We were alone except for what must’ve been a family with bags and rolling suitcases who waited by the courtyard fountain. The only sound was the gurgle of water and the dull thuds as the little girl in the family bounced a ball against the floor. Until a shrieking alarm split my eardrums and I jumped out of my skin. The shrill whirring was so loud that it rattled my teeth. Yusuf’s hands flew up to block his ears. An oddly soothing voice cut through the alarm. Lockdown procedure has been initiated.

Yusuf and I froze, since the alarm was clearly about us, if the three security guards in dark green uniforms who were sprinting our way were any clue.

“So far so good, huh?” I said.

“At least we’re not dead.”

“Yet.”

I fought just about every instinct to run while the security guards stopped about five feet away, holding up fat black batons. Almost funny to think that I’d just stopped Yusuf from being killed only to have us get gunned down here.

“Why aren’t you in the living quarters?” one of the guards said in English. “I’m going to need to see your citizen cards.”

“Hold up,” another said before we had a chance to sputter some bullshit. “It’s…”

“No,” the third guard said, her mouth falling agape.

“We’re unarmed,” I said. “We’re just here looking for safety.”

I looked to Yusuf, broadcasting help me out here with my eyes.

The guard closest to us unclipped a fist-sized radio from her belt. “Cut the alarms,” she said into her hand, eyeing us. “You’re gonna wanna see this.”

*   *   *

The three security guards called in a troupe of hazmat suits who ushered me and Yusuf with cattle prod-looking things into a glass and plastic room, where other hazmat suits ignored all our questions about what was going on. I had to mostly drag Yusuf because he shut down. It was like he was in power save mode—completely dead in the face and unresponsive except for his wheezing breath when I called his name. I pressed my hands to either side of his face, whispering to him, “We’re okay. We’re okay.”

If him mentally ghosting on me when things got intense was an indicator of things to come, I’d have to worry about keeping us both safe.

The room stank of bleach. A doctor, I figured, in another hazmat suit swabbed our arms and drew our blood—Yusuf willingly, while three of the hazmats had to come back and hold me down until I bruised because I have to make everything hard. The doctor fiddled with our vials of blood, slid them into a centrifuge, and only when the thing stopped spinning and our vials were the blue of window cleaner did she pull her mask off and sigh.

“All clear,” she said into her wrist. “Dial back the lockdown.”

“Where are we?” I asked her.