In his bedroom, Humphries was screaming at his security chief.
“What do you mean, the whole house is burning? It can’t burn, you stupid shit! The firewall partitions—”
“Mr. Humphries,” the chief snapped stiffly, “the partitions have failed. The intruders opened a ventilator shaft and the fire is spreading through the eaves beneath the roof. You’ll have to abandon your suite, sir, and pretty damned quick, too.”
Humphries glared at the screen.
“I’m leaving,” said the chief. “If you want to roast, go right ahead.”
The phone screen went blank. Humphries look up at Ferrer. “This can’t be happening,” he said. “I don’t believe it.”
She was at the door, ready to make a break for it. “At least Fuchs and his crew have left the house,” she said, trying to stay calm.
“They have?”
“That’s what the guards outside reported. Remember? They’re having a firefight out there right now.”
“Firefight?” Humphries couldn’t seem to get his mind working properly. Everything was happening too fast, too wildly.
“We’ve got to get out, Martin,” she insisted, almost shouting.
Humphries thought it was getting warm in the bedroom. That’s my imagination, he told himself. This whole suite is insulated, protected. They can’t get to me in here.
Something creaked ominously overhead. Humphries shot a glance at the ceiling, but it all looked normal. He looked around wildly. The whole building’s on fire, he heard the security chief’s voice in his mind. I pay that stupid slug to protect me, Humphries said to himself. He’s finished. I’ll get rid of him. Permanently.
“How do you open this hatch?” Ferrer asked. She was standing at the bedroom doorway, the door itself flung open but the protective cermet partition firmly in place.
Humphries eyes were on the window, though. “My garden!” he howled, staring at the flames licking across the branches of several of the trees.
“We’ve got to get out—” Ferrer put a hand on the cermet hatch and flinched back. “It’s hot!”
The phone was dead, Humphries realized. The controls for the fireproof partitions were automated. As long as the sensors detected a fire, the hatches would remain closed unless opened manually. But the controls are down in the security office, in the basement, Humphries realized. And that yellow little bastard has run away.
I could override the controls from my computer, he thought. But that’s in the sitting room, and we’re shut off from it!
He could feel the panic bubbling inside him, like the frothing waves of the sea rising over his head to drown him.
Ferrer was standing in front of him, shouting something, her eyes wide with fear. Humphries couldn’t hear what she was saying. His mind was repeating, The whole house is on fire! over and over again. Glancing past her terrified face through the bedroom window he saw that the garden was blazing as well.
Ferrer slapped him. Hard. A stinging smack across his face. Instinctively Humphries slapped her back as hard as he could. She staggered back, the imprint of his fingers red against her skin.
“You little bitch! Who do you think you are?”
“Martin, we’ve got to get out of here! We’ve got to get through the window and outside!”
Perhaps it was the slap, or perhaps the sight of the always cool and logical Ferrer looking panicked, terrified. Whatever the reason, Humphries felt his own panic subside. The fear was still there, but he could control it now.
“It’s burning out there,” he said, pointing toward the window.
Her face went absolutely white. “The fire will consume all the oxygen in the air! We’ll suffocate!”
“They’ll suffocate,” Humphries said flatly. “Fuchs and whatever riffraff he’s brought with him.”
“And the guards!”
“What of it? They’re a useless bunch of brain-dead shits.”
“But we’ll suffocate too!” Ferrer shouted, almost screaming.
“Not we,” he said. “You.”
The six-hundred-meter-long concrete vault of Selene’s Grand Plaza is supported, in part, by two towers that serve as office buildings. Selene’s safety office is located in one of those towers, not far from Douglas Stavenger’s small suite of offices.
This late at night, the safety office was crewed by only a pair of men, both relaxed to the point of boredom as they sat amid row after row of old-fashioned flat display screens that showed every corridor and public space in the underground city. On the consoles that lined one wall of their sizeable office were displayed the readouts from sensors that monitored air and water quality, temperature, and other environmental factors throughout the city.