to care about anything. Here was Dr. Verlyn, peering down at her through his tiny glasses in his grandfatherly way. His eyebrows struck her as extraordinary. He was holding a silver forceps; a wad of cotton soaked in brown fluid was clinched between the tines. She supposed that since he was a doctor, he was doing something medical to her.
“This may feel a little cold.”
It did. Dr. Verlyn was swabbing down her arms and legs; at the same time, somebody else was positioning a plastic tube beneath her nose.
“Catheter.”
Now, that was not so nice. That wasn’t nice at all. A moan rose from her throat. Other things began to happen, various pokings and intrusions, the alien sensation of foreign objects sliding under her skin—her forearms, the insides of her thighs. There was a beeping sound, and a hiss of gas, and a peculiar odor under her nose, strikingly sweet. Diethyl ether. It was manufactured at the biodiesel plant, though Sara had never seen how this was done. All she remembered were tanks with the word FLAMMABLE stenciled in red on the sides, and their clattering bulk as they were rolled on dollies to a waiting truck.
“Just breathe, please.”
What a strange request! How could she not breathe?
“That’s it.”
She was borne aloft on the softest cloud.
61
Two days had passed since they’d made contact with the insurgency. At first, Nina had failed to believe them, as anyone would. The story was too fantastic, the history too complex. It was Alicia who had finally come up with a way to prove their case. She retrieved the RDF from her pack and led the woman up the ridge and pointed it toward the Dome. Greer was watching the valley below. At this distance, Alicia worried that she wouldn’t get a signal. What would they do then to convince the woman? But there it was, fat and clear, a continuous pulsation. Alicia was relieved but also perplexed: if anything, the signal was stronger. Amy was silent a moment, then said, We’ll have to hurry now. That sound you’re hearing: it means the remaining Twelve are already here. She drew the knife from her belt and passed it to Nina and told Alicia and Greer to disarm as well. We’re surrendering to you, said Amy. The rest is up to you.
The truck arrived, carrying two armed men. Alicia and the others met them with arms raised. Their wrists were bound, black hoods drawn over their heads. An interval of time passed, the three of them freezing in the bouncing cargo bed; then they heard the sound of a garage door opening. They were escorted from the truck and told to wait. A few minutes passed; footsteps approached.
“Take them off,” a man’s voice said.
The hoods were removed, revealing half a dozen men and women standing before them with raised weapons—all but one.
“Eustace?”
“Major Greer.” Eustace shifted his broken face toward Alicia. “And Donadio, too.” He shook his head. “Why am I surprised?” He turned to the others and gestured for them to lower their guns. “It’s all right, everyone.”
“You know them?” Nina asked.
Eustace looked them over again, noticing Amy. “Now, you I don’t think I’ve seen before.”
“Actually,” said Amy, “that’s not precisely true.”
They had arrived on the eve of Eustace’s people making their move. Years of painstaking infiltration had reached the moment of culmination. First, the decapitation of the leadership, followed by simultaneous attacks on a range of major targets: HR stations, industrial infrastructure, the power station, the detention center, the apartment complex on the edge of downtown where most of the redeyes lived. Weapons and explosives had been cached throughout the city. Their forces were small, but once the attack was under way, they believed, their numbers would grow. The slumbering giant of seventy thousand flatlanders would awaken and rise. Once that happened, the insurrection would become an avalanche, unstoppable. The city would be theirs.
But something had gone wrong. Their operative in the Dome had been found out. They knew she’d been taken alive, but not where—in all likelihood, the basement.
“I’m afraid there’s something I must tell you,” Eustace said, and explained who this operative was.
Sara was here. It strained belief. No, it went hurtling past it. And her daughter, too. Sara’s. Hollis’s. In some deep way, the child belonged to all of them. Their purpose had magnified, but so had the situation’s complexity. They would have to get the two of them out.
Amy repeated the story she had told Nina. There could be no doubt that the