Torq found us at the gaming center. He appeared in a convoy of combat vehicles bristling with heavily armed men clad in black and blue. They surrounded the center and sealed access from the road. A bat-winged drone kept a lookout in the sky. Torq himself led a dozen gunmen through the doors. His shiny head gleamed in the artificial light, and his perfectly manicured hands caressed a machine pistol.
The gaming center was filled with the usual assortment of players. Boys and girls gathered at the consoles, competing for high scores and each other’s attention while solitary men fed their chips into credit readers. On the walls, the screens broadcast a constant stream of content from across the globe: song and dance routines from YouToo!, news reports and info oddities in obscure languages—anything to distract people from their misery. The popular clips rose to the top, while the disfavored sank without a trace. The wireless was truly the most democratic forum in the world. Governments tried to filter it, but the signal could not be stopped. Any user with an uploader and a transmitter could post anything for the world to see: truth and lies in equal measure.
Torq couldn’t kill us in the open. Not even he was brazen enough to shoot three people in plain view of a crowd. Besides, although his men were well-equipped and protected by kev-armor, it would have been a close battle against Ulysses and Sula. Torq told us to line up at the wall, but Ulysses refused, and Sula stepped in front of me.
“There’ll be no heroes here,” said Torq.
“Killing you wouldn’t be heroic,” said Sula.
Torq smiled, but his gray-blue eyes slitted black. “Where’s the boy?”
“What boy?”
The sound of his safety catch clicked loudly.
“Put your weapon down,” said Ulysses.
“A shame to have to kill the girl.” His gun pointed at Sula, but I knew that when the shooting started, the bullets would go right through her.
Three boys playing Death Racer inched toward the walls, out of the line of fire. Two girls at Geyser let the imaginary water spray harmlessly while they ducked behind a pillar. They were old enough to know when to run.
“Not even Bluewater can cover up a massacre of innocents,” said Ulysses.
“Don’t be too sure,” Torq said.
I held my breath. My plan had been a good one, but it required just a few more seconds. If the shooting started now, it would all be ruined. I stepped out from behind Sula.
“He’s back there,” I said, indicating the wi-booth behind us. “I’ll get him.”
I moved toward the booth before Torq called out to me, as I knew he would. “Stop!”
I stopped, turned slowly.
“Yes?” I asked politely, as if I were still innocent.
“I’m not a fool. Do you think I believe you’d just lead me to him? Come back here.”
I walked as slowly as I could. Each step was excruciating, drawn out, as slow as I could make it. Naturally Torq thought I was frightened of him—he was so powerful with his weapons and muscles! And of course he didn’t trust me—not after my trick with the destabilizer. I shuffled the last few steps, sliding awkwardly across the hard floor. When I was close, he reached out and grasped my wrist, then twisted my arm behind my back. I cringed and stifled a cry. The pain in my shoulder was unbearable. Ulysses started but stopped when Torq pressed his gun against my skull.
“Now,” he said, face so close I could smell his skin. “Where is he?”
“In the booth,” I managed.
“This is your last chance.”
I didn’t want to die, but if it gave us the time we needed, I was not afraid. The irony of being killed when we were so close to home was wretched, but there was a certain perverse logic to ending at the beginning. I let the moment linger as long as I could, each second improving our odds. Then I said, “It’s the truth.”
Before Torq could fire a shot, Kai emerged from the wi-booth, followed by Will and Driesen, as if they had been making a dance holo or posting wi-texts for everyone to see. They sauntered toward us. Torq released my wrist and pounced on Kai, who didn’t resist. Ulysses grabbed me and clutched me to his side like his own daughter.
“This one’s coming with me,” Torq said to his men. “You can do what you want with the others.”
“It’s over,” said Ulysses.
“Save your regrets for later.”
“Look up.”
At first one of the wi-screens seemed to be displaying a bad home holo: sand, dust, and machinery. But as the camera zoomed in, the image came into clearer view: A blue stream like life itself, shimmering with luminous clarity.
Water! It arced from the ground into the sky like the most extravagant fountain. It was Kai’s secret river, unleashed from the earth and sharing its bounty with the land. Water fell from the heavens like an impossible storm. It soaked the dry beds, washed over desert scrub, and covered the dirt with water. It rained and rained, not for forty days and forty nights but long enough to make men grateful for the blessing.