Under the Same Sky

By Michael Rizzo

Occurring immediately after the events of Grayman Book Two: The Ratings War, Mike Ram, at the peek of his popularity, is forced to face off against the grieving father of the teenaged mass shooter he’d killed on camera, knowing he’s being manipulated by the same terrorist mastermind that recruited and armed his son.

Under the Same Sky represents one of the darkest and most tragic chapters in the career of Mike Ram, as he’s being carefully crafted into a global hero as part of a daring and disturbing experiment to decisively end the tenacious threat of global terrorism. A group of powerful corporate and political players have leveraged a desperate world to create a multinational force of “surgical” strike teams, armed with advanced weapons, technology and armor, and directed by a cutting-edge AI. But more than simply employing high-tech weaponry, this new army is designed to fight a true “information war” by operating completely in the public eye, their missions crafted for maximum marketability, their operatives shaped into Hollywood-style action heroes. Now, their deadliest opponent threatens to bring it all down by using one broken man to publicly expose the vulnerabilities in their costly promises of protection.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Rizzo
• Release date: Jun 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005833046

Michael Rizzo

In addition to writing dark speculative fiction, Michael Rizzo is a graphic artist (yes, all those covers are his), a martial scientist, a collector and frequent user of fine weaponry, and a pretty good cook. He continues his long, varied and brutal career as a mercenary social services consultant, trying to do good important work while writing about very bad things.His fiction series include Grayman and The God Mars. (The research he’s done for the Grayman series has probably earned him the attention of Homeland Security.)Check out his Facebook pages ("The Grayman Series" and "The God Mars Series") for lots of original art and updates.He causes trouble in person mostly in the Pacific Northwest.

Book preview

Under the Same Sky

A Mike Ram Novel by

Michael Rizzo

Copyright 2022 by Michael Rizzo

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Table of Contents:

Author’s Forward: Deleted Scenes and Semi-Alternate Timelines

Prologue: Unacceptable Losses

Part One: The Components of Justice

Part Two: Feeding Frenzy

Part Three: Simple, Dynamic, Immediate Solutions

Part Four: Theater of Blood

Epilogue: The Multiple Endings Trope

Author’s Forward: Deleted Scenes and Semi-Alternate Timelines

I started writing my Mike Ram stories as a pre-teen back in the 1970s, inspired by the pulp science fiction and action thrillers that I loved, with larger-than-life heroes taking on over-the-top villains, usually with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. My first set of novels, written by hand on notebook paper, were basically Mike Ram vs Aliens, wherein I’d envisioned a future Late Twentieth/Early Twenty-First Century where we’d built space stations and lunar colonies, travelled to Mars, effectively cloned human beings, and figured out safe nuclear power, just like many of the other classic speculative fiction authors whose works I’d spent my childhood summers obsessively collecting and consuming.

Unfortunately, my most profound inspiration came as I watched the tragic events of the 1972 Munich Olympics unfolding live on television, and ten-year-old me realized that this would be the kind of enemy the free world would be facing, the kind of war we would be fighting, for generations to come. And so, the epic conflict between my oversized pulp heroes and villains that would eventually become Grayman began to take form.

I’ve written countless versions of the tales over the now half-century since 1972, starting with loosely-connected serial-style novels and short stories, and a few of the latter garnered some encouraging attention in small local writing contests.

Fun fact: One common criticism I received back then was that my central trope of a democratic people agreeing to suspend civil and constitutional rights in the name of aggressively fighting a terrifying enemy was just too unbelievable. Not even I could imagine it would come to be called the Patriot Act.

Anyway: We never did get the moon base or the mars colony or the jetpacks or the widespread hydrogen-powered cars. But as the years passed, the real world consistently kept one-upping every nightmare scenario I’d predicted (including a story written in 1977 featuring a terrorist attack in Manhattan that brought down a landmark skyscraper). I would regularly have to revise and rewrite the stories just to keep up with increasingly dark current events. And as I grew up, the tales got darker, grittier, more uncomfortable, and far less science fiction. My perfect heroes became more and more muddled, damaged.

In the early 1990s, I began submitting my first proper Grayman novel, a middle story that I felt was complete enough with a salting of flashbacks for backstory. This eventually became Grayman Book Three: Vulnerability. I was given very encouraging feedback from a few editors, but was consistently told that a then-90,000-word novel wouldn’t sell, that it needed to be well over 100,000 words to successfully market, so it was back to the word processor.

I had to take a break after September 11th, 2001. Reality had one-upped my speculative fiction way too far.

Most of a decade later, I started to feel like it was important I get back to it, because the madness wasn’t stopping, and the Media had indeed proved itself the most powerful weapon on both sides of this seemingly endless war. I revised and coalesced my main Mike Ram stories into a cohesive single Grayman Trilogy. Get it done, get it out, move on. But by this point, most publishers weren’t taking unsolicited manuscripts, and most agents weren’t taking manuscripts from authors who weren’t already established in the marketplace. (Why would I need an agent if I was already successful?) I submitted to pretty much everyone who would look at a new author, and there were a handful that gave me encouraging feedback, though with one unexpected reversal: Now I was being told that a manuscript over 100,000 words wasn’t marketable as a first novel.

Well, shit… I’d just spent two decades becoming artistically long-winded. In case you hadn’t noticed. (It’s why I don’t do Twitter. I can’t contain a coherent thought in less than 280 characters.) I did some serious cutting, completely failed to come in under these new limitations, so I re-divided the Trilogy into a Quintology, even though it violated my own personal loathing for cliffhangers.

Nope. Nobody wanted to take a risk on a series from a new author, even a completed one.

However, one particular agent liked what she saw enough to issue me a creative challenge: Write a stand-alone Mike Ram thriller, around ninety thousand words worth. I didn’t want to compromise what I felt was already a complete story, but there were all these Mike Ram short stories I’d written since the 1970s, some of which had won minor awards. Perhaps I could take one and create a piece of Apocrypha, a semi-self-contained side incident, that illustrated the essential nature of my characters and their battlefield?

Well, there was this one peripheral incident, one that I’d considered too dark for the current canon. That’s saying something. I’ve done sample live readings from Grayman and thoroughly traumatized my unsuspecting audiences. And this story is worse?

I got about 70,000 words out of me, and it just felt too miserable to finish. I moved on to other projects, including publishing the Grayman Series and the arguably more approachable first books in the The God Mars Series in 2013. At that point, Grayman was still speculative near-future fiction, set between 2020 and 2025. The times and history have since caught up with those dates and events. I suppose I could do another rewrite, update everything one more time?

No. I’d sort of co-established these stories as canon in my God Mars novels. But, hey: God Mars plays with the concept of revising and rewriting history. Let’s just go with that theme. So:

Mike Ram’s Grayman is now officially an alternate reality. Semi-alternate reality? Historical fiction fantasy? A path we could have taken. Sort of did take. Are sort of still taking.

I didn’t intend to look back. Grayman was done, out into the world. But I do feel like there were certain key themes, details and pieces of character development that I didn’t take enough time with. And, hey, I had this stand-alone novel project basically three-quarters done sitting in the Cloud: a modern horror story, of sorts, and still pertinent to the times we keep having as the world continues to one-up my nightmares, like it’s a contest or something.

Stare long enough into the Abyss, and you start spinning stories at each other.

Evidentiary Excerpt: From the hand-written journals of David Anthony Haffner:

Every day, on every channel and page and popup searchware adlink that has any news content, I keep seeing the man who killed my son.

He’s their favorite lead, their favorite tagline, best guarantee of the hits and views that bring the precious ad-revenue. He’s a Hero, after all. Most popular one of the New War, the New World Order.

But he’s really just a product. A character in their grand drama. Manufactured and marketed. Because news is marketing. And apparently so is war, now.

My son’s life, and death, became part of that marketing strategy. So were a lot of other lives and deaths, deserving or not.

At least he doesn’t look proud of it, doesn’t actively glorify what he’s done or what he’s become because of it, at least not in front of the cameras. But they do. They all do, celebrating politically and popularly sanctioned slaughter, and these new high-visibility heroes that perform for them on cue. Like bad action movies come to life, the stuff of comic books made our new reality. To sell. Whether it’s agendas or ad-revenue. Propaganda and profit.

Maybe I’d have some sliver of respect or maybe even forgiveness for the celebrity son-of-a-bitch, but they listen to him when he talks. They listen. And not once does he tell them "No, what I did was ugly. I killed a messed-up confused angry exploited teenager. Shot him in the head, right there on TV for you. It doesn’t matter if I had to, if it was ‘necessary’ or not. He’s dead. A child is dead. So don’t glorify it and watch every link and share every clip and buy up millions upon millions of downloads and plug-ins for your sick virtual fantasy games so you can repeatedly entertain yourselves replaying the killing of real human beings.

My son’s death isn’t theater. He wasn’t a throwaway stock villain in some brainless action movie. He was somebody’s son, somebody’s brother. He had people who loved him. His death was shocking, horrible, senseless, and permanent. He didn’t get up and go home after the director yelled cut! They put him in a bag and washed his blood off the pavement. Washed his life into the sewer. Somebody’s son.

My son.

This is something they should be mourning, not marketing. But to his adoring public, his fucking sick fanbase, it’s entertainment, ratings gold. By design. And he knows it is. He knows.

And that’s what really damns him: He knows, but he still keeps doing it.

Prologue: Unacceptable Losses

October 23rd 2020.

Major Mike Ram, United States Army, attached to Project Manticore:

"The Global War on Terror. Otherwise known to popular history as twenty years of bloody tragedies and politically devastating fiascos: New York, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Spain, Columbia, Jerusalem, Kashmir, Chechnya, Paris, Orlando, Bakersfield... I doubt anybody here really wants me to go on… And despite whatever military or political or social victories you’ve tried to claim from all your efforts, the Media has consistently preferred to rub your noses in your losses, your shortfalls, your errors, your vulnerabilities, your unintentional atrocities…"

You’re careful to not specifically look any one delegation directly in the eye—you don’t want any of them to take it personally, or anyone watching to assume that directing blame is your intention. You’re just as careful with your tone, your choice of words. You’ve come with no script this time, no prepared speech—Henderson’s idea, after how well he felt you were received the last time for breaking with convention and speaking your mind. You glance up at him in the gallery: Still smiling, he gives you a nod of conspiratorial approval. In their far more conspicuous seats, Secretary Miller and General Collins keep stone-faced.

This is the Ratings War, you explain with gentle, parental intensity. "It’s like what they say about an auto race: more people watch hoping to see someone crash than care who wins. And someone almost always crashes.

"Trillions of dollars per year you collectively spend trying to predict and protect against what a handful of desperate individuals can think up and pull off with minimal resources. Trillions spent bombing already-impoverished urban areas and third-world wastelands, and sweeping in with thousands and thousands of troops, trying to occupy territory you can’t politically or economically afford to hold, and they’ve got all the time in the world to take it right back again.

"Any victories you manage are fleeting. You kill or capture one high-profile terrorist warlord, and then can’t contain the dozens that pop up eager to replace him. You topple one terror-supporting regime, only to watch the country fall into hopeless chaos and maybe be taken right back by those same ‘terrorists’ as soon as you try to withdraw. You drive one enemy into the ground, only to inspire ten or a hundred or a thousand more. For every hundred terrorist plots you manage to stop, it’s the one you miss that devastates you."

You can see Colonel Richards squirming in the wings in his fresh, custom-tailored uniform. Trying not to. Trying not to sweat. Wishing you’d just shut up, even though he knows they’re listening to what you have to say. Because they’re all that fundamentally desperate.

"Twenty years of radical restrictions on almost every aspect of our society and commerce and rights in the name of increased security… and still there is no real defense. Even with all the hundreds of billions thrown into screening technology, global surveillance and intimidating security, they always find a new way—or often, a humiliatingly old way—to hurt us. And the Media will always be there when that happens. And through the Media, the world will watch you as you so desperately try to do the same things over and over again to try to prevent what you cannot completely anticipate. And fail."

You stop and breathe and soften as they stew in their frustration. And then you ask them:

How do you feel?

You give them a few seconds to try to make sense of that, let them try to get their balance back. Then repeat:

How do you feel? Right now?

You face the row-upon-row of stone-faced delegations laid out almost stadium-style in the massive General Assembly Hall and the galleries above them and the cameras placed around the chamber, and you spread your armored arms and embrace them all, all the officially recognized nations of the so-called civilized world. United, in name if nothing else. And maybe a shared cause, a shared enemy that is no single enemy, no nation.

"I have just done exactly what the terrorist does, albeit without the bloodshed: I have told your people that you can’t protect them from the monsters of their nightmares. That you are helpless. That all of your efforts are worse than useless."

You lower your arms, get smaller behind the podium, softer again.

"But it’s not just the terrorist that does that, or the lone spree killer that turns your vulnerable public places into massacres. Every single one of your very vocal critics does the same thing: They tell you what you’re doing wrong. That you’re only making it worse. They just never tell you what the ‘right’ thing to do would be. At least not anything that would actually work. The fearful want more laws and restrictions on freedoms and rights, hoping that making a heinous crime slightly more illegal will somehow be a perfect shield this time against bullets and bombs and knives and trucks. The would-be peacemakers and so-called social justice warriors would have you try to placate implacable fanatics. And the angry, the retribution-mongers, would have you make war on entire nations and populations, when you know full well that most terrorism is fringe extremism."

You pause, let them digest. Then start your sales pitch:

"We have come here today to offer you an alternative. The only truly effective way to really stop the terrorist is through surgical means: to identify and neutralize each individual threat as soon as it begins to materialize. You know this. You just can’t do it effectively. So you go to war with the tools you have, to paraphrase one of Secretary Miller’s predecessors..."

There’s an uncomfortable chuckle from the gallery at your reference. You try to let it pass unnoticed.

"I come here to offer you new tools. And I know how unusual it is for a line officer to address the General Assembly like this—believe me, it wasn’t my idea… More chuckling, this time even among the dourer delegations. But those wiser than me felt it was important for all of you to meet a flesh-and-blood representative of the human beings who will be underneath all of this armor and technology, so that you may hopefully be impressed that I believe—and I do believe—that we cannot afford to do what we have been doing. We cannot afford what is impersonally called ‘collateral damage,’ no matter the lengths our enemies go to to ensure that we cannot avoid it if we wish to fight back."

You give them a few more breaths to absorb, and then Dee begins to roll the armor and ICW demos across the big theater screens flanking the UN Globe and Laurel emblem behind you. And then you wade into the same pitch you’ve been delivering to boots and base commanders for the last six months:

"That means a new kind of intelligence and a new kind of soldier. Tanks and planes and smart bombs and satellites and warships are all fine tools, but they are not effective where we need them to be. It’s been decades since our enemies have gathered in numbers and in locations that would make those weapons effective. This is because they learned that lesson far more quickly than we could adapt. They learned to embed themselves into environments that we couldn’t afford to use our precious arsenals in, and then they dared us to come after them. What we need, ideally, is to be able to locate and cut the terrorist out of highly populated areas quickly and efficiently without incurring civilian casualties, or risking unacceptable losses of our own troops. We also need to be able to fight the terrorist face-to-face, so we can confirm our accuracy and effectiveness immediately, instead of trying to positively ID a target vaporized by a missile or smart-bomb; or even uglier: trying to defend ourselves in the Media against claims that we killed innocents instead of combatants. And we need to show the terrorist and the public that we are both willing and able to make this a face-to-face fight, instead of hitting from distance with drones and long-range weapons that make us look like cowards.

"As for the new kind of soldier, we now have that: individual troops with armor and weapons and interface systems that can excise a small army of terrorists holed up in a crowded neighborhood or a delicate shrine or a school full of children potentially without incurring any collateral damage. We call this new soldier a ‘Tactical.’ And, ladies and gentlemen of the Assembly, they will be yours. That is essential to this proposal. The UN already has eighty-thousand assorted troops and personnel scattered in two-dozen countries, but they serve only by the generous cooperation of their home nations. The proposal is on the table that the Tactical teams be employed directly by the Security Council, commanded by a new Military Staff Subcommittee under a restructured CTC—what my esteemed colleagues have tentatively named the United Nations Action Committee on Terrorism. And not for any one nation’s political agenda, but for the simple purpose of hunting down those who would slaughter innocent people in order to bend the world to their will.

"While it is not my place to put this plan before you, I feel that it is important that I speak as a representative of those like me who have chosen to wear this armor, to tell you that I believe in this vision enough to swear an oath of service to the Council, an oath that I know may override my oath to serve my own country. This will not be a step that I—or any of my fellows—will take lightly. But if there is to be any real trust in the authenticity of what we propose, we must demonstrate that our service is to the world, not to any one nation. And that, ladies and gentlemen of the Assembly, is your new kind of soldier."

There’s a rumbling in the galleries, but also up through the ranks of delegates. You’ve dropped the bomb that you needed to. Now you change the subject before they can assess what it may come to mean.

"As for the new kind of intelligence, since that’s not my area of expertise, I defer to Doctor Scott Becker of the McCain Foundation.

Thank you for your time, your attention, and your tolerance.

More chuckles at your deadpan self-deprecation, as you bow as gracefully as you can in the bulk of your armor and walk off to turn the stage over to Doc, who looks like his tie is slowly strangling him as he walks out to take your place at the podium under the UN emblem. You look up at the galleries as you pass. Henderson gives you a nod and an almost genuine looking smile. Miller and Collins look like they’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, as do most of professional diplomats in the room.

It’s no reflection on Doc, who gets his presentation rolling with just a bit of a stammer as Dee demonstrates sample mission scenarios overhead. It’s that they all know The President of the United States is coming up next.

How’s your head? Matthew chimes in on your link as you make it into the wings.

Where I left it, I assume, you reply, a little unsure of the context of his question.

I heard about last night, he clarifies with steadily building innuendo. "You apparently got so plowed with pre-game jitters that you passed out on poor Lieutenant Ava’s sofa and didn’t make it home. That’s her story, anyway."

Ah. You try not to feed into his immaturity. That.

Funny, he pushes it. Just doesn’t sound like you.

Things change, you allow him.

Good for you. He sounds like he honestly means it. Glad to hear it.

So how was my Captain Kirk impression today? you change the subject, reflecting on his review of your previous version of this performance.

More Jean-Luc Picard this time. You’re maturing. Poor Doc still looks like he’s about to have a stroke, though.

It’s the tie.

Major Ram? A live voice comes from behind you. It’s shockingly familiar, from both the news and more than a dozen comedians’ impressions. When you turn around, there’s a cluster of dark gray and navy-blue tailored suits standing roughly in a kind of formation. The man on point—who manages to appear larger than the men in his protection detail even if he physically isn’t—offers his hand and that almost unnatural smile that he won the last election with. An honor to meet you, son.

Thank you, Mr. President. The honor is all mine. You pull off your right gauntlet and take his hand as firmly as he grasps yours.

Great speech. You should consider a career in politics.

Not on a bet, sir.

He smiles wider, tries to look fraternal. I just hope I do justice to following you out there.

I’m just glad that I could go first, sir.

Matthew is laughing his ass off in your earpiece.

Listen, Major… I’d like you to do me a favor and walk out with me afterwards. I’m having a little meet-and-greet back at the White House and I’d like you to drop by, press some flesh, talk about the future. Get to know you a little better.

I’d be honored, sir. I…probably should change first. You hold up your bulky armored sleeves.

I can have a fresh dress uniform sent over, he offers insistently, apparently not wanting you to get away from him.

Thank you, sir.

My pleasure, Major.

His personal guard of Secret Service suits move him off to get ready for his grand entrance. Dee’s hacked you a copy of his speech: He’s bound and determined to embrace this, to keep it appearing above board, and to assure the UN—with the whole world watching—that he will guarantee that control of the Joint Tactical Force is placed solely in the hands of the membership, reversing the go-it-alone mandates of his predecessors that have dominated the War on Terror since 9-11. Part of that, it appears, is making an effort to convince the world he’s not afraid to be seen with the most visible players, especially after the closed-session with the Security Council—your first semi-public performance on these grounds—was too easily interpreted as an attempt to hide an American agenda to control and militarize the UN.

"Okay, Matthew pants into your link, collecting himself. That was just… surreal…"

My whole life is surreal, Matthew.

True.

An hour later, the President is done insisting that the United States will absolutely not hold the reins of either Datascan or the Tactical Teams, and his entourage finds you to set you up for what comes next:

You get herded in with his protection detail. Your own team of players (Richards, Doc, Lisa) is left somewhere far behind in all the directed chaos.

It’s just a photo-op, Henderson pipes in on your link to reassure you. "He’s got his motorcade parked out under the flags, where all the Press can see him. And see you leaving with him. There’ll be some waving and maybe a soundbite or two. Then just go enjoy the party."

Somebody get my sidearm back from main security, you ask no one in particular.

Already taken care of, Major, Henderson lets you know.

"Don’t do anything I would do, Matthew inserts himself, letting through just a hint of his frustration at being made to watch from the Langley Basement. Again. And I expect you home by eleven, mister."

Not a problem, you promise him easily.

One of the UN security jackets almost immediately comes running up after you, calls your name, hands you a secure hard case and keys it open for you. It’s your automag.

Talk about service… you mutter. You say thank you, and he quickly disappears with a polite My pleasure, Major.

You check the weapon and find it’s loaded. More so: it’s been chambered, Condition One cocked-and-locked, ready to fire. Odd. You’re sure you’d emptied it when you handed it over. Ingrained habit: You never check in a loaded weapon.

You slip the big pistol back in your thigh rig as discreetly as possible. The Secret Service agents flanking you seem only concerned with keeping the pace, staying on schedule.

We rush in rough formation out through a side entrance, bypassing the secure garages where they would have met the limos if they’d just preferred to leave without running into the Press, and you’re out into the sunlight. You flinch and squint and go digging for your interface glasses, but the agents around you keep everybody in the entourage moving. The crowd waiting is possibly bigger than they’d initially anticipated.

The caravan of armored limos that make up the Executive Motorcade sits ready in the long, open drive that fronts the domed Assembly Building with its famous line of national flags. The long black cars and SUVs wait perfectly lined up just inside the barricades and police-armor of the makeshift security cordon. On the other side, waiting with anxious patience, are several hundred civilians: a few dozen of them are wired with Press-gear, but the majority look like a selection of party-followers, well-wishers and supporters who knew in advance that the President would be coming out this way. It’s very clearly a staged appearance—you can see that all the visible protesters have been held well back, out of camera shot. You remember that the election is barely two weeks away, and he’s been sliding in the polls.

The President is barely visible behind his living wall of security, as he changes our course just short of his limo to approach the line and wave to his supporters. Your escorts gently prod you to follow him, apparently calculating exactly how close you should be standing to him to make the appropriate impression. He faces his audience with his famous smile beaming and bridges the cordon for the ritual of pressing flesh, while you probably look like his very uncomfortable date.

No shades, please, Major, one of the agents prompts you as you try to get your interface glasses on. Just…

ATTACK DETECTED, Dee blares in your link.

Then you hear the almost-buzzing rattle that you know is a Fletcher.

And screaming.

The crowd seems to break like a wave against the cordon, and the Secret Service suits lunge to cover the President with their bodies and get their weapons out of their suits. You can see the storm of flechettes tear into them.

Dee starts feeding you the urgent professional panic that floods the Secret Service, NYPD, Homeland and UN Security channels as they try to pick their target out of the crowd, try to get a sniper shot. You try to hold your position in the middle of the shoving and running and diving. And right in front of you, the crowd falls like the sea parting, around the eye of the storm:

It’s just a kid.

Blonde haired. Blue eyed. Bad skin. Maybe fifteen or sixteen. Wide-eyed and howling his head off in an undecipherable swirl of obscenities, looking like this is the greatest rush on the planet, spraying everything in sight until his weapon clicks empty.

Like a pro, he ejects and slaps a new magazine into the ceramic and nano-carbon automatic that he shouldn’t conceivably have, and starts spraying more armor-piercing darts at the heap of bodies trying to protect what must still be the President underneath them. And looking at him, you’re not sure if he knows that he’s only about three seconds away from getting his spine severed by any of the Federal or NYPD snipers covering the site. But he does know enough to keep moving and use the crowd to make himself a difficult target, his weapon cutting down anybody who gets brave enough to try to grab him.

And you feel your blood charge and your mouth tics up into your Manticore grin and your face feels wet and you barely realize that one of the darts has cut you just below the left eye and you reach down and fill your hand by sheer muscle-memory and raise the automag and fast-lock the sight-picture on that triumphant screaming crying cursing contorted child’s face and you can see his eyes go wide as he looks straight down the maw of the big stainless gun and you do the only thing that your rage says makes any sense.

Breathe. Let go. Let it happen.

One shot.

One life.

Major Matthew Burke, US Army, attached to Project Manticore:

I stare awkwardly at the door for more than a few seconds before I knock. Hesitating. Stalling now at the literal threshold, despite just running DC rush hour like NASCAR to get here the second Dee let me know they’d made it out of the post-incident madness and were back home from Manhattan.

But not home, not in terms of our temporary home base in the Langley sub-basement, secure and safe. Home in terms of maybe another kind of safety. Or comfort.

Her place.

And me being here is probably a violation of that comfort, that privacy, even if I’m only here as the concerned friend who just saw his buddy shoot a kid (the mass-shooter label already sticking to him doesn’t make him not a kid) in the face. This isn’t about the work or the mission or The Agenda right now. I know him enough to know the state he’s probably in, and also why he came here—why they came here—instead of going straight back to Langley. And I’m not sure if I should knock or just turn and walk away, give him the time he needs. Staring at her apartment door.

And now I’m wondering about how many more years it’ll be until physically knocking on doors goes the way of the phone dial and the fax and the printed page, because I know I don’t really need to knock now: Dee’s almost certainly announced my arrival, likely as soon as I came in through the building’s lobby, or as I was parking in the secure lot outside. I’m sure her apartment’s security system has me lit up and ID’ed and cleared my ass standing out here staring at her door like a dumbshit, still not sure what the fuck I’m going to say and not say, and if that will help at all or dig the wounds deeper.

I knock anyway. Old habits and all. The reassuring, comforting normal of knuckles on… metal. Because of course the door is armored.

It takes her several seconds to answer. She probably wasn’t eager to get up and leave his side. That’s what her face says when she opens the door. It also says she’s both glad I’m here (as a friend) and wished I hadn’t shown my face just now (as a major co-player in this game called UNACT). That second thing is why I didn’t wear a uniform, just my worn old bomber over flannel that’s baggy enough to hide my basic protocol vest and