Ciphers - Matt Rogers (popular ebook readers txt) 📗

flowing in several different directions at once, each in various stages of excitement. Some were giddy, some were scared, and some had no visible reaction to the blackout.

Almost everyone was looking up. That’s where the awe lay.

King barely noticed. All his brainpower was consumed by risk assessment. He was scanning every face, searching for the slightest hint of hostile intention. He knew it was useless — if the mercenaries truly knew his position, they’d be watching him from one of the blacked-out windows. But it was impossible to follow anyone in a crowd like this, especially one so frantic.

They trekked south-west, toward Lenox Hill. King noticed someone by his side and looked over to see that Slater had caught up.

Above the incessant murmur of thousands of civilians, Slater said, ‘No one’s freaking out yet.’

‘People are scared.’

‘Scared. Not panicked. There’s a big difference.’

‘I know.’

‘You said two days.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Are you sticking to that?’

‘Yeah.’

‘She won’t tell us anything until we’re secure, right?’

‘Not yet. She takes protocol seriously.’

‘It sounds like malicious code.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t worry. I’m speculating.’

‘You mean a deliberate attack on the power grid?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Aren’t there systems in place to prevent that?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You seem to know what you’re talking about. Could it be done?’

‘We’ll find out, won’t we?’ Slater said.

Together, they bored holes into Violetta’s back. Desperate for answers. But she didn’t turn around. She was in a hurry, laser-focused on the task at hand. She shouldered pedestrians aside as best she could in her haste to reach their destination. King and Slater almost had to strain themselves to keep up.

Then, all of a sudden, she veered off Second Avenue, deep in Lenox Hill. They moved away from the crushing throng of pedestrians and found some space to breathe. King followed her carefully as they passed a couple of art galleries and an expensive hotel, all dark. Then they reached a walk-up residential building that seemed barely inhabited, even when the lights were usually on. It looked like tenement housing, with old brick walls and arched windows and dirty glass and a rusting metal fire escape trailing up the exterior.

There was a visible water tower on the roof.

King pointed up and it and said, ‘Most residential buildings in New York have those, right?’

She followed his gaze and said, ‘Most of them should. It used to be a requirement because of the water pressure you’d need to pump water up to the top. Why?’

‘That’s good, then,’ he said. ‘The taps might work for more than two days in those buildings.’

She didn’t respond. Just thought about it, and nodded curtly.

Slater said, ‘And then?’

‘And then they’ll go dry like the rest of them.’

Violetta didn’t react. But the ramifications seemed to sink in, if only for a moment. She’d clearly been running all systems go ever since the power went out, including flirting with death in the lobby of King’s building. Now, in a rare moment of quiet, with her adrenaline coming down, it seemed she had time to consider the consequences.

She reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder.

Then she looked from him, to Slater.

She said, ‘We need the two of you now more than we ever have. This is going to be a disaster of historic proportions if we don’t fix it.’

They nodded.

The gravity of the situation seemed to get heavier.

The atmosphere bristled.

She said, ‘Follow me.’

Then she walked up the short flight of concrete steps to the tenement building’s lobby and opened the door.

She ushered them into the dark.

24

Slater had no idea what to expect.

They crossed a rundown lobby, then went four floors up a chipped and cracked staircase in pitch darkness. He figured the building was uninhabited. Maybe cordoned off by the city for health and safety reasons, and then delayed back to market so the government could use it discreetly. They reached the fourth floor and came to a door with frosted glass at head height. By then, their eyes had adjusted to the dark.

Violetta reached out and knocked once.

The door flew open, and a gun barrel protruded from the shadows. It came inches away from touching her forehead. She was too close to get out of the way, but she didn’t try to.

The voice on the other end of the firearm breathed out. ‘Good. You’re back.’

She turned and ushered Slater and King through the doorway. ‘After you, gentlemen.’

Very professional.

Her demeanour entirely different.

Slater figured she was overcompensating to try and mask the fact that she and King were in a relationship.

Professional conflict of interest, and all that.

Slater went first, and found a middle-aged guy behind the gun barrel, with two guys behind him in turn. The three-man cohort seemed restless and thrown-off yet professional all at once. They wore navy blue suits with white shirts open at the collar. They were all Caucasian, and all of them had short hair, only a little longer than military buzzcuts. Like they’d got out of the army several years ago but never lost the habit. They were built bigger than the average serviceman, with extra muscle sculpted out of additional downtime. They were all hard and mean under the surface, but their auras were accommodating enough. They still eyed Slater as he stepped in all the same. Subtle machismo. None of the three stepped aside to let him through, meaning he’d have to weave his way around them like he was in a maze.

He figured they were federal agents with egos.

He stopped dead in his tracks and stared right back at them.

King stepped through the doorway and did the same.

The guy with his firearm in his hand said, ‘Are you the infamous duo?’

‘Depends,’ Slater said. ‘Define “infamous.”’

‘The ones she hasn’t been able to shut up about for the past few hours. Are you even military?’

Violetta said, ‘Cool it,’ from the landing.

Slater understood intimidation, and posturing, and peacocking. He could read the three of them like a book. They seemed fairly important, so they probably were feds, but they were disgruntled at having been called out to safeguard a place like this. Which meant they had probably been