WHEN SONOR BREECE emerged from the culvert pipe, he wasn’t exactly sure of his location. It had been a frantic scramble from the mansion after the mob broke through the perimeter. He’d made his way across town through the old E-train tunnel and found the enormous cement duct running along the east side of the city. But now the pipe had run out—another unfinished infrastructure project. He was standing on the lip of the final section with nothing ahead of him but an empty ditch.
Above him at street level, he could see a crowd of citizens filling the roadway. He heard the pop of gunfire and hoped that the government forces in this sector had restored control. But as soon as he climbed up the embankment, he could see that the guns were in the hands of citizens instead. The shots were celebratory, fired into the air—or into video screens.
Breece hung briefly on the margins of the crowd. He pulled his hood forward to shield his face, then filtered into the flow, moving uptown alongside the East River. In his salvaged clothes, he blended in with the masses. If he kept heading north, he would soon be out of Manhattan and into the safety of the upstate wilderness. Just keep moving, he told himself. Don’t stop for anything.
Ahead of him on the right, he saw the bridge that led to Rikers Island. For a moment, he thought that the prison compound might be a final holdout, a stronghold for loyalists. But he quickly saw that it was just the opposite. As he watched, squads of TinGrins were being herded over the bridge toward the prison, hands bound behind them with plastic ties. Spilling across the bridge from the other direction were hundreds of newly freed prisoners, still in their yellow jumpsuits, jumping and shouting and embracing everybody along the route to the mainland.
Breece tried to wind his way through the congestion at the city side of the bridge, but he found himself engulfed in the crowd. The more he tried to force a path forward, the more he kept getting jostled backward. A chunky young man in a yellow jumpsuit bumped hard against Breece’s shoulder, knocking the hood back from his face, just for a second. But long enough. The man started to say “Sorry,” then stopped short.
“Hey!” he said to Breece. “I know you!” He said it with snappy emphasis—a comic’s timing. Sonor Breece had a photographic memory for names and faces. He remembered this one from an arrest order. Danny Bartoni. Illegal comedy performance. Inciting insurrection.
“I don’t think so,” Breece muttered. He tried to move away through the crowd, but his path was blocked by a cluster of citizens and prisoners. Former prisoners. Bartoni grabbed his arm and leaned in for a closer look.
“Yes!” he shouted. “You’re him! You’re Sonor Breece! You’re the Beak!”
Breece felt a chill run through him. He reflexively reached into his pockets for the stack of bills he had stashed for bribes and safe passage. When his hand came out, a legal document fell onto the ground. It was crushed and torn by crowding feet. The bills were knocked from his hands and fluttered through the crowd like confetti.
“Hey, everybody!” shouted Bartoni. “Look who it is!” He stood on tiptoes and pointed emphatically at Breece, as if introducing the next act at the comedy club. “Let’s hear it for the Beak!”
Bartoni knew how to command an audience. Even in the noisy intersection, his voice carried. People in the scrum around him quieted and turned his way. They had only seen Sonor Breece in pictures or in rare public appearances, always in Gismonde’s shadow. He looked smaller in person, but the profile was unmistakable—the kind that would look good on a coin. No doubt about it. It was him.
“Where ya headed, Beak?” a man taunted, pulling Breece’s hood all the way back, exposing his bald skull and wrinkled neck.
“Time to fly the coop?” said another, speaking right into his face.
Slow, rhythmic clapping started to rise from the crowd, and then the mantra began…
“Beak! Beak! Beak!”
The sound grew louder and more insistent. Breece twisted one way and then the other. But it was no use. There was nowhere to go. The circle started to tighten. Breece tried to raise his arms to push back, buy himself some space, but he was now compressed so tightly that he couldn’t move at all. He could barely breathe. Within seconds, he only had room to swivel his head from side to side, like a terrified bird.
“Help me!” he screamed. “Somebody help me!”
“What a comedian!” said Bartoni.
The circle closed in.