Breed

Chapter Forty-five

There was a knock on her door and Mikaela tensed. After the shooting on campus that morning, everyone was on edge. She checked the time on her phone, to see if it was maybe the mail carrier with a package. It was too early, but the knock came again.

She needed to answer, to stop being scared. She cracked the door, and saw Peter standing outside. "I've been trying to find you all morning," he said. "But with the lockdown, I got stuck in my lab for the better part of the morning. Even when they caught the guy, the cops were paranoid about another shooter, or explosives. They locked everybody down. And of course the phones have been hammered."

"What's up, that you needed to find me?"

"It's Cris."

"He's okay?"

"Yeah. It was just the one girl who was killed, no one we knew, but..."

"Are we going to have to have another jailbait conversation?"

"Just because I like a young look doesn't mean I like them actually young."

"It's still a little creepy."

"Whatever. Last night, he told me Rox was planning to hit a government installation, one the NSA is using as part of their transhuman surveillance program. Last night, I didn't... I thought it was idle talk, kids too young to recognize the consequences who just wanted to do something to set the world right. But this morning... I was stuck in my lab during the attack. I was locked inside, and forced to watch the gunman go into Mendel. Twenty minutes later, I watched them wheel his victim out on a stretcher covered in a white cloth.

"I wanted to do something. I thought about harnessing the power of our technopaths to send a malignant signal into their servers and destroy all of their data- not just on transhumans, but all of their surveillance, all of their secrets. Show them the price of their callous arrogance. Clearly I sobered up. My rage didn't last long, but that's more down to temperament and age. If I was still 17, still full of fire over the dirty looks I'd get any time I asked out a straight man whose fragile masculinity couldn't let that slide... I'm worried they really will do it.

"I think I talked Cris down. But that many pissed off teenagers, it's a critical mass. Cris, me, you could have Ghandi and MLK try to talk them down, and I wouldn't like their odds. When you're that age, it already feels like the world is against you, but finding out some parts of it actually are..."

"Yeah," Mikaela said. "You're right. What can we do?"

"I don't know, that's part of why I'm here."

"So maybe we need to do what you did in coming to me- call in reinforcements."

"You mean Linc, don't you?"

"If anyone has a chance of either scuttling their plans or talking them out of it, it's him. Seems like the logical choice."

"I guess. Saying it all out loud... it feels like maybe I was just being paranoid, like I'm sure Cris and the rest will come to the same sane conclusions I did."

"You're worried about looking like a hyperventilating loon in front of Lincoln."

"I'm pretty sure he's thoroughly straight, but still..."

"I'm sure he'd appreciate the heads up, even if nothing comes of it."

He frowned. "I did come to you. I would feel like I was being a dick if I ignored your suggestion."

"So don't be a dick. Come on." Mikaela grabbed her coat and headed for the door. Pete shrugged, and followed.