Cause news flash: there are no black Russians. Not a one, barring the cocktail.

  Left back at the park border, beat cheeks up to 8th Street, one wheel on the cart starts to go wonky . . . shit. Crunk west and do a full spin, cheating a bit now, so I’m pointed at Fifth. Have to stop periodically to readjust Haifa’s outfit for modesty’s sake . . .

  Another gaggle of choppers gives me pause . . . then it’s on to the relative exposure of 5th Avenue. Start to stepping once again, and with a jerk the princess sits up and nearly tumbles off the cart.

  “Bloody fucking . . .”

  Ease her gently to the concrete, she’s on her hands and knees panting, me saying, “Haifa . . .”

  The princess rotates her torso and commences smacking me, her face smeared with rage, wiped clean of makeup.

  Manhandle the lady up and back into a recessed doorway. I note the gold house number 11, still intact, the facade untouched.

  “Haifa. Your Highness—”

  She takes a final weak swipe at my mug, and I lift my gas mask.

  “It’s Decimal. Your escort. It’s me. Look here. It’s me.” Grab her chin, bring that face front. Takes her a moment. Me saying, “I apologize, I lost you. I lost you—”

  She spits something in Arabic. My heart sinks, because—agonizingly—it sounds like nothing at all.

  “I can’t understand that. I can’t understand that anymore,” I tell her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let’s just stick with English.”

  “Fuuuucking hell . . . Where’s Khalid?”

  “Haifa . . .”

  “Where is he, you bloody bastard!” She struggles out of my grasp and sinks to her knees.

  I kneel next to her, withdraw my hand sanitizer.

  Cheeks flushed, wild. She’s still wobbly, half-drugged.

  “Haifa. Have some PurellTM. Well, it’s not actually PurellTM . . . It’s been a—”

  She slaps at the bottle of sanitizer, and then her hands jump to her mouth. “Fuck me. Please tell me he’s okay. Khalid. He’s okay.”

  Consider this, decide I’m gonna talk straight with the lady. “Khalid didn’t make it. Won’t sugarcoat it. Took his own life. So at least this was a choice. Haifa, I’m so sorry.”

  The princess puts her palms in her eye sockets. “No. No. Why should I believe a bloody fucking word you say?”

  “I don’t know what else you’d wanna do, I’m your best bet now. It comes to this. And we’ve gotta keep moving if we’re gonna stay—”

  “You were to protect us, mate, and you made a bloody botch-up of the whole—” She stops, removes her palms, slowly, horror freezing her face. “Elif air ab . . . Do not tell me . . . they successfully . . .”

  I don’t say anything. It’s all there in my face. And hers, imploring.

  “. . . the Prophet. Please. Tell me this is not happening.”

  My silence is just slightly too long, then I manage, “Your Highness, I need you to breathe—”

  Haifa vomits, it’s extremely sudden, and I find myself at pains to get the fuck out of the radius of the spray while simultaneously attempting to provide comfort. Maybe it’s a reaction to the appearance of fresh vomit on the scene, but in my throat there’s so much grit I get panicky, my trachea seemingly obstructed . . .

  “Gotta get you some water,” I wheeze. Fuck, me too.

  She is on her hands and knees now, spitting, hair in her face, the boom-boom of the loudspeakers down the block. Whispering something. I move in.

  “. . . not natural. It’s not right. It’s bloody . . .”

  “We have to keep moving, Your Highness. You gotta find a way to get up and move forward. I understand it’s a nightmare. I got railroaded here too. One thing at a time, you know? And right now we gotta bounce.”

  The princess doesn’t look up. Goes down on her forearms, hair in her puke. “I want to die. This monstrous . . . this unnatural . . . I want it dead . . .” She keeps talking. More helicopters rip by overhead.

  “Let’s stay in the moment. I’m hearing you. You gotta stand up and walk. Gotta be mobile.” Fumbling through my bag. Thank Allah I raided the minibar. “Here,” I say, getting the cap off a warm bottle of Evian. “Drink.”

  Only a matter of time before we encounter a clique on foot. Only a matter of minutes.

  “Drink it,” I say again, with greater emphasis.

  Haifa is startled out of her fugue. She takes the bottle wordlessly.

  “You’re dehydrated as fuck, drink it.”

  “Where are we?” she mumbles, bringing the bottle to her lips.

  “In trouble. Downtown. Haifa. Please stand.”

  She’s nodding. I take her arm and we get her upright.

  “I’m well fucked, Mr. Decimal. It doesn’t matter anymore, I’m so very well fucked. Curse my fucking family, a thousand cocks upon them. Better I die.”

  Start steering her toward Fifth. “That’s enough of this nonsense. Okay? You don’t know how this is gonna play out.” I’m babbling, out of my depth, scanning the rooftops, trying to put my eyes everywhere. “Babies don’t always survive, and that’s just nature. Especially in this environment. It’s early on. See what I mean? All kinds of factors.”

  She shakes her head. Says dreamily, “No. No. This is real. I feel it, and it’s strong. It wants to live.”

  My eyes on the buildings, the upper floors. Always thinking about snipers, cameras . . . “You can’t possibly know that,” I say. Pregnant chicks always talk crazy smack. “Haifa, you can’t know that, you’re in shock, girl . . .”

  She smiles. It’s a tight, thin movement. “I feel it. It’s a fighter, and it bloody well intends to make it.”

  I wanna tell her that she can’t know this. It’s not even a real thing yet. It’s just a bunch of protein, a cell-clot, hours old, if it took at all . . .

  I open my craw just as a stretch limousine comes around the corner.

  Pull my handgun and come to a crouch.

  The problem with everything at this point is that no new development, nothing whatsoever, can be good. Only different degrees of bad.

  A placard in the front window reads, WHO. This throws me . . . then I think, World Health Organization, and relax, though I’m not sure why . . . Limo comes to a stop nearby. Glass smoked over. Electric window slides down.

  “Major,” greets Dr. Kavan, “unbecoming of an officer. Your discharge wasn’t sanctioned. Came to follow up, and whoops. No patient. You’re gone.”

  I stand, saying, “Yeah, well, I had business elsewhere. ’Sides, some big Russians kinda hustled me out.”

  The door opens. “Please. We’re headed out of town, but we’ve got just enough time to drop you off wherever you choose. It’s the least I can do. We can speak a little.”

  I look to Haifa, who is making big eyes. I nod, it’s okay. Take her arm and duck in.

  Dr. Kavan is seated, wearing his uniform. Boxes marked MRE—US ARMY—30 UNITS fill the seat next to him and the floor.

  “Getting ready to bunk down, doctor? Stockpilin’? News flash, the apocalypse already hit.”

  Kavan gives this a stiff smile, indicates Haifa. “I see you got my note. That was a gamble, but . . .” he half bows. “Your Highness.”

  “Who is this?” asks Haifa.

  “An old coworker,” I say. “Apparently.”

  “Where are we headed?” asks Kavan.

  I think about this. I think about this pretty hard. “The Main Branch of the library. Forty-Second and Fifth.”

  The doctor gives me an unreadable smile.

  _________________

  North on 5th Avenue at a clip.

  I’m moving in circles, with one leg stapled to the ground.

  Gray, gray, white, gray. A construction site. Another construction site. They’re popping up overnight, rising from the core of the planet. Tremendous structures with tremendous history, once so alive, have been carved out and stuffed with alien material, stuffed with emptiness.

  And the warnings:

  STAFF ENTRANCE ONLY

  KEEP OUT

  SECURITY WILL USE LETHAL FORCE

  Afresh, afresh, I dig it all afresh.

  Maybe it’s that with the loss of language comprehension, I have more space in my head to mull shit over. Maybe I’m just in a broody kinda mood.

  Cause what do I see: it’s not my city. The space through which I move. I’ve been rendered blind by nostalgia. Allowed to see only what once was. In the empty lots, phantom shapes to which I ascribe meaning.

  But there is no meaning left here. It’s not a city at all.

  Wait, Decimal. That’s not entirely true. There is the precursor to meaning. There is the precursor to whatever “meaning” one might ascribe those Chinese industrial villages we used to hear so much about. The energy that filled the air surrounding the construction of such not-quite-places.

  This is what has replaced my home. My home, spiritually, has been systematically removed. Taste its absence in my throat where a grain or two of sand lingers.

  Why did I not see it in quite this way before? Because hope springs eternal. The mind is cruel. The city has split the scene, and with it, anything you might call God.

  Entire streets cordoned off. Those signs in English that I spot share a theme:

  DO NOT ENTER

  PRIVATE PROPERTY

  TRESSPASERS WILL BE SHOT

  Foot traffic at zero. No more civilians. It happened quickly.

  I dig Cyrillic, Mandarin, Arabic lettering on the sides of trucks, on fences. And I can interpret none of it.

  “Must be disconcerting,” says Kavan, sucking me back to my present. In a van headed uptown.

  “Not knowing anymore,” he continues.

  Some psychic shit. Maybe I was moving my mouth. I turn away from the window. Though he could be talking about anything.

  Haifa is there and I realize she’s gripping my numb robotic hand.

  Decimal, she’s looking to you, like a little kid. Guide me now. You gotta handle this. Try to vibe reassuring, but that’s a much larger project. For the moment I say, “Why didn’t you have the decency to tell me I was sick, Kavan? I’m a big grown-up man.”

  “Tell you about what, officer?”

  “My illness. Why the fuck wouldn’t you mention this? What, it ain’t relevant? Aren’t you a cocksucking health professional?”

  Kavan pinches his nose. “Major. Am I supposed to keep careful track of what you do and do not remember about your own life? Is that my purpose? I am not your personal secretary. I am not your biographer. Plus, I have no idea what you’re referring to by illness.”

  “My illness, you motherfucker.”

  “The only illness I’m aware of . . . and mind you, I haven’t run any blood tests or anything of that nature, that’s simply not possible anymore—the only illness I’m aware of is your mental illness. Which, I think, in removing the implant, we have gone a long way toward alleviating.”

  My jaw is slack. I valiantly attempt to snap to. “Your nurse . . . your, ah, coworker. The redhead? Glasses?”

  “Who might that be?” says Kavan, look genuinely confused.

  Jesus. Just when I thought I had a solid grasp on this noise. “The girl . . .”

  Kavan sighs. Offers me a weary, practiced smile, which I am sure many many others have seen as well, designed to remind me that I am most decidedly the patient. “It’s not uncommon. To hallucinate, or to hear voices, et cetera, after such a traumatic alteration, and they can seem extremely real . . .”

  But I’m not hearing him. “We spoke. We spoke for a long time. She had files. She had files on me.” Sounding crazy . . . sounding unstable. I shut it.

  Kavan regards me, seems to be watching my mouth. Waiting.

  Hold up . . . having difficulty organizing my thoughts. I mentioned the red-haired white girl? Wanna chase this butterfly down, but it’s gone. I change course. “What’s your fucking objective then, Kavan? You come back and dig me up, just to what? Head-fuck me? Throw me off my game? What are you after?”

  “Oh, I don’t think you can help me with what I’m really after,” says the man dismissively.

  “Try me. We’ve gone this far. Try me.”

  “I am after, what. Democracy.” He follows this up with a gut-busty bark, which is shockingly loud in the confines of the limousine.

  Haifa looks on incredulously. Flipping between the doctor and me like a tennis match.

  “Democracy,” he repeats, with more than a little sarcasm.

  “Yeah, sure,” I say. Is he insane?

  “You know, that quaint little concept we clung to. Or, in your case, made great and noble sacrifices for.”

  Is he fucking trifling? He wanna rile me up?

  “Kavan, I’m not a goddamn fool. Got my eyes wide open and shit. I do what I do and did what I did cause it’s a job. The military . . . might as well have been working at a . . . Best Buy, the shit is all the same to me. I’m an agnostic, you know what I’m saying?” The doctor is nodding along. I carry on, wondering where this is coming from: “None of these terms mean a fucking thing. It’s all just control and survival, man, that’s it.”

  Kavan nods impatiently, and shifts gears. “Fine, major. Now, this is perhaps the last chance we’ll get to speak. I don’t want to get into semantics. We’re faced with huge challenges here, and we’ve got to address them.”

  “You got a for instance? Cause from where I’m sitting, we already done fucked it all up. Look. Outside. Here. At. This. There. Is. Nothing. Left.” I jab the window with each word. We’re passing a massive expanse of emptiness, stretching an entire city block, 26th through 28th streets. I can see straight though to Broadway.

  “This is what my former colleagues would call movement forward, Decimal. Part and parcel to what I would discuss with you now.”

  I wait. Trying to remember . . . trying to remember what was there, in that block . . . because once I forget . . .

  “Seeing as our post-op debrief was somehow cut short, major,” says Kavan, “there’s still more to say.”

  “Yeah, we’re discussing,” I manage. Whipping past Koreatown, which is in the process of gradually being painted over, by my reckoning. Less protrusions. But then I’m apparently not the most trustworthy lookout.

  “As I mentioned prior to your most recent operation, major. And I’ll speak frankly, if you excuse me, Your Highness.”

  Haifa stares at the man. “I’ve no idea what you’re on about as it is,” she says. Then to me, quietly: “What illness?”

  But Kavan is talking: “It’s just as well you not know, ma’am. Major, this is a . . . deeply strange period in our history as a nation.”

  “Huh. You think?”

  “And as I mentioned, major, I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, but I want to be as clear as possible.”

  I do my utmost to refocus on this man, possibly one of the most important figures in my life, of whom I have absolutely no recall.

  Kavan touches his forehead, then continues: “Factions . . . factions within the government that have always existed were allowed the space to actively assault each other, thanks to the disruptive events here and elsewhere. At the moment, one such splinter group is dominant, of course, this being your current employer, major.”

  “Yeah. But that’s basic Darwin, ain’t it?” Can’t keep the acid out of my voice.

  “For years,” Kavan is saying woodenly, “we operated alongside the very people we knew to be working actively to short-circuit our society. For years we strove to find methods to thwart them. We knew that the only way to accomplish this was from within. We had to be extremely careful. We had to use every possible tool—”

  “Tools like me, ” I cut in.

  He regards my mouth, then lifts his eyes to mine. “If you must, yes, we used everything and everyone available. For the larger good.”

  Overwhelming urge to slaughter, maim, kill.

  Grip Haifa’s hand, for my sake as much as hers.

  She says again, with greater vigor: “What illness?” But I ignore her.

  Kavan tilts his chin. “What I’m telling you now: we find ourselves at a crossroads. My group has not prevailed. We’re defeated. We’re exposed. Our only option is to retreat and regroup.”

  “Some brave motherfuckers.”

  “Bravery, it’s not about bravery. Do you not see that should we completely disappear, that’s the end of the story? There is nothing, I mean nothing, preventing them from achieving their goals at this point. Except . . .”

  Buncha crap. “Yeah, except?”

  “There is an opportunity here.” He indicates us, generally.

  “We’re listening.”

  “Whether you appreciate it or not yourself, major, and Your Royal Highness . . . the both of you are critical to how this thing plays out.”

  Kavan’s peepers flit over Haifa’s midriff.

  I nod. I get it. I know where this is headed.

  “So I’m here to tell you: there’s still time.”

  “To do what, exactly?” says Haifa.

  Kavan exhales. “I am leaving New York City, and the both of you should join me.”

  Can’t help but scoff at this folly, saying, “Exactly how you gonna get out, you reckon?”

  Kavan looks at me for a moment, then speaks again: “278.”

  “The Verrazano? You fucking crazy? Nobody gets through there. Don’t care what kinda badge you got.”

  “Remember, I’m government. Legitimately.”

  “Trying to say I’m not legit?”

  “That’s not what I meant. Have you ever tried to leave via that road yourself?”

  “No, but you’re gonna have to take a fucking boat around Fresh Kills.”

  Kavan raises his eyebrows, this being entirely obvious. He would have planned accordingly.

  “Okay, it’s your world. And then where you plan on going?” I ask.

  “A secure location.”

  “No such motherfucking thing, doc. Not anymore.”

  He wags his head. “But this is all completely beside the point. If you join us, the child—”