by Peter Watts
The first thing they looked for was food. The light booth had an impressive array of snacks. All of it was the high-calorie contraband that the school had outlawed in the year of its founding: bright pouches and boxes of crisps and chocolate (a whole box of the cherry brandy kind), seaweed crackers, “cheddar” popcorn, “kettle” popcorn, and bottle after bottle of energy drinks. Hwa mainlined the first one like it was the blood of Christ.
Tossing the empty bottle into a bin, she took stock. The light booth’s equipment was still all tarped over; no one had come in to use it since the summer. She plunked herself into one of the chairs and pulled the other one out for Joel.
“What’s going on, out there?”
“Let’s see.”
Hwa opened the security tab again. More feeds had come online. The shooter was on the second floor, now. He was in the foreign language pod. He was standing outside Madame Clouzot’s class—Hwa recognized the French flag across the door—and firing at it.
“It’s not good.”
Just as she was about to explain, the bell sounded. First period was over. Second period was about to start. Christ, where were the cops? A fidgety tension lit up her limbs. Joel was right. No one was coming. They were alone. Maybe the cops had some other assessment of the situation. Maybe they knew something she didn’t. Like maybe this dude had chemical weapons, or there was a bomb somewhere, or he’d rigged himself to blow up. Maybe he wasn’t the run-of-the-mill batshit shooter, after all. Maybe he was a terrorist.
Maybe he was the one trying to kill Joel.
“Fuck this,” Hwa whispered. She stood up and started digging in the supply racks. Most of it was just extra wire and batteries, along with folders of gels and green wafers of chip for re-programming light and sound on the fly. There was an old red toolbox that looked promising, but it had a big fat padlock on it and Hwa had no time.
“What are you looking for?”
“The emergency ladder.”
Hwa fished a box-cutter out of one bin. That could come in handy. She tried stuffing it down her skirt, but that didn’t work so well. She dug out a tool belt, cinched it over her waist, and stuck the cutter in there, along with a couple of flat-head screwdrivers and a heavy flashlight. There was a drill, but it was a small battery-powered job without much force. She needed something bigger. Like a nail gun.
Fortunately, she knew exactly where to get one of those.
“What are you doing?” Joel asked.
Hwa’s hands lit on the emergency ladder. It was lightweight yellow nylon. Joel would have no trouble hauling it up after her.
“Going to shop class.”
The problem was the silence. That terrible, awful silence that had turned the whole school into an echo chamber. In order to bust open the door to the woodshop, Hwa would need to use a fire extinguisher. The sound of it clanging on the door would draw the shooter in no time. So she needed something to cover the sound.
“That’s why you need to start a fire,” Joel said. “That way the alarm goes off, right?”
Hwa winced. The school fire alarm was among her least favorite sounds in the world. The last time she’d heard it, the Old Rig was on fire. And her brother was in flames.
“Yeah,” she said. “But it might open up all the doors, too. I don’t know what the procedure is for a lockdown versus a fire. I think fire ranks above lockdown, but we might just throw the system for a loop and get nothing. The specs don’t say anything about it.”
Joel plucked out a bunch of the gels from the lighting cabinet. On their black envelopes was an orange sticker with a campfire on it. “WARNING: EXTREMELY FLAMMABLE,” it read. Then he held up a black glass tube with an electrical cord dangling from it.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a black light. Probably the last incandescent bulb in this whole town.”
“So it’s hot.”
“It’s very hot. It has to absorb most of the visible light spectrum, and it’s spectacularly inefficient. That makes it good for checking for lint on a red velvet curtain. So here it is.” He knelt down and plugged in the light. Then he started unfolding the black envelopes.
“Hey! What are you doing?”
“I’m starting a fire,” Joel said. “In a small space like this, the smoke detectors will notice in no time.”
“I can do that myself, in a bathroom or something!”
“You only have one arm,” Joel said. “You’ll be slow.”
The fire caught almost immediately. Joel quickly fed it more gels. A weird metallic smell arose from them. Smoke started to rise. Joel backed away. He reached for a bottle of water from the tub of snacks.
“Do we hug, or something?” he asked.
The fire leapt up about three feet.
“I don’t think we have time to take our relationship that far,” she said. The alarm sounded. It was a shrill keening sound, as though the whole building were shrieking in agony at being burned. Then the sprinklers came on. Together they stared up at the water. It tasted of ocean.
“Great,” Hwa said. “Just great.”
“I’ll get the ladder.”
They left the fire burning and opened the exit. Joel secured the ladder to a set of hooks hanging off the threshold. Hwa watched the ladder fall into the darkness around the nearest catwalk. If she fell, she would die. Period.
Joel’s head stuck out above her. “Are you going to kill him?”
Hwa had not really considered this as a possibility. The shooter had a gun. If she were lucky, she would have a nailgun. It wasn’t exactly a fair fight. “Maybe.”
Joel nodded. “Well, if you do, I’m sure my dad’s attorneys will defend you in court. They’re very good. They got him out of a whole criminal negligence thing with an oil spill, before I was born. So you probably won’t do any time.”
Hwa winced. “That’s a real comfort, Joel.”
He held up both thumbs. “Good luck.”
“You too. Lock that door, and turn off all the lights when I’m gone.”
Going down a nylon ladder with one arm and a heavy tool belt wasn’t easy, but it was a lot easier than the ducts. Her arm was oozing, but she felt okay. Sitting still and focusing on it would have just made the pain worse. Her feet found empty air, and she looked down. The catwalk was another two feet down. Holding the ladder with her wounded arm she quickly changed her left hand’s grip on the ladder to something more like a one-armed chin-up. Then she slowly let herself dangle down off the ladder, and dropped onto the catwalk. It was slick and she slipped, gripping the railing with her whole body and getting an eyeful of auditorium. One of the screwdrivers dived out of the tool belt and glittered as it fell into the deep dark far below.
Righting herself, Hwa looked up at Joel. She gave him a thumbs-up, and he gave her one, too. Then he started pulling up the ladder.
Twisting on the flashlight and sticking it between her wounded arm and her body, Hwa navigated across the catwalk and down a set of stairs to the backstage area. Right near the outdoor exit (locked) was a fire extinguisher. Hwa lifted it off its housing and carried it to the interior exit that led to the drama department (also locked). She lifted the fire extinguisher and bashed at the lever on the door.
Behind the door, she heard screaming.
“It’s just me!” Hwa bashed at the lever. After two more tries, it fell out with a clunk. She opened the door, and a stage sword jabbed her in the belly. “Ow! Fuck!”
“A rat! A rat!” Mrs. Cressey said. She was holding on to two crying girls. She smiled. Hwa thought she had maybe gone a little crazy. “Dead for a ducat! Dead!”
“What the hell is a ducat?” She had to yell to make herself heard above the sprinklers and the alarm. Hwa pushed the stage sword away and gave the huge boy holding it a hard stare. “One side, Zorro. I’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
He backed off, and she pushed into the classroom. All the other students were staring at her. They were freshmen. They looked so small and formless. Like little tadpoles.
She had never felt old, before. Not until this moment. She was still young, and she knew that, intellectually. But staring at these kids with their jeweled eyelashes and chipped nail polish and their knees all hugged to their chests, she felt like some ancient thing that had crawled up out of a very deep and ugly pit.
“I’m sorry about the door!” She pointed behind herself. “All of you will be safer if you go up into the catwalks! Get to higher ground!”
The students looked at each other. Then they looked at their teacher. Slowly, they got to their feet. Hwa threaded herself through them, and started bashing on the door to the hall with a fire extinguisher. As she did, other students started streaming out of the room. She watched as the last one left, and then kicked open the door and got out into the hall.
The hall was a loop that made up the vocational pod. Mr. McGarry’s shop was around the bend. This time, she paused and looked through the window first before raising the fire extinguisher to the lever. No one was inside. Once the door was open, she dashed in and put the fire extinguisher down. The entire wall to her left was a pegboard of tools. The red chalk outlines for each tool’s shape were all bleeding down under the sprinklers’ onslaught. But the tools themselves were still in place and ready to be used. Including the big gas-powered nail gun, complete with its backpack of fuel.
Hwa wiggled her fingers. They were mostly numb. “Come to Mama.”
Threading her injured arm made the wound open up again, and she wished she’d taken that other pad from Joel. Hissing, she managed to peel back the padding and spray some industrial adhesive on the wound. It stung mightily and she howled in shock. She suddenly felt a lot more awake and alive. Endorphins were a wonderful drug.
She checked her specs. The shooter was back on the main floor, now. The same floor as she was. He’d gone up and around and down, covering the whole school. Looking for something. Or someone. She had to get him before he found the open door to the drama department. Before he found the other students. Before he found Joel.
Hwa checked the fuel gauge on the tank. It was in the green. She added a couple of cartridges of nails to the tool belt. Then she wiped the specs dry with a chamois from Mr. McGarry’s desk. In the security tab, she changed the video feed to a basic semi-transparent map in the lower left of her vision: the shooter was now just a red dot on a set of lines, and she was the blue one. It would be easier to see what was in front of her, this way.
Easier to aim.
She took a few deep yogic breaths to center herself. It wasn’t easy with a heavy pack on, but it was necessary. In (two, three, four), hold (two, three, four), out (two, three, four). And again. The pain dissipated. So did the endorphins. There was only her—a calm person accustomed to hurting other people—and him—an imbalanced student who probably came here with a death wish. They were probably equally frustrated by the fact that the cops hadn’t shown up. One way or another, they would have to have to end it themselves.
Hwa entered the hall. She moved past the doors. In other classrooms, there were kids pressed up against the windows. She felt them watching as she walked to the main hall. There, way on the other side of the school, was the shooter.
Behind her, something splashed.
Hwa whirled. At first, she couldn’t see it. But in the rain created by the sprinklers was a . . . shape. A human shape outlined in water trickling off its surface. Only, she could see straight through it. Without the water it would have been completely invisible. She ripped off the specs.
It shifted. Glittered. Like a poltergeist caught in the act. De-realization. That was the medical word for it. That moment when everything around you seemed impossible. The moment before you had a seizure.
“Oh, Jesus.”
All her calm vanished. She was cold and wet and wounded and alone. And she was about to seize for the first time in three years. It made sense: she’d barely eaten anything, meaning there was a dramatic change in her blood sugar, and she was under physical and emotional stress. Her brain had handled all of these challenges just fine until now, and now the sparkling aura in her vision was warning her to sit down and hold on before she hurt herself.
“Master control room,” she said aloud. “Master control room.”
She pictured the bank of buttons. Big and bright and perfectly fitted to her fingers. Imagined punching them. That satisfying click. The way each button lit up as she locked a series of doors behind her, locked herself away—
Behind her, the shotgun sounded. She turned. The shooter was running at her. Her icy fingers fumbled on the nail gun. She lifted it. It shook in her grasp. She pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Oh, Christ, the safety, shit—
“Hwa, get down!”
Síofra. In her bones. Finally. She fell to the floor. So did the shooter. The sprinklers stopped. The siren died. Her ears rang. Her hands kept shaking. Something peeled away from the shooter’s scalp. A skein of skin, with hair attached. Beneath it was a skullcap. Light danced across the shooter’s skin. It slowed down, ceased, and he went limp.
“He’s inoperative, now, Hwa. He can’t hurt you. I’m coming. Stay there.”
She tried to say something. But then there were people in Lynch uniforms, and they had bright yellow towels of absorbent foam, and they were picking her up under her arms and dragging her to the nearest wall and taking her backpack off and unbuckling the tool belt. They were saying how sorry they were. How glad they were that she was okay.
“You passed with flying colors,” they kept saying.
Síofra skidded out into the hall. He nearly wiped out on the wet surface. But he just kept running until he got to her end of the hall. The others scattered and lined up against the opposite wall, chins up, shoulders back. Waiting for orders.
“Hwa?” He snapped his fingers. “Are you in shock?”
“Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.”
He laughed. He started dabbling her face with a towel. “Look at you. You’re all wet. We didn’t know the sprinklers would go off. We’ll change the crash protocol before the next drill.”
Hwa tried hard to make her lips shape the word. “Drill?”
“Yes.”
She had lost so much blood. She realized that now, distantly, and without anxiety. She wasn’t even angry. That was how she knew. “For . . . the school?”
“No. For you. To see how you would protect Joel.” His lips thinned. He looked away. “I asked Mr. Lynch not to go through with it. But he wanted to test you, and I . . . I knew you would pass.” He smiled like his mouth hurt. “That’s why we didn’t use real rounds.”
She really was pretty far gone, now. She couldn’t even come up with something clever to say. Why was she so hot? Why was she sweating so hard? She’d barely run at all. “Can blanks do this?”
Daniel peeled back the tie, and the pad, and looked down. Blood covered his fingers instantly. Hwa felt sticky all down her right side. She’d thought it was the sprinklers. But it was hot. It was blood. The hallway tipped over on its side.
Her boss was screaming.
“I NEED A MEDIC!”
“Hwa!”
Suddenly Joel was there. He was saying something to her. She didn’t know what it was. Her ears were still ringing. Go away, she wanted to say. Go. Go now. There’s someone here who’s trying to kill you. A ghost. The invisible man. And he’s been following us this whole time.
Then they were lifting her on something. A stretcher. And Hwa saw where Síofra had gone. He was shaking the skullcap by the collar of his long black coat. Shaking him and slamming him against the lockers and yelling in his face about how you fucking idiot you had one job one fucking job and she’s bleeding out just look just look JUST FUCKING LOOK WHAT YOU DID TO HER—
“H . . . Hey.” Hwa held out her hand. It fell. She had to concentrate to bring it back up. Imagined all her muscles working like the girders on a causeway. Imagined all the tendons in her hand working her fingers into a fist. Close. Open. Close. Open. Síofra dropped the skullcap and reached out.
He held her hand in both of his. It felt almost obscenely warm. And strangely damp. Sweaty. The sprinklers. The towel. Had to be.
“What is it?”
“You can . . . ”
“Yes?” He bent down closer. Like before, she directed her voice at the little purple dot below his ear.
“You can take this job and shove it.”
Negative Space
Amanda Forrest
With light-speed flickering of self, Lan forgot the color blue. She stared at the sidewalk between her feet and couldn’t remember the hues of the sky. A breath, and she looked heavenward to learn them again—azure, cyan, indigo.
She played these sorts of games while she walked. Lan knew how to forget. Next, she changed blue to red, and remembered a sky full of blood. She knew how to remember, too.
She stepped onto the remnants of the Strip. Vegas, undone. A shatter-glass pyramid clawed the sky, jagged edges in a rusting skeleton. Rows of dead palms lined the main avenue—from a block away, she’d heard their fronds rattling in the wind. In front of a dry fountain, a sign had been hammered into the earth: This water is property of the MGM Grand. Thieves are subject to fines and incarceration. The letters had faded, their color sapped by years under the desert sun. A handful of bicycle taxis ferried diehard gamblers with private water supplies between hole-in-the-wall slot parlors.
She swiped the sweat from her forehead and checked the time. Noon. Just two hours until Alexis would return to their squat, an abandoned condo in the north-side ghost ‘burb. When she found Lan missing—captured, she’d assume—she’d move on, head back east where the rain still fell and companies still hired.
At least, that’s what Lan hoped. It’s what she was counting on.
She just needed the guy to show up with the assembler cartridges. Her mind-melded nanocore was nearly complete. Just a few more assemblers to finish the storage for the really heavy-duty apps.
Soon Lan would erase her beginnings, scrub them. Rebuild herself with memories that didn’t leave her feeling like half a person. She was a lacework being, full of holes, negative space where her Vietnamese self should have been. It hurt, a bone-deep ache, to remember her homeland. And her memories made her a target. Her and Alexis both. She was tired of running. Tired of hearing Alexis cry behind a closed door. Alexis didn’t deserve this. She wasn’t even Lan’s real mother.