Kim Robinson - New York 2140

Then Gen saw it clearly, and maybe everyone did: it was all about the towers. The Cloister cluster was still far to the north, but there were many other stupendous superscrapers in Morningside Heights, and the crowd was now coursing among them, surrounding them.

Gen’s ad hoc platoon stumbled with the crowd itself into the great plaza south of Amsterdam and 133rd, where the first big cluster of towers shot up to their impossible height, scoring a moony gray sky, looking like space elevators. By day they were plum, emerald, charcoal, bronze. Tonight the lights that usually turned them all into giant liqueur bottles were absent, and in the moonlight they were a purplish velvet black, possibly an effect of their photovoltaics.

Police were regrouping under them, on the far side of a big plaza, in larger numbers than ever. This time it seemed possible they could hold the line. The crowd, though angry, was mostly unarmed. Possibly the cops there could link arms and take the brunt of the charge and hope the crowd would stall against them. And indeed vans were pulling into a line across the plaza, and there were helmets and shields and vests being passed out, also nightsticks and tear gas and face masks. Almost every cop on hand had just enough experience to struggle into this gear, and when they had done that they moved to the front of the line. Not much talking going on among them, it was clear what they had to do. Therefore a bad moment. Not an NYPD moment, at least in the living experience of any cop there. Surreal: they had left the real.

Gen had just gotten a vest and helmet on when she heard shots ring out. They pinged her inside with the usual adrenaline shock, and she could see it was the same for the others around her. The shots had come from behind them, however; from the towers themselves, or rather the mezzanine of the terraces below the towers. The plaza footing the towers consisted of a sequence of giant terraces, like broad low stairs sized proportionately to the towers themselves. There were people up there on the highest terrace in full riot gear, but also with rifles—assault rifles, by the sound of it. Clips were now going off in staccato blaaps , followed by screaming and shouting. The inhuman roar redoubled. Moonlight illuminated the scene with black-on-gray clarity: the crowd was pressing in on them at the same time it was pulling back. Gen spoke into her wrist fiercely: “We need more support! There’s private security here who have opened fire on the crowd!”

“Say again?”

“Private tower security is now firing on the crowd, and we’re caught in the middle here! We need the National Guard here now . Where’s the fucking backup?”

A rhetorical question at this point. The National Guard was elsewhere. Gen walked over and joined a group of about ten police officers in vests who were headed up the broad steps toward the security forces on the highest terrace. They walked together up the steps, straight at the business end of assault rifles, but they were in uniform, and the assault rifles were still pointed over their heads, or even at the sky, it seemed. But some of the guns pointed up were still firing, scoring their eyeballs with spurts of orange flame, and there were many crisscrossing red laser lines as scopes redlined targets among the stars. Warning shots, maybe, or shots into the crowd to the south. Gen pulled her pistol from its holster, feeling her skin go hot all over as she did so. She held up the shield she had gotten from the riot vans in her other hand, and marched slowly together up the steps with the front group of officers, all of them shouting, “Police! Police! Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” From random shouts like that they quickly followed the loudest among them into a coordinated shout, a shouted chant: “Police! Police! Police! Police!” It felt good to shout it like that.

They came to the middle terrace. Nowhere else left to go; the security team loomed just above them on the next terrace up, rifles still pointed over their heads, and down at them too. A horrid frozen moment. Many of their shields and vests were now red-dotted: yes, laser scopes. Some of their helmets and foreheads were red-dotted. They stopped where they were and kept chanting Police, police, police, police.

Nobody moved. The incredible noise was still behind them, but on the steps it seemed a little quieter—no one shooting, now, and the cops continuing to chant, but in almost conversational tones. Bring it on down.

Gen figured she might be the senior officer there, and in any case no one else was doing it, so she walked forward from out of the other cops, pistol extended down to the side. “New York Police Department,” she announced calmly, flatly. “You’re on camera now and you are not police. Point those rifles down right now or you’ll end up in jail. Who’s in charge here? Who are you?”

A man bulled through his people to her. He looked familiar to her, and he seemed to recognize Gen as well.

“What the fuck were you doing shooting off those guns?” Gen said to him.

“We’re defending private property here. Since you can’t seem to do it.”

Gen waited a beat, then slowly stepped toward the man. She didn’t stop until she was too close. At that point she was looking down on him. She still had her pistol pointed down at the ground, but it wasn’t that far off his feet. The man’s people stirred behind him. Some shifted their rifles, aiming them away off to the sides or lifting their barrels up, but there were still red laser dots on her vest. She felt like a fucking Christmas tree, a target in a pistol range. No one knew what to do.

“Stand down and get inside your buildings,” Gen said to the man, staring hard at him. “We’re on camera now. All of you are obliged to obey police orders to keep your security licenses.”

No one moved.

“You were the first people to fire guns tonight,” Gen told the man. “That’s already bad, but you’re only going to make it worse if you don’t do what I say. It will be interfering with police during a riot. Pretty soon it will be resisting arrest. The New York Police Department doesn’t like people shooting at it, and the courts don’t either. We’re the ones who police this town. No one else. So get inside. Now. You can defend the rooms in there, if it comes to that. This here is public space.”

“This plaza is private property,” the man said. “Our job is to defend it.”

“It’s public space. Get inside. You’re under arrest now. Don’t make things any worse than you already have, or your employers will not be happy with you. You’ve already cost them millions of dollars in legal fees. The worse you make it now, the worse it’s going to be for you later.”

The man hesitated.

Gen said, “Come on, inside. I’m coming in with you to find out more about what happened to set this all off. You can show me what your cameras got, if anything. Come on.”

She took another step toward the man. Now she was definitely too close. With her police boots on she was six foot four, and now she was helmeted, pistol in hand, a look that could freeze blood. A big scary black woman cop, mad as hell and calm as heaven. Shield in her other hand. Ready to knock the man back with it if needed. He could see she would do it. Another step forward. She wasn’t going to stop when she got to the man, she made that clear. He was about to be in her space, and she had the momentum. There was a water sumo move she was contemplating, a quick shove with the shield, that would knock him on his ass. Staring him right in the eye. It occurred to her there must be blood all over her from the cop with the cut scalp. She was the white male criminal’s worst nightmare, or maybe his dream hero, or both at once. She was trying to hypnotize him now, boring into him with Big Mama Calm. Authority figure. Bloody priestess of this night’s full-moon panic. He wanted to have a way out. Push had come to shove.