Day One

ourselves in, to explain. Those of us who are innocent.” Vasco looked at them all in turn, his hostile gaze lingering on Hawke’s face. “We stick to the goddamn plan.”

Hawke rubbed at the headache that had worked its way like an ice pick into his skull. “It’s too dangerous to go that far on the streets.”

“You can protect us,” Hanscomb said, looking at Vasco, hope lightening her voice. “We can find a weapon… I don’t know, a gun?”

Price had gotten to his feet, still sharing Hanscomb’s oxygen. “A gun’s going to be tough to find,” he said.

Vasco was pacing now, short strides back and forth. “Then we go underground,” he said. “We take the subway tunnels. The trains aren’t running; it’s a direct route and keeps us under cover. There’s a station entrance on the other side of the building on Lexington. We could follow that line right to Grand Central.”

Or to the tunnel, and New Jersey. It wasn’t a bad idea. Hawke thought about the ride into the city, the PATH train rumbling through the dark under millions of tons of black water. There were fewer cameras in the tunnels, more places to hide. It would be harder to track them.

According to Hanscomb, the bridges were all out. So this was his only straight shot home.

The chirp of a siren came from Park Avenue. An NYPD squad car screeched hard around the corner, less than a hundred feet away. Hawke looked up, saw a security camera pointed right at them from a nearby light post. He put down the oxygen tank as the car came to a shuddering stop behind a jam of cars, tires squealing. The doors flew open and two cops jumped out, pointing guns at them.

Vasco took off running with Young, tossing their oxygen tank aside. Hanscomb ditched her tank, too, but she was slower, weaker, and she stumbled before Hawke turned back and helped her to her feet. Price kept behind them as Hawke stayed with her, keeping her up as they dodged through three more cars and around a construction Dumpster. Someone shouted out to stop before a soft clap and a chunk of bark from the tree about three feet to Hawke’s left exploded, a puff of concrete drifting from the building nearby as the twang of the bullet reached him a second later. Another shot rang out; this time, it was accompanied by a grunt and the sound of a body falling.

Hanscomb swerved hard right, breaking Hawke’s grasp and catching her thigh on the bumper of a Nissan, spinning wildly before regaining her balance. Hawke turned to see Price lying in a twisted heap on the ground halfway between them and the hospital. Blood was bubbling from a wound in his back.

Hanscomb screamed as another bullet hit Price in the lower back and his body jerked. The cop who had fired on Price pointed his gun at Hawke. He was less than one hundred feet away. Hawke grabbed Hanscomb’s hand and turned to run again.

The sound of pounding feet came behind them. The length of time to reach the corner seemed interminable. It was hard to breathe. Hawke used to have a repeating dream of facing a man with a knife, knowing the man was going to stab him, unable to move, unable to avoid the killing blow. This was like that. The seconds ticked on forever. They were being shot at. Price had been killed. It was impossible to believe. There was nowhere to hide, no place to go.

A bullet shattered the rear window of the Nissan as Hawke yanked Hanscomb around the corner just in time to see Young disappearing around 77th Street. There was no cover here, but the block was thankfully short. As he ran, he kept waiting for the shot that would hit him between his shoulder blades like Price and send him spinning to the pavement in a gore-streaked heap, breathing his last, shuddering breath.

It didn’t come. As they reached 77th and the subway entrance loomed dark and silent at their feet, he heard another shout and risked a look back. Their pursuers hadn’t yet come around the corner of Lexington Avenue; the street was empty. With luck, the cops would think Hawke and Hanscomb had kept going and they could disappear belowground like Vasco had hoped. Unless they follow us down, and we’re trapped in the dark.

But Hawke didn’t have time for second guesses, because Hanscomb was pulling him to the steps and into the tunnels, away from the light and into the shadows.

CHAPTER TWENTY

2:50 P.M.

THEY HESITATED AT THE FOOT of the steps for a few precious seconds, out of sight from above, catching their breath as the familiar hot, metallic and oily smell of the subway wafted over them. The power was out. There were a few emergency lights active, but the gloom and relative silence were unsettling.

A distant, low moan that sounded half-mechanical and half-human drifted up to them from somewhere below. Hawke imagined a hybrid being birthed down there in the dark, an offspring of the day’s events, fleshy limbs from piles of the dead weaved into the solid steel underpinnings of a machine. He thought of the people he had seen on the screens in the morgue, pacing in their cages. The absence of other human beings around them was beyond all comprehension. Millions of people lived in this city, and even more swelled the ranks during the day, commuters and protestors and contract workers and emergency responders. Where had they all gone?

Hanscomb was in shock. She clutched Hawke’s hand, breathing fast and shallow, panting. “I need to wake up,” she whispered, and he got the feeling she was talking more to herself than to him. “They killed him! Oh my God. This is a nightmare, isn’t it? It can’t be real.”

“It’s real. I’m sorry.”

“Are you really a part of this thing? Is that why the police are shooting at us?”

“No,” he said. “I’m not. But Jim was right. Someone wants them to think so.”

“But you said you were involved with those hackers before—”

“I was just a stupid kid,” he said. “I made some mistakes. But they were for good reasons. I would never be involved in something like this, Sarah. I promise you. I have a son, a three-year-old boy. I have a wife; she’s pregnant.”

“You tell me the truth,” Sarah said. She looked at him in the shadows. Her eyes looked wet. “You tell me one more time you had nothing to do with this, and I’ll believe you.”

He thought about telling her about the documents he’d seen and everything Young had said back in the morgue, but he didn’t think Sarah could handle it. Even the thought of giving voice to the idea seemed crazy. “It’s true. I swear. I’m a journalist. I was working on a story in the city. Wrong place, wrong time. That’s all.”

She sighed, and it seemed to take more years out of her. “I’ve never been in trouble with the law,” she said. “I… I wouldn’t have made it back there if…”

Hawke felt the bones of her fingers, light as a bird and just as fragile, an old woman’s grip. He shook his head. She was wheezing softly, her face haggard in the dark.

They waited, pressed tight against the grimy, tiled wall, but no one came after them and they took the hallway deeper inside. A clinking sound drew Hawke’s attention. Vasco was rummaging through the attendant’s booth. A moment later, Vasco straightened and a light flicked on, a flashlight beam playing over a deserted entryway, arrow-shaped graffiti sprayed in a corner, the familiar turnstile access to the platform below the entry sign and symbols for each line, a dented periodical box half-tilted and empty, its plastic cover dangling from one hinge like a loose tooth.

The light washed over Anne Young, who was standing absolutely still, arms folded across her chest like a petulant child. Tears were streaming down her face, but she didn’t make a sound, didn’t even blink before the light left her in darkness once again.

Abruptly the beam’s glare found Hawke’s face and remained there. He put up an arm, blinking against the light. “Knock it off,” he said.

Vasco kept the beam on him. “The fugitive,” he said. “After what happened up there, I guess we’ve got the answer to whether they’ll shoot first and ask questions later. Did you bring them right to us?”

“At least he stayed back to help me,” Hanscomb said, the words spat from her mouth as if she’d tasted something rotten. “Which is more than I can say for you.”

“Touchy,” Vasco said. “Maybe he was using you as a human shield.” He let the beam play down Hawke’s