Doomsday Rebirth novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: The Gate, Reversed

Two guards took Dexter by the arms, and he went with them, looking back over his shoulder.

"Sir," he said. "Sir, I signed what you gave me. You told me to build it."

"I told you to find a place for the sick," the Commissioner said. "I did not tell you to put a man behind bars."

"You said he was dangerous."

"I said a great many things."

The hall had gone from silence to a roar, and some of it was cheering.

A woman near the front shouted, "Put him out!"

Another voice took it up, and another.

Down on the floor, the boy in the sweatshirt had climbed onto a cot.

"Put him out," he said, clear and high.

I stood on the table with the microphone in my hand.

Ezra's guards had stepped back from him, one pace and then another.

A man in the crowd was holding out a coat.

Ezra took it, looked at it, and put it around my shoulders instead.

"You don't have to do this," he said, low.

"I know."

"Do you want to?"

I thought about it honestly.

I thought about the steel door, and the wire window, and the little sound the bar had made when it dropped.

"Yes," I said. "I want to be there."

I climbed down, and the crowd opened in front of me.

We walked the whole length of the hall behind the guards, six hundred people turned to watch.

Lacey stood at the end of a row, with her clipboard flat against her chest and her mouth half open.

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