It is then his smile fails and his body shudders as if run through by a current. A wheezing sound comes from his mouth, where a moment later a bubble of blood swells and pops. When he falls to his knees, she sees the reason. Behind him stands the small man with the old face. His clothes are singed and the skin along his right side chewed up like hamburger. In his hand he grips the ceremonial knife used during the bomb-blasted Sabbath.
By now she should be attuned to danger. She remembers what Juniper told her—“Paranoia is a requirement”—and knows she should have expected this. Something will always go wrong. A threat will always be lying in wait. With that kind of defensive mindset, you’re always ready to slam on the brakes, strap on a Kevlar vest. She thinks of herself as vigilant, but she has been pushed too far. To an emotional brink. Death is starting to feel less like something to fight than accept. Because then all the pain and anxiety would simply vanish.
A very real part of her wants to push back her hair, reveal her neck to his blade. But then Hemingway gets in between them and bunches his shoulders and growls so deeply, she can feel it in her teeth. By putting himself in danger, he forces her to care. She still has someone to look after.
Hemingway hunches low to the ground, his whole body coiled, when he tests his way forward. The small man slashes the blade as a warning. Lela remembers her pistol then, and pulls it from her holster and empties every last bullet into the small man. He jumps and spins and tremors, and when he collapses, there is less of his body than when he was standing a few moments before. Her finger keeps snapping the trigger after the magazine empties.
It takes a while for her hearing to come back, and when it does, a voice burbles out of the tinny whine, and she realizes she is talking to herself. “What do I do?” That’s what she keeps saying. “What am I supposed to do now?” To stand alone in a room such as this. Surrounded by equipment whose function eludes her. She turns in a slow circle, taking in the many cabinets. The vault reaches no more than a thousand square feet, but she couldn’t feel more lost if dropped blindfolded in the Mount Hood wilderness.
Derek lies in the open doorway, and Hemingway stands over his body. The dog whines. She calls for him, but he ignores her, dipping his head to nuzzle Derek, lick his cheek. She assumed him dead, but he stirs in response. Lifting a hand and dropping it as if in protest. “Derek,” she says, repeating his name as she rushes to him. His skin is ghost-white. Offset by his blood-painted lips. His eyes flutter open and closed, and she slaps him across the cheek. “You need to stay here. Stay with me. Tell me what to do.”
His eyes focus and slide from her to a nearby cabinet. “That’s the one. That’s it.”
“The master cabinet?”
“Just like we talked about. Insert the thumb drive.” He swallows. “And pray for a miracle.”
She shoves a hand into her pocket and closes it around the thumb drive, around Hannah. We’re going to take care of each other, she thinks. The master cabinet is a metal tower stacked with black metal boxes, some of them knobbed and slotted, and others crazed with yellow wire. Red lights flash their warning. It makes a chittering noise as if geared by a thousand insect mandibles. She points at various USB ports until Derek nods his head weakly, Yes, that one.
If they unleashed Hannah into this system, then supposedly she could stream into every home, every phone, every tablet and television and device connected to it, as human software, the anti-virus, a digital rite of exorcism. It seems the stuff of miracles, impossible.
Pray? That’s what Derek wants her to do? She pauses her hand as all the nerves in her flare at once. “It’s not going to work,” she says. How can it? She wasn’t even a teenager when people started referring to her as cynical, biting, sarcastic. She has always seen the world through a darker veil. There must have been a time when she looked at an ornamented Christmas tree with wonder, when she heard a concert and felt overwhelmed by the sound. But she has since lost her ability to hope and her capacity for awe. The death of her parents secured this, and every year since has whittled away whatever faith and reverence she retained until she feels there is nothing left but her black, rotten, pessimistic core. Nature is the closest she gets to astonishment anymore. When she wanders the tide pools beneath Haystack Rock or splashes through the headwaters of the Metolius River or takes in the banded color of the Painted Hills. But every day on the job, she creeps further away from that feeling as she visits the morgue, a crime scene, the site of a seven-car pileup on the freeway. She knows too well the awfulness of the world. Indifference or outright hostility feels like the safest response. Why would she bother voting? Or use less water or recycle or eat organic, humanely raised livestock? People like her sister and Juniper always strike her as blindly hopeful, unable to recognize that people are hell-bent on killing themselves and ruining the planet. So this is hard for Lela. Making a leap. Extending her whole body in a kind of prayer. Even on a good day, it would be hard. But now, surrounded by so much despair, how can she believe she might make a difference? How can this thumb drive in her hand hold any promise?
“It’s not going to work,” she says again.
From where he lies on the floor, Derek says, “It’s going to work. Take a leap of faith.”
The thumb drive is hot in her hand. Hemingway licks her knuckles as if encouraging her.
“Believe,” Derek says, choking on his own blood. “Just believe.”
She guides the thumb drive toward the USB port and closes her eyes and takes a steadying breath and clicks it into place.
?
Juniper has fifty pounds on Cloven, but he shrinks before him like a child who fears his father’s fist. He isn’t sure how many rounds remain in his pistols, and he never gets the chance to find out. When he raises his arms, Cloven strikes them down with enough force to send the guns clattering away. A fist bruises Juniper’s stomach. An elbow jars his throat. A knee batters his face. Fingers twist his hair. Teeth gnash his ear. He is too big to be thrown, but his body is somehow soaring through the air, striking the pavement, rolling several yards until he comes to a stop.
He keeps trying to fight back, and Cloven keeps striking him down. He has to hope Lela and Derek stand some chance inside the data center, but right now they feel far away. Portland feels far away. The life he has built there feels far away. The only thing that feels near is water. It puddles around his feet, splashes past his knees, his waist, his chest, siphoning into his open mouth and gurgling his screams. He tries to kick his way up, but two bony hands hold him down. Above the rippling surface of the water, a face stares down at him. Grinning. Red-eyed. Bubbles escape Juniper’s mouth until there is no air left in him. And the water comes flooding in to fill every chamber of him with thick green algae-stinking water. A fish pecks at his eye and a water beetle claws its way into his nose and a frog slides down his throat. He was supposed to die. He is going to die. He is dying.