by Wesley Cross
“Are you okay?” Schlager was standing in the hallway when the elevator doors opened and scooped Chen into his arms. The swelling on his face had subsided and the purples of the bruise were now turning into shades of green and yellow.
“I’m fine.” She let him plant a kiss on her cheek and then gently untangled herself from his embrace. “I need to take a shower. I reek of smoke.”
“You should have called me right away. They said it was a Molotov cocktail.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It happened fast. One moment we were driving through the crowd and the next there was shooting and that’s when somebody must’ve thrown the bottle.”
“Come on. Let’s not stay in the hallway.” He led her to the suite and took out a clean bathrobe and a fresh towel. “Stay here tonight. I hate sleeping alone.”
“I know. Just too much work, and I didn’t want to come back here in the middle of the night and wake you up.”
“You can work here too,” he said. “I’ll build the Faraday cage, so you can access JC here as well. With everything going on, I don’t want you out of my sight.”
“I know.” She leaned into him and put her head on his shoulder. “Every day could be our last.”
“Don’t say that.”
She sighed, stood up straight, and took the towel from his hands. “Come with me.”
Chen led Schlager to the shower, dropped the towel to the floor and turned to face him. She closed her eyes as he leaned in and kissed her on the lips, first gently, and then with more urgency, like a soldier kissing a girl before being sent to the front. Unsure if he’d make it back.
She kissed him back, feeling his hands on her body as his fingers worked their magic on the buttons and hooks. And then, as they were under the warm running water, she let him take the lead, giving in to the motions, pressing her body into his. More seeking refuge than trying to satisfy her desire. Trying to find comfort in being held by someone who truly cared for her.
After the shower, she brew gunpowder green tea, as Max cooked, but not before he put Tracy Chapman’s vinyl on a turntable.
They sat at the table, shoulder to shoulder, and ate almost entirely without talking, a comfortable understanding that didn’t need to be filled with words. The food was good—grilled salmon and roasted vegetables, Schlager’s signature, and they sipped on green tea, while the soulful sounds of “Give Me One Reason” filled the room.
Schlager was a lot of things, but he knew her better than most, and right now this was exactly what she wanted—a quiet evening and a good meal. Despite all the craziness of the past few weeks, she felt almost at peace.
Almost.
“Stay here tonight,” he said again.
“Give me one reason.” She smiled, echoing the song’s lyrics.
“I can give you more than one.” He smiled back. “And I’ll make breakfast.”
“I’ll move my stuff here,” she said. “You’re right. What was the point of moving in together if we aren’t always living together? But I’ll do that tomorrow.”
“Good.”
“I’m exhausted,” she said, standing up and dabbing her lips with a napkin. “I’ll go down for a moment. I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?”
“I need my pillow,” she said. “Sorry, but your pillows are atrocious. And I need my purse.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No, that’s okay.” She patted him on a shoulder. “I’ll be right over.”
“Okay.”
She put a pair of shorts on and wrapped herself in Max’s bathrobe, two sizes too big. Then she stepped out of the suite and into the hallway.
The lights were dimmed for the evening and she squinted when the doors of the elevator car opened, blinding her with a bright overhead spotlight.
“Helen.” Jason Hunt was standing in the back. His coat was damp and his hair wet. “Turns out freezing rain isn’t good for a walk.”
“Hey.” She smiled and stepped inside. The doors closed, and the elevator jerked up as it went to the top floor. “Needed some air?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged. The door chimed as they stopped and Hunt went out, but then turned back and held the door with his left hand. His fingers were pale. “How are you holding up?”
“It’s all…” She paused, looking for the right words. “Surreal. But we’ve come this far, right?”
“Right.” He looked down at his feet and then looked up, his eyes searching her face. “We’ve come so far. Good night, Helen.”
“Good night.”
He let go of the door, and Chen leaned on the wall as the elevator descended to the twenty-seventh floor. She took a step out, and the doors closed behind her. As if on cue, the lights went out in the entire hallway, a lone red Exit sign glowing to her left by the stairway door. Chen stood there for a moment, startled. Then, when her eyes acclimated to the dark, she walked to her room. The keypad next to the door was dead too, and she pulled out a key. She couldn’t remember the last time she had to use it.
It wasn’t as dark in the apartment, the glow of the city below it illuminating the sparsely furnished room. She marched to the bathroom, picked up her toothbrush, a mascara, a few bottles and tubes, and loaded them into a portable bag.
Then she went to her bedroom and went through her closet, picking out a few shirts as she held them out to the window light to see. Satisfied, Chen picked up her pillow and headed back to the living room. That’s when the lights came back on.
“Weird,” she said out loud. Then she stopped in her tracks. In the middle of her living room stood a petite woman. She wore a black leather motorcycle jacket, cargo pants, and a pair of black military boots. There was a sleek backpack strapped to her back.
“Who the fuck are you?” Chen said, dropping the pillow down. “How did you get here?”
The woman cocked her head without answering. She had an oval face, that under different circumstances Chen might have thought lovely, and the woman’s bright, dark-brown eyes seemed to study Helen. Calculating.
“What do you want?” Chen moved to the side, one step closer to the door.
“Helen Chen, I presume?” The woman’s voice was soft. “I just want to talk. Something we both might benefit from.”
Helen threw her bag into the intruder’s face, turned, and tried to run, but the woman dodged, caught up to her, and swiped her leg.
Chen went down hard. The impact knocked the air out of her lungs and before she had a chance to regroup, the woman went down on one knee and struck a blow to her lower back. The pain was paralyzing.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said, squatting next to Chen. She grabbed Helen’s wrists, pulled them back, and cuffed them with a zip tie. “I don’t want to hurt you. But you have to listen to what I’ve got to say.”
47
Chuck Kowalsky sped down Sixth Avenue, cut in front of a taxi—which, to his surprise slowed down, letting him go—and turned onto Broome Street. He pulled ahead of a beat-up Nissan Altima and parked by the curb on the opposite side of Orion Tower. There was a patch of broken asphalt a car-length away from him, covered on all sides with half a dozen white plastic barricades with orange stripes. A paper sign REPAIRING YOUR GAS SYSTEM was taped on one of them. Kowalsky considered it for a second and then moved his car a few feet forward, enough to render the spot in front of him too small for most cars.
Not the most popular move in the city, always struggling with parking space that put his car in danger of being keyed, but Kowalsky didn’t care. He wanted to make sure he could get out when he needed to without inching back and forth a dozen times.
His radio squawked, and he pressed the button on the dashboard. “What’s up, Latham?”
“Are you at the tower yet?”
“Just parked. You?”
“I got out of the tunnel. I should’ve left earlier. The Belt is one giant parking lot,” the man said, referring to the Belt Parkway, a series of connected highways that formed a belt
-like circle around Brooklyn and Queens. “But it looks like I’m out of the woods. Should join you in ten-fifteen minutes, tops.”
“Sounds good.” Chuck glanced at the plastic barricades again. “Pull up at the northern entrance. I’ve saved you a parking spot.”
“Thanks.”
“Any Black Arrow guys?”
“No,” Latham said. “I think they all pulled out of New York. I didn’t see any of them since Price announced his plan to hold the inauguration in the city.”
“I’m not sure if it makes me happy or worried.”
“How do you mean? Isn’t it a good thing?”
“I don’t know.” Chuck tensed as he watched a black SUV make its turn on Broome Street but then relaxed as the car sped by. There was a woman behind the wheel and he could see two kids in the back, strapped into their car seats. “Shit I can’t explain makes me nervous. Hurry up.”
Chuck disconnected the call, got out of the car, and walked back to the intersection of Broome and Sixth. He stood there next to a red, old-fashioned fire and police emergency call box and looked up and down the street. The box was weatherworn and hadn’t been painted for a long time. Chuck glanced at the oversized buttons—the red one for the fire department and the blue for the NYPD—wondering if they still worked. There were only a few boxes left in the entire city, and almost nobody knew that those that remained still ran on the original technology. When the button was pressed, or, on some models, flap lifted, it would turn a coded-wheel that would send a unique box number to the dispatchers. Those, in turn, would forward it to the appropriate depot or precinct. A few mayors had tried to get rid of them, but some advocacy group sued, arguing it would take away a vital option for deaf or mute residents of the city who could not use a regular phone.
It was a moot point, anyway. It had been a few years since the city was covered with cameras that transmitted live video twenty-four-seven. The stream went straight to an NYPD-controlled center, where it was processed by a sophisticated AI. But it had also been a few years since the police responded to anything other than a major shoot-out. And even then, only if the participants didn’t belong to some large multinational corporations. Self-government was the key phrase these days and everybody, the police department included, tried to steer clear of getting involved in anything that could put them on the wrong side of a powerful entity.
He leaned against the box and kept watching the intersection. It wouldn’t be too cold, if not for the gusts of icy wind threatening to take his breath away. Chuck zipped his jacket all the way up and pulled the hood over his head. It’d been many years since he smoked but now, standing in the cold wind on the corner of a street, suspiciously scanning the passersby, brought back the memories from his NYPD days and with that the craving for a cigarette.
As if on cue, a man crossed the sidewalk, a smoldering cigarette in his hand. He went to the row of Citi bikes, flicked the glowing stub away, and unlocked the bicycle. Then, he was on his way, pedaling down Sixth Avenue, his hooded parka ballooning on his back with every gust of wind.
Chuck’s right thumb rubbed across his index and middle fingers as if rolling a tube. He snapped his fingers in frustration, trying to break the spell. It was a slippery slope.
He took his hands out of his pockets, letting the cold air be a distraction, and walked west to Varick Street. The traffic was heavier on this side, a steady flow of cars going for the tunnel, but even here it was lighter than usual.
Chuck’s stomach grumbled as he caught a whiff of aromas coming from the diner on the corner—a complicated mix of sharp coffee smell, smoky bacon, and sweet bread. He swallowed, for a second considering popping in and grabbing something to eat. Then, with a resigned sigh, he turned and walked back. His phone vibrated, and he took it out as he watched a pickup truck make a turn off Sixth Avenue, a large Silverado with oversized wheels.
“Where are you, man?”
“Forgot to ask you something,” Latham replied, ignoring his question. “What did Jason say about the Otomo connection?”
“We didn’t have a chance to properly talk about it, but I think he took it seriously. Without going there and poking around, it’ll be impossible to know for sure. But I don’t care if it’s Otomo or somebody else. We have to do something about it.” Chuck paused. The pickup truck slowed down between the barricades and Chuck’s car, a driver in a bright-orange jacket craning his neck back and forth as if gauging the distance. “You won’t fit there, asshole.”
“What’s going on?”
“Somebody’s trying to take your parking spot, that’s what’s going on.”
“I thought you said you saved me one.”
“I did,” Chuck said, watching as the truck turned at a steep angle and crept backward. “There’s not enough room for him. But it doesn’t stop him from trying.”
“You think Jason will send somebody on an expedition?” Latham asked. “Normally I wouldn’t be volunteering for something like this, but after the last few weeks, I could use a change of scenery. You and I can go together.”
“Right.” Chuck snorted. “A dream team.”
“We found the connection,” Latham said. “I wouldn’t mind to see it through. Even if that means a trip across the pond with an asshole like you.”
“If I didn’t know you any better, I’d say you want to be friends.”
“Fuck you.”
The truck climbed on the curb with its rear tire and the driver started turning the steering wheel back, pulling the cabin into the space.
“I’ll have him buy me a new car, if he scratches it,” Chuck said. “Why aren’t you here yet?”
“Five minutes,” Latham replied. “Almost there.”
Chuck cringed as the truck stopped right before hitting his car and then the cabin started to complete the semicircle. It might not have been obvious for the driver, but from his vantage point, Chuck could see that the massive bumper was about to smash into the front barricade that carried the gas repair sign. He cocked his head, expecting to hear a scraping sound, but it never came. The front of the car went straight through the top part of the stripy plastic and came out on the other side.
“What the—” Chuck said as he ran toward the work site. He stopped near the barricade and extended his hand. Just like the truck before it, the hand went straight through the plastic without touching it.
“What’s happening?” he heard Latham ask, but didn’t bother with an answer. Bewildered, he leaned closer, bringing his face inches from the barrier. At this distance, it didn’t seem solid. It vibrated like an unstable image. Chuck stepped forward and once he was inside the perimeter of the barriers, they disappeared altogether. There were no plastic barricades; there was no sign informing the public about a gas line repair. Even the patch of the road was as smooth as everywhere else on the block.
In the middle of the space, there was a matte-black metallic cube the size of a trash can. On top of it lay a small rectangular object that looked like an old-fashioned flip phone with a small blinking light on its side. A barely audible vibrating sound was coming from the device.
He picked up the small gadget and flipped the lid closed. It gave a beep, a perfectly ordinary sound, and powered down. Judging by the expression of the truck driver, the barricades disappeared for him too. Something clanked inside of the cube, startling Kowalsky, and then four spindly telescopic legs sprouted from the bottom of it, lifting the cube off the ground. The top surface split in the middle, both sides sliding at a forty-five-degree angle and revealing a short barrel of a strange weapon. A moment later, the sentinel was pattering across the street, the barrel of its gun swiveling back and forth between two protective plates.
“Shit,” Kowalsky said and ran toward the tower.
48
The fiery disk of the sun had already sunk low enough to disappear somewhere west of the Hudson River, but its last rays set the wispy cirrus clouds on fire and colored the observation deck of Orion Tower in burgundy red. A mast bear
ing the dark-blue flag with three shining stars was bending in the wind, its foot-thick steel joints trembling so hard Michael Connelly could feel them through the thick soles of his boots. He glanced at the flapping fabric and then looked around the room as the music flowed from the hidden speakers behind the screen above the bar. Max Schlager was holding Helen’s shoulders, and for once she didn’t seem to mind the public display of affection. Jason Hunt was standing closer to the bar, his face relaxed, but his body tense as if ready for a fight.
The music stopped, and Connelly returned his attention to the big screen. The TV drone, one of the many, was hovering above the cobblestone street in front of Federal Hall, catercorner to the New York Stock Exchange. It zoomed in on the statue of George Washington for a few seconds, then zoomed out and panned around, showing the crowd stretching from the exchange and disappearing down Broad Street. The row of blue police barricades was set up thirty feet away from the steps of the hall, and a row of cops in dark-blue uniforms were pushing some of the overeager spectators back behind the line.
“This is happening,” Schlager said out loud.
“He got sworn in,” Hunt said. “Yeah, it is happening.”
The cameras shifted to a tall, slim figure of Darius Price, his wife and two kids in tow, flanked by a few men and women on the top of Federal Hall’s steps under the giant stars and stripes flag. The crowd erupted in applause and cheers that refused to die out even as Price raised both hands in the air asking for silence.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer said, “please welcome the president of the United States, Darius Price.”
“My fellow Americans,” Price started, his voice amplified by the speakers rolling over the crowd.
“You rock,” somebody shouted from the crowd, interrupting him. A few other voices joined in.
Price smiled and raised his hand again until the crowd grew quiet.
“Thank you,” he said. “There’s a reason I wanted the inauguration to take place here in New York. I know the critics will say I had no other options, but it’s not true. I wanted to do it here even before the last few weeks seemed to have put everything in this country upside down. It’s going to be hard, but I will try my best not to talk about the impostor who’s staging a pretend play today in front of the Capitol building down in DC in a brazen attempt to hijack our future. I want to talk about you. About us. About this great country that has overcome so much. We were a young nation when the great George Washington took his oath on the balcony of this very building. Now, I didn’t choose to do it here because I think history would compare me to him. I chose it because right now, like it did back in 1789, our country stands on the precipice—”