I punch a message to Kat.
Me: Where are you? We need to talk.
We jump on the scooters parked outside—whoever they belong to, we’ll return them—and race to the Center.
My heart is thumping. If it’s another world conflict, we have to be ready. We might have to go into a full lockdown again.
Our scooters zoom out of the main Ayana area into a jungle, the patches of darkness and light like zebra stripes, flickering against the road that leads onto the brightly lit up courtyard of the Center.
Slate and a group of guards are at the entrance. They go quiet and stare at me like I have a third eye.
I storm inside, Marlow on my heels, as well as the rest of the guys, shoes stomping like that of an army of soldiers.
The twenty-by-twenty-foot TV screen that takes up one of the walls of the surveillance room is a live feed from some city, a building on fire, half-destroyed, part of it in rubble, smoke, people running around, fire trucks, police, and military.
“Where is this?” I blurt out, walking up to the several surveillance guys who stare up at the screen. “Why is there a military presence?”
The live feed is ash and fire in the background.
Rio, the location on the bottom says.
Shit. That’s where Dad is.
“Archer.” Amir is next to me, and there is something wrong with the way he looks at me.
Scared, I realize. And not of what happened.
Of me…
“Amir. What’s up? Where is this?”
“Archer, it’s the Alejo Convention Center in Rio.”
The world goes dizzy for a second. Then too quiet.
“It’s where the International Assembly was taking place,” he says, his words too slow and calculated. “The detonation epicenter was under the main hall where the meeting was.”
No-no-no-no-no.
Sound and color are slowly draining from the world, through me, all the way down, and sending chills back up throughout my body.
All I see are the images flickering on the screen.
Numbers in the report line.
643 estimated dead.
Amir pinches the bridge of his nose. “The Assembly councils—everyone in that assembly hall is presumed dead.”
“But—” The words get stuck in my throat. That’s where Dad is.
“Including the Secretary of Defense. They just announced that,” he adds almost in a whisper.
The world is suddenly muffled like when your ears get blocked at high altitude.
The TV screen volume is on low, but I can still hear the correspondent’s fast speech.
The sirens at the scene.