Opal Dernier’s, also on the Honshū Wolf evacuations list, and also on the list for anti-parasitic drug implants. She had been lumped in with the rest of the captured Infected employees because Miller hadn’t been alert enough to realize that she, like Alphonse, like the children, like the injured, needed special treatment.
The guard who’d been on duty explained it all to Miller, his face drained of blood.
At first, nothing had looked wrong. The Infected—and Opal—had been herded into the huge wire-mesh cells that kept the refugees in place through quarantine and testing. They’d sat around, stumbled—they were still all zip-tied, hands behind their backs as they’d shuffled around. Stinking, filthy, sweaty.
They mostly stood around in a single mass, but one or two, sometimes three, broke away from the pack and moved up to the far end every so often. Like they were searching for an escape from their mob, but only a temporary one. They always came back to join the huddle. Except for one prisoner, not that any of the guards had noticed.
Opal had been sitting in the corner, as far away from the main mob as she could get. She shouted at the guards for attention a few times, but the whole mob was shouting, mumbling, moaning. Like bird-song. Twittering tones and sounds that could almost have been musical, if they weren’t made up from murmurs and howls and grunts. No one had heard her.
The longer they were in the cage, the more the mob’s individual members wanted to escape it, to get respite from each other. And when too many were trying to find solitude, that’s when things went sour.
The first Infected to get too close to Opal screamed at her, called her all kinds of filthy names, told her that she wasn’t one of them, wasn’t human, wasn’t real—that same disgust Miller had seen when the mob was on the attack.
With one of their number disturbed, a second picked up on it soon enough, a third, a fourth, until the whole mob were screaming at Opal. But it didn’t stop there. Their shared rage grew out of control, reflecting back at them from every face around them, until they simply charged Opal, crushing her against the fence with their weight and their shoulders and their xenophobic hatred.
And then, working with a single mind and near perfect coordination, sixty people pushed over the chain-link fence like bison trampling grass.
What was left of the wire fence was slick with blood, pieces of skin and hair caught in the weave. Her body lay, crumpled and bruised, her flesh raggedly cut by the mesh. Miller stepped back a little, keeping clear of the still-spreading pool.
Obviously she was dead.
So were the twenty-three Infected the guards had been forced to gun down before the mob within their midst had torn two of them apart—there had been more injured by gunfire, and by the Bayonet team that had re-secured the storehouse, but they were in a temporary infirmary. Only Opal, and the twenty-three, remained on the storehouse floor.
One of the Bayonet operatives, wearing a full-body exoskeleton that made him seem Herculean and inhuman behind his gas mask, awkwardly shook his head. “It was god-awful,” he buzzed through his personal radio’s external speaker, rather than leaving his voice muffled behind his mask. “Those Infected... they’re all monsters.”
H EADING UP TO Gray’s office in the elevator, Miller pulled the Gallican from its holster again. Just to be sure it wasn’t stuck in there—the belt rig was different from the little concealed holster he usually wore and he wasn’t sure if he trusted it yet.
He drew back the slide, making sure there was a round chambered, set the safety back on, and reholstered the gun. Then he pulled it free, checking for snags, and let it drop back down again.
Miller had never actually shot anyone. Never actually killed anyone, not personally. It made sense he’d be nervous.
Holly Moulin, Gray’s personal assistant, was at her desk. She
The guard who’d been on duty explained it all to Miller, his face drained of blood.
At first, nothing had looked wrong. The Infected—and Opal—had been herded into the huge wire-mesh cells that kept the refugees in place through quarantine and testing. They’d sat around, stumbled—they were still all zip-tied, hands behind their backs as they’d shuffled around. Stinking, filthy, sweaty.
They mostly stood around in a single mass, but one or two, sometimes three, broke away from the pack and moved up to the far end every so often. Like they were searching for an escape from their mob, but only a temporary one. They always came back to join the huddle. Except for one prisoner, not that any of the guards had noticed.
Opal had been sitting in the corner, as far away from the main mob as she could get. She shouted at the guards for attention a few times, but the whole mob was shouting, mumbling, moaning. Like bird-song. Twittering tones and sounds that could almost have been musical, if they weren’t made up from murmurs and howls and grunts. No one had heard her.
The longer they were in the cage, the more the mob’s individual members wanted to escape it, to get respite from each other. And when too many were trying to find solitude, that’s when things went sour.
The first Infected to get too close to Opal screamed at her, called her all kinds of filthy names, told her that she wasn’t one of them, wasn’t human, wasn’t real—that same disgust Miller had seen when the mob was on the attack.
With one of their number disturbed, a second picked up on it soon enough, a third, a fourth, until the whole mob were screaming at Opal. But it didn’t stop there. Their shared rage grew out of control, reflecting back at them from every face around them, until they simply charged Opal, crushing her against the fence with their weight and their shoulders and their xenophobic hatred.
And then, working with a single mind and near perfect coordination, sixty people pushed over the chain-link fence like bison trampling grass.
What was left of the wire fence was slick with blood, pieces of skin and hair caught in the weave. Her body lay, crumpled and bruised, her flesh raggedly cut by the mesh. Miller stepped back a little, keeping clear of the still-spreading pool.
Obviously she was dead.
So were the twenty-three Infected the guards had been forced to gun down before the mob within their midst had torn two of them apart—there had been more injured by gunfire, and by the Bayonet team that had re-secured the storehouse, but they were in a temporary infirmary. Only Opal, and the twenty-three, remained on the storehouse floor.
One of the Bayonet operatives, wearing a full-body exoskeleton that made him seem Herculean and inhuman behind his gas mask, awkwardly shook his head. “It was god-awful,” he buzzed through his personal radio’s external speaker, rather than leaving his voice muffled behind his mask. “Those Infected... they’re all monsters.”
H EADING UP TO Gray’s office in the elevator, Miller pulled the Gallican from its holster again. Just to be sure it wasn’t stuck in there—the belt rig was different from the little concealed holster he usually wore and he wasn’t sure if he trusted it yet.
He drew back the slide, making sure there was a round chambered, set the safety back on, and reholstered the gun. Then he pulled it free, checking for snags, and let it drop back down again.
Miller had never actually shot anyone. Never actually killed anyone, not personally. It made sense he’d be nervous.
Holly Moulin, Gray’s personal assistant, was at her desk. She