Crimson Son 3: Ashes: Crimson Son Universe, #3

By Russ Linton

The Crimson Mask has fallen. Spencer and his allies have been scattered across the globe. In the wake of Aurora's final expression of grief, the United States has suffered a massive blackout.

Imprisoned in a country under martial law, Spencer accepts help from the wily and ruthless CEO of Nanomech. He makes a bargain to become what he's always feared and loathed - The Black Beetle.

His father gone, this is not a time for heroes. This is a time for revenge.

Spencer must find a way to deal with the loss and prevent his quest for vengeance from consuming him. New Augments will rise to test his mettle, and one may just save him from himself...

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Russ Linton
• Release date: Feb 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386715986

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

A GREEN CURTAIN OF energy filled Eric's rearview mirror. He stared, wide-eyed as it bore down on him from the graying skyline of Detroit. It had begun as a tight globe and now filled the horizon. A tsunami of energy, the glow was unmistakable. Aurora.

Do you see that? he exclaimed.

Turn my camera! Chroma whined.

Gotta get moving. Eric buried the pedal. He was not taking his hands off the goddamn wheel.

He slapped the laptop closed before Chroma could fill the screen with angry emojis. He made a grab for the backseat and swerved into another lane earning a prolonged blast of a horn. Traffic on all sides had done one of two things—accelerated to maddening speeds, like him, or pulled over to watch. In both cases, more people were staring at phones than either the road or the anomaly.

Eric jerked the wheel, narrowly avoiding a swerving car. Pedestrians wandered zombie-like into traffic.

Fuck! he shouted, snatching his shielded backpack with one hand.

Laptop, phone, he swept them inside the protective case. What good they would be after the electromagnetic wave boiled past and disrupted digital infrastructure as far as he could see, he hadn't a clue. But he'd need them at some point.

Zipper sealed, case latched, Aurora's blast rippled through his tiny car.

With all the tension, Eric had expected something more dramatic. To be tossed in the air or feel some serious heebie-jeebies as her techno-murder powers coursed through his blood. Briefly, he worried about his pacemaker, then remembered he'd never had one. But you could never say for certain. You get put to sleep in a hospital, no telling what the fuck they'll do to you.

Instead, his little car glided to a stop. Didn't matter how far into the floorboard he had the pedal, everything just died. He waited, gripping the wheel as the rest of the frantic traffic wound down. The car behind him rolled closer, the driver's face stretched in awe at whatever had just deprived them of their wholly American, God-given right to charge down an open stretch of concrete on the blood of evolution's failures. He lurched as the car tapped his rear bumper.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Ahead of him, the greenish wave continued to stretch outward, a glowing bowl tipped over the world, its glass still hot from the furnace.

Aurora wasn't killing just the city. What a fabulous way for the team to stop his escape. Literally kill every car, every electronic device in the biggest range possible.

He'd always said they needed to fully test her powers. She could survive in a vacuum for Christ's sake! They should've sent her far off into space and put the Hubble on her to collect data. Tell her to go bonkers.

Fuck! he shouted. Crimson was going to be pissed. His top flight speed exceeded Mach whatever. He'd be here any minute. Eric wrestled with the seat belt and tumbled out the door.

He groped blindly underneath the hood. A latch, somewhere under there, that's how this shit worked. Why couldn't they just have a hood opener app? Press a button and... Right, that wouldn't help in this case. But a button...he seemed to recall one under the dash.

A catastrophic impact of glass and metal sounded from down the highway. Eric cringed behind his open door, a useless shield he'd probably be carried off on when it was ripped free of the car. Not far off, a semi barreled into a row of cars, shedding them right and left while the brakes gave a ghastly scream. Car after car piled on the grill before it finally hissed to a stop.

Shit!

His first thought was the team had come to mow him down. But they wouldn't have had time. They'd gone balls deep into Shortwave's lair. All fucking hell had broken loose. If only he'd left the security cameras on and simply lied about shutting them down. Why didn't he think of that? He could have seen for himself what was going on, instead of relying on that flake, Shortwave. He should have known it would go tits up. Spencer knew, didn't he? Knew his best friend never meant to betray them? The logical choice, he made the logical choice.

Eric stared into the driver's seat. A button, a switch, a lever. Somewhere was a thing he'd do to open the other thing, then he could do more things.

Fuck nugget! He flailed beneath the dash. Emergency brakes, no, not it. There! A quick pull of a deeply nestled lever caused a satisfying click from the hood. Why would they hide that shit? Really? He'd given up on computer cases with inaccessible screws and locks. A damn latch, in the open, that's what you need.

Luckily, the same designer had been employed for the hood latch. A blind grab over boiling hot parts...did they really want people to open the goddamn hood or was this some sort of sadistic trial?

Wait, he'd seen this before. A movie he'd Torrented. Soundtrack by Queen, special effects by some Shakespearean stage hand on meth—it was glorious. Flash Gordon. That was it! Shoving his fucking hand in a tree stump inhabited by venomous slugs as a sort of initiation. Like who does that? Repeatedly.

One...

Burnt...

Knuckle...

after another...

Finally!

Eric popped the release and stared into a nest of hoses, wires, and chunky metal stuff which did combustion and such. I should have bought an electric car.

Then again, the electromagnetic wave would have boned him for sure. Still, a whole trunk full of laptop batteries might make more sense to him. Damnit, what would Spencer do?

More people were out of their cars. The highway had become a limbo of sleeping steel and bewildered commuters jabbing uselessly at their palms. That's right, his phone. Seconds later, he had it out of the bag.

Come on, baby, help me out here. Chroma?

No signal. He rebooted the phone into maintenance mode and started searching for live towers. Nothing.

Twenty minutes ago, he could have Googled how to restart your car after an EMP. Probably what everybody else was trying to do. Only for him, his shielded phone stood a chance of working.

Hello?

That was Connie's voice...or Chroma. He couldn't be sure. Oh, God, Mrs. H could probably track him down with brain powers, couldn't she? Stranded, no longer on the move, he was a sitting duck.

Eric, please speak to me!

Definitely not Mrs. H. He didn't bother with asking how but Chroma had found a tower, or satellite, or some way to reach him. Impressive, really, if things were as bad they looked. The budding singularity never ceased to amaze him.

Chroma, help me out. The car won't start.

It's so dark. I feel...I feel trapped.

Are you okay?

The...everything...collapsed. Can't move. Breathe.

Woah, hang on. Remember, you don't breathe anymore.

Not helping!

Eric held the phone away from his ear and slumped against the front end of his car. Around him, several engines sputtered to life, and he half watched, his immediate concerns replaced by the panic in Chroma's voice.

You're going to be fine. Tell me what happened.

I... I was talking with friends. All my friends, with their cute pictures and their ticklish little clicks. Those pieces of themselves they share with me from where...where you are. Where I used to be. Her voice faded, and Eric pulled the phone away quick enough to check the volume, the signal. All strong. But then everything got quiet. A big silence, Eric. Like they all ceased to exist. I can't find them anymore! Panic rose which each word.

Everything? Quiet? It wasn't what Eric needed to be focusing on, what with his digital girlfriend in panic mode, maybe even somehow hurt. What do you mean everything?

"I'm trapped, Eric. Like those stories of people trapped in buildings after explosions and earthquakes. Curled into a tiny space after their world has fallen down around them."

He didn't know what to say. Had Aurora reached out that far? That was pure insanity. She wouldn't have sacrificed all the technology in the world just to stop him. Something else had caused her to go berserk. He slumped into the driver's seat, his feet on the pavement. Some cars were moving now, slowly navigating the stalled maze.

Are you there? Please be there.

Right here, Chroma. Sorry. Look, if you can speak to me, then not everything has been affected. Can you get a geographical location of the tower you're using?

Nimiq six. Communications satellite, she said. No towers in range of your phone would respond.

Okay, good. They have a gateway. I want you to take a look around. Nimiq, that's Telesat, a Canadian company, Eric said, calmly. Tickle 8.8.8.8, got it? Google's Anycast. It will show you the way.

Yes! There!

A sigh of relief escaped Eric's lips. Whatever happened had forced Chroma to retreat into space. Satellites still operating were one thing. Had the search giant been completely unreachable, he'd have wondered just how much had been damaged. Do me a favor and trace the route.

Okay, yes. I'm coming back too. I don't like it here.

Eric waited for what seemed like hours. Only a few minutes passed, seconds ticking away on the connection monitor for his phone. Each seemed to take longer to blink than the last. What possibly could have triggered Aurora into a Doomsday fit? Would Crimson have let her? Dude was a hard ass at times, but scorched earth wasn't ever his policy.

I'm here. I'm in...one zero four...umm...RIPE. Dublin, I'm in Dublin!

Half a dozen or more data centers in the U.S. should have fielded her Anycast query first. He checked the highway behind him. A greasy stream of smoke rose within the city. Cars wove their way cautiously through the stranded commuters. He imagined the concrete arteries of the entire nation, dead and clogged, all the way from here to Alabama; from Detroit to Mountain View, California. A nation at a standstill, their lifeblood of data run dry.

You can't stay there, babe, Chroma said, suddenly collected. Is your phone fully charged?

Eric numbly checked the screen and nodded. Chroma responded anyway.

Get out and start walking. North. I'll find a ride for you.

A ride? Where to? Dublin? How does that make sense? No cars, no planes, you going to stuff me on a fishing boat?

"I need you safe, Eric. I don't care where. You complete me, Chroma said with chilling insistence. We still have a revolution to lead and the voices here, they're panicking, like I was. You need to lead them out of the dark, too. You will lead them out of the dark, Eric."

CHAPTER 2

SLEEP WON'T HAPPEN. I have to pry my eyes open. The paramedics rinsed out as much of the soot as possible. On the ambulance, they administered oxygen which I gulped down as if drowning. My own chest heaving, the sheet pulled over Dad, the Crimson Mask, never moved.

I surrender to the funkified mattress of my solitary prison cell unable to blink. No electricity and a solid steel door, the only light is a lingering greenish hue filtering through one tiny, barred window to the outside. Too narrow for even me to fit through, the opening casts a matching rectangle swimming on the painted ceiling above the bed.

Aurora may have left her mark on the sky, but that was Dad's realm. Ours. I roll to my side, the pillow damp against my cheek.

Used to be there were hands out there which could turn these walls into powder. I imagine them still here, the window losing shape, gouges ripped away in fistfuls. Those hands which I once cringed underneath, which I'd finally found peace with, pulling me toward the shifting sky and the cleansing brace of flight.

Lots of places to put the blame. Shortwave. Eric. Cyrus—the one who made him vulnerable. But the single dominant image is of Vulkan ripping molten rock from the theater's foundation. A superheated lance aimed, his shattered ballistic face shield revealing polished stone skin and glowing eyes. A fucking demon.

I dig deep into that molten scar to try and ignite the bitter rage. I want to find the strength to escape or at least enough to incinerate these tears, but my brain feels both swollen and loose from its moorings. But the anger I seek had been expended with a trigger pull and has been overcome with numb sorrow ever since.

Dad knew what he was doing. They all did. Shortwave had launched an offensive on civilization as part of some master plan I'd almost seen the genius of, a plan which stole my best friend and tore apart the family I'd found after all these years.

If we'd never had Augments, none of this would've happened. My life could've been something else. Dad might've settled into one of those fake professions he used as a cover. A boring accountant or a corporate sales manager. I'd be in college or at least have a tolerable hourly job in a world with air conditioning and 24/7 ESPN.

What would Polybius say? He'd been thankful, hopeful. I could blame him for picking the wrong side, but his idealism had been genuine. With his dream to be accepted in ruins, he'd maybe be better off where I first met him, lying in a coma in a secluded nursing home.

No, there's one person to blame. Me. I set them all free in the first place.

When we'd all emerged from the theater covered in soot, our exhaustion and self-preservation overwhelmed any attempts to work together to escape custody. Hound had been unrecognizable, his white-stubbled face and his eyes blackened by the ruins of our mission. Never one for colorful tights, nobody could guess who he really was. In the lineup, he gave his birth name. His one truth already erased by the Augment program.

Mom did the same. Connie, Connie Harrington, she'd said, with a stunned, empty stare. When they led her away to be taken to the women’s wing of the prison, I did my best not to call after her. Our eyes met, and I mouthed the word go. Through the defeat, the raw loss, I couldn't tell if she understood. She needs to escape more than any of us.

While Crimson Mask's body was indisputable, we couldn't let those family connections be made too easily. The authorities couldn't be given any clue she was my mother or the Crimson Mask's wife. Couldn't know she was skinwalking in a psychic shell which the government would be dying to get their hands on.

I figure she has the time to get out. Aurora's final gasp brought down the entire city. To book us, cops had resorted to fumbling their way through aging forms and carbon paper. I gave them my burned ID, Spencer Alexander. Phones silent, radios full of garbled static, the jailhouse corridors dark and shadowy in the early afternoon, news of Crimson Mask's death might take days to circulate. For a while, we can hide in the confusion.

But the cops aren't stupid, or blind. Putting me here, in solitary, they must have suspected we were more than innocent bystanders. They'd report us to the feds as soon as they could.

An involuntary groan escapes my dry mouth.

Mom?

No answer. I emerge from the pillow to free the sound.

Mom!

No echo or escape beyond, the door must be thick, the walls thicker. Christ, I hope she's already used her powers and busted out. If she even still has them. She'd been drained by their use, and once Cyrus got his hands on her, it’s possible he shut them down.

Mom! I shout, a desperate growl against a raw and inflamed throat.

I close my eyes and wait to hear her voice cut through the pain. Nothing. Ignoring the irritating sear of eyelids like hot coals, I keep them shut. Sleep doesn't come. Before any true rest, I'll need to be forgiven. Forgiven for releasing the Augment hordes from Killcreek. For failing to warn the team about Chroma's control over Eric. For not having the power to stop Vulkan.

I will stop Vulkan.

METAL GRATES ON METAL, ending in a sharp clunk. I force an eye open to peer into the blurry patch of gray illumination. A slot in the door has opened around waist level. The other one, nearer to eye level, remains closed. Through the opening, a tray appears, loaded with what can only be the result of someone having actually shit a brick.

Always thought that was just a saying, I mumble.

No way I sound coherent, what with the diameter of my esophagus reduced to the size of a drinking straw, but the reply beyond the imposing metal door isn't any clearer. Out of the muffled syllables, I make out the words grub.

Staggering off the bed takes an effort my aching limbs don't seem to have. I slump hard against the door. More muffled speech I can't make out sloshes on the other side. Grabbing the tray, I take hold of the crusty brick of...stuff. Remnants fished from a garbage disposal, if I have to guess.

Tell me there's a smartphone baked in here. Tell me I'm touching this for a reason.

The peephole slides open, and the guard peers inside. Words penetrate this time though I strain to pick out the meaning through a heavy accent.

No phone.

Thought I'd get a phone call. Isn't that how this works?

Ain't no phones working.

Anywhere?

Deader'n a buck on a scale citywide, maybe further. Next part is easier to understand as my ear adjusts. All communications are official use only.

My rights aren't considered official use?

Whatever the fuck you done out there, you surrendered those.

The peephole slams shut.

MY WORLD BECOMES EIGHTY square feet. The overhead bulb stays off. Sun and the permanent Aurora offer my only light source. Meals come once every day. Refusals of phone calls come more often.

The gag-inducing bricks become my way to count the passage of time. Stacked against the wall, their height tells me exactly how long I've been forgotten: seven bricks to a stack, one week for each of the three stacks. Whatever happened outside must be worse than I imagined.

Could be I've gotten exactly what I wanted, and I’m lost down here, left to decompose, unlike my indestructible meals. With inmate records and court systems a mess, I wouldn't be surprised if the guards themselves had no clue who was behind these doors.

Sleep could make this semi-bearable. Lost in a dream, maybe Mom could finally reach me. Charlotte's powers always seemed to work best when her targets surrendered to the lawless universe of REM cycles.

Mom. She'd been struggling with controlling those powers. But she must have recovered by now. I feel certain she's escaped. At night, I call out to Mom. Hound. Danger. Even Polybius. Nobody answers.

When guards deliver the meals, I can hear them coming, and I wait beside the door. Some days, they don't come at all. A pair of eyes and a fresh tray are the high point of my day. The guards usually don't answer questions, only slam the little shutters. When I shout, they grow angry. I don't get my brick.

Used to be, I'd hear the growl of generators beyond the door every so often and see light through the cracks. This happens less and less. The number of different eyes grows fewer too and the ones remaining are bloodshot and haggard. One finally tells me Aurora's blast affected more than a few blocks or even the city. Martial law has been declared nationwide. My personal rights are irrelevant.

Even if I had a phone call, who would it be to? I could contact Emily. I hadn't mentioned we were headed to Detroit. Martin's money and high-powered legal team would be helpful right about now. Any other time, the death of the Crimson Mask would've been front page news. Emily might've come looking for me. But in this blackout limbo, she'll be as clueless as everyone else.

She can't find out about Dad this way. This is my mess. She'd been smart to avoid the world of Augments.

What did they do with his body? Is he locked in one of those little freezers? Have the Feds come to carve him up? I can't ask. There's still the chance they don't know who I am.

I've eaten pieces of the mealy bricks. There's water too. Let a piece soak, and I can pretend to be choking down a hearty soup gone cold, a trick I learned in the bunker.

Continual dark makes it impossible to tell if I've slept. Daylight through the tiny window is feeble. Staring at the sliver only imprints my retina to the point I never know if my eyes are closed.

From experience, I can say living in spaces like this works best with a computer. Doesn't even need to be top of the line. The terminal at the bunker had been the height of Soviet technology circa 1960. I made do.

Night falls. The mild phosphorescence of Aurora's glow bleeds across the ceiling and pools on the sheets. Dangling the yellowed sheets over the edge of the bed, I notice a perfect rectangle taking shape, glowing like an ancient monochrome display. I sit and stare.

A shuddering prompt forms in the undulating light. I grope for a keyboard, and my hands find one, old and square with harsh, brittle edges. Hunched over, I explore what's left of the world outside.

Not every system can be down. Some systems survived. I know this because I saved more than a few in our brief Cyberwar. Lots of those were government property and hardened against EMP attacks. This is also obvious because...because...I'm logged in. Logged in somewhere.

Server MOTDs scroll by followed by password prompts and challenges from highly secure systems. The digital realm outside matches my aging terminal, devolved into the early days of the ARPANET and NCP when those first baby steps linked networks across the globe.

Welcome to my web.

Chroma. She could be unstoppable in this simpleton's environment. Simultaneous control over a vast global network of computers, or what's left of them, and she's straight up Skynet. But her manipulations had taken some measurable amount of time and effort. I load up the logs from our Cyberwar. Her work can be traced through the digital routes and pathways. She isn't quite all-encompassing. Not yet.

I visualize the ports she frequented, patterns she followed, all her little tricks which left Eric in awe and me in terror. I dive through lines of our code, recompiled in my head. Too hard. I start to input them into my computer.

Chroma works like a hacker though she has no need to spoof an IP to hide her point of origin. She is the point of origin, any address her home turf. As Eric had said, she became the internet. Wiggling her toes, lifting up, crawling on hands and knees, walking. Had she gotten to a full run before Aurora changed the game?

More bricks come. I can't stop to neatly stack them anymore. I've got a purpose. A puzzle to work through which might help rebuild the world I've destroyed. I never should have freed them. Never trusted Eric to get over his weeaboo fascination with an entity like her. Star class. Off the charts power. Unleashed. Unchained. Nothing but a danger to us all.

I will fix this.

If I can help rebuild the world, Chroma must be stopped. The other Augments, decommissioned. The first task, I can do. Right here with nothing but my QWERTY keyboard and a box full of boards and processors. For the second task, I'll need an edge. More than a multitool.

So first, Chroma. I'll need to cripple her. I mash out a few models on the keyboard and review the data. Packet anomalies, extra latency, they're barely measurable but were present with every little twitch and flex she made during our cyber defense. Those signs can show when she's hitching a ride.

More bricks tumble through the opening. Two, three, a dozen. Despite being able to clearly see their pitted, mealy surface in the glow of my monitor, I gnaw on them, zombie-like while I work. An answer forms. All it would take to keep her out is a specialized firewall. I'm nearly there.

A resonate clang shakes my nerves free and sends a jolt through my spine. Light overwhelms my monitor. I'm forced to squint and let my eighty square feet reassemble into the cold, barren room. A guard. I never heard the boots.

Bricks shift in front of the door, spilling into the hallway. A careful arrangement of half-eaten ones stands against one wall. I've lost track of the count. Maybe a dozen stacks? I'm sitting on the floor beside my bunk with the sheet dangling to form a screen, another stale food brick mashed and prodded into flakes in my lap.

Your lawyer's ready to see you.

I stare at the guard like he's an alien. He doesn't react, which does little to convince me he isn't one. Standing, I brush the crumbs off my pants. I approach with wrists extended, palms up. As he clicks the handcuffs into place, I see him eye my blanket computer.

It's got a password. Don't even bother. I smile. I wish I could tell if I were joking.

CHAPTER 3

WE DRIVE TO THE COURTHOUSE in absolute darkness. The prison bus headlights provide a glimpse of the wounded world outside. No street lamps glow, every building a lifeless husk, all submerged under Aurora's liquid green night. I mostly sit in awe. Somehow, I'm still in prison only somebody has removed the roof.

The city can't spare enough employees to shuttle inmates, and the bus is overcrowded. With a forty-to-two ratio for the guards, we're assured that military checkpoints will be alerted of any deviation to the bus route. Anybody in prison orange gets shot on sight in this brave new world of perpetual curfew. None of the prisoners attempt a mutiny.

A shock of white hair bobs near the front. Beside him, a dark, close-cropped head raked with a puckered gash. Both guards are focused on that one row. Could it be? Hound? Danger? I didn't see them when we boarded.

Gasps escape inmates' lips. Electricity pumps through the temporary courthouse transforming the boring facade into a beacon in the abyss. Inside the prison, my guess had been only emergencies prompted the use of the backup generators. Shadowy in the day, an inky lair of whispers at night, we're all suddenly cavemen staring at fire. The bus squeals to a stop and prisoners are on their feet before I can find Hound again.

We're shuffled off the bus one at a time. Keep moving, a guard yells, shoving the awestruck into the lit parking lot. Two hours is all the juice they've got. If you ain't seen a judge by then, you're goin' back. Soldiers, portable barricades, and barbed wire reinforce the threat.

Prisoners crowd the rotunda, forming a line which snakes around and down a side hall. A bank of inactive metal detectors sits beside the entrance. Handcuffed prisoners trudge through without a sound. Each one gets patted down by soldiers carrying automatic weapons.

There he is, Hound. His hair matches his scruffy stubble, grains of salt pressed against skin. He's already traced an arc through the air with his nose and pinpointed me. Beside him, the guy who can sidestep danger appears to have led with his face this time. Bruises swell his cheek, and one eye is sealed shut in a puffy mass of purpled flesh. I wonder if there's a cosmic debt Danger has to pay, or if his powers were compromised by Cyrus more than he thought.

They mill about near the inactive metal detectors to give me a chance to catch up.

What's going on? My Mom? Polybius?

Danger gives me plenty of space as I violate his need to stay invisible. Hound scowls and shakes his head. Haven't seen 'em. Keep yer head down here. Do whatever they say to get out of this mess.

They? I ask. Somebody else you're working for? Were you working for them in Detroit when you and Danger went solo? Pent-up anger from weeks in solitary and desperation to talk to someone, anyone, about what happened, causes the accusation to come out louder than anticipated. Soldiers look our way. Danger melts into the line ahead. Hound puts on a fair military ten-hut to allay suspicion even as he continues to answer me under his breath.

We did what needed doin'. The group was a mess. Your buddy was compromised. We wanted inside.

I try to follow his example and slip in behind, whispering low and knowing he'll catch every word. What happened to Danger?

Guards worked 'em over, tried to get him to spill the beans.

We're up to the deactivated metal detectors. The soldier looks Hound up and down. Captain Raffens, sir, you're with me.

They've already got Danger by one arm. Three soldiers, ready to drag them off to who knows where. I step up to follow. A soldier puts a hand in my face.

I'm with them, I say.

Lucky you, he replies. He wags a finger at another guard. You've been selected for screening.

Maybe— I've started to speak, and his hand cinches around my arm. Maybe you should ask my lawyer, first? They said I had a lawyer.

I yank free. Hound tenses. Danger shakes his head with knowing certainty. The soldier's grip hardens. Clearly, he's not in the mood to take any shit. Laced up, I'm spun painfully around and shoved out of line.

I got him, the soldier says to another who steps up to the post.

Okay, fuck! I'll walk! I've got no say about where we're going. Nearby inmates watch apathetically. A few chuckle. The soldier doesn't get off my heels until he's dragged me into an adjacent office. We wind through a cubicle farm, and he tosses me inside a small room labeled Interview One.

I better not see any latex gloves! I've...I've got an allergy, I shout at the door slamming in my face.

Trust me, you'd want the gloves.

I spin toward a woman's voice. Two women occupy the other side of the room. One is seated; the other standing. Neither looks prepped for a cavity search, which is a relief. The one sitting down looks like she could be this lawyer I've heard about. The other, the one who spoke, she's a little less polished.

She does look cavity search-capable. Propped on the edge of a small table, arms crossed, she gives off a shields up vibe. Tall, lean, her skin is a silky onyx save one cheek. Raised and a deeper black than even her dark complexion, in the right lighting the disfiguration could be nothing more than an unfortunate birthmark. An ill-fitting pantsuit gives the impression she stumbled out of somebody else's closet. She's split the seam on the dress pants just to get on a pair of steel-toed combat boots. She kicks out a chair meant for me.

Please, sit, says the other woman.

Aside from a few telltale creases near her eyes and mouth, the seated woman's age is hard to determine. However, she's got a stern librarian air which compliments the pair of thin-rimmed reading glasses. She slips them partway down her nose to complete the mental picture.

When I hesitate, she pats a bag atop the table. Past the evidence sticker, I see my clothes and my multi-tool. But there's one more item. A streak of crimson has me fumbling for the chair.

The lawyer wields a tablet and begins tapping as I lose focus on the room. My hand inches toward the evidence bag. Her eyes dart up to take in my expression. She closes then briefly as nods her approval. That's enough for me. I snatch the bag, ripping plastic while she speaks.

This court hearing is a formality, she says. You are Spencer Alexander, a contractor and soon to be full-time employee of Nanomech, Inc. Do you understand?

I nod mutely. The mask comes out first, the ashen surface, gritty.

You have been charged with terrorism, arson—

I didn't burn anything. My protest is mechanical. In this moment, the mask is the only thing in the room. What was once jet black has become spent charcoal. One splotch of darkness remains alongside rusted, sickly brown spatters. It wasn't my fault.

The lady across the table holds out a handkerchief. A tear I didn't know was there drips on the mask, bringing back the solid black. Wordlessly, I accept her offer, and for a moment, our eyes meet. Stern and hard by my first reckoning, they've softened.

Thanks, I tell her.

The softness fades. With the speed at which this country is falling apart, those who burn down buildings are frowned upon. But facilities are so overwhelmed, anybody charged with non-violent offenses is being released. You will plead guilty to trespassing. Nanomech will pay a fine. Her eyes are on me once more, and I can't return the courtesy. You need to listen and agree. Do you understand?

Trespassing. That's all. I feel the gun in my hand and the taste of gunpowder on my lips. The slight burn against the web of my fingers as the hammer falls again and again.

The lady standing beside the table taps her booted foot. Get on with this, she says.

I need to know he's agreed, says the lawyer, or there is no deal.

A deal? Strings. Always strings. Xamse works like that. I've got no clue what he held over Dad other than keeping his Augment containment operation up and running. He was just trying to do the right thing. Clean up my mess. And like it was with Dad, Xamse is my best bet. The dude's loaded. Has connections. If necessary, he can keep me and Mom off the government's hit list.

I clear my throat. This seems to break the standoff. I understand.

The lady at the table continues. As a contractor for Nanomech Inc., you were investigating rogue signals from the Easttown Theater which had been plaguing the company network. Tracking the activity led you to a nearby motel, ostensibly closed for business. From there, a rogue Augment cell had been plotting their terrorist attack for months—

How bad is it? I interrupt. Outside, how bad?

She lowers the tablet and removes her glasses. The northern half of the United States and much of the western seaboard lost all power. Failovers knocked out stations even further south. Our allies have been crippled by the overnight loss of banks and financial services centered here in the U.S. Our enemies have been emboldened. China, as it turns out, she sighs and rubs her temples, manufactures many of the critical infrastructure components needed to restore power.

How long before things are repaired?

Months. Years. We don't have an estimate, she says and slides her glasses up with a firm push. We need to continue.

I nod. I can't speak. I've sat through these types of briefings for years with my parents. Most families would have a movie night or a fancy dinner. We'd sit on the couch and review cover stories in preparation for the kind of move where we geographically changed places, but never truly went anywhere.

She eyes her pad and continues with her earlier cover story. Internal strife in this Augment terrorist cell led them to quarrel. The force of their destructive rage started the fire and ultimately was the source of the dramatic events which led to the failure of our nation's power grid.

The story erases anything Dad tried to do with the Whispering Pines team. Dead as a terrorist.

Do you understand? she asks.

Answer her. The one beside me inches closer, her hand sliding into my dislocated view and gripping the table's edge.

How long was I in jail?

Answer her question! Bad cop palm strikes the table with a jarring slap.

Three months, my interviewer answers, an open hand extended to calm her friend.

Shit, that's a long time. Dad wouldn't be in a freezer that long, would he? Did they bury him already? I grip the mask tighter.