Page 113 of Anarchy Missing

I crawl away from Thomas, pushing him aside when he makes to grab my arm, and look at Lincoln as I get to my feet.

He… he’s… not normal.

“What are you?” I ask. “Who are you people?” I yell it. I’m so fucking done with all this weird shit.

“Just listen,” Thomas says. He’s got his hands up, palms out, like he’s backing off a dangerous animal.

I’m the dangerous animal here, buddy.

“It’s the glass,” Lincoln says, before Thomas can explain anything else. “The SmartGlass, Thomas. That computer he invented that runs the Cathedral City history map. It’s all over. It like… self-replicated in the windows. Used the glass to grow into…”

“Jesus Christ,” Thomas says, grabbing his hair.

“Kill it.” Sheila’s voice comes out from someone’s phone speaker, thin and far away, reminding us all that she’s not really here. She’s far, far away and any help she might offer won’t come quickly now that the helicopter is nothing but a red-hot pile of glowing metal.

“How?” Lincoln says, staring up at the windows. They are flashing bits of code now. Code that looks a lot like the one Randy showed me the other day when all this craziness started. Lincoln squints his eyes, like he can read it.

“What’s it say?” Molly asks, reading my mind.

“It’s a program,” Lincoln says. “The whole fucking building is nothing but a giant computer and that SmartGlass is acting like an operating system.”

“Kill it, Lincoln,” Sheila repeats. “Shoot it. Destroy it! Quick! Before it finds a way to corrupt me too!”

I think I actually hear fear in her voice.

But it’s the rest of the world who need to be terrified.

I don’t know what a corrupted Sheila looks like. But I don’t want to find out. Because all roads lead to terror. Never-ending riots, and quite possibly the global destruction of the human race.