Chapter Five

“I have a great relationship with the Mexican people.” Donald Trump

The airwaves exploded with chatter, and Kate was kept busy for the rest of the day. Lots of red alerts—someone wasn’t fond of Harry. She left the office at six and didn’t get a chance to consult with Auspex again.

Christ, Auspex had decoded the chatter. And it wasn’t what she had expected. She was aware how it worked. Chatter was flagged based on search terms input by the agents at NTAC. She’d presumed things like “kill the president” and “nuclear bomb.”

Instead, for the red alert she had checked, the info dump included references to the cartoon that had been released on the day of the president’s “return to democracy” speech. The person involved apparently thought it amusing. But did that really warrant a 72 percent chance of action? What sort of action? She hadn’t had time to investigate, but she found it mind-blowing and quite scary that something so trivial would be considered a threat to the president.

With the possibilities churning in her head, Kate packed up and headed home. When she’d finished college and gotten her job with Homeland Security, her father had bought her an apartment only ten minutes’ walk from her office. It was in an old converted house, and she loved it. Liked having her own space.

Five minutes out of the office, walking up Connecticut Avenue, close to Dupont Circle, she came upon the first checkpoint. Two uniformed officers from the Secret Service manned the station, slightly sinister in black, their weapons holstered but in full view.

She frowned. This was the first time she’d seen a checkpoint in this part of the city.

She dug through her bag for her papers, fingers fumbling, palms sweaty. She didn’t know why she was nervous: everything was in order, and they’d never detain her once they saw she was a Party member with privileges. Maybe it was just that she’d been caught unprepared. She flashed her Party membership and was waved straight through.

Still, the experience made her feel…on edge.

There was a second checkpoint on the junction before she turned off to Hopkins Street where she lived, and her heart rate kicked up. What was going on?

She had to wait as the family in front of her was stopped. The man was arguing with one of the Secret Security officers. His wife stood at the side, clutching a child by each of her hands as though they might disappear if she let them go. A girl and a boy, about five and six—old enough to pick up the vibes from their parents and be scared.

Where were their papers? All they had to do was show them. It wasn’t unreasonable. They looked to be Hispanic, but that didn’t mean anything—there were many Hispanic Americans.

Kate bit her lip as she held out her own. The man nodded and gestured for her to go through. She walked slowly. What could she say? She’d gone a few more feet when she turned back just as a black van pulled up. She hesitated as the husband’s yelling grew more insistent. Whatever he was saying didn’t matter, though. The whole family was hustled into the van, and the doors slammed shut.

She turned for home. It was none of her business. If they’d had their paperwork, everything would’ve been fine. If they didn’t… As Harry always said, this was America, and it was for Americans. That was the premise the Loyalist Party was built on. It was the only way they could survive.

Kate ducked her head and walked faster. While they were far from perfect, the Loyalist Party’s policies had resulted in a time of unprecedented prosperity. Crime had been almost eliminated, as had poverty. Transmittable diseases had been almost wiped out, and pandemics were no longer to be feared. If people didn’t move around, they didn’t pick things up, pass them on. Also, thanks to a closely monitored breeding program, congenital illnesses were almost unheard of.

No system was perfect, but the results spoke for themselves.

Or so her father always said. Even so, as she let herself into her apartment, she couldn’t get the woman’s expression out of her head. Fear.

They would no doubt be deported, presumably back to wherever they had come from. Their home. Like America was her home. They would be all right. She’d heard rumors that they were just taken to the nearest portal and put outside, but that couldn’t be true. The area immediately beyond the Wall was said to be lethal, the air laced with smoke and poisonous gases and viruses released by their enemies—the next pandemic just waiting to happen if they didn’t maintain their vigilance. The ground had been mined to stop the enemy getting close. Not that she’d seen that area. She hadn’t even seen the Wall itself.

They wouldn’t send innocent children out there.

She sighed. There was no sense in dwelling on it. She’d go to bed, get up early, and go into the office so she could grab a few hours’ work on her own projects.

But when she closed her eyes, she saw the woman again, holding onto her children for dear life. And when Kate finally did manage to fall asleep, it was to find herself being deported. She was in the back of some sort of vehicle in total darkness. Then the vehicle stopped, and the doors opened, and there she was in front of a huge set of black gates in a tall wall that stretched as far as the eye could see on either side, vanishing into the distance. She huddled on a bench seat as the gates opened, slowly revealing a burned-out land.

“Get out.”

She didn’t want to get out. “My paperwork is good. My father is a supreme court justice.”

“You didn’t attend the prayer meetings. You must face your punishment.”

She realized then that beyond the gates was Hell.

Someone gripped her arm and pulled her out. She grabbed hold of the door, trying to stop her forward momentum, but whoever it was pried her fingers from their death grip. She begged them to let her stay, screamed that this was her home, she was American. They dragged her across the space, hurled her out through the gates, and slammed them closed behind her. She landed on her front, the air whooshing out of her lungs. Opening her eyes as she came up on her hands and knees, she screamed. Only a foot away, the bodies of the Mexican family lay sprawled in death, the woman still holding on to her children, their faces masks of agony, eyes wide, blood crusting their nostrils. The air was thick with smoke and something worse. Gasping, she tried to drag oxygen into her lungs as the poisons seared her throat. She couldn’t breathe, her lungs heaved.

She woke up gasping for air and covered in sweat.

In the early years of the Party, there had been a lot of propaganda about getting rid of the aliens. While she’d been protected from most of it, it had been hard to miss. She’d lost friends. Her father had explained that they were not like her, not true Americans, and that there was only room in their country for people who belonged. She’d thought she had come to terms with it. Had accepted that things were the way they were supposed to be…had to be—their very survival as a nation had been threatened.

Clearly her peace was a fragile thing.

She shoved the sheets down, kicking them off the bed, grabbed a robe from the nearby chair, and wrapped herself in its comforting folds. After padding into the kitchen, she opened the fridge and found a half-full bottle of white wine. She took it, got a glass from the cupboard, and headed back into the living room. Sinking down on the sofa, she curled her feet under her and switched on the TV.

The highlights of the president’s birthday party were airing on the main station, and she watched for a moment, hoping to take her mind off things she couldn’t change. Wouldn’t even if she could. Except…

She shook her head and concentrated on the picture. She spotted her sister first, looking glamorous and gorgeous. Good thing she wasn’t the jealous type, or she would have grown up hating Stella.

The camera moved on to follow the president. And there was Gideon Frome. The image zoomed in as the president came to a halt in front of him, hand held out. They shook hands, then spoke together for a few minutes. As Stella had said, Gideon was obviously back in favor, and she was glad. It hadn’t been fair what had happened to him. You shouldn’t be responsible for the actions of your family, although she knew her father didn’t agree. He said it was a way of ensuring checks and balances. People would know that their actions had consequences beyond just themselves.

Their families had moved in the same circles, both high up in the Party hierarchy, though she’d known Gideon’s brother, Aaron, better than she knew Gideon. Aaron was the same age as Stella, and he’d been close to her sister. They’d grown up together, played together as children. And Aaron had always made time for Stella’s geeky little sister. She’d liked him. A lot. Aaron had been the one person she could talk to about absolutely everything. She could tell him things she would never dare to say to anyone else, about traveling into space, about her obsession with AI and computers and all that vast, untapped potential.

He’d called her his little rebel—funny she’d forgotten about that.

Then something had happened the summer Stella turned fifteen, he and Stella had had a falling out, and Aaron had stopped coming around.

Up until then, Kate had had a happy childhood, but after that, everything had changed. Her sister had withdrawn into herself, as had her mother, her father had been angry—all the time—and she’d had no clue why. Aaron couldn’t have had that big of an impact on her parents, but who was she going to ask? It’s not like anyone would talk to her.

Computers became her way of coping. More of a game than anything else. She’d discovered one of the now illegal PDAs, Personal Digital Assistants, on the old computer her father had passed on to her. The software had been deleted, but she’d managed to recover the files. It had been the beginning of a love affair and she had lost herself in the world of computer programming and the limitless possibilities of artificial intelligence.

Then she had discovered Auspex. She suspected that it had been no accident—Oliver would have wanted to bequeath his baby to someone who would appreciate it. Auspex had opened up a whole new world, but it was only since she had come to work here, and had access to the Homeland Security’s systems, that she’d made advances in her research.

Then, when he and Stella were twenty—shortly after Stella had gotten engaged to Aaron’s brother, Gideon—Aaron had done his vanishing act.

Was he still alive? They’d gone after him, but never found any sign. It was said he’d joined the rebels. Ironic, really, when she’d been the rebellious one.

She turned her attention back to the TV. The camera followed the president as he moved away from Gideon, and she switched the channel. After her nightmare, she didn’t want real life. She searched through her files and found her favorite film. She’d watched The Return of the Jedi so many times and knew the words almost by heart, and the familiarity soothed her. As the Millennium Falcon flew away and the film ended, she rested her head on the cushion. She had no wish to return to bed where the nightmares waited.

But sleep was tugging at her and, no matter how hard she tried to resist, it pulled her under, and she was back in the nightmare. Only this time it was Gideon who dragged her kicking and screaming from the van, Gideon who laughed as he threw her through the gates and into the badlands.

And she wanted back inside the Wall so badly it was a physical pain.

“Let me in, I haven’t done anything wrong!”

Except she had.