The Invisible (15 page)

I can fight it
is my last coherent thought before I’m engulfed entirely in the cloud of noxious pink spewing up from the canisters on the floor. I cover my mouth and nose with my hands, but it’s too late. I’ve already inhaled enough for the giggle gas to do its job. It tastes of cotton candy and gasoline and pure horror.

My feet feel as if they’re glued to the ground, and a moment later I’m convulsing with painful laughter, each spasm of it hitting so hard it hurts my rib cage.

HA HA HA HA HA.

The sound of it echoes all around me. Everyone’s faces twisted, bodies shaking.

HEE HEE HEE HEE.

HA HA HA.

Staccato laughter like machine-gun fire fills the air, spilling from hundreds of mouths. So much hysterical laughter, it blends together until it sounds like a collective wail of pain. I laugh so hard my stomach convulses to the point of cramping. The feeling is violent and unstoppable.

Tears begin to stream down my face. My vision blurs with the pink smoke, and the room becomes a fun-house mirror, everyone distorted and elongated, the whole room tilted and bending toward the corners, the room stretched taut like a drum.

The sound of my own forced, painful HA HA HAs scrambles in my ears, messing with my cerebral cortex, my inner ear, my center of gravity, and then I realize I’m falling over from it.

I fall to my knees, my shoulders shaking, unable to fight the gas’s hold on me.

Using every ounce of strength I have left, I manage to turn my head slightly. Behind me and to my right, Ford is bent over, his face twisted, both scary and scared, a violent shade of red. He is frozen where he stands. I can’t find my parents in the crowd—all I see are dressed-up people convulsing, doubled over, mouths open wide as if on hinges, howling, shrieking, all of whom appear to be dying with laughter.

And to my horror I see they’ve somehow got the video running again. This time the projection is faint and much smaller, but the audio is loud.

“Until you start leveling the playing field, we’re going to borrow your most valuable possessions,” the voice on the video drones.

Where are the cater-waiters? I’ve lost sight of them. Pink gas keeps billowing up from the floors, but I force myself up, make my knees unlock and support my weight again. I take a huge gulp of air through my hands and nearly pass out from the painful giggles it produces, but manage to stay upright.

“We want a hundred million dollars donated to the South Side in the next forty-eight hours. And every day after that, if you don’t pay up”—the computer-altered voice pauses just as a guffaw rocks through me, nearly sending me to the floor again—“one of those valuable possessions will be destroyed.”

I can hold my breath longer than most people. I can push through this, I tell myself, where others cannot.

My heart punching my ribs, I lift my feet step by agonizing step and slowly move out of the crowded middle of the ballroom, toward the edge of the convulsing, shrieking crowd, tears streaming down my face, agonizing laughter still ricocheting through my body.

As I drag my feet along, I kick dozens of broken champagne flutes, their stems snapped when they were dropped.

And in the back of the room, near the farthest exit, I see the precious possessions. A small group of kids my age and younger, maybe eight or nine of them, are convulsing with laughter, their faces twisted in agony, and simultaneously being dragged across the ballroom by six cater-waiters, each of them wearing hoods fitted with plastic breathing apparatuses, tubes springing out in all directions.
No no no.
I’m too far away still to see who the kids are, but if they’re here at this party, they are likely to be children of important families.
Valuable possessions.
Their bodies limp and still convulsing as they’re dragged by their armpits across the marble floor.

There is a hundred feet between me and them, and I’m still holding my breath.
Go
, I order myself.
Push.

It feels like walking with thousand-pound weights on each leg, but I do it.

I drag my legs toward the back of the room, stars appearing in my vision because of lack of oxygen. I do not dare to breathe for fear of inhaling more gas.

I’m seventy feet away, then fifty, then—when nearly all of them are out the door—thirty. Most of the kids still wear their masquerade masks, but a few do not. A couple of them look really young and small. I recognize Celestial Deal, a junior at my school, and my heart twists when I spot a little kid, born of famous parents: Jasper Cawl. He can’t be much older than ten. He’s so small and delicate, it looks like his arms are going to snap the way they’re pulling him. And then I spot Will. He’s big and strong at six foot two and 190 pounds, and two aproned waiters drag him across the floor as he kicks in what must be agonizing slow motion, crying out in pain that sounds like laughter.

Just before the masked waiters drag him out the door, his eyes meet mine. Though tears stream from them, they are ablaze with something like horror and something else, too. Something like
help me.
Or
forgive me.

I stagger forward, my vision darkening from all sides, trying as hard as I can to reach them on the other side of the room. I take a tiny breath of air and push on, my reflexes diminished from the gas. When I get to the door a minute later, all traces of the kids are gone. I breathe more freely in the hallway, a few loose
ha
-
ha
s still working their way through my cerebral cortex as I listen for them and run silently past eight burly guards passed out in a row on the floor, their hands bound tightly with white plastic zip-ties.

I move through gallery after gallery, running in a slow-motion zigzag through marble sculptures from Greek antiquity, beautiful headless women and boys, men with no arms, lovers entwined.

Where are they? Why can’t I run properly?

Finally I drag myself to the room that opens up to the scar line of the museum. It almost looks like an art installation, with all the black ash flung against the walls and ceiling and the wall at the end missing, covered instead by a thin gray tarp flapping at the corners, not quite concealing the seam of the bomb site, where wires and metal studs stick out in all directions, all of it coated in a thin layer of drywall dust.

I dash to the tarp and pull it back, my breath held. In the dark night, there is absolutely nobody. Not a trace of the kids or the masked waiters. Not a trace, even, of their screams.

It’s almost dawn, and he’s been tossing and turning for hours. Finally he gets out of bed, moves to the window. The view of Exurbia in the dust-gray night—the seven stars he can count in the sky where the city lights are dimmer—it feels like a promise.

He turns away, assesses the darkened space. It’s only four rooms—living, bed, kitchen, bath—but for now it’s all they need. Just outside the city, before the winding lanes and farmland of Exurbia open up, there are two massive C-shaped brick apartment buildings with intermittent heat, brown water pouring from their faucets that needs to be boiled for fifteen minutes before it’s drinkable. There are holes in the plaster ceiling that leak every time the upstairs neighbors take a bath, and the floors are so full of splinters, it’s best to wear socks.

But for now, it’s a roof over their heads.

She’s furnished the place with rugs she dragged here from other parts of the city, chairs she found on curbs on trash day. Before her money ran out, she splurged on a love seat. A few pots and pans.

He looks at the clock: 4:06
A.M.
Moves his gaze to her, asleep in their bed. Her newly shortened hair springing up in all directions.

They’ve been living together for eight months. He’s found a job down by the river, hauling goods delivered by boat onto the docks. He goes out less and less at night. The riots he’s inspired have been gathering momentum all on their own. People demanding safety, fair treatment, jobs. He’s still in the news all the time, even though he now rounds up what’s left of the criminal element on the streets at night only about twice a month.

Because the spark he lit is spreading through the city, all by itself. They both hope it builds to a blaze. Maybe then the riots will lead to something.

His thoughts return to his usual worries. They need to move farther out. Live off the land. Get away from the city altogether. It’s not just him who’s got a reward on his head. It’s her, too. Though in her case, she’s wanted alive.

When she finally told her parents about them, it didn’t go well. Her father threatened to send her to boarding school on another continent if she didn’t end it. She’d come to him the night it happened, eyes swollen shut from crying. “I’m never going back,” she said. “This is it now; it’s just going to be us. We can do whatever we want.” That was two apartments ago, with the Bridge of Brotherhood twinkling out the window.

“He’ll come looking for you,” he’d said.

She nodded. “They will. We need to get farther away.”

And so they landed here. Where their neighbors mostly speak no English. Where people fight late into the night, where they can hear grown women and babies crying through the heating pipe in the bathroom. Where everyone is too busy trying to get by to suspect Regina Fleet is in their midst. Nobody here seems to notice the girl whose father offered a cool million for her safe return, or the boy the Syndicate will pay several hundred thousand for, dead or alive.

She’s dyed her hair now, to disguise herself. It’s blue-black and short, cut like a boy’s. Almost as short as his. She’s become a different person, almost. Going to the dusty marketplace ten blocks away, carrying her meager, careful purchases back and making them into meals that stretch every dime. She’s learned from Selina, a woman on the seventh floor, to boil dried beans with a bit of meat, to cook rice with spices so tasty you’d never know it was prepared by a girl who was raised with a full-time cook.

He looks out the window again, feeling the pull of motion, wanting to get outside and move around to calm down. In an hour, it’ll be time to leave for the docks. No point in lying back down under the six thin blankets they’ve scrounged up. It’s warm enough in here at night if you arrange them just right, the heaviest on top. A leaden worry sits on his chest. Makes it hard to breathe.

Calm down
, he tells himself.
Things are fine. They’ll get better. You’ll figure something out.
This is what he tells himself whenever he can’t sleep, which happens often lately. He repeats it over and over, like counting sheep.

Silently, he slips on his jacket, grabs his wallet off the kitchen counter. He’ll run to the outdoor market, he decides, where they’re likely just setting up before dawn. He’ll pick up milk and fresh rolls. Maybe come home with a treat. Something that will make her smile. When she’s in a good mood, he’ll broach the subject of their leaving here again. They need to make a plan, to get out before something goes wrong.

With a price on both their heads, this is no way to live.

He opens the door, tiptoes out, closes and locks it from the other side.
Cherries
, he thinks. If he can find some, that’s what he’ll get.

Regina wakes to the shuffling of feet in the hall. A heavy tread. Someone paused just outside the door. Instantly, she’s alert. They’ve come for him. Today is the day the Syndicate finally catches up to them and tries to take him out. She reaches out in the dark to wake him, but there’s just blankets there, a cold pillow. Where is he? She looks at the clock. It’s 4:53
A.M.
Has he left early for the docks?

She’s up like a shot, racing barefoot to the bathroom. Empty. She checks the rest of the tiny apartment. The meager alcove. Absurdly, in desperation, she even checks the coat closet.

He’s not here.

What should she do? She stares at the door, frantic. Then she moves toward it as silently as possible, terrified but suddenly filled with resolve. She needs to be the protector now.

If the Syndicate breaks in looking for him and they find what’s in here, they’ll use it as bait for him. God knows what they’d do. Before she can even process what she’s doing, she darts to the pile of dirty clothes at the foot of the bed, throws on whatever she finds over her nightgown. His blue sweatshirt. A pair of his pants. Then she goes to the spot at the side of the mattress where he’s carved out a compartment. She digs around inside, her fingers groping in the dark. There is cash here, a small stack of bills that is everything they have. And then her fingers graze what she’s been looking for: the cool metal of the gun muzzle. She digs deeper, pulls the gun out, then finds the second gun behind it. Which means that wherever he is, he’s unarmed.

She yanks them both from the mattress, pulling out some batting in the process. Her hands are shaking so badly, she’s not sure how she’ll be able to shoot.

She knows where he keeps ammunition, in the drawer in the kitchen. She darts barefoot toward it, his jeans catching twice on the splintered wood. From the coatrack by the door, she snatches a baseball cap and puts it on. Anything to look intimidating, to feel like someone other than herself.

She moves to the kitchen drawer, where she finds a box of ammo behind the scissors and a bunch of plastic bags. She slams the cartridges down into the guns, first one, then the other. Her hands shake worse than ever. She holds her breath and listens. The door handle rattles, as if the person on the other side is testing it. If they get it open, she will fire. It’s that simple. The calculus is clear. Everything that matters to her is on this side of the door. She lives with a man who has a price on his head. She cannot take chances.

As quietly as she can, she tilts the dining table up onto its side to make a barricade. She ducks behind it, rests the gun muzzle on the edge of the table, and aims it at the door.
Stop shaking
, she orders herself.
You have to do this. You only stand a chance if you shoot first.

There’s a creeping silence now, no more jiggling of the knob. Maybe they’ve given up and gone away.

But then the doorknob starts not just to jiggle but to turn. She hears the bolts sink into place.