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“They’re going to wait for us outside.”

“Just eat,” Brad said. “There’s a lot of people here, they can’t do anything.”

“What are you, crazy? There are a lot of Mexican people here. They can do anything they want. I knew we shouldn’t have come.”

“Bullshit. It was your idea.”

“It was my idea to get pastrami. Your goddamn car sent us to a prison.”

Brad bit into his sandwich. He was worried about his safety but didn’t show it. “Wow, this is good.”

“It better be. It’s our last meal.”

They ate in silence, staring at the car through the window. They couldn’t see the men; they were hoping they had left. This wasn’t the first time Brad had felt picked on because of his age, but it was becoming more frequent. Herb, meanwhile, made up his mind never to try a new restaurant again. Better to have the same old thing and not be stabbed.

* * *

At ten o’clock at night, Stewart Bernard saw an alarm light go off that told him someone was breaking into the school gymnasium. The cameras confirmed it. It looked as if six boys were forcing the door open; one of them had a basketball in his hand. Stewart thought how silly this was. It was dark in there; how did they think they could play without lights?

He got on the Shuffle, the three-wheeled cart he took on his patrols, and headed down to the gym. When he arrived the door was open, and he heard the sound of a basketball and saw some dim lights. The boys had brought electric lanterns with them. Stewart stood there and smiled. This was harmless. They weren’t stealing or disturbing the peace; they were just playing basketball. But he had a job to do, so he threw on the switch and the overheads lit up. The boys stopped and looked up to where Stewart was standing. “The gym is closed, boys. You’re not allowed in here.”

“We’re just playing basketball,” one of them yelled.

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

Stewart felt it before he heard it. A sharp pain in his collarbone. As he reached for his chest, he heard the explosion ricochet throughout the building. The kids were running up the stairs to the exit. Stewart dropped to the floor, feeling as though he was going to faint.

“What the fuck did you do that for?” he heard one of the boys say to another as they ran by him. Stewart really wanted to hear the answer but he blacked out. He lay there in a pool of blood until one of the robot vehicles sensed there was a door open and came to take a look. The next time he opened his eyes, he was in an operating room.

Kathy was home when her reading device blinked red. She knew what that was, but had never seen it before. All handheld devices had an emergency chip that could either send or receive an urgent message. The device displayed the words “Contact St. Peter’s Hospital. Your father is hurt.”

She was hoping against hope that maybe it was a prank, but hacking into an emergency chip had severe penalties and she didn’t know anyone who would do that, anyway. She was frantic. She called Brian. They were both at the hospital within fifteen minutes.

Kathy looked pale and scared. Brian didn’t know what to do other than support her. He hated hospitals—the smell literally made him sick. When Brian was five years old, he fell off a scooter and skinned his arm so badly he needed stitches. The doctor did it poorly and it became infected, and he had to spend a week in the hospital, sharing a room with a teenager who had broken his neck skiing. The infection wasn’t what spooked him; it was seeing a boy in the bed next to him wearing a full body cast. It left an impression that hospitals were to be avoided at all costs. Better to just die.

When they opened the door to the emergency room they could not believe the number of people waiting. It was more crowded than the Department of Motor Vehicles. Probably three hundred people at least. There was so much sneezing and coughing that if someone walked into the room healthy, by the time he got to the front of the line he would need medical attention. Those who could walk