“Come on, hurry it up. Hurry it up.”
Walkie-talkies explode with static. Urgent voices shout in a coded language I don’t understand. I try to turn around to look for my mother and am nearly carried off my feet by the pressure of the guards moving me forward. I catch a glimpse of Fred surrounded by his security team. He’s white-faced, yelling into a cell phone. I will him to look at me—in that moment I forget about Cassie, I forget about everything. I need him to tell me we’re okay; I need him to explain what’s happening.
But he doesn’t even glance in my direction.
Outside, the glare is blinding. I squeeze my eyes shut. Journalists jostle close to the doors, blocking the way to the car. The long metal barrels of their camera lenses look for a second like guns, all directed straight at me.
They’re going to kill us all.
The bodyguards fight to clear space for me, shouldering apart the rushing stream of people. At last we reach the car. Once again, I look for Fred. Our eyes meet briefly across the crowd. He’s heading for a squad car.
“Take her to my house.” He yells this to Tony, then turns around and ducks into the back of a police car. That’s it. No words at all for me.
Tony puts a hand on top of my head and directs me roughly into the backseat. Two of Fred’s bodyguards slide in next to me, guns out. I want to ask them to put their weapons away, but my brain doesn’t seem to be working correctly. I can’t remember either of their names.
Tony jerks the car into gear, but the knots of people gathered in the parking lot mean that we’re trapped. Tony leans on the horn. I cover my ears and remind myself to breathe; we’re safe, we’re in the car, it will be okay. The police will take care of everything.
Finally, we begin to move forward, plowing steadily through the dispersing crowd. It takes us nearly twenty minutes to make it out of the long drive leading down to the labs. We turn right onto Commercial Street, which us clotted with more foot traffic. then zip against traffic into a narrow one-way street. In the car, everyone is silent, watching the blur of people in the streets—people running, panicked, undirected. Even though I can see people openmouthed, shouting, only the sound of the alarms penetrates the thick windows. Strangely, this is more frightening than anything—all these people voiceless, screaming silently.
We barrel down an alley so narrow, I’m positive we’ll get stuck between the brick walls on either side of us. Then we turn down another one-way street, this one relatively free of people. We blow straight past the stop signs, and jerk left into another alley. Finally, we’re really moving.
It occurs to me to try and reach my mother on her cell phone, but when I dial her number, the phone system keeps returning an error. The systems must be overloaded. I suddenly feel very small. The system is security; it is everything. In Portland, there is always someone watching.
But now it seems the system has been blinded.
“Turn on the radio,” I tell Tony. He does. The National News Service patches in. The announcer’s voice is reassuring, almost lazy—speaking terrifying words in a tone of total calm.
“ . . . breach at the wall . . . everyone urged not to panic . . . until the police can restore control . . . lock doors and windows, stay inside . . . regulators and every government official working hard in tandem—”
The announcer’s voice cuts off abruptly. For a moment there is nothing but static. Tony spins the dial, but the speakers continue buzzing and popping, letting out nothing but white noise. Then, suddenly, an unfamiliar voice comes in, overloud and urgent:
“We are taking back the city. We are taking back our rights and our freedom. Join us. Take down the walls. Take down the—”
Tony punches the radio off. The silence in the car rings out, deafening. I flash back to the morning of the first terrorist attacks, when at ten a.m., in the middle of a peaceful, everyday Tuesday, three blasts went off simultaneously in Portland. I was in a car then, I remember; when my mother and I heard the announcement on the radio, we didn’t believe it at first. We didn’t believe it until we saw the smoke clotting the sky, and saw the people begin to stream past us, running, pale, and the ash began to drift like snow.
Cassandra said that Fred let those attacks happen, to prove that the Invalids were out there, to show that they were monstrous. But now the monsters are here, inside the walls, in our streets again. I can’t believe that he would let this happen.