Chapter 15
The garage door kept rising and the cold hit my ankles first.
It wasn't just night air. It was the sweep of red and white from the SUV at the curb, washing up the driveway in pulses. I could hear the motor of the door straining on its track and Zora's breathing next to me. Both car doors were open. Both phones were on the center console, screens up. Mine still showed FINAL NOTICE in red. NYLA BANKS SELECTED. The little red record dot pulsed. Hers showed ZORA BANKS EXEMPT in that flat green.
"Get in," Zora said. She didn't wait. She slid into the driver's seat and pulled her door.
I got in the passenger side. The seat was cold through my cargo pants. My pendant swung and hit the zipper of my top with a little click. I could see the street beyond the garage mouth. The dark police SUV was parked at an angle, and beyond it two more sets of lights were parked further out, making a loose line across the mouth of our court.
The door was halfway up when a voice cut through from outside.
"Selected subject, remain inside," a man's voice said. Amplified but not shouting. "Exempt subject is clear to proceed."
Zora had the key in. Her hand shook once. She looked at me.
"They want me to drive," she said.
"I heard it," I said.
The dash lit up. The headlights threw a white cone onto the driveway and the flashing red washed back at us. On the console, my phone buzzed against the plastic. The red dot got brighter.
Zora didn't put it in reverse. She put it in drive.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Exempt means go," she said. "It said exempt subject is clear to proceed. That's me. Not you. But if you're in my car while I'm proceeding—"
"They'll pull me out."
"Not if we're moving," she said. Her jaw was tight. Her hands were at ten and two. "They said remain inside. That's the house. Not the car. I'm exempt. I can go. And you're with me."
It was the only loophole we had.
The garage door hit the top with a clunk. The whole driveway was open now. The air smelled like concrete dust and car exhaust and cut grass from earlier that day.
Zora eased forward. I stared straight ahead at the SUV. A figure stood beside it, hands visible, not reaching for anything yet. As our front tires crossed the threshold from garage to driveway, both phones changed at the same second.
I grabbed mine. The interface flickered. The red bar at the top stuttered, then the text underneath rewrote itself. FINAL NOTICE stayed, but under NYLA BANKS the word SELECTED dissolved and retyped as IN TRANSIT WITH EXEMPT. The color didn't go green. It went amber. The red record icon turned to a yellow hollow circle.
Zora's phone made a different sound. A low chime. Her screen went from EXEMPT to EXEMPT — CARRYING in the same green, and a new line appeared under it in small white letters: CORRIDOR ACTIVE - 90 SECONDS.
"Look," I said, holding my screen up.
She glanced down while the car crept forward. "Amber. Not red."
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"It means they don't know what to do with you yet," she said.
We were at the end of the driveway now. The SUV was ten feet to our left. The person beside it was a woman in a dark uniform. She held a tablet, not a weapon. She didn't step in front of us. She stepped back.
Zora turned the wheel toward the gap between the SUV and the second cruiser. There was just enough space for our car. The headlights lit the street and the sidewalk. No one had put up a barricade. They'd just parked.
As we passed the SUV, the woman lifted her tablet and spoke, not to us but into her shoulder mic.
"Exempt vehicle proceeding with selected subject in transit," she said. "Corridor confirmed."
The second cruiser's white lights dimmed. Just a little. Like someone had turned a switch.
Zora didn't speed. She drove exactly twenty-five down our street, past the neighbors' houses where the lamps were still on. I watched the side mirror. The SUV didn't follow. It stayed at our curb, red light still flashing but slower now.
On the console, my phone buzzed again. The amber IN TRANSIT WITH EXEMPT blinked, then cleared. New text typed itself: TRANSFERRED TO EXEMPT HOUSEHOLD - REVIEW SUSPENDED. The amber faded to green. The hollow circle filled solid green. It matched Zora's.
Below it, in the same small white letters, it said ZORA BANKS — SPONSOR.
Zora let out a breath she'd been holding since the garage. I felt my own chest unlock. My hand with the gold bracelet was shaking against my knee.
"Did yours—" I started.
She nodded without looking away from the road. "Green. Both of us green."
We hit the stop sign at the end of the county road. Past it the highway ran dark, no lights, no cordon. Zora stopped fully, checked both ways like she'd done since we were sixteen and she taught me to drive in a church parking lot.
"Where do we go?" she asked. Her voice was low.
May you like
"Anywhere that's not that house," I said.
She put her foot on the gas and we went straight through. In the rearview, the flashing red got smaller until the warm light from our entryway was just one more dot on the street, then it was gone. On the console both screens stayed green, steady, and didn't change again.
