by Nate Kenyon
“I get it,” Hawke said. His legs nearly buckled as an image of Thomas as a baby flashed through his head, little round face all squeezed up and red, a squalling mass of infant fury. “I have a family there, too. I know how you feel, but we have to stick together here, because one wrong move could get us killed.”
“Talking to this crazy…,” Vasco said. He shook his head. “We should throw her back out there to fend for herself. Hell, I don’t even know you people. No job is worth this. Who the fuck are you to tell me what to do, anyway?”
Hawke glanced at Hanscomb, who made another small, helpless noise. “Look, it doesn’t matter how we all got here,” he said. “What’s important is what we do now. We need to put our heads together.”
Vasco stared at him, looked at Hanscomb. “Security checkpoints,” he said. “You said they were on the radio. Where’s the closest one?”
Hanscomb nodded. “Yes, right, there was … I don’t know; I’m trying to…” She started trembling, tears starting again, glancing back and forth between them.
“Lenox Hill Hospital,” Hawke said. “I heard it on the radio. That’s the closest one to where we are.”
Vasco looked at Hanscomb, who nodded again. “I … think that’s right,” she said. “It’s hard to remember. Everything was so crazy.”
A noise from behind the closed inner doors made them all freeze. Someone was inside.
Before Hawke could say a word, Price turned the handles, swinging the doors wide.
* * *
The main sanctuary was deep and filled with flitting shadows, paneled in dark wood and carpeted with a deep red Berber, with rows of simple pews marching in straight lines toward the reader’s platform and curtain that hid the Torah Ark. Low ropes ran along inset portions of the walls, and narrow vertical lines of windows let in a little watery light. Candles flickered from candelabras on both sides of the bimah, where a group of people had gathered.
A man was talking in a low voice; Hawke thought it might be a reading from the Torah. The man wore a tallith draped over his shoulders. None of the people acknowledged their arrival.
Vasco spread his arms out and walked up the aisle. “Hello!” he shouted. “You know what’s going on outside? Wake up, people. We’re all looking down the barrel of a gun! You want to wait around until it goes off?”
The words were explosive in the quiet room. But the small group at the front didn’t seem to react, the man in front of them still droning on as if nobody had spoken. Vasco continued up the aisle, wheeling around and walking backward for a moment, then spinning to face the front again, arms still spread wide: a welcoming, open gesture sharply at odds with the barely contained rage held in his body and quivering voice.
“Hey,” Vasco said. “Are you people deaf? Or just stupid?”
He’s going to lose it, Hawke thought again, and he wondered how it would come, an all-out lumbering assault or a more carefully designed, surgical attack.
A man stepped abruptly in front of Vasco just before he reached the front. The man was short, bespectacled, wearing a kippah, his olive skin partially hidden by a thick black beard. He held a copy of the Torah in his hands. Uh-oh, Hawke thought.
“I’m sorry, this is a house of God,” the man said. “Please be respectful—”
Vasco didn’t even slow down, just shouldered past the man on his way to the bimah. “Who’s in charge?” Vasco said, addressing the man in the tallith. “You? This your temple?”
Hawke moved down the aisle, following the action. He saw the small group part and turn as the man sighed slightly, set down his readings and finally looked at Vasco, like a patient father at an interrupting child. Candlelight flickered across his face. “I have come here to welcome anyone who feels the need to pray,” he said. “The house of worship belongs to no one except God.”
“In case you haven’t noticed,” Vasco said, gesturing toward the front doors, “while you’re all sitting in here staring at the Torah, the world is going to hell, and that includes this place. You might want to consider finding an escape route.”
“God will decide who lives and who dies,” the rabbi said. He was taller than the rest, in his fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair cropped short and a close beard streaked with gray. His voice was calm, but it held a commanding power that filled the large room.
“When Gog Umagog arrives,” the man who had stepped in front of Vasco said, “we must repent and pray and release our fears, give ourselves to God. Redemption will come to those who do.”
“Gog what?” Vasco was smiling now, but his face looked pained, like he was humoring a mental deficient.
“The war to end all wars,” the rabbi said. “Armageddon. The end of days.” Several others murmured in agreement. “The Ba’al Shem Tov teaches us to believe with complete faith, so that we may find joy and peace. Our redemption is at hand along with the coming of the Mashiach, and we shall be received with kindness and mercy.”
As Vasco got closer, the men around the reader’s platform shifted to form a half circle in front of the rabbi. Hawke sensed it was done passively, purely for protection, but it punctuated the divide between the two groups. Us against them.
Vasco stopped suddenly, eyeing them all as if discovering a threat. “Armageddon, huh?” he said. “The Mashiach? I thought Jews didn’t believe in Jesus.”
The murmuring grew louder, several others shaking their heads, but the rabbi didn’t seem to mind. “Our Mashiach is not the Christian Messiah,” he said. “But the coming of a savior, one who will lead the way to heaven for those who believe, is understood by anyone who has heard the power of prayer, who understands redemption.” He looked around at the people gathered before him. “That time has come.”
“Give it a rest,” Vasco said. “We’re dealing with terrorists, and people are dying outside, and they’re going to start dying in here.”
“Our world has finally reached its end, our hubris, our pursuit of power before God, our worship of progress at any cost.”
“What the hell are you talking about—”
“You haven’t seen what’s happening out there? You haven’t noticed that the things attacking us are all of our own making? They are using our own creations against us.”
“Whatever’s going on has human beings on the other end of it, I can promise you that,” Vasco said. “They want to scare the shit out of us; that’s the goal. We need a plan to get out of the city, find some open space.”
The rabbi studied him for a moment, as if considering whether to squash a bug under his foot. “There is no plan,” he said. “Not one for us to make, anyway.”
“What about the people who are still out there?” Sarah Hanscomb had come up behind Vasco and Hawke. “My husband is a good man,” she said. Hawke thought of Bluetooth and his uncle who had skipped the country after destroying Hawke’s parents’ lives, leaving nothing but ruin in his wake. “He … he might be hurt; he might need help. Don’t you have anyone? Loved ones who are missing?”
She looked around at the people watching her. The rabbi gestured for her to move aside. “Are you hurt?” he said, looking at Price, who had remained near the door. In the shadows, the blood on his shirt looked black.
“I’m okay,” Price said. “The friend who bled out all over me is not.”
A woman who stood at the front, her head covered, her body draped in a modest floor-length dress, spoke up. “Maybe we should talk about this,” she said, her voice soft but clear. “They may have news. There’s no harm in that.”
For the first time, the rabbi seemed off balance. “No harm?” he said, his voice cracking slightly. “Ana, you surprise me. There is great harm in letting in those who come from a dying world, who bring that stain with them. If they enter our sacred space with no fear, if they embrace their faith and accept the Mashiach with kindness, they are welcome. If not…” He waved a hand toward the door. “They must leave us.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” Vasco said.
“What ab
out Mother?” the woman said, ignoring him. She was younger than Hawke first thought, as he caught a glimpse of her face. Maybe late teens or early twenties.
“She made her choice,” the rabbi said. His slightly furrowed brow had relaxed again, smooth and clear.
“We don’t know that,” the woman said, edging closer to him. “She wasn’t home. She didn’t know where we’d go—”
“Enough, Ana.” The man looked at her, and the woman stopped speaking abruptly. “These people don’t need to hear about our personal lives. None of that’s important anymore.” He gestured at the open space, toward the outside walls. “It doesn’t matter where we are when the time comes. What matters is our expression of faith and our willingness to accept God’s will.”
“This isn’t your building,” Vasco said. He looked like someone who had just figured out a riddle. “You’re squatters, am I right? Came here and took over, just like that?”
The rabbi sighed again, like he had before, the sound of a patient person dealing with someone unstable, a nuisance he’d rather forget. “This house belongs to no man,” he said. “Now, if you’ll allow us to return to our prayers—”
“We’ve got as much a right to be here as you do,” Vasco said. “Who the fuck are you to say otherwise?”
The rabbi stared daggers, and Hawke saw something behind his calm demeanor, something unbalanced and furious—a man not used to having his authority questioned, and one who might react in unexpected ways.
“Profanity has no place in a house of God,” he said. “Please leave us to our prayers.”
As Vasco shook his head, smiling again in a way that was anything but friendly, Hawke’s cell phone chirped in his pocket. Momentarily stunned, he stepped away and slipped back toward the entrance to the building and into a deeper darkness, passing Young and Weller, who seemed to be coming around. The phone had been bricked back in the Conn.ect office, completely dead. How could it be back on now? Hawke turned his back to the others and dug it out with trembling fingers, hoping for something from Robin, anything that would reassure him she was okay.
The message was from Rick, the words bright and clear on his screen: I LIED. I AM ADMIRAL DOE.
CHAPTER TWELVE
12:10 P.M.
HAWKE STARED AT THE PHONE, his head spinning. How had it booted itself up again and come to life? He was certain it had been bricked. Devices didn’t just reanimate themselves.
Maybe Rick had done it somehow, sent Hawke a worm that worked in this way. But why would Rick text him now, on an unsecured line, to admit to something like this? During their chat session Rick had begged Hawke to help him find out who Doe was and claimed he was being set up.
It made no sense.
A sudden buzz of opportunity lit him up like a live wire. Use this chance. He hit the home button, trying to get to the keypad to call Robin. Nothing happened; the phone wouldn’t respond. It seemed to be locked into the texting program but wouldn’t allow him to get to his other contacts or do anything other than respond to Rick’s message.
Hawke cursed and resisted the urge to throw the phone across the room. He typed a response: Need to get a message to Robin.
He waited, gripping the phone so hard his fingers started to ache. Maybe Rick had no other choice; maybe he’d gotten in far deeper than he expected and needed help and wanted to come clean. But if he and Anonymous were involved with what was happening now, then the shit had truly hit the fan and Hawke would have to admit that he didn’t know Rick anymore and maybe never had. Whatever else the man was, whether the steps he had taken were right or wrong, his heart had always been in the right place, his motivations pure and simple and closely aligned with Hawke’s own. Use the tools at hand to expose corruption, level the playing field. Tear down the walls that keep people from the truth; empower others to make their own choices. Rick had always said that they were living in one of the most exciting times in history, and he saw himself as a comic-book hero fighting injustice. Hawke knew it wasn’t that simple, that there were other motivations, purely selfish. There was the challenge of each project they took on—clicking the puzzle pieces together to see if they fit. And the challenge to authority.
But whatever Rick was into now, it wasn’t about empowering people, or making the world a better, fairer, more purely democratic place. This was about anarchy and destruction and pain. Rick had spent over a year in jail, and maybe that had changed him. But Hawke couldn’t imagine reconciling the man he knew with the person who was behind the events today. And besides, even if Anonymous had become a much more malignant and powerful network while Hawke had been away, it was difficult to believe they were capable of the kind of comprehensive and overwhelming attack that was going on now. The entire structure of the group was built upon freedom, anonymity, individuality. It was one thing to bring enough people together for a short period of time to take down a few servers. But how could they gather the resources and power to pull this off?
His phone chirped. NO MESSAGES. WE ARE MAKING A STATEMENT. TIRED OF WAITING FOR EVERYONE ELSE TO ACT.
Who?
US. THE COLLECTIVE. IT DOES NOT MATTER.
Hawke typed: What about my family? Are they in danger?
THE WORLD IS IN DANGER.
What are you doing now?
NOT YOUR CONCERN ANYMORE. OPERATION GLOBAL BLACKOUT CANNOT BE STOPPED. IT IS GOING TO GET WORSE. GET TO A CHECKPOINT. YOU WILL BE SAFE THERE. WE WILL NOT TOUCH THEM.
Hawke hesitated, overwhelmed, every nerve in his body singing, wondering what to say, how to handle it. You don’t want this. This isn’t you.
THINGS CHANGE. PEOPLE CHANGE.
I don’t believe you.
There was no answer for a long moment, and then, without warning, the screen shivered and blinked, and suddenly Hawke was staring at himself through the lens of his camera, his face caught between the shadows and flickering candlelight. There was something threatening about the act, as if he was being observed by a voyeur, the camera’s eye making some kind of point. There was nowhere to hide. His own device had been commandeered and turned against him.
I SEE YOU.
As Hawke watched himself on the screen, hypnotized by the image, someone came at him from the side with a bear hug, low and hard. His phone was wrenched from his grasp. He staggered right, barely kept his feet with a hand on the back of a pew.
He turned to find Weller standing next to him, breathing fast. “You’re going to get us killed,” Weller said. Damaged during the near collision with the SUV, Weller’s glasses sat askew on his nose, giving him an unbalanced, slightly crazed look. He glanced down at the phone, the screen still on, his face filled with an emotion that appeared to be half sadness, half fury, and threw it to the floor, stomping down with a foot as the glass crunched, grinding it into pieces.
Stunned for a moment, and then enraged beyond all understanding, Hawke felt the world go gray as blood thumped behind his eyes. He grappled with the other man with a ferocity he hadn’t known he possessed. Weller’s hands clawed at Hawke’s face as they went to the floor like animals fighting in a back alley. Time seemed to slip away before he began to come back to himself and realized Weller was grunting something at him as they rolled together.
“It’s … not … who you think—”
As abruptly as the fight had begun, it was over. Weller rolled away as Hawke lay on his back, chest heaving, his face wet. “It’s not who you think!” Weller shouted, his voice raw as he regained his feet and collected his glasses from beneath a nearby pew and setting them on his face, where they tilted even farther askew. One lens was cracked now, reflecting the candlelight in two fractured planes, and the lump on Weller’s forehead from hitting it against the curb was purple and swollen like an egg. He looked around at the rest of the group. Everyone had remained frozen in place, staring at him like he’d lost his mind.
Hawke touched his face, his hand coming away red. Weller had clawed him pretty hard, and the blood was mixed with his own tears. He felt somet
hing digging into his back and realized it was the remains of his shattered phone.
He got to his feet. “What do you mean, it’s not who I think?”
“It’s not your wife, your friend, your family, on the other end of that text message. Whoever you think it is, it’s not them.”
“How the hell would you know that?”
Weller turned away without answering. Everyone had stopped to watch the spectacle, even the rabbi and those at the front, who had gathered closer together with the others from the pews, forming a tight group around the prayer table. “Anyone else with a phone?” Weller said to the silent room. “Destroy them. Do it now. It doesn’t matter if they’re working or not.”
The look on Weller’s face was so intense and so radiant, Hawke took a step back like it was a communicable disease. Maybe the bump to the head had scrambled Weller up worse than anyone had thought. Or maybe this was more of the paranoia he’d shown in his office earlier.
A glance passed between Weller and Young, and she pulled her own phone from her pocket, placed it on the floor and stamped down, cracking the glass, grinding it under her heel.
Vasco, who had come halfway down the aisle, took his own phone out. “We can deactivate the GPS,” he said. “We might still be able to use them—”
“Do it,” Weller said, his voice holding an edge. “I can’t tell you how dangerous this is. Do it now.”
The two men watched each other for a long moment; then Vasco shrugged and glanced away. He tossed the phone on the floor, crushing it with his foot, making a show out of the process, taking his time.
“You got it, boss,” he said. “Anything you say. It’s dead anyway.”
“There are chips inside,” Weller said to the rabbi’s group. “Your phones can be operated remotely. They can be used to track your location.”
The room was electric. Hawke felt something happening here, words unspoken and hanging like ghosts, things hidden just out of sight. Weller knew something important, and he held people’s attention like a politician at a rally.
