I hung my head as I hurried along, depressed at the thought that I had to be prepared to say something that should have been so obvious.
It was going to be a strange afternoon, and I was wondering exactly how strange when the white van pulled up beside me. As the hood fell over my head, I realized it was going to be even stranger than I could have ever imagined.
THREE
Before I could scream, a hand clamped over my mouth. I was grabbed by my arms and lifted, firmly but gently, into the van.
I kicked and thrashed and tried to bite the hand covering my mouth. A voice next to my ear said, “We’re not going to hurt you. We just want to talk.”
My wrists were taped together behind my back as the tires squealed and the van surged away.
We turned a corner, sharp and fast, then turned again a half-minute later. We zigged and zagged through the city for a while, long enough that I was totally disoriented. And furious. I hadn’t actually had time to get scared, or at least not until the van stopped and the hood came off of my head.
There were no windows in the back, just a cloudy sunroof. A metal partition blocked the driver and the windshield.
I was on a bench seat and three of my captors were sitting across from me on another one. They all wore masks.
“Who are you?” I demanded. “What do you want?” I was trying to sound defiant, but by now, the fear had hit me. I could hear it in my voice. The van turned again, and I slid in my seat, unable to stop myself with my hands taped behind me.
“We just want to talk to you,” said the figure in the middle. “You can call me Cronos.”
His voice was hoarse and raspy, like a very old man. And he seemed to be over-enunciating each word. The effect sounded alien but somehow familiar, as well. He was bigger than the others, and his mask was more elaborate. Theirs were simple, similar to the hood I had been wearing, but with holes for the eyes and mouth. The mask on the guy in the middle was fitted, not tight, but stitched and seamed to match the contours of his face. The fabric over his mouth was some kind of mesh, and his eyes were hidden by a pair of mirrored shades.
“Who’s we?” I demanded.
“That’s not important now,” he said. “What is important is that you are about to make a mistake.”
“You made a mistake,” I shot back. “I don’t know what you want, but you can’t just grab people off the street. Kidnapping is a federal crime.”
He laughed, but it sounded like a cough. “We don’t care about federal crimes,” he said as the van turned another corner.
“Is this good?” called a voice from the driver’s seat.
Cronos turned toward the front and said, “Not yet.” Then he turned back to me. “What we do care about is that you’re planning on meeting with the enemy, and I can’t allow that.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You mean well, Jimi Corcoran, we know that. But you’re mistaken if you think the people you’re meeting with mean well, too. Reverend Calkin. H4H. They hate chimeras. They kill chimeras.” I had wondered if my kidnappers were spliced, but with the hoods and masks there was no way to tell for sure. “You’ll never change that about them,” he continued. “All you’ll accomplish with your presence there is to give them the appearance of moderation, the political cover they need to continue their campaign against us.”
“You don’t know that,” I shot back. “Calkin has said publicly that he seeks common ground, ways to accomplish their goals without hurting chimeras or anybody else.”
Cronos laughed again, softly. “After all you’ve seen, how can you still be so naïve?”
“I’m not naïve!” I snapped back. I knew I sounded juvenile, but something about the way he said it brought it out in me. He was obviously a jerk, but he sounded like a cartoon bad guy, like a James Bond villain from an old movie. He was scary, and I was scared, but he was also ridiculous in a way.
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “As I said, I cannot allow it.”
“You can’t tell me what I can and can’t do.”
He sighed, a raspy scraping sound. “Yes, I can.”
He knocked on the partition separating us from the driver. One of the other two quickly leaned over and tugged the hood back over my head.
“No!” I yelled. “Dammit!” I jerked my neck from side to side, but he pulled it down over my face. Then a pair of hands clamped each of my arms and the van screeched to a stop. I would have gone sprawling if not for their grip. I heard the door slide open, and something metallic brushed against my hands as I was hoisted out of the van and placed on my feet.
The door slid shut and the van sped off. I filled the hood with curses and tried to free my hands. I expected to struggle, but my hands came apart easily. The tape had been cut.
I ripped off the hood as the van disappeared around the corner. I was standing underneath a mass of ancient blue steel trestles. I realized I was under the Vine Street Smartway, the highway that separated the Tower District from the expensive residential neighborhoods to the north. Right above me was the spot where it turned into the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, which crossed over the river to New Jersey. I was about a mile from the museum.
I looked at my watch. It was five after twelve. The picture I had been trying to conjure—me sitting in the luncheon, calm, self-confident, and mature, and the others nodding sagely as I shared insights that changed people’s minds for the better—was an image that had never fully materialized. But now even the vague outlines of it were obliterated as I pictured myself bursting into the room—late, sweaty, traumatized from being abducted off the street—as E4E’s national vice president and regional chair shook their heads with disgust, along with everyone else there. I considered not going, rationalizing that I could actually do more harm than good. But then I decided that was a cop-out, and obviously what my captors wanted.
Plus, it was only a mile. I smiled, thinking this Cronos character and his buddies didn’t know me as well as they seemed to think they did. I started running, through Olde City, down Third Street, back to Market Street, and east, toward the waterfront. I dodged and weaved around the tourists gawking at the old buildings the way I’d been gawking at the new ones just a few minutes earlier.
I made it to the promenade at 12:10. As I ran along the water, the museum came into view. It looked out over the river, a squat, concrete building, like a bunker except for the colorful posters and all the decks and balconies. The meeting was on the second floor. At least there’d be a nice view.
I was about fifty yards away from the museum entrance, when I heard a loud, rumbling boom!
The deep-set windows of the museum blew out, shooting jets of fire and glass, like an old battleship firing its guns.
On the promenade ahead of me, a woman jogging by was sent cartwheeling into the river.
I stopped so suddenly that I stumbled to my knees, and for half a second I watched the debris tumbling across the pavement as the first tendrils of smoke curled up from the windows. Then I staggered to my feet and sprinted forward.
FOUR
In the seconds it took me to run to the burning museum, people who were there before me were already backing away, abandoning their attempts to reach any survivors in the rapidly intensifying fire.