26
Huko had been kinder to the island than anyone had expected—or maybe they really had been ready this time. The new and newly refurbished hotels, the dome houses, the solar farms, and the distributed electrical grid had all survived with minimal damage. The roads were a mess and the farm fields trashed, but they could be cleaned up and set right. More landslides had ravaged the valleys above Honolulu, but those were designated hazard zones anyway, and no one lived there anymore.
The navy began preparations to tow Denali, issuing a statement claiming an onboard emergency had forced the submarine to surface during the storm. Casualty figures were classified.
Ava made it back to her apartment near noon. She’d signed her lease agreement knowing the building was rated to only cat 2, so it wasn’t a surprise to find the windows shattered and the interior a wreck. Still, it was strange to think that Hurricane Huko had gone through her dresser drawers, pulling each one out, upending it on the floor, and making off with all her electronic gear.
She wondered if the storm had ravaged her off-site backups too, but with no functional gear remaining to her, she couldn’t check. Either way, there would have been nothing significant to find. Kaden had not shared his secrets with her.
Moving mechanically, almost overcome by the oppressive heat and the humidity, she gathered her sodden clothes and a few other surviving possessions. Then she crossed the street to Harbor Station, where she picked up a new phone from a still-operable vending machine.
The streetcars remained garaged, and taxis couldn’t negotiate the debris-filled roads, but Ivan had let her check out a motorcycle. She rode it back to Waikīkī, returned it to the ready room, then walked around to the Pacific Heritage Sea Tower’s public lobby. An exhausted-looking desk clerk, wearing an aloha shirt and a rumpled smile, booked her into a room, giving her an excellent rate now that most reservations had been canceled.
After calling her daughters and assuring them she was fine, Ava slept for fifteen hours, waking to the news that the president had reversed his position and refused to authorize the signing of the handover treaty—a peculiar change of heart. She had to believe that news of Sigrún’s operation had finally reached him. Perhaps someone on his staff had taken him aside, explaining just how close his administration had come to self-inflicted disaster.
Of course, not signing had its cost. Relations with China would be fraught and filled with saber-rattling for years to come.
Abandoning the treaty also did not guarantee domestic peace. Hawai‘i’s people had seen their land, their lives, and the lives of their families offered up in exchange for debt relief. Hard to get over a betrayal like that. Hōkū Ala’s activists would work to ensure that no one forgot—and demands for independence would surely accelerate. Ava sensed years of turmoil ahead. But maybe something better would follow?
She reported in early for work, needing the distraction. But Captain Isaiah Mahoi met her offer to help out with evening shift with narrow-eyed suspicion. “Eh, Ava. Things got a little rough, last time you took an early assignment. Maybe you should just work with dispatch for a couple of hours.”
“I promise to stay out of trouble,” she told him.
Eventually he sent her outside, where she worked with other officers, patrolling the strip’s public areas, writing up damage reports, and working to replace broken security cameras. On the beach, a fleet of small bulldozers operated under lights to clear debris and rebuild the dunes. It wouldn’t be long before the hotels started to fill again. They needed to be ready.
Two more days passed before an FBI agent knocked on the door of her hotel room. Ava let her in, sure that she’d be out of a job soon, and that she faced years of legal issues. So be it. She wanted to tell what she knew anyway.
“But not in some secret court,” Ava warned the agent. “I want a promise I’ll be able to testify at a public hearing, without HADAFA filtering the reality of what I have to say.”
Too much information was hidden away from the public eye, classified, for no legitimate reason. Sigrún had thrived in that culture of secrecy, a hidden infestation, evolving in dark corners and spreading unseen.
Ava said, “Let me do what I can to let in a little light.”
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