Chapter 3

This chapter is dedicated to Borderlands Books, San Francisco's magni-ficent independent science fiction bookstore. Borderlands is basically loc-ated across the street from the fictional Cesar Chavez High depicted inLittle Brother, and it's not just notorious for its brilliant events, sign-ings, book clubs and such, but also for its amazing hairless Egyptian cat,Ripley, who likes to perch like a buzzing gargoyle on the computer at thefront of the store. Borderlands is about the friendliest bookstore youcould ask for, filled with comfy places to sit and read, and staffed by in-credibly knowledgeable clerks who know everything there is to knowabout science fiction. Even better, they've always been willing to takeorders for my book (by net or phone) and hold them for me to sign whenI drop into the store, then they ship them within the US for free!
Borderlands Books: 866 Valencia Ave, San Francisco CA USA 94110+1 888 893 4008We passed a lot of people in the road on the way to the Powell StreetBART. They were running or walking, white-faced and silent or shoutingand panicked. Homeless people cowered in doorways and watched it all,while a tall black tranny hooker shouted at two mustached young menabout something.
The closer we got to the BART, the worse the press of bodies became.
By the time we reached the stairway down into the station, it was a mob-scene, a huge brawl of people trying to crowd their way down a narrowstaircase. I had my face crushed up against someone's back, andsomeone else was pressed into my back.
Darryl was still beside me — he was big enough that he was hard toshove, and Jolu was right behind him, kind of hanging on to his waist. Ispied Vanessa a few yards away, trapped by more people.
"Screw you!" I heard Van yell behind me. "Pervert! Get your hands offof me!"37I strained around against the crowd and saw Van looking with disgustat an older guy in a nice suit who was kind of smirking at her. She wasdigging in her purse and I knew what she was digging for.
"Don't mace him!" I shouted over the din. "You'll get us all too."At the mention of the word mace, the guy looked scared and kind ofmelted back, though the crowd kept him moving forward. Up ahead, Isaw someone, a middle-aged lady in a hippie dress, falter and fall. Shescreamed as she went down, and I saw her thrashing to get up, but shecouldn't, the crowd's pressure was too strong. As I neared her, I bent tohelp her up, and was nearly knocked over her. I ended up stepping onher stomach as the crowd pushed me past her, but by then I don't thinkshe was feeling anything.
I was as scared as I'd ever been. There was screaming everywherenow, and more bodies on the floor, and the press from behind was as re-lentless as a bulldozer. It was all I could do to keep on my feet.
We were in the open concourse where the turnstiles were. It washardly any better here — the enclosed space sent the voices around usechoing back in a roar that made my head ring, and the smell and feelingof all those bodies made me feel a claustrophobia I'd never known I wasprone to.
People were still cramming down the stairs, and more were squeezingpast the turnstiles and down the escalators onto the platforms, but it wasclear to me that this wasn't going to have a happy ending.
"Want to take our chances up top?" I said to Darryl.
"Yes, hell yes," he said. "This is vicious."I looked to Vanessa — there was no way she'd hear me. I managed toget my phone out and I texted her.
>
We're getting out of hereI saw her feel the vibe from her phone, then look down at it and thenback at me and nod vigorously. Darryl, meanwhile, had clued Jolu in.
"What's the plan?" Darryl shouted in my ear.
"We're going to have to go back!" I shouted back, pointing at the re-morseless crush of bodies.
"It's impossible!" he said.
"It's just going to get more impossible the longer we wait!"38He shrugged. Van worked her way over to me and grabbed hold ofmy wrist. I took Darryl and Darryl took Jolu by the other hand and wepushed out.
It wasn't easy. We moved about three inches a minute at first, thenslowed down even more when we reached the stairway. The people wepassed were none too happy about us shoving them out of the way,either. A couple people swore at us and there was a guy who looked likehe'd have punched me if he'd been able to get his arms loose. We passedthree more crushed people beneath us, but there was no way I couldhave helped them. By that point, I wasn't even thinking of helping any-one. All I could think of was finding the spaces in front of us to move in-to, of Darryl's mighty straining on my wrist, of my death-grip on Van be-hind me.
We popped free like Champagne corks an eternity later, blinking inthe grey smoky light. The air raid sirens were still blaring, and the soundof emergency vehicles' sirens as they tore down Market Street was evenlouder. There was almost no one on the streets anymore — just thepeople trying hopelessly to get underground. A lot of them were crying.
I spotted a bunch of empty benches — usually staked out by skanky wi-nos — and pointed toward them.
We moved for them, the sirens and the smoke making us duck andhunch our shoulders. We got as far as the benches before Darryl fellforward.
We all yelled and Vanessa grabbed him and turned him over. The sideof his shirt was stained red, and the stain was spreading. She tugged hisshirt up and revealed a long, deep cut in his pudgy side.
"Someone freaking stabbed him in the crowd," Jolu said, his handsclenching into fists. "Christ, that's vicious."Darryl groaned and looked at us, then down at his side, then hegroaned and his head went back again.
Vanessa took off her jean jacket and then pulled off the cotton hoodieshe was wearing underneath it. She wadded it up and pressed it toDarryl's side. "Take his head," she said to me. "Keep it elevated." To Jolushe said, "Get his feet up — roll up your coat or something." Jolu movedquickly. Vanessa's mother is a nurse and she'd had first aid trainingevery summer at camp. She loved to watch people in movies get theirfirst aid wrong and make fun of them. I was so glad to have her with us.
39We sat there for a long time, holding the hoodie to Darryl's side. Hekept insisting that he was fine and that we should let him up, and Vankept telling him to shut up and lie still before she kicked his ass.
"What about calling 911?" Jolu said.
I felt like an idiot. I whipped my phone out and punched 911. Thesound I got wasn't even a busy signal — it was like a whimper of painfrom the phone system. You don't get sounds like that unless there'sthree million people all dialing the same number at once. Who needs bot-nets when you've got terrorists?
"What about Wikipedia?" Jolu said.
"No phone, no data," I said.
"What about them?" Darryl said, and pointed at the street. I lookedwhere he was pointing, thinking I'd see a cop or an paramedic, but therewas no one there.
"It's OK buddy, you just rest," I said.
"No, you idiot, what about them, the cops in the cars? There!"He was right. Every five seconds, a cop car, an ambulance or afiretruck zoomed past. They could get us some help. I was such an idiot.
"Come on, then," I said, "let's get you where they can see you and flagone down."Vanessa didn't like it, but I figured a cop wasn't going to stop for a kidwaving his hat in the street, not that day. They just might stop if theysaw Darryl bleeding there, though. I argued briefly with her and Darrylsettled it by lurching to his feet and dragging himself down toward Mar-ket Street.
The first vehicle that screamed past — an ambulance — didn't evenslow down. Neither did the cop car that went past, nor the firetruck, northe next three cop-cars. Darryl wasn't in good shape — he was white-faced and panting. Van's sweater was soaked in blood.
I was sick of cars driving right past me. The next time a car appeareddown Market Street, I stepped right out into the road, waving my armsover my head, shouting "STOP." The car slewed to a stop and only thendid I notice that it wasn't a cop car, ambulance or fire-engine.
It was a military-looking Jeep, like an armored Hummer, only it didn'thave any military insignia on it. The car skidded to a stop just in front ofme, and I jumped back and lost my balance and ended up on the road. Ifelt the doors open near me, and then saw a confusion of booted feet40moving close by. I looked up and saw a bunch of military-looking guysin coveralls, holding big, bulky rifles and wearing hooded gas maskswith tinted face-plates.
I barely had time to register them before those rifles were pointed atme. I'd never looked down the barrel of a gun before, but everythingyou've heard about the experience is true. You freeze where you are,time stops, and your heart thunders in your ears. I opened my mouth,then shut it, then, very slowly, I held my hands up in front of me.
The faceless, eyeless armed man above me kept his gun very level. Ididn't even breathe. Van was screaming something and Jolu was shout-ing and I looked at them for a second and that was when someone put acoarse sack over my head and cinched it tight around my windpipe, soquick and so fiercely I barely had time to gasp before it was locked onme. I was pushed roughly but dispassionately onto my stomach andsomething went twice around my wrists and then tightened up as well,feeling like baling wire and biting cruelly. I cried out and my own voicewas muffled by the hood.
I was in total darkness now and I strained my ears to hear what wasgoing on with my friends. I heard them shouting through the mufflingcanvas of the bag, and then I was being impersonally hauled to my feetby my wrists, my arms wrenched up behind my back, my shouldersscreaming.
I stumbled some, then a hand pushed my head down and I was insidethe Hummer. More bodies were roughly shoved in beside me.
"Guys?" I shouted, and earned a hard thump on my head for mytrouble. I heard Jolu respond, then felt the thump he was dealt, too. Myhead rang like a gong.
"Hey," I said to the soldiers. "Hey, listen! We're just high school stu-dents. I wanted to flag you down because my friend was bleeding.
Someone stabbed him." I had no idea how much of this was making itthrough the muffling bag. I kept talking. "Listen — this is some kind ofmisunderstanding. We've got to get my friend to a hospital —"Someone went upside my head again. It felt like they used a baton orsomething — it was harder than anyone had ever hit me in the head be-fore. My eyes swam and watered and I literally couldn't breathe throughthe pain. A moment later, I caught my breath, but I didn't say anything.
I'd learned my lesson.
41Who were these clowns? They weren't wearing insignia. Maybe theywere terrorists! I'd never really believed in terrorists before — I mean, Iknew that in the abstract there were terrorists somewhere in the world,but they didn't really represent any risk to me. There were millions ofways that the world could kill me — starting with getting run down by adrunk burning his way down Valencia — that were infinitely more likelyand immediate than terrorists. Terrorists killed a lot fewer people thanbathroom falls and accidental electrocutions. Worrying about them al-ways struck me as about as useful as worrying about getting hit bylightning.
Sitting in the back of that Hummer, my head in a hood, my handslashed behind my back, lurching back and forth while the bruisesswelled up on my head, terrorism suddenly felt a lot riskier.
The car rocked back and forth and tipped uphill. I gathered we wereheaded over Nob Hill, and from the angle, it seemed we were taking oneof the steeper routes — I guessed Powell Street.
Now we were descending just as steeply. If my mental map was right,we were heading down to Fisherman's Wharf. You could get on a boatthere, get away. That fit with the terrorism hypothesis. Why the hellwould terrorists kidnap a bunch of high school students?
We rocked to a stop still on a downslope. The engine died and then thedoors swung open. Someone dragged me by my arms out onto the road,then shoved me, stumbling, down a paved road. A few seconds later, Itripped over a steel staircase, bashing my shins. The hands behind megave me another shove. I went up the stairs cautiously, not able to usemy hands. I got up the third step and reached for the fourth, but it wasn'tthere. I nearly fell again, but new hands grabbed me from in front anddragged me down a steel floor and then forced me to my knees andlocked my hands to something behind me.
More movement, and the sense of bodies being shackled in alongsideof me. Groans and muffled sounds. Laughter. Then a long, timelesseternity in the muffled gloom, breathing my own breath, hearing myown breath in my ears.
I actually managed a kind of sleep there, kneeling with the circulationcut off to my legs, my head in canvas twilight. My body had squirted ayear's supply of adrenalin into my bloodstream in the space of 30minutes, and while that stuff can give you the strength to lift cars off42your loved ones and leap over tall buildings, the payback's always abitch.
I woke up to someone pulling the hood off my head. They wereneither rough nor careful — just… impersonal. Like someone atMcDonald's putting together burgers.
The light in the room was so bright I had to squeeze my eyes shut, butslowly I was able to open them to slits, then cracks, then all the way andlook around.
We were all in the back of a truck, a big 16-wheeler. I could see thewheel-wells at regular intervals down the length. But the back of thistruck had been turned into some kind of mobile command-post/jail.
Steel desks lined the walls with banks of slick flat-panel displays climb-ing above them on articulated arms that let them be repositioned in ahalo around the operators. Each desk had a gorgeous office-chair in frontof it, festooned with user-interface knobs for adjusting every millimeterof the sitting surface, as well as height, pitch and yaw.
Then there was the jail part — at the front of the truck, furthest awayfrom the doors, there were steel rails bolted into the sides of the vehicle,and attached to these steel rails were the prisoners.
I spotted Van and Jolu right away. Darryl might have been in the re-maining dozen shackled up back here, but it was impossible to say —many of them were slumped over and blocking my view. It stank ofsweat and fear back there.
Vanessa looked at me and bit her lip. She was scared. So was I. So wasJolu, his eyes rolling crazily in their sockets, the whites showing. I wasscared. What's more, I had to piss like a race-horse.
I looked around for our captors. I'd avoided looking at them up untilnow, the same way you don't look into the dark of a closet where yourmind has conjured up a boogey-man. You don't want to know if you'reright.
But I had to get a better look at these jerks who'd kidnapped us. If theywere terrorists, I wanted to know. I didn't know what a terrorist lookedlike, though TV shows had done their best to convince me that they werebrown Arabs with big beards and knit caps and loose cotton dresses thathung down to their ankles.
Not so our captors. They could have been half-time-show cheerleaderson the Super Bowl. They looked American in a way I couldn't exactlydefine. Good jaw-lines, short, neat haircuts that weren't quite military.
43They came in white and brown, male and female, and smiled freely atone another as they sat down at the other end of the truck, joking anddrinking coffees out of go-cups. These weren't Ay-rabs from Afgh-anistan: they looked like tourists from Nebraska.
I stared at one, a young white woman with brown hair who barelylooked older than me, kind of cute in a scary office-power-suit way. Ifyou stare at someone long enough, they'll eventually look back at you.
She did, and her face slammed into a totally different configuration, dis-passionate, even robotic. The smile vanished in an instant.
"Hey," I said. "Look, I don't understand what's going on here, but Ireally need to take a leak, you know?"She looked right through me as if she hadn't heard.
"I'm serious, if I don't get to a can soon, I'm going to have an ugly acci-dent. It's going to get pretty smelly back here, you know?"She turned to her colleagues, a little huddle of three of them, and theyheld a low conversation I couldn't hear over the fans from thecomputers.
She turned back to me. "Hold it for another ten minutes, then you'lleach get a piss-call.""I don't think I've got another ten minutes in me," I said, letting a littlemore urgency than I was really feeling creep into my voice. "Seriously,lady, it's now or never."She shook her head and looked at me like I was some kind of patheticloser. She and her friends conferred some more, then another one cameforward. He was older, in his early thirties, and pretty big across theshoulders, like he worked out. He looked like he was Chinese or Korean— even Van can't tell the difference sometimes — but with that bearingthat said American in a way I couldn't put my finger on.
He pulled his sports-coat aside to let me see the hardware strappedthere: I recognized a pistol, a tazer and a can of either mace or pepper-spray before he let it fall again.
"No trouble," he said.
"None," I agreed.
He touched something at his belt and the shackles behind me let go,my arms dropping suddenly behind me. It was like he was wearingBatman's utility belt — wireless remotes for shackles! I guessed it madesense, though: you wouldn't want to lean over your prisoners with all44that deadly hardware at their eye-level — they might grab your gun withtheir teeth and pull the trigger with their tongues or something.
My hands were still lashed together behind me by the plastic strap-ping, and now that I wasn't supported by the shackles, I found that mylegs had turned into lumps of cork while I was stuck in one position.
Long story short, I basically fell onto my face and kicked my legs weaklyas they went pins-and-needles, trying to get them under me so I couldrock up to my feet.
The guy jerked me to my feet and I clown-walked to the very back ofthe truck, to a little boxed-in porta-john there. I tried to spot Darryl onthe way back, but he could have been any of the five or six slumpedpeople. Or none of them.
"In you go," the guy said.
I jerked my wrists. "Take these off, please?" My fingers felt like purplesausages from the hours of bondage in the plastic cuffs.
The guy didn't move.
"Look," I said, trying not to sound sarcastic or angry (it wasn't easy).
"Look. You either cut my wrists free or you're going to have to aim forme. A toilet visit is not a hands-free experience." Someone in the trucksniggered. The guy didn't like me, I could tell from the way his jawmuscles ground around. Man, these people were wired tight.
He reached down to his belt and came up with a very nice set of multi-pliers. He flicked out a wicked-looking knife and sliced through theplastic cuffs and my hands were my own again.
"Thanks," I said.
He shoved me into the bathroom. My hands were useless, like lumpsof clay on the ends of my wrists. As I wiggled my fingers limply, theytingled, then the tingling turned to a burning feeling that almost mademe cry out. I put the seat down, dropped my pants and sat down. Ididn't trust myself to stay on my feet.
As my bladder cut loose, so did my eyes. I wept, crying silently androcking back and forth while the tears and snot ran down my face. It wasall I could do to keep from sobbing — I covered my mouth and held thesounds in. I didn't want to give them the satisfaction.
Finally, I was peed out and cried out and the guy was pounding on thedoor. I cleaned my face as best as I could with wads of toilet paper, stuckit all down the john and flushed, then looked around for a sink but onlyfound a pump-bottle of heavy-duty hand-sanitizer covered in small-45print lists of the bio-agents it worked on. I rubbed some into my handsand stepped out of the john.
"What were you doing in there?" the guy said.
"Using the facilities," I said. He turned me around and grabbed myhands and I felt a new pair of plastic cuffs go around them. My wristshad swollen since the last pair had come off and the new ones bit cruellyinto my tender skin, but I refused to give him the satisfaction of cryingout.
He shackled me back to my spot and grabbed the next person down,who, I saw now, was Jolu, his face puffy and an ugly bruise on his cheek.
"Are you OK?" I asked him, and my friend with the utility belt ab-ruptly put his hand on my forehead and shoved hard, bouncing the backof my head off the truck's metal wall with a sound like a clock strikingone. "No talking," he said as I struggled to refocus my eyes.
I didn't like these people. I decided right then that they would pay aprice for all this.
One by one, all the prisoners went to the can, and came back, andwhen they were done, my guard went back to his friends and had anoth-er cup of coffee — they were drinking out of a big cardboard urn of Star-bucks, I saw — and they had an indistinct conversation that involved afair bit of laughter.
Then the door at the back of the truck opened and there was fresh air,not smoky the way it had been before, but tinged with ozone. In the sliceof outdoors I saw before the door closed, I caught that it was dark out,and raining, with one of those San Francisco drizzles that's part mist.
The man who came in was wearing a military uniform. A US militaryuniform. He saluted the people in the truck and they saluted him backand that's when I knew that I wasn't a prisoner of some terrorists — Iwas a prisoner of the United States of America.
They set up a little screen at the end of the truck and then came for usone at a time, unshackling us and leading us to the back of the truck. Asclose as I could work it — counting seconds off in my head, one hippo-potami, two hippopotami — the interviews lasted about seven minuteseach. My head throbbed with dehydration and caffeine withdrawal.
I was third, brought back by the woman with the severe haircut. Upclose, she looked tired, with bags under her eyes and grim lines at thecorners of her mouth.
46"Thanks," I said, automatically, as she unlocked me with a remote andthen dragged me to my feet. I hated myself for the automatic politeness,but it had been drilled into me.
She didn't twitch a muscle. I went ahead of her to the back of the truckand behind the screen. There was a single folding chair and I sat in it.
Two of them — Severe Haircut woman and utility belt man — looked atme from their ergonomic super-chairs.
They had a little table between them with the contents of my walletand backpack spread out on it.
"Hello, Marcus," Severe Haircut woman said. "We have some ques-tions for you.""Am I under arrest?" I asked. This wasn't an idle question. If you're notunder arrest, there are limits on what the cops can and can't do to you.
For starters, they can't hold you forever without arresting you, givingyou a phone call, and letting you talk to a lawyer. And hoo-boy, was Iever going to talk to a lawyer.
"What's this for?" she said, holding up my phone. The screen wasshowing the error message you got if you kept trying to get into its datawithout giving the right password. It was a bit of a rude message — ananimated hand giving a certain universally recognized gesture — be-cause I liked to customize my gear.
"Am I under arrest?" I repeated. They can't make you answer anyquestions if you're not under arrest, and when you ask if you're underarrest, they have to answer you. It's the rules.
"You're being detained by the Department of Homeland Security," thewoman snapped.
"Am I under arrest?""You're going to be more cooperative, Marcus, starting right now." Shedidn't say, "or else," but it was implied.
"I would like to contact an attorney," I said. "I would like to knowwhat I've been charged with. I would like to see some form of identifica-tion from both of you."The two agents exchanged looks.
"I think you should really reconsider your approach to this situation,"Severe Haircut woman said. "I think you should do that right now. Wefound a number of suspicious devices on your person. We found youand your confederates near the site of the worst terrorist attack this47country has ever seen. Put those two facts together and things don't lookvery good for you, Marcus. You can cooperate, or you can be very, verysorry. Now, what is this for?""You think I'm a terrorist? I'm seventeen years old!""Just the right age — Al Qaeda loves recruiting impressionable, ideal-istic kids. We googled you, you know. You've posted a lot of very uglystuff on the public Internet.""I would like to speak to an attorney," I said.
Severe haircut lady looked at me like I was a bug. "You're under themistaken impression that you've been picked up by the police for acrime. You need to get past that. You are being detained as a potentialenemy combatant by the government of the United States. If I were you,I'd be thinking very hard about how to convince us that you are not anenemy combatant. Very hard. Because there are dark holes that enemycombatants can disappear into, very dark deep holes, holes where youcan just vanish. Forever. Are you listening to me young man? I want youto unlock this phone and then decrypt the files in its memory. I want youto account for yourself: why were you out on the street? What do youknow about the attack on this city?""I'm not going to unlock my phone for you," I said, indignant. Myphone's memory had all kinds of private stuff on it: photos, emails, littlehacks and mods I'd installed. "That's private stuff.""What have you got to hide?""I've got the right to my privacy," I said. "And I want to speak to anattorney.""This is your last chance, kid. Honest people don't have anything tohide.""I want to speak to an attorney." My parents would pay for it. All theFAQs on getting arrested were clear on this point. Just keep asking to seean attorney, no matter what they say or do. There's no good that comesof talking to the cops without your lawyer present. These two said theyweren't cops, but if this wasn't an arrest, what was it?
In hindsight, maybe I should have unlocked my phone for them.