“Keep moving,” the regulator says, and I’m surprised to hear a woman’s voice, distorted through the gas mask.
A caravan of vehicles is parked on the road Julian and I walked, and there are more police officers here, and more members of the SWAT team. Some of them are in full gear, but others are leaning casually against their cars, dressed in civilian clothing, chatting and blowing on Styrofoam mugs of coffee. They barely glance at me as I am hauled, struggling, down the line of cars. I’m full of blind rage, a fury that makes me want to spit. This is routine for them. They will go home at the end of the day, to their orderly houses and their orderly families, and they will give no thought to the girl they saw screaming and kicking and dragged away, probably to her death.
I see a black town car; Thomas Fineman’s white, narrow face watches me impassively as I go by. If I could shake a fist loose I would plunge it through the window. I’d watch all the glass explode into his face, see how calm he would stay then.
“Hey, hey, hey!” A policeman is waving to us from up ahead, gesturing with his walkie-talkie toward a police van. Black words stand out vividly against its sparkling white paint: CITY OF NEW YORK, DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTION, REFORM, AND PURIFICATION. In Portland, we had a single prison, the Crypts. It housed all the criminals and resisters, plus the resident loonies, many of them driven crazy by botched or early cures. In New York and its sister cities there is a web of interrelated jails, a network stretching all across the sister cities, with a name almost as bad as the one Portland gave its prison: the Craps.
“Over here, this way!” Now another policeman is waving us over to a different van, and there is a momentary pause. The whole scene is a mass of confusion, more chaotic than the raids I’ve seen. There are too many people. There are too many cars choking the air with exhaust, too many radios buzzing at once, people talking and shouting over one another. A regulator and a member of the SWAT team are arguing about jurisdiction.
My head hurts; the sun is burning my eyes. All I see is glittering, glaring sunshine; a metal river of cars and motorcycles, exhaust turning the air to mirage, to thickness and smoke.
Suddenly panic crests inside of me. I don’t know what happened to Julian. He isn’t behind me anymore, and I can’t see him in the crowd. “Julian!” I scream out, and get no answer, although one policeman turns at the sound of my voice and then, shaking his head, hocks a brown glob of saliva onto the ground by my feet. I’m fighting against the woman behind me again, trying to tear myself out of her grasp, but her hands are a vise around my wrists and the more I struggle, the tighter she holds.
“Julian! Julian!”
No response. The panic has turned to a solid lump, and it is clotting my throat. No, no, no, no. Not again.
“All right, keep going.” The woman’s distorted gas-mask voice urges me forward. She pushes me past the line of waiting cars. The regulator who has been leading the procession is speaking rapidly into his walkie-talkie, some argument with Command about who is to take me in, and he barely glances at us as we thread through the crowd. I’m still fighting the woman behind me with every bit of strength I have, even though the way she is holding my arms sends a fiery pain from my wrists to my shoulders, and even if I did break free, I’m still handcuffed and wouldn’t get more than a few feet without getting tackled.
But the rock in my throat is there, and the panic, and the certainty. I need to find Julian. I need to save him.
Beneath that, older words, more urgent words, continue to surge through me: Not again, not again, not again.
“Julian!” I strike backward with my foot and connect with the woman’s shins. I hear her curse, and for just a second her grip loosens. But then she is once again restraining me, jerking my wrists so sharply that I gasp.
And then, as I tipped backward to give relief to my arms, trying to catch my breath, trying not to cry, she bends forward a little so the mouth of her mask bumps once against my ears.
“Lena,” she says, low. “Please. I don’t want to hurt you. I’m a freedom fighter.”
That word freezes me: That’s a secret code sympathizers and Invalids use to indicate their allegiances. I stop trying to fight her off, and her grip relaxes. But she continues to propel me forward, past the caravan of cars. She walks quickly, and with such purpose that nobody stops her or interferes.