Everyone around me is a criminal. No one can be trusted. But I know what I know from all my years as a pulse, and if I have to believe in something, I’ll believe in that.

“No,” I say. “I’m going black.”

In desperate chorus Charlie and Kong and Jagjeet yell “No!” but it’s too late.

Snip.

They all gasp and recoil and clench their eyes as if in the presence of a bomb that just ticked down to zero. Then the door retracts into its pocket. Everything is quiet. We lean our heads out the door and scan left and right: all clear. We step through the door, looking down the hall in varying degrees of astonishment, and still: all clear. Charlie stares at me in wonder.

“See?” I say.

As Charlie nods in concession—admiration, even—the door behind us slams shut and an alarm starts shrieking through the halls.

“Not one word,” I say to Charlie, upholding a finger.

“I didn’t say anything!”

Jagjeet and I pull left; Charlie pulls right.

“This way,” she says.

“No,” I say, “it’s this way.”

“We have to go this way.”

“I just came this way. I know what I’m talking about.”

It’s a bad time for one of our battles of wills, but there it is.

“Otto,” she says as the alarm wails, “my father’s still here.”

My heart pinches. To me, he has always been in some remote Californian village; I have always been working up the guts to ask him for permission to marry his daughter. Now he is in the same building with me; now I am going to put his daughter in jail.

It’s not the way I envisioned meeting him.

“Mr. Izzo?” Jagjeet says urgently, lovingly. “Where?”

Before Charlie can answer there is a burst of gunfire and a spray of drywall confetti rains down on us. Jagjeet shoves us around the corner but can’t join us before an explosion of white powder above his head forces him to dive behind the other corner.

We are in the hallway that leads to Kong. He is in the one that leads to Mr. Izzo.

My ears burn with the sound of feet sprinting toward us.

“Where?” he yells over the din of the bells and gunfire.

“Room 207, north wing!” Charlie yells back.

Jagjeet is off in a bolt. Charlie takes me by the hand and drags me down the hallway with the sound of sprinting footsteps coming after us. With the alarm squealing it’s impossible for me to apply my hearing around corners and so we’re running without any idea what’s ahead. We could easily run into a bullet.

“Kong,” I yell into the mouthpiece, “you’ve got to cut the alarm. I can’t hear anything.”

“I can’t! I can barely keep the cameras off of you!”

“Just do it!”