Ms. Candace is front and center, hands resting on the head of her cane. “Sydney, what was that noise? Is that blood all over you? What in the—”

Her words drop off as the streetlights and every other light on the block blink out, leaving us in darkness.

Chapter 21

Sydney

WE’VE HAD BLACKOUTS AND BROWNOUTS IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD since I’ve moved back—when the grid gets hot, we get shut down so the richer neighbors can stay cool. The fact that the electrical company feels comfortable admitting that seems sinister given everything else going on.

I can think of a million possibilities tying this coincidence to all of the fucked-up things that happened this week.

Maybe the other power outages had been conditioning. We’re used to this happening now. We’re not supposed to worry that the rest of Brooklyn is bright in the distance, not knowing or caring what goes on in the dark at Gifford Place.

This knowledge combines with the darkness and the humidity, pushing me down into the asphalt. My heart was already beating out of my chest and now I get goose bumps despite the heat because this blackout feels different.

Drea is dead. She’s never coming back.

Rejuvenation.

A man just tried to kill me in my own home.

Clear out.

My breathing starts to come fast and shallow, the pain in my chest a seed of anxiety ready to sprout and bind me, choke the breath from me.

No.

I have to keep it together.

An image of Drea’s last words, in text, pops into my head. I force it away. If I think too much I will die. That’s the bottom line here.

I take a deep breath. And another.

Breathe.

“Well, shit,” Ms. Candace says from somewhere next to me. “This ain’t good.”

A hand closes around my arm, and even though I’m ready to bash anything that touches me, Theo’s low voice follows immediately. He squeezes my arm twice and then his hand slides down to grip mine.

“This reminds me of . . . one time, one of my mom’s boyfriends took me on a night hunt,” he says. “He got a kick out of chasing panicked creatures through the dark. This feels like that. Except I’m not one of the hunters this time.”

“Let’s walk Candace back to her place,” I say as, one by one, cell phones glow into the darkness around us, like giant blue lightning bugs floating up and down the street.

“Damn, I wanted to watch the game tonight but the network is down, too,” a man I don’t know by voice says, sighing dramatically as he waves his phone around. “Can’t even use my phone as a hotspot. Fuck outta here with this shit, man. Look. Look. Medical center been closed down for years, and they got electric?”

He waves his phone down the street.

His friend, standing beside him, laughs. “You think they got a TV that play ESPN in there?”

Their joking only adds to the sense of unreality, because when I look down the street, there are lights on in the old hospital.

“They’re having a meeting,” Theo says quietly. “And the lights are on in the hospital VerenTech just bought. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I swore I saw something in there the other night.”

“What was that noise that came from your house, Sydney?” Candace asks again, nudging at my other arm.

“Firecrackers. I think you need to go be with Paulette, Ms. Candace. She’s probably scared since she doesn’t like . . . Oh fuck.” Paulette’s ramblings about the ’77 blackout come back to me.

Earlier I was telling Theo how these things happen in cycles, white people clambering into a hood, be it the original Algonquin hood or closer in history, like Weeksville. If I’m right, what Paulette said makes this darkness even more frightening.

Break and build.

This is the breaking point.

I look down the street in the direction opposite the hospital in time to see more cell phone lights blink on in the distance—no, not cell phone lights. It’s the faraway mirror images of the cell phones near us on reflective surfaces.

“It’s the cops,” I say aloud, grasping toward where I last heard Ms. Candace. After snatching humid air a few times, I catch hold of her wrist.

On the other end of the block is a phalanx of cops—I assume. I can’t really make out much except for the reflection of light sources in their plastic riot shields and dark, bulky silhouettes.

I very briefly assume they’re here for me and Theo or the man bleeding out in my hallway, but no. They wouldn’t need this many cops, or shields, for that.

Break and build.

Night hunt.

Rejuvenation.

“Disperse!” a voice shouts through a bullhorn as the march of footsteps sounds through the street. “Disperse! Anyone continuing to riot will be arrested and puts themselves at the risk of lethal force.”

“Continuing to riot,” the man who had joked about the hospital repeats. “The fuck? Ain’t nobody rioting.”

“Everybody get inside,” Theo shouts, jogging and pulling me along toward Candace’s house. “Get inside your houses and don’t let anyone in.”

“I’m not going inside shit,” another man says. “We didn’t do nothing and—”

There’s a flash of light and a whistle where the cops stand, and then a canister is tumbling toward us, end over end, shooting smoke. It lands by the man who was talking and he reflexively kicks it, sending it back toward the growing cluster of police.

“Assault against a police officer is a felony offense,” the cop with the bullhorn says, and there’s laughter in his voice.

They charge.

It’s a short run to Candace’s, but she’s old. We start to fall behind as she limps, but one of the guys next to us scoops her up without a word and sprints to her stoop, then keeps going without waiting for a thank-you.

A knot forms in my throat as he melts into the darkness. This is what Gifford Place has always been to me—someone helping you without a second thought and keeping it moving.

This is what the people behind this rejuvenation are trying to destroy.

Jenn and Jen’s door opens and they pop their heads out.

“What’s happening?” Jen asks, her eyes wide.

“Go back in and don’t come out,” Theo says harshly.

Jen looks hurt. “I just want to help. Should we call the police?”

“Baby, go inside,” Ms. Candace says in her firm but friendly tone as she opens her own door. “Shit is about to get real, and I don’t wanna see you hurt, okay?”

Jenn comes up behind Jen, pulls her in, and slams the door shut.

Candace looks down at me and Theo. “And you two. Get in here, now. You need to tell me what’s going on.”

Her voice is a little less gentle with us.

“We have to go to the medical center,” I say, thinking about those lights that shouldn’t be on. “We’ll come check on you after. Get inside, hide, don’t let them find you.”

Candace puts her hand on her hip, her patience gone. “Girl, if you don’t stop playing and get your ass inside this house!”

That tone would have worked on me any other time, but Candace doesn’t understand. Doesn’t know that some of our friends are dead or in danger.

I think of Drea’s face, when I’d finally looked at it. She didn’t look peaceful like Mommy had. Foam had dried at the edges of her mouth and her eyes had stared toward the door, as if she’d been expecting me to open it and find her.

I hadn’t.

I’d walked past her, how many times?

I’d heard scratching in the walls. Maybe it had been her. Maybe—

“Sydney!”

Theo yells right in my face and I realize that I was starting to give in to the panic.

“Let’s go.”

Theo holds my arm as we run, and he guides me across the street as another smoke bomb streaks by us. The hospital looms ahead of us, the brighter lights of the lower floor illuminating the base of it and making it look even more imposing.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“When I saw Kavaughn, he appeared out of nowhere but it was here. If he got out, then there’s an entrance or exit we can use to get inside.”

I watch him as he looks back and forth, his jaw rigid and his shirt splattered with the blood of a man he killed for me.

“Why are you doing this?” I ask. “This isn’t your neighborhood.”

And I’m not anything to you.

“Maybe not,” he huffs. “But you know us strange white dudes have a hero complex. Of course I’m gonna swoop in and save the day.”

“If you don’t get killed,” I remind him.

“I’m hoping to avoid that outcome.”

I don’t want anyone else to die, but I really hope Theo in particular avoids that outcome, too. I don’t know if either of us will, given the war zone sounds coming from my neighborhood.

We skirt around the chain-link fence and he moves to touch it but then pulls back. “Either running in these jeans built up some static electricity or this is now electrified. It wasn’t the other day.”

Shit.

The cops are starting to reach our end of the block. There are knots of people tussling in the streets.

Think, Sydney.