Flowers blinked and blinked and eventually laughed. “You’re crazy, hostage.”
The two men may have been strangers, but they were strangers together. So they watched the set together, too, filling strained pauses with jokes about bohemians and vague allusions to their shared stay at the hospital. Flowers said he didn’t remember much from it, either. They got another round of beers, then another. Flowers asked if Sebastian would do a Truck Bomb shot with him. Sebastian winced and told him they didn’t call it that here. Flowers apologized, he’d forgotten he wasn’t in the South, and ordered two Kill Shots like a proper citizen. The shot roiled Sebastian’s stomach, but he managed to keep it down. Sebastian tried not to look at Britt much, even though he knew she couldn’t see into the crowd because of stage lights. They were pretty good, Sebastian thought, though Derivative’s style and songs were a bit, well, unoriginal. He asked about Pete Swenson. Flowers said he was supposed to be there, had been the one who told him to come, but the oversize bastard was nowhere to be seen.
“Typical Pete shit,” Flowers said, his voice flexing hard to sound amused. “Do as he says, not as he does.”
Time passed. Derivative kept playing. Flowers left for the bathroom and didn’t come back. Sebastian got another beer. Someone bumped into him, and he felt a trickle of cold liquid on his back. He counted to twelve very slowly in his head then found another pillar to lean against. Some more time passed. Derivative kept playing.
Sebastian yawned and his right leg began twitching. He took off his sunglasses and chewed on one of the ends. Then he popped a blue Valium from his pocket and wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. It’s all good, he thought. All good. Something about the noise, and the sweat, and the flashing lights, and the talking with Flowers, made him think of the night he’d been rescued. The short guy with the asterisk scar had gone home, so the other militants had unbound him and let him join the dominoes game. The one with the crooked smile and construction-worker hands knew bits of English and was asking why America could put a man on the moon but not bring electricity to the lands it invaded. It was a fine question and Sebastian hadn’t known the answer. Then the helicopters came on like a tempest, and the whole building began shaking. They’d bound and blindfolded him again and hid him in a pile of loose blankets and boxes and told him not to even think about making a sound and they all grabbed their AKs and ran upstairs and gunshots rang out in mad, dizzy minutes and then there was a pause like a long echo and he smelled ice of all things so he’d sat up and pushed off the blindfold against a box corner just in time to see the whole world turn to the brightest, darkest star and—
“Hey! Hostage!”
Sebastian shot back to the now.
“Sleeping standing up. I’m impressed.”
“Naw,” Sebastian said to Flowers, checking his chin for drool, then readjusting his sunglasses. “Praying to the boho gods.”
Britt, her face wiped clean of geisha makeup, stood next to Flowers with her head tilted. The omega symbol on her arm glinted like an X on a treasure map.
“They wouldn’t listen to you.” Britt frowned and looked at his feet. “Nice shoes.”
Sebastian shook out his legs to make sure they hadn’t fallen asleep, too. “That was really good,” he said. “Thanks for inviting me.”
Britt brought her hands together into prayer and bowed her head.
“See Pete yet?” she asked.
“Couldn’t make it,” Flowers said, cutting in. “Gonna meet up with us at the lofts.”
Britt didn’t respond, just turned and walked toward her boyfriends, who were waiting at a rear exit. Flowers clutched at his heart, winked at Sebastian, then trailed her steps. Sebastian stayed at his pillar until Britt called over her shoulder, “Come hang with us, Sebastian Rios.”
As he moved into the midsummer night, following Flowers who followed Britt who followed her boyfriends, Sebastian caught a whiff of something different, something he’d never smelled in Empire City. Rain was coming, but that wasn’t it. Wood smoke, he decided. Like new beginnings. He kept that to himself, though, not wanting to sound eager. He jogged to catch up with the group.
CHAPTER 5
MIA WOKE BEFORE the alarm. She usually did on weekdays. She was a person of routine and that’s what routine did. Sleep whispered like a lullaby through the black morning but she pushed it away, sitting up in bed to put her mind in order. If she’d been dreaming, she’d already forgotten what about.
Monday, she thought. Cardio.
A storm had rolled through the city late in the night, leaving the brittle musk of rain. A coldness nipped at the top of Mia’s shoulder. How do they keep getting in here? she wondered, rubbing at the mosquito bite. I shut the screen last night.
Jesse hadn’t come home. He’d sent a few texts, first saying he wasn’t sure when he’d be leaving work, then saying he wouldn’t be. All-nighters during Bureau emergencies weren’t unprecedented. Mia knew the deal. All part of marrying a special agent. Even if waking up by herself in darkness brought on a loneliness she didn’t trust.
Mia ate a yogurt, then changed into light workout gear and fitted her running leg and sneakers. Downstairs, the summer air smelled of metal and moss. Dim streetlights lined the corners like sentries and the sidewalks had almost dried. A garbage truck on an adjacent block groaned through the still while monitor drones pulsed red in the sky. She stretched her left leg and then her core in front of her building, looking up to watch the flag whip around atop the Global Trade. Sixty stars and thirteen stripes, pale against the dark. All those rings and stars in the blue canton struck her as cluttered, still.
Mia finished stretching and tapped at her right knee. Her running prosthetic was hard and coiled, like a spring. She appreciated the city most during these early morning runs, because it was empty enough to seem welcoming, even hopeful. It reminded her of the city from her childhood. It reminded her of the America she’d grown up in.
Daybreak always ended the spell.
Cut the crap, Mia thought. These ten miles aren’t going to run themselves. Then she took a deep breath, set the digital green of her wristwatch to 00:00, hit start, and began, the joints of her leg cracking with the motion while the socket of her prosthetic did the same. She headed west, toward the harbor.
Mia had run most of her life, discovering as a girl that she was good at it and being good meant respect, and trophies, and approval. It made an object of her body, but it was a functional object, something that mattered to her even before she’d figured out why. She’d pushed herself to be very good at points in her life, competing in college for two seasons before it interfered with ROTC, and later running the city marathon her first year with the prosthetic to prove that she could. But she’d never crossed into greatness, and for that she’d come to be thankful. Mia lacked the masochism of true runners, the renegade fanatical gene to ignore and ignore all the warning blinkers thousands of years of evolution had instilled in the human brain. Bloody calluses and angry muscles were one thing. Tendons ripping from bone were another.
The baby, or not-baby, entered Mia’s mind. She focused on her breathing. Then came General Collins’s job offer. She focused on her breathing.