Nate Kenyon - Day One

When Hawke turned back toward the stroller, he saw Thomas crouched down behind the trash barrel in his puffy blue coat with his lion, his little face squeezed up into a private smile, eyes shut, as if by closing his eyes and being still he became invisible. Hide-and-seek, Thomas’s new favorite game at home—he was playing it now and blissfully unaware of Hawke’s impending heart attack.

His chest violently unclenched; he heaved in a gulp of air and pounded toward his son, his emotions now pouring out in a single grunt of blind rage as he grabbed Thomas’s arm and pulled the boy up toward his face. Whatever Thomas saw there made him go slack with shock and then crumple into tears, and Hawke’s words died on his lips as he hugged Thomas to his chest and rocked him, cooing his apology into the shoulder of the boy’s coat until his sobs began to subside.

Hawke found himself struggling to catch his breath.

The doors had swung shut on their own, blocking out the image of the dead man. Hawke reeled backward, bumping into Anne Young, who had come up behind him. He was shaking like a leaf in high wind, but she was absolutely still. She put a hand on his shoulder, light as a bird, and kept it there. He glanced back but couldn’t tell from her face whether she’d seen anything at all, her gaze remaining on the closed doors as if she could look right through them.

Hawke leaned left and convulsed, a stream of vomit splattering onto the rug: the remains of coffee and the energy bar he’d eaten that morning.

Young kept her hand on Hawke’s shoulder. Everything seemed to press down upon his head, suffocating him. He wiped his mouth and swallowed hard, keeping the sickness down this time as he tried to make some kind of sense of what had just happened. But it was wrong in every way. His mind played over the scene again and again: the man’s face registering what was going down a split second before the cops fired, the way his hands came up to ward off the bullet, twin red holes blossoming in them as if by some dark magic, the back of his skull exploding in a mass of red spatter, his body falling backward to slap lifelessly against the sidewalk. It was an execution, an outrage, the murder of a defenseless person who had probably done nothing wrong. A man in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But why ? Two cops shooting someone in cold blood made no sense, no matter what else was happening out there.

The feeling of dread had come full force with the sight of blood. It was like Hawke’s dream, tentacles pulling Thomas away from him. The need to get home to his wife and son clawed at Hawke’s chest. What if they were in trouble right now, facing the same kind of violence he had just witnessed?

“Wait,” Young said, but Hawke pushed past her without bothering to ask what she wanted. He stalked back up the aisle of the worship room to where Weller stood with the rabbi and his group, Vasco and Hanscomb right behind him.

“Your laptop,” Hawke said to Weller, inserting himself in between the man and the others. “What’s on it?”

Weller had been in midsentence, continuing the argument about cell phones that had apparently escalated between the rabbi’s people and the rest of them. He stopped, mouth still open, studying Hawke’s face. Then he looked around the room, his gaze finally settling on Young, who had followed Hawke back from the vestibule. “Where’s the case?” Weller said, his voice rising. She shook her head, mute, and Hawke stepped in again to get him focused, the movement bringing Weller’s gaze back around.

“What the hell is going on?” Hawke said. “You seem to know something. Why did a man carrying your laptop just get executed?”

“Hold it,” Vasco said. “ What did you just say?”

Hawke kept his eyes trained on Weller’s face. “Two cops,” he said. “They just shot someone outside who was carrying Jim’s laptop case. Maybe he was trying to steal it; I don’t know. But it seemed like a pretty harsh punishment to me. Excessive force, don’t you think?”

“Are you serious?” Hanscomb shook her head, backing away until her legs hit a pew behind her, as if trying to escape. Her voice was shrill and loud, and she sounded like she thought it might be some kind of bad joke. “Oh my God.”

“That makes no sense,” Vasco said. “Why would cops be shooting people in the street?”

“I don’t know,” Hawke said. He gestured at Weller. “Ask him.” Hawke kept seeing the blood, the man’s skull exploding in red chunks of bone and brains, the way the body fell straight back and nothing cushioned its fall, as if that mattered anymore.

A long, uncomfortable silence descended over the temple. Even the rabbi and his people remained still, watching, waiting. Weller glanced back at Young and then away, a look coming over his face as if he’d just figured out the world’s biggest riddle. “They think it’s a threat,” he said, almost too softly to be heard. “Things are out of control, just like I told them, and it’s a loose end. And we’re a scapegoat.”

“For who?”

“Eclipse. They’re tracking us.”

“You’ve got to be kidding—”

“You can’t imagine the power,” he said. “The sheer size and scope, the capability. It’s breathtaking, in its own way.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Jim?” Hawke said.

“Don’t you get it yet? They’re going to find a way to make us disappear.” Weller smiled, but his eyes were distant. “We’re all wanted terrorists,” he said. “Every one of us from Conn.ect. Starting right now, every law enforcement officer in the city is looking for us.”

“For what ?”

“Crimes against humanity,” he said. “The downfall of modern civilization.” He spread his arms in the direction of the doors. “According to every cop in New York, we’re responsible for what’s happening outside. We’re on every list in every database in the world, and I’m quite sure excessive force is not only going to be justified, but encouraged.”

“You’ve lost your fucking mind,” Vasco said. His voice had grown dark. “They can’t do that. This is crazy .”

“Has Google mapped the inside of this building?” Weller said to the rabbi, dismissing Vasco’s outburst.

“Google? I don’t know what you mean—”

“Does it show up on Street View? Is that how you found it?”

“Google Maps,” the young woman explained, the one the rabbi had called Ana. “He’s talking about the maps on the Internet. They’ve started to do interiors, not just roads. You can walk around inside buildings, on your computer.”

The rabbi closed his mouth, opened it again, a fish out of water. Weller didn’t wait for a response. He wheeled around and walked to where the remains of Hawke’s cell still lay in the aisle and crouched, studying them for a moment before turning again and looking over their heads at the ceiling. “It’s unusual,” he said as if to himself, staring at the walls, “the lines of the windows….” He stood up. “Consumer GPS chips are accurate to within a few feet, but inside a building like this the error could be more. They thought we were outside, but they’ll be looking to confirm location.”

“Jim,” Young said. Her face was like a white moon in the shadows.

Weller walked over to Hawke and both stood there nose to nose, Weller’s glasses winking in the faint light. “I hope you got something important out of that conversation,” he said. “It won’t take long before they verify the ID, but they’re already mapping images from your cell. It’s going to bring them right to our door.”

“Who?” Hawke said. “Who are they?”

“Eclipse’s secret service,” Weller said. “The police, the FBI. Whoever else they convince to come after us.”