“Sound booth.”
(Check.)
“Lights.”
(Check.)
“Fire teams.”
(Check.)
And so on. Guilder, listening vaguely, shook out his robed arms like a boxer preparing to step into the ring. He had always wondered about this gesture, which seemed like empty showmanship. Now he understood the sense of it.
“Good to go when you are,” Suresh said.
So: the moment at last. What a shock the crowd was in for. Guilder slid his glasses onto his face and took a last, long breath.
“All right, everyone,” he said. “Let’s look alive. It’s game time.”
He stepped forward, into the light.
64
“Dani, wake up.”
The voice was familiar. The voice belonged to someone she knew. It drifted toward her from high above, saying this curious, half-remembered name.
“Dani, you have to open your eyes. I need you to try.”
Sara sensed her mind emerging, her body taking shape around her. She felt suddenly cold. Her throat was tight and dry, sweet-tasting. She was supposed to open her eyes—that’s what the voice was telling her—but her lids felt like they weighed a thousand pounds apiece.
“I’m going to give you something.”
Was the voice Lila’s? Sara felt a prick in her arm. Nothing. Then:
Oh!
She bolted upright, violently curling forward at the waist, her heart thudding against her rib cage. Air rushed to her lungs, expelled by a dry cough that screeched across the parched lining of her throat.
Lila pressed a cup to her lips, bracing the back of Sara’s head with her palm. “Drink.”
Sara tasted water, cold water. The images around her began to coalesce. Her heart was still racing like a bird’s. Bits of pain, real and remembered, jabbed at her extremities. Her head felt like it was only vaguely related to the rest of her.
“You’re all right,” said Lila. “Don’t worry. I’m a doctor.”
Lila was a doctor?
“We need to be quick. I know it won’t be easy, but can you stand?”
Sara didn’t think she could, but Lila made her try. She swung her legs to the side of the gurney, Lila helping her by the elbow. Below the hem of Sara’s gown, white bandages encircled her upper thighs. More bandages dressed her lower arms. All of this had happened without her being aware of it.
“What did they do to me?”
“It’s the marrow they take. They start with the hips. That’s the pain you feel.”
Sara eased her feet to the floor. Only then did it occur to her that Lila’s presence was an aberration—that she was freeing her.
“Why do you have a gun, Lila?”
Gone was the frail, uncertain woman Sara had come to know. Her face radiated urgency. “Come.”
Sara saw the first body when they stepped into the hall: a man in a lab coat lying face-down on the floor, his arms and legs splayed in the random arrangement of swift death. The top of his skull had been blasted off, its contents splashed over the wall. Two more lay nearby, one shot in the chest, the other through the throat—though the second man wasn’t dead. He was sitting upright against the wall, his hands encircling his neck, his chest moving in shallow jerks. It was Dr. Verlyn. Through the hole in his neck, his rapid breathing made a clicking sound. His lips wordlessly working, he looked at Sara with pleading eyes.
Lila was tugging her by the arm. “We need to hurry.”
She didn’t have to say it again. More bodies—the splashes of blood and startled postures and expressions of surprise in unseeing eyes—flowed past. It was a massacre. Was it possible that Lila had done this? They came to the end of the hall, where the heavy steel door stood open. A col lay beside it, shot in the head.
“Get her out of the building,” Lila commanded. “It’s the last thing I’ll ask of you. Do whatever you have to.”
Sara understood that she was speaking of Kate. “Lila, what are you doing?”
“What should have been done long ago.” A look of peace had come into her face; her eyes glowed with warmth. “It will all be over soon, Dani.”
Sara hesitated. “My name’s not Dani.”
“I thought perhaps it wasn’t. Tell me.”
“It’s Sara.”
Lila nodded slowly, as if agreeing that this was the right name for her to have. She took Sara’s hand.
“You will be a good mother to her, Sara,” she said, and squeezed. “I know it. Now run.”
A hush fell over the crowd as Guilder stepped onto the field, all seventy thousand faces swiveling to look at him. He stood still a moment, drinking in the stillness as his eyes traveled the grandstands. He would make a humble entrance, like a priest’s. Time seemed to stretch as he walked to the platform. Who knew it could take so long to cross fifty yards? The silence around him seemed to deepen with every step.
He arrived at the platform. He gazed out upon the crowd, first one side of the field, then the other. His hand slipped to his waist and located the toggle.
“All rise for the singing of the anthem.”
Nothing happened. Had he hit the right button? He glanced toward Suresh, who was standing on the sidelines, making a frantic rolling motion with his hand.
“I
Begrudgingly, the crowd took to its feet. “Homeland, our Homeland,” Guilder began to sing, “we pledge our lives to thee …”
With a sinking feeling, Guilder realized that almost nobody else was singing. He heard a few isolated voices here and there—HR personnel and, of course, the staff, manfully croaking the words from the fifty-yard line—but this only heightened the impression that the crowd, basically, was on strike.
The song didn’t end so much as turn a corner and fall down. Not a good sign at all. The first of several beads of sweat shot from his armpit to slither unimpeded down the length of his torso. Maybe he should have found somebody who could actually sing to warm up the crowd. Still, Guilder had a few things planned to engage the people fully in the evening’s transformational festivities. He cleared his throat, glanced toward Suresh once more, received the man’s approving nod, and spoke.
“I stand before you today on the eve of a new era—”
“Murderer!”
A buzz of voices shivered through the crowd. The shout had come from behind him, somewhere in the upper decks. Guilder spun around, blindly searching the sea of faces.
“Killer!”
