grew louder and clearer as she and her parents approached. “Don’t believe the lies! They’re here to colonize! Protect the US border! Prevent the new world order!”
The chanting began to break up as a new cry arose from the crowd on Reese’s right. She kept moving forward, head down and shoulders hunched, but out of the corner of her eye she saw the crowd roiling as if it were preparing to disgorge someone. A demonstrator yelled, “It’s her! Reese Holloway!”
The sound of her name sent a shock through her. The sensation of the crowd’s anger changed; they turned their eyes to focus on her. As goose bumps rose all over her skin at the force of their attention, she began to hear words in her mind as if her brain had suddenly tuned into someone else’s thoughts.
She knew instantly that the words were not the product of her own mind. They came from outside her just as the crowd’s emotions did. She remembered David describing hearing voices in his head like surfing through TV channels and catching disconnected snatches of dialogue. Was this what she was experiencing now? Were her abilities changing?
She didn’t like it. Even though she was outdoors, she felt as if she were in a crowded warehouse where every sound echoed, creating a cacophony of psychic noise. She wanted to shrink back, but her parents tried to hurry her along, pushing her toward the onslaught.
“We just have to get through the checkpoint,” her mom was saying.
“Traitor!” someone screamed. “Traitor to humanity!”
The metal barrier to Reese’s right clattered over. People poured over it, rushing toward her and her parents. The police shouted at them to get back, and Reese’s dad grabbed her arm, yanking her away. Her mom yelled, “Move! Move!”
A man pushed through the mob and halted directly in front of her, blocking her way. He was breathing heavily and carrying a sign that read IMRIA = NEW WORLD ORDER, but he dropped it carelessly onto the ground as he reached for something inside his Windbreaker. Reese froze. The man’s eyes were wide and crystal blue, focused on her with a piercing hatred that felt like a physical blow to her gut. He was in his twenties, with pale hair cut very close to his scalp. When his hand emerged from his jacket, he was holding a gun.
Before Reese knew what was happening, both of her parents had knocked her flat onto the ground. Her mom’s body shuddered over hers, and Reese could feel her terror, bitter and sharp. Her father threw himself over the both of them, and someone was screaming, “He has a gun!”
Reese was immobilized beneath her parents while other people’s emotions buffeted her from all sides. Anger pelted her like a sudden hailstorm while fear dragged at her limbs. She couldn’t distinguish her own feelings from the others’. She could barely breathe. She heard the gunman’s voice breaking through the cacophony, clear and sharp. “You’ve betrayed your own kind!
All she could see was the ground. The asphalt was dark gray and splotchy near her head, where something had spilled and left a stain shaped like a pear. The street shook with footsteps. Police officers were nearby, yelling for the man to drop the weapon, to lie on the ground, to put his arms behind his back. The scraping sound of metal across concrete told her that the barrier was being pushed back into place. The chanting slowly began again.
It was surreal: the absurdly hilarious rhyme of the demonstrators’ chant. The hard, pebbly surface of the ground, reminding her of the asphalt outside Blue Base, where the blast had thrown her into the hot desert. The immobilizing pressure of her parents’ flesh and bone against her, their child. They would die for her, and she was overwhelmed by the knowledge of it, heavy as weights tied to her ankles.
Finally, when she felt as if she might be suffocated by it all, her parents helped her up, still surrounding her, still preventing her from seeing what was happening, and herded her the last fifteen feet toward the security checkpoint. Police officers in their black uniforms pushed her through the gate. The scent of the bay, salty and sour with yesterday’s fish, filled her nostrils. Ahead of her the ferry to Angel Island waited like a safe house, the ramp reminding her of the ramp that had emerged from the belly of the Imrian spacecraft.
“Go, go!” her mom said, pushing her up the ramp.
Her legs wobbled as the ferry rocked in the water of the bay. They wouldn’t let her look back. They pushed her inside and onto a padded, disturbingly warm seat. Her head spun from the aftermath of the attack. She was still trying to separate out her own feelings from the tangled threads of everyone else she had just encountered. There were voices all around her and inside her, and she couldn’t tell them apart. Her mom was on the phone yelling at someone. Her dad spoke in hushed, urgent tones to a stranger. Someone apologized over and over.
“I don’t want it,” she muttered.
“Honey, are you all right?” her mom asked, rubbing her hand over Reese’s back. A jolt of anxiety went through Reese, and she cringed away from her mom. She pushed herself out of the seat on unsteady legs and lurched across the slanting floor of the ferry, banging into another row of seats.
The door to the deck was ahead of her, a yawning window of bright light. Her vision was blurred. She went for the door. Her dad tried to stop her, but she shook him off. “I need some air,” she said. She stepped out onto the deck, and there was San Francisco Bay and the sky, blue and slate gray, and she sucked in a deep breath of briny, fishy air and thought it was the best-smelling thing in the world.
She leaned against the railing, staring down at the water, and breathed.
Slowly, she came back to herself. She realized that her parents were standing a few feet away, watching her. “I’m okay,” she said to them. “I just needed some air.”
Her mom came a step closer.
“Please don’t touch me right now,” Reese said.
Her mom stopped. “Is it your—your adaptation?”
“Yes.” She swallowed something acidic and looked toward the dock. A line of police officers blocked the bottom of the ferry ramp. Beyond them the demonstrators were a mob of signs and motion, but she couldn’t see the man who had drawn the gun. “Where’s David?” she asked. “Is he here yet?”
“No,” her mom answered.
Reese pulled her phone out of her pocket and found David’s number. Her hands were shaking.
“Honey, why don’t you sit down?” her dad said, trying to sound soothing.
She paid no attention to him, lifting the phone to her ear as she continued to scan the dock for any signs of David. His phone rang and rang, but he didn’t answer. She hung up, feeling queasy. “Who are those protesters? Were they in front of our house?”
“I don’t know,” her mom said. “I think some of them were, but these people are much better organized.”
“I think we should go back inside,” her dad said. He looked worried. “I don’t like being out here. We’re too exposed.”
The implication of his words was clear. He thought there could be more protesters with guns. Suddenly the cool tang of the air over the bay didn’t feel so good to Reese. She let her father usher her back into the ferry, where she saw several other people milling around. There were reporters holding microrecorders, photographers and video camera operators. There were a few politicians, too, recognizable by the flag pins on their lapels. Reese and her parents sat down in a row of overly soft seats on the side of the ferry farthest away from the dock, and Reese kept an eye on the main entrance. She saw Senator Michaelson come in, and her mom went over to talk to her. She saw other reporters gathering together to compare notes. A couple of police officers entered, looking frazzled. Finally, just as Reese was beginning to completely freak out, she saw David and his parents coming up the ramp.
She ran to meet him, hugging him as soon as he entered the ferry. “Are you okay?” she asked, her voice muffled against his neck. As she held him she was nearly overwhelmed by how clearly she saw his interior landscape. Adrenaline lingered inside him like a wire still reverberating.
His arms tightened around her, relief sluicing through them both.
