Page 62 of Anarchy Missing

Case pulls me back inside. “You’re letting all the heat out,” he says, forcing the doors to close again.

“We’re not stuck here. My phone still works.” I take it out of my purse, hoping it still has a signal. It does. But when I call the station I get a busy signal. God, when was the last time I heard one of those?

“The phones are out, Lulu,” Case says, talking to me like I’m a small, clueless child. “City Hall doesn’t have SkyEye. And even if you could get a hold of someone, they probably couldn’t make their way all the way over here with the traffic lights out. I’m stuck with you.”

Not, You’re stuck with me, which is how he should’ve said it. But the other way around. We are definitely not friends anymore.

“Sheila?” Case says, talking into his own SkyEye phone. “What’s going on in the city? Uh-huh… Shit… Fuck… No?… All right. I’ll make do. Later.”

“Who was that?” I ask. He mentioned someone named Sheila earlier, right?

“I was gonna have her send the helicopter, but the weather up in the mountains is fucked.” He tabs the screen of his phone again. “Thomas, just what the…” The conversation goes much the same as the last one. “No shit?… Fuck… Dammit… So what do you want to… Yeah. All right. I’ll wait it out at home.”

“That was your friend?” I ask.

“You’re gonna have to come home with me. Come on, we better get a move on before the roads get any worse.”

I follow him, having to run a little bit to keep up because he’s walking with some serious determination. I’m about to protest about going home with him, but it’s pointless. I have no options. If I had my own car I could at least drive myself. But I don’t. It’s either stay here or follow him.

We hike without talking back up the stairs to his office, where he grabs his coat and a briefcase, then stomp back down to the lobby. Case opens the doors the way I did a few minutes ago, then locks it back up with a key from the outside.

There’s only one car in the parking lot and it’s a ridiculous silver two-seater sports car that immediately has me picturing us sliding into a ditch. “I hope you don’t live far,” I say, as he beeps his alarm to unlock the doors.

He doesn’t answer me. So I slip into the soft bucket seat and close myself up from the blowing wind. He does the same, starting the car up before he even gets the door closed. Two seconds later he’s got it in gear and we pull out, the tires slipping on the slick pavement, and I feel a little wave of justification for my negative assessment of his car.

He shoots me a dirty look when I grunt out a laugh. “I’m two miles up the hill.”

“If I have to walk two miles up a hill in the snow because this toy car can’t make the climb, I will be pissed.”

He rolls his eyes and drives around the back of the building to a lone road that winds up the mountain behind ToyBox. And we don’t get stuck. He flips some button on the panel near the gear shift, gives the car a second to adjust, and then we plow upward with the feeling of tires digging into the pavement.

His house really is close, and a few minutes later we’re pulling into the garage of a very modern building that looks like his ToyBox offices, except it’s not a box, but a rectangle. “You’ve got power here,” I say, getting out of the car and watching the garage doors close us up.

“Separate system,” he mutters, keying in a code to the alarm. “After you.” He waves me inside and lights start turning on as I step deeper into his home. Like those lights on the frozen case doors of the grocery store that are all motion-activated.

“Steve?” Case calls out, throwing his keys down on a stainless-steel counter in the kitchen. My eyes immediately track to the view from the floor-to-ceiling windows.

“I’m here,” the light-man says, appearing as a hologram off to my right. He’s definitely not as strong over here. Like he’s too far away from his base. Because he’s nothing but wild flickers. “I’m sorry, the power went out down at—”

“Yeah, I know,” Case says, irritable. “Do you know why the power went out? Did we run out of fuel?”

“No way to tell until it comes back on. I’m sorry, Mr. Reider. Should I make lunch for you and your guest?”

“Sure. Surprise us.” Case comes over to stand next to me. “I don’t know what’s happening. But none of this is good. And before you even open your mouth with accusations, none of this has anything to do with me or my friends.”

I don’t say anything because it will just start another argument. I find it oddly ridiculous that he wants me to believe they’ve got nothing to do with this after we found that Bike Boy message inside the code that stole that money from the banks. And it’s very suspicious that Thomas Brooks owns the only usable phone company right now. The lawyer in me says I should shut up and listen.

So I do.

And I hear nothing but the sound of beeping kitchen appliances.

“How can he possibly make lunch?” I ask quietly, both of us still looking out at the dead city. We’re too high up, and there’s smaller hills in the way, so I can’t really see any roads. Or accidents. Probably most people have gone home by now, anyway. But off in the distance I can see the Cathedrals. The main one and SkyEye, across from it, both in downtown. And up to the north I can see the remnants of Blue Corp. And past all that, I see nothing but mountains on every side.

“It’s all automated, so don’t get too attached to the idea of lunch. Doesn’t taste too great yet. It’s something called an autocook. I’ve been working on it for a while now. But like I said, don’t get excited. The protein is soy-based and the vegetables aren’t worth talking about. The only thing that even remotely passes as food is the pasta.”

“Well.” I sigh. “Here’s hoping we get pasta.”

“You can take your pick of guest rooms,” he says, turning away. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t wander around the house at night. I will be arming the alarms and I’d hate for you to be caught up in it. I’ll find you some sweats and a t-shirt to sleep in—”

I catch up with the conversation before he can finish that thought. “I’m not sleeping here.” Ilaugh. “Don’t be ridiculous. The power will be back in a few hours at most. In fact,” I say, getting out my phone, “I’m going to keep trying the cab companies while we wait it—”

“You’re not going anywhere, Lulu. In case you haven’t noticed, the anarchists have taken over my city.”

“Anarchists?” I laugh. “OK. Well, that’s quite a jump in what’s happening down there. But I’ll go along for the sake of argument. What—”

“Thomas,” he says in a low growl, “just told me that there’s riots downtown. You know, those people who wear black ski masks and throw Molotov cocktails through windows? It’s them doing this, not us. So… don’t you feel stupid now?”

I wish I could see for myself. And just as I think that, Case shoves his phone at me and says, “Look.”

On the screen is footage from some kind of drone above downtown, showing hundreds—maybe thousands—of people going crazy. Smashing cars, smashing windows, looting stores. “What is this? How are you seeing this? Is it the news stations?”

“News stations?” Case snorts. “Please. It’s a SkyEye drone. Thomas is watching everything so when the shit settles down, we can run it—” But he stops abruptly. “Put some names to the faceless faces,” he says after the pause. “For the greater good. Don’t worry, we’ll share with City Hall and CCPD. If you guys are even interested in the truth, which I highly doubt.”