“I sent you a pin with my location,” she said, her voice trembling. “Can you get to me?”
I didn’t even look. “I’m coming. Stay quiet and keep that door locked.”
“I did.”
“Good. Nobody gets in until you hear my voice. Nobody.”
A pause. Longer than it needed to be.
“Finn…is this happening everywhere?”
The sirens outside answered for me.
“Stay off the phone,” I said. “Don’t make a sound.”
The line went dead.
I shoved the phone into my pocket and headed for the elevator.
* * *
The doors opened on chaos.
The noise hit me like a wall before the doors had even finished opening, the lobby packed. Every seat was taken, every inch of floor claimed by bodies pressed three deep against the front desk, where a clerk held both palms up, saying words nobody was listening to. I saw a man in a business suit with his phone crushed to one ear, shouting to be heard over the din. Near the couches, a woman had folded in on herself, face in her hands, the crowd flowing around her like water. The television above the desk was turned up loud enough to rattle, but all I could make out was the anchor’s silent mouth and the red emergency banner crawling across the bottom of the screen.
EMERGENCY ALERT
“What the hell is going on?” someone yelled at the front desk.
“We don’t know yet, sir.” The clerk’s hands shook against the counter.
Near the entrance, a woman stood perfectly still in the middle of the noise, eyes glassy, voice flat, repeating the same words like a skipping record.
“They shut down the subway. They shut down the subway.”
I stood there a second longer than I should have.
A citywide shutdown. That wasn’t a riot. Riots don’t close cities. My mind supplied a list of things that did, and I shoved the thought down before it could take root.
I pushed through the crowd toward the doors and stepped outside.
The cold hit first as the sounds caught up—sirens, and somewhere down the block a single gunshot cracked through the morning air.
Silence.
Then screaming.
I pulled my jacket tight and moved.
* * *
I quickly realized I wouldn’t reach Fiona by car.
Traffic was gridlocked in every direction, vehicles abandoned mid-turn, doors ajar. A delivery truck blocked the intersection ahead, its rear doors swinging loose. Packages lay scattered across the asphalt, their cardboard darkened and wet, and a long drag mark disappeared into the nearest alley.
I stared at it for two full seconds.
Killing the engine, I grabbed my backpack—knife, emergency kit—then pulled up the pin Fiona had sent: four blocks to the east.
