“I’ll be good,” she said faintly, and with a last look, he walked out.
Standing, she stretched and went to the window to gaze out at the river. The street below was empty, and even as she worried about Daniel and Quen, the thought crossed her mind that the earth might appreciate a few less people on it. Still, if Sa’han Ulbrine didn’t show soon, she was going to get out of here and find Daniel. She’d take this right to the enclave in DC if she had to, and if they wouldn’t listen, she’d go to the elven religious council, the dewar. One thing was sure: it wasn’t going to end here, and not with Kal running free.
27
It was the noise that first struck Daniel as wrong as he was escorted to the arena floor, a Red Cross comfort pack under his arm. It wasn’t the roar of the crowd living vicariously through athletes playing out their strategies with elegance and grace. There was no rise or fall to make the sound a living, breathing thing. No, the clamor spilling into the hallway to push against him was the muted thunder of a thousand conversations, of coughs and baby cries, of laments unanswered, all merging into a din without meaning. It was a sound absent of intent . . . but one heavy with the promise of no way out.
He scuffed to a halt as he emerged into the light, gazing at the court in a moment of shock. His grip tightened on his cot assignment, and as he looked over the humanity sprawling out of the neat rows designed to give order to chaos, he wondered if he could ever go to another basketball game and not see cots in columns.
B-12, he thought as he looked at the number the man had given him along with a thin pillow and blanket, and he blinked fast when he sent his gaze over the malaise. He was reluctant to step down into it, afraid that if he did, he’d be swallowed up, his ability to change the course of the future—gone.
Why did they send me here to die? he wondered, his thoughts going to Trisk and her expression of anger and fear when they’d shoved her in the back of that cop car. But the answer was clear. Global Genetics, or perhaps the entire elven community, was going to make her into the scapegoat for Kal’s actions. Blaming the plague on a poor, stupid human was not as believable or satisfying as blaming it on an upstart woman. She’d go down easy, her defense written off as a weak attempt to sway when everyone knew she shouldn’t have been trusted with such a monumental task to begin with.
The bitterness swelled, showing in his expression.
“Looking for your cot?” a voice at his elbow said, and he jumped. The noise beat again on him, and he turned to the man beside him with a laminated STAFF badge and a clipboard. “Single men are to the right, single women to the left, and families are in the middle,” the man added, pointing in case Daniel didn’t know his right from his left.
“It’s just me,” Daniel said as he showed him his cot assignment. He couldn’t help but wonder if the man was a criminally optimistic human or a witch who knew the virus had been engineered to not even see him. Witch, he decided, though he couldn’t say why.
The man frowned at the small slip of paper and handed it back. “Down the stairs. About four rows in, cut a right. You’re near the basket.”
“Thanks.” Daniel shifted his care package and started down the stairs. He was in the red zone. How appropriate.
The noise changed as he descended, and he stifled a shudder when he reached the court and was immersed in chaos. Immediately he stopped trying to make eye contact. There was no privacy apart from what you could find behind a draped blanket. Signs of his virus were everywhere, hidden like guilt itself.
He turned right, walking sideways and feeling as if he was intruding as he slid between the cots where people played cards or dice or just lay covering their faces. No one looked at him. His head lifted when he came under a blue canopy providing a little relief from the open aspect of hundreds of people in one spot, and he slowed when he saw the empty cot. B-12.
There was a big, dark-complected man in slacks and a white button-down shirt reclining on the cot to one side of Daniel’s, reading a paper so used it was almost like fabric. A skinny young man in a T and jeans sat on the cot to the other side, coloring his sneakers with a black marker. They both looked up when Daniel cleared his throat. “Hi, I’m—”
“Don’t want to know,” the ragged-looking man with the marker said, his gaze lingering on Daniel’s care package. “The last man to have that cot lasted four hours. He shouldn’t have been allowed in, but they say you can’t catch it by touch.”
Daniel leaned to follow his gaze, now focused under his cot, an ugly feeling filling him as he saw the dead man’s belongings still there.