Wes turns to him. “Is that a risk you want to take?”
Tim doesn’t answer, and I shake my head. “We’ll run. It’s our only option.”
“Get to the windows,” Twenty-two says.
The four of us keep our shoulders bent, our faces away from the I-units of the other guests as we make our way past the table where the president was sitting only minutes ago. The Secret Service agents push through the crowd, searching for us, but without our I-units we have become harder to find in this teeming mass of people. It doesn’t take long to reach the edge of the room. The ballroom is on the ground floor, overlooking the front of the hotel. The window is tightly locked and stretches up at least twenty feet. Wes is right—this won’t be subtle, but there’s no choice now.
He picks up a chair and throws it through the window in front of us. We all duck and cover our heads as glass pours down like beating hail, small slivers bouncing off our hair and shoulders. I feel a piece slice into my upper arm and the rush of blood that follows. Someone screams, and the mood of the crowd shifts again, louder, on the verge of frenzied. I see a woman run past, her silk dress slapping against her legs. The Secret Service seem to disappear, lost in the panic and noise.
Twenty-two uses her hand to push some of the remaining glass out of the frame. Blood from her palms smears across the window ledge as she launches herself through the open space. Tim is slower, trying not to touch the jagged pieces. “Go, go, go,” Wes yells. I follow, leaping through the frame. My long gown gets caught on a protruding shard, and it tears through the thin fabric. I land half on a bush, half on the sidewalk and I quickly scramble to my feet, turning to watch Wes jump through after me. For a second he appears frozen in midair, silhouetted in the dim light, splinters of glass reflecting all around him.
He falls hard beside me, landing on his back against the pavement. Twenty-two and Tim are already in the street, running for a parked car. I help Wes get up, and we keep our fingers linked together as we chase after them. In the distance I hear more sirens. They are getting closer.
Twenty-two kicks through the back window of the car. There’s no way to get the doors open without an electronic key, so she dives inside despite the glass. She crawls into the front seat. Tim follows her, clumsy, like he has forgotten how to move his body.
Wes lets go of my hand and climbs in first, reaching back to help me up over the rounded hood. My knees, now bare where my gown was ripped, sink into the broken pieces of glass, but I don’t have time to check and see if they’re cut. I slide through the window and join Tim in the back as Wes moves to the passenger’s seat.
“Can you start it without the key?” he asks.
She shakes her head. “It wouldn’t matter anyway. They’ve frozen the grid.”
I look out the window. Drivers don’t exist in 2049; vehicles run on a system of automated tracks that are built into every road, eliminating accidents and traffic jams. But now they are at a standstill, motionless in the middle of the street. The Secret Service must have shut down transportation as soon as they realized there was an assassination attempt.
“We need to get it off the grid,” Wes says. “I’ll disconnect it from the mainframe. You hot-wire the engine.”
“Okay.” Both of their voices are calm, maddeningly so, as though they are discussing what to eat for dinner. I feel Tim dig his fingers into the seat next to me, the tension coming off his body in waves.
“Here.” I take off my shoe and toss it to the front of the car. “Use this.”
Wes jams the pointed heel into the plastic box under the steering wheel, prying it open to reveal a tangle of wires. Thank God this is an older model of car, and it still has a steering wheel, still has the capacity to be driven off the grid. It means we have a chance.
Twenty-two bends down, ripping through the hardware with her hands while Wes uses my heel to force open the dashboard. He starts fiddling with the wires there too, a mess of red and blue and green and white lines. Twenty-two is successful first and the engine sparks, catches, and rolls over, humming underneath us. But we’re not moving. Wes is taking longer to override the system, and I see his hands start to shake, the vibrations traveling all the way up his arms until it seems that his whole body is trembling.
“Shit,” Tim breathes, and I turn to see a dark-suited member of the Secret Service standing just inside the broken window of the hotel. She raises her gun and points it at the car.
“Hurry, Wes.” I try, but cannot keep the panic out of my voice. “You can do this. Just breathe.”
Sweat falls from his forehead, sliding down into his hair, and finally the shaking subsides. I hold my breath as he connects two wires. “Do it now.” His voice is strained.
Twenty-two steps on the pedal and the car surges forward, just as the gunshots start. I hear the bullets crack against the pavement behind us.
“Go, go, go,” I whisper. Twenty-two yanks us into the road, swerving around the frozen, stalled cars. I turn to look out the shattered back window. Three Secret Service agents have emerged from the front doors of the hotel and are now climbing into their own black car. In less than two seconds they are following us, easily breaking out of the grid.
“They’re right behind us,” Tim says. Shots ring out again, ricocheting off the back of the car in a torrent of metal on
