“Ahhh, let it out. It is hard news, I understand.”
Tears began to dangle from Kai’s chin. She felt slighted when she realized she hadn’t even felt them slide down her cheeks.
“What do you want?” she whispered, hoping she was being conned.
“I want to bargain. You turn yourselves in, I don’t have any more dead teenagers in my case report.”
“Any more” echoed in Kai’s head. He’d said it so casually.
“And what if I refuse?” Kai asked, putting the phone on speaker mode. Her ear was burning.
“Well, Kaila, I think we both know you’re not stupid enough to do that. Not only do I know where you just parked off of Spring Street, I know where you’re going, and I have a pretty good idea of what you’re going to do. It’s not happening. I’ve had Google Atlanta completely evacuated, Atlanta’s finest are on the way as we speak, and all military satellites have been moved from Atlanta airspace. This is over, children. I know you thought you could evade us with your firewalls and data encryptions and IP blocking, but this is the big time. We’ve got phone records. You should have stuck with spray paint and ink pens.”
“Bye, nigga,” Apollo blared from the back seat, reaching over the console and grabbing Kai’s phone. He ended the call, then tossed the phone onto the street, where it was quickly devoured by oncoming traffic. Kai wished they had used burners like the first time.
They got out of the car and headed toward the building. After a few steps, Zed’s phone rang.
It was “Theo” again. Zed sighed and lobbed her phone into the street. It tarried before being overrun by a herd of vehicles, the lit phone a dull ember on the jet-black asphalt. Apollo’s phone lit up soon after. He threw it directly at a passing car, striking a passenger in the face through an open window. They all laughed at once, deep laughs that penetrated the noise of the city. Kai was glad they were on a one-way street.
“Do we have to do this?” Kai asked as they idled on the sidewalk. “Is it really our job to destroy these satellites? Theo is dead.”
Sol kept walking. Then her phone rang, loud and shrill and funky. The ringtone was “My Summer Vacation,” by Ice Cube. In April, Theo had insisted that she both obtain the song and make it his ringtone. Kai was surprised that Sol had obliged.
Sol answered her phone with a bark. “What?”
Rick was loud, emboldened. “Last chance, kiddies. It’s 2019. Cops show up, someone tends to get shot.”
“Well, I guess you’ve got plenty of reason to stay the fuck away from us.”
“I’m not a cop,” Rick said. The call ended.
° ° °
Tilly studied Rick’s face as they flew down Peachtree, a detachable light flickering on the roof. He seemed thrilled. This would be their first time hauling in perps in the middle of a crime. They usually cuffed people when they were fiddling with their Keurigs or changing the cat litter. Rick liked to call those kinds of pickups data dumps: show up and unload the evidence, smothering the perp all at once, like pouring ashes into a fire. It was the most reliable way to bring in perps. It was natural for people to resist some mudslinging, but being buried alive brought swift acquiescence. Kill Bill: Vol. 2 was a fantasy. This case was different, though. This was a hunt.
Midtown was active. Cars were reluctant to pull aside, pedestrians made their own crosswalks, Uber drivers loitered near the curbs of restaurants. Tilly hadn’t been out all summer, she realized as they passed the Vortex. The last guy she’d dated had taken her to an open mic comedy show there in early May. She’d been struck by how many variations of bearded white man there were. The jokes weren’t as variable. Dicks, self-derision, anxiety about gentrification, comments on unique romantic experiences that were actually quite common: it all had reminded her of the internet.
Her phone rang. It was the captain of the two precincts helping them with the arrests.
“What?” Tilly huffed. “Are you fucking serious?” she screamed, spiking the phone onto the car floor.
Rick looked over at her as they waited at a light, somehow still thrilled. A homeless woman skipped across the street. Tilly found it unsettling. She remained silent until the car started moving again, turning left onto Tenth.
“So?” he asked.
“The officers we were supposed to be given are being rerouted to State Farm Arena. There was a technical mishap at the Gucci concert. People are panicking.”
“Don’t they understand that the goddamn city’s at stake?”
“I don’t know what Houndum told them, Rick. But maybe this is actually what we need? These are just kids, after all. Why are we sending a SWAT team after them? Two of them visited a college last month. They can’t be doing anything too radical.”
Rick parked the SUV on the sidewalk, dropping his voice to a murmur as he checked his ammunition. “Tilly, this isn’t an investigation anymore. The kid said the word ‘bombing.’ You’ve seen the images from the Rudolph bombings; you don’t want that much blood on your hands. We don’t have to ask any further questions. We just have to go pick these kids up.” He paused, calculating. “If you’re feeling squeamish about it, I can go alone. I will have to put that in the report, though.”
Tilly scowled at him, disgusted at how much power he had amassed simply from claiming he had power. In a single day, he’d rewritten their job description a dozen times. They’d gone from cybercrime investigators to bounty hunters. And the bounty wasn’t even necessarily tangible; it was prestige, privilege, glory. Meager reward for a child’s life, Tilly felt. Still, she found herself stepping into the heat of the night, armed and even exhilarated. The case really was coming to a close, she realized.
The lobby of Google Atlanta was more austere than Tilly expected. It looked, quite simply, like a lobby: chairs, a desk, home improvement magazines, company insignia, a sleek coffee machine, a water cooler. She had anticipated Android tablets dangling from the ceilings, perpetually burning effigies of Steve Jobs, Roombas slavishly cleaning the floors, a self-driving car practicing three-point turns. Instead she found white walls accented with splashes of green, red, blue, and yellow. “Corporations gonna corporate,” she imagined the old Rick saying, if she, the old Tilly, had confessed her surprise. Instead, she said nothing and followed him as he stalked toward the stairs, providing cover as they walked through the open atrium of the ground floor.
A sleek card reader hugged the doorway to the stairs, but made no fuss as Rick twisted the handle and nudged the door forward. Tilly knew from her days as a security auditor that automated access points were notoriously unreliable, but she told herself that these kids were responsible for the easy entry. She needed to be prepared for whatever happened next.
“We’re gonna have to split up,” Rick announced, holstering his gun.
“Why?” Tilly asked, gun still in hand, gripped.
“Google agreed to evacuate but they wouldn’t confirm or deny that they have a supercomputer on the premises. It could be in the basement, could be in a lab, could be that gorgeous coffee machine in the lobby. They wouldn’t budge.”
“Fucking techholes.”
“Honestly, I can’t even blame them,” Rick said as he ascended the stairs. “We’re the FBI. You don’t want us to know your secrets.”
Tilly shrugged and headed downstairs. It took her three full flights to reach an exit, but there was only one floor awaiting her. Cautiously, she stepped through a door and into a narrow hallway with a towering ceiling. It felt as if she were in a silo for a giant paper plane.
Motion-sensing lights incrementally illuminated the corridor, a new pair of bulbs bolting awake each time Tilly stepped forward. The wall on her right was made entirely of thick, translucent glass, but no doors were in sight. Tilly gripped her gun tighter.
As she began to approach the end of the hall, a door finally became visible, twenty yards ahead on her right, opening into
the room behind the glass wall. Tilly slowed to a prowl as she approached it, her body taut. Calmly, she tested the knob. It was open. She immediately burst inside.
She found herself standing on immaculate hardwood floors, the sweet-sour smell of stale sweat wafting through her nostrils. No one was in sight. Tilly laughed, holstering her gun and admiring the fact that she was standing in a fully-stocked gymnasium. Basketballs, towels, and unfinished water bottles littered the floor, but even that small untidiness was impressive. At the time the building was ordered to be evacuated, people had been playing basketball at work, she thought. “I don’t even play basketball when I’m not working,” she said aloud, her tone both mocking and mournful. She picked up a basketball and held it, awash in memories of high school: unplanned leisure, AOL Instant Messenger, jump shots.
She returned to the stairwell, ascending slowly. Finding the door to the fourth floor ajar, she stepped forward cautiously. A muffled gunshot rang out. “Shit!” Tilly shouted, brandishing her gun and crouching. Was Rick okay? she wondered as she found cover behind a work desk cluttered with paperwork. Hearing no other gunshots, Tilly rose and followed the faint sound of voices. Ducking into a hallway, she slowed to a tiptoe as the voices grew louder. Another gunshot sounded off, followed by screams.
Tilly stopped at the edge of an open door, pressing her back against an adjacent wall, listening.
“Guys, we don’t have to do this. What are we still doing here?” Kai asked.
“You can leave if you want, but a nigga literally just got shot, so I’m doing what the fuck I came here to do while I can do it,” Sol insisted.
“You are not doing a damn thing,” Apollo responded. “Me and Zed are the ones who are entering the long and lat coordinates, and we’re the ones who programmed the lockpick. Chill out.”
“I don’t take orders from you, Apollo. Don’t forget about these.”
An object flew through the air, landing flatly on a hand. Tilly guessed it was a notebook of some kind, maybe a phone.
“Sol, we’ve already talked about this. We’re not going to shoot at houses. We’re here to hit other satellites, nothing else. Nothing has changed,” Zed affirmed.
“I’m sorry. Apollo and I have an arrangement,” Sol said.
The talking suddenly stopped. Something was missing, Tilly felt. Where the hell is Rick? she wondered. And who had the damn gun? Was she just paranoid?
“You don’t control me just because you point a gun at me,” Apollo said coolly.
“Shit,” Tilly mouthed, breathing nervously. One of them was armed. She considered her options. She could take them by surprise. She could try to negotiate with them. She could retreat and call for backup. She could flee. None of the options thrilled her, especially without knowing Rick’s status, but she had to move now, before things escalated further.
She decided to check on Rick. “Rick, are you alive?” she shouted over her left shoulder, revealing herself.
“Yeah, they’ve got my gun,” he yelped back, his voice curt.
“Kids, I know that you have no reason to trust me after what he’s done, but please return his gun to me. I promise that I will not harm you.”
No one responded, not even Rick.
Tilly spoke again. “I’m going to kick my gun across the doorway, disarming myself. Please do the same.”
“Jesus Christ, Tilly, just come in here and fucking shoot them. I’m fucking dying in here!” Rick hissed.
Tilly paused. Maybe Rick was right. What was she doing? Every bullet in her clip was backed and approved by the entire federal government. A legion of judges, secretaries, bailiffs, senators, congressional aides, and analysts had authorized these bullets to take any path she chose, any trajectory she willed. She had a license to kill and a warrant to do it at her discretion. Why was she hesitating?
She sucked in a deep breath, harboring the air in her chest, relishing its presence even as it transformed into an absence, a vacuum of unwanted gas.
Exhaling, she pivoted into a crouch, positioning herself in the center of the open doorway. Rick had lied again, she realized too late, diving forward as bullets sped past her, one acquiring a chunk of her left ear. On her belly, she fired back twice, both bullets striking Rick in his neck, toppling him over.
Tilly rose slowly, advancing toward Rick’s shaking body. His gun hung limply from contorted fingers. Tilly kicked it toward the doorway, holstering her own gun. Silently, she examined him. He was still alive, but he seemed to be frozen in an eternity of pain. His entire face was a grimace, every crevice broadcasting some unspeakable distress. Tilly stared directly at him as his body began to violently shake, blood fleeing his wounds. He didn’t look back at her.
Bending down, Tilly closed his eyelids and turned to the kids, who were huddled together in a corner. One of them was bleeding, but he was quiet. “What happened here?” she asked calmly.
Kai immediately spoke. “He ambushed us while we were in the middle of bombing. Apollo’s dumb ass said he’d rather die, and Rick shot him in the arm.” She stopped talking to glare at Apollo. “He then told us to continue what we were doing. He said that he ‘had to make us worthy.’”
Tilly didn’t reply. She knew exactly what “worthy” meant. He was going to make them carry out their plan and then kill them. He was making the case news-ready, promotion-ready, politically sound, flattening their motives. She’d underestimated the thoroughness of his ambition.
Troubled, she wondered about her own ambitions. Saving these kids? Getting a promotion? Saving the city? She felt disappointed. Her ambitions were all obligations. How motherly.
“How far along did you guys get?” Tilly inquired, finally taking the time to examine the room. It felt like a temple. The floors and the walls were a shiny white marble, their surfaces so clean that the lights nested in the floor seemed to beam from all directions, like a disco ball turned outside in. A CPU in the shape of a sphere hung from the ceiling, floating over a circular table where small fans provided it with a constant breeze. Adjacent to those fans were keyboards and monitors. Tilly felt like she was at the center of a star system.
“We destroyed seventeen out of the forty-four satellites we were aware of,” Zed declared, her voice flat, but proud.
Tilly felt relieved. “Well, assuming that no one is hurt from satellite debris and no communications satellites are damaged, that’s a pretty victimless crime. You didn’t hear this from me, but with the right lawyer, you guys might get off pretty easily. Vandalism is still vandalism.”
“Perhaps. But we also fired at the Georgia Dome. And Centennial Olympic Park. And Atlantic Station. And SunTrust Park. And Emory. And Municipal Market. And the streetcar. And about half of Buckhead.” Apollo paused. “And two random houses that Sol forced on me,” he added with a smug scowl.
“We?” Zed shrieked into Apollo’s face. “We agreed to destroy the satellites. We did the hard work of tracking down the satellite orbits. We programmed the digital lockpick. We all came here together to do the same thing. To honor Jerry. You…you have done something else. You have taken our futures from us.”
“At least you have a future,” Sol jeered.
“Cut the shit, Sol,” Kai squawked. “You know your parents have nothing on you. They’re just trying to shake you down because they think they can.”
“Her parents probably don’t even have a life,” Apollo chuckled.
“I don’t have a life,” Zed asserted, shoving Apollo into a wall. He looked away as she repeatedly jabbed her finger into his shoulder. “We could have gotten away with this, could have gone to school, could have done something, but now this moment will define us forever. Did you think to ask me about how I felt? Did you think about anyone but yourself? Did you think at all? You killed people!”
“Even if some good ones die, fuck it, the Lord’ll sort ’em,” Apollo rapped.
“Fuck yo
u, Apollo. You don’t even believe in God,” Kai spewed.
Tilly listened to their exchange, her head spinning, her body stiff with disbelief. The slab of ear she’d lost must have distorted something, she speculated. That self-assured look on Apollo’s face was teenage arrogance, not truth. He couldn’t have just committed mass murder. He couldn’t have just razed his hometown. He was trolling her. That’s what kids did online these days, wasn’t it? Especially guys. Even black guys? Probably. It was a new day. Niggas had been in Paris since 2011. Maybe they were on 4chan too. She didn’t tweet as much as she used to. She still logged into Myspace when she had a little too much Chardonnay. Things were different now.
When she was coming of age, trolling was like white guys’ new national pastime. She’d read an academic study on it somewhere, for some case. Something about privilege and power. The most privileged tended to use power the most flippantly because they knew they would never lose it. That’s why Eminem was so extra. Teenagers, all teenagers, thought of themselves as almighty. He was just being a teenager, that was it. “Teenagers gonna teenage,” old Rick might have said.
Tilly gawked at his motionless body, stroking the part of her maimed ear that was left intact. The pond of blood around him accented the white room. Is this how bears would decorate if they had human rugs? Tilly wondered. That was a question old Rick might have asked. Was it old Rick or new Rick that she’d shot? Could she have shot him in the legs? She’d never killed a coworker before. Was she the same Tilly?
Tired of posing so many questions to herself, Tilly turned to Apollo, who was crouched in a corner, his arms being wrapped in T-shirt tourniquets by Zed. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do all this?”
“Because Black lives matter.”
“I’m not your Facebook friend, kid. I’ve been through your search history. The first time you Googled Black Lives Matter was in August. And you didn’t even click any links. Give me a real answer.”
“Black privacy matters.”
In the Heat of the Light Page 18