The Nobody People by Bob Proehl (manga ereader TXT) 📕

to think of moments when he and Bishop seemed close. Maybe they’d been in touch while Patrick was away, hunting. Maybe Bishop was there for him on the road. She likes to imagine Patrick and Bishop as a buddy movie. One’s on the hunt for a cold-blooded killer. The other is a disembodied voice in his head. She stifles a laugh that feels sacrilegious for being not just in church but at a funeral.

On the way out, Senator Lowery finds Fahima and falls into step behind her.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he says quietly.

“You could have gotten in,” says Fahima. “Maybe thrown on a clever disguise? Groucho mustache and glasses?”

“Are you who I talk to now?” he asks. “I need to know.”

“What are you talking about?”

“With Kevin gone, someone needs to be the public face,” he says. “Is it you?”

There’s real worry in him, a sense that things have become unstable. It’s worse for him because he thought things were stable to begin with. At the awful dinner Lowery hosted, Jefferson Hargrave suggested Resonants would be better off if they hid what they were. Lowery has done just that, and it’s working for him. He belongs out here on the street with the allies and well-wishers.

Fahima stops and turns to him. She clasps his hand in both of hers and shakes it. “Thank you for your thoughts and prayers,” she says. “I’m sure we’ll be in touch.”

“Come on,” Sarah says, pulling her away. “Kimani’s picking us up.”

“You go on ahead,” says Fahima. “I’ve got some things back at the lab I need to finish.”

“Not today,” Sarah says.

“It’s for him,” says Fahima.

“He’s not going to take a point off for late work anymore,” Sarah says. Fahima smiles, kisses Sarah on the cheek, and heads to the F train.

—

Fahima changes into jeans and a work shirt. She hangs her black dress and nice hijab off the corner of her whiteboard, covering the notes she’s least comfortable with. Emmeline. A pulse. In the center of the board, she’s drawn a timeline that starts with the Trinity test and extends through today, into the future. A registration act by the end of the year. Internment camps soon afterward, if not concurrent with legislation. From there, two paths. One leads to submission. The other leads to war.

Fahima thinks about ways to change the course of a stream. Drop a rock in its path or pour in a ton more water so the stream overflows its banks. From there it could go anywhere. It could reconfigure itself as something new.

She doesn’t notice the pop when the door reappears. She doesn’t even notice the door is there until it opens and organ music floods out. It’s Prince’s opening monologue from “Let’s Go Crazy,” his sexy preacher bit.

“Fahima, we’re not taking no for an answer! Get in here and drink with us,” Patrick yells. “Quick, before Kimani starts singing!”

Fahima glances at her timelines. She’s already decided on a course of action. She decided when she drew up plans for the device instead of letting the idea slip away, forgotten like a dream. You’ll have to answer for this, she thinks. Whether the results are good or bad, you don’t do something like this with impunity. She turns away from the whiteboard and goes through the door. Kimani’s room hasn’t been cleaned or tidied since Revere. The sculpture Ji Yeon smashed is on the floor, a swarm of ball bearings beneath a shallow dent in the wall. She tries to catch Kimani’s eye, but Kimani is fixing a drink, whispering lyrics to herself as she does.

“I don’t know how you drink these things,” Sarah says. She scratches under Cortex’s chin with one hand and holds up a half-finished martini in the other. “It tastes like pine needles steeped in paint thinner.”

“It’s an acquired taste,” Fahima says, accepting a drink.

“When you die,” Patrick says, “we’ll drink white wine spritzers in your memory.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Sarah says, sounding genuinely hurt. “I’ve never had a white wine spritzer in my life.”

“How far along are you all?” asks Fahima.

“One round and this much,” Sarah says, indicating the empty top inch of her glass. “These things have a lot of booze in them.”

“Patrick was telling us about his travels,” Kimani says.

“The great white hunter,” Sarah says.

“I wasn’t telling them anything,” he says. “They were badgering me. We’ve been through all this. It’s not something I want to talk about.”

“So don’t talk about it,” says Fahima.

“He’s been gone for years,” Sarah says.

“I’m coming back next term,” Patrick says.

“You caught all the bad guys?” Fahima asks.

“It’s time to come back,” he says. “The job is too big for one person. It’s not just Owen Curry. There are groups. Cells. I couldn’t tell if they were connected or reporting to someone higher up. But I kept finding these little knots of Resonants waiting to blow shit up. It was like Whac-A-Mole. Every time I smacked one down, another popped up.”

“Would you say you were stretched too thin?” Sarah asks, stifling a laugh.

“Sarah,” says Patrick.

“Would you say you overextended yourself?”

“You’re drunk,” Patrick says.

“Yes,” Sarah says.

“I had a strange conversation on the way out,” Fahima says. “Have you met Senator Lowery?”

“Our wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Patrick says. Cortex growls, low and lupine.

“He asked me which of us is the new face of Resonants,” she says.

“What does that even mean?” Kimani asks.

“It sounds like a Cosmo article,” says Patrick.

“He wanted to know who becomes Bishop now,” Fahima says. “It’s not as ridiculous a question as it sounds.”

“Then you do it,” Patrick says.

“Let’s put the queer Muslim lady out front,” says Fahima. “That’ll chill people right the fuck out.”

“Sarah’s the pretty one,” Kimani says. “Everybody loves a pretty white lady.”

“I don’t—” says Sarah, flushing bright red. “I can’t—the academy.”

Patrick nods. “Sarah was born to run that school,” he says. “Maybe no one should take Bishop’s place.”

“I was about to say it should be you,” Fahima says.

“He did the things he had to,” Patrick says. “It doesn’t mean they should