Chapter Eight

Wayne Webster Watts, from his underground book, 9 Lives:

I never said I was happy. I’m not happy, but I’m alive. I’m strong. I take what I want. I make my own calls, and I can’t be bothered with anybody who doesn’t like it. What is happiness anyway? I’ll tell you what happiness is: happiness is a hot babe and a strong drink.

Moments before the Lightbringers and their recruits reached the ground floor, alarms sounded. Several of them cursed and gritted their teeth. The elevator doors opened to reveal security forces rushing around in confusion.

Time had run out, and it would be impossible for more than two dozen people to snake through the milling crowd without touching anyone.

Everyone looked at Drew. She called out, “Run for the doors! Stun as you go!”

The group obeyed. Anyone in their path who wasn’t stunned was simply bowled over. There were startled shouts among the security forces, but no one could tell what was happening in all the confusion. To anyone outside of the cloaking shields, it must have looked as if the air itself had become possessed and was attacking them.

Gaylen strained to keep up and stay in range of the nearest shield without getting tripped up by the people the others were shoving aside. He had pulled out his weapon, but he couldn’t pick out a safe target in all the chaos.

The group was pouring through the doors when the building itself started to emit a loud hum. Gaylen narrowly escaped as plates of metal slid out from the door frames and met in the center, blocking them off.

He looked back to see one of the prisoners caught half-way through as the plates snapped shut. The man’s severed upper body fell in front of the doors, his eyes sightless.

On the streets, a change rippled across all the wallscreens mounted to the front of buildings: those facing out from the Bureau of Provision darkened, while those on the other side of the street all showed the face of a clown, who bellowed, “It’s time for a Happiness Break! Come on, everyone, let’s play some games!”

A shout went up from the people on the streets, and they stopped and dropped their shopping bags or purses to prepare to join in.

Gaylen had seen Happiness Breaks many times, but this was the first time he realized that they had a purpose. With everyone’s faces turned in the other direction, no one was watching the building where the emergency was happening.

See only good, he remembered.

The revolutionaries and rescued prisoners followed Drew to an empty area near a wall, behind the crowds facing the wallscreens. They took a moment to regroup.

The clowns led the crowd in a rapidly-paced rendition of “Simon Says.” Everyone, adults and children, joined in, laughing and giggling. Gaylen felt out of place, watching from back here instead of being in the thick of the crowd. On the other hand, he had always hated the Happiness Breaks.

In all the noise, Drew was able to call out so that most of them could hear her. “Don’t attract any more attention. We can take our time going back out, so don’t touch anything, don’t move too fast, and don’t make too much noise.”

The group made the trip back into the abandoned area of the city quietly and slowly. It took at least thirty minutes.

And then, apparently, the big black man had had enough.

He casually reached over to Drew, as if he was going to put his hand on her shoulder, and wrenched her into a nearby wall, slamming her head against the bricks.

He pulled her into a headlock in front of him as he turned to face the rest of the group and pointed his weapon toward the others.

Her feet off the ground, Drew hung onto his arm for support, shock on her face. She tried to pull back far enough from his arm to breathe. Blood trickled from the side of her head.

The others stopped in their tracks. Former prisoners and revolutionaries alike pulled weapons. Some prisoners pointed their weapons at the revolutionaries, some at Drew’s attacker, while the revolutionaries did the same in return.

Gaylen drew his weapon, too, but he was afraid to point it anywhere near Drew.

Kevin’s hand, though, was steady, his gun level with the big man’s head from a distance of about ten feet.

Each side eyed the other. The Lightbringers waited for orders, while the prisoners waited to see what the big man would do.

The man spoke in a low, slow, rumbling voice, his face impassive. He kept his weapon up, moving it deliberately from one Lightbringer to another.

“I call myself Mercy, because I’m used to hearing people beg for it. Consider that a warning. Now, this gorgeous little girl is going to stay right where she is, right where I’m in charge of things, until I get some idea of what the hell is going on.”

Kevin spoke, his expression more intense than usual. “We’re rescuing you, breaking you out. That’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?”

Mercy rumbled, “That is obvious, yes. But I don’t think this was a random act of kindness. I think you want something, and I want to know what that something is before we go too far.”

Drew strained through the choke hold to whisper, “‘Mercy’ is perfect for you.”

He ignored her.

Kevin used his gun to gesture towards the man’s captive. ”Drew is our leader. She can explain this better than any of us.”

“Well, she’s my hostage, so she’s not going to be explaining anything. Since you’re the only one brave enough to speak up, you explain this to me.”

Kevin paused for a moment. He didn’t lower his weapon or take his eyes off the former prisoner. “We are the Lightbringers. We work against the government. We’re on a mission, and we need backup. We rescued you hoping that some of you would join us.”

“And I’d want to join you in your mission why?” Mercy asked.

Drew strained again to whisper, “Because we saved your lives, and because we are on the same—”

Mercy tightened his grip on her throat. She grimaced.

“Why would you people think that we are on the same side?” he said to Kevin.

Kevin was stock still for a moment, and then he slowly lowered his weapon. The rest of the revolutionaries followed suit. Mercy did not. Gaylen wanted to shout at them not to do that, not to leave them defenseless, but he just stood there.

Drew attempted to nod, apparently signaling approval. Tears leaked from her eyes.

Kevin said, “Because we both want to destroy the DAA and every bastard who has anything to do with them.”

Mercy thought this over, his weapon still leveled at the revolutionaries. “So you’re giving us another chance to strike back before we get dusted.”

“Pretty much.” Kevin looked around at the other former prisoners. “Some of you will die in the process. But you were going to die anyway. At least this way, by joining up with us, you’ve got another chance to do some real damage. And you’ll die free men instead of dying in prison.”

One by one, the prisoners lowered their weapons, and some put them back into their pockets.

Mercy’s weapon was the last to come down. He dropped Drew to the ground and gave her a shove away from him, though not too roughly.

She allowed herself to fall to all fours, her head lowered, to rub her throat and catch her breath. Christian went to her side to help her up.

When Drew was standing again, she met Mercy’s eyes with a wry smile.

He looked back without a word, his face stony.

She smiled bigger. “I forgive you,” she said, her voice rough from being choked.

His expression only grew stonier.

Drew broke the eye contact first. She turned to the rest of the group. “It’s all right that Mercy forced this conversation a little sooner than I’d planned. Now you all know what I was going to tell you. We’re on the same side, we have the same agenda, and we all run the same risk of losing our lives in this fight.

“But for those of you who survive, I tell you now, I want you to stay. Your old friends failed you already, in that you were in those prisons at all. We offer you new friendship, and new resources.

“Perhaps even more important than that, though, we offer you new purpose. We hand-picked each one of you, because we knew that you were the ones who have been fighting back effectively and for the right reasons, but most of you have been trying to fulfill individual agendas. We offer you the chance to work within a large group that is organizing massive resistance. Striking a blow on a large scale. You’ll be part of something here that matters.

“If you join us, you will be supplied and trained. If you survive long enough, you will also learn how to manage your emotions better, how to make decisions more wisely, and how to find meaning in your lives.

“And if you do not join us, you are free to go. You are free to go even now. I only ask you to stay, to help us, and to join us.”

Some of the prisoners shifted, but no one spoke up or walked away.

Drew nodded. “Let’s go.”

Not much later that same night, John Oldman sat in front of his work screen in his office at the DAA headquarters and stared into space.

He’d talked to Nick about whatever the Lightbringers possessed that had allowed Chloe to disappear. Nick had claimed not to know anything about it, and John had told him to include the tech in whatever deal he made to ensnare Drew.

The crime statistics ticker scrolling past on the wall in front of John ticked up from 11 to 12 for October in the category of Terrorist Control. Another terrorist attack, then.

He pulled up the home page for the Terrorist Control division and read the announcement. There had just been a disturbance at the Bureau of Provision: criminals had been broken out, and the responsible group had not yet been identified. He frowned.

He both felt and heard a faint buzz-buzz and realized that his handscreen was ringing. He hurried to dig it out of his jacket pocket.

“Yes?… Yes, hello?”

“Is this… Goldfinger?” It was a girl’s hesitant voice. It was Chloe.

He turned up the volume and closed his eyes tight to concentrate better on the sound of her voice. “Yes, it is.”

“OK. Well, it turns out we are recruiting. In a big way, actually. So, Drew said it was all right to invite you to come join us.”

If he had been younger and more optimistic, John would have thrown a fist in the air in celebration. As it was, he cracked a smile. “Good. Good, I’m… grateful.”

“We do need somebody to vouch for you though. Somebody who was with FPU with you. Who can we call?”

“No problem.” John recited a name and number from memory. He was glad he’d been able to keep his cover on that last assignment, even if everything else about it had gone to hell.

“Just a minute,” Chloe said.

Waiting, the silence seemingly unending, John all but held his breath. Only a couple of minutes later, though, Chloe came back on the line and announced, “You’re good.” She gave him an address and a passcode and hung up.

He knew the area. The address placed the cell in the military housing on the defunct Fort Myer in Arlington, just across the river.

John took a deep breath. It was a breakthrough. Something he hadn’t screwed up—yet.

He cast one last concerned look at the announcement about the terrorist attack and then turned off his work screen.

Back at the house with broken wallscreens, Gaylen sat against a wall in the living room, chilled and shaking with the aftermath of the mission. He kept remembering their final escape from the building and the man who had been cut in half by the doors. And then Mercy’s attack and the stand-off they’d had. He wrapped his arms around himself in an attempt to calm his shaking body.

At the moment, Mercy leaned against the doorway, taking up most of the frame. He had found, borrowed, or stolen a patterned silver lighter, and he used it to light a cigarette. Mercy and Kevin had the same sort of inscrutability. Gaylen envied and resented their ability to seem perfectly calm no matter what happened.

Most of the others spread out into other rooms or the back yard. A few sat on the floor in here, mostly former prisoners who seemed to know each other already. One had found a deck of cards in the house somewhere, and they were playing some sort of game.

When they’d gotten back, Drew had told them that there would be a few hours before their next effort. She’d told them to grab some sleep while they could. But Gaylen knew he was too agitated to fall asleep.

Gaylen’s body seemed to have taken on a permanent shiver. He felt he’d never be fully warm again. He stood up and went outside, his shoulders tight and hunched as if cast that way.

At first, he only saw that there were a lot of people out there in the darkness, illuminated only by moon and stars and the artificial lights of the city outside the base. People filled the two benches, and some were on the ground in clusters on the unkempt grass—all of them strangers to him.

He was about to go back inside when he noticed an unoccupied corner in the back. He went out there and sat on the cold grass and dirt, looking out into other, empty yards, shivering.

There, unhappy thoughts swirled through his mind in a cacophony, and he became more and more agitated. These people rejected President Martha’s teachings, and they had gotten hurt as a result. Some of them had even gotten killed. Wasn’t this proof that President Martha was right?

In fact, he found himself thinking, his whole life had been just fine, really, until he had gone into the underground. Every awful thing that had happened since then had been his fault, for abandoning what he had been taught all his life. Hadn’t it?

Yes, their government was lying to them and hiding things from them, but without the underground, maybe they wouldn’t have to. Maybe the underground was creating all the other problems by refusing to think correctly.

He had voiced this suspicion to both Nick and the Lightbringers, and they had both talked him out of it, but it kept coming back up. It matched everything. If there weren’t all these people in rebellion, surely everything would be fine.

Soon, Gaylen had himself convinced that he would take the next opportunity to find his way back to civilization and resume a normal life. He would just try harder this time to keep his thinking perfect. He would fake it until the DAA let him go home, and then he would—

Then he remembered what might still happen to his family. Serena. His beautiful little girl.

His heart sank, and in that moment, he knew that he no longer believed in the law of attraction.

If he really believed that positive thinking would keep Sierra and Serena safe, he would be able to just leave them alone and let them go about their lives. But he knew that it wouldn’t. The dread in the pit of his stomach told him that it wouldn’t.

A few days ago, he had believed that everyone was always safe and always would be. He’d been wrong all along, and now he didn’t even have the lie to make him feel better.

He put his head in his hands.

After some time, someone approached. He looked up quickly, apprehensive, but it was just Chloe. She sat down with him, a safe, quiet presence, and chewed on a dreadlock.

Words swam in his mind until they fought to come out, and in Chloe’s silence he sensed an invitation to speak, and finally he did.

“I used to feel safe, sort of. I mean… Nothing bad ever happened, and nothing bad was ever going to happen. Everything was fine. I’m always healthy, I have work, I have food and clothes and a nice place to live, and I… had a family I loved… But, then, bad things were happening all the time, at the same time. Sort of. I mean, I wasn’t… happy, even though I was supposed to be. I’ve never really been happy. Unless I was with Sierra… and Serena, at first, before things changed…”

The confessions spilled out of him, uncontrollable. “And I’ve done things that hurt people. And then Serena left me, and she took Sierra… But that was all my fault, because I couldn’t think and feel the right way, right? But now, it turns out it’s all a lie. Nothing is safe, after all.”

His voice began to catch in his throat. “People get killed, they get sick, they die, they have horrible accidents, there’s this secret police, prisons—life is bad, Chloe. And what am I supposed to do about it? I can’t deal with this.”

Tears spilled over. “And I can’t even protect myself from it, because positive thinking doesn’t—doesn’t work—and I can’t—I can’t protect my—family—” He found himself sobbing the last words, and Chloe took him in her arms.

“I know,” she whispered to him. “I know. I’m sorry.”

He cried against her chest even as a part of him watched, uncomfortable, awkward with this. He hadn’t allowed himself to cry in another person’s presence since he was a child crying on his mother’s lap.

“Go ahead and feel it,” Chloe said softly. ”Make it even bigger. Let it kill you. I promise you won’t die.”

He took a deep breath and surrendered. The feelings overpowered him until his entire body shook, and then, just as he knew they would, the feelings passed like a tsunami crashing across him. Then he let them recede, his breath evening out, and he sat up, wiping his face with his sleeve.

He looked over at Chloe, tentative, worried about how she might see him now, and saw that tears streaked her face, too.

He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen anyone else cry, besides his own daughter. In the past, even if he had seen such a thing, he never would have asked about it, but things were different here. Gently, he touched one of the tear tracks. “Why are you crying?”

She shook her head and wiped her face. “I just… I feel for you. That’s all.” She smiled wanly.

Gaylen sat back and took a deep breath. He didn’t know what to think about it.

A few tears welled up in Gaylen’s eyes again, and he wiped them away. He let the last traces of emotion bubble up and then fade away. As it had in his meditation with Drew, vulnerability assaulted him now that he had been seen in this state of weakness, and he had to bring that vulnerability to the light, too.

As it passed, he felt closer to Chloe than he had before. Her warmth soothed away the chill that had attached itself to him.

Time passed in silence and stillness, while Chloe glanced at him occasionally.

Finally, Gaylen said, “I really don’t understand. New America was supposed to be safe, and perfect, and I don’t see how…” It was hard to even find the words to explain the question. “The whole idea is just to be happy, right? We think positively so that we can feel good and keep our lives good. If that’s all Martha ever wanted for us, then how could she end up killing people and lying and all of this… stuff?”

“I know,” Chloe said. It wasn’t an answer.

Gaylen sighed heavily.

After some time, Chloe put her hand on his shoulder and spoke softly. “It will get better. It doesn’t ever really get easy, exactly, but it does get better.”

“Do you promise?”

“I promise.” She grinned a little, and he believed her.

They sat quietly for a while, and then Gaylen remembered the earlier kiss. She seemed to be a willing partner, and he needed comfort and distraction. For the first time, he was able to push aside his thoughts of Serena as he sat up, leaned in, and kissed Chloe gently.

For a moment, she accepted and returned the kiss, her lips soft and warm, and he heard her quick in-breath that signaled arousal, and then she pulled away. She looked up at him and shook her head sadly. “Not yet, Gaylen.”

“Not yet?” He looked at her, his brow furrowed. He couldn’t think of any reason to wait, and he didn’t want to wait. “When? Tomorrow?”

She shook her head, smiling. “It’s too complicated to explain right now, Gaylen, but… things are different in the Lightbringers world than they are in Martha’s world. I want to take my time with you.”

He didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything. But he was glad that she couldn’t see the rush of blood to his cheeks. Why was she rejecting him? She had kissed him before… it didn’t make any sense.

She smiled again. “Thank you, though. For the compliment.”

She got up and went inside.

Gaylen sat out on the grass for a while longer, trying to understand what might be different here—or what he had done wrong—but eventually he felt his eyelids growing too heavy to hold open, and he went in and found his bunk and collapsed into sleep alone.

An hour or so later—now in the early morning hours of Tuesday—John Oldman had his gold mask in place to hide his identity, plus a rucksack of basic belongings, and he knocked on the door of a rundown bungalow on the abandoned base. He felt alert and tired at the same time. He wasn’t wearing his armor or carrying a weapon, because he would be undercover full-time now, with all the risks that entailed.

The door was opened by a black man who was the biggest man John had ever seen, wearing an unfriendly expression and pointing a gun right at John’s face.

John flinched, just a little. Then he sighed, irritated with himself. “I was invited here by Chloe. She said the password was, ‘Bring the light.’”

The guy’s scowl didn’t change. He opened the door and stepped back, waving John in with the gun.

John stepped cautiously into a room with half a dozen typical denizen types in it, all of whom had paused to look at him curiously. He glanced around. Nothing about the people or the place struck him as unusual for a temporary terrorist safe house. The room was empty other than the people, the walls were cracking and peeling, and the wallscreen was broken, of course.

A heavy-set Hispanic man with tattoos on his arms approached, studying his mask. “Don’t tell me… I think I’m figuring it out… You’re Goldfinger.” His tone was dry.

John almost laughed, but he settled for nodding.

“I gotta scan you, man,” the tattooed man said. “Plus, just so you know, only stun weapons are allowed around here.”

John shrugged and raised his arms, surprised at the latter rule. Usually, groups like this let new recruits bring in whatever firepower they wanted.

However, it always made sense to scan for wires, implants, and the like. John hoped that the shielding around his subvocal communications implant would hold up. It was fairly new tech from the outside world.

A moment later, the scan was done. “Welcome, then,” the other man said. He cast an appraising look at John, and then walked away.

John let out a slow breath, then turned back to the large man who’d answered the door. He was now cleaning his nails with a sharp knife. “Where can I find Chloe?” John asked.

The man gave him a look that said, Not my problem, and went back to cleaning his nails.

John turned back to the room. He glanced around, and a woman with thin cheekbones and dark curls said, “I think she’s in the kitchen.”

John nodded his thanks and headed toward the back of the house, to where he guessed the kitchen would be, given what he could see of the floor plan.

He guessed right, and in the kitchen he found Chloe talking to a pixie-like woman with short honey-blonde hair. He paused at the doorway.

Chloe saw him first and smiled. Then the other woman turned and looked at him—or, rather, she looked into him. Her green eyes were piercing, and they struck him with such intensity that he found himself taking a step backward. For a moment, he felt the urge to turn and run—a feeling that was foreign to him.

The woman took a couple of steps closer as she scrutinized him. Then she asked, “Can you turn that mask off?”

John flirted with the idea of lying, but he might not be able to do it well. She had him off balance. After a pause, he said, “I can…”

She stared directly into his eyes again. He wanted to tear his gaze away, but he waited, hardly breathing, hoping she would let him off the hook soon. Her gaze was so unsettling that he feared he would start babbling incoherently or confessing everything any minute.

In a tone of voice that made it clear that this was a gentle command, the woman said, “When you’re ready, you’ll turn it off.” Then she walked past him.

John let out a breath. This had to be Drew, the leader of the Lightbringers. And now he understood why Nick, in particular, would hate her so much.

He stepped into the kitchen, where Chloe still stood. She grinned at him and tossed her purple dreadlocks over her shoulder. “That was Drew, our leader. Sorry, she can be kind of…”

“Wow,” John said.

“Yeah.”

John took a deep breath and refocused himself. “So, first, thank you.”

She shrugged a little and grinned a little.

“So why the big recruiting drive?” he asked, trying to sound casual.

“There’s a big mission coming up,” she said, her eyes cast down. “But I don’t really know anything about it yet—I mean, nobody does, not even Drew, I don’t think. We’ve got some data to pick up first, but we’re just waiting right now. Probably, we should all be asleep. Um, there aren’t enough bunks anymore, but I’ll show you where you can find a spot on the floor with some blankets.”

The girl with the dreadlocks led him to a back bedroom. There were three bunk beds squeezed in there, but one ordinary-looking black guy slept in one bunk and backpacks staked out the others. Chloe pulled two blankets from under a bunk bed and laid them out for him along an empty wall.

John nodded his thanks. He decided that he had made plenty of progress for one night and should give the girl some space. He sat down heavily on the blankets, wishing his knees were younger. Chloe smiled at him and left.

He stared around the room. This was it: his chance at redemption. He was on the inside, and now it was up to him to drive this organization into the ground. He wished he had more energy for the task—he felt old.

Most of all, he wished he had some whiskey.

His communications implant sounded at a frequency only he could hear. He got up and headed back to the kitchen; he remembered seeing a back door there. He got outside before he answered the call. Even though subvocal speech couldn’t easily be detected, John always worried that he might give something away with his facial expressions.

The call was from Nick.

“Good news,” Nick said.

“What?”

“We’ve got Drew where you want her. Meet us in Constitution Below, under the Reflecting Pool, in an hour.”

First, John had to settle out from the mental whiplash. He hated it when he had to jump from one persona to another. Then he had a moment of exhilaration. He had gotten into the Lightbringers and already Nick was going to give him his chance to capture Drew. If all went well, he would be able to work this from both sides—interrogating Drew for key information while simultaneously embedding himself deeper within the organization.

“I’ll meet you,” he said. “Why Constitution Below? That’s not your territory.”

“No kidding, it’s not my territory. Do you think I’m stupid?”

John ignored that. “Did you make the deal for the invisibility tech?”

Nick started sounding pissy. “I did. I told you, I do what I promise I’ll do.”

“Good,” John said. “Thanks.” He ended the call, then prepared to call the DAA office to arrange the sting.

Just before he initiated the call, the reality of what he was about to do crashed in on him. A fair number of the people he’d just met were about to get dusted, and Drew was going to end up in a DAA holding cell for interrogation.

Just from their brief meeting, he had seen something about Drew that he didn’t want to destroy, and Chloe was just a good kid gone down the wrong path.

He kicked himself mentally. This was the kind of thinking that had made him hesitate for too long with the FPU. He could not allow himself to make the same mistakes again. He made the call.

Almost as soon as John ended the call, the door opened behind him, and he turned around. The tattooed man who had scanned him earlier stood in the doorway. “Rounding everyone up for orders,” he said and went back inside.

John took a deep breath, laboriously made the mental switch back to new recruit, and went in. He wished he’d gotten more sleep the previous night. It was going to be an all-nighter if they were just now getting started.

A few minutes later, dozens of people filled the living room—many more people than John had expected to see. The guy from the bunk room was there, looking sleepy and miserable. Probably a new recruit.

Drew stood before them, waiting, and the people soon gave her their full attention. John envied her natural charisma. The tattooed man stood next to her, an easy confidence in his stance, too, and John guessed that this was her second in command.

“OK, guys,” Drew said. “I know it’s late. I’ll make this quick. All we have to do is pick up some data. I’m taking a small crew with me just in case something goes wrong. One piece of bad news right up front, though. Somehow, our contact knew about our cloaking devices. I don’t know how our recruiting could have been connected to us already, but what’s done is done.”

John breathed slowly. Any guilty look or move here would ruin him. Instead, he looked around the room as if trying to see if anyone else looked guilty.

In the pause, Chloe shifted. Drew caught her eye, and Chloe said, “I used mine last night. I thought someone was following me. So, it might be my fault… sorry.” She looked abashed. She did not look toward John.

John just kept breathing.

“Well, done is done,” Drew said gently. “But we’re having to give up one of the devices to get this data. So, we’re paying the price. This is a good reminder that constant vigilance is necessary. Now, let’s move on. Gaylen, you’re coming on this mission. Kevin, you’re my second. Mercy, you’re our third.”

The big man, who was leaning in the door frame and lighting a cigarette, raised an eyebrow.

Drew went on, “Six more, self-select. The rest of you, get back to sleep if you can. We’ll have something for breakfast in the morning.”

She waited a few moments for her team to sort itself out.

John went up to Kevin and volunteered himself. The man simply nodded. The others took no particular notice of him, except that one gave him a compliment on his mask.

He noted that introductions were being made within the team, and realized that many of these people were strangers to each other. He guessed that there were a lot of new recruits besides himself.

That was when he put two and two together: all these new recruits plus the breakout at the Bureau of Provision. He gritted his teeth. This group was more dangerous than he had thought.

Gaylen held back a yawn. The group was going down through the trap door in the laundry room. He rubbed his gritty eyes as the people in front of him descended the ladder. Mercy, Kevin, and Drew were on the team, plus Chloe, who had self-selected again. The other four self-selects were new recruits. One man had a gold mask tattooed across his face.

The group lit the way with flashlights as they walked through rough, dirt-walled underground corridors. It looked like someone had used a laser dozer to vaporize just enough earth for two people to walk side by side. The different flashlight beams played across the walls in a dizzying display.

Gaylen found himself next to Drew, who smiled at him, and he smiled back and took the opportunity to ask a question.

“Drew, what’s it really like in the outside world?”

“I’ve never been there myself,” Drew replied, ”but I’ve talked to others who have. They say that Martha is both right and wrong. You know she says that it’s chaos out there—total barbarism. She says civilization has collapsed. That part isn’t true. The countries and governments and societies out there are perfectly functional. Now, yes, there is crime and war and sickness and accidents and old age and all of those imperfect realities of human life. But only because they don’t cover it up there.”

“How do people deal with it?” Gaylen asked.

“A lot of them find comfort in their religions. But mostly, people rely on one another. People help each other feel better when things go bad.”

A day ago, that would have been an alien thought to Gaylen. Now he thought about how he had cried on Chloe’s shoulder last night—how awkward and yet how comforting it had been. He wondered how his life might have been different if he had always had friends he could do that with.

At a T-intersection, the passageway opened up into a finished hallway with overhead lights. The group turned off their flashlights and turned right. After a few yards, they started encountering other denizens. For their part, the Lightbringers looked nonchalant as they walked along. Only Chloe still looked nervous. She popped her gum repeatedly.

Drew went on, “One really big difference is that the whole outside world is in contact, in communication. Even if someone moves to another city, their friends can still call them or message them. They can even visit. Almost everyone has friends and family outside of their own town. In fact, most people make friends with people who aren’t local.”

That sounded bizarre to Gaylen, but it also sounded nice. “Why don’t we do that here?”

“The real reason? Because the DAA finds it a lot easier to cover up problems when people aren’t in communication. We used to have the ability to travel and communicate freely between cities, too. The DAA locked down our communication technology and shut down our transportation systems and instituted checkpoints.”

Gaylen had never even thought about trying to stay in touch with anyone who had moved away. He had intuited years ago that it just wasn’t done. “How can people move away so often, then?”

Drew paused. “Most of them don’t actually move away, Gaylen. That’s the DAA covering up people being taken to prison.”

Gaylen staggered, struck by the thought of Serena and Sierra. “How can you know whether they went to prison or actually left?” He couldn’t breathe, suddenly.

“It’s hard to know,” Drew said, looking at him sympathetically. “But if they told you themselves, in person, or in a handwritten letter, it’s probably true that they just left.”

Relief washed over Gaylen, and he chose to stay silent for the rest of the walk. Again, he promised Serena and Sierra, I will find you and tell you the truth. I will protect you.

After a while, he noticed the fellow with the gold mask nearby. He glanced over, and the guy looked away. Gaylen felt sorry for him—he had an aura of age and defeat about him that inspired pity. It was a strange contrast to the shining, expressionless mask.

The other new recruit of note was a thuggish type he had overheard being called Erik. He looked like a good guy to have nearby in a fight.

Drew led them through a doorway and down another flight of steps and through another doorway into what appeared to be a utility conduit. The concrete tunnels were narrow and rounded instead of rectangular. There were no light sources, and large pipes ran along the tunnels in various configurations. The group broke out their flashlights again.

After some dozens of yards and many twists and turns, the tunnel opened up into a much larger area that looked relatively new and roughly carved out. Denizens must have created it. Can lights along the walls cast shadowy light, and a huge work of graffiti on the far wall read, “Welcome to Constitution Below. To reserve: See Jared.”

A half-dozen or so denizens stood around the room. Gaylen’s eyes widened as he recognized Nick at their center.

Drew stopped about a third of the way into the room, and the group stopped with her. Gaylen glanced over and saw that Drew was also staring at Nick, a thoughtful expression on her face.

Nick, for his part, displayed a sour look at the sight of the two of them. He recovered, however, and quickly had a big grin on his face. He crossed the room just to pat Gaylen clumsily on the shoulder, his gracious manner belied by the hateful look in his eyes when he glanced at Drew. “Gaylen! So glad you could make it! What are you doing running around with these losers? You’re not letting them poison your mind, are you, buddy?”

Before Gaylen had a chance to speak, Nick laughed loudly and turned to Drew. “I’m just kidding around, of course,” he said with a smile that came across more like a sneer. “You know I think the world of you, pretty lady.”

He reached out to take her hand, but Drew just smiled at him with her hands still at her sides.

Nick flushed and said, “OK,” with poor grace.

Gaylen heard Mercy snicker behind him, and he almost grinned.

Drew still smiled at Nick. It was an inscrutable smile that suggested that she saw straight through Nick and knew every thought that ran through his mind. It said that she knew every bad memory he’d buried and every fantasy he’d ever acted out. It made Nick take a step back and avert his eyes.

“Let’s see the toy,” Nick said, his expression and tone turning ugly. “And I got your boy with the data right over here. This is the boy you made the deal with, right? George?” He took a few steps toward a quiet young man in the corner and looked at him as if he distrusted his name and perhaps even his existence. The young man held up a data stick.

“Yes, that was my contact,” Drew said levelly. “I didn’t know he worked for you, Nick.”

“Everybody works for me, didn’t you know?” Nick said. “Everybody.”

Drew pulled out her cloaking device and held it up so that Nick could see it. “Give me the data,” she said to George.

Drew and George made slow underhand tosses of their respective items. George threw the stick clumsily and Mercy actually caught it. Meanwhile, Nick caught the ring.

“How does it work?” he asked.

“Put it on and press the gem,” Drew said. Then, her tone casual, she added, “Lightbringers, get ready. We’re about to be ambushed.”

The revolutionaries drew weapons. Kevin and Mercy dropped back and looked for trouble.

Nick’s scowl was the last part of him to disappear as the nanobots cascaded from the ring and surrounded him. Then, the telltale shimmer of rapid movement appeared where he had stood—and shouting and the whine of stun guns broke out behind the Lightbringers.