The Nephilim Protocol

Snow Day

The night is cold and dark. We're packed tighter than a rush-hour subway car. My face is pressed into someone's back parka, and I'm pretty sure there's somebody resting against my ankles. I wake up at least five times when someone near me needs to go out for one reason or another. I wonder if they're going to the bathroom, then I wonder how that even works with the power out, then I wonder about ... nothing in particular. Just a wave of disconnected thoughts. And in the middle of them:

You need to sleep, Chad.

What if I never wake up?

But each time, exhaustion wins out, and I drop back into an uneasy sleep.

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The last time I wake up, it's to shouting. "Get your hands off me, fucking asshole!"

I just have time to wake myself before Big Bear bangs in the door. "Hey," he says. "Square? You just getting up now?"

"Mm." I'm still a bit foggy.

"New roommate." He pushes a black—I should say African-American—kid into the room. "Get him settled."

"What: me?"

"You see anyone else in here?" Big Bear asks. Sure enough, the whole room's empty. Guess everyone else is up already. "I've got work to do. Get him situated."

The door slams behind him. There's a moment or two of awkward silence as I try to figure out how to approach this. New Black Kid—seriously, Chad, African-American—is powerfully built, with his hair braided in corn rows.

Finally, the silence just gets too awkward. "Hey, I'm Square."

"Yeah?" he says. "Sorta figured that just looking at you, white boy."

There's a chuckle behind him. "Sounds a bit racist," Ball Buster says, coming in, glancing at New Bla—New Kid. Dolphin follows behind him.

"Damn, it's all the white people up in here," New Kid says, looking at them. "What kind of prissy white-ass prison they send me to?"

"That definitely sounds racist," Ball Buster says, but he's grinning.

"Camp Solanas," I say with a smile. "You're new? How'd they drop you in? I thought the flights still weren't running."

"Drop? Flights? You trippin', man? I just got kicked out of some hospital."

"You mean the clinic?" Ball Buster asks.

Something connects in my memory. "You're the kid who landed in the water," I say. I look at Ball Buster. "When they dropped us, remember they were talking about Lotus or someone getting pulled out of the water and that they'd be in the clinic for a while?"

Ball Buster shrugs. "If you say so." He turns to Corn Rows. "What's your name?"

New Kid gives a dark look, eyes glancing at each one of us in turn. And then he says it. "Sue."

There's no translation. Just the pure, unvarnished name, and it hangs in the frozen air for a solid moment. My brain's still trying to process what I just heard.

Ball Buster laughs.

Sue (really?) holds up a finger in his direction. "That's one. You get to laugh about that once, white boy."

"C'mon, man. You gotta admit it's a funny name," Ball Buster says.

"Which is why you get to laugh about it once," Sue says.