Something sailed high over the mob and smashed down on the bonnet of the cop car. Flames licked across the paintwork and a roar went up. Violet turned away and ran along the side of the mob, weaving to avoid colliding with the stragglers milling around the edges. She dodged a burning rubbish bin and a pile of splintered glass that had been a shop window. Camera flashes were bursting out white light, people were shouting, and she heard a woman screaming, as if in terrible pain, but Violet kept moving, did not slow down; she had to get back home, she had to get that phone and call the club and let them know.
As she neared the hotel she saw Kev, an immense hulk marooned on the footpath with his arms crossed over his belly; around him stood a huddle of old guys from Legends, all of them craning their necks. Only then did she see the orange glow of the fire.
The blaze was consuming the old boarding house next door. Flames leaped up the building's blackened face and slithered into the sky, and the foyer glowed orange like the throat of an incinerator. As she drew closer she heard the sound of the fire, a low, dry roar punctuated by loud cracks, and its heat pressed against her skin. Firemen were wrestling a hose into place and herding onlookers back from the flames.
The birds, thought Violet: the birds will all get burned to death. She ran past Kev and the old guys, straight for the door of the hotel.
âViolet!' Kev yelled after her. âDon't go in there!'
She shoved the door open, kicked her shoes off and took the stairs three at a time, scampering up twelve flights without effort; then she hammered barefoot up the metal staircase, ducked through the sagging wires, pushed open the door and ran out onto the roof.
The heat hit her first, but it was the sight of the fire that stopped her dead: the old boarding house loomed overhead, flames snaking from its broken windows and racing up the walls, gobbling at the wooden structure like a mass of hungry tongues. Embers speckled the sky, swirling upwards in the heat draughts. The gap between the two buildings was a few short metres, and the whole rooftop was bathed in a surreal glow. Hot air pressed against her skin.
She forced herself to look away and ran to the birdcage. The poor creatures were flapping against the mesh in panic, trying to escape the heat, but none seemed sick or hurt. She yanked the door open, ducked inside the cage, and shooed every last one of them out into the night.
The birds scattered upward, into the darkness, away from the fire. That's when she saw him, the man at the window of the burning building next door: a dark outline with the hot glare of flames behind him, his arms raised, half leaning out the window, his mouth a terrified black zero in his face. She knew he was screaming, but the roar of the fire had blanketed out any other sound. He was looking right at her, pleading, but there was no time to do anything. With a loud crack, a chunk of timber fell from above and shattered on the roof nearby, sending sparks skittering over her feet, then a plume of water arced over her, spattering and sizzling as it landed.
As she made a run for the door, a siren rang out â a long, slow, urgent wail that undulated mournfully, like the song of some disaster. Violet was halfway down the third flight of steps when the lights in the hotel abruptly cut out. The stairs beneath her seemed to disappear as she lost her footing and fell forward into empty space. The last sound she heard was her own voice screaming.
[Northern border, Commerce Zone: Milk | riot squad officers | unidentified dissidents]
When the call comes through, Milk is lost to everything, dozing on the couch. Jolted awake, he scrabbles for the phone.
âMr Dabrowski?' A man's voice, polite but authoritative.
âWho's this?' Milk's response is curt, almost rude.
The man does not seem ruffled. âI'm calling from the minister's office. We have a level-nine security situation.'
Milk now remembers he's on standby: they told him to keep the next twenty-four hours free.
The man is still talking. âI'm dispatching a vehicle to collect you. How soon can you be ready?'
Milk looks around him blearily; in a corner of the lounge room his gear sits in a neat pile, all packed, everything prepped. âI'm ready now,' he says.
âExcellent,' the voice replies. âThe car will be there in fifteen minutes.'
As Milk double-checks his pockets, he realises the man has not even asked where he is.
The government vehicle speeds through the streets, in the wake of a cop car clearing the way ahead, its lights and siren whirling. The driver looks nervous and does not speak to Milk. The moment he arrives at the incident scene he realises the set-up is inadequate, a last-minute job, and his stomach takes a nervous lurch. His technical crew is nowhere in sight. Instead he is met by a group of silent security guards who scan his ID, lead him through the swarm of cops and military personnel, and usher him towards the crane, up the ladder to the sky-pod.
His capsule wobbles when he shifts in his seat. If the tip-off was correct, he is directly above the confrontation zone where protesters and police are due to clash. At the back of his mind lurks a reprimand: he should not be here. He feels like a trespasser; no, suspended in this transparent capsule, he feels like a piece of bait dangling on a hook. Down below, the riot squad is lined up in neat rows behind the barricades, floodlights winking off their helmets. A group of soldiers dressed in khaki are guiding the squat body of the air cannon forward. It is an ugly thing, some obscene bug from a war zone, its barrel poking over the barricade like a proboscis. It swivels back and forth, shaking its head âno', then falls still, facing the empty street.
When the wail of the siren first cuts the night air, he feels his throat close up. That sound signals a civil emergency; it means things are already going very wrong. He tries messaging control to shut it off, but there is no response: control has fallen silent. The last thing he heard was that the protesters were on their way, close to four hundred of them, armed with Molotovs and baseball bats. They'd already smashed shop windows and set a police car alight with the occupants inside.
Check the controls
, he thinks.
Stay calm
. But he's been checking and re-checking them for half an hour. The floodlights rule out any chance of softening the scene with visuals. He's infused the squadron below with a scent that focuses concentration, but there isn't much else he can do for now, and the cops are not the ones he has been told to tune. All he can do is wait. What his nerves are urging him to do is slip back down the ladder, edge through the police lines, and vanish into the backstreets. But there are AirDrones hovering at the edge of his vision, and his gut tells him the hatch at the bottom of the ladder is locked. He can see a line of security guards down there, facing outward, blocking access to the sky-pod. Or blocking his way out. Trapped like a bug.
Milk shuts his eyes and concentrates on breathing, tries to slow his heart. Tries to be there but not there, folding his awareness inward, seeking out a corner of himself; a place to withdraw to, where he cannot be found. It doesn't last long: a minute at most, perhaps just a few seconds. Not long enough.
He hears the crowd before he sees it, the noise welling up over the howl of the siren: a ragged chant, an ugly call and response with an undertone that sounds more machine than human. The mob boils into view and dread shoots through him, the taste of metal in his mouth. A solid jam of bodies clad in black, anonymous, uncountable; a mass ruled by its own momentum, sprawling forward in waves that keep on coming.
Milk sits there frozen and watches disaster roll towards him. For a moment he cannot move, can barely breathe, just wants to disappear. But that isn't an option: only a coward would sit there and do nothing. He hones in on the front line of the crowd and sends out a low pulse of soothing sound, a tranquillising ripple just below the threshold of awareness, but the chaos of the mob does not change. He dials it up a few decibels, praying for a shift in mood, but the herd keeps coming. He hits them with an olfactory sedative, Purple Haze, a heavy calming scent that has never failed him once, but this time it has no effect. There is a slight breeze too, and the aroma is drifting back into the squadron of cops and soldiers down below.
The siren, still blaring out its note of panic, rings through the mass of bodies like a command to charge. They keep surging forward. Those near the front are screaming abuse at the cops, who stand motionless in lines behind their riot shields. Milk's breathing is shallow and quick with fright. There is no art in this situation. There is nothing he can do. His hands flap over the controls and land on the scent-box coordinates. Load up the one thing he hasn't tried yet: the hope variant. He turns a dial and sends it flooding into the melee below.
The rioters have almost reached the barricade when someone hurls the first petrol bomb. It sails above the black-clad mass, over the barricade, and lands squarely on a cop, glancing off his plastic shield. The glass does not break but within seconds the riot squad has turned the air cannon on the crowd. Bodies are mown down like weeds, toppled by the blast of air from the swinging barrel. Bodies fall on bodies, a human pile-up, a mess of twisted torsos and feebly thrashing limbs. Milk can hear the screaming from up here.
The second Molotov is hurled from somewhere near the crowd's far edge. It sails in a high arc, smashes down on the bitumen directly beneath Milk, and bursts neatly into flames. With a motion that is almost elegant, the cannon swings around and blasts out a throatful of air.
Like a flower unfurling on sped-up film, the fireball gathers and blooms into the night sky.
[South-west Commerce Zone/Interzone: TALLY | multiple unidentified citizens]
Tally had been in the department store far too long, she knew that, but it was like she'd fallen into some kind of trance. It was another world in here, a peaceful dimension where time hung suspended in a glaze of calm lighting and beautiful smells. This was her second stink-bomb job, but she almost didn't want to smash the putrid capsule and wreck the whole thing, so she was putting it off. Slowly she wandered from floor to floor, gazing at the perfect piles of scented soap, the mirrored picture frames and silk dresses, the feathered hats and walls of pastel-hued cosmetics.
It was easier to be in here, she thought, than out in the streets facing up to her growing sense of hopelessness, or sitting back in their room staring at a blank page in her notebook.
My room
, she corrected herself,
it's just my room now
, and felt her throat closing up like she was going to cry. She swallowed hard and stared at a display of sequinned handbags until the feeling passed. She must not be afraid: if she started to let herself be afraid now there was no telling where it would end. Catching her reflection in a mirror she gave herself a stern glare. She looked different, she noted again: taller, older, hair gone long and curly. Softer in the face but something hard about the eyes â she looked like some other girl, no longer a frightened kid. That's how it looked from the outside, anyway.
On the way here, she'd walked past the electronics shop with all the TVs and paused to watch the screens for a moment: planes landing on tarmac, convoys of cars with dark windows, men shaking hands and flashbulbs popping, police lined up in rows. Some sort of politics thing, she guessed. The Chinese man behind the counter had glanced up at her once without interest, then went back to his paperwork.
Not so dirty now
, she thought, scowling at his profile.
She joined a group of women gathered around a display stand that was giving out free hand-cream samples. She'd wait a while before she dropped the stink bomb. It couldn't hurt to stay in here a bit longer.
Tally had only just escaped the store when she heard the siren well up and fill the city. The blare of it gave her a fright â she'd suspected a security guard in the perfume section had been following her â but she fought the urge to run. Moz said running only raised suspicions: if you made it safely out of the shop, the guards weren't allowed to grab you. Her stink bomb had caused a mass exodus anyway, propelling the late-night shoppers outside, faces screwed up in disgust. She'd made sure her own expression echoed theirs: it wasn't hard, the stuff really stunk, like the smell of rotting meat.
But out here there were police everywhere. It made her jumpy, seeing their uniforms and yellow safety vests, the way they patrolled around in groups of four, their tank-like cars with the lights on top.
Don't freak out
, she told herself.
They're not looking for you
. It had just been a little stink bomb, no big deal: nothing to get paranoid about.
Then she saw the paddy wagon. Some cops were shoving a scruffy guy inside, his wrists cuffed tight behind his back. Beyond him, in the vehicle's dim interior, she could see other shapes, an arm and a leg, someone crouched on the floor. They must be doing a sweep, picking up undocs. This was bad: she had to get out of the Commerce Zone.
Keep your head down
, Blue had always told her.
Don't make eye contact with cops, just keep walking.
She stared at her feet then remembered: she was wearing a posh school uniform, complete with stupid hat. Surely they wouldn't pick her up, not dressed like this.
The cop was on her before she'd even seen him. Tally held her breath as she looked into his face; he was saying something to her, waving his arms about like he was doing breaststroke. âGo back,' he was shouting over the blare of the siren. âYou can't get through this way. There's been a situation up there, the city's cordoned off.'