on the fender of a rusted Ford, and then dropped out of sight.
“Ariana!”
I rounded the car to find her doubled over, puking on the ground, splashing the tires. I came up behind her, set a hand on her back. A tremor went through her. “No!” She pushed me away.
“What happened?”
She wiped her mouth, then looked at me. Her eyes were wide, frightened. “You tell me, Lorcan. What did you see?”
“You mean Quicksilver?”
“Tell me!”
“Same thing you—”
“Don’t bet on that, Lorcan. Tell me. What did he look like?”
I tried telling her, describing the glowing man with the silver voice.
She cut me off. “That’s not what I saw. Jesus, Lorcan!” She shivered, hugged herself, then glanced toward the warehouse. “I need to get out of here.”
People were leaving the building now, gathering along the graffitied wall, looking at us.
I tried walking her toward her bike.
“Hold on.” She took out her camera, aimed it back at the crowd, hit record. “What do you see, Calder?” She angled the view screen toward me. I glanced at it. The people were small, pixilated. I had to look behind us to be sure what they were doing, and then I knew.
They were coming toward us.
“Maybe they just want to check on you,” I said.
“Fat chance.”
We hurried through the lot.
“They’re after us, Lorcan.” She put the camera away as we reached her bike. Then she climbed on, kicked the starter. “Get on if you want. If not, you’re on your own.”
The crowd was coming faster now.
I climbed on behind her, holding tight as she sped out of the lot and down the street. My car came into view, still wedged tight beside the hydrant. She braked hard. I climbed off, expecting to follow her in my car, but she gunned the bike as soon as I was clear of the saddle, roaring away, leaving me in a cloud of exhaust.
The crowd sounded nearer, out of sight but still advancing. I got into my car, pulled from the curb, and burned rubber till I reached the cross street. She wasn’t in sight when I rounded the corner . . . nor when I rounded the next.
By the third street, I realized I was only a block from Smallman, the main artery leading through the Strip District and toward Fort Pitt Boulevard.
No longer lost, I steered toward home.
An hour later, dressed in a robe and still damp from a shower that had cleaned everything but the permanent marker on my palm, I went to my computer and logged on to Ariana’s blog. It was pretty barebones, no bio or graphics, but plenty of posts about politics, fringe science, weird news.
Her most recent screed bore the heading:
The Secret World of Silverheads
The Music Scene You’ve Never Seen
It gave an overview of Bobbie Quicksilver, purporting to be based on information gained after hacking a private Quicksilver site.
Apparently, the first place anyone had encountered Bobbie Quicksilver had been on a community discussion board, on a thread devoted to the doubts and aspirations of bottom-feeding musicians. It was there that someone with the username Hg80 had posted a link to a private forum, one that he claimed might be of interest to likeminded dreamers.
People going to the site confronted a string of apparently random images, each accompanied with the same question: What do you see? Those who made it to the next level were asked to respond to a list of personal and philosophical prompts. After that, selected applicants received access to a private discussion board where they found a posted manifesto by Hg80, in which he revealed that the forum would serve as a place for planning private gatherings to be held in free spaces throughout the rustbelt region of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio:
We’ll focus on towns where security is minimal, where police forces are bankrupt and understaffed, where the industries and businesses that once provided our nonmusical livelihoods sit empty and forgotten. Fittingly, our venues will be abandoned warehouses, wharfs, rooftops, lots, depots, and mills—places abandoned by the world at large.
I have set up this discussion in hopes of attracting the attention of the creative and adventurous souls needed to make our dream a reality, people who can play music, paint signs, highjack power lines, rig locations for light and sound. At each event, we will move in fast, spend a couple hours celebrating who we are, and clear out before the Powers That Be realize we were ever there.
Anyone who wishes to jam at these events is free to do so,