“Who?” Pell asked.
“Del’s dad,” Rex said. “Jimi, are you sure?”
I hadn’t seen Stan since Pitman, since he shot Del, since he murdered my best friend after making so much of his life miserable. Stan had disappeared after that. He quit his job as a cop out in the zurbs and his house had been siting empty next to my mom’s ever since.
Hatred quickly burned off the chill I had felt. “I’m sure.”
Then someone from our side threw a large cup of soda toward the screen. It was a good throw, a high arc that hit right in the middle of Wells’s face, splashing those below as it fell to the ground. Nervous laughter rose around us.
A moment later, the cup came back, but on a much different trajectory. It didn’t arc through the air, it came in fast and low, in a way that no empty paper cup would behave.
It disappeared into the crowd, and I heard the sound of broken glass, accompanied by a scream. I saw a flash of red through the crowd. The bicycle cops were all looking around, confused. A bunch of the E4E protestors surged against the cordon, then climbed over it and rushed across the street toward the other protestors.
The crowd briefly thinned out behind them, and I caught a glimpse of a girl with long black hair and blood streaming down her paper-white face, being led away by two cops. I guess other people saw it, too, because suddenly half of the people in our cordon were running across the street.
Those remaining behind, including Ruth and Pell and Rex and me, all shouted, “No! Don’t!”
But the first group reached the far side of the street, viciously punching and kicking the H4Hers. The drones in the sky all swooped down, clustering in the air above our heads, recording as the bicycle cops tried to restore order, first with whistles, then truncheons, and then stun batons.
Rex froze for a moment, torn, then he said, “We need to get out of here. Come on.” He grabbed my hand and I grabbed Ruth’s—she was already holding onto Pell—and we ran away from the violence.
More and more police flooded onto the scene, batons raised as they plunged into the melee. I was surprised by how many of them had Wellplants.
Rex stopped and looked back. I knew he still wanted to do whatever he could to protect the other chimeras back there. In all the chaos, I couldn’t see what was going on in the center of the throng, although with his height, maybe Rex could. I knew it was likely that the chimeras were bearing the brunt of the brutality, but I also knew that all Rex would accomplish from going back there would be to get himself beaten and arrested.
I gripped his hand tighter and pulled. “No,” I said. “You’re right, we do need to get out of here.”
“She’s right,” Ruth said, and Pell nodded, reluctantly.
Rex resisted for a moment, then he nodded, as well. We hurried away, putting another block between us and the violence before we stopped to consider our next move.
We were just a few blocks away from E4E’s offices, and I was supposed to be meeting Trudy and my mom there soon anyway. I suggested we go there to regroup.
E4E headquarters was in an old, three-story building above a print shop in Callowhill, just on the other side of Chinatown. As we hurried along, Rex and I checked in with each other, quietly asking if the other was okay. Ruth and Pell did the same thing.
“I can’t believe Wells is running for president,” Ruth said, then held up a hand and as the rest of us all started to weigh in, saying how we totally saw it coming. “I know, I know,” she said. “I’m not surprised, I just can’t believe it.”
“He’s been running for years,” Rex said. “All that riling people up. It’s not about chimeras. He’s just using us as a tool to get what he wants.”
“Do you really think he’s that cynical?” I said.
Rex raised an eyebrow at me, like I should know the answer to that question.
And I did. “Man,” I said. “I don’t know what would be worse: to actually have that much hatred in you, or to pretend to for political purposes.”
“I hate him either way,” Pell said. “And I’m not pretending.”
NINE
I had thought E4E would be a safe, friendly place where we could process what had just happened and decide what, if anything, we needed to do about it. It hadn’t occurred to me that, of course, everyone there would be processing things, as well.
We entered through the door on the street and climbed the narrow stairs to the third floor. Through heavy glass doors, I could see most of the people standing and staring intently up at a holovid unit mounted on the wall. Behind them, through an open office door, I could see a trio of senior staffers clustered around a speakerphone. It could have been my imagination, but it seemed like a palpable sense of sorrow hung in the air. A lot of the people in that office had been friends with Myra Diaz and Davey Litchkoff.
At the far end of the room, through a glass wall, I could see the bullpen, where the volunteers worked. There were a dozen people, half on the phones and half folding papers and stuffing envelopes, as if maybe no one had told them what had happened at the protests or that it was there on the holovid. Mom and Trudy were stuffing envelopes, chatting quietly with an older woman sitting next to them. I felt a wave of warmth. They had come to feel strongly about chimera rights, but I knew the main reason they were there was to support me and the things I thought were important.
No one looked up as we pushed open the glass door and entered. They were paying close attention to the newsfeed on the holovid mounted in the corner of the room.
I turned toward the bullpen, to let Mom and Trudy know we were there and to tell them what had happened, but stopped as the holovid cut to footage of the violence we had just fled.
It was surreal to be watching it just minutes after having been there, knowing that I was in that crowd on the screen. The holovid showed the beginning of the brawl—with the soda cup sailing one way, then shooting back the other—then the surge from the pro-chimera side and the mayhem that followed.
A male voice intoned from off-screen, “Once again violence has infected the debate about chimera rights, only this time, by all accounts the blame lies squarely with the pro-chimera camp.…”
“What!?” I said, as a murmur of groans rose from the room, accompanied by lots of shaking heads and downcast looks.
Someone in the room said, “Idiots.”
“In the wake of yesterday’s devastating bombing by the pro-chimera terrorist group that calls itself CLAD, a peaceful protest and counter protest at the inaugural Humans for Humanity Convention was marred by violence that quickly escalated after a soft drink was thrown from the group of anti-Humans for Humanity protestors. When the beverage container was thrown back, a sizable portion of the anti-Humans for Humanity protestors launched a vicious attack on the H4H supporters.”
“What?!” I said again, in disbelief about how one-sided the reporting was. But watching the holovid feed, all I could see was the soda cup flying one way, then back the other—a different trajectory, yes, but still looking like a soda cup, and with no sign of the girl whose face was bloodied by the bottle hidden inside the cup. Then the pro-chimera protestors surged across the street in response, punching and kicking and looking like a crazed mob. And the protestors on the H4H side did…nothing. Some covered their heads and hunched over, some stood up straight with their hands at their sides, but none of them hit back.