Opening the side doors, she gestures for me to climb inside. Flip is in the driver’s seat while Quint and Lamar are sitting in two small fold-out chairs. The three of them are chowing down on soup straight out of the can. A skinny counter wraps around the back and driver’s side of the van, and above it are rows of monitors, lights, switches, and buttons.
Lamar greets me with a grin. “Hey, Rainy Lady!”
“How’d it go?” Quint asks, setting his can on the counter.
I sit in the middle of the floor and try to pry off one of Michelle’s cruel shoes. It’s so tight on my foot that I end up yanking it off with both hands and throwing it across the van. “Ugh!”
“So … not good?” Lamar summarizes.
I screw my eyes shut and shove my hands into my hair, tugging as hard as I can to distract myself from the pain. A squeal emanates from somewhere deep inside of me, high and pained and pressured, like a teakettle about to blow.
“What the hell happened?” Michelle asks, climbing in behind me and shutting the doors. “You were in there for, like, half an hour!”
“I had him!” I shout, hot, angry tears leaking through my closed eyelids. “I had him, and I fucking lost him!” I take a few deep breaths and try to calm down. Try to force my brain to think.
Think, Rain. Keep it together.
“He’s right there!” I growl, shoving my hand in the direction of the police station. “He’s right here, and I can’t get him out!”
“What happened in there?” Michelle repeats her question as she climbs back into the passenger seat.
I suck in another deep breath and cover my mouth with my hands. “They have guns. That’s what happened.”
“We have guns,” Quint offers.
“We have two guns.” I snort.
Flip lifts his pant leg, revealing a small silver pistol in an ankle holster.
“Okay, three guns. Even if we managed to take out the cops in the lobby without getting shot, there are probably more officers inside. All they’d have to do is seal the doors, and then we’d be sitting ducks.”
Michelle shakes her head. “This whole Green Mile operation is run by, what … the governor, a handful of police officers at the station, maybe a dozen riot cops, and a couple of security guards at the capitol? What is that, like, twenty people?”
“If we could just get the Bonys on our side, we’d have enough people to fight back or even the runaways from the mall.” Lamar raises his voice in excitement. “Q is fuckin’ crazy. I bet she’d kill a cop.”
I sigh. “I tried to get her to come, but you know her. Q only does what’s good for Q.”
“You know who would probably love to help? All those prisoners they just released,” Quint suggests. “Nobody hates cops more than criminals, right?”
“There’s enough guns in this country to arm every man, woman, and child,” Flip mumbles around a mouthful of loaded potato soup. “All you need is, like, a hundred of ’em.”
My shoulders slump. “How do we even find that many people? Look around. Everybody’s just tryin’a survive. They’re not gonna put their necks on the line for people they don’t know.”
“Damn.” Michelle’s mouth draws into a frown as she reaches for a bottle of vodka next to a monitor. “I wish we could broadcast a message for you, but they’d kill us as soon as they saw it.”
I stare into the black monitor next to her as she takes a long pull from the bottle, seeing only my reflection staring back at me.
Broadcast.
Message.
As soon as they saw it.
“What if they don’t see it?” I blurt out, my eyes darting back to Michelle’s. “What if we fight fire with fire?”
“What are you talkin’ about?” Flip asks as Michelle chokes on her last swallow of vodka.
“I’m talking about subliminal messaging! That’s how they programmed us to think the world was gonna end, right? How they drove a quarter of us insane enough to kill ourselves or get ourselves killed. What if we do the exact same thing against them? We could plant a subliminal message in the interview footage that makes people want to fight back!”
Michelle shakes her head. “Stella …”
“My name is Rain.”
“Rain … we only have a few hours to get back to the newsroom and upload that interview. Where are we gonna find that kind of content? Or software even?” Michelle turns to Flip. “Can our programs even splice images in at intervals that small?”
Flip shrugs as Quint gestures to the computer screens. “Can’t you just find the images online?”
Michelle’s mouth falls open. “Have you guys not been online since April 23?”
We shake our heads in unison.
Michelle huffs in exasperation. “It’s unusable! With no laws, it’s been completely overrun by hackers. If you go online through anything other than a secure government server, you’ll have your identity stolen, your bank account emptied, and you’ll be locked out of your device in seconds.”
I groan and fall back in my chair, rubbing my eyes with both hands. “So, where do we find a secure server?”
“Well, they have one at the TV station, but I am not working on this there.” Michelle takes another gulp from her bottle before passing it to Flip.
He accepts it with a polite nod and turns to face me. “Pretty much any government buildin’ should have a secure server. You just gotta be able to get inside and plug in.”
My eyes drift over to the heavily tinted windows on the side of the van. Just beyond them, rising like both a beacon of hope and symbol of death, is the glowing gold dome of the capitol building.
“Michelle”—I swallow—“you still got that media pass?”
Wes
Once, when I was, like, eight, I went on a school field trip to the zoo. My mom was too fucked up on
