23 - Sam
A PAIR OF MILITARY JETS streaked through the air above Sam as he, Ari, and Frida came out of the subway at Chambers Street and West Broadway.
The sidewalk was packed with freaked-out people hurrying in every direction.
Ari led them east past gridlocked traffic and abandoned cars, toward the wedding cake topper of the Dinkins Municipal Building up ahead.
Despite the end-of-the-world vibes, Sam was a little excited—the three of them had been friends since seventh grade, but neither he nor Frida had ever been invited to Ari’s home.
Like it was some big secret. At first Sam had thought it was because Ari was ashamed of it not being as nice as his place or Frida’s dads’ brownstone in Hell’s Kitchen.
But over time Sam had realized that wasn’t the reason.
It was Ari’s business, both figuratively and literally.
And from what Sam had been able to figure out over the years, that business was high-tech secret-keeping.
Ari had hired Sensei to be the adult face fronting their business, and having other teens hanging around wouldn’t help sell that.
Sam hoped the thirteenth floor didn’t know about Ari’s place. Trouble was, Nico didn’t know where it was either. Was he okay?
Traffic was at a standstill, except for electric scooters and bikes going dangerously fast past people standing by their stuck cars, and other folks like Sam and his friends hurrying to their destinations.
A block up, a crowd was gathered around a thirtysomething Black guy standing on the trunk of his rideshare car in the completely blocked intersection. “Turn up your radios!” he was encouraging the cars around him. “Every station’s playing it.”
The three of them slowed to listen with the rest.
“This is the emergency broadcast system. A new message has been picked up, seemingly sent by the aliens in our solar system.”
In that same halting, oddly spliced human voices repurposed to be an “alien” message, they heard:
Can / you / prove / we / can / trust / you
You / are / out / of / time
We / do / not / trust / you
The words were like throwing a switch—taking everyone’s stress and flipping it to panic.
“City Hall could be a target!” someone yelled.
“We have to get out of here!” Another voice.
“The bridge is just a few blocks that way!” The guy on his rideshare trunk pointed east, and jumped off.
And then everyone started running in that direction.
A baby in their adult’s arms wailed.
An older man in front of them tripped and went down. He was going to get trampled! Sam pushed through the stampede and helped him up. The guy seemed dazed—eyes wide with fear. He didn’t even thank Sam. Didn’t say anything, just started running again, and in a second was swept along with the crowd.
Someone else screamed, like in a horror film.
“Keep calm!” Sam yelled, but no one listened to him.
It was a white-water river of people going as fast as they could around abandoned cars to the river, to the bridge, to what they thought was safer ground. The pit in Sam’s stomach told him people were going to die from the panic alone.
His mind flew through the flawed logic. If Keahilani and Noble One wanted to make a statement as the aliens to freak people out even more, no one outside an actual New Yorker even knew about City Hall. But Brooklyn Bridge was world famous. If anything this far downtown was a target, that was.
But stopping a panicked mob with reason wasn’t a plan.
They needed proof.
Sam fought his way back to Ari and Frida, and they turned north into a quieter alley by a parking structure. It had a C LOSED sign on it. Steel shutters were pulled down, making it a three-story concrete box.
The steel gate rolled up as they approached. No, Sam realized: as Ari approached.
They stepped inside, and another steel wall ten feet up blocked their way. As soon as the exterior gate closed again an automatic door in the interior wall opened, and he and Frida followed Ari in.
Sam blinked, not trusting his eyes.
Outside, it was madness. Here, they were in a small clearing inside a giant bamboo forest. A midcentury-modern couch, coffee table, and two side chairs were in the center, but otherwise it was like they’d been transported to somewhere outside, in nature. In Japan?
Meditation music played, and Sam could hear a stream burbling somewhere close. A breeze he could feel rustled the leaves above them. The walls, ceiling, and floors all matched the location perfectly.
Sam bent down to inspect the floor of fallen bamboo leaves. LED screen. Perfect, except no texture.
It was impressive. But there wasn’t time to marvel at it.
“Should we have everyone meet us here?” Frida asked. Sam could hear her worry, but Bec, Peter, and Byron had reported in that they were safe. Nico was the only one they’d lost touch with. And not knowing if Nico was safe was killing him.
Sensei walked in with a tablet, saying, “Glad you’re all okay. Re: the alien hoax, this might be a lead.”
Sam realized Ari must have updated her via some encrypted tech. Otherwise she’d probably be with her kids, not here working.
She swiped the image to appear on one of the walls, replacing a section of bamboo where a peacock showing off its feathers had just been bobbing its neck as it walked by.
Sensei tilted her head to acknowledge both Sam and Frida.
They’d met her a couple of times before, when she’d filled in as the responsible adult when Ari’s parents were a no-show, which was their usual state.
Sam knew her regal I’m in charge of everything manner was performance—Ari had confided in him that she was an actor working to put two kids through college—but it was hard not to be a little intimidated.
Above the screen graphic L IVE FROM T IMES S QUARE , a reporter in a suit and tie sat at the desk talking to the camera. Behind him a street-level window with a flower box border looked out on Times Square, where frantic people ran in all directions.
“The chaos behind us—” the reporter started, but Sensei hit mute.
“Don’t we need to hear this?” Frida asked.
“Not the reporter,” Sensei instructed. “Behind them. Out the window. Something’s moving over those flowers.”
“Winter heather.” Sam recognized the burst of dozens of little pink flowers on each stubby stem. He’d gone with his dad to the flower show enough times for reference materials. His dad loved the colors, insisting photos couldn’t do them justice—but paintings could.
“They’re broadcasting in 8K,” Ari said.
“When we zoom in,” Sensei reverse-pinched the tablet screen, and the wall image zoomed in to where the tips of the blooms were a foot high. And just inches above them, something moved. “It’s a bee.”
Sam could see the logic hole. “But it’s February.”
“Exactly,” Sensei said. “And you were just using bee drones.”
“Byron?” Sam spoke on the earpiece.
Dressed in the lichen-green jacket of a Central Park Conservancy volunteer, Byron was seven feet up a ladder inside the icy frame of a tree without leaves. With gentle tongs he was recovering bee drones.
“Almost done here. Peter’s with me.” Byron handed the latest down to Peter, who ran warm air from a portable hair dryer over the drone wings. Once they were dry, he set it in another mobile hive charging case in the back of Byron’s bicycle pedicab.
“Are you making a bee fly on live TV from Times Square right now?” Sam asked.
“That’s a negative,” Byron said. “But it can’t be real, not when it’s this cold out. Real bees would be in their winter clusters.”
“We’re sure this isn’t the thirteenth floor?” Frida asked. “They’ve been messing with a lot of natural phenomena.”
“Everything else has been showy. This… is spy-level sneaky. This is Nico!” Sam said, a wave of relief washing over him. He was safe! “He knows the condo was compromised. It’s a message for us.”
Peter brought the broadcast up on a tablet. Zoomed in on the bee drone.
Frida had been watching it carefully. “It’s definitely a pattern. It starts on the left and moves right in a crazy set of loops, and then kind of resets, flying in a straight line back to the left. We’ve seen the cycle twice now.”
Byron came down the ladder with the last two bee drones in his palm.
“Let me try something.” Peter lifted the camera around his neck, cranked the ISO to 100, as low as it would go, and switched to bulb mode.
Just like Frida had said, the bee reset, flying back to the left, and as soon as it was in position Peter hit the button to open the shutter.
He watched through the lens as the bee did its weird up and down swirly thing, sometimes retracing a pattern, the whole intricate dance taking twenty seconds.
Drying the wings of the bee drones, Byron looked over Peter’s shoulder. “Bees dance in the air to tell the rest of the hive where to go. I told Nico that.”
When the bee started to fly back to the left, Peter let go of the shutter button.
Byron secured the last two bee drones in the charging case and worked the tech in the pedicab. “Sam, Ari, I’m patching this through to you.”
Peter brought up the image on his camera screen, a duplicate showing on the tablet in the pedicab and on the wall of Ari’s digital bamboo forest.
There was something there, but Peter couldn’t make it out. He punched up the contrast.
A light-painting photograph was suddenly revealed. It was cursive, each letter connecting to the one before, forming a message spelled out in bee drone light:
Sam time for offense Meet 13 Tell me where
“Meet thirteen?” Ari asked.
“Thirteenth floor,” Sam translated. “Nico knows that’s where we need to go. Confront Keahilani and Noble One and get our proof.” He gestured outside. “That’s how we’ll stop all this craziness.”
“So where are we going?” Frida asked.
Sam shook his head. “I need you and Bec set up to broadcast the proof, once we have it.”
“With the mess outside, I’m not sure we can make Bushwick work.” Frida pointed to the screen where the reporter was still talking. “How about that Times Square camera? Crank Shaft could be a surprise guest.”
“I think, to be safe, we need more than just one station,” Sam said. “We kind of need them all.”
“There’s a TV station transmitter on One Times Square, the building where they do the ball drop on New Year’s Eve.” Bec’s voice came through their earpieces. “It’s sending out 103 channels. Maybe we can tap in there.”
“How do you know that?” Frida was impressed.
“I took a tour,” Bec said. “A girl’s got to learn her new city, right?”
“You’re amazing.” Frida grinned.
“Again with the flirting!” Ari complained, but not like they really minded.
Sam was outlining the plan in his head. “Ari, I need you to break that code. Prove they’re faking the aliens.”
“I can do that best from here,” Ari said.
Sensei stepped to Ari’s side. “I’ll help.”
“Byron, Peter, we’ll need the bees,” Sam told them.
“And we need to tell Nico where you’re going,” Ari said. “You can’t do this alone.”
“I’m not alone,” Sam said, and he realized it was true. “We’re a team. And we’ll do this together.”
“Byron, the bee drone Nico’s controlling—can you take it over?” Sam asked.
“Affirmative.” Byron’s fingers flew on the keys of his laptop.
“We should go,” Frida said. “Bec, I’ll meet you at One Times Square?
“I can be there in fifteen,” Bec said in their earpieces.
Sam stood up. “I need a minute.”
“Bathroom’s that way.” Sensei pointed.
Sam opened the bathroom door and the inside of the ten-foot-square room was like Versailles—French baroque everything, including the sparkling gold-and-marble toilet and sink.
And while Sam wasn’t sure they had indoor plumbing back when Louis XIV was king of France, the digital screen wallpaper made it all look hella fancy.
Even the ceiling looked like a fresco of cherubs and— wow!
—a gorgeous intersex person with flowing hair and breasts and a penis and these giant wings…
Sam realized it was an intersex angel! Ari really was so cool.
He got out his burner phone and tried a video call to his dad. He flipped the camera around so his parents could see him and managed a weak smile.
After two rings it went to voicemail.
“Hey! Sorry you weren’t able to pick up. Hope you’re both safe.” He hesitated. “That all of you are… Though the middle of the ocean is probably a great place to be right now.”
He paused but knew he needed to keep going. “Panic’s pretty bad here in the city. I need you to know, this whole alien thing is a scam—don’t believe it. Nico and I are going to get proof, so everyone can chill the fuck out. Sorry.”
His dad hated cursing.
“I mean, chill out.”
Sam swallowed past the lump of anxiety that seemed lodged in his throat.
“Just in case things go sideways, I want to at least leave this message. I mean, I’m off to save the world. Kind of like James Bond, right? But not everyone always makes it to the end credits. Not even Daniel Craig in No Time to Die .”
He remembered how pissed he’d been that they’d killed off Bond. That Craig-Bond didn’t get his happily ever after with Madeleine—and their kid!—after all. Maybe someday he and Nico would have a kid. The thought that they might never get that chance made him almost tear up.
Sam nodded at no one.
“But it doesn’t mean the world’s not worth saving. Love you.”
He ended the call and a sigh he didn’t intend spilled out. His big, stupid, oversensitive heart that cared way too much was telling everyone how much he loved them, and no one was saying it back. Not his parents. Not Nico.
He knew they loved him, but maybe he loved them more? Wasn’t it supposed to be even? He pushed down the hurt and gave himself a hard stare in the over-the-top gold-framed LED mirror, which must have had a hidden camera in it to actually work like a mirror.
Bond didn’t focus on petty shit like that. Not when there were villains to stop.
Not when there was a world to save.
As he spoke to himself, Sam couldn’t help the smirk. “So go save it, Solomon. Go save it.”