“A threat,” the security director said, his voice low and hushed. “Whole plaza. Homeland marshals got it last night.”
“Oh.” There’d been a few lockdowns in Empire City over the years, for both real and false alarms, but Mia couldn’t recall any of them shutting down a main cog of the Finance District. “Must be some kind of threat.”
The security director looked out the corner of his eye to make sure no one else was listening, then pulled out his cell phone and read.
WITH FIRMNESS IN THE RIGHT AS GOD GIVES US TO SEE THE RIGHT, LET US STRIVE ON TO FINISH THE WORK WE ARE IN, TO BIND UP THE NATION’S WOUNDS, TO CARE FOR HIM WHO SHALL HAVE BORNE THE BATTLE.
MAYDAY, MAYDAY. FROM THE ASHES, HOLY REDEMPTION.
“Mean anything to you?”
Mia shook her head.
“The first part’s from a speech Abraham Lincoln gave. Used to be the motto of the old Veterans Administration. The second part… I don’t know. The distress signal or something.”
Mia contemplated that. “There’s a Council of Victors office down here. Some crazy’s angry about the colonies again?” She tried not to laugh but couldn’t help it. “It all needs to be taken seriously, of course. But shut down the plaza?”
The security director shrugged. “Federals think it means something. The Mayday thing, especially.”
“I see,” Mia said, wondering if this was the Bureau’s emergency, and if so, why Jesse hadn’t said anything to her. He worked intel analysis, not counterterrorism. Though he hadn’t always been behind a desk.
Mia texted him a simple “?” as she walked home, feeling a little apprehensive and a lot aimless. She owed an IPO risk assessment to her department head by the end of the day, a transaction report to a client by the end of the week, and a regulatory review to her father by the end of the month. She’d traded in the stakes of investment banking for the tedium of compliance, a decision that had benefited her both personally and professionally. Still, she felt little remorse when she arrived home and turned on the television instead of sitting at the kitchen counter. The thing about compliance was that it was always there. It would wait. It always did.
The threat on Westmoreland Plaza had reached the news, sort of. It was being reported as a gas leak. “Empire Energy and Grid workers have identified the leak’s source and shut it off,” the newscaster assured the screen. “Repair is under way.”
Typical media, Mia thought. Passing along spoon-fed lies instead of actual journalism.
In national news, the president had announced his run for another term at the Freedom Infinity island base in the Mediterranean. Surrounded by soldiers, expeditionary privateers, and legionnaires, he argued that the nation’s war on terror took priority over the traditions of the republic. He cited FDR and World War II and Nixon and Vietnam. Mia wasn’t sure about that but she also thought that the hysteria about him becoming an American tyrant was too much. Things hadn’t always been this divisive, she believed that. She thought of General Collins’s offer again.
At the World Court, the Abu Abdallah trial limped into its thirty first week. After the Balkan witnesses had been killed with ricin pens, the man had gone on a hunger strike, falling into diabetic shock that led to a medically induced coma for the health of the brain. He’d been woken weeks later, claiming his name was Bjorn van der Hoedemaker from the small Dutch town of Volendam. Most doctors were certain he was lying, but that hadn’t stopped the wild protests of innocence during proceedings. The tribunal was openly mulling a mistrial and Arabia had requested he be extradited there.
“What a dang mess,” the newscaster said, punctuating with a smack of the lips.
Something hard and solid thumped against the kitchen window. Mia muted the television and heard trilling. Outside the window, a stunned bird was regaining its feet on the back of the air conditioner Jesse had installed for the summer. She considered it a waste of money and electricity and refused to run it when she was home. Their last power bill had revealed her beloved held no such inhibitions.
The bird was small and light brown and didn’t appear seriously injured. It blinked at her through the pane with jade dark eyes. Mia figured it a sparrow and was still admiring it as she remembered how much her stepmother Linda loathed sparrows for what they did to other birds in her flower garden. “Piranhas with wings,” Linda had called them. Which was dramatic. Still, Mia had seen the fallout of a sparrow’s presence: the pecked-out brains of a mother chickadee on their front lawn remained her most fixed memory from second grade.
Mia glimpsed the progressing nest wedged between the bottom of the air conditioner and the window ledge. Something needed to be done.
She fetched a broom from a hallway closet and was working out how to open the window and chase off the sparrow when the still-muted television screen glowed like a halo with BREAKING NEWS. That got her to stop and watch. The superhuman profile of Pete Swenson got her to find the volume.
“A railroad train crashed at the transportation hub in the Old Navy Yard district during morning rush, injuring more than sixty people and disrupting the commute for thousands more,” the newscaster said.
“The train was midtown-bound, coming in from the far townships. Officials say the train rammed into a bumping block as it pulled into the Old Navy Yard terminal around eight forty-five a.m., knocking the lead four carriages off the rails.
“First responders were aided by three very unlikely bystanders—the Volunteers, home on leave from the Mediterranean. Here, in an exclusive cell phone video filmed on scene, you can watch them pry wounded citizens from gnarled train carriages, helping treat their injuries…”
It was them, wearing shorts and T-shirts instead of commando uniforms. But it was them. Pete, pulling apart a metal carriage window to make an opening. Flowers, disappearing in the corner of the video, reappearing a few seconds later holding an injured citizen in his arms. And Dash, so skittish when Mia had known him, racing around the platform, delivering supplies to the paramedics.
That month in Germany seemed a long time ago. Because it was a long time ago, Mia thought. From another life.
Still, she couldn’t help but notice Pete. A pretty man, she remembered. Not pretty enough to make up for the rest of it, though. No one could be.
The cell phone video ended and the newscaster reappeared on the television. “The Volunteers left before our reporters could interview them,” he said. “A War Department spokesman said that they are aware of the incident and the Volunteers’ courageous efforts.
“The cause of the accident remains unclear. According to a railroad official speaking on the condition of anonymity…”
Mia turned off the television. She returned to the window, but not to sweep away the sparrow’s nest. That could wait. She just wanted to look out at the morning.
She understood why the three Rangers could use their powers and why she couldn’t. The reasoning was sound. Yet the urge to fly again was ferocious. It’d never gone away, but like an unreachable itch, she’d been able to ignore it. Until recently.
If I did it—then they’d know. People would see a flying lady in the sky. Well, she thought, so what? Then they’d know.
Mia was thinking again about a quick spree through the sky when the landline rang. They tended not to answer it—who used a landline, other than telemarketers and grandparents?—but it was a local number. Someone from work calling for instruction, she thought. Or to vent.