ahead of Michael. “Mike. Mike. Oh, Mike.” His voice quavered with controlled fury. “I shoulda thrown your ass over the cliff.”
“Hey . . .” It was a weak protest. But it came from Hank.
“Hank, why don’t you shut your mouth up, candy-pants?” Jopek said.
“Don’t be a bunghole,” sniffed Patrick, and pulled his hood over his head and shrank it shut with the strings, cupping his hands over his ears to hide the sounds.
Michael braced himself, feeling the pebbled grip of the gun in his pocket.
“Is Michael wrong, though?” Holly asked.
Jopek’s nostrils flared. “You know, I’m damn sure I don’t like that tone, girl.”
“Well, Captain, I don’t like that you drove me to a bunch of people who want to shoot me,” Michael said. Jopek tried to protest, but Michael almost-shouted over him: “Is it just me, or does that break one of a platoon’s basic rules?” He emphasized the last word for Patrick.
The words rang.
Jopek stood in the center of them now—the center of his platoon—and in the burning silence he sensed what was occurring: the image these people held of him, which always stood on solid ground, was teetering at a cliff’s edge. Captain Jopek circled on his boot heels, scanning their faces, finding a dangerous uncertainty that he could never have predicted.
And Jopek smiled. He seemed true, in the same way that he had seemed true as he fought the Rapture. More than ever before, Michael understood that, like himself, Jopek was most awake when in danger. Jopek was coming alive now, and he was about to do something to take control of the night.
So am I, Michael thought.
Guys, he imagined himself saying, as he had on the car ride to the Capitol, as he had every night Before when things were bad and Mom pretended they weren’t, when home was pain but freedom and life were just one opened door away. Guys, I think we need to leave now.
But Holly took the play out of his hands.
“Captain, Michael wants to go.”
What are you doing? Michael screamed silently.
“And sir,” Holly said, “I think that it’s absolutely understandable that he feels that way. He’s had a terrible day, we all have, and I think it’s possible, sir, that you did put us in danger needlessly. With things getting worse with the Rapture and the Bellows, doesn’t it make sense for us to leave—all of us?” Her jaw was strongly set; she was trying to appear calm and reasonable. But there was something desperate in her voice, as if this moment was her final chance to salvage the hope she had placed in the captain.
“We,” said Jopek, “are goin’ nowhere. And you-all know that is rule one. Rule one.”
A hundred feet tall, all muscle—that’s how Jopek seemed as he slung his machine rifle over his shoulder and turned. He marched away, and each of the steps sounded like doors slamming and sealing.
“Why the hell not, Jopek?”
Hank’s voice was soft, so soft. For this a-hole Cool Kid, Michael suddenly felt something like love.
Jopek stopped, but didn’t turn.
“Why not?” Hank repeated, louder. “Why can’t we leave?”
Thumpuh: Michael’s heart, a fist in his throat. Jopek looked at Hank, his face incredulous and hateful, like a jack-o’-lantern with a butane torch inside.
“We’re doin’ what I say, and I say—”
“I—I think you’re wrong on this, Captain,” Hank said.
Jopek asked, “You think I’m wrong?” He sounded politely interested.
“Yes, I—”
But somehow Jopek had cleared the distance between him and Hank before any of them realized he was moving and his fist pistoned out and he slugged Hank, cracking across his jaw. Holly gasped. Patrick’s blind-hooded head looked up, momentarily startled, then hummed and looked back down.
Hank managed to catch himself before his face struck the marble, but it was close.
“You wanna compare guns, Hank?” asked Jopek softly, leaning over him. “Boy, you ungrateful shit. Who’s been savin’ you this whole time?”
“Michael saved us in the Magic Lantern,” spat Holly miserably.
“Little girl, don’t be smart.”
“Somebody has to.”
“You’ll want to watch that mouth.”
Can a whole body quake with a heartbeat?
After a moment, Holly replied, “No, Captain.”
Hank touched his blood, looked at the captain, sneered.
What happened next was as palpable as a burst of electricity traveling across the rotunda: the final control in this room shifted to Michael. They looked to him for his response. In that dizzying moment, he knew what it must be like to be Jopek: the trust . . . and the power.
“Screw y’all, somebody’s gotta patrol,” said Jopek, and this time his departing steps were