The Fall

What you must know is that I needed to do this-not out of arrogance (I am no hero, son), but out of conviction. Leaving you in that train station-the pain I feel now is the worst I have ever experienced. Know that I never chose the human race instead of you. What I am to do now is for your future-yours alone. That the rest of mankind may benefit is but a side issue. This is so that you will never, ever have to do what I just did: choose between your child and your duty.

From the moment I first held you in my arms, I knew that you were going to be the only genuine love story in my life. The one human being to whom I could give my all and expect nothing in return. Please understand that I cannot trust anyone else to attempt what I am about to do. Much of the history of the previous century was written with a gun. Written by men driven to murder by their conviction, and their demons. I have both. Insanity is real, son-it is existence now. No longer a disorder of the mind, but an external reality. Maybe I can change this.

I will be branded a criminal, I may be called mad-but my hope is that, in time, the truth will vindicate my name, and that you, Zachary, will once again hold me in your heart.

No amount of words will ever do justice to what I feel for you and the relief that you are now safe with Nora. Please think of your father not as a man who deserted you, who broke a promise to you, but as a man who wanted to ensure that you survived this assault on our species. As a man with difficult choices to make, just like the man you will one day grow to be.

Please think also of your mother-as she was. Our love for you will never die so long as you live. In you, we have given this world a great gift-and of that, I have no doubt.

Your old man,

Dad

Office of Emergency Management, Brooklyn

THE OFFICE OF Emergency Management building operated on a darkened block in Brooklyn. The four-year-old, $50 million OEM facility served as the central point of coordination for major emergencies in New York. It housed New York’s 130-agency Emergency Operations Center, containing state-of-the-art audiovisual and information technology systems and full backup generators. The headquarters had been built to replace the agency’s former facility at 7 World Trade Center, destroyed on 9/11. It was constructed to foster resource coordination between public agencies in the event of a large-scale disaster. To that end, redundant electromechanical systems ensured continuous operation during a power outage.

The twenty-four-hours-a-day building was operating exactly as it should. The problem was that many of the agencies it was meant to coordinate with-local, state, federal, and nonprofit-were either offline, understaffed, or else apparently abandoned.

The heart of the city’s emergency disaster network was still beating strong, but precious little of its informational blood was reaching the extremities-as if the city had suffered a massive stroke.