The Invisible (10 page)

“Bye,” Z whispers. “And hey, enjoy this. You’re allowed to. Even with all this horrific stuff going on. Be happy with your boxer.”

A swell of gratitude prickles at the back of my eyes. “Thanks,” I say, and then Zahra’s wobbling up her front walkway in her too-high platform shoes, her plaid skirt swishing in the spring sunshine.

“Anthem,” Serge says, rolling down the partition. “What happened last night?”

“I don’t know what they were planning,” I admit. “But when I arrived at the mayor’s mansion, they had already shot Martha point-blank.”

“So they’re organized.”

I nod. “Very. And if they’re capable of doing it once, they can do it again and again. You heard what happened at school. They are intent on becoming a threat. I’m just not sure what their game is.”

Serge nods, his hand absently rubbing his chin. “But they’re different from the Syndicate. Not in it for the money, it seems.”

“No,” I agree. “It’s more than that for them.”

When Serge turns the car onto Thorne, there’s a traffic jam starting and the car slows to a crawl. I gaze absently out the window as a group runs past on the sidewalk. It’s a big bunch of joggers, their knees high in the air with every step. There are maybe twenty of them in the pack, racing by on the sidewalk. I’m only halfway paying attention, but I register that they’re all in black, even their socks and shoes. There are many piercings among them. A lot of dyed black hair, glowing bluish in the sun.

As they run, they shout encouragement to each other: “Way to be!” “Feel the burn!” “Push it!”

When they move away, my thoughts move to my kiss with Ford. Wanting more time with him, already. Missing him and also reminding myself I didn’t—
don’t—
want things to move too fast.

I start to dig my phone out of my pocket to send him a text when the car is rocked by a sonic boom—louder and more powerful than thunder.

Then a second bang rocks the car. I look out the front window. Up ahead on the crest of the hill is the North Bedlam Power plant. A fireball rises from the top of it, opening up like a mushroom cloud in the bright afternoon.

“Are you okay?” I ask Serge.

He nods. Heat ripples shimmy across the shiny hoods of cars. Then he turns the wheel hard and pulls the car sharply to the curb, out of the traffic jam and into a bus stop.

“I’m going out there.” Serge grabs his gun from the hidden compartment of the glove box and puts it inside his jacket. I follow him when he steps out of the car. Thorne Street is long and straight and leads up into the Bedlam hills. Several blocks up, the power plant is engulfed in flames. They leap from the white dome of the plant, along with huge white sparks. An ominous black plume of smoke pours straight upward into the perfect blue sky. It’s almost beautiful.

Everywhere, cars are pulling over, people are getting out to stare. The air is filled with the smell of burnt plastic, smoke, and leaned-on car horns.

Suddenly I flash on the joggers in black.
Feel the burn
, one said. Their shoes were not running shoes. They were out-of-date leather dress shoes. Why would anyone wear those to go jogging?

“Did you see that group of people running?” I ask Serge as I wheel around, my muscles tensed for liftoff from the hot sidewalk.

He nods. “Very odd.”

I crane my neck for a glimpse of them, but they’re long gone. Thorne forks up ahead—I have no way of knowing which way they went.

“We need to get you home.” Serge raises his voice above the din of people pouring out of apartment buildings and offices and businesses. “Without electricity, the city will grind to a halt. Just like during the riots.”

The riots.
When I was a baby and before I was born, the city was full of them. The Hope got everyone stirred up, is how my father puts it. People demanded things from the city—higher wages, more services. The police cracked down hard on the riots. There were curfews, power shortages.

I nod. The cars on Thorne Street look like they will be in a dead stop all day, stuck in an endless traffic jam. But we are close enough to walk.

Everywhere, people are leaving their homes and businesses, coming out of all the buildings to look at the power plant in flames. Shopkeepers wander around with flashlights inside, or sit in their doorways holding baseball bats, bracing for looters.

I turn again to try to spot the pack of runners in the distance, but it’s useless. They could have gone anywhere. Meanwhile on the street, the mood has shifted from shock to fear. And anger too. Like a match has been struck, and it’s only a matter of time before the whole city burns.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

It’s dusk when the visual drama of the power outage starts to show, the North Side completely dark, the normally dim South Side a carnival of lights in comparison. I press my forehead up to the glass in the kitchen as the TV blares, and stare down to the street a million miles below, where riot police run drills and there are no pedestrians out walking in the sweltering, ash-swirly air.

I’ve been home all afternoon with my mother and two of her socialite friends, Phyllis Sheltz and Fernanda Cuesto, who came over a few hours ago to do damage control for the masquerade ball. It was supposed to be held this Saturday, but now that the city is on lockdown, they’ve had to postpone it.

In the darkening streets, teams of riot police patrol in formation, spreading through the North Side like ants. School is cancelled tomorrow. Life as we know it has stopped. Our building is one of the few around with an emergency generator, so we have power for now, but it won’t last long. Serge has been out stockpiling fuel. Lily has been buying up canned goods and nonperishables at inflated prices. It’s like we’re in a bunker, preparing for the end of the world. There’s no word yet on when the electricity will come back. The plant explosion was “massive and total, with seven individual bomb sites,” says the news anchor on the kitchen TV, where I’m camped out, watching.

“The police have not yet released the names of any suspects for the murder of Martha Marks, but many are speculating as to the identity of Invisible,” the news anchor reads from his teleprompter.

“The North Side’s four hospitals are still running on generators. Bedlamites have been lined up for hours at mobile charging stations that have been set up at major intersections,” the anchor goes on. I press my nose against the window glass and peer out at the South, all lit up, glorious and prosperous-looking in contrast to the gray-black stillness surrounding me here.

This is what we must look like to them. Normally. Since we have more working streetlights, more businesses, brighter wattage in every way.

The TV shows more footage of Invisible’s past few videos, and I watch them closely for clues. The curtained backdrop behind his desk. The flag draped over it. The way the camera zooms upward, starting at his hands. Do I know those hands?

Think
, I urge myself.

One of the Syndicate thugs, changing course? I shake my head slightly. No. I’ve been able to tell all along that this is different.

“It’s just such a shame,” I hear Fernanda say to my mother as they walk down the hall toward the front door. “We worked so hard.”

“We’re not cancelling, we’re just postponing,” my mother reminds her. “There are worse things. At least we still have running water and backup generators. At least our children are safe.”

“True, true,” Fernanda mutters. “Imagine being the mother of that poor girl.”

“Horrific,” my mother says. “Just horrific. The mayor and Belinda are beside themselves.”

My arms prickle with goose bumps as I stare down at my hands. I know all too well what scene awaited them when they came home.

The next day, with the power still out on the North Side and school still cancelled, Madame calls a rehearsal. I walk to Seven Swans at nine
A.M.
Even with a dozen buildings running on generators, the streets are eerily devoid of life. All I hear outside is the boot steps of the riot police as they march in endless drills around the neighborhood. Whenever I pass by a group of them, they stare me down, their plastic shields on their helmets raised so I can see their dumb eyes watching me, their fingers tickling their batons at their waists.

Toward evening, the silence takes on an air of menace. The curfew in Bedlam is eight P.M., with the only exceptions for emergencies and city workers. Occasionally a person wrapped in a coat will scuttle by Fleet Tower at night, eyes downcast, before disappearing into the shadows.

I’m glad to be heading to rehearsal. We’re supposed to perform
The Four Seasons
in less than six weeks—it’s something to focus on. My body craves movement, and I’m certainly not getting much of it sitting at home with my mother.

As I move down Hemlock Avenue, I spot a huge graffiti eye, maybe five feet high by ten feet wide, placid, unblinking, and totally realistic, so much so that it seems to follow me as I walk. It’s painted in black and white on the brick wall behind the Bank of Bedlam.
THE INVISIBLE ARE WATCHING
, it says underneath it in purple letters. I reach out a shaking hand to touch the iris. The paint is still wet.

I yank my hand away and hurry toward the ballet studio, gritting my teeth in frustration. Whoever did this was
just here
. And yet I’m still so far from finding them. I spent hours this morning looking at their video transmissions, but so far nothing has clicked from the few scant details on the walls behind the desk. It could be anywhere.

Each of the twelve dancers in Level Six is off her game. Constance is all over the place, her limbs flailing. Liv’s
fouett
é
s
look like she’s doing them in slo-mo. Jessie is so wildly off the count that Madame makes her do the routine twice by herself while we all watch.

For the first couple of hours, I manage to hold it together and rein in my hummingbird-fast heart and my new abilities. I focus on keeping my mind here in the mirrored room of Seven Swans and not off in the clouds with Ford or in Martha’s bedroom or out on the silent streets where the Invisible are no doubt painting additional all-seeing eyes all over town.

But as rehearsal stretches into the third hour, I start to lose focus.

And pretty soon I catch myself hovering a second too long in the air. I quickly readjust, hoping Madame hasn’t noticed the extra beat it takes me to come down. It doesn’t look fully human—even I can see that, in the studio mirror.

I flick my eyes to Madame, and I’m relieved to find her focused on critiquing Constance’s form at the moment.

Concentrate,
I order myself.
Move like an ordinary human being
.

From then on, I put eighty percent of my focus in class on keeping myself in line with the others. We keep doing the same
chass
é
-jambe
sequence again and again. It requires symmetry and control, and I’ve got it down. At least the first ten times, I’m on the count. Matching the speed of the others.

But on the eleventh or twelfth go-round of the same section of the dance, my mind drifts again, pulling me back to the sidewalk outside The Scrambled Yolk. Back to Ford. My feet kick out too far. I jump too high. Hover in the air a beat or two too long.

“Anthem!” Madame shouts in exasperation, breaking me out of my thoughts just as I land my
grande jet
é. “We do not need pyrotechnics!”

The other girls glare at me when Madame says stuff like this. I shrug it off, but make a point of doubling my efforts to focus on keeping in line with gravity.

I pick one of the weaker dancers, a small, dark-haired junior with heavy eyebrows named Tish Tanger, and tell myself not to go any higher than her. I peg myself to her movements.

All the while as I watch myself dance with my fellow Level Sixers in the studio mirrors, the back of my mind is working, always working, on the question of Invisible’s identity.

Over the past two days, I’ve spent hours watching the last two transmissions on repeat, slowing them down to isolate them frame by frame and look for clues. In one of the shots of the most recent video where the masked man says he’s looking for the New Hope, there is a large, scratched-out D on the wall. Too straight and ordinary-looking to be graffiti. I noticed it this morning, and paused. Zoomed in on the D. Then I listed words that end with it on the back of an envelope on my desk.

Dead

End

Bad

Doomed

I stood up when I realized what it was.

Condemned.

Which could be anywhere in the South. There are hundreds of condemned properties. Even here in the North, close to the river it’s not hard to find block upon block of warehouse space that’s been condemned and awaits the wrecking ball. And then I focused on a tiny, squiggly tag done in metallic-paint pen next to it that looked familiar but was too small to read. I couldn’t quite place it. I still can’t, not quite, but it feels like my mind is circling around it, getting closer.

As I’m fanning out across the studio floor, it hits me at last.

The scrunched letters. The paint pen. The shape of the scrawl.

I know the tag.
WrastlDown
.

WrastlDown is a Lowlands tagger with a huge mural a block away from Jimmy’s Corner, where Ford and I used to box. In the corner of the mural—all faces and googly eyes popping out of windowed buildings—the artist put his signature in paint pen. The letters scrunched and squeezed tight. WrastlDown. The Leonardo da Vinci of the Lowlands. It’s the same tag. I’m sure of it.

Invisible must have filmed the transmission in the Lowlands, somewhere flooded out and empty.

“Anthem!” Madame’s face blazes with incredulity and irritation and I’m snapped back to the mirrored studio, the candles set up all around the edges, the room sweltering from lack of air conditioning. “My office, now. I need to speak with you.”

“Oooh,” Constance singsongs under her breath. “Miss Prima Perfect’s going down.”