“We need to get out of here,” I announce to the room.
“Oh, you think so?” Nora says, prepping another staple.
“Fucking shit!” M shouts.
“I mean now. City’s emptying out. I think it’s—”
“Shitting fuck!”
“It’s a hurricane,” Julie says, and this gets their attention. “Probably a big one. And considering half of Manhattan is below sea level . . .”
No one speaks. M suffers the next staple in silence.
“So they are taking her to safety,” Abram murmurs into his palm. There’s an unnervingly boyish, singsong quality to his voice. “That’s good. She can play with the Dead kids. Your Dead mom can adopt her. That’s good.”
“Abram,” Julie says, trying to catch his eyes. “We’re going to find her.”
He smiles at the floor.
JULIE CHECKS the stairwell door. Locked.
I try the elevator. Keycard required.
We rummage through the other offices and conference rooms, some of which haven’t yet been converted into jail cells, but we find nothing useful in their musty drawers. Just pencils and pens and absurd Axiom paperwork. Accounting forms listing ammo crates as income. Human trafficking receipts.
“There’s no way out,” Tomsen says, watching us through the bars of her cell window. Her cell is dark. I don’t know why she put herself back in there now that all the guards are gone. “Sorry, but I’ve tried everything. I’ve been in here two months and I’ve tried everything. There’s no way out.”
Julie stands in the hallway tapping her foot and twisting her hair.
“I’ve broken into a lot of buildings,” Tomsen continues. “Almost all of them. Sears Tower. Chase Tower. Key Tower. Wilshire Grand Tower. Bank of America Building. Chrysler Building. Woolworth Building. GE Building. Met Life Building—”
“Tomsen?” Julie says, cutting her off as politely as possible. “Are you going somewhere with this?”
Tomsen pauses, thinking. “GE Building. Trump Hotel. Columbia Center. Transamerica Pyramid. Sinopec Tower, before they exed it. Comcast Technology and Innovation Center—”
“Tomsen!” Nora shouts from the other room. “Get to the point!”
Tomsen cocks her head, perhaps retracing her steps to find the point. “I know how to get in and out of buildings. But this one’s different.” She shoves her hands in her pockets and starts pacing her cell. “Security is double, triple. Redundant. Ridiculous. They must spend hours a day just entering codes and turning locks.” She digs her fingers into her kinked brown curls and pulls her face tight, suddenly distraught. “I hate this building! Nothing makes sense! I can pick key locks but not code locks. I’m not a hacker! I’m a journalist! I can’t get you out of here.”
A blast of wind hits the building and doesn’t let up. The building creaks like a tree fighting a bulldozer. I’ve never heard of a hurricane felling a skyscraper; surely they’re built to withstand strong winds. But then again, the drowned ruins surrounding this island attest to the old world’s lack of foresight. And this is the new world. There are new winds.
Above and below us, I hear windows breaking.
“I’m sorry,” Tomsen says, wiping furiously at her face. I realize with some alarm that she’s crying. “I can’t pick the code locks. I can’t get you out of here. I’m sorry.”
Julie glances at Nora through the cell door as if seeking backup, but Nora is still busy with M, tearing strips off the dead guard’s clothes and tying them around M’s wounds.
Julie knocks on Tomsen’s cell door. “Can I come in?”
Tomsen doesn’t answer, so Julie pushes the door open and steps through, shooting a look over her shoulder that tells me to follow. I am her backup backup.
Before addressing the woman frantically pacing her cell, I have to take a moment to absorb the cell itself. It’s like stepping inside a particularly manic issue of the Almanac. The floor, the walls, and somehow even the ceiling are covered in words and sketches, some scratched into the drywall, others finger-painted with food or perhaps less savory substances. The content itself—what little is legible—appears to be a detailed account of life in this cell. Feeding schedules. Descriptions and portraits of guards. Speculations on the unfathomable purpose of her detainment. Everything is written in the same bubbling style as the Almanac itself, all her world-exploring energy compressed into this tiny room.
It occurs to me what cruelty this is. It occurs to me that to a person whose life is a search, to a person who has never stopped moving, two months in this place must feel like a century.
The cell is dark because the lights are broken out. The writings on the wall are punctuated by fist holes.
“Tomsen, listen,” Julie says. “We’re not expecting you to get us out of here. We’re going to get out together, and we’ll take any help you can offer.”
Tomsen keeps pacing. Julie watches her for a moment.
“How long have you been writing the Almanac?”
“Since nine from BABL,” Tomsen says without slowing.