by Sean Platt
“Mom! What are you doing in here!?” In the dark. Alone. Sitting in Terrence’s chair, saying nothing even when I shouted. The hairs on the back of Lila’s neck rippled in a wave.
“I thought he might go to visit me in my place. So I came here instead.”
“Who?”
“Your father.”
“That’s not funny.”
The flashlight’s beam lit Heather’s face. Clara, on her lap, seemed overly content, but Heather was neither welcoming the girl nor pushing her away. It was as if she had yet to notice her.
“Seriously, Mom.”
“I didn’t know where else to go. I didn’t know where we were going when your dad and I ran away, but he always had a way of knowing what to do and where to go. I trusted him. Believed him. Without him, I’m a loose end.”
“You’re just sitting in the dark.”
“The power is out.”
“There’s power in the house, and plenty of extra bedrooms.”
“But he’s there.”
“Who?”
“Meyer.”
Lila wanted to shout. This wasn’t fair. She shouldn’t have to deal with her father’s death and her mom’s mockery in the same day. Or with her losing her shit. Again.
She met Heather’s eyes, unsure how to respond. They were here because Clara insisted: If she wasn’t allowed to see Grandpa anymore, she wanted to see Grandma. Why not? Lila wouldn’t be getting any sleep tonight anyway. It seemed that Heather wouldn’t, either.
“I don’t like you joking about it,” Lila said.
“I’m not joking.”
“Stop it, Mom.” Lila pressed her lips together, fighting something that might, left unchecked, turn into tears. Anger and loss in a horrible flurry. She wanted to cry. She wanted to shout. But most of all she wanted to take Clara by the arm, drag the girl out of the house, and tell her to keep her goddamn scary powers to herself. Tell her to stuff those things down and be normal, for once.
“Go inside, and ask for the viceroy, Lila,” Heather said, her usually nasal, usually sarcastic voice deeply changed. This voice was more mature — the kind of maturity forced on a person through trauma. “Go in, and ask for him if you don’t believe me.”
“This isn’t fair.”
“It definitely isn’t.”
Lila pulled Clara from her mother’s lap, turning on the ball of her foot. The yard seemed bright — albeit a frightening kind of illumination made of hard shadows and sharp angles — compared to the house. She wanted to be out there. She wanted to cross back to the mansion, to her room, to her bed. Raj would probably work all night, hoping to become the big man in charge. She’d have the place to herself, and maybe overnight, it would all go away.
“Goodbye, Mom. Enjoy your insanity.”
“But Mom,” Clara said.
“It’s bedtime, Clara. Come on. We’re up too late. We need to get to bed. Nighty night.”
“But Mom, I want to see it! I want to see it happen!” And with that, she sprinted outside. Lila followed, giving Heather a final, loathsome look. She found Clara on the porch’s edge, sitting cross-legged, elbows to knees and chin on palms, facing away from the mansion, toward the Apex.
Lila didn’t feel like asking. Didn’t feel like indulging. Didn’t feel like playing stupid games perpetrated from women either above or below her by a generation. She grabbed Clara, perhaps too roughly, and marched. Away from Heather and her unfair, cruel jokes. Away from whatever waited in the shadows, and whoever, if Clara was right, might be approaching from beyond the city wall.
They were halfway across the lawn when a flash lit the sky from behind. By the time Lila turned to look, everything was back to being perfectly normal, leaving no clue as to what had just happened.
Clara kicked the dirt with her bare feet.
“Aww, we missed it!”
CHAPTER 21
Jons looked up from his desk. To Christopher, he seemed like a parody of an ancient officer — possibly something out of a gumshoe movie set before the electrical age. The shop next door happened to sell oil lanterns, so Jons had bought a dozen. Now the place was filled with flickering wick lights, cops still on duty scribbling on paper with pens. A few tablets still had juice, and there were a handful of external batteries. There was also a generator, but Jons wanted to save it all. He knew Terrence. And whether Terrence’s virus intended to kill the network or not, one truth remained: what Terrence did, he did thoroughly.
“What the shit was that?"
Christopher shook his head. He, like Jons, had been looking down when the flash had lit the windows. One hit then gone, like an old-time flashbulb to match the antique mood.
Jons rose and crossed to the window. Christopher followed. A few of the other cops went to other windows, but most seemed to have decided that whatever it was had ended and that they might as well return to work. Few were in the building to shuffle papers. Most were here to suit up, now that the order had come down from the mansion … where the viceroy, it seemed, wasn’t dead after all.
“Was it a searchlight?” Jons asked.
“I don’t see a searchlight,” Christopher answered.
“It looked like an explosion.”
“It didn’t sound like one.” The flash had been silent, like something on a muted TV.
Jons was scanning the city, seeing more of the earlier nothing. The Apex was visible, looking mostly (but not entirely) the same as always. It might be cycling faster, but that was probably the greedy thing gobbling power, heedless of the city’s needs.
Jons rushed past Christopher, headed for the door. A moment later, Christopher found himself outside, following the chief like a puppy at his heels.
Jons looked around again, still seeing nothing.
He looked right at Christopher. Then, as something seemed to click, he dragged him down the stairs and around a corner.
“Is it your buddies? Is this some kind of an attack?”
“What are you talking about?”
Jon’s eyes, in the shadow, were almost like pits. He was boring right into Christopher, the chief’s giant fist still gripping the front of Christopher’s guard uniform. But despite the situation, he didn’t feel menace from Jons. It was something different, but no less urgent.
He let go, looked around, then spoke more quietly. “The Astrals let your people go.”
“What people?”
“Don’t act like I’m stupid, Chris. I know Terrence, too. He’s my boy. I know all about you two being in with Bannister. Not Benjamin. His kid.”
Christopher considered playing dumb, but Jons was right. He wasn’t stupid, and Terrence did talk. But Terrence was a good judge of character and always had been. He only talked — in the way Jons surely meant — to people he trusted. Terrence was a rock. An anchor. And those he took into confidence, Christopher took into confidence, too.
“I know Cameron, yes.”
“And that thing with the tank that crashed in here. We know that was Andreus Republic. Terrence thinks the Astrals are leaving them alone, too. Maybe even working with them. That tank that took Piper and Trevor away.” He looked around again then spoke even lower. “When Bannister gave Terrence the Canned Heat.”
Christopher exhaled. Jons must know it all. But he hadn’t said a word, even after Terrence had been caught.
“Tell me the truth, Chris. They coming in?”
“I don’t know.”
“They pulled some shit. They’re in with the rebels we keep hearing about, am I right?”
“I assume. But I don’t know what they pulled.”
Jons paced a small strip of pavement, eyes peeled for patrolling peacekeepers. When he saw one, and saw the station’s door still unattended at his back, he turned back to Christopher.
“Okay. Let’s talk for real, you and me. Know that if you fuck me, you fuck friends. You hear me, Chris? You and Terrence, I’m on your side. And I don’t think Terrence would be in with someone who’d fuck friends.”
Christopher n
odded. Jons was a giant, and his voice was timpani deep. It was hard not to be intimidated.
“They don’t tell us much, so it’s always possible we’re being played, but I’m told more than anyone still alive is supposed to be. Why, I don’t know. Something that serves the Astrals. I don’t know for sure that they’re expected here, but my gut says they are. Not called. Just expected.”
“Why would Cameron come here?”
“I don’t know. But the Astrals are letting it happen.”
“But why?”
“Terrence said they were trying to get something. My guess is they got it, and that’s what made the Astrals so pissed. Now I’m thinking they want to get whatever that thing is. So they can’t just kill your buddies. They have to trap them. Pin them down. Then carefully take it away.”
Jons looked toward the Apex.
“If I were them, I’d have my guard way the hell up. Especially coming here. I’d have an ace. So you’ve gotta tell me, Chris. You heard anything from them? Because if they plan to nuke their way in, a lot of people are going to pay. If they got artillery, I’d rather know it’s coming.”
“How would they get artillery or a nuke?”
“Nukes weren’t all spent on Black Monday. And they got fighters. A bomber that one time. And latest, a tank.”
“I don’t know.”
Jons’s expression turned assessing. He shook his head, again turning toward the Apex.
“I hate being in the dark.” The police captain wasn’t talking about the blackout. He was talking about being totally cut off, having to operate in isolation. Unlike he’d grown up thinking, before the Astrals, before the network had failed. Unlike the aliens, who seemed to have many bodies and one shared mind.
Across the small yard, two Reptars emerged from the shadows. They passed each other, one headed in each direction. One seemed to snarl and growl at the other. Its purr grew louder. Two heads thrashed, as if trying to bite. Then it was over, and the aliens moved on, out of sight.
“Seems like they do too,” Christopher said.
CHAPTER 22
Terrence leaned back in his chair and stretched. He looked at Raj. The little bastard had been holding a gun on him the entire time, practically twirling it on his finger for show. Now, as Terrence stretched, his gaze leveled. His grip tightened.
“Get back to work.”
“I’m just stretching.” He gave Raj a look. “Raj. Brother. What say you put the gun down?”
“What say you fix what you broke?”
“Are you going to shoot me if I don’t debug fast enough?”
“I shot Meyer.”
Terrence considered saying, Yeah, you did a great job killing him, but it was a bit too far over the line. Raj had probably realized his failed plot during his earlier absence because that was when he’d become so suddenly strange, distant, and sulky. Meyer had put an exclamation point on his resurrection by showing up in person, tipping Terrence a look that Raj hadn’t seen. The rapport between the two seemed unchanged. Usually, when one person tried to kill another (and came damn close, according to what Terrence had gathered), there was bad blood between them afterward. But to Meyer, Raj still seemed unworthy of mention. And Raj, because he was a spineless shitheel, just went right back to licking boots.
“We don’t have to be like this. I’m doing all I can. I couldn’t escape if I tried, and you know it. We have history. How about we act like men?”
It was all half truths. If Terrance tried to escape, he could probably ignore the human guards as obstacles. Christopher was definitely on his side, and the guards had always liked Chris and Terrence more than Raj, whom they openly despised. Loyalty was a funny thing. It had to be earned, and was never conferred by promotion.
And as far as Raj and Terrence having history? They did. But Raj had always been aloof. He’d never trusted the newcomers to the bunker, even and especially in the end.
Surprisingly, Raj holstered his weapon. He sat forward, hands on thighs.
“Okay.”
Terrence fought back his surprise.
“Thanks.”
“No problem.”
“In fact, why don’t you take a break?”
Terrence blinked. “Really?”
“It’s late. Go ahead. There’s water in my office refrigerator.”
Terrence half stood. Raj being civil, after his wounded pride and all that had happened, was odd. But Raj being obliging? Accepting requests and making offers? Terrence had no idea what to make of it.
When he saw that Raj wasn’t going to shoot him or take it cruelly back, he stood all the way up. His spine cracked. He’d been working too long in one position, his eyes fatigued from staring at a screen. The work was difficult. Considering that Canned Heat wasn’t something that could simply be removed but had actually caused irreparable damage, it was impossibly hard. Futile. The kind of work that one person made another do only because he didn’t understand it was pointless, or understood fine and was enjoying the torture.
“There’s some snack bars in there, too. Not good ones. Ones Lila made. You can’t get the good kinds anymore.” And then Raj, impossibly, smiled.
“Okay,” Terrence said, puzzled. He looked at the door, but Raj didn’t move.
Halfway to the door, Terrence stopped. He shouldn’t rock the boat, but he couldn’t help it. “Why are you being cool to me?”
“Hey,” Raj said. “We have history.”
Terrence left, sure that at any minute, he’d get a bullet in the back.
But Raj didn’t shoot.
He just picked up a tablet and turned it on.
CHAPTER 23
Raj flipped to his office camera feed.
Too much had changed in the last several hours. Raj felt beaten, humiliated — exactly the way, in fact, that he always felt around Meyer Dempsey. And was any of it fair? Of course not. Not at all. Everyone was either incompetent or deliberately subversive. Everyone except Raj, who did his job and nothing else. Raj, who’d come so close to having the big chair — but had it snatched away when the two-faced son of a bitch he’d tried to kill popped back up like a jack-in-the-box.
Meyer hadn’t mentioned it. He hadn’t even spoken. Ironically, it seemed that Raj had blown the lid on himself. Who’d taken credit when Heather quite unnecessarily began to blab. Raj killed the viceroy? Fuck yes, he did. The viceroy had stabbed his keepers in the back, helping Terrence and Heather, loosing that virus on the city. Anyone could see he was telling the truth. Raj didn’t lie, and he helped the Astrals at every step.
He’d helped them find Piper.
He’d helped them tighten the hatches following her escape, when the city had been in turmoil.
Now that the city was again in distress, Raj had been heading up repairs, not so much as leaving his post for dinner.
And Raj already had a rather juicy bomb, about who might be returning to the city, who knew about it in advance and was turning traitor, and how those intruders might be intercepted before they could do any more damage.
Yes, Raj had been an ideal soldier.
But did anyone believe him about Meyer? Nope. Not even after Raj had commandeered the Titans and Reptars himself, all of them catching Meyer red-handed together. Raj didn’t buy that crap about the Astrals not understanding the Internet. You could have read Meyer’s guilt right from his face.
But who was let free to resume his post, and who was reprimanded?
And now that Meyer was back, somehow miraculously unharmed despite Raj being quite sure he’d landed a fatal shot? Whom did the Astrals and Mo defer to now? Was it Raj, who’d been a hero? Or was it the traitor?
Well. There was only one sensible path between the fourth-floor network center and Raj’s office, and it led right by the library where Raj had spied Meyer searching for something not five minutes earlier, on a trip back from the bathroom, while other guards held their eyes on Terrence.
Meyer was in the library with a pair of Titans.
But Ter
rence was alone.
With any luck, what Raj suspected would happen was about to … and this time, he’d finally have proof.
Raj watched the feed from his office.
Waiting for the viceroy to hang himself.
CHAPTER 24
Nathan was on his belly, flat on the ground, binoculars to his eyes. He handed them to Coffey, who took a look.
“Just like with Bannister,” Coffey said. “There’s nobody there.”
“The drone showed police and peacekeepers shuffling. When Cameron went through the gates, they were all lined up waiting. It’ll be the same this time. They’ll be hiding. Waiting inside.”
He looked over at Coffey. Piper, Cameron, and Grace were back at the RV, hidden behind a clutch of trees past the scorched, barren apron. Preparing, supposedly. But they weren’t soldiers. That’s why true warriors had to step up.
“They want the key,” Nathan said. “That’s why they let us come. They’ll pin us down so they can take it without damaging it.” He corrected himself, tipping his head toward the RV. “Or rather, they’ll pin them down.”
“They know we’re here too, Nathan. It’s naive to think they haven’t seen us.”
Nathan nodded. “Of course. But we’re not going in. Not yet anyway.”
“Yet?”
“We’ll go in when we’re invited.”
Coffey stared at him.
“The drone dropped a message. It’s not reliant on the network.”
“Who was the message for?”
“The viceroy. I dropped it on the doorstep.”
Coffey was almost shaking her head. She probably wondered why he was only telling her now, as if he’d broken their bond of trust. The why was simple: Nathan had betrayed their mission. Coffey might disagree with his decision, but now it was too late to make a difference.
“What did it say?”
“It told them where we are and what we have. It offered to give them up.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Amnesty for the Republic. We helped them. We harbored Bannister’s cohorts. At the time, we didn’t know the Astrals wanted them taken in, so it was an act of betrayal: the Andreus Republic breaking our arrangement. Then we pulled Cottonwood, and that was a definite act of betrayal — one that kicked them in their probably dickless crotches. They hit us back, hard. So now we’re scared. Now we want a summit.”