The TV flickered at the back of the room. The vaulted ceiling overhead was supported by metal struts and in the dim light the TV cast altering shadows about. The sound wasn’t on.
“You shouldn’t have come,” said Cogar.
The man’s face was broad, his upper lip dressed with a mustache, and his bald head shone in the glare from the screen.
Behind Rosie, the big person shifted on their feet and Rosie couldn’t help but be aware of how Busher held that hammer, as though to bring it down on someone’s head without a second thought.
“We had to. You know I wouldn’t have come here if I had another choice,” said Carlos.
Rosie noticed he was standing ridged. There was none of that easy swagger about him, none of that assuredness he’d had when he pointed his strange gun at the monster on the train.
“So, they’ve driven you out of hiding? How?” asked Carlos.
Rosie looked to Carlos who had eyes only for the broad, stout figure before them.
When he spoke again with was slow, as though he weighed every word. The girl was a veil.
“That what?” asked Rosie.
Carlos looked at her. That strange shadow that hung over his eyes twisted about his head, making him hard to read. “You were my veil,” Carlos said. “But they still found me. . . somehow. Some one close to you must be a vessel.”
“What are you talking about.”
A bark echoed through the warehouse suddenly.
BRAINSTORM
The sun beat down on the warehouse roof. The talk came from within.
Inside, Cogar is bashed and bruised. Rosie is raging.
Carlos is nowhere to be seen and Busher tries to hold Rosie back.
Rosie demands to know where her brother is.
Cogar doesn’t know.
Behind him the TV is flickering again, and there is an ariel view of police vehicles parked at a departent store mall in downtown Pittsburgh.
A ticker across the screen reads: BOY TAKES HOSTAGES WITHIN BLOOINGDALES.
Cogar’s eyes slowly turn toward the TV.
He explains how there is almost certainly nothing Rosie can do to save her brother.
She doesn’t care. But she does chill out. Carlos flows out of her as and re-establishes himself next to her. He looks shaken.
Rosie demands to be taken to the mall in order to find her brother.
How do they get INSIDE the mall without the police noticing?
Options:
Cogar has a magic door.
Carlos uses a magic coin.
Rosie absorbs the power of something and arrives there.
They drive the bus directly into the entrance of the department store, crashing through the police baricade and into the doors of the building. . . . I actually like this one, thematically.
Rosie pulls Carlos back toward the van they’d stolen. She’s been to this mall before and knows the way, as long as she’s on the free way.
They drive to the mall and crash through the police barrier, the whole time the snipers take shots at them. Rosie is identified as the girl who shot a man on a bus the night before.
