again.
“Get a grip,” I told myself, fanning my face with my shaking hands. What was I doing there? From the second I walked up to the place, it was obvious I didn’t belong there. These people, in their suits and uniforms, thought I was a complete loser. Next to them, I looked ridiculous.
Before I let myself go any further down that road, I decided to risk using the flask. I took it out of my purse, uncapped it, and tipped it back, filling my mouth once, twice, then a third time before I heard someone in the hallway and almost dropped it. Clenching my mouth closed, I screwed the cap back on and stowed it back in my purse a second before he walked in.
“Ms. Ott?” he asked. It was him. I swallowed the fiery liquid down in one gulp, bringing tears to the corners of my eyes.
“Yes?”
He was going to smell it—there was no way he wasn’t going to smell it—but it did make me feel better, calmer. I fumbled a stick of old gum out of the pack in my purse and stuck it in my mouth.
“You can take your coat off if you like,” he said. “Just put it on the chair there.”
I took the parka off and propped it on the chair. It was weird actually being in front of him. He seemed a lot bigger in real life, and having him looming over me was kind of intimidating. He wore a dark suit and white shirt and tie like the other men I’d seen, but his knuckles on both hands were covered with stick-on bandages, several of which had a dark spot seeping through. He had a cut on one cheek, and his face was bruised. He looked tired.
“I’m Nico Wachalowski. It’s nice to meet you,” he said, holding out his hand. I shook it, and he gestured for me to sit down, so I did. He sat down across from me.
“So,” he said, “your card said you could help me. Help me how?”
The card. I tried to remember what was on it, but as far as I could remember it was just my name. It wasn’t even a real business card; it was just some stupid thing I made. All I could think about was how I’d just seen him on the news, and how he must have been in the middle of something important. I was totally wasting his time.
“Why did you really call me down here?” I asked, and immediately kicked myself.
“Sorry?”
“It can’t just be the card,” I said, my mouth moving on its own. “You don’t even know who I am…. Did it say anything else?”
As soon as I said that, I wished I hadn’t. He raised his eyebrows a little.
“You wrote it,” he said. “Didn’t you?”
Booze or no booze, my face got hot again and I knew it was obvious. My mind went blank and I couldn’t think of anything to say. The longer I went without saying anything, the worse it got, and I started feeling panicky. All of a sudden, I thought I was actually going to start crying.
Don’t you dare …don’t you dare …
“It was the doodle,” he said. I looked back up at him and he was looking at me, but not like some of the others did. He wasn’t looking at me like I was a piece of dirt, or like he was sorry for me or embarrassed for me; he was just smiling a little. His blue eyes were on me as I nodded, but I still wasn’t sure what he meant.
He slid the card across the table with the back facing up, and tapped the corner where I had scribbled some kind of little pattern.
“Do you know what that is?” he asked.
“A doodle?”
“Well, if it is, it’s a doodle of the waveform that’s generated when a revivor’s systems reanimate and come online. It’s called a revivor heart signature. Does that sound familiar?”
I shook my head.
“What’s really interesting,” he continued, “is that your doodle is even more than that. Every signature is unique, and your doodle matches, for all intents and purposes, the signature I pulled off a revivor found at the Palm Harbor docks yesterday.”
He was looking at me more intensely now, orange flickering in the pupils surrounded by that cold blue. The booze had finally started working its magic and was hitting me all at once, making it harder to concentrate. My anxiety was melting away, and I started to relax.
“Can you explain that?” he asked.
I couldn’t explain it, because I had no idea what he was talking about. He was kind of cute in person, I decided. He was nice, too. He didn’t treat me like a lot of the others.
His phone rang. He reached into his suit jacket and checked it, but didn’t answer. It looked like maybe he was reading a text. When he put the phone away, I could tell something was bothering him.
“Who was that?” I asked. He raised his eyebrows.
“An old friend. She wants to meet for lunch.”
“Are you going to?”
“Look, Ms. Ott—”
“I can help you,” I said.
“How?” he asked. His attitude was different, and I thought I was losing him. I remembered the resume I held in my lap. It shook a little as I put it on the table and slid it across to him, just like he had done with the card.
He took the paper and looked at it. He read it for a couple seconds; then his face started to change.
“I’m serious,” I told him.
“You know,” he said, folding the paper and putting it on the table in front of him, “I can see that you are.”
I had blown it. All at once, the anxiety was back and I sat up straight. Damn it, I knew the resume was a mistake; I shouldn’t have given it to him.
“Wait,” I said.
In a few seconds, he was going to send me home. I didn’t know what else to do.
The room got brighter as I stared at him, until it was so bright that the only colors I could see were the ones that hung above his head. They were complicated, but shifting toward red. I pushed them back, soothing them until I saw his face relax.
“You need to give me a chance,” I said. “If you could know one thing right now that you don’t, what would it be?”
He paused for a couple seconds, considering.
“Did she love me?” he asked.
“Something to do with your case,” I said.
“We have a suspect in custody. I need him to talk.”
“Good,” I said. That was perfect, actually. That was something I should be able to do. “I can make him do that. Don’t think about it. Just trust your instincts and take me to him. When we get there, do what I say and I’ll prove it to you. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
I let go of the patterns above him and let them resume their flow as the brightness subsided and they faded from view. The room returned to normal, leaving us sitting there facing each other. Agent Nico was looking at me now differently from before, but it was hard to say exactly what he was thinking. The seconds ticked by, but I didn’t want to jinx it by saying anything.
“Follow me,” he said finally.
“Really?”
“Really.”
It had worked. He stood up and waited for me to come around the table; then he walked down the hall and I followed him to a door with a little glass window that was blocked from the other side. He opened the door, and I could see there was a man inside.
“Is that him?” I asked, trying to get a peek through the doorway. Nico seemed to be deliberately standing in front of me, trying to block my view.
“Yes,” he said, “Ms. Ott—”
“I’m listening,” I said. I caught a look at the man through the doorway; he was big like Nico, and dressed in an orange prison uniform. He was sitting in a wheelchair, and from the look of him, he’d been in some kind of accident. He was staring at the floor, and all around his eyes his face was swollen and bruised black and blue. He had cuts on his cheeks and a square piece of gauze was tented over his nose with a strip of adhesive tape. His lips were split, with a couple of stitches in the top one.
“No, you’re not,” Nico said, and stopped talking. I looked up to see him looking down at me, waiting.
“Not what?”
“You’re not listening,” he said. “Pay attention.”
“Okay, okay.”
“Stay on the other side of the table from him,” he said. “He’s in bad shape and he’s restrained, but he’s had extensive body modification, so he’s tougher than he looks. He’s on painkillers that will keep him calm and also keep his motor skills fuzzy, but play it safe.”
“I will.”
“What are you going to do?” he asked. “Do you need anything?”
“Just let me talk,” I said, “and don’t say anything.”
He pushed the door open and went inside. He reached up over the door and did something, then motioned for me to follow. As we approached the guy in the wheelchair, he was looking at his leg. I couldn’t see it before behind the table, but one leg was held out straight in a metal brace. The pant leg was rolled up, and I could see two metal rings around his shin, one under the knee and one above the ankle. Metal pins were stuck into his skin and the whole middle portion was wrapped in gauze. His foot was swollen and black, the toes sticking out like fat little sausages.
I focused on him and saw a violet light prickling above his head, red spikes jumping out. Even with the painkillers, he was in pain, but he was also experiencing some turmoil. He didn’t know what to do.
“Hey,” Nico said to him. “You’ve got a visitor.”
The man looked over at me like he hadn’t noticed me before.
“No shit,” the man said. He was hoarse and his nose was plugged up. His front teeth were missing so his t’s came out like d’s.
“Answer her questions.”
Nico turned to me. I was on.
“Are you okay?” I asked. It was the first thing I could think to say, seeing him like that.
“I hope you’re not my conjugal visit.”
He smiled slightly and winced. His remaining teeth were bloody. I thought about the bandages on Nico’s knuckles. Had he done this? I wasn’t expecting the man to look like that. One part of me was saying that he must have done something to deserve what he got, but another part of me wasn’t so sure.
“I’m helping Agent Wachalowski,” I said weakly.
“You’re wasting your time.”
I was going to have to try it soon, before he got too riled up. I was hugely aware of Nico’s eyes on me.
“Relax,” I told him.
“Screw you, you ugly little bitch!” he yelled; then, before I could react, he leaned forward and spit at me. I saw a red glob shoot out of the gap in his front teeth and felt something wet land on my face, above my eye and down across the bridge of my nose to my cheek. I felt a big surge of anger from Nico, who stood up so fast he knocked his chair back. I held up one hand, easing him back.
“Calm down,” I said. “Both of you, calm down.”
The man in the wheelchair had been glaring at me with a kind of satisfaction, but now his face relaxed as I eased back the light around him, shifting the violets and reds to orange, then blue. Nico put his chair back and sat back down.
“Sleep,” I said. The man’s eyelids fluttered.
His eyes didn’t close but they looked unfocused, staring into nothing. The pain was gone from his face.
I glanced over at Nico, who looked surprised. He handed me a paper towel.
“Is this for real?” he asked.
“Shh.”
I took the paper towel and wiped my face, then folded it in half, covering the smeared blood. I looked back to the man.
“Can you hear me?” I asked.
“Yes.”
Nico had pulled a pad of paper out of his jacket and was scribbling on it. He put it down on the table between us, facing me.
His name.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Alek Katebi.”
Nico pushed the pad toward me and tapped it with his pen.
Who is he working for?
“Who are you working for?” I asked.
“I don’t know who he is.”
“You don’t even know who you are working for?”
“That’s how it’s supposed to be.”
Nico turned the pad to me again.
What was the revivor for?
“What was the revivor for?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “All I did was pick them up when they came in, and drop them off. The buyer had a deal with some local trafficker to piggyback the units through his regular routes. I don’t know who the trafficker is. The trafficker doesn’t know who I am, or who I work for. I doubt he ever even saw the units himself.”
Where did you drop off the revivors?
“Where did you drop them off once you had them?” I asked. “The revivors, I mean.”
He paused, and the far-off look left his face. His sudden change worried me. Was he coming out of it? He turned and looked at Nico.
“He knows who you are,” he said.
Nico didn’t respond, and the man smiled, showing the gap in his teeth.
“He doesn’t care that you know. You can’t stop it now.”
“Can’t stop what?”
“Maybe before this is over,” the man said, “we’ll let them eat the rest of you.”
Another surge of emotion came from Nico, but he clamped down on it, leaning across the table to face the man.
“Were you there to pick up the revivor? Or were you there to destroy it?”
“If—” the man said, but that’s all that came out. He jerked in his wheelchair so violently that I jumped in surprise. His eyes bugged out, and I heard a muted popping sound as the mellow blue light around his head expanded into an orb and burst like a soap bubble. A spurt of blood shot out of one of his ears and spattered across the table, leaving red dots on Nico’s pad; then the man’s body went limp in the wheelchair.
“Shit!” I said.“Holy shit! What the hell was that?”
Nico didn’t answer; he was already up and checking the guy. He put his fingers to the man’s neck.
Shit. The light above him was gone. Blood was dripping steadily from his ear.
Nico took a step back; then, after a few seconds, he made a call on his cell phone.
“Get a medic up here,” he said. “Interrogation room 5-C. I’ve got a suspect down; he’s dead.”
“It …wasn’t my fault,” I said. Nico hung up his phone, still looking at the body.
“I didn’t do it,” I repeated, standing up. My legs buckled a bit, and I was having trouble catching my breath. Blood was spreading all down the guy’s neck, seeping into his shirt. Nico looked over at me.
“I need to get you out of here.”
“I didn’t do it,” I said.
“I know, but you’re not supposed to be in here.”
“But I—”
“Now.”
He turned me around gently and put his palm on my back, guiding me out of the room. I caught one last look at the body in the wheelchair as he closed the door behind us.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
He took me back to the conference room and handed my coat to me.
“Go back through the lobby,” he said. “You were never in that room, understand?”
“I blew it, didn’t I?” I asked.
“Just the opposite,” he said. “I’ll be contacting you again. Soon, I hope. For now, though, it will be better if no one here knows about your involvement, understand?”
I couldn’t believe it. I think maybe my mind was blown a little, and I couldn’t interpret it all. Was it me? Had I somehow killed that man?
“Understand?”
“Yes.”
He put his hand on my shoulder, and a shiver went up my spine.
“Go back out the way you came,” he said. “I’ll contact you again soon.”
Before I could say anything else, he left, heading back to the room with the dead man. I noticed there was some blood on my shirt, so I zipped up my parka to cover it up. As I headed back toward the elevators, I passed a group of people moving quickly in the other direction, but they didn’t pay me any attention. On the trip back down the elevator I kept waiting for an alarm to go off or something, but nothing happened.
I pushed open one of the front doors and went back out into the cold, leaving Nico and the dead man behind me.
As soon as I got close to his place, I knew I shouldn’t be there. It was way the hell on the other side of town—that was the first thing. The twerp was way off his turf, hitting that bar and ending up in the tank with the rest of us. No wonder his friends were crying their eyes out; the dumb shits were probably scared stiff.
Not this one, though; I’d give him that. He’d had it all worked out and cut himself loose, no sweat. If he was scared, he fooled me.
He tapped the top of my helmet and pointed left when we got to a set of lights. A ways back, the streets got cleaner; then they got dug out; then they got plowed. Now there were even little green trees in a row right down the goddamned sidewalk. The road was smooth, as though it had been paved not too far back, and all four lanes were packed full of sports and luxury jobs full of uptight snobs. All down the walk, it was long coats, shiny shoes, and leather gloves. Every guy looked like he ran a bank, and every woman looked like she was on TV. All of them looked at me like I was the worst piece of shit they’d ever seen.
When I looked back at Luis, he was smiling. He was getting a kick out of the whole thing, but I wasn’t. At the light I thought about gunning the engine and giving those assholes something to get tweaked about, but I was tired. I just wanted to dump him, pee, and get the hell out of there.
“How much farther?” I yelled back at him. The light turned red, and I rolled to a stop.
“We’re almost there!”
When I looked back at the walkway, a bunch of people looked away. Right then, I caught the blues in my rearview.
Great.
The light turned, but before I even got a chance to move, I got waved over by a cop on a bike as he cruised down the edge of the walk. When he was on top of us, he chirped the siren.
“It’s us!” Luis yelled.
“No shit, asshole.” I pulled off and he came up alongside me, while another one rode over to back him up. Just like that, there were two cops in my face.
“Sir, cut your engine!” the first one yelled. I cut it while the other one walked over, talking in his radio.
“Remove your helmet, please, sir,” he said.
I pulled it off, then planted it in Luis’s gut, and he grabbed it. The cop saw my face and frowned.
“Sorry, ma’am,” he corrected. His eyes did a sweep up and down me, looking for metal. They stopped on my left tit.
“What’s in your jacket?” he asked, still staring. He’d found the lined inside pocket, but he couldn’t see in.
“Nothing,” I said. “What’s the problem?”
“What’s in your jacket?”
“My ID.”
“Your ID should be readable at all times,” he said. “Remove it, please.”
Keeping my hands where they could see them, I unzipped halfway and reached in slow, then pulled the ID from between my two pairs of brass knuckles. He watched closely while his buddy stood in back of him like he was his goon.
“What’s the problem?” I asked, holding up the card. He stared at it for a second.
“You’re from Bullrich Heights?”
“Is that a crime?”
“Ms. Flax, what is your business in this area?” he asked.
“Is it against the law for me to be here?”
“What is your business in this area?”
“Just visiting.”
“Isn’t it a little late in the season to be riding a motorcycle?”
“You’re riding one.”
His eyes started moving across the bike, then made their way back to my jacket pocket.
“Step off the bike, please.”
“What, are you kidding me?”
“Step off—”
“Sir?” Luis piped up. They looked over at him.
“Sir, I’m Luis Valle.”
“I got your information,” he said. “Weren’t you in jail not two hours ago?”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “It was a misunderstanding and I was released. I couldn’t get in touch with my parents, and I didn’t have fare or a rail pass. This woman was nice enough to give me a lift, that’s all. She’s just helping me out.”
The cop stared at me for a little longer, then back at him.
“Really,” he said. “She’s just taking me home, and that’s it.”
He sighed and waved to his goon, who turned and went back to his bike, talking into his radio.
“I’m not going to write you up for the ID violation or the helmet violation for your passenger,” he said. “And I’m going to pretend I didn’t see your trick pocket there, miss. From now on, keep your ID where it can be scanned, and if you’re going to ride two to a bike, then both of you need helmets. Got it?”
“Yes, sir,” Luis said.
“You take him straight home,” the cop said. “Then you turn around and go back where you came from. Understand?”
“Yeah, I get it.”
“Move along.”
He and his goon got on their bikes and took off, and I grabbed back my helmet and put it on. They were two blocks off when I fired my engine back up and left a strip on their pretty goddamn road and a cloud of blue smoke in their pretty goddamn air.
“Sorry about—” Luis started to say.
“Shut the hell up,” I shot back. “And keep your mouth shut the rest of the way!”
He had some sense, since that’s what he did. He just tapped and pointed until we got to his street.
“Nice place,” I said when we rolled up.
“Thanks.”
He hopped off and jumped up and down to warm up.
“Can I use your john?”
“Huh?”
“I need to pee.”
“Oh,” he said, looking up at his building. “Um …”
“Jesus, never mind.”
“No, it’s okay,” he said. “I just don’t know if my mom—”
“You live with your parents?”
His face went red and he frowned.
“It’s just for college. The rent—”
“Uh-huh.”
“It doesn’t make me a pussy.”
“Look, can I pee here or not?”
“Fine.”
I followed him up the steps to the front door, where he flashed his ID at the security eye. It blinked and flashed a white light at us.
“Hello, Luis Valle, second class,” it said. “Who is your guest?”
“A friend.”
“ID please.”
I pulled out my ID and showed it.
“Hello, Calliope Flax, third class,” it said. “Mr. Valle, due to multiple violations including assault, illegal possession of a weapon, public drunkenness, and speeding, your guest is considered a medium-high security risk and will require verbal authorization to enter. Do you authorize entry?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you,” the eye said. “Please proceed.”
He opened the door and we went in.
“Shit.”
The hall was wide, with some kind of flat red carpet and fancy lights down the walls. Big plants in big pots were in between the lights. The place looked like a straight-up palace.
“This way,” he said.
He took us down the hall to an elevator, then up to the one hundred thirtieth floor, where he and his parents lived.
“What are you going to tell your mom?” I asked as he flashed his key at the door and opened it.
“That we’re dating.”
“In your dreams, asshole. Anyone else live here?”
“Just my sister.”
It turned out it wasn’t a problem, since no one was home. He hit the lights and dropped his keys on the counter, but no one showed up or said anything.
“Guys?” he called. The place was quiet. “Guess they’re out,” he said.
“Bathroom?”
“Down there,” he said, pointing. “Go. Go pee.”
My boots clomped on the wood floor as I went down the hall to their head. The door was dark wood and had a brass knob. I pushed it open.
“Shit.”
“Put the seat down when you’re done,” he called.
“Funny.”
His toilet was almost the size of my living room and ten times nicer. When I walked through the door, it smelled better too. There was a big white sink and a huge white tub with jets in it that was big enough to soak in. All the faucets were brass, like the doorknob, and everything was shiny and clean. It looked like a picture in a magazine.
The toilet looked as shiny as the rest of it. It seemed wrong to sit there, but I really had to go.
When I was done, I started to head out when I caught a look in the mirror over the sink, and for some reason it made me stop. The mirror was huge compared to mine, carved around the edges and framed with shiny brass. I saw myself standing there in the middle of it, and compared to everything else, I just looked dirty. Beat-up jacket, big black eye, and busted lip. The bandage over my other eye was the cleanest thing on me. My picture didn’t belong there with the rest of it, and this was just their shitter.
When I looked down, I saw a bar of clear soap in a tray, and next to that were two more that were wrapped in colored paper.
Just like that, I didn’t want to be there anymore. I didn’t belong there. If his folks did come home and saw me, there would be a shit storm.
When I left the toilet, Luis almost plowed into me on his way back from wherever he went. He looked jumpy.
“What’s your problem?” I said.
“Nothing,” he said. He rubbed his face, and when he was done his grin was back, but not all the way.
“Trouble?”
“No.”
“Thanks for the bailout, then. I’m out. Nice can.”
“Wait.”
I was at the front door, one hand on the knob. When he said it, I knew something was up. I knew that before I got out of there, there was going to be a catch. No one gives you shit for free; there’s always a catch.
“What?”
“Actually, something kind of came up.”
“While I was in the john?”
“I made a call.”
“It must have been a quick one.”
“It was,” he said. “I can’t stay here.”
“So don’t.”
“I need another ride.”
“Look.” I sighed. “You’re cute, and thanks for the help, but I’m not a taxi. Got it?”
“Just one more. I promise that will be it.”
“Why can’t you stay here?”
“It’s complicated. Please?”
“Where?”
“Your place?”
There’s always a catch….
“I’m out of here.”
“I’ll pay you—”
“Pay me? For what?”
“Just to give me a place to crash for a few hours,” he said, putting up his hands. “Just so I can make some calls, and then I’ll be out of your hair. I’ll even buy dinner. Please, I’m in a bind—”
“Jesus—”
“What if I said I could bump you up to a two?”
That stopped me. It had to be bullshit, but it did stop me.
“I’d say you must be in trouble.”
“I am.”
Right when he said that, I saw it was true. He was pretty much full of shit, but right then, he was for real.
“I’d say you’re a liar too.”
“Not this time,” he said. “If you help me, I’ll try.”
I didn’t see how he could pull that off, but then, who knew? He was some kind of tech geek, he had rich folks, first class …maybe he could rig it. What was there to lose?
“Why’d you bail me out?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“I gave you the shiner.”
“Oh.”
For the first time that day, I felt like I could laugh. It must have been a pretty good punch.
“Come on,” I said, and the grin came back, but like before, not all the way. It never came back all the way again.
With what I know now, I guess I get that.
The restaurant Faye had suggested in her text was a noodle house sandwiched between two buildings where the streets and sidewalks were so crowded, it was difficult to get through. Cars sat bumper to bumper just beyond banks of frozen snow, while people shouldered by each other on either side of the road so that all I saw in front of me was a carpet of hats and scarves. If I hadn’t taken the subway, I’d have never made it.
The restaurant was bigger on the inside than it looked from the street, but the lobby was filled to capacity and probably beyond it. Brushing snow off my coat, I looked around to see if I could spot her.
I’d meant to break the date. I didn’t have the time to spare, and I didn’t know what I would say to her. We’d been close once. It was more than a friendship. I didn’t have any excuse for disappearing like I did.
Then there’d been the interview with Zoe Ott.
I wasn’t sure what I expected out of her, but it wasn’t what I got. I figured in a best- case scenario she might have some kind of tip for me, and when she first came in I stopped hoping for even that. In person she seemed disturbed, and from the smell of it, she’d been drinking. My first reaction was to send her home.
She did something, though. Somehow that pint-sized woman with the bony shoulders and shaky hands sat down across from an ex- military killer and started pulling information out of him that no one had been able to get him to give up. She’d managed that, as best I could tell, just by asking him. I couldn’t shake the way that strange little woman had controlled that situation.
Then either the guy killed himself, or the person that hired him did it remotely. That left me sitting in an interrogation room with a corpse, a camera I had shut off, and a civilian who probably had a substance abuse problem. The inevitable question as to why I let her in there in the first place, I didn’t have a good answer for. The meeting with Faye would make me scarce for an hour. That’s what I told myself.
“Nico?”
I looked across the room and saw her standing by the far wall, waving. She smiled, but her eyes looked nervous. The lower lids were red and she had dark circles under both of them. She looked tired, maybe even sick, but I smiled too in spite of myself.
The last time I saw her, we argued. I told myself it wasn’t as though I never expected to see her again, but when I saw her like that, I think I hadn’t. In some ways, she looked exactly the same, but the picture of her in my mind looked much younger. Had it really been that long?
Making my way over to her, I could see she wasn’t sure how this was going to play out. Neither was I, to be honest. When I got close enough, I offered my hand.
She shook it, her smile turning into a smirk that took me back. Gripping my hand, she pulled me closer, then got on her toes to hug me.
“I missed you,” she said in my ear, but she didn’t let the hug linger. I found myself a little disappointed when she pulled away. When she did, her eyes darted to the scar on the side of my neck. She didn’t ask about it; she just made a note of it.
“Come on,” she said. “I got us a table.”
We sat down, wedged between the window and two businessmen who were talking animatedly. She reached across and switched on the noise screen, tuning it until the chatter of the businessmen faded into the general din.
She ordered hot noodles that came with an egg sitting in another bowl next to it. I got some kind of spring ramen.
“Since when are you a vegetarian?” she asked, peering down at my bowl.
“I’m not.”
She picked up the egg and cracked it, dumping the contents raw onto the noodles. She stirred them with her chopsticks, letting the egg congeal as the steam rose in little clouds between us. When she looked back up at me, her eyes darted to the scar again.
“Ask,” I said.
“What happened?”
“I was injured,” I said. “It happened when I was in the service.”
“How far down does it go?”
“Pretty far.”
She looked back at my face.
“Were your eyes always that blue?”
“No. They’re replacements.”
“Oh.”
“It’s good to see you, Faye.”
She smiled, but her eyes were sad. She looked like she wanted to say something but was having trouble with it. I’m not sure if I did it to spare her or to spare myself, but I spoke first.
“You saw the fire from the train?” I asked.
She nodded. This was familiar ground. This was something we could talk about.
“Yes. The fire was fairly close to the train stop, so I got off at the next platform and followed the smoke.”
“It was hard to tell from the footage,” I said. “Did you approach the truck because you heard something inside?”
“Yes.”
“So the revivor was animate?”
“At first.”
“What made you help it?”
“I didn’t realize it was a revivor at first. I thought she was alive. Even so …”
She sighed, her eyes looking distant for a moment.
“I understand,” I said.
“I’ve seen plenty of bodies, but I can’t get her face out of my mind. She was burned so badly.”
“They don’t feel pain,” I told her, but she didn’t look so sure.
“They don’t,” I said.
“It just seemed like so many of those people there were glad to see her like that.”
“It wasn’t alive.”
“She was once.”
“Yes, but it was too late to do anything about that. What you saw in the truck, they weren’t hostages. I didn’t rescue them.”
“What were they, then?”
“Evidence,” I said, and I could see that it bothered her. This was one of the big reasons why the government didn’t want the general public exposed to revivors if they could help it. When they had to deploy them locally, they used them sparingly. They kept them in full uniform, with their faces mostly covered. People weren’t supposed to relate to them. They were supposed to fear them. It’s what they were for.
“I heard what you did,” she said. “You risked your life.”
“Not for them. Those women didn’t sign up or donate; they were kidnapped and murdered. All I could do with them was deactivate them, dissect them, and hope something in there would lead us to whoever did this to them. So we can stop them from doing it to anyone else.”
She smiled, but looked down.
“You’ve changed.”
“Sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry; I’m running on fumes.”
“Stim wearing off?”
“Yes.”
“You want tea?”
“I want sleep.”
She stared into her noodles, stirring them.
“The girl, the revivor, it spoke to me,” she said.
“Before it died, or deactivated, it was trying to tell me something.”
“What did it say?”
“It said to hide behind whatever I could and keep my head down, but I think it was rambling at that point.”
I recognized the words as the last thing I’d said to the revivor, but didn’t point that out.
“Anything else?”
“Yes. It said, ‘Zhang knew the truth.’ ”
“Zhang?”
“Yes. It said I had to wake up, and then it said it again: ‘Zhang knew the truth.’ ”
Zhang. That name had not come up at any point in our investigation. Not on the client list or Tai’s contact list.
“Does that name mean anything to you?” I asked.
“No.”
I sent a message via my implant.
Sean.
Yeah?
I’m interviewing the detective that responded to the truck fire—
You mean Faye.
She was with the only revivor that made it before it deanimated. It looks like it dropped a name: Zhang.
Is that a last name?
I think so. Sorry, but that’s all we’ve got.
I’ll see what I can find.
Thanks.
When I brought my attention back to her, Faye was looking into my eyes intently.
“You have a JZ implant,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Did you get that in the service?”
“After the standard tour, I specialized.”
“I know.”
A pause developed and started to get uncomfortable. Neither of us felt like eating, and there wasn’t enough time to get into the things we needed to talk about. I felt like I should ask her if she had gotten wired up for PH service, but I knew she had, and she knew that I knew. I felt like I should tell her it wasn’t too late to serve now. They wouldn’t throw her on the front lines at her age; she wouldn’t be exposed to the things I was. Her reasons for not wanting to go were probably the same as they had been, though, and the truth was I didn’t know whether I could argue my original position with the same conviction I’d once had.
“You know, it was strange,” she said suddenly. “Afterward, when I was waiting there, I decided to call you. I was still on the ground with the revivor, and I’d just gotten through. I swore I saw the strangest thing.”
“What?”
“For just a second, I thought I saw someone standing next to me.”
“What did he look like?”
“That’s just it—I couldn’t see him. Just his outline, like he was invisible. Just a hole in the snow and the smoke.”
I remembered the footprints I had seen next to the spot where she’d knelt, and wondered. She laughed a little.
“Too many stims,” she said.
“Maybe not.”
She wouldn’t have seen anything like that before, but I had. I wondered if the person responsible for the fire hadn’t been still standing there when she arrived. Maybe he just couldn’t be seen.
She frowned suddenly, and looked me in the eye.
“How could you come back and not even call me?” she asked. She watched me as I didn’t answer.
Before either one of us could say anything else, her phone rang. She looked apologetic, but was still watching me when she answered.
“Shanks,” she said. “What’s up?”
Her face fell just a little as she listened, and I afforded her what privacy I could by turning my attention out the window. The stream of cars was inching forward on the other side of the snowbank, as somewhere down the street the signal changed. A white van in the midst of them began to slow down.
“Are you sure?” she asked. She listened again, then nodded.
The van slowed down some more, and the gap between it and the car in front of it got wider, prompting the traffic behind it to begin blaring their horns. People inside the restaurant and outside on the sidewalk began looking over to see what the problem was.
“I’m on my way,” she said. She snapped the phone shut and looked out the window.
“What’s the—” she began, but stopped in midsentence as the van skidded to a stop and a couple seconds later the back doors burst open. Immediately, we both knew something was wrong, but before anyone could do anything, another man jumped out of the back and into the middle of the street. He wasn’t wearing a coat, and from where I sat, I could see the explosives strapped around his torso.
The guy in the car directly in front of him saw them too; he slammed it into reverse and immediately crashed into the vehicle behind him. People on the street started to scatter, streaming by the window as they abandoned their cars and ran. A woman was slammed into the glass near where we sat and went down onto the sidewalk as Faye and I both stood up.
“It’s a bomb!” someone inside shouted. People began getting up uncertainly, some pushing their way out, while others clustered at the windows, holding out digital cameras.
This is Wachalowski.
Go ahead.
We’ve got a suicide bomber at my location.
The man outside turned toward the window and I got a good look at his face. The skin was ashen, and the lips and eyelids were grayish-black. The eyes looked bleached white in the daytime light.
It’s a revivor. There’s a revivor armed with explosives at my location.
Roger that. Is it threatening to blow?
Someone sent it here. It will detonate.
“Nick!” Faye shouted.
I pushed my way through the crowd and out onto the street, displaying my badge to try to keep the worst of the foot traffic off me. A kid scooted by my legs, and another man clipped me as he ran past.
The revivor had a communications system, so I started flooding it with a connection request. The revivor began to look around, trying to find the source.
“Nicky!”
It looked in my direction and I met its eye, holding up my badge so it could see. It hadn’t picked up yet, but it stopped looking, keeping its dead eyes fixed on me.
Faye reached me through the crowd and grabbed me, physically pulling me back. She was stronger than she looked, one arm gripping me tightly around the waist as she began to force me away.
Call connected.
The revivor accepted the connection. As soon as it did, I tried a brute- force scan of its memory buffer, but never got the chance. Still watching me, it raised the detonator in one hand.
Time to wake up, Agent Wachalowski. The words blinked in front of my eyes for a brief second.
I turned and grabbed Faye, throwing my coat over her as I pulled us down to the sidewalk behind a box truck. There was a bright flash of light, and a beat later a loud boom slammed through the air, shaking the pavement and rattling in my chest. A blast of air and dust rushed by, and something struck the side of the truck as the windows of storefronts buckled and exploded. Through the ringing in my ears I heard dull thumps as debris rained down over the clogged street, bouncing off hoods, windshields, and rooftops.
The explosion thundered down the streets as people ran screaming. I looked back to see the mangled remains of the vehicles that were closest to the blast. The van the revivor had driven was twisted into shrapnel, burning in the middle of the street. The revivor was gone.
When I looked back at Faye, she was staring at the spot where the revivor had been.
“Are you okay?” I said, my voice sounding muted in my own ears. She nodded.
Panic had erupted on the streets. All around, throngs of bodies were pushing and shoving at each other, trying to move through a mob that was quickly getting out of control. Sirens began swelling in the distance, coming closer. My head was spinning.
Trying to get through the crowd was pointless. I could barely keep my position, and Faye wouldn’t have a chance. Already people were shoving past with shoulders, hands, and elbows. Screams filled the air as I saw a woman slip and go down behind a parked car as people forced their way past. I couldn’t even get to her.
“Come on!” I shouted, grabbing Faye. She gripped my arm and held on while we pushed our way back to the closest storefront. When we pushed through to the door, I saw faces staring out at us from behind the safety glass. A newspaper dispenser crashed off one of the windows, bouncing back onto the sidewalk and knocking someone over. A man on the other side of the door looked at me and shook his head.
I held out my badge, and that got him to back up. The door opened enough to squeeze through, and I dragged Faye in along with me.
“Get back away from the door!” I shouted.
It’s a madhouse down here. What’s going on?
They’re organizing a response; stay low until then.
We’ve got dead and wounded down here.
Get inside and stay put. You can’t do anything out there. Help is coming.
A man who looked like he was missing a chunk of his shoulder stumbled against the window and left a streak of blood as he scrambled away. The crowd had become one giant organism, ready to consume anything that got too close.
With no way to stop it, we stood there and watched it happen.