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  “So they just modified them once the Ravagers came into being?”

  “Right. Plated the walls with Diasteel. Built up a series of pumps and moats to coat the exterior surfaces with water to prevent any possible infiltration by Ravagers. Lots of water to get through to be allowed inside… trust me, I can confirm that part personally.”

  “So your parents control that now?”

  “They are officially part of Phoenix and serve as operations managers of the facility, which means they are nominally in charge. It wouldn’t be wise for them to show their true allegiances, though; while they’ve gotten quite a few people on their side, it’s still not a majority. Most there still think they’re waiting out a purge to eliminate a horrific virus from existence by killing everything not proven immune. They still expect to terraform and welcome their friends from space back to the surface. They have no idea what they’ve helped unleash.”

  Wesley winced. “We should probably not go there, then.”

  “What?” Roddy’s eyes narrowed, his tone turned sharp. “We absolutely need to involve them, and—”

  “He’s right, Roddy,” Mary said. “If we all show up there, it will raise too many questions. We’d have to fight all of New Venice before we could even think of fighting the upper echelons of Phoenix. If we even survived that first battle.”

  Roddy opened his mouth to protest, then shook his head. “I’m not sure I agree, but we should certainly board the sphere and get moving. We can talk to Micah and my parents from the air and figure out our best course of action. It may be that New Venice is a better rendezvous point than wherever Micah’s stationed.” He glanced at Mary. “Even if New Venice isn’t safe, we still owe them word that you and the kids are safe.”

  “Hello, still here, stop talking like we’re not around,” Jack murmured.

  “We get to talk to Gramma and Grampa?” Jill said, eyes wide with anticipation.

  Mary nodded. “Fair enough.” Her tone didn’t hide her mistrust of her in-laws. Like Roddy and Wesley, though, she’d realized that being allies didn’t have to mean you were best friends. She’d work through her trust issues with the Lights when the fate of the world wasn’t on the line.

  “So we’re settled, then?” John asked. “Board the sphere, get in the air, connect with our remaining allies in the West and determine next course of action?”

  “I love this plan,” Roddy said, his voice stoic. “It’s the worst plan ever… except every other option.”

  They all laughed and left the captain’s cabin and marched across the deck toward the hovering sphere, collectively groaning as the hot, humid, salty air buffeted them. Perspiration exploded.

  They’d taken a dozen steps when the first of the missiles screamed out from the cloud deck, raced toward the yacht, and slammed into the side, knocking all six of the passengers off their feet.

  Chapter 5

  Western Territory

  Deirdre squirmed around in her seat, scanning the horizon in all directions. She ought to be able to see some sign of the others—a previously unseen ground car like hers, dust clouds as they moved away rapidly on foot—but there was nothing. No sign of twenty people who’d been pointing rifles at her in a threatening manner not two minutes earlier.

  The ground car’s engine grew louder, more throaty as Miriam accelerated. Deirdre’s insides felt a similar level of grumbling.

  Miriam glanced at her. “The scenery’s a bit repetitive, unfortunately, no matter how far you look. Especially in recent weeks.”

  “No, it’s…” Deirdre paused. “Where’d they all go?”

  “Who?”

  Deirdre glared at the driver, a that’s-not-funny look on her face. “The people who were with you pointing guns at me when I woke up a few minutes ago. They’re gone. Where are they? And how did they vanish so quickly?”

  “Are you sure you saw people, Deirdre? Maybe I just set up a lot of realistic looking statues to feign strength where I had none.”

  Deirdre paused, then shook her head. “The man standing next to you moved and talked to me. The others moved as well. Not statues.”

  “Robots, maybe? Very real-looking ones?”

  “Where’d they go Miriam?” She felt safer arguing now; Miriam’s rifle was in the back seat, and after years of Roddy’s training, she felt she could take on anyone who wasn’t Roddy and at least get some good blows in.

  She laughed. “Sorry. They’re going to the same place we’re going. As to the method of transport… you’ll need to earn our trust to a higher degree before I’ll tell you that. But you will see all of them again soon enough.”

  “Oh.” It was fair, she guessed. They’d only just met. And they knew of her father and seemed to understand that he wasn’t the nicest man around. It was reasonable for them to remain skeptical of her loyalties, feeding her only the information necessary until she proved herself reliable.

  She felt her face relax into a bit of a smile. At least, she supposed, the next time she saw them—

  “And this time, they won’t be pointing guns at you when you wake up.”

  Deirdre blinked. Twice. “How’d you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “You just said exactly what I was thinking. How—?”

  Wait. Could this woman—?

  “I can’t read your mind, Deirdre.” There was an odd bitterness in her tone as she spoke those words, and Deirdre couldn’t help but think of the words Miriam hadn’t said, words implied by her tone.

  I can’t read minds now… but I once could.

  She pushed the though away, and the follow-up thought, about how Roddy seemed to do something similar, finishing a sentence or vocalizing aloud what you were thinking in such an uncanny manner. “But how did you know I would suspect that your friends wouldn’t be pointing weapons at me.”

  “Logic. Given your original introduction, it was reasonable for you to briefly assume a similar greeting at each encounter. When I mentioned earning trust, you likely reasoned that a first step in that process was avoiding the rather threatening encounter we just had.”

  “Oh.” It was the second time she’d be rendered nearly speechless inside a minute. “Where are we going?”

  She smiled, eyes fixated forward on a road only she could see. “Can’t tell you.”

  “But—”

  “Look, Deirdre.” Miriam offered her an extended glance. “We’ve invited you to join us. We remain skeptical of your motives. Our initial assessment is that your story, odd though it sounds, is true. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to lose every ounce of skepticism in an instant.” Her face crinkled. “We aren’t mind readers; we can’t know your true intentions. People can mask their true purpose and true emotions behind seemingly good intentions, and do so all the time.”

  Deirdre looked away. They thought she was using them, or might be. Thought she might betray them.

  She wasn’t sure what hurt more. The fact that the veiled accusation was reasonable.

  Or that, until a month or two ago… it would have been true.

  Miriam gave her a moment to think. “We don’t live in the cityplexes or announce our existence for a reason, Deirdre. We don’t come upon strangers in ground cars and point overwhelming firepower at them because we’re cruel. The reality is that there are people in positions of immense power who would, if they knew of our existence, expend every bit of power and technology at their disposal to find us, and every bit of weaponry in their possession to destroy us. We want to live our lives in peace. You’ll have your chance to prove yourself to us, Deirdre. But we won’t throw away what we’ve so carefully crafted and built outside of today’s world simply to avoid the appearance of unfriendliness or being inhospitable.”

  Deirdre still said nothing. She felt an odd bit of emotion, recognizing that she’d spent much of her life getting exactly what she wanted, always, often without asking. If she desired to possess a thing, her father made it appear, almost as if by magic. As she matured, she need ba
rely flirt with a man to possess him.

  At some point, she couldn’t remember when, something in her… changed. She didn’t want that life any longer, the artificiality of it no longer plausible or desirable. She wanted to earn, to be something more than just a pretty face, a cog in the great Phoenix machine. She began to sense right and wrong more than want and don’t want, began to recognize what was happening around her. It was the type of maturation that often happened in early childhood; hers had been extended for too long.

  That change, subtle at first, helped her decide to try to sabotage the Ravagers effort. She’d played a role in setting the plan in motion, and she’d do what she could to stop it. But she’d been cowardly, and rather than use her influence to find and, through coercion, bribery, and subterfuge, disable the various Ravager caches throughout the world, she’d instead decided for a symbolic gesture, saving the life of a man whose name she couldn’t even remember now. Something with an S, she thought.

  It wasn’t until the Ravagers activated, until she’d watched that man with an S name dissolve before her eyes that the real change had come about. When she’d lost the fear. Jeffrey—damn him and his lies and betrayals—had brought out something deeper and better in her. The old Deirdre wouldn’t have escaped New Venice… even if, as this Miriam inferred, she’d been allowed to escape in a manner that didn’t look as if she’d been released from her captivity.

  Now, she wanted nothing less than to alter the makeup of the new world so painstakingly planned over the course of years, decades… expelling people she’d known since birth in favor of people like Miriam, even people like Jeffrey… and Roddy. Definitely Roddy. He deserved better than her, even if she changed, but she knew that if at some point he came to believe in her once again, she’d have demonstrated the change in herself to satisfaction, her penance complete.

  She watched the landscape, never changing from one flat, barren plain to another, and sensed the turning of the car. After meshing what Miriam had said with her actions, she finally realized what was going on. “You’re not driving back to where you live, are you? You’re trying to see if someone’s using me, tracking me, and may come here and find you.”

  Miriam nodded.

  “I know I’m not tracking you intentionally.”

  Miriam said nothing, just turned the car into another wide, graceful arc.

  Deirdre swallowed. “Do you think… do you think they’d track me… or the ground car?”

  Miriam hit the brakes. After hours of driving on dusty terrain, they squealed loudly. Plumes of dust fanned out to the side and behind. “That’s a very good point, Deirdre. And one we should test.” She nodded at the passenger door. “Get out.”

  Deirdre stared at her. “That’s not exactly what—”

  “Hop out, Deirdre.” There was a controlled menace in Miriam’s tone that gave her pause, made her lose any desire to argue the point. “Take a bottle of water if you’d like. I’ll be back quickly.”

  She tried arguing anyway as a sense of despair came over her, realizing the risk in following the command. “So after all this, you just want to steal my car?”

  “I’m not stealing it, Deirdre. And it’s no more yours than mine, if we’re being honest.” Miriam’s gaze intensified. “Is it?”

  Deirdre opened her mouth to protest. Then she reached into the back—feeling Miriam’s efficient eyes tracking every motion for any indication Deirdre was fumbling for the rifle—and grabbed a sandwich and a bottle of water from the small refrigerator. She shut the door to the refrigerator, triggering a small burst of cold air.

  And then, with a look that she hoped was threatening, she opened the passenger door and hopped out.

  Miriam rolled the window down. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Don’t go anywhere.”

  She drove off, rolling the window up as she went. She accelerated slowly until well past Deirdre, perhaps wanting to avoid kicking up plumes of dust that might trigger coughing fits and watery eyes in her former passenger. Once well away, the ground car accelerated quickly off into the distance.

  Deirdre watched the ground car leave, wondering if she’d just made the biggest—and final—mistake of her life.

  With nothing better to do, she sat down on the barren, dusty plain, unwrapped the sandwich, and bit in. She chewed slowly, savoring each morsel. When she’d finished it, she sipped on the water.

  And she waited.

  Ten minutes later—or perhaps an hour—she heard an odd noise. It sounded almost like an oncoming Ravager swarm. Had her father found her, realized who she’d met, and sent a Ravager swarm to devour her and Miriam and Miriam’s friends?

  She jumped to her feet and turned to face the threat.

  It wasn’t a Ravager swarm. It was Miriam, returning in the ground car.

  The plumes of dust trailed behind as the vehicle slowed to a halt, whisking forward only slightly. Miriam waved and nodded at the passenger door. Scarcely believing that the woman had returned, Deirdre climbed in, oddly grateful that Miriam, the would-be thief, had graciously returned in the car she’d presumptively stolen.

  “There was a tracking device under the back seat,” Miriam said by way of greeting. “It’s gone now.” She offered a wry smile. “So if they find us now, it’s because they’ve got something planted in you.”

  Deirdre offered a faint smile back. “We’re heading to… wherever it is that you live?” She realized that the phrase sounded rude after saying it, and hoped Miriam didn’t notice.

  If she did, Miriam didn’t show it. “We are.” She pulled a long, dark piece of cloth from a bag she’d stowed in the back seat, possibly one she’d gathered up in her solo drive. Deirdre wondered where it had come from; Miriam hadn’t been carrying it during their original encounter, and she hadn’t seen the woman throw the bag back there when she’d set the rifle carefully on the back seat. Her eyes tracked to the back seat and the bag… and found no sign of the rifle.

  What the…?

  Miriam handed the cloth to Deirdre. “It’s not that we don’t trust you, specifically, you understand. But our enemies—those you would have called family and friends until recently—they must not be able to ply your mind for directions to our residential location should they gain possession of you.”

  Deirdre looked at the cloth in her hands, finally understanding. “It’s a blindfold?”

  “Correct. Put it on, please.”

  Deirdre shrugged. She fit the thick cloth over her eyes, making sure she couldn’t see anything. Some light trickled in, but no matter how she turned her head or angled her eyes behind the blindfold, she could see nothing of interest. “That work?”

  “That works.” The engine started.

  “How much longer till we’re there?”

  “It won’t seem like long at all.”

  Deirdre thought the answer strange. But then, nothing about her entire encounter with Miriam and her friends would be classified as anything else.

  The car began picking up speed and Deirdre settled back against the seat.

  She barely recognized that an oily substance was secreting from the blindfold fabric before she was overcome with drowsiness and fell into a deep sleep.

  * * *

  When she woke, she first noticed that she was resting horizontally, atop something soft and cool and definitely not the seat of the ground car. Memories flooded in. The escape from New Venice. Waking to find Miriam and friends pointing weapons at her. The odd and sudden disappearance of everyone. The blindfold that had somehow knocked her into a deep sleep.

  Miriam’s answer to her query about the length of the journey made sense. She had no idea how long they’d been driving, having been awake for no more than a minute of the journey. They might have been in the correct spot all along… or they may have driven for a day to reach Miriam’s home.

  If it had accomplished nothing else, Miriam’s sleep-inducing blindfold meant Deirdre would have no possible way of knowing where she was in the world.

 
The air here—wherever here was—felt different than that inside the ground car. There was a less artificial feel to it, like it came from natural winds rather than forced to her by machines. There was a faint but sweet scent to it, and she couldn’t tell if they’d added something or if the air was simply that pure.

  She allowed one eye to crack open. Satisfied that she wouldn’t be blinded by light too bright and sudden for one who’d been sleeping, she opened the other and sat up. The thin blanket that had rested atop her slid down her shoulder and pooled up next to her on the sofa where she’d been sleeping. The furnishings in the room suggested this space might normally be used for meetings rather than for sleeping guests. A large wooden table dominated the center of the room, though curiously she saw no chairs. The walls she saw were opaque and glossy, and she noted with amusement that someone had scrawled the words “Hi Deirdre” on a portion. The flooring looked smooth, comprised of tile or a similar material. Deirdre noted her shoes on the ground near her resting space—they’d thoughtfully pulled her boots off after knocking her unconscious—and moved to slip them back on her feet. She could find all sorts of reasons to feel threatened, to think she might need to run, that she might need to plant a heavy heel into someone for her personal protection… but she felt safe.

  And that didn’t make sense. But she decided to trust her instincts… unless and until circumstances demanded otherwise.

  She reassessed her initial impression of Miriam and her friends. She’d honestly thought when she’d first seen them that they might live in tents or in caves given that they lived outside the safety of the cityplexes. The weapons didn’t discourage that notion; they’d need them to hunt for food, to protect themselves against whatever horrors lived beyond the plex walls. But everything since—they query about if she’d been emailing them, their recognition of her, their obvious awareness of the space station’s existence—made her at least realize that they were an intelligent and informed group.