Page 105 of Radar

Xander turned to see the men helping other passengers out. Once Xander got her chair rolling forward, Elyssa asked. “What’s happening?”

“The electrical outages have been spreading across France, and my app showed them creeping closer to the city. I thought we had enough time to get to our stop and then some. There must have been a surge of outages.”

“Damned sunspots.”

“I told them that I wasn’t willing to sit in a Metro for hours until some official came to get me off. As long as I was on the walkway, nothing could happen, even if they had a backup generator that would kick in.”

“Well, as people see us leaving, they’re getting the idea, too,” Elyssa said.

“Good. I prefer to be lost in the crowd.”

Xander and two other men from their same subway car carried Elyssa’s wheelchair up the steep steps. Elyssa was both grateful and wanted to roll her eyes at the preposterousness of it all. It wasn’t preposterous. If she were at home, she would have been in bed sleeping all day. Honestly, it had been two weeks of overexertion. And two days in a row, her brain had turned to big orange letters of insistence that she act to stay alive. And keep Xander alive. Who knew that was a thing her brain could do?

Xander was standing at a crossroads. “The boat is two blocks that way. Believe it or not, we’re still on time. We have about thirty minutes until we need to meet our helper. You need to eat.”

“You need to eat,” Elyssa said.

He pushed her up the road to a café where they read over the menu.

“English?” Xander asked the server.

“Yes.”

“We’d like sandwiches and drinks to go, please.” He turned to Elyssa. “Do you know what you’d like?”

“The Mediterranean, please. And the largest bottle of sparkling water you have. Two. No, three. Three of your largest bottles.”

The server used his hands to indicate their size and a face that asked if she was sure.

“Yes, thank you.”

Xander ordered his lunch and pulled out a chair to sit and hold her hand.

The eye of the storm, Elyssa thought, enjoying the calming sensation of Xander’s thumb brushing over the top of her hand.

A pop dropped Xander out of his chair onto the ground as he reached out and pressed Elyssa’s head down.

Was that gunfire?

Pop. Pop. Pop.

It sure sounded like gunfire. Had someone found them again?

Xander twisted to look around him, and Elyssa looked too. There wasn’t really anywhere to go that didn’t look easily shot up.

In one fluid motion, Xander released Radar from his lead and signaled him to his side. “Elyssa, hang on, this is going to be bumpy.”

Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.

They were moving.

Xander had the bags over his shoulders and was pressing her chair forward, running full tilt across the street, then over the sidewalk into the row of hedges and trees. He didn’t stop. He didn’t slow. It was like being on a wild amusement park ride through the branches.

Arriving at the ticket building outside the tourist boats’ wharf, Xander burst through the door.

The man peeked up when the bell tinkled.

Now the strafing sound of gunfire was a constant ratatatat. It sounded like a war had broken out along the shores of the Seine.