Alpha

“We’re-hold on-we’re being evacuated.”

“Is everyone with you? You have everyone with you?”

“Yes. We’re with that girl, the one you got for us. She’s leading us out. There are park people everywhere.”

“She’ll get you out, just follow her directions. I’ll be in touch.”

“Jad? What’s going on?”

“I’ll call you later.”

“This is why you didn’t want us coming, isn’t it? This is-”

Bell hangs up, hits another button, raises the phone again. Nuri has moved away, she’s now standing by the double doors, looking out as she speaks on her own phone. She glances his way, and from her look Bell has a good idea just who it is she’s talking to, and maybe even what he’s telling her.

“Chain, Warlock. Sitrep.”

“Assisting southwest evac. You inviting me to this dance or am I going stag?”

“It’s not that you don’t look pretty in a dress,” Bell says. He’s moved closer to Nuri, now lowering her phone. Bell looks out the windows of the double doors, and the mass of people beyond is like a moving wall of flesh and anxiety. A man passes, pushing a stroller, wife with diaper bag right behind, pulling a little boy along by his hand. The boy is in tears, dragging a stuffed Rascal doll by its tail. As he watches, someone steps on the monkey, the boy losing his grip. He wails in protest, but his parents don’t stop.

“What we got?”

“Something in the air.”

“I need to hold my breath?”

“Too late for that.”

Nuri makes a noise, shakes her head. Bell ignores her.

“Am I coming to you or you coming to me?”

“Neither,” Bell says. “Heading for the Keep.”

“You’re bringing the Angel?”

“Negative.”

“Roger that,” says Chain, and the line goes dead.

“That was some mighty macho bullshit,” Nuri says. “You want to tell me what you’re thinking?”

Bell tucks his phone away. “I’m thinking that if someone had aerosolized botulinum you or I or someone we know would’ve heard about it. I’m thinking if someone has done it, we’re all dead anyway. I’m thinking it’s a hell of a good way to get a park all to yourself, and I’m thinking that I’ve never seen a dispersal pattern that uniform in twenty years of looking at worst-case scenarios.”

“Funny.”

“Funny?”

“I was thinking the same thing. Minus the twenty years part.”

“Good, then you’ll love the next bit. Get back into the command post and keep an eye on things.”

Her jaw tightens. “I’m coming with you.”

“That’s a negative. Real or not, there’s someone on the inside, someone who planted the botulinum or mind- fucked the Spartan. If that someone is upstairs right now, they have access to all our intel, our coms, our eyes, and all of it is compromised. I need someone I trust upstairs, and Chain’s not here, so I’m stuck with you.”

“Those aren’t my orders.”

“They are now, Angel. What’s the word of the day?”

Her eyes are more brown than hazel in this light, and anger flashes in them. “The word of the day is ‘buzzsaw.’ You don’t trust me?”

“The word of the day is ‘buzzsaw,’” Bell agrees. “I’ve got mission coms in my office, in the desk, middle left, back. You get a chance, plug in. Chain or I will contact as soon as we’re on the net.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Bell pushes on the doors, feels the wash of heat, the sunlight, the noise of the evacuating park.

“Of course I don’t trust you,” Bell says. “You’re CIA.”

Then he wades into madness.

Chapter Eleven

Athena doesn’t like most hearing people.

They’re too much trouble, and they don’t get it, and pretty much all of them have no idea how to treat the deaf, anyway. Some of them freeze up and some of them just pretend there’s nothing different and sometimes, some of them, they act like it’s contagious or something. Like they can somehow catch deaf, like Athena can pass it on, which would be a trick and a half, especially because she doesn’t know how or why she lost her hearing, can’t remember if she really ever had it, and nobody else does, either. That’s not uncommon, Mom told her, the same time she told her that something like 90 percent of all deaf kids are born to hearing parents.

It just happens, Mom said.

So she doesn’t like hearing people that much, most of them, and the jury is still out with this woman Dana, but it’s looking pretty good for her. Dana signs a little slow, and it’s hard not to get impatient talking to her, but she’s been nice and she’s funny, and she doesn’t break eye contact the way most hearing people do when you try to talk to them. People who can hear, Athena has learned, don’t like it when you keep looking them in the eye. They get uncomfortable the longer you do it. People who can hear don’t understand that it’s the eyes and the face and the thousand microgestures and movements coming from each that make up communication.

Best of all, Dana doesn’t do any of that bullshit silly embarrassed awkward stuff that people do when they’re uncomfortable around Athena and her friends. Dana’s going to be a senior at UCLA and she wants to be a teacher of the deaf, and when they were talking after the Timeless River Cruise, she told Athena she has a boyfriend who works here in WilsonVille, too. When Dana told her that, she kind of blushed, and it made Athena laugh. Dana laughed, too, and that scored her major points, because sometimes when Athena laughs, people stare, and she understands why; her mother explained that to her once, too.

Because of how you sound, Mom said. A surprising sound to them.

Bad?

No! Not a bad sound, Mom said, and she spelled out “no” instead of just shaking her head, totally meant it. Never! Beautiful sound your voice even if you cannot hear it you laugh when you like all you like. Anybody has a problem with that they can take it up with your father and me.

Athena had smiled when she said that, and not just because Mom is fierce, but because Dad wasn’t at home; he was someplace he wouldn’t ever tell them, fighting Bad Guys. There was a lot about her dad that Athena didn’t understand, not even now, but she understood one thing, and she understood it without ever having to be told. Her dad was a soldier, he was a warrior, and he went to fight a lot of Bad Guys, and he always came back.

Bad Guys did not want to mess with her dad.

Dana didn’t even make a face or anything when Athena laughed, didn’t even try to tell her or any of them to quiet down. Dana grinned at her and winked when she saw Joel holding her hand on the Timeless River, as Mr. Howe and Mom had their backs to them. After, when they were getting smoothies at Thyme’s Fruit Stand, Dana caught her eye and signed to her, keeping it close, whispering through gesture.

Joel’s cute.

Athena nodded, sneaking a look at Joel, who was joking with Leon and Miguel. Signed back to Dana, Yours cute?

To me!

They couldn’t decide where to go next, because the boys all wanted to go to the Pyramids of Ke-Sa, but Athena and Lynne and Gail all wanted to visit the Euro Strasse and maybe buy some stuff, and then go on Lion’s