“I gotta talk with you,” I say. “About…other stuff.” I take a final glance at her bare shoulders, the smooth skin. It’s only a little less than what she was wearing before, when she stitched me up, but it makes a world of difference.
“It’s kind of late,” Evelyn says. The little moment passes.
“Never too late to see you.”
“You’re better than I heard,” Evelyn says. “Come in.” I slip by her, inches from the towel, and head to the sofa. She sits down next to me on the couch.
“That’s what they all say.” I can’t see her eyes, but I hear her sigh. “That, too.”
“I bet they do, Casanova,” she says and hands me a pair of battered field glasses. “Look over there, on the left. The city’s beautiful at night.”
“That’s not why I came—”
“Just look,” she says with a whisper. “Imagine what the world could be.”
There’s a long silence. I stare out at the empty park, at the leave-less dead trees, the yellow grass. At one time long ago, this place was beautiful. Birds played in the empty, algae covered fountain, dogs snarled at one another on the cracked paths. Maybe there weren’t so many goddamn skyscrapers, rising from the ground like glass tombstones, blocking off the little sky that’s left.
“I’m guessing you came for the drive,” Evelyn says. The towel dips a little.
I don’t bother denying it. “Yeah.” It’s almost refreshing for someone to see you for who you really are—not who you think you are, or pretend to be. So I tell the truth. “I need it.”
“To save your own ass?”
I think for a second before responding. “There’s more to it than that.”
“Like what?”
Before I can answer, the coordinates flash across my vision and my temple throbs. I bring my hand up to my head and snap my fingers. “Hey, give me a piece of paper.”
Evelyn gives me a funny look, but manages to find a shred of paper and an old pen buried deep in one of the drawers. Apparently I’m still expecting some residual effects from the HIVE demo, even after a few hours. I scribble down the coordinates before they disappear. Good to have a copy for myself—I told Blackstone, sure, but just in case…
“What are those?” Evelyn says when she sits back down. She leans over my shoulder and I smell lilac. “Coordinates, huh?”
“I gotta go to the Black Hole.”
“That’s your best play, at the end of all this?”
“Best option out of a bad bunch.”
“So make your own option,” she says.
“How do I do that?” I say.
“If you have to ask,” she says, “You’ll never know.”
Then Evelyn gets off the couch, the towel not entirely closed at the back, so that I can see her bare thighs and the beginning of her ass. I instruct myself to stay on my game, stay on mission. I try to focus on the tiny studio. She makes tea in the kitchen as I inspect the clean, minimalist space. There’s a woven bamboo mat in the corner.
“You meditate?” I say.
She doesn’t look up but says, “Not many people know that. Lost art.”
“Not much time for stillness,” I say. It’d be tempting to close my eyes and think of nothing. Allow the world to disappear. But it’s not going to happen. “Where you from?”
“Tacoma,” she says. “Got out before the quake hit.” A spoon clinks and she comes over with the tea, the towel slipping more. I watch as she takes a sip. “Drink. It’s good.”
“Seattle,” I say. “You know what happened to the Space Needle?”
“I imagine it’s cracked in two,” she says.
“You aren’t wrong.” I remember the broadcast from Old Silver Fox. Snapped in half like a twig between a wolf’s jaws.
“So what’s the play, Luke,” she says, the towel slipping further. “Come here, call me pretty? Snatch the drive while I’m not looking? Or maybe, if things don’t go your way, put that gun of yours up to my head and pull the trigger?”
“I guess a little,” I say in a soft voice, like I’m admitting something horrible. “Not that last part.”
“I didn’t peg you for a murderer,” Evelyn says. “Drink your tea.”
“It’s the only way to fix things,” I say. “Avoid war.” Even I’m not sure that’s true.
“I’m still glad you came.” Then she comes forward before I can react, her full lips closing in, and then everything happens all at once, and this little room a quarter mile high in the sky is the universe, the galaxy, everything that has ever existed and will ever exist.
Nothing else matters.
Everything else matters.
Evelyn tears herself away from my grasp and gives me a devilish smile, like a pixie about to play a prank in the forest.
“I’ll be right back,” she says. “Don’t go anywhere.” She takes a hair ribbon from the table and begins to gather her long, flowing locks in her hands.
I watch her bare figure recede into the bedroom, hear the door click—apparently she’s modest all of a sudden—and then I jump into action. First order of business is finding my pants, which have somehow found their way on top of the stove. I allow myself a small smile, before my heart constricts, threatening to implode. It’s time for the job, and despite the plan going a little off the rails—into decidedly emotional territory—everything is going more or less as expected.
“Come on, man, you know there’s no other options,” I whisper to myself.
I’m suddenly struck by the overwhelming urge to rush to the bedroom, pound down the door and beg for redemption at the altar of—what? Romance? Two human beings who, for one brief moment staved off loneliness and despair?
There’s a rustle in the other room. I need to leave.
But I can’t.
Not yet.
I grab the pen from the table, try to find another scrap of paper. Can’t find one, so I just use the one with the coordinates, leave it behind.
I’m sorry. Really.
I don’t know who I’m apologizing to. The world, myself, to Matt, or what it will all become. But I don’t trust Kid. I don’t trust Blackstone. And, whatever happens with the drives, I can’t let anyone have full access to HIVE.
Then I slip out the door. As I wait for the elevator, I think that I hear Evelyn’s door opening, but it’s just my imagination. A wishful desire for her to come and change me when I cannot change myself.
I guess I understand what great sacrifice means, now.
But I wish that I didn’t.
“Didn’t think you could last that long, Stokes,” Kid says. He’s off smoking a cigarette in a nook and cranny around the corner from Evelyn’s apartment. “You get it?”
I hold up my empty hands and say nothing.
“The fuck, man,” he growls, jabbing his cigarette at my nose. “I gotta go up there myself?”
“She didn’t have it,” I say. I stare him dead in the eye, not blinking. “Her analysis was done.”
“Hell,” Kid says. He bangs his head against the wall, the gel from his side part leaving behind a wet imprint. “Where’d she send it?”
“Slick,” I say. “If I had a guess.”
“Thought you were better than this, Stokes,” Kid says. There are shouts around the corner, and he tugs me inside with a hasty yank. “Things are picking up, man. We don’t have time to search all over the city.”
“So we go with what we got and hope for the best,” I say. “Maybe it’s enough. I saw the HIVE alpha code.”
“Yeah?” This interests Kid, and he arcs his eyebrows to show it. “What’d you think?”
“A stable version of that would be impressive enough. So maybe you don’t need everything.” I hope that’s the case. Then again, I don’t really understand how code works. Matt probably split the critical components over the drives.
Kid shakes his head and confirms it’s a fantasy. “That’s not how it works.” I have to agree—I think that was me just trying to spin things, take heat off Evelyn.
I say, “You got a choice to make here. We go ahead, or we don’t.”
He flicks the cigarette butt down the alley. The voices subside—for now. Another pitchfork mob will soon replace them. “No turning back, Stokes.”
“Let’s go to the Black Hole.”
He stares at me before bringing out a walkie-talkie from his back pocket. Noticing my look of surprise, Kid says, “Harder to trace.” Then he puts in a call to Blackstone’s lead guard. Gets them to find the best route into the center square on the fringe of Black Hole, given the current conditions.
The guard tells us, in no uncertain terms, that the Otherlands is one big witch hunt. And it’s gotten worse—the tracker in my HoloBand’s been activated, broadcast on the big screen and across HoloNet for everyone to see.
After the conversation ends, Kid looks at me with a grin.
“You know what that means, Stokes?”
I figure he’s gonna tell me that it means I’m gonna die.
But instead, he says, “We’re headed underground.”
After an hour in the sewers, we emerge from the septic system like phoenixes from the ashes. During our stay, however, a few of the mobs splintered off—their voices echoing off the dank, foul-smelling walls. The tracking signal isn’t visible underground, but the last known location was right next to a manhole.
Putting two and two together wasn’t hard. We stayed a few steps ahead, though, and survived.
But now we’re back on the grid, exposed. I listen for voices as Kid slides the sewer cover shut and then tips a piece of asphalt from the ruined road on top. We’re in the middle of the real Black Hole—not the fringe, but Marshwood’s Black Hole. There’s an eerie silence, after the symphony of gunfire earlier. A delicate, stale smoke lingers around the torched asphalt. Pockets of embers still glow in the distance, closer to the main battlefield.
“Don’t you think we should remove the band,” I say as we traverse the broken landscape. “Until we’re closer?”
“Then I can’t keep tabs on you,” Kid says. “You try to pull some stunt and bounce.” As if to demonstrate his lack of trust, he reaches into his pocket, takes out the coin removal device, and chucks it into the blackness. It tings off the pavement in the distance.
I guess that’s a no on taking it out. Should’ve considered that before I agreed to install it again.
I shrug and walk in front. Behind me, I hear Kid take out the walkie and ask for a sit-rep. We’re told that no one’s headed our way—but a large wall of people is collecting on either side of the square on the fringe of the Black Hole. Getting to that screen is gonna be impossible.
“Can’t Blackstone just order a couple drones,” I say, once the call is over. “Just blast through?”
“We’re trying to build support, Stokes,” Kid calls back. “Not destroy it all before we even had it.”
“Good to know you’re both people pleasers,” I say. “I’m in good hands.” We walk closer towards the fringe, the terrain getting rockier. There’s still no plan for what to do once we hit the screen. Everyone will know I’m coming. They can see the tracker in real-time, the dot a hundred feet high in ultra-high definition.
I see the flash of the Red Bee a few blocks over as we cut down an alleyway. That’s a place, if I die tonight, that I definitely won’t miss at all. I have the .38 out in front of me, at the ready, but with thousands of people after me, there aren’t enough bullets to save me.
The footsteps stop behind me, so I stop, too. I watch Kid crane his neck to look up at a ten story building.
“Don’t tell me you’re admiring your handy work,” I say.
“I didn’t really work with the building bots that much,” he says.
“What, too warm and fuzzy for you?”
“I was really more focused on saving my own ass at the time,” he says. “Not drawing attention.” With his rifle, he points up to the top of the unfinished building. “That could work.”
He presses the walkie up to his lips and says, “Alpha 1, this is Sparrow, over.”
“Alpha 1, copy, what’s your status Sparrow?”
“I need a drop,” Kid says, his eyes still pointed upwards. “A little C4 and some rope.” Then he asks for something that’s muffled, inaudible.
There’s a long pause on the other end. “Director Blackstone doesn’t want any bloodshed.”
“Traceable bloodshed,” Kid says, correcting the soldier on the other end, “this has total deniability.”
“I don’t follow, sir.”
“You ever played dominos?”
I rub the thin fabric of my jacket. My breath comes out in a cold mist. I pace from wall to wall and look out at the Otherlands. Massive buildings block much of the view, but I can see a tell-tale orange-white glow coming from the fringe of the Black Hole. The main screen and the main mob, lying in wait.
“Cheer up, Stokes,” Kid says. He leans against a chunk of wall. Just above head height it disappears, offering a view of the surrounding block. The top half of this former high rise has been torn off like a piece of paper, leaving behind only jagged edges and ample places to plummet to your death.
A small hum accompanies a white-parachuted satchel gliding down from above. It hits the unfinished ground softly, rolling over twice before coming to a rest. Kid pushes himself off the wall with his boot and grabs the package. As he unwraps it, he nods, smiling to himself.
“This’ll do,” he says. “Catch.”
I get my hands up just in time to catch a block of gray putty. “Goddamn, man, don’t do that.”
“Relax,” he says, taking out some wire. “You need a detonator.” Kid dangles a spool of wire in front of his face.
Holding the plastic explosive with care, I say, “You sure this is gonna work?”
“Who’s ever really sure of anything?” Kid says.
Not the type of confidence I’d like to hear. A braid of rope hits me in the back.
“What’s this for?”
“You see that building across the street?” I don’t look back at him, so I can’t tell if he’s pointing. The structure he’s referring to is obvious, though. It still has most of its windows, and shoots up in the sky far beyond what I can possibly see at nighttime. “Get the C4 ready and then toss it through the window.”
I can see my reflection in the shiny black glass. I begin wrapping the rope around the explosive, careful not to squeeze too hard. Kid tosses me some wire, and I push it into the ends of the soft putty.
Then I grab the middle of the rope and dig my feet in, ready to make a toss.
“Whoa, cowboy,” Kid says. “You wanna kill us both?”
“Not really, no.”
“It’s armed and ready. Just wait for my signal.” I hear a beep. I glance back to find Kid heading out into the hall, towards the stairs. He has a small blue object under his arm, about the size of a briefcase.
“Where’re you going?”
“Rig a couple support beams. Play this right, and the whole thing topples over.”
“And play it wrong?”
“I don’t think we wanna do that,” Kid says, and then disappears, leaving me in the ruined room. A light wind whistles through my hair. He’s gone before I can ask him what the hell I’m supposed to do up here. His footsteps die away as I stare at my distant reflection in the glass.
This is, admittedly, not my style. Staying under the radar is how I’ve thrived and survived to date. Thrive might be an exaggeration, a story I’ve told myself. But staying out of explosive messes is always a good call.
But this is the only way to those coordinates.
And, if I’m going to stop Kid and Blackstone from rising to power, this
needs to happen.
A walkie talkie crackles, startling me. “Hey, Stokes.”
“Kid?”
“I left a spare walkie in the corner,” he says. “You hear me?” His voice fades in and out of static.
I reach down and grab the plastic unit. Press the button on the side. “Yeah, I copy,” I say. “Can I come down now?”
“I would highly recommend that.”
“What do you mean?”
There’s a slight pause before he says, “The building’s gonna explode in ten seconds.” And then, “Fling the rope off the east roof and jump off the west.”
“What?” I glance over my shoulder, at the other end of the ceiling-less room. The wall is almost neck-high there. “I can’t jump from there.”
“Clock’s ticking, Stokes.”
I fling the charge as hard as I can at the other building and begin to run across the room. I drop the walkie as I drop into a dead sprint. The scene behind me erupts in an orange wall of flame, so close that I can feel heat and glass and dust spraying over my back.
I barrel towards the wall, reach my hands up and push myself over.
After then I’m tumbling into nothingness as the building behind me sags and topples, like the first in a line of dominos.
I land feet first in a soft, pillowy cushion of blue fabric as debris showers down from above. A pair of strong hands grabs me from the landing pad just as a chunk of steel hurtles down and lands in the middle. The air-filled pad hisses and deflates.
“Run,” Kid says.
We tear up the street, sprinting west as fast as we can. Behind us, the landscape rumbles, but the chain of destruction isn’t coming our way. The skyscraper dominos fall east, towards the mega screen and the plaza.
A safe distance away—and out of the blast radius—I turn around to watch and catch my breath. Building after building careens against one another, smashing forward, shaking the earth. I try to imagine the chaos in the plaza.
“Could’ve told me the plan,” I say.
“You never would’ve agreed,” he says with a collected cool. “Hell, Blackstone’s guys never would’ve agreed, either.” He points up the street, as the chain grows closer to the center square. “But I just carved a path right through the city.”
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