“THEY TOOK US to a secret facility near Quantico,” Ethan says as we continue amid the Tabula Rasa heading up the dusty path. “Pinned their hopes for mankind’s future on a bunch of pubescent college students. They assembled as many experts as they could by video to brief us, teach us, tell us their secrets.”
“While you nerds were being given the keys to the kingdom, what was I doing?”
“Getting in trouble, mostly. We were all forced to grow up fast. But at least Luke, Daniel, and I had work to distract us.”
“And I did not.”
“No. You were smart, idle, and basically in emotional free fall. Books weren’t quite cutting it anymore. You needed to be doing. In motion. Out there,” he says, gesturing around us. “You started with arson and petty theft, moved on to burglary and black market trafficking.”
That explains some of my more unique skills.
“But even those activities couldn’t hold your interest. You took to dogging the marines. Begged and cajoled them to teach you, train you, put up with you. Eventually they relented, and you went with them.” Ethan looks like he’s swallowed something bitter.
“And you just let me go?”
“We tried to stop you … We should’ve tried harder…” His expression darkens. “After the grown-ups were dead, the remaining soldiers found themselves spread thin, trying to keep us safe while preserving as much of civilization as they could. So you began bringing them promising orphans to train.”
“The Child’s Army?” I ask in an even lower whisper, aware of all the ears around us.
He nods. “The marines’ nickname, and it stuck. They taught you all tactics and weapons along with how to keep some semblance of society going—everything from hunting to farming to shutting down nuclear reactors. You started spending more time with them, less with us … And you grew from Beatrix Parrish into … Bix. Skillful, relentless, fearless…”
“Ruthless?”
He pauses a moment, choosing his words carefully. “You became our well-armed catcher in the rye, protecting us nerds squirreled away in the labs, trying to hold on to the science, the possibility of a future. And to do that, I think you felt you needed to be more soldier than sister or friend. To close off that part of your life.”
Grim.
Well, you asked.
“We saw you less and less,” he says. “After Luke died, you threw yourself into procuring supplies and building up the Child’s Army. It was sometimes weeks before we’d see you. Eventually, you’d appear, always with some haul for us but no explanations. Then Daniel died … and you really went lone wolf. Not even letting your people in on what you were doing half the time.”
Tears are about to roll. For these two forgotten brothers? For myself? I close my eyes, try to push them back down, not lose it here among the enemy. But when I feel my twin brother’s arm around my shoulders, I let it stay, let the drops flow from my eyes, where they’re quickly absorbed by the brown scarf.
Now we’re almost at the entrance to the Copley Lawn market—and beyond it, the Reclamation. Ethan looks around at the crowd, then whispers softly, “Last March you visited me. Said you were going up to Baltimore. That you’d be gone awhile—”
“Ethan,” Kyung whispers sternly from behind us.
But he doesn’t stop. “You told me about a cult there called the Tabula Rasa—”
Now Kyung quietly pulls us out of the procession. Kofi sees and joins us. “You said they seemed awfully well stocked for a bunch of religious nutbags,” Ethan says. “You told me you’d be going under a different name, so they wouldn’t know you were that Bix, of the Child’s Army. That you’d poke around till you got some answers.”
“I have a history with the Tabula Rasa?” I ask, and Ethan nods.
“This really isn’t the time—” Kyung says, glaring at Ethan.
“So, what did I learn about them in Baltimore, Ethan?”
He shakes his head. “When you got back, you wouldn’t talk about any of it,” Ethan says.
“What? Why?”
“Look,” Kyung says, “what you’ve done these last few years, whatever you did in Baltimore, it was always to provide for us, protect us and what we’re trying to do. What you do safeguards hope.”
“Sounds lofty,” I say. “And what’s the going rate for saving hope? What have I been willing to do for the cause?” More furtive looks between them. “Never mind, I don’t need to know. ’Cause that’s not who I am anymore.”
“It’s not?” Kofi asks.
“No. For all the machine has cost me, it’s also given me something: a do-over, wiped away the old Bix and her violent proclivities. It changed me, and new Bix won’t go back to being her for any cause. And I don’t need to; goals can be accomplished without bloodshed.”
Kyung takes a deep breath, and I can see her scarf puff outward as she exhales. Then she speaks: “Do you know why we sent you to 1954, Bix? Because you were someone who would do whatever it took to get the job done.”
Whatever it took. The voice’s strong suit.
“I don’t know if you’ll ever remember that Bix. All I do know is, right now, this Bix,” Kyung says, pointing at me, “with all her shiny new emotions, and gun phobias and ‘no thank you’s,’ she’s all we’ve got. So don’t let this idea of some untainted ‘New Bix’ get in the way of what you were sent back to ’54 to do. We can’t afford that. You’re there to save millions here. And if that means bashing some heads, so be it.”
Brava!
Easy for her to say. “Are you finished?” I ask.
Ethan gets between us. “Let’s all cool—”
“No, actually I’m not finished,” Kyung hisses. “Two identical viruses seventy years apart and someone cleaning up their connection—that’s no accident. That’s a big-ass conspiracy with dangerous rogue military and CIA players at its core—part of it operating within Hanover. And you think New Bix is going to jump back there like some quantum Gandhi, waving incense at them when they come for you? No. When you jump back, you’re taking a weapon.”
Agreed.
“No,” I say. “I get the information without violence, or I don’t get it at all.”
On first glance, the market at Healy Circle looks like your average farmers market: tents, lots of people with handmade tote bags slung over their shoulders perusing the kale.
But then you see the postapocalyptic touches. People are hawking anything and everything: liquor, pot, sex, generators, canned goods, solar batteries, tattoos, gauze, books, gasoline, horses …
The crowd here isn’t just Tabula Rasa. There’s a whole spectrum of end-of-days tribes represented: folks who look like they’ve been hiking the Appalachian Trail too long—straggly hair, threadbare clothes. Skinheads in all black with elaborate geometric scalp tattoos. A group of women in what look like the faded remains of surgical scrubs, armed with bows and arrows.
Near the tents are a few battered flatbed trucks alongside the horses and wagons.
Off to the left I see what Kofi was talking about: fencing’s been thrown up, guarded by Kameron Rook’s Reckoners, that blocks off access to Copley Lawn—and any escape in that direction. More leather-jacketed goons are stationed on foot and on horseback along Thirty-Seventh Street’s fencing.
We make our way past tables of goods: books, magazines, VHS tapes, and DVDs for sale.
Inside a locked cage in the center of a display are DVDs of the complete third season of Friends, Liar Liar, and Uncle Buck. “Comedies are by far the most sought after,” Ethan says.
“Old comedies,” I say.
He nods. “Technically, 2025 was the last year of global media—last movies made, songs recorded, TikTok videos posted. But most of that was in the cloud, lost when everything collapsed. The older stuff’s on DVDs, VHS, still accessible if you can get hold of a machine—”
“What’s my favorite movie?” I ask him. “I mean, if you know—”
“Amélie, hands down. You watched that movie over and over. I’ve got a copy somewhere … Hey, when all of this is over, and you’re back for good from 1954, we can watch it together … if you want to, that is.”
“Yes,” I say, “I’d like that.”
“I’ve missed this, missed you, the last few years,” he says.
Near us in the crowd, a bearded redheaded man in an overcoat is conducting business with a pale-faced man. There’s a devil’s kiss rash on the customer’s neck. “You’ve squeezed all you could out of your final year, reached your quarter hour,” the ginger says. “Now it’s time to opt out, let Blue Heaven take it from here. You have payment?”
The doomed man hands him three potatoes and a DVD whose case shows a man covered in yellow Post-it notes. Above him the title reads: Office Space.
The ginger nods appreciatively as he inspects the goods. “Very nice,” he says, then whips open his coat, and I hear the sound of hundreds of pills rattling in bottles. He drops the potatoes in one of the many pockets sewn into the coat’s lining, the DVD in another, then pulls a bottle of pills from a third. “You’re making the smart choice,” the red giant says as he taps three blue pills into the doomed man’s waiting bandanna. “Quick. Clean. With Blue Heaven, there’s no waiting around for the Guest to do the dirty work.”
Beyond the merchant of death are several tents manned by Tabula Rasa. Their vegetables, canned goods, and definitely their pot look superior to the competitors’. But it’s their electronics, under lock and key inside the fenced-in back of a flatbed truck, that impress me most: parts for solar arrays, generators, even a couple large-capacity storage batteries.
“Nice equipment,” I say to Kofi. “Where’s it coming from?”
“You asked that same question last year,” he says, “just before heading off to Baltimore.”
And whatever I did there …
I hear music—notes of Creed’s “With Arms Wide Open” being sung in multipart harmony by a choir. The Creed cover makes it official—mankind is circling the drain.
“What kind of religious ceremony is a Reclamation?” I ask Ethan as we head toward the entrance.
“The kind you don’t want to be part of,” Kyung says. “Stay covered up.” She gestures to my scarf, which is starting to come loose. I redrape it across my face and tuck the slippery fabric in tight.
Kofi pauses near the entrance. “Remember, keep to the middle, don’t stray too close to the Reckoners on the perimeter or the stage. Kyung, you go first, then Ethan, Bix. I’ll go last. Keep some space between us and remember, walk slowly—like you’re mingling, not like you’re escaping. If one of us gets stopped, don’t stick around. Get out of here. Meet up at Rock Creek Pumping Station as soon as it’s safe.” Kofi pulls me aside. “No matter what you see or hear onstage, keep moving.” Jesus. I nod. “Let’s go.”
The enormous Healy Lawn is packed. Even the branches of its trees hold people. The crowds are so thick I can’t even see the exit on the far side of the field. Here and there tents have been pitched and the smell of makeshift barbecues wafts through the air. From their clothing, I sense the crowd’s a mix—everyone from fully indoctrinated Tabula Rasa to the merely curious. As I walk through it, “mingling,” I keep the others in sight.
In the near distance a stage juts into the audience, constructed around Healy Hall’s central entrance, below one of its towers. Its double doors are flanked by large white banners painted with the red letters TR inside a circle.
Extending from a balcony above the doorway is a giant wood beam rigged with an arrangement of ropes and pulleys. Around the stage are floodlights connected to large nearby solar generators. Amps and speakers are wired in as well.
Impressive setup for the end times. We slowly begin to weave our way through the crowd, ten to fifteen feet apart from each other, balancing our distance from the stage with our need to avoid the Reckoners on the perimeter. As the choir exits the stage, rhythmic clapping begins to break out in the crowd, growing rapidly till the whole audience is pounding their hands together in unison and a voice comes over the speakers: “And here he is, Brother Kameron!”
Two men open Healy Hall’s doors—and a high-pitched scream now pours from this audience of children raised by each other, and I’m careful not to bump into any of the screaming feral fans.
Kameron Rook emerges—and he does not disappoint. East Asian, long and lean, he is dressed in a faded, snug-in-all-the-right-places T-shirt, black jeans, and boots. He descends the handful of steps and struts onto the stage, a glorious end-of-days amalgamation of rock star and preacher. Even before he’s said a word, his charisma is palpable.
But I have zero memory of this man.
Much as I try to recall any past dealings with him, I’m drawing a complete blank. Suppose that shouldn’t be a surprise to me anymore.
After the announcer hands Rook the mic, the preacher pauses, allowing the collective energy of the audience to build, and I find myself slowing to watch, getting just a little bit closer for a better look.
The clapping and cheering are now deafening. Finally, he walks to the front of the stage, maybe a dozen yards from me. “Brothers and sisters, God has made a promise to us during these years we are being tested.” He pauses again before continuing. “Only the chosen will be saved. And…”
Now he holds the mic out to the crowd, and it shouts back in thundering unison, “Only the worthy will be chosen!” The expressions of hungry devotion on the faces of those replying take my breath away.
Kameron Rook pulls back the mic and nods. “Exactly so … It’s a simple truth, one any child can see—which is a good thing, given this crowd.”
The audience erupts in laughter and applause, and he waits till it’s crested before continuing. “Believe me, God wants all of his children to be saved,” he says, and begins a slow walk across the small stage, steering the crowd’s mood back into more thoughtful territory.
“But there are some poor, misguided souls among us who’ve strayed from the path of salvation,” he says, “because they haven’t yet found their faith in God. Many kinds of sins among these folks. Some are practitioners of thievery, others of deception, still others are pursuing unsanctioned science, the kind that helped decimate our world.”
Shouts of “Uh-huh,” “That’s right,” and “Yes they are” erupt from the audience as Ethan nods to me to keep moving.
Rook stops and the last of his swagger falls away, leaving just a solemn man onstage. There’s something so deeply compelling about this and I can’t help myself, I draw a little closer. “And then there are those practitioners of treachery. In Baltimore last summer, we learned firsthand just how much pain and destruction can be caused by such a person, a creature pretending to be our trusted counsel, friend, lover, only to betray us.”
At those words, Ethan, fifteen feet away, glances nervously over at me—and I realize in that moment that Kameron Rook is talking about me.
I’m the “creature” who wreaked destruction. Betrayed the Tabula Rasa.
Maybe so but ignore it. Keep moving.
I manage to resume walking but can’t completely tear my eyes away from Rook, who is calling to his henchmen at the foot of the stage. “Bring up the volunteer.”
Two Reckoners drag a figure, hands bound, head hooded by a burlap sack, up the steps. Once onstage, they lift the prisoner’s tied hands onto a large meat hook on the end of a rope hanging from the beam above.
Fuck. This isn’t a ceremony, it’s an inquisition.
“Like last summer’s betrayer, this one here has committed sins against the Tabula Rasa. But you and I are not judge and jury,” Rook says to the audience. “We are simply witnesses to this volunteer’s decision. They can reclaim their soul, willingly join us on the path of salvation, by choosing to purge their sins, reveal their coconspirators, and accept their penance in the camps … Or not.” The Tabula Rasa have camps? That’s not good. Rook now paces to the edge of the stage. “The decision is entirely theirs.”
A Reckoner signals someone above to crank the pulley, and the hook rises, hoisting the poor “volunteer” onto their toes.
The second Reckoner produces a whip and a couple of bladed implements as Rook continues, voice smooth as glass. I look around to see how the crowd is reacting to this prelude to torture and notice, ahead of me, Kyung and Ethan both slowing, eyes on the stage.
“As Proverbs, chapter twenty, verse thirty, says, ‘Lashes and wounds cleanseth away evil…’” The rest of the words come floating back to me before he says them: “‘… beatings purge the inmost being.’” Maybe it wasn’t my mother, the religion professor, who taught me scripture. Maybe it was the Tabula Rasa. Rook turns back to the crowd. “Thus, together, you and I must proceed.”
Now the Reckoner reaches up, about to take the hood off the figure—and I see Ethan’s now joined Kyung. Both are at a dead stop—and mere feet from me. They don’t seem to have noticed, their attention completely focused on the “volunteer” about to be unmasked onstage. I glance behind me and see Kofi ten yards back, definitely not happy with our spacing.
“Do you think it could be him?” I hear Kyung whisper to Ethan, slipping her hand in his and squeezing it tight.
“Not sure. Gideon does have sneakers like those,” he answers.
They think the prisoner “volunteering” could be Gideon? So the Tabula Rasa arrested him?
Onstage, the hood is pulled off, revealing a gagged man who is not Gideon—and I see Ethan’s and Kyung’s shoulders drop just a little in relief that this poor unfortunate is not their poor unfortunate. I pull up next to them and whisper: “How long has Gideon been their prisoner?”
Guilt washes over their faces at their lie of omission. Kyung shakes her head slightly at Ethan, but he shrugs off her warning, says, “Enough, Kyung. She deserves to know.” He turns to me. “A few weeks ago Reckoners raided the lab. Kyung and I were in the back when it happened, near the tunnel entrance. We barely made it out with the football as the Reckoners were coming in the front. They locked down the building and took Gideon and a half dozen others prisoners. We don’t know what’s happened to any of them since.”
The cult has been in control of the machine—and the people who know how to operate it—for weeks. And at some point Kameron Rook and his goons forced them to send my fake husband to November of ’54.
Paul is Tabula Rasa.
But my spiraling thoughts on this new revelation are cut short by the stifled, animallike cries of the gagged volunteer onstage. His eyes are bugged wide with fear and when Kameron Rook unmuzzles him, he begins to plead, “Please, you don’t have to do this!”
“Let’s go. He won’t last long,” Kyung says to me. Then she and Ethan split up and head for the exit.
She’s right. Go now. Before you’re next.
But before I turn and follow my deceitful compatriots, I turn back for one last look at Kameron Rook. He’s running his fingers through his hair. It’s such a small, nothing gesture—
Yet it’s managing to provoke feelings in me—shame, panic, guilt—stronger than any I’ve experienced since waking on the bus. I can feel my knees going weak, about to buckle.
I need to get the hell out of here.
So I bolt—no looking, no thought, just pure adrenaline and fight-or-flight instinct propelling me—and immediately crash into two bearded and hoodied Tabula Rasa men.