A child asked for his autograph on a scrap of paper. Jean-Jacques signed. Then a group of teenagers asked for a group photo. He obliged. Then another group of teenagers asked for a group photo, too, a brazen kid with a cocky smile challenging him to a footrace.
“Time to bounce?” his cousin asked. People were beginning to gather around Jean-Jacques, calling his name, pulling at his arms, causing him to sway a bit. Even pretending at anonymity wasn’t possible anymore. He moved his shoulders to the beat of the closest dance song, to the crowd’s delight. He heard people talking about his smile, his teeth, his muscles. “I just wanna touch you,” a woman old enough to be his mother said, and then she did, rubbing her hand down his chest.
“Read my mind,” he called back to Emmanuel, enjoying the homecoming for what it was.
“Got some folks wanting to meet you.” His cousin’s voice sounded tart, wary even, like it hadn’t only been Jean-Jacques worried about mixing family with business. “If you’re game.”
Mayday, Mayday, Jean-Jacques thought. Then he heard Pete Swenson’s words in his head, and he smiled at them, despite it all.
Duty. She beckons.
11:35 P.M.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8
IMPERIAL TIMES ALERT
BREAKING: Mills Harrah, the former governor of Nevada and presidential candidate for the upstart party American Service, was shot and severely wounded this evening at a political fund-raiser in Empire City. Gunfire emerged from a hostage situation gone awry that’s left at least three others dead and a dozen hurt. Governor Harrah has been rushed to a local hospital and remains in critical condition…
CHAPTER 13
SWEAT SLICKED HIS palms, but Sebastian felt ready. Mind, spirit, gut, et cetera. He looked ready, too, according to the galaxy of studio cameras reflecting his own image back at him. A new corduroy jacket trimmed his shoulders and chest, the white button-up under it crisp like a tunic. He’d left open the top two buttons, as instructed. “Fratty chic,” he’d told the gay salesman at Banana Republic that morning, and they’d spent the next three hours figuring out exactly what that meant. His peacemonger shag had grown out since the summer, and he went through the motions of tidying his bangs. He’d swapped his aviator sunglasses for a pair of smart-looking brow lines. You’re ready, he repeated to himself. He’d shaved and everything.
“Sixty seconds out.” Words from the void, obliging yet hostile.
“Ever been on television before?” The newscaster leaned toward Sebastian, away from Liam Noonan, who was going over notes scrawled on an index card. Jamie Gellhorn was properly cast as an anchor lady with wavy honey hair and shiny north-star skin, but Sebastian knew she’d just returned from four months in the Barbary Coast. She had substance. She also didn’t wait for a response.
“Be natural, you’ll be fine. Keep it succinct. Liam’s a pro—he’ll take good care of you, I’m sure.”
Noonan grunted, his attention still on his cards. Sebastian swallowed to wet his throat.
“Thanks,” he told Jamie Gellhorn. “For having me, I mean. You and Jake Tapper are the best.”
“Tapper.” Jamie Gellhorn rolled her eyes. “I don’t nag at power, sweetheart. I speak truth to it.”
Sebastian had forgotten they were on rival networks.
The voice from the void called, “Thirty,” then “Ten,” then “Five.” The lights behind the cameras seemed to brighten. Sebastian straightened his back and tried to look pensive.
“Welcome back to The Proving Ground on Empire News. I’m your host, Jamie Gellhorn. Happening around the world tonight—the Abu Abdallah trial begins anew. Designs for a new Lady Liberty statue are out, to great debate. And the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on assimilation boards—what does it mean for your hometown? But first, live from our studio in Empire City, I’m going to chat with two foreign policy experts. Liam Noonan is a former Navy SEAL and author of Battlefields and Boardrooms: How You Too Can Lead at Life and Dominate. Welcome back to the program, Liam.”
“Glad to be here.”
“Joining Liam is Sebastian Rios, deputy assistant secretary for digital engagement, new media, and communications at Homeland Authority, and a survivor of a harrowing crisis in Tripoli a couple years back.”
“Uhh, thanks, Jamie.” She’d inadvertently promoted Sebastian but he wasn’t about to correct it. He tried not to squint underneath his glasses; the room still seemed too bright. And hot—when had the lights turned so hot?
“I want to begin with reports of American warfighters moving deeper into Africa, into Sudan and Chad. The War Department denies there’s any meaningful military presence there, only ‘advisors,’ but we’ve heard that before. With America at war in twenty-four countries—that are publicly known about—what do these new fronts mean for the Mediterranean Wars en masse?”
“Well, Jamie, there’s two prongs to this,” Sebastian began, not sure why he was using the word ‘prong.’ He never used that word. “Can we even call them the Mediterranean Wars now? Some of these places don’t come close to having ports. It’s fast become the everywhere wars. There’s also—”
“We are not at war with twenty-four countries!” Liam Noonan cut off Sebastian with something just below a shout. “Sorry to interrupt, hoss, but can’t let that go.”
“What would you call it, then?” Jamie Gellhorn shifted her posture and attention toward Noonan.
“We. Are. At. War. With. An. Ideology. One. Singular. Ideology.” Noonan’s talking points were pronounced and bullish. “We can’t win, we won’t win, until our country accepts the threat for what it is: wog fanaticism. One fight. One enemy. Then and only then will we turn our military loose to do what it’s meant to do. By any means necessary.”
Jamie Gellhorn leaned back, craned her head, and swiveled her chair and attention yet again. “Sebastian Rios: agree or disagree?”
The vortex of talking-head tribalism whirled around Sebastian in all its slobbering idiocy. It sought his scalp, his voice, his critical thinking, and the other sorts of thinking, too. All or nothing, it demanded. Nuance is weakness. Us. Them. You. Him. We. They. There was power in the black, there was clarity in the white. Equivocate now and be branded a moral coward, in front of millions. This wasn’t the time or place for contemplation, for consideration. This was cable television.
Sebastian knew all that, already. He believed some of it, too.
“First, that’s not the preferred nomenclature, my man. And it’s an interesting term to use for a guy held hostage last month by… who again?” Sebastian asked, rhetorically. He saw Jamie Gellhorn’s mouth hint at an upward twist while Noonan’s jaw clenched. “Oh, I was there, too. American war veterans. Mostly white ones, if that matters. One fight, one enemy, whatever. Let’s answer Jamie’s questions here without any posturing. Maybe we’ll educate a viewer or two in the meantime.”
Such nonsense, Sebastian thought as he looked into the cameras and smirked his smirkiest smirk. Such glorious nonsense.
“I was going to ask about that night, it’s so incredible,” Jamie Gellhorn said, and they were off. Sebastian’s fears, over his sunglasses, the bright lights, the hotness of those bright lights, they all fell away like old coins. They talked terrorism and fanaticism, and the expansion of the Freedom Infinity island base in the Mediterranean. They talked American invincibility. They talked about what should happen to the jailed vets awaiting trial and what might happen to the comatose governor awaiting surgery. Noonan barely got in a word. Sebastian had been the one who saved an Empire City ballroom, after all. He’d been the one who vanquished Veteran Zero. He’d been the one who shot the enemy.