“Catherine Lupoi?” asked Clair, remembering the name of Ant Wallace’s assistant.
The woman shook her head. “Angela Kadri, head of security. Ant will be down in a moment. I’ve been asked to make you comfortable. Is there anything you’d like to drink, eat?”
Clair felt a moment of dizziness that she put down to lack of sleep and a terrible awareness of how important the coming moments were. After every hardship they had endured, every mile covered, every discomfort and privation, they were about to come face-to-face with VIA’s head of operations, a man who could make the world really pay attention. If Improvement was ever to be stopped, if Libby and Q were ever to be restored, if Clair’s doubts about her mind were ever to be put to rest, he had to be convinced of its reality. If she failed, nothing would change—but everything would change for her, because all she held dear would be gone.
“Clair, are you all right?”
Jesse was asking her the question, but everyone was staring at her, like she was an actor who had forgotten her lines.
“I think I need to sit down,” she said.
“Please, feel free.” Kadri indicated the chairs scattered about the room. “There are facilities if you need them. I’ll go see what’s holding Ant up.”
Kadri strode crisply across the room and through the double door. Clair looked around her and noticed an arched entranceway she hadn’t seen earlier. She went through it and found herself in a privacy alcove containing a fabber, a sink, and a small mirror. She looked dirty and desperate, like every other Abstainer she had ever met. Worse than that, she looked as crazy as Dylan Linwood.
Suddenly convinced that Wallace was going to brush them off, no matter what they said to him, she leaned over the sink and splashed cold water on her face. She saw a double image of herself as she did so, one from the mirror and another via a video feed someone was posting. They had hacked her lenses somehow, so she was seeing what she was seeing twice over.
She turned to see Jesse watching her.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes, honest. And that’s me talking, in case you’re wondering.” This kind of anxiety could only come from herself.
He half smiled. “I can tell.”
“What about you?”
“I’m shitting myself,” he said. “I wish Dad were here. He’d do a much better job of explaining things than I would. Not that you won’t, I mean,” he added. “You’ll be great.”
“What about after?” she said, meaning What will you be going home to? What’s left out there for you?
He looked away. “I’m not thinking that far ahead.”
“You could go to Melbourne to live with your mom’s family.”
“I don’t want to do that. I don’t know them, and it would mean changing schools.”
“You could do that.”
“But I don’t want to,” he said, with a flash of his old prickliness. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“No,” she said. “That’s not what I want,” she said, only realizing the truth of it as she said it.
“Good, because . . . well, to hell with it.” He paced around the tiny space, looking at her and then looking away, over and over, as though making sure she wasn’t about to vanish into thin air. “I know this isn’t the right time, and I know you had that thing with Zep, but we’ve been holding hands, and we kissed once, and then you kinda threw yourself at me downstairs—not like that,” he amended, “but it happened, and it must mean something when a girl tries to save your life. Right?”
“Jesse—”
“Don’t get me wrong. I know I’m not your type. Girls like you don’t date Abstainers. So we’re doomed from the start, but I have to—”
“Jesse, listen to me.”
“Wait, Clair. I’ve been rehearsing this in my head ever since Brooklyn, and this might be the last chance I have to say it, so I need to get it out. I’ve had a thing for you for years, and then Improvement brought us together, but now it’s going to be fixed, and I’m worried that everything will go back to normal, and you—”
“Jesse.”
She put a hand over his mouth.
“Someone hacked my lenses. The whole world is seeing this. Hearing it too, probably.”
He swiveled slowly to face her.
“Oh . . . that’s . . . great.”
Before he could say or do anything else, a piercing wail split the air.
69
CLAIR PUT HER hands over her ears and stared up at the ceiling. The blast of sound was so loud, it seemed to be coming from inside her head.
“What is that?”
“Sounds like a fire alarm,” Jesse shouted close to her ear. She could barely hear him.
They ran into the office and found Ray tugging bodily at the doors.
“We’re locked in!”
Jesse lent his weight to the effort while Clair checked her infield.
There was a message patch from Angela Kadri. Clair winked on it immediately.
“What’s going on? Why are the doors locked?”
“It’s for your own safety,” the head of security told her. “The building’s under attack.”
Clair went cold. The submarine. Turner.
Ending the exchange with Kadri, she called Q.
“Where’s Turner?” she asked. “Has the drone surfaced yet?”
“Yes, Clair. It’s at the old subway station, with the others—what’s that noise?”
“Tell Turner to stand down! They know you’re there!”
“Clair, look.” Jesse was tugging at her arm, pointing at the windows.
Heavy shutters were descending rapidly over the wide expanses of glass.
“Q, tell him to stop! He’s going to ruin everything!”
“I don’t understand,” said Q. “What’s happening, Clair? What’s going on?”
The shutters slammed with a boom. In the same instant, the siren died. A ringing silence fell.
“Q?”
The conversation had been cut off. Clair’s infield was blank. She was severed from the Air.
“I don’t like this,” said Jesse.
“That’s the understatement of the year,” Clair said, rounding on Ray. “What was Turner planning? Tell me!”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Once he decided I was going with you, he cut me out of the loop. Honestly. But he was prepared. If things went wrong with you, he was ready for anything.”
“Too ready, obviously,” she said, fighting the urge to weep with frustration. “This can’t be happening.”
“We don’t know that Turner did anything at all.” Ray put his hands on his hips. “He wouldn’t blow up the building while we’re in it, would he?”
“I don’t know, Ray. You tell me.”
“Maybe the sub tripped an alarm,” Ray said, “and VIA security’s just being ultracautious.”
“Maybe a lot of things. I still don’t like it.”
For five minutes, they pounded the door with their fists to get someone’s attention, but there was no reply. Then they paced from wall to wall, looking for ways out that didn’t exist. Jesse probed every socket and sensor. There were no vents: air was refreshed through the fabber, and food waste was disintegrated into nothing.
There was only one way into the office, and it was firmly shut.
“Maybe the lockdown’s an automatic safety procedure,” said Ray, “to protect Wallace if something goes pear-shaped.”
“So why haven’t they contacted us?” asked Jesse. “There must be some way to talk to Wallace if he’s caught in here.”
“Maybe they’re all busy,” said Ray.
“Thanks to you and your friends,” Clair snapped at him. “This is going to look bad. We’re locked in here like prisoners.”