The skyscraper slabbed vertically out of a wider base. Clair and her entourage circled the base once, counterclockwise, passing Madison Square Garden, its southwestern edge literally hanging over the water, in order to approach the crowd from the other side. A cheer rose up. Placards waved. Some people booed. A surge of information rolled through the Air, spiking Clair’s popularity levels to new heights.
As they wheeled past the plaza’s stand of d-mat booths to approach the main lobby entrance, gunshots cracked over the crowd
“Traitors!” a voice shouted. “Terrorists!”
People went in all directions. More gunshots, and Clair found herself on the ground with Jesse, not entirely sure how she had gotten there, her pistol in her hand but no one to point it at.
Over the shouts and screams came the sounds of barked commands. Peacekeepers, Clair hoped. She didn’t want fighting to break out in the crowd. A man cried in protest as barking voices ordered him to the ground.
Clair raised her head. Three PKs were standing over a spread-eagled man dressed in combat gear and flak helmet. He had been liberally sprayed with thick white confinement foam that held him immobile on the ground. There was a rifle trapped safely beneath one of the PKs’ boots. The crowd had scattered to points of cover, from where they watched the scene unfold. There was no cheering now, just weeping and exclamations of shock. Two people were injured. There was blood on the ground.
In a panic, remembering Zep, Clair turned to check on Jesse. He was fine.
“Thanks, Clair,” he said, sitting up and brushing himself off. “That was close.”
She just nodded, although she still had no memory of what had happened immediately after the first shot. Her pulse was still racing, and it was hard to think. The Air was full of clamoring voices. Footage was already streaming in, including a perfect shot of her throwing herself at Jesse and tackling him to the ground.
“I’m sorry, Clair!” Q’s voice was frantic. “I should have seen him. I should’ve done something—”
“It’s not your fault,” she said. “Do you know who he is?”
Data poured into her infield. The shooter looked like an ordinary guy, if a little extreme in his anti-Abstainer outbursts. He had a feed not so different from hers, except with a much longer history, detailing deaths by terrorist attacks all around the world. He had lost his mother in a shutdown in Cairo, which WHOLE said was a power failure, VIA sabotage.
Clair hadn’t known that such arguments existed. It hadn’t been part of her world until now.
A peacekeeper towered over her, offering her his hand.
“Best you move inside, Clair,” he said. “Things could get ugly out here.”
His name was PK Drader, Clair’s lenses informed her, leader of the Rapid Response team. His face was hidden behind his visor. He had narrow shoulders set on a slight angle, as though he were leaning into a strong wind.
Clair nodded but didn’t take his hand. She could stand on her own. Jesse did the same. Ray joined them, and PK Drader and three other peacekeepers formed a protective cordon around them as the three of them approached the Penn Plaza building. Their monocycles lay abandoned on the ground behind them. The crowd was emerging slowly from cover. This wasn’t a game anymore. It was something else entirely, now that someone had been tangibly hurt.
Clair wondered what would happen to the shooter. Then she saw two bullet holes in the glass doors ahead of them and decided she didn’t care. That was the third time she had been fired at in four days. It had to stop.
68
“WE’RE HERE,” JESSE said as the glass doors slid closed behind them. He looked shaken but relieved. “We actually made it.”
“Don’t get cocky,” said Ray. “This is the hard part.”
Clair agreed. They might have beaten Turner to VIA, but he was still out there somewhere, perhaps right under their feet, right at that very moment. And then there was Ant Wallace: he wouldn’t be a pushover. Her plan was, basically, to convince him that he wasn’t doing his job.
The lobby was cool and dimly lit, a marble expanse with a reception desk directly between the doors and a bank of elevators at the opposite end. A single person sat behind the desk, an ageless woman with porcelain skin and a sleeveless halter top in silver and gray. Her red hair was piled up in a series of complex curves with no visible means of support. Clair felt intimidated, although the woman didn’t actually do anything as they approached. Doing nothing was more than enough.
Only when Clair was right in front of her did the receptionist stir. Her voice was honey and steel. She came right to the point.
“Mr. Wallace will see you in his office. Please proceed to elevator three.”
One perfectly manicured hand indicated a bank of sliding doors to her left.
“Thank you,” Clair said. The woman didn’t acknowledge her.
“Can you still hear and see me?” she asked Q.
“Perfectly well, Clair,” came the instant reply. “This is exciting! What do you think he’ll say?”
“I guess we’re about to find out.”
The elevator doors opened as they approached, revealing a heavyset security guard in a shiny blue suit that was a near-perfect match for his stubble. He motioned them inside without a word. Clair obeyed. Through the foyer’s glass windows, she saw the crowd waving at her, mouthing words she couldn’t hear. Through the Air she saw herself, expressionless, as the doors closed over them. It didn’t look like her as she thought of herself. Was she really her, Clair couldn’t help but wonder, or someone who only thought she was?
The elevator moved underfoot. Clair’s weight seemed to double. There was no progress indicator above the door, no counting upward like Clair had seen in old movies.
“You’ll be required to leave your weapons behind at the next checkpoint,” said the guard in the blue suit. His voice was surprisingly light. “They’ll be returned to you afterward.”
“How do you know we have any?” asked Jesse.
“You’ve been scanned.”
Ray shrugged philosophically.
The doors opened, and the security guard escorted them into an unremarkable corridor. There was another security guard waiting for them, next to a table, on which they placed everything lethal. Clair gave them her pistol. Jesse had nothing but a pocketknife. A small arsenal appeared from Ray’s pockets and the depths of his pack, including three pistols, a collapsible rifle, ammunition for all, and several grenades.
“We’re lucky you didn’t start a war when that guy started firing outside,” Clair said.
“He’s lucky the PKs were there,” Ray said.
“This way,” said the first blue suit, indicating a double door at the end of the corridor.
This is it, Clair thought. This is really it.
On the other side of the door was an office that took up half an entire floor. It contained a desk and several chairs but seemed empty. The view more than made up for that. They were looking out across the archipelago, over a jungle of rooftops and parabolic bridges and sails and swooping monorail tracks. The light seemed brighter from their elevated position, even through storm clouds moving in from the west. The whole world shone with optimism and opulence.
In front of the view, behind the desk, sat a woman in her fifties, not Ant Wallace, as Clair had expected. Tall and solid, with swept-back gray hair and a thin, bladelike nose, she was wearing a conservative, tight-fitting suit that was a light shade of blue identical to that of the suits of the men outside the room. She stood up but didn’t shake their hands.