Alpha

by Greg Rucka

  Nuri is back, opening the binder and setting it on the console in front of him. Bell can read the heading on the open page: PROCEDURE IN EVENT OF EVACUATION. She looks at him, and he nods, and she moves away, toward the line of radios locked down and sitting in their chargers.

  “I’m going to give you your posts,” Bell says. “Take a radio, take a light, take your posts, clear the park. That’s all you have to do, just that. Just that, and one thing more.

  “You cannot lose your nerve. Not a single one of you, not now. We have to get this right. The wrong word will start a panic. The wrong word will get people killed. You know that word, you’ve heard that word, but that’s all it is right now. That’s all it is, just a word. It’s just a word.”

  He stops, feels that he’s spoken too much, that his own words—just words—are inadequate. But people are watching him, and he sees the resolve, a few of them nodding. They’re getting to their feet, and Nuri has the radios out, ready to distribute them, and so Bell takes the binder, and starts calling people by name.

  One by one, he sends them out into the park with nothing but a flashlight, a radio, and their courage.

  The room clears, is all but empty, when Nuri moves to Bell’s side, opening her mouth to speak. He holds up a hand, indicates Norman Struss, still manning the Spartan II, still trying to gauge the machine’s potential duplicity; Heather Heoi at the network station, on the coms; and finally Neal Bailey, watching the surveillance monitors. All of them are grim, all of them focused on their work, but Bell can see the beads of sweat shining on Struss’s balding head, and he knows how frightened all of them must be. He cannot fault them for that.

  “Right, get outside, help with the evac,” Bell tells them.

  The Spartan begins bleating once more, and Struss quickly silences it with two keystrokes. The man’s shoulders slump, then rise once more, and when he turns in his seat, the expression he’s wearing is both apologetic and somehow resolved. Bailey refuses to glance away from the monitors, and Heoi is looking at him almost sadly.

  “Someone’s got to babysit this thing,” Norman Struss says. “Someone has to wait for the diagnostic to come back.”

  “I’ve got a job to do,” Bailey says simply.

  Heoi nods slightly.

  “Doesn’t have to be you guys. Grab a radio and get outside, help with the front gate.”

  “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, Mr. Bell,” Bailey says. “But this was my job today. Wouldn’t be right for me to leave another to do it. You need eyes here, anyway, someone to check and make sure everything gets cleared out.”

  “I’ll take it,” Nuri says.

  “Not your job, either, Miss Nuri.”

  Bell is scanning the monitor banks, the surveillance video. A time stamp in the upper corner of one of the screens tells him it’s been all of five and a half minutes since Nuri fetched him from his office. The evacuation is already in progress, people moving en masse, and he can see it on the screens. There’s a Hendar leading a young man by the hand, one of the concession Friends waving the glow sticks he sells above his head as he leads a cluster of confused and anxious parents with their children. He’s seeing all this, but Bell is not seeing panic, and that’s maybe the best he can hope for.

  He is also not seeing any sign of the group from Hollyoakes school. If they’d done as suggested, they should be on the north side of the park, guided to either the northwest or northeast service exits, and out into the employee lots. Further along the bank of screens, he can see a view of the gates in question, visitors flooding through them. In the northeast lot, one of the first responder teams has already arrived, a fire engine and a group of what looks to be six men suiting up for hazmat work, white jumpsuits and gas masks.

  He still doesn’t see Athena, still doesn’t see Amy.

  And he still can’t shake the feeling that something about this isn’t right, isn’t what it seems at all.

  Norman Struss, Heather Heoi, and Neal Bailey are all looking at him.

  “Second it comes back, you contact me,” Bell says to Struss.

  “Second it comes back, you’ll know,” Struss says.

  They’re coming off the stairs and into the fake police station, finding it deserted, hearing the muffled noise from the foot traffic outside, when Nuri says, “What’re we doing?”

  Bell has his cell phone out, the real one, the secured one, not the office one. Presses it to his ear, ignoring Nuri, listening as it rings once, twice, is halfway through its third, when Amy picks up. There’s ambient noise over the line immediately, and he can hear someone shouting for people to stay calm, to follow him.

  “Jad?” Amy sounds calm, if a little breathless. “Jad, what the hell is going on?”

  “The park is being evacuated. Do you have Athena with you?”

  “What?” The noise over the line swells, a background of multiple voices, the reverb of Porter on the PA. “We’re—hold on—we’re being evacuated.”

  “Is everyone with you? You have everyone with you?”

  “Yes. We’re with that girl, the one you got for us. She’s leading us out. There are park people everywhere.”

  “She’ll get you out, just follow her directions. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Jad? What’s going on?”

  “I’ll call you later.”

  “This is why you didn’t want us coming, isn’t it? This is—”

  Bell hangs up, hits another button, raises the phone again. Nuri has moved away, she’s now standing by the double doors, looking out as she speaks on her own phone. She glances his way, and from her look Bell has a good idea just who it is she’s talking to, and maybe even what he’s telling her.

  “Chain, Warlock. Sitrep.”

  “Assisting southwest evac. You inviting me to this dance or am I going stag?”

  “It’s not that you don’t look pretty in a dress,” Bell says. He’s moved closer to Nuri, now lowering her phone. Bell looks out the windows of the double doors, and the mass of people beyond is like a moving wall of flesh and anxiety. A man passes, pushing a stroller, wife with diaper bag right behind, pulling a little boy along by his hand. The boy is in tears, dragging a stuffed Rascal doll by its tail. As he watches, someone steps on the monkey, the boy losing his grip. He wails in protest, but his parents don’t stop.

  “What we got?”

  “Something in the air.”

  “I need to hold my breath?”

  “Too late for that.”

  Nuri makes a noise, shakes her head. Bell ignores her.

  “Am I coming to you or you coming to me?”

  “Neither,” Bell says. “Heading for the Keep.”

  “You’re bringing the Angel?”

  “Negative.”

  “Roger that,” says Chain, and the line goes dead.

  “That was some mighty macho bullshit,” Nuri says. “You want to tell me what you’re thinking?”

  Bell tucks his phone away. “I’m thinking that if someone had aerosolized botulinum you or I or someone we know would’ve heard about it. I’m thinking if someone has done it, we’re all dead anyway. I’m thinking it’s a hell of a good way to get a park all to yourself, and I’m thinking that I’ve never seen a dispersal pattern that uniform in twenty years of looking at worst-case scenarios.”

  “Funny.”

  “Funny?”

  “I was thinking the same thing. Minus the twenty years part.”

  “Good, then you’ll love the next bit. Get back into the command post and keep an eye on things.”

  Her jaw tightens. “I’m coming with you.”

  “That’s a negative. Real or not, there’s someone on the inside, someone who planted the botulinum or mind-fucked the Spartan. If that someone is upstairs right now, they have access to all our intel, our coms, our eyes, and all of it is compromised. I need someone I trust upstairs, and Chain’s not here, so I’m stuck with you.”

  “Those aren’t my orders.”

  “They are now, Ang
el. What’s the word of the day?”

  Her eyes are more brown than hazel in this light, and anger flashes in them. “The word of the day is ‘buzzsaw.’ You don’t trust me?”

  “The word of the day is ‘buzzsaw,’” Bell agrees. “I’ve got mission coms in my office, in the desk, middle left, back. You get a chance, plug in. Chain or I will contact as soon as we’re on the net.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  Bell pushes on the doors, feels the wash of heat, the sunlight, the noise of the evacuating park.

  “Of course I don’t trust you,” Bell says. “You’re CIA.”

  Then he wades into madness.

  Chapter Eleven

  ATHENA DOESN’T like most hearing people.

  They’re too much trouble, and they don’t get it, and pretty much all of them have no idea how to treat the deaf, anyway. Some of them freeze up and some of them just pretend there’s nothing different and sometimes, some of them, they act like it’s contagious or something. Like they can somehow catch deaf, like Athena can pass it on, which would be a trick and a half, especially because she doesn’t know how or why she lost her hearing, can’t remember if she really ever had it, and nobody else does, either. That’s not uncommon, Mom told her, the same time she told her that something like 90 percent of all deaf kids are born to hearing parents.

  It just happens, Mom said.

  So she doesn’t like hearing people that much, most of them, and the jury is still out with this woman Dana, but it’s looking pretty good for her. Dana signs a little slow, and it’s hard not to get impatient talking to her, but she’s been nice and she’s funny, and she doesn’t break eye contact the way most hearing people do when you try to talk to them. People who can hear, Athena has learned, don’t like it when you keep looking them in the eye. They get uncomfortable the longer you do it. People who can hear don’t understand that it’s the eyes and the face and the thousand microgestures and movements coming from each that make up communication.

  Best of all, Dana doesn’t do any of that bullshit silly embarrassed awkward stuff that people do when they’re uncomfortable around Athena and her friends. Dana’s going to be a senior at UCLA and she wants to be a teacher of the deaf, and when they were talking after the Timeless River Cruise, she told Athena she has a boyfriend who works here in WilsonVille, too. When Dana told her that, she kind of blushed, and it made Athena laugh. Dana laughed, too, and that scored her major points, because sometimes when Athena laughs, people stare, and she understands why; her mother explained that to her once, too.

  Because of how you sound, Mom said. A surprising sound to them.

  Bad?

  No! Not a bad sound, Mom said, and she spelled out “no” instead of just shaking her head, totally meant it. Never! Beautiful sound your voice even if you cannot hear it you laugh when you like all you like. Anybody has a problem with that they can take it up with your father and me.

  Athena had smiled when she said that, and not just because Mom is fierce, but because Dad wasn’t at home; he was someplace he wouldn’t ever tell them, fighting Bad Guys. There was a lot about her dad that Athena didn’t understand, not even now, but she understood one thing, and she understood it without ever having to be told. Her dad was a soldier, he was a warrior, and he went to fight a lot of Bad Guys, and he always came back.

  Bad Guys did not want to mess with her dad.

  Dana didn’t even make a face or anything when Athena laughed, didn’t even try to tell her or any of them to quiet down. Dana grinned at her and winked when she saw Joel holding her hand on the Timeless River, as Mr. Howe and Mom had their backs to them. After, when they were getting smoothies at Thyme’s Fruit Stand, Dana caught her eye and signed to her, keeping it close, whispering through gesture.

  Joel’s cute.

  Athena nodded, sneaking a look at Joel, who was joking with Leon and Miguel. Signed back to Dana, Yours cute?

  To me!

  They couldn’t decide where to go next, because the boys all wanted to go to the Pyramids of Ke-Sa, but Athena and Lynne and Gail all wanted to visit the Euro Strasse and maybe buy some stuff, and then go on Lion’s Safari. So the boys said they should vote and the girls said there wasn’t a point, because it’d still be a tie. Mr. Howe suggested they split up, that he could take the boys to the Pyramids and Mom could take the girls to the Euro Strasse, but Mom vetoed that right away. Then Dana said she’d be glad to take one of the groups, and that seemed to Athena to make fine sense, but Mom shot that down, too. So then Mr. Howe asked to talk to Mom, and the two of them stepped off by the side of the Forest Friends Feed Shack to have “a conversation.”

  Athena didn’t catch all of it, partially because they were far enough away to make it hard to see their mouths, and also because she didn’t want to be obvious about trying to read them. Mom knows how well she can read lips, too, and so when she’s saying something she doesn’t want Athena reading, she turns away. But Mr. Howe doesn’t know or maybe he forgets, and Athena caught enough, guessed enough, to make her uncomfortable.

  Because she’s pretty certain that Mr. Howe and Mom were talking about Dad.

  She didn’t know what to think of that. It made her tense, made her angry, and she wasn’t sure whom she should be angry at. Then they came back, and Mom had the fake smile, the one that’s too bright, and she told them that they’d all go to the Pyramids first, because the girls had gotten to choose already. This was true enough. They’d gone into Wild World when they arrived, and that’s about when Dana had joined them. She had said that if they wanted to see the Flower Sisters Mystical Show, going early was best, because the animals got tired later in the day. The boys had objected, but they’d been overruled. Dana had been right about the show; it had been awesome. There was a jaguar, and a lion cub, and Athena had fed a real meerkat with Lilac’s help. Joel held a python—he wanted to hold the cobra but nobody thought that was a good idea except Joel—and they’d all gotten to meet Lilac and Lily and Lavender and have their pictures taken with them. When the show was finished, and since they were already in Wild World, they went to Lilac’s Secret Garden, and then, after that, on the Timeless River Cruise.

  So it wasn’t that Mom was wrong about it being the boys’ turn, and Athena knew that. But she was angry anyway, even if she couldn’t exactly say why, and when Mom tries walking with her, Athena ignores her and then takes three quick steps to catch up with where Dana is walking with Gail and Leon, leading the way across the bridge into Desert Oasis. Leon is really trying to impress Dana, and Athena can tell he’s already got a crush on her.

  Dana looks at her, then cants her head, showing the question. Something wrong?

  No.

  Angry?

  No.

  No? In WilsonVille I know when someone is angry or sad. My job to know. I can lose my job if you do not tell me why you are not happy.

  Athena gives her a look, or tries to, but there’s the hint of a smile in it. She can tell Dana’s lying, too, that she won’t lose her job if they’re not all having a good time.

  I see you smiling. Tell me.

  Athena sighs, throws up her hands. Because my mom and my dad are stupid divorced and I think and she stops here, throws a glance over her shoulder. Mom is walking beside Mr. Howe, at the back of the group, and they’re talking to each other. Mr. Howe has that same expression he uses on the class when he’s telling them to be reasonable. The look on Mom is the same one she wears when she argues with Athena about what she’s wearing to school because she thinks it’s “inappropriate.”

  Athena turns back to Dana, continues, I think Mr. Howe likes my mom and she spells the word, because she wants this absolutely and unequivocally clear. G-R-O-S-S.

  Dana puts a hand to her mouth, trying to hide her laugh. Lowers her hands, asking, Your dad?

  What about Dad?

  Dad where?

  Here.

  Dana looks at her curiously. They’ve come off the bridge, and there are palm trees a
nd fake ruins here, and rising behind them are the tips of three pyramids in a line, the center one the tallest. There are plenty of people about, but it’s not so crowded that they’re interrupted every time they talk. Sometimes that happens, when Athena’s somewhere and it gets really busy, people will cut in between her and Mom or her and Joel or her and whoever she’s trying to converse with, not realizing that it’s the exact same thing as if Athena had just decided to interrupt their own conversation by putting her hands over their mouths.

  Here what do you mean “here”?

  Here he works.

  Dana shows surprise. His name?

  J-A-D B-E-L-L but J-O-N-A-T-H-A-N real name.

  Him I know! Dana nods quickly, smiles. Very important man! Here in the park very important!

  Athena looks aside, feeling herself blushing, not sure why she’s doing that. The anger is abating, still nameless and insubstantial. She shakes her head, then has a horrible thought and glares at Dana suspiciously.

  Not your boyfriend!

  Dana jerks her head back. American Sign Language is conveyed as much through expression as through gesture, and Dana’s expression is perfectly eloquent. Surprise and amusement and just a touch of disgust at the suggestion, so that when she’s shaking her head, Athena already knows what she is saying, what she is going to say. Too old!

  Athena laughs, relieved, amused, and she thinks Dana is, too, from the look of her. Someone nearby looks their way sharply, surprised, but Dana ignores it and Athena doesn’t care. It’s her hearing that’s gone, not her voice. Now Joel is tapping her arm lightly, and Athena turns to face him. He had cochlear implant surgery a couple years ago, when they were all in ninth grade, and he’s supposed to talk aloud when he signs now, but sometimes he forgets. Not this time, and Athena can see his lips moving as he points.

  “Come on come on come on!”

  He holds out his right hand for her, and Athena smiles, takes it, and they’re running together toward the pyramids. Because Dana’s with them, they get to avoid almost every line, led instead along private paths that parallel the regular queues. Dana makes them wait for Mom and Mr. Howe, and then they’re plunging into the shade.