Company Town (10 page)

“THIS IS A LOCKDOWN. ALL STUDENTS MUST REPORT TO CLASSROOMS IMMEDIATELY.”

“Is it a drill?” Joel asked.

“Keep moving.” Hwa's gaze slid slowly over a series of icons in the far right of her vision. One of them was an exclamation point. It was blinking. She focused on it and blinked three times. An alert swarmed up in her vision:
THIS IS A LOCKDOWN. ALL STUDENTS MUST REPORT TO CLASSROOMS IMMEDIATELY.

Which one was the goddamn security icon? Why weren't these things more intuitive? She blinked out of the alerts menu and roved her gaze over the others. There it was. A badge. Security. She blinked three times.

“FIFTY SECONDS.”

There, in her left eye, was a juddering video feed of a man in a long coat. He was carrying a shotgun. He was on the edge of the atrium at the end of the lobby. Any minute now, he could change direction and cross the atrium, where he would see them. They were boxed in.

“THIRTY SECONDS.”

“Is it a drill?”

Hwa focused on Joel. “No,” she said. “It's not.”

“TEN SECONDS.”

Joel bolted back to the mail room. He pounded on the door. He tried the knob. It was locked. The blinds were down. Hwa began stacking bins. If they couldn't find shelter, she would have to make one. Maybe if she stacked the bins outside the mail room, they would just look like another delivery that hadn't been processed yet. Or maybe fetal pig bodies were especially good at absorbing hollow-points.

“Sorry, piggies,” she murmured. “Joel!”

“They won't let us in!”

“Not so loud!” Hwa gestured for him to hunker down beside her in the shadow of the bins. He came over and crouched. “Here's what we're gonna do,” she said, and belatedly realized that phrasing something that way meant she actually had to have a plan.

“What?”

Hwa watched the shooter in her left eye. He was moving in the other direction. Good. “We have to be really quiet,” she whispered.

“Okay.”

Hwa tried to remember what the school security briefing had said about lockdowns. She'd gone through lockdown drills before dropping out, but being on the other side of all that procedure was different. In the security tab, she found a subheading marked E
VACUATIONS AND
D
RILLS
, and blinked at it. It unfolded across her right eye, and as she read, her heart sank.

“All the doors are locked, now. The whole school is sealed. Main doors, fire exits, everything. It's all remote; the cops are the only ones who can open it back up.”

“Daniel could open it back up,” Joel said. He focused elsewhere and whispered. “Daniel? Are you there? Daniel?”

Static.

“All the communications are being jammed,” Hwa said. “That's part of it. In case there's a bomb. Or in case there's a hack in the system or the augments. Or a toxin. It's a total quarantine, until the cops come in. Nothing goes in or out. No people, no information, not even the air. Nothing.”

There was a terrible silence. The silence of scared kids hiding behind locked doors. The silence of fans that have stopped spinning. Dead air, closed mouths, and empty halls. Hwa had never known the school to be so quiet. It sounded like everyone was already dead.

“We're alone,” Joel said, finally.

“Yeah.”

“So what do we do?”

Hwa looked again at the shooter. He was far on the other side of the atrium. “We move. Now. Quietly.” Hwa pointed to the left of the atrium. “We need to get to the elevator on that side. I'll force the doors open. We can use the elevator shaft to get into the ducts. Then we use the ducts to climb into the lighting booth above the auditorium.”

Joel looked at her as though she had just relayed all that information in Korean. Given the situation, maybe she had. “You're crazy.”

“The lighting booth is the safest place in school, Joel. It's why everybody goes there to make out. There's only one way in or out, and it's a ladder that pulls up behind you.”

He didn't look any more confident.

“Joel. Come on. Your dad hired me for a reason, right?”

He nodded.

“This is that reason.”

His lips firmed and he nodded again. “Okay.”

Hwa poked her head out first. The shooter was peering down another hallway. This was the perfect time to move. She gestured behind herself. “Go. Now.”

Joel skittered around from behind her and started running. She chased from behind, keeping herself in line behind him. Their new shoes squeaked across the floor; it was recently waxed and Joel wiped out and yelped. In her left eye, the shooter's head came up and she saw him raise his gun—

—heard the dry pops of fire—

—felt her right arm open up—

—skidded to the nearest bathroom. It was the girl's room; there was only one door and it didn't lock. Hwa pushed Joel toward the back stall and locked the door behind them.

“I thought we were going to the elevator!”

Hwa held up her arm. It was as though a mouth had yawned open across her flesh. Yellow globules of fat dangled from underneath her ragged skin. “Plan's changed.”

Joel went even paler than usual. “Oh, no.”

“Yeah, karma's a bitch,” Hwa said. “Shouldn't have showed it off to you.”

“We have to apply pressure.” Joel grabbed her arm and held it. His hands shook. He seemed entirely too focused on his hands. “Wait. I have a better idea.” He put Hwa's hand over her wound and held it there. “Hold on.”

Hwa watched him hop off the toilet and open the stall door. “No, don't!”

He darted out and she heard a rough scraping sound and a few grunts. Finally there was a terrible screech, and he came back into the stall with a maxi pad in each hand. “I got the extra absorbent kind.”

Hwa forced her grimace into a grin. “Nice work.”

Joel removed the tie pin from his tie, loosened the tie, and pulled it off without un-knotting it. He tore open the packaging around one pad and frowned at the wad of antibacterial memory foam in his hand. “That's it? That's the best they can do?”

“Hey, those were miracle Space Age fibres, back in the day.”

“Wow. No wonder you're so pissed off, all the time.”

Joel wrapped the pad over Hwa's wound. Then she helped him slide his tie up her arm. He tightened the loop around the pad and then wrapped the rest of the tie's length around her arm and tucked the end into the wrap.

“Can you still move your fingers?” he asked.

Hwa flexed them. “Yeah. Thanks. You're kind of a genius.”

Joel shrugged. “I know. That's what my test scores say.”

“Seriously?”

“Pretty much. I have a certificate and everything.”

She licked her lips. The wound in her arm was now more of a dull, throbbing ache. She could work with that. But only so much. “Well, you got any genius ideas for getting us back into that elevator? I can't force the doors with this arm.”

Joel pulled the tie pin from his pocket. “Actually? I do.”

*   *   *

The elevator had two access mechanisms: a standard chip-reader, and an old-fashioned lock-and-key system for when the power went out. Hwa stood guard as Joel worked the pin into the elevator's key slot.

“This always looks easier, in the dramas,” Joel said.

“Don't force it,” Hwa said. “Just feel around gently until you feel something push back.”

The doors chimed open. They fell inside, and Hwa slapped the “door close” button. Then she looked up at the ceiling of the elevator. There was all kinds of shit up there, wedged up between the lights and the plastic panels that were supposed to protect them. Pencils, rubber bands, dead flies both organic and robotic, even a pink assignment sheet with the word
GULLIBLE
written across it in green marker.

Hwa pointed. “Jump up there and take down one of those panels.”

Joel reached up and jumped. It took him a couple of tries, but the panel fell open and showered him with dead flies and paper clips. “Now what?”

Hwa told him how to turn the lights off and gain access to the ceiling panel that would pop open the trapdoor on top of the elevator. She had to kneel down and let him stand on her knee to do it, but he had good hands and worked fast. Soon he had the trapdoor open, and after he climbed up through it, he helped her get up there, too.

“Hold on. Let me get into blueprint mode, here.” Hwa found the blueprint icon in her vision. The school being a publicly funded building, it had to release all its plans. So she could see where all the shafts and ducts went. It took her a moment to orient herself, but the light booth was unmistakable. And as she suspected, it had a major HVAC duct sitting right up on top of it. With the stage lights, the auditorium got awfully hot during performances. The only way to control the temperature was to force the air one way or another. And the only way to do that without impeding anyone's view of the stage was to stick a big fan on top of the light booth.

Hopefully the quarantine would last long enough that none of the fans would be spinning while they were in the ducts.

She pointed at the spiny ladder leading up the shaft. “Okay. Let's go.”

*   *   *

Climbing ladders and crawling through ducts with one arm was excruciating. There was no other word for it. Hwa smeared blood everywhere she went. The ducts were smaller and tighter than she'd expected, and the only thing that greased their way through the aluminum tunnels was anxious, frustrated sweat. It felt like being born, if your mother was an unfeeling machine with a pussy made of steel who didn't really care if you lived or died.

That was a fairly accurate description of Sunny, actually. Hwa would have to remember that for later. If there was a “later.”

Finally, they made it to the light booth. The fan was still off. Hwa checked her watch. This was a long time for the cops not to enter the building. What were they waiting for?

“Let's get through before it starts up again,” Joel said.

“Yeah.” Hwa wriggled around until her feet faced the fan. “Turn around so your back is to mine, okay? I need you to brace me, so my kicks have more force.”

“Okay.” He turned around. Through his shirt, she could feel how hot and damp he was. But he didn't seem frightened. He was doing well with this whole thing. “You're doing pretty well with this whole thing.”

“I have an antianxiety implant,” Joel said. “It's perched right on my amygdala. It's sort of like a pacemaker, for my emotions. I don't feel high highs or low lows. I'm right in the middle, all the time. Dad had it put in right when my voice started to change.”

Hwa kicked twice. The fan squealed the second time, but didn't budge. “No shit?”

“No shit.”

“That's a long time to go without worrying.” Hwa tried not to sound as snide as she felt.

“I'm fifteen,” Joel said. “I only got it like three years ago.”

Hwa focused all her surprise into her legs and kicked again.
“Fifteen?
You're a senior! You're graduating this year!”

She felt him shrug against her shoulders. “Like I said: I'm a genius.”

“Wow.” She kicked right at the centre of the fan. It dented around her feet. Now they were getting somewhere. She could see a rim of light around the panel. “So, that means I'm, what, seven years older than you?”

“I don't know how old you are,” Joel said. “Does it matter?”

Hwa kicked hard. The fan fell in, and a couple of little kicks at its edges with her heels popped it the rest of the way. “Nope,” Hwa said. And she pushed herself through.

The first thing they found was food. The light booth had an impressive array of snacks. All of it was the high-calorie contraband that the school had outlawed years ago: bright pouches and boxes of crisps and chocolate (a whole box of the cherry brandy kind), seaweed crackers, “cheddar” popcorn, “kettle” popcorn, and bottle after bottle of energy drinks. Hwa mainlined one like it was the blood of Christ.

Tossing the empty bottle into a bin, she took stock. The light booth's equipment was still all tarped over; no one had come in to use it since the summer. She plunked herself into one of the chairs and pulled the other one out for Joel.

“What's going on, out there?”

“Let's see.”

Hwa opened the security tab again. More feeds had come online. Students in darkened rooms cowered under their desks. Teachers held fingers over their lips. The halls remained empty. It was standard protocol in an active shooter situation, one Hwa had drilled her self-defence students on: run, and if running is impossible, then hide.

The shooter was on the second floor, now. He was in the foreign language pod. He was standing outside Madame Clouzot's class—Hwa recognized the French flag across the door—and trying to kick it down. Hanna Oleson was in there, Hwa realized. She'd figured out Hanna's whole schedule when Jared took her. Was she as scared now as she'd been then? Had Hwa saved her just to watch her die here?

“Hwa?”

Just as she was about to explain, the bell sounded. First period was over. Christ, where were the cops? Maybe they knew something she didn't. Like maybe this asshole had chemical weapons, or there was a bomb somewhere, or he'd rigged himself to blow up. Maybe he wasn't the run-of-the-mill batshit shooter, after all.

Maybe he was the one trying to kill Joel.

Maybe he was going to kill everyone in his way until he found Joel.

“Fuck this,” Hwa whispered. She stood up and started digging in the supply racks. Most of it was just extra wire and batteries and folders of gels. There was an old red toolbox that looked promising, but it had a big fat padlock on it and Hwa had no time.

“What are you looking for?”

“The emergency ladder.”

Hwa fished a box cutter out of one bin. That could come in handy. She tried stuffing it down her skirt, but that didn't work so well. She dug out a tool belt, cinched it over her waist, and stuck the cutter in there, along with a couple of flat-head screwdrivers and a heavy flashlight. There was a drill, but it was a small battery-powered job without much force. She needed something bigger. Like a nail gun.