After the Golden Age (Golden Age 1)

“Okay. If you think it’s best,” Celia said, a little breathlessly.

“You might need something, and if none of us is around—” Her mother smiled. It was like she’d been waiting for years to give Celia access to the command room. To initiate her into the club.

No one was protesting.

Suzanne brought her to the main terminal and had her put her thumb on a scanner, to record her print, to confirm her authorization. The computer accepted her with glowing green lights.

The numeric code for the outer door was Celia’s birthday.

* * *

Her mother fussed over her some more and wanted to feed her even more lasagna, when what Celia really wanted to do was start pouring data into the mainframe. But she didn’t want to do it with everyone hovering over her. Arthur took the cue and excused himself, claiming he had some work to finish up at his psychiatry practice—his office was halfway down the building. So, the group dispersed, and Celia promised she’d get a good night’s sleep, and the data crunching would have to wait until tomorrow.

When she left West Plaza for home, she checked her phone and found she’d missed a call. The Olympiad conference room blocked such transmissions.

Mark had left her a message. He sounded angry. “Celia. I got your call and checked up on your information. I don’t know what you’re implying about my father. You’re obviously bored out of your skull to go through this much trouble to dig up this trash. I think your parents’ paranoia has rubbed off on you. You’re looking for conspiracies that don’t exist.” He clicked off.

Maybe she could find a few of his hairs on her pillow, to compare against Sito’s DNA. She doubted she’d be getting any other kind of genetic material from him any time soon.

TWENTY-ONE

THE Banner’s headline the next morning announced in blazing bold letters: “DEFENSE RESTS IN SITO TRIAL. JURY DELIBERATION BEGINS.” So, the end was nigh.

In a fit of déjà vu, Celia set out for the bus stop, on her way back to West Plaza to feed her information about Leyden Laboratory into the Olympiad mainframe. She was as giddy as a kid at Christmas about what she might find.

She made a point of walking around the sewer grate by a good margin. No one was going to pull that on her again. When she made it onto the bus, she heaved a sigh of relief.

The baby started crying as soon as the bus left the curb.

It wasn’t just a fussy baby. This was a baby who was generally unhappy with the state of the universe and was expressing this with its entire lung capacity. Celia sympathized. The bus’s overactive heater had brought the temperature up to about eighty—with everyone on board bundled in winter clothes. It was noisy and smelly, filled with strangers, all of them trapped. The poor mother was doing her best to hush the thing, but her soothing did no good.

Celia was about to give the woman cab fare so she could get off and take her screaming infant home in peace, when the man in the seat in front of her hollered at the driver, “Hey! I wanted that stop! Didn’t you see the freakin’ light?”

They had zoomed right past the last stop.

The bus was speeding up. Riders started murmuring, shifting restlessly.

Leaning on the seat back in front of her, Celia stood to look.

“Hey, didn’t you hear me?” the guy complained again.

The woman sitting behind the driver tapped him on the shoulder. “Excuse me—”

The driver fired a gun into the ceiling of the bus. People screamed, then a sudden hush fell. Except for the baby.

The bus swerved and ran a red light, leaving behind squealing tires and the smashing metal of a collision as cars scattered in its wake.

Celia fell back into her seat and braced, white-knuckled. Runaway bus—the driver was taking the whole bus hostage. He wasn’t shooting anyone with the handgun, which was a small blessing. He held it flat to the steering wheel while he glared ahead, oblivious to the chaos he caused.

Then a guy in the second row decided to be a hero. He lunged forward, grabbed the driver’s shirt, and pulled, clawing for some kind of purchase on his head or neck, probably hoping to pull him out of the seat. The driver was belted in, lodged firmly in place. He brought the gun to bear without even looking and pulled the trigger. Drops of blood spattered on the windshield, and the guy fell.

Everyone in the front half of the bus pressed back, surging away from the driver as a mass. The bus went faster.

Behind Celia, a screaming woman popped out the emergency window by her seat. The shield of plastic fell away and the woman leaned out. Wind whipped into the bus.

“No!” Celia threw herself over the back of her own seat and grabbed the woman’s coat, hauling her away from the opening. The woman, in her thirties and ghostly pale, struggled, slapping at Celia, muttering hysterically, “Got to get out, got to get out.” Celia held her wrists, crossed her arms, and pinned her to the seat. “Not that way. You’ll smear yourself on the pavement.”

The woman snapped back to lucidity and stared wide-eyed at Celia. “We’re going to die!”