Jared’s sleight of hand didn’t eliminate the problem of the guards; it merely shifted the upper hand. The guards still had to be dealt with. Everyone knew what that meant. They all knew that these guards were willing to lay down their lives for their cause. These guards were, after all, the ones left behind in an otherwise evacuated building. Everyone knew that the fight between them and the guards would end only in death. And all the while the clock kept ticking.
The inside of the Intelligence Center didn’t look like a war room or a bunker. It looked eerily like a normal office. The five of them stood on bland, dark green carpeting, staring at the empty reception area in front of them. In the middle of the reception area, a leather couch and a few leather chairs surrounded a dark wood coffee table adorned with magazines. The desk where the receptionist would normally sit was empty, the receptionist’s computers still. To their right, a giant window stretched from the floor to the ceiling, looking out over the tops of the buildings in the center of Manhattan. To their left, a few hallways led from the reception area to the maze of offices and filing cabinets.
It was quiet inside—quiet and bright. The gunfire from upstairs had either stopped or was too far away to be heard anymore. Reggie and Christopher hoped for the latter. They hoped that the gunfire was too far away to hear but knew that the the gunfight was likely over already. They knew that Mike was probably dead and they knew that people were going to be coming for them next. All the office’s lights were on. Christopher looked toward the giant window. It was so bright inside the office that it was almost impossible to see into the darkness outside.
“Remember,” Reggie told the rest of them as they each stared down the empty hallways, “no gas until we’re sure that we’ve gotten rid of all the guards. First, we secure the place. Then we let the gas out. Then we get out of here. If somebody fires a gun after we’ve let even a little bit of the gas out, this whole place will ignite with us in it.” Everybody nodded. They’d all heard this speech before.
“So who’s going upstairs and who’s going downstairs?” Dave asked, needing to ask because Mike’s absence required them to update the plan.
“Linda and I will go upstairs,” Reggie said to Dave with everyone else listening too. “You and Hector go down.” To Christopher, Reggie said, “You stay here to make sure that any guards that break loose don’t get very far.”
Christopher nodded. He knew what Reggie was doing. Reggie was trying to keep him out of the fight. Christopher didn’t argue because he knew that it would be the last time anyone ever tried to protect him. It would be the last time that he was special. Soon he would be normal—or at least as close as he could get to it. “Okay,” Christopher conceded and the others split into their two groups and ran off down the empty hallways.
Alone at the literal epicenter of miles of chaos, Christopher turned and walked toward the window. He could see more as he got closer to it. The fireworks had ended. Christopher missed them. He missed the colors and the light and the sounds. He could still see the haze they caused, floating over the city, the smoky remnants of the glorious spectacle that he had created. The smoke was only now beginning to settle into the shadows between the thousands of buildings across New York. The smoky haze went on as far as Christopher could see, like a mist or a shroud. He stepped closer to the window and looked down through the haze at the street. He could barely make out the people still standing down there, crowding the street, staring up at the sky, wondering what they might see next. For the first time Christopher could remember, he was proud of something he’d done.
“Chris,” Christopher suddenly heard a voice say. He had almost forgotten where he was. He turned quickly to face whoever it was that was talking to him. No one was there. “Chris, it’s me,” the voice said. Christopher recognized the voice this time, but that only confused him more. He spun around again.
“Evan?” Christopher asked. Only then did he remember the earpiece. “Holy shit. You scared me. I forgot about the radio for a second.”
“What are you doing, Chris?” Evan asked.
“What do you mean?” Christopher answered.
“I can see you, Chris. I can see you standing in the window. You’re not doing anything. You don’t have time to waste, Chris.”
Christopher looked up. He hadn’t realized that he was facing Evan and Addy’s building. They were watching him through binoculars. They could see him standing in front of the window, looking out. Christopher lifted a hand, waving to his two friends. “Why?” Christopher asked, emerging from his fog as he waved. “What’s going on?”
“We can hear gunshots, Chris, from all over the city. That means that they’re coming for you guys. That means that our people are trying to stop them, but they’ll only be able to hold them off for so long. The fireworks worked, Chris. They just didn’t work for as long as we wanted them to. So you can’t stand there. You have to do something. They’re coming.”
“There’s nothing I can do,” Christopher told Evan. “I have to wait here until the others have killed off the guards. I can’t even start letting the gas out until we’re sure the shooting is over or I’d risk blowing us all up.”
“There’s got to be something you can do,” Evan pleaded.
Christopher looked around him and tried to think. It seemed so strange to him that this mundane place was the key to ending the War. Jared had warned them about that. Jared told them that the Intelligence Center wouldn’t look like much but that there was information hidden everywhere. What did Jared tell them that they had to do? “Open every closet door,” Jared had told them. “Open every drawer. Make sure the gas gets everywhere. Make sure everything burns.”
“I can open doors and drawers,” Christopher said, half to Evan and half to himself. Then he went to the first drawer he saw and pulled it open. There were papers inside—nothing but papers in green hanging folders. Christopher reached in and pulled out a handful of paper. He looked at them. Each page was full of color-coded lists of names and corresponding series of numbers. The first number was ten digits long. The other numbers seemed completely random. Each name was printed in either red or blue. Christopher couldn’t divine any meaning from any of it. He ran to another desk and pulled another drawer open. He reached in and grabbed a handful of papers from that drawer. They looked the same—a list of color-coded names and seemingly random numbers. Each page had dozens of names. All told, there had to be thousands of pages or more on those five floors.
“Ask him what he sees,” Addy said to Evan as the two of them watched Christopher go from desk to desk, pulling open the drawers and rummaging through the papers inside.
“Addy wants to know what’s in the drawers,” Evan said to Christopher.
Christopher looked out the window in the direction of his friends. “Nothing,” he said, sensing how disappointed Addy would be. “It’s only names. Everything else is in code.” Evan looked at Addy and didn’t say anything. Evan didn’t need to give Addy the details. He simply shook his head.
The gunfire was getting closer. Evan and Addy could hear it down on the streets, closing in on them from all directions. Evan searched the other windows of the office to see if he could spot Reggie or the others, to see if they’d finished off the guards yet, to see if it was safe to tell Christopher to go forward. He saw them—all of them—running back toward Christopher. “They’re done, Chris. Reggie and the others are finished. They’re coming back to you.”
A moment later all four of them burst into the room where Christopher had been waiting. “We’re finished with the guards,” Reggie announced. “We can start releasing the gas.” Christopher looked at the four of them. David had blood pouring out of his shoulder. The rest of them looked like they’d come out unscathed. “Everybody take their floor,” Reggie ordered. “We’ll meet back here when we’re done.”
“No,” Christopher said, stopping everyone before they left. “There’s no time to
regroup. The diversion didn’t last. They’re coming for us. Once each of us has prepped our floor and let out our gas tanks, we need to run.”
David, Reggie, Hector, and Linda understood. They all nodded in response. Then they reached into their backpacks and pulled out their gas masks. “Let’s go,” Reggie said. Each of them slid their gas mask over their face. With their gas masks on and their guns at the ready, Christopher thought they looked like the monsters from a science fiction movie.
Before slipping his own gas mask over his face, Christopher whispered, “This is it, Evan. I’ll still be able to hear you, but I won’t be able to talk.” Behind the gas mask, Christopher felt the world close in on him. Everything suddenly appeared two-dimensional. The depth was gone.
Everyone knew their assignments. Since David was the original backup, he took Mike’s floor. Despite the work that he’d already done on the middle floor, Christopher was assigned to the top floor. He ran for the stairs. “They’re getting closer,” Evan told Christopher as he headed up the two flights. “Be quick.” Christopher heard Evan and ran faster. He knew why Reggie had assigned him the top floor. It was because it should have been the last one that anyone from the outside could reach. Anyone from the outside should have had to climb up through the lower floors first.
Christopher reached the top of the stairs and slid both the backpacks—his and Mike’s—off his back. He reached inside them and pulled out the gas canisters. They were heavy with gas. Christopher never understood how that worked. Now wasn’t the time. He moved away from the stairs, toward the middle of the floor. He left everything but the gas canisters behind, not wanting anything to slow him down. He left his guns behind. What use would they be to him anyway? He couldn’t fire them once the gas was released. Then, free of everything but his gas mask, Christopher began his search. There was a file room in the middle of the floor. Jared had told them that they should prop the file room’s doors open and let the gas out in there. Christopher opened doors, searching for the file room, leaving every door that he opened open, propping open the ones that swung closed automatically. He could hear his own breathing in the gas mask. With the fifth door, he struck gold.
Christopher stepped into the file room. This room alone had to contain thousands upon thousands of names. He placed the gas canisters in the middle of the room and turned the nozzles on each so that the gas began to leak out. Then he began opening the drawers to all of the file cabinets. This time he didn’t bother to look at the papers inside. He knew what they would say anyway. He could still hear the gas hissing out of the canisters when he left the file room to begin opening doors and drawers all over the top floor. He was making progress now, real progress, attacking cabinets and closets in every office and every room. He was about halfway done when Evan first warned him. “Chris,” Evan said, “they’ve got a helicopter. They’re heading for the roof. I’ll try to hold them off, but I’m not going to be able to stop them.” Christopher glanced up at the closest window. He could see the lights from the helicopter flash by as it swooped down toward the building. They were going to come down from the roof. Reggie’s plan to protect Christopher by assigning him to the top floor had backfired. The last will be first, and the first will be last. Christopher sped up, rushing into offices and overturning desks and pulling open doors like a man possessed.
Addy and Evan hadn’t thought that they’d have any need for more than one rifle. The plan required them to take only one shot. Even so, Evan took his gun and aimed it at the helicopter. He remembered for a second those days that he and Christopher spent in the woods, each shooting his rifle at rocks that the other threw as high into the air as he could. Christopher was always the better shot, but Evan hadn’t been far behind him. Before pulling the trigger, Evan looked down over the edge of the building toward the street, trying to estimate how much damage he would do if he took the whole helicopter down. The street was still flooded with people staring into the sky, waiting for something else to amaze them. Evan aimed the gun at the helicopter again and pulled the trigger.
At first, Evan had aimed his rifle at the helicopter pilot. He could make that shot. It wouldn’t even be hard with the scope he had on his rifle. One shot, he thought, and he could bring the helicopter crashing down. But then he had seen all those people down in the street. So instead of taking out the pilot, Evan aimed in front of the helicopter, firing a warning shot. He hoped that they would be sensible. He hoped that they were regular people, people smart enough to react to fear. He hoped that they weren’t people who had grown up with paranoia. “Fly away,” he whispered to himself, and at first the helicopter turned up and away from the roof as if it would go. Before it was too far off, though, the helicopter turned back to make another pass at landing on the roof.
“Chris!” Evan shouted into his radio. “You’ve got to get out of there, Chris. You’ve done enough.” Christopher didn’t answer him, but then he couldn’t answer him, not with the gas mask on. Evan shot a panicked glance at Addy, unwilling to take his eyes off the helicopter for more than a split second. “Can you see what Christopher is doing? Tell me what he’s doing. Is he running?”
Addy lifted the binoculars and scanned the windows, looking for Christopher. Then she spotted him, still moving through the building. The hose from his gas mask hung down in front of him like an alien appendage. He didn’t look human, and still, Addy could tell from the way that he moved that it was Christopher. “No,” she said to Evan. “He’s not running.”
Christopher heard Evan telling him to run. Evan’s wasn’t the only voice Christopher heard, though. He also kept hearing Jared’s. “Open every drawer. Make sure the gas gets everywhere. Make sure everything burns.” Christopher couldn’t leave this job half done. He couldn’t risk waking up tomorrow in an unchanged world. Every drawer. Every closet. Every door. Make sure everything burns. He only had a few offices left anyway. Then he would be done. Then he could run.
The helicopter swooped down for a second pass and Evan fired again, another warning shot. This time the helicopter did not heed his warning. Instead, it pulled its nose up, aiming the landing skids at the roof. In that position, the helicopter looked to Evan like a cornered animal, rearing up its head before a strike. Evan fired again—no warning shot this time—but from the new angle, all Evan could hit was the helicopter’s white underside. He saw the bullet puncture the metal, creating a tiny hole in the bottom of the helicopter but the hole did nothing to stop its landing. Evan wanted to shout at Christopher again, but he didn’t. Evan knew that Christopher would leave when he was ready to leave, and Evan didn’t want to waste any more time distracting him. The helicopter came down now, the skids bouncing only slightly on the roof of the building before the machine settled. Evan aimed and fired again. This time he had a clear shot. The pilot’s head jerked back and he was gone, but it was too late. The others were already stepping out of the helicopter onto the roof. Evan tried to get his sights on another one of them. He felt no remorse for killing the pilot. He felt nothing. He wouldn’t feel any remorse if he shot another one too. He would be too numb to feel until he had shot them all, and then all he would feel was relief.
Evan’s next shot missed. Five people ran out of the helicopter. They were hard to hit. They ran on the roof in zigzag patterns, like people trained to run from bullets while searching for cover. He missed only once. His next shot hit one of them in the leg. The man fell to the ground. Evan moved the gun imperceptibly higher and fired again, ending the man’s life with a bullet to his chest.
“I can’t get them all,” Evan said, realizing the truth.
“I think he’s only got one office left,” Addy reported, following Christopher as he moved quickly but methodically across the office floor. “There in the corner.” She didn’t take her eyes off Christopher. “Just hold them off for another minute or two.”
Evan fired another shot. This time he missed, but the bullet still served its purpose. One of t
he men had lurched out from his hiding spot on the roof, squatting behind an exhaust fan, and the shot scared him back into his hiding place. They were all hunkered down now, trying to avoid Evan’s bullets. Evan knew he could manage another minute or two.
Christopher ran into the last office. It was a large corner office with a big desk on one side, a small table in one corner, and a closet with the door closed in a third corner. All the blinds were down. This was the first office Christopher had entered where the blinds were down. In case it was meant to hide something, Christopher violently ripped each set of blinds down, exposing the office to the world. He was so close to being finished. He went to the desk first. He pulled open each drawer. The bottom drawer was locked, but he broke the lock with a single hard tug. Jared had been right. The papers were everywhere. Name after color-coded name, but they were out now. They were open. They would burn and every horrible thing linked to those names would be forgotten. Christopher stepped toward the closet door. He opened it, expecting to see more papers. Then he froze.
“What’s he doing?” Evan asked after three minutes and then four minutes went by and Addy still didn’t say that Christopher was running.
“I don’t know,” Addy answered. “He’s just standing there.”
Christopher stood, staring into the closet, trying to make sense of what he saw. In trying to make sense of it, Christopher forgot where he was. He forgot what he was doing. He lost his ability to move. Why, he wondered, is a bloody, dead body in the closet, a pen still sticking out of the body’s neck? Even in a place where so little made sense, this really didn’t make any sense. Who was he? How did he get there? Christopher grabbed the stiff body by the wrists and slid it out of the closet, stretching it out on the floor.