“Kemp wants to buy time to finish the evacuation,” Jesse said. “The Mirror is a bottleneck. It’s hard to say how long this will last. You can record moving pictures with this phone?”
“For the last time, yes! But I don’t mean to stand close enough to the window to do so. I’ll go back down, if you don’t mind. I feel like a flea on a flagpole.”
“All right, but will you show me how to do it?”
She spent a few grudging minutes adjusting Talbot’s device until it needed only the touch of a finger to begin capturing images. Jesse thanked her. She said, “You’re bleeding again.”
He was, but it wasn’t a problem he could address just now.
“And you’re pale as a ghost.”
“I can take care of myself from here on out. Thank you for your help. You’re a good girl at heart, Doris.”
He thought the words would please her, but she frowned. “Do you mean that?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then say it like I was one of them.”
“What?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Woman,” he corrected himself. “You’re a good woman.”
She smiled. “And you’re a gentleman.”
“I left you something,” he said, “back in your cubicle.”
He used Dekker’s pass card to open the elevator for her. She stepped inside and gave him a longing look. Those big eyes of hers were what had drawn him to her in the first place, against his own better judgment. She said, “We were a good pair, weren’t we? While we lasted?”
No, not especially. “Sure, we were.”
She smiled and kissed his cheek. “Keep safe.”
Keeping safe was not an option. But he nodded as the doors closed.
* * *
In truth, he would have liked to get off his feet. There was something lulling about this bright, vacant aerie. It provoked an urge to sleep, despite the thunder of guns. The tiled floor began to look like a bed to him. But he dared not give in to that temptation. It was the siren song of his faltering body. He pictured Phoebe in his mind’s eye. Phoebe and Elizabeth. He would sleep when they were safe.
Now the federal cannons began to fire en masse, a concentrated volley that probably represented some frustrated commander’s failing patience, all focused on the main gate. Swaying at the edge of the observation deck, Jesse took off the Oakleys Doris had given him and dropped them at his feet. He raised the iPhone to eye level, peered at its screen and at the diminishing row of bars that predicted its useful life, touched the icon that caused it to record moving pictures. The device captured images of rising smoke and City soldiers firing fierce volleys, the steel gate trembling under the artillery barrage. At least two shells arced over the wall and struck Tower Two as the battle went on, impacts that shook the floor under Jesse’s feet.
He was still recording all this when a vast shape hove up at the periphery of his vision, close enough to rattle the window. It was the City helicopter—the one that used to give rides to tourists—but there were no tourists in it now. As it canted toward the besieging army Jesse saw an open door and figures with rifles at the ready.
It was as if a monstrous but formerly pacific creature had been provoked to deadly violence. The airship crossed the City’s boundary and bore down directly on the federal lines. What happened next seemed dreamlike, framed in the luminous display of the iPhone: federal marksmen firing futile volleys at the airship—the airship tilting to give its own gunners a field of fire—then rounds pouring down from above in a sudden, furious rain. Here was Thermopylae, Jesse thought madly. Here was Bull Run.
Blue uniforms blossomed with blood.
He went on recording until the phone’s screen dimmed to darkness. In a matter of minutes the besieging army was reduced from ordered ranks to terrified chaos, its flags trampled in a panicked retreat. And now the victorious City men began to abandon their positions atop the wall, hurrying down interior stairways and across the open courtyard toward Tower Two as the attacking airship circled back to its landing pad.
Which could only mean that the evacuation was nearly complete.
Which meant Jesse had to hurry.
He used Dekker’s card to call an elevator, hoping the artillery impacts hadn’t damaged the machinery. Hours seemed to pass before the door slid open. He stumbled inside, leaving boot prints in the blood that had puddled at his feet.
* * *
Down in the sublevels, in the tunnel that connected the towers, he joined the crowd of men who had just left the wall. He recognized none of them, and none of them recognized him. They were all from the future, new arrivals recruited to act as a rear guard for the evacuation. A few of them saw the blood he was trying to conceal and urged him to hurry to the Mirror or to go to the clinic in Tower One while there were still medics available. It was this last advice he chose to accept. His body had grown mysteriously heavy, but he refused all offers of help. Better not to involve strangers. He found the designated elevator and used Dekker’s card to summon it.
The door opened on a hectic crowd of men and women in white gowns, uniformed security men, distressed civilians. Jesse stepped out of the elevator and tried to orient himself. The Tower One medical clinic had originally been a small part of this arcade floor, but the broad central corridor was lined with cots and gurney beds now; shop stalls had been curtained off to create makeshift surgical rooms where physicians patched up security men who had been injured in skirmishes and civilians who had been hurt by stray artillery rounds. No sooner had Jesse stumbled out of the elevator than a medic pushed a loaded gurney past him: It looked as if casualties were being hurried to the Mirror as soon as they were stabilized.
He caught the attention of a woman in a green surgical gown. “I need to find Dr. Talbot.”
“Are you in from the wall?” She looked him over, and her eyes widened. “You need to be triaged.”
“Talbot,” Jesse insisted.
“I’m sorry, but you need attention right now.”
“Not as much as I need to find Talbot.”
“I don’t have time to argue. Triage is by the fountain. I think Dr. Talbot is working over there,”—she waved vaguely—“in what used to be the spa. Take your pick.”
It was only a scant few yards to the sign that said MASSAGE/HYDROTHERAPY/FACIAL AND BODY SCRUBS, but the journey seemed immensely long. Jesse kept his eye out for Talbot, but in the end it was Elizabeth he found. She came barreling out of the crowd so eagerly that he had to turn away to protect his damaged arm. “Jesse!”
He hugged her, or leaned on her, a little of both.
“I wanted to kick Kemp’s ass when I realized he shut you out, but by then we were deep into Tower One and I figured I ought to stick with Phoebe. They handcuffed Theo and Mercy and took them to the Mirror, but—are you all right?”
Not entirely. He ignored the question and asked where Phoebe was.
“Talbot’s with her” was all Elizabeth would say.
His thoughts had grown unreliable, but he remembered the iPhone. He took it from his pocket and presented it to her. “It’s the one Kemp’s people confiscated,” he said. “I took some extra pictures with it. The kind August Kemp doesn’t want anyone to see.”
* * *
Phoebe lay on a table in a back room of the former spa with bags of fluid attached to her body. Her face was alabaster-white, her eyes were closed. Dr. Talbot took Jesse by his good arm and steered him to a chair. “You need attention,” he said.
I need to stay awake a little longer, Jesse thought. That’s what I need. “How is she?”
Talbot took a vial of liquid from the heap of medical supplies on an adjacent table and drew some of the fluid into a syringe. “Under the circumstances,” he said, “I can’t help her.”
Jesse focused on the words until they made sense. Even then, he refused to believe it. He had come too far to be dismissed so cavalierly. “With all your futuristic medicine—”