"Unfortunate?" I frown at her. "That's my home you're talking about, you know."
"Well your home is perpetuating the belief that genetically damaged people need to be fixed—that they're damaged, period, which they—we—are not. So yes, it's unfortunate that the experiments still exist. I won't apologize for saying so."
I hadn't thought about it that way. To me Chicago has to keep existing because the people I have lost lived there, because the way of life I once loved continues there, though in a broken form. But I didn't realize that Chicago's very existence could be harmful to people outside who just want to be thought of as whole.
"It's time for you to go," Amy says, dropping the corner of the tarp. "They're probably in one of the meeting areas, northwest of here."
"Thank you again," I say.
She nods to me, and I duck out of her makeshift home, the boards creaking beneath my feet.
I move through the aisles, fast, glad that all the people scattered when we arrived so there is no one to block my way. I jump over a puddle of—well, I don't want to know what it is—and emerge into a kind of courtyard, where a tall, gangly boy has a gun pointed at George.
A small crowd of people surrounds the boy with the gun. They have distributed among them the surveillance equipment George was carrying, and they're destroying it, hitting it with shoes or rocks or hammers.
George's eyes shift to me, but I touch a finger to my lips, hastily. I am behind the crowd now; the one with the gun doesn't know I'm there.
"Put the gun down," George says.
"No!" the boy answers. His pale eyes keep shifting from George to the people around him and back. "Went to a lot of trouble to get this, not gonna give it to you now."
"Then just . . . let me go. You can
keep it."
"Not until you tell us where you've been taking our people!" the boy says.
"We haven't taken any of your people," George says. "We're not soldiers. We're just scientists."
"Yeah, right," the boy says. "A bulletproof vest? If that's not soldier shit, then I'm the richest kid in the States. Now tell me what I need to know!"
I move back so I'm standing behind one of the lean-tos, then put my gun around the edge of the structure and say, "Hey!"
Everyone in the crowd turns at once, but the boy with the gun doesn't stop aiming at George, like I'd hoped.
"I've got you in my sights," I say.
"Leave now and I'll let you go."
"I'll shoot him!" the boy says.
"I'll shoot you," I say. "We're with the government, but we aren't soldiers. We don't know where your people are. If you let him go, we'll all leave quietly. If you kill him, I guarantee there will be soldiers here soon to arrest you, and they won't be as forgiving as we are."
At that moment Amar emerges into the courtyard behind George, and someone in the crowd screeches, "There are more of them!" And everyone scatters. The boy with the gun dives into the nearest aisle, leaving George, Amar, and me alone. Still, I keep my gun up by my face, in case they decide to come
back.
Amar wraps his arms around George, and George thumps his back with a fist. Amar looks at me, his face over George's shoulder. "Still don't think genetic damage is to blame for any of these troubles?"
I walk past one of the lean-tos and see a little girl crouching just inside the door, her arms wrapped around her knees. She sees me through the crack in the layered tarps and whimpers a little. I wonder who taught these people to be so terrified of soldiers. I wonder what made a young boy desperate enough to aim a gun at one of them.
"No," I say. "I don't."
I have better people to blame.
By the time we get back to the truck, Jack and Violet are setting up a surveillance camera that wasn't stolen by people in the fringe. Violet has a screen in her hands with a long list of numbers on it, and she reads them to Jack, who programs them into his screen.
"Where have you guys been?" he says.
"We were attacked," George says. "We have to leave, now."
"Luckily, that's the last set of coordinates," Violet says. "Let's get going."
We pile into the truck again. Amar draws the doors shut behind us, and I set my gun on the