Blackfish City(73)

“Thank you,” she whispered, her voice more human than Ankit had ever heard it.

“Hey,” Ankit said, uncertainly. “Hey.”

“I’m so scared,” she whispered.

“You shouldn’t be,” Ankit said. So am I. “Here is where you’re safest.” Her boss’s arms didn’t loosen. “I’ll stay with you. Okay? For a little while?”

Fyodorovna nodded gratefully.

Ankit went to the window. They were eighteen stories up. Down below, it looked like any other day in Qaanaaq. Fyodorovna poured out two glasses of water from the pitcher. Fyodorovna told her to make sure to call this person, file this document, all of which Ankit was already planning to do, and could not focus on. All she could think about was the chaos on its way, how helpless she was without her implant, the hundred million ways this could go down wrong.

She closed her eyes and she was standing in the wind. Giddy. Happy. A tiny helpless unstoppable primate. None of the million things that had made her sad or scared an instant ago had any meaning, anymore.

“What’s that?” her boss said suddenly.

Ankit opened her eyes and came crashing back into her own body, her own life. Her monkey’s wild joyous freedom was gone. She ached for it. Had to fight to keep from shutting her eyes again.

“What’s what?”

Ankit heard nothing. And then she realized—that was the problem. Something you almost never heard in Qaanaaq. Silence.

“The heat,” Fyodorovna said, getting up and putting her hands in front of the vents. “It stopped.”

All her life, everywhere she went, Ankit had been hearing the low rumble and purr and hiss of the geothermals. And now there was nothing.

“Perfectly normal,” she said, but she could see that Fyodorovna was not convinced.

Time passed. An hour, two? There was no voice in her ear telling her what time it was.

The plan was idiotic. They were idiotic. All of them. How could they not have anticipated that the implants would get pulsed, that they wouldn’t be able to communicate through this crucial phase?

A shout from the hallway. More shouting in the distance.

People are panicking. Health’s response software will be collating all this information, plotting out scenarios, issuing a decision.

“You said I’d be safe here,” her boss said, sniffling.

“And you are.”

“Not safe from freezing to death.”

“Shhhh,” Ankit said, and sat on the bed beside her. Took a blanket and draped it over her shoulders. Fyodorovna pulled it tighter, gratefully.

The poor woman. She couldn’t help what she was. It took a special sort of insanity to run for public office. A fragile megalomania; a delusional ego.

I’ve let my contempt for her become contempt for the office, Ankit realized. I came to share her crazy mistaken idea of what the job of an Arm manager could be.

But there had been a time, almost forgotten now, when she’d enjoyed her job. What it had been for her originally. When she’d gotten something out of it. Something positive—not the energy and stress and urgency and self-importance, the negative things, the things she became addicted to. The fact that she could solve problems for people. That she could help them get through something bad.

I could do this, Ankit thought, and almost choked on the realization, the suddenly seeing that she could do the thing she swore she’d never do. I could be the Arm manager.

Someone ran past the door. A whole bunch of someones followed them.

“Thank you for your patience,” said a voice from the ceiling. “We apologize for the sustained inconvenience.”

Fyodorovna grabbed her hand.

The voice continued: “Health has made the decision to evacuate the facility. The floors below have already been emptied. Please exit your room and follow the red floor arrows to the nearest exit.”

The door swung open. Someone howled. Someone else joined in.

“I’m not going out there,” Fyodorovna said.

“Come on,” Ankit said, standing, feeling just as frightened.

“Anything could happen to us. All these crazies running around? I’ll take my chances here. They’ll come for us eventually.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Ankit said, and tugged on her hand. “We’ll freeze to death if we stay. These walls are so thin. They hold no heat. It’ll be arctic in here in less than an hour, and who knows how long it’ll take for them to come find us. We’ll be fine out in the halls.”

Fyodorovna looked up, her eyes frightened and trusting. She nodded.

If I can help this hopeless creature, I can help anyone.

“Should I leave the blanket?” she asked.

“Keep it,” Ankit said. “It might be cold for the next little bit.”

The door shut behind them. An explosion shook the floor beneath their feet. They began to move with the flow of other frightened people.





Kaev


Watching Masaaraq move was like watching some eerie artist, a terrifying ballerina who slowly and beautifully slaughtered her fellow dancers. The blade swung, it twisted, it slammed backward. She was a painter, sending artful sprays of blood onto the bare green canvas of the Cabinet. Kaev grinned, ecstatic.

Masaaraq slapped him lightly.

“You need to concentrate,” she said. “He smells blood, he sees all this frenzied motion, it’d be very easy for him to go into a total killer rampage and start taking out patients along with security. Keep your attention on the people he needs to be focused on.”