When Vera and I returned to the trainways filled with people, we noted the silence. So many looked at one computer, hovering over each other, pushing into the person beside them. David turned around when he saw us, biting his lip.
"What's up?" I asked. "What's going on?"
"The ship's really falling," he said.
I glanced at the screen behind him. "I thought we knew that."
"Yeah, but not at this speed." David pulled me around the group and pointed at the monitors. "See that? It's too close to the buildings near the lake. Another hour or so and it'll take the tops off them."
Slowly, I nodded. "All right." I glanced back at Vera. "Is there a way you can call the ship or something? Like a phone?"
Vera shook her head. "No," she said. "We don't have phones. Not like you guys do."
David growled. I could tell he didn't like the sound of no communication or lack thereof. I just knew there had to be something.
Biting my lip, I looked back at Vera. "How do you contact your people when you're down here?"
"We don't." Vera came beside us, watching the screen, too. Even though the scene was grainy, captured by modern cameras but displayed on outdated systems, you could just see the terrors that would land. What made it worse was that no one was paying attention.
Having aliens so close was too normal.
Vera twiddled her fingers in front of her, nervously. "Unless you have business down on Earth, you don't leave the ship. And if you do, you have an escort, someone official."
"Oh." I nodded, understanding. "Like that guy who came with your dad?"
Vera nodded. "Yeah, Brylon. He's kind of our personal guard."
"Can we call him?" David looked back at her. "A way to reach him?"
Vera bit her lip. "He's probably looking for me now, anyway. Or my father; I couldn't find him either. I'm worried."
I was worried, too. Despite the tight feeling I had in my gut, I knew now wasn't the time to cling to my anxieties. I had to push forward. Like had Vera saidâstop the bad, bring the good.
"Well, what if we get on the ship?" I turned, facing both David and Vera. "It's crashing, right? Is there a way to stop it from falling? Something we can press?"
"There's probably something in the control room." Vera looked down at her feet and rubbed her chin. "But I don't know how."
"Okay, fine." I turned to David. "What about everyone outside? No news outlets have picked this up. Nothing?"
"Nah." David ran his hands through his hair as he looked back at his team for confirmation. "It's been quiet."
"Hm." I sucked my bottom lip up between my teeth and exhaled sharply through my nose. "There has to be something..."
Vera looked at the both of us before pushing through the group to stand the closest to the monitor's screen. "Chaos?"
She said it so nonchalantly, all heads turned towards her.
Vera shrugged, glancing at every set of eyes peering in her direction. "You need a reaction, right? No one's paying attention. And it's too quiet, so Holmes is just sneaking around like he doesn't have a care in the world. But if everyone was out, if everyone was making noise, then he'd be stuck, right?"
Vera had a point. As negative as chaos and panic could be, sometimes it was the only way to get the desired reaction. There had been studies that proved it, right? To find our bad guy, we needed to rush out on the streets.
"Then how do we get the city's attention?" David placed both of his hands on his head. "We're in a fucking train station for God's sake."
A light bulb went off in my head. And I smiled because I watched too many movies. "Emergency broadcast systems."
Everyone looked back at me. "What?" various voices said.
"I know they don't use it anymore, not like they used to. But wasn't there a system that just set off city alarms and sent alerts to everyone's phones."
"Yeah," everyone responded the same way.
David grabbed my shoulders. "And how are we supposed to find that, huh?" And again, he emphasized, "We're in a fucking train station."
I grinned.
|||
It only took a few internet searches to find the old emergency broadcast system in Chicago. Considering it was essential to the city, it wasn't private data. And the building previously used to send such alerts had become just a storage warehouse for city supplies.
According to David, it wasn't hard to get into. And as we walked up the steps towards the building's top floor, I had to agree with him.
"Y'all lucky I know how to hack computers and shit," David said as he pushed his shoulder into the door labeled "Employees Only." "Or else, how would you have planned to send the alert out to people?"
I shrugged, stepping inside the room. "Honestly, I just knew you'd come with me automatically." Glancing back at him, I laughed. "Since y'all had been planning to do something heroic anyway."
"Yeah, well, whatever." David continued to grumble under his breath as he walked past me.
The room at the top was large, spacious. Some tables remained with minimal chairs. There were computers, too, but none of them were on. Vera and I walked around them, touching them. David walked over towards the largest panel attached to the screens. His hands hovered over the buttons beneath them.
"All right," he muttered.
"Is that it?" I asked him. "How do we know if this is it?"
"I don't know," David said, shrugging. "You act like I've done this shit before."
"Didn't you just hack a computer, though?" Vera appeared on the other side of him, lips pressed up to her nose as she slowly nodded. I couldn't help but laugh.
"Yeah, but not this." David moved his hands all around the computer in front of him. "I've done little shit, yeah. But this? Hell, this is so out of date, I wouldn't know how to turn it on."
"There's a button." I pointed at his right. Beside his fingers was a red button. Out there in the open. And obviously stereotypical. "Right there."
David glanced down at it before looking over at me. Both of his eyebrows shot up high on his forehead. But he couldn't help but laugh. "Are you trying to be a smart ass?"
"I learned from the best, right?" I smirked at him.
He had no response. Next to him, Vera couldn't hold in her laugh. She tried, pressing her lips together. She even covered her mouth. But all of us heard it.
Without saying anything else, David pressed the button and watched the computer screens come to life.
It was interesting to watch. You heard the power come to life before the screens regained their light. Bursts of static electricity shot out from the walls the moment David pressed down on power. The sound hit my ears, almost echoing.
I had to cover my right ear to let my left focus and follow, just like my eyes followed the waves of light. It started from the left screen. A small flicker, bringing color to almost dead pixels. When it reached the right screen, the room was perfectly lit. And a city map appeared in front of us, straight out of a science fiction movie.
"Is this how the city announced alerts?" Vera asked in a hushed whisper.
Both David and I shrugged. And David, leaning against the panel in front of him, eyeing the screens with wide eyes. "I have no idea," he said. "For all I know this isn't even the system we need."
"Right, right." I nodded, agreeing because he could be right. "Or it could just be what we need, see?" I pointed at the middle screen. "It says emergency right there, system test. Isn't that what was performed on Tuesdays?"
"Isn't this what's performed on Tuesdays," David mocked me, but the smirk on his face proved he agreed, nonetheless. "But yeah, I think so." He glanced at me, then at Vera. "So, it says here to input the alert. I guess it was manual back then. What am I putting in?"
That was a good question. What was the alert going to be?
It wasn't like we could go in and accuse Holmes out in the open, through text alerts vibrating on everyone's phone. As much as I wanted to, and as much as it made sense to do, it didn't. If we did that then we'd be outed. Crying wolf, even though he was the wolf, could very well eat us.
"What about...?" Vera tapped her finger against her chin. Her eyes dimmed with thought.
But we had no time to waste. Leaning against the counter alongside David, I looked up. "Be dramatic," I said, eyeing the various dots on the map. "People react to drama."
"To chaos," Vera added, agreeing.
"Right." I smiled, then looked at David. "Put the sky is falling or something."
"The skyâ" David raised his eyebrows as high as they would go. "âis falling?"
"Right." I nodded.
"How is that even possible?" David waited for an explanation. "Skies don't fall, country boy."
"No, they don't." I pushed David out of the way and moved my fingers over the keys. Pushing the comma button a few times, I checked to make sure the keyboard still reacted to the system it was meant to work with. When a million commas appeared in the grey box, I smiled. "And ships don't crash either, but it is today."
"Could crash," Vera corrected me. "If we don't do something about it."
"Right." I nodded, agreeing with her.
"Ship's crash." David nudged me out of the way. And despite disagreeing with what we thought made sense, David keyed in the sentence anyway. "They crash all the fuckin' time."
"Name one." I crossed my arms. "Name one Pylon ship that hit Earth."
David didn't have an answer. If there had been one, it would never have been noted in our history. All we knew was their perfection. And that Holmes was trying to destroy them.
"Good point." David's fingers typed away at the keys. "Can't argue that."