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With everything going on, they’d decided to pull back, regrouping.  Bolden was being looked after, Highland watched the video with the prisoners, and Carson had picked up Valentina to bring back to the house.

Part of the reason for the retreat had been Mia’s health.  She’d focused on too much for too long, and her headache had won out.  Carson took over for the kids while Mia slept in a dark room, no screens, only white noise.

The kids were being pretty good.  One moment from Ripley where the volume control slipped, several from Tyr, but that was to be expected.  Carson involved all three in making dinner- burgers and fries with salad on the side.  Valentina got a walk-through on stove-grilling burgers to temperature- with a chicken breast in another pan for Mia.  Beef had a way of locking up her gut -probably tied to her anxiety- so it was a sometimes thing.

Ripley was chopping and watching some of the lesson, while helping with Tyr, who was chopping lettuce and other greens for salad with a kid safe knife.  The bonus of that was that if he helped prepare it, there was a good chance he’d eat ‘his’ salad.

Two liter bottles of soda and a tray of cinnamon rolls for dessert awaited them all at the end.

Then the lights went out.  It was overcast enough that the entire house was plunged into near-darkness, except for the areas close enough to the windows.

Carson found his phone on the counter, and checked it.

No service.

“Mission time- Ripley, brown cabinet with the christmas stuff, drawers.  There are candles.  Go.  Don’t hurt yourself in the dark.”

Ripley went.  The cabinet in question was central to the house.

“Tyr, flashlight in the bench by the stairs.”

Tyr ran off.  The way was partially lit by the window in the door.  Mia had put up a curly piece of decorative iron over it, to keep it from being a point of intrusion, and the glass there was textured, so someone outside wouldn’t have an easy view of the inside.

Both kids out of the way, Carson quickly went to the closet, and accessed the gun safe, arming himself.

“Watch the kids?  Lighter in the drawer by the knives if Ripley comes back,” he told Valentina.  “Batteries in the kid-proofed cabinet, above the liquor.  Keep them away from windows.”

“Yeah,” Valentina said, a bit breathless.  Scared.

Turnabout is fair play? Carson thought.  We attack a Cavalcanti house, put a crossbow bolt in one of them, kill two, maybe more, on our way out?  You come after us, now?

He moved between windows, trying not to hold any posture or anything that would spook the kids.  Peeking from the edges, moving fast if he had to cross any point someone might have an open shot.  His eyes scanned the outdoors.

Half the neighborhood had gone dark.  The way things were wired up, it was patchwork- a streetlight on this side of the street was lit, but houses on the other side weren’t.

Neighbors had stepped outside too, making it harder.

“Carson?”

Mia, talking to him from the darkness.  She had that look to her eyes, drawn partially closed, as if she was looking into a bright light, a weariness replacing tension in her features, even in near-total darkness.

She’d armed herself too.

“Not sure yet,” he said, to answer the question.

“Were, um-” She paused, wincing.

He waited, attention split between her and scanning the backyard.

“-can- cameras?” she asked.

“Only a bit.”

“You have to,” she said.  Alarm seemed to surge in her and push against the bars and barriers of everything else she was dealing with… not quite managing to reach the forefront.  “Carson.”

“I know.  I had my hands full with the kids.”

“Carson!”

In another situation, he’d think she was trying to warn him about something she’d seen, that he’d missed.  But she wasn’t.

It was there- her hand shaking, emotion beneath the surface, beneath headache and incapacitation and fatigue and everything else.  Alarm.

“I know,” he said, firmly.

She looked wounded, as she looked at him.  In more than one way.  Disappointed.

“Go easy,” he told her.  “Kids are getting lights.  I’m going to check outside.”

“Cay-” she started.  It seemed to take effort on her part.  “Careful.”

“Yeah.”

He finished checking out the windows, past front door, side windows.

Then he went to the back door again, and opened it.  He checked, then stepped outside, moving quickly between locations, ready to pull the gun from beneath his waistband and fire, if he had to.  It would shatter the illusion, for Ripley and Tyr, even the illusion that he and Mia had.

Even to the point that, when those elements of doubt were introduced, they’d fall apart, drift away from each other.

But it was better than the alternatives that awaited them, if it was the Cavalcantis.

Backyard clear.

Got to move in directions people won’t anticipate.

A fence encircled nine tenths of the backyard that the house didn’t- and a gate made up the other tenth.  With the way the porch was raised and the placement of the fence, Carson could step onto the fence, then go from there to the roof.

He scaled the roof, belly rubbing up against shingles, as he peeked around the side, then over the top.

Higher vantage point, easier to see people sneaking around.

Mia was in bad shape.  The way Carson interpreted her head injury, it was that one area of her brain had taken the hit hardest.  She’d ‘recovered’, not by having that part of her brain heal back to one hundred percent, or ninety percent, but by rerouting a lot of it.  Other parts of the brain took on the loads, making it easier for that smashed part of the brain to do what it had to do.

It wasn’t perfect.  That part that was damaged caused her constant pain, and impacted her in countless small ways- many of which she’d learned to hide.  When that part of her got too taxed, or if something forced its way through those channels that had been rerouted around a long time ago, then the damage reared its ugly head.

Sometimes that was minor- worse headaches.  Sometimes it was everything.  Fatigue, crushing headaches, emotional disregulation, language issues, coordination issues, balance issues.

It was part of why he nagged her to look after herself.  To rest.  Because every night she stayed up late and every meal she skipped was testing her limits, and when she failed a test, it could cripple her.

The trick being that she couldn’t bring herself to relax.  Even like this, when she needed to recover, he’d had to take away her phone to stop her from compulsively checking the doorbell cameras around the neighborhood, security cameras, and the satellite feeds they reserved for emergencies only, currently hooked up in the bedroom.

She was mad at him for not taking over the load and being vigilant enough to anticipate this, but she couldn’t articulate it in her current state.

No unusual cars on the road.  The sky was a dark grey.  Over toward the city, it took on a tint from the fires.

Then, with an almost imperceptible thud, the rest of the grid failed.  The collective hum of appliances, streetlights, and power cut out, and all the rest of the lights died.

Even in the city.

Carson slid down the slope of the roof, and landed on the porch.  He opened the door and let himself back in.

Valentina was crouched by the kitchen counter, struggling to breathe.  Mia stood by her, half-crouching, hand at her shoulder, eyes- still that wounded look, from an injury decades ago, frustrated she couldn’t say or do more to help.

“All safe, no disasters incoming.  The power grid failed all the way from Camrose to the city,” he said, making his tone gentle and confident.  He eased his way to the ground, and reached out, taking Valentina’s hand between both of his.  “All safe.”

“Is she okay?” Ripley asked.

“I’m okay, I just…”

Still trying to find herself after coming close to hyperventilating, Valentina found talking difficult.

“Scared of the dark?” Carson offered.

“Light the candles!” Tyr said, with a volume and suddenness that made Carson startle.  Mia winced.  Then winced again when Tyr turned the flashlight on her.

“Easy does it, Tyr.  Mom’s not feeling well, so remember to use our quiet voice, okay?” Carson asked.  Off to the side, Ripley was up, went to the drawer with the lighter, and started lighting the candles she’d dug out of the cabinet.  Carson found himself divided between trying to manage Tyr, pulling him into a one-armed hug, and trying to reassure Valentina.

“I’m not scared of the dark,” Valentina said.  “Scared.”

They took a bit of time in the dark and the quiet, Tyr squirming a bit before Carson quietly sent him to see what was going outside and to quietly- quietly report back.  Carson got up, checked the meat, where the pan was still warm, deemed it done enough, and then served it on buns he lightly toasted over the candles.

As he took food over to the table, Ripley intercepted him, clearly curious, but not asking any questions.

“Valentina’s been through a lot,” he told Ripley, voice very quiet.

“Like Mom with her head?”

“Different.  Mom’s head was a long time ago, a one time thing that still hurts now, Valentina’s going to be scared for a while, I think.  Be a good cousin, okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Mia, do you want to eat in your room?”

“Here.”

It was a weird mood for dinner, eating in the dark by candlelight, Mia unwell and Valentina subdued.  He’d sat with a view of the backyard and out the one window.  Mia sat with a view out the front.  They hadn’t planned it- it had been intuitive on that level.

“I saw some bags in the bench,” Ripley ventured.  “I’m not sure if I was supposed to see, but…”

“Oh,” Mia said, smiling.  “Open- open them?”

“Can I go get-” Ripley asked, then, seeing her mom’s nod, didn’t waste any time.

The bags were from the store where she got her coveralls- car mechanic style, buttons down the front, folded collars, sleeves to ankle and wrist.  Mia had found the time to pick up some of Ripley’s favorite kind for warmer weather.

Ripley was thrilled.

“What’s the deal with that?” Valentina asked.  “The coveralls?  You were wanting these the other morning, and you wore them again yesterday?”

“It’s comfortable,” Ripley said.

“It’s kind of odd, though?” Valentina asked.

“Ahem,” Mia said, clearing her throat.

“Whatever Ripley wants to wear,” Carson said.  “Whatever style, we support.”

“Even if she wants to wear a, um,” Tyr cut in, voice a bit loud.

Carson stole a fry off Tyr’s plate.  It distracted him sufficiently, but Tyr, in turning to reach for it, stuck his elbow onto the lip of his plate, nearly catapulting his burger.  Carson managed it.

“Right, um.  Sorry?” Valentina responded to Mia.

“It’s fine,” Ripley said, unfazed.  “I don’t think it’s that odd, but I don’t care if it is.  I joke with my friends that my gender is ‘old man in a workshop’.  I like books, and old timey stuff, and building things, and not giving a damn what people think.  I’m weird like that.  My friends are weird.”

She said it as a point of pride.

“Right,” Valentina said.

Valentina, who’d gone to private schools with uniforms, for whom ‘weird’ might mean something very different.

Mia nodded, like this was a settled subject.

“…But what if you regret it?” Valentina asked Ripley.

Mia visibly tensed.

“I don’t care if I do,” Ripley said.  “I don’t want to be that kind of person, living with regret.”

Maybe not the best thing.  There were three things that were in play here- Mia could be protective and anxious about the kids, she couldn’t communicate very effectively right now, without stumbling over words, and her emotions ran a lot closer to the surface.

Bad combination.

“That might get harder when you’re a bit older.  I regret eating breakfast, sometimes.  Or not eating breakfast,” Valentina said.  “Or saying hi to someone in the hallway weird.  Clothes are complicated, it’s so easy to pick the wrong thing and have people be savage over it.  So I got good at it.”

“I guess there’s two ways to handle it,” Carson said.  “Master it, or ignore it.”

Valentina didn’t look like she agreed.

This was tricky to navigate.  Mia, like an increasingly dark cloud that nobody else had noticed.  Ripley, cavalier.  Valentina, who had been called ‘Gucci’ by friends in a past life, dwelling on something familiar to her.

He wasn’t sure how to redirect her without popping the swelling bubble.  And if he didn’t, would this get bad?  If Valentina looked away and to the side from the burger she was trying to hold together, as toppings slipped out the back?

Plus Tyr- Tyr was eating, but he was also trying to steal Carson’s fries now.  Carson turned it into a bit of a game, because Tyr could be a dangerously good bubble popper.

“Okay, wait, what if there’s a compromise?” Valentina asked.  “Let’s say you’re an old man at heart.  Have you seen some of the old guys who get featured on Bulle-pin boards online?  Crazy braided mustaches and beards, vests, nice shirts, pants that fit?”

“I don’t want a mustache or beard.”

“Let’s not pressure her,” Carson said, very mindful of Mia now.

“What about braids?”

“Valentina, please,” he said.

“It’s okay,” Ripley said.  “I don’t know about any of that stuff.  But I’d be okay to try.  I want to be comfortable though.”

“What if I show you?  Maybe overalls- not coveralls like you’ve been wearing, but strap-over-the-shoulder overalls, corduroy, maybe?  Nice shoes, different sort of top?  We can try a few styles?  You don’t have to wear anything you don’t want to.”

Ripley was nodding, smiling some.

Did she look relieved?

Because of common ground with this cousin she didn’t yet understand, maybe.  And maybe because she was getting to the point she wanted to try a change, but didn’t know how.

Mia was relaxing as Ripley seemed happy.  She finally moved, which drew Valentia’s eye.  And Valentina saw the tail end of that dark cloud.

“Oh, I’m sorry, you got her clothes and I’m talking about changing her style- I wasn’t badmouthing-”

“It’s fine,” Mia said.

“I was trying to understand, that’s all, it’s-”

“It’s fine.”

There was back and forth, Valentina stumbling to recover, and Mia insisting it was fine.  Ripley tried to interject.

“I think,” Carson said, picking a moment to cut in.  Both stopped.  “All we want is for Ripley is for her to be happy.”

“Yes,” Mia said.  “There- people.”

She pointed.

Carson turned around.  Maybe too fast.

There were people in the front yard.

He got up and went to the door, his gun in mind.  Mia remained where she was, a dark cloud again.

Carson checked, then opened the door.  Neighbors.  “Hello?”

“We’re checking houses to make sure everyone’s okay.”

“Were you now?” Carson asked. His eyes scanned the surroundings.  No people in cars watching them.  No drones.

“Lots of people died during the last few outages.  Services aren’t always responding, some old folk with machines they rely on, get into trouble.”

“No old folk here,” Carson said, flashing a smile.  “Eating a lukewarm dinner, that’s all.”

“Yeah, for sure.”

It was hard to get a read on those people.  It seemed like a few too many to be something tricky… but Carson wouldn’t have been the most surprised person in the world if some people had started this whole neighborhood watch thing by claiming they were checking on people in trouble, when they were scouting places to rob.

“Power and phones went out at the same time,” Carson said.  “Coordinated?”

“Looks like.  They took over the TV and radio.  Obviously TVs don’t work if you don’t have a generator, but…”

“Yeah.  Okay.”

“Sorry to take you away from your dinner.”

Carson watched as they moved on, eyes still darting around to look for Cavalcantis who might be looking in, taking advantage of this blackout the same way they’d used the protest last night.

A slice of the city had power again.

He went through the living room, grabbing a portable radio from inside a cabinet.  Cranking it on, it brought on a voice.

“…doing our best to be civil, but this is infrastructure that we built.  Working class Americans, born right, born patriots, we laid this groundwork, our fathers and forefathers built this for us.  Expect more of this, if you don’t turn over control, if you don’t stop taxing us, if you…”

He turned it off.

“Civil Warriors,” he told Mia.  “Power and phones, TV and radio.”

She looked relieved.  It wasn’t Cavalacantis.

“Looks like power is already starting to come on in places, and I think we have more serious things to worry about.”

Mia’s eyes had a lot of emotion.

“Tyr stole all my french fries while I was away from the table.”

He’d delivered the line right.  Both Ripley and Valentina laughed.  Tyr, his mouth full of fries, nearly choked, as he laughed to himself.  Carson thumped his back.  There were some lingering smiles, even though that.  Even from Mia.

Big win.

⯁

The rambling messages on the radio were still going when he started the drive, multiple men who recited their speeches, sometimes prepared, sometimes just guys taking their minutes of fame.  All signing off with the ‘we’re being civil, you wouldn’t like us if we got angry’ tagline.  So he plugged his phone in and put a playlist on.  He wasn’t good with silence, or stillness, unless it was a shared silence or stillness.

It was dark, and he’d gone to check on Valentina’s family.  To Ripley, that sounded like he was checking on her mom, who wasn’t doing very well.  But no, Highland needed a break, and the prisoners needed care.  Tyr was in bed, and the girls could look after themselves.  Mia was up and about, even if she was still not at one hundred percent.

The morning would be a better day for her, he figured.  It was more likely to be one if she didn’t spend time on the computer, brimming with stress.

He was turning onto the rural road when the phone rang.

“Phone, answer,” Carson said.

“Trouble,” Mia said.

“What kind of trouble?”

“The soldier.  Got a call.”

Highland?

Who was at the destination they were driving to?

“What kind of call?”

“An offer.  He said yes.  Lied.”

“We thought this might happen.”

“Yeah.”

She hated being like this.  Vulnerable.  Halting.

“Could it be a triple cross?”

“Mmm… Could.”

She didn’t sound very sure, but tone of voice got weird when she was this nonvocal.

“Thanks for the heads up.  I love you.”

Silence on the other end, as Carson drove past a farm, then another.

“Yeah.  Don’t jinx this.”

“Yeah,” he said, smiling a bit.  “Sorry.”

“Same here.”

She said it with more meaning and emotion.  Like it wasn’t just the sorry she was saying ‘same’ to.  Jinxing things herself, implying an ‘I love you’ so close to a dangerous situation.

What were the odds that Highland could be planning something?  If he knew they were watching and listening to everything, it might make sense to do it.

They’d anticipated all of this.  That Cavalcanti, having effectively tortured the contact, might have extracted all the information he could out of the man.  All of the people the contact had relocated.  The ones he’d kept.

There was a reason they’d gone to Highland, Bolden and the Angel of Death, over some others.  They were more Mia’s than the contact’s.  The contact didn’t know about some, and others were early enough into things that Mia had more of a role or relationship.

It was amusing that she regretted interfacing as much with Highland as she had, to the point that it had shaped a lot of her personal rules going forward, but it was only because of that interaction that she could call him now, and trust him with stuff like their prisoners in the shelter.

Carson drove toward the bunker with the three prisoners, but stopped short of actually parking outside.

Routine was death, in situations like this.  Routine was something that criminals loved, whether they were house burglars, serial killers, or traitors.

Mia trusted Highland and Carson trusted Mia.  She was paranoid about everything, but she’d let Highland come this far, see this much.

So Carson broke routine.  He parked by the side of the road, then cut through trees.  It took ten minutes to make the walk.

The abandoned house was by a path that ran beneath some old transfomer towers, that had once carried a lot of power from a nearby hydroelectric plant toward the city.  The most traffic this place usually got was a farmer with a dog, going for a daily walk.

They timed things so they wouldn’t run into him.

Now there were people out there.  Carson could see a flashlight.  Across that grassy, overgrown-with-weeds patch that had the old transformer towers, by the treeline on the far side.

It coudn’t be easy, could it?  If he wanted to communicate with Mia, the way to do it would be a message sent from inside the bunker.  But he couldn’t go straight to the bunker because of that five percent chance Highland could be an issue.

Was he meant to go after them first, or deal with the Highland situation first?

One had a… seventy percent chance of being an issue.  Maybe it was teenagers.  But would it be teenagers, tonight, out of all nights?  When they’d gone years using this place without seeing anyone?

Mia had even checked on nights they weren’t keeping prisoners, to make sure everything was in line.  They’d done regular maintenance.  They’d come down to expand from the initial single cell to three- a fourth nearly done.

Five percent chance, Carson figured, that Highland was an issue.

He chose the five percent chance.  Still breaking routine, he approached the dilapidated building from behind, slipping between tree and the side of the building.  A window had broken long ago, glass lost in the dirt and overgrown weeds, and Carson climbed through- nearly making a racket because the same weather that had cracked the glass had also let water into the windowsill, rotting it.

Gun drawn, he cut through the property, toward the garage.

Movement.

Carson raised his weapon.

“I’m here,” Highland said.

Carson let eyes adjust further to the darkness.  Highland sat by his parked car, back to the bumper.  Approaching from the angle he was, Carson could see the man from the side.

“Why are you up here?”

“Because I knew you’d be wary, and I thought the best place to be here would be sitting in plain view, hands in sight.  No worrying about turning your back to me or me being around your car while you’re down in the tunnels.  You can watch me as much as you want to watch me.”

“Spooked me, man.”

“Yeah.  That’s it.  Did our friend on the phone call?”

“Yeah.”

“So you know why I’m being cautious.”

“Yeah.  There are people outside.”

“No shit?”

“Across the way.”

“Cameras were pretty much clear.”

“Pretty much?”

“Wild animals, we think?”

Carson frowned.

“Want to go and check?”

Carson studied the man.

“You can cuff me to the car, if you want.  Or anything here.”

“Why does she trust you?” Carson asked.

“Heavy question, all of a sudden.  I’ve wondered the same about you.  There’s an energy or rhythm you two have.”

“Turning the question back on me?”

“No.  Stating facts.  Putting it out there.”

Highland’s pride had stood out on first meeting, then had tempered, as each of them had settled into their roles within a working operation.  Now it felt like that pride was back up again.  The man looked very average, except for being more fit than most, dressed simply, jeans and a tee.

“I can explain, but I don’t want to delay.  If we’re in danger-?” Highland asked.  He’d made it a question.

“Solid chance.”

“You can keep a gun on me.  I’ll put mine aside.”

Carson nodded.

Max put his gun on the wheel of the car, then stepped away, going to the hatch.  Carson watched as he input the code, watched him climb down the ladder, and saw the man stand, leaning forward, hands against the wall.

Carson climbed down with one hand, two feet, and a gun trained on the man.

“I can’t peg your age,” Highland said.  “Were you paying attention when the first dominoes fell?”

“Twin dominoes?” Carson asked.

“Yeah.”

“I was a kid.  Didn’t pick up much.”

“Me either.  But my family made me watch, made me pay attention.  Towers, Pentagon, Superbowl, Actihal and Cheklem.”

“Yeah.  Kept on coming.”

“Didn’t stop, then the Mandate dropped, family had me convinced.  Went overseas, fought.”

He moved to the side so Carson could verify the cameras and check the coast was clear on the other side of the door.  Carson motioned, and he put in the numbers.

“Then the fighting kicked off at home.  They deployed military against our own citizens.  Me included.  Rumors started exploding, about government agencies creating special squads and units.  Picking out top soldiers.”

“You?” Carson asked.

“No.  Hah.  I’m not that good.  It was agencies watching other agencies.  Government creating guys to clean up messes, guys to watch those guys.  Everyone wanted a new last line of defense, covering others.  Which is how you get guys like the one who took a run at the president earlier this month, bypassing the secret service.”

“Yeah.  How do you fit into that?”

Highland sat at the couch and opened the laptop.  “When that started coming out, I lost faith.  They weren’t letting people quit, so I rebelled, got a dishonorable discharge.  Fined.  Did work on the side.  Hired gun, very careful, thorough guy who can do what you need done.  Billed myself as a private investigator for a while, but I wasn’t good at the investigation part.  Then someone thought my warning was a bluff, pushed it.  I shot him.”

Carson remained silent.

“How much of that did you already know?” Highland asked, looking over his shoulder.

“Most.”

Highland smiled.  “Losing faith, you stop caring.  I think I didn’t mind if I pushed things and took a bullet.”

“Been there.”

“I believe you.”

The laptop had finished waking up, and the feed now showed the trail cameras from above.

“Reaching for my phone,” Highland said.  “I took a note of the times.”

“Sure.  Slow.”

“We crossed paths.  Her and I.  She offered me a new life.  Asked for information, wanted to know me.  Asked me some personal questions.  I thought we had a similar way of looking at the world.  I was in a place, I was looking for an excuse, an answer.  If someone had realized I was in that place, found an in, and gave me a good enough reason and a good enough target?  I’d have given my life trying.  She realized, there was an in, and she didn’t use me to her advantage.”

“A connection?” Carson asked.

“Yeah.”

He didn’t like that.  It wasn’t the kind of answer he’d wanted.

Now he felt like he wanted Highland to give him an excuse to shoot.

“I don’t know if it was one way or not,” Highland said.  “It felt like we were similar.  We talked for longer than necessary, she helped me figure things out.  Sent me on my way.  Last thing I- second last thing I said to her, besides ‘bye’, was I owed her.  If she wanted me to stay by her side, I would.  She said no.”

“Yeah.”

“I still owe her.  I wish I knew why I wasn’t good enough.”

The time input, the video feed stopped on an image.

They were moving too fast to easily make out.  They were animals- wolves?  Dark ones?  Coyotes?

Highland, without being asked, moved through the video frame by frame.

It didn’t help to do more than give a suggestion of a shape.

“Overhead map?”

“Where’s that?”

“Directory, screens.  Anything from A to F.  Copy that and put it in a paint program.”

Highland did.

Carson put his gun away.

“You trust me now?”

“I believe you.  You were too similar.  That’s the easy answer.  Different skills, but if she needed someone who thinks like her, she’d rely on herself, instead,” Carson said.

“What’s the not-easy answer?”

“That she respects you and she didn’t respect me, and that gave me the chance to get closer.  Then she got used to me,” Carson lied.

Highland seemed to take that in, digesting it.

The man sighed, relaxing some.

Reading Highland, Carson knew there were two big possibilities, after a story like that.  That the man was jealous, and he’d be upset, more willing to act, or that something had been put to rest.

Highland was the latter, Carson decided.  The man had skills but he wasn’t subtle enough to pull off something like that.

With the paint program open and the image on the big television, Carson went from looking at the laptop screen with the security feeds, to moving his finger along the image on the television.  With a few false starts on placement, Highland drew out some triangles.

“That’s what the cameras can see,” Carson said.  And here…”

He touched a spot to the side of one triangle.  Highland drew an ‘x’.

“Was where I saw people.  Flashlight, briefly.  Dark shapes.”

“And our freeze frame…” Highland stopped, drawing out a dotted line.

Roughly right.

A group of people, on the trees, away from the trail cameras here.  Dark shapes had raced this way, then scattered, taking less direct routes back, crossing the view of the cameras.

“Dogs,” Highland said.

“He wanted access to our cameras, from the earlier job, not to watch through them in case his daughter passed, but for us to leave them up so he could study them.  He got some lead on us, found some way to know we were here, sent men out with dogs and a means of spotting the video cameras.  Even with careful placements.”

“There are tools,” Highland said.  “I’ve seen them in use.  You think the dogs spotted us?”

“No sound on those cameras.  You hear any barking when down here?”

“Nah, but you don’t hear anything from up there, when you’re down here.”

Carson’s heart rate was picking up, in a way it hadn’t, when he’d been in the house with Bolden and the target, or when he’d been close to an explosive, his hands slippery as he worked with the wire.

Maybe it was being down here.  He had a natural restlessness, and being trapped, in a bad situation, while also being underground, seemed to have an effect on his nerves.

“How the hell did he find this place?” Carson asked.

“I know one way to find out,” Highland replied.

“Yeah.”

Were the dogs here to track?  What smells were they tracking?  The three girls in the cells?

Valentina?

Carson armed himself.  Then he took over at the laptop.

Prisoners were secure.  Needs met- except for tonight’s shower.  That was Carson’s job, to schedule.  The usual plan was that he’d give them a heads up, drop the shutter in front of the camera that was safely on the side of plexiglass in the corner, and give them fifteen minutes each, one at a time.  He’d double check they were fed, that everything was secure, stay the night, and then feed them before trading shifts with Highland again.  Then he’d sleep through the rest of the morning, until noon.

Now this.

The reason he’d taken over at the laptop was that he needed to send a message to Mia.

Phone plugged in.  He loaded up a photo of a bar with a silly name, then typed up the message.  Letting her know they were compromised, that Davie was anticipating the cameras, now.

That things were bad.

Fuck.  Fuck fuck fuck.

How?

Why would Davie know about this place, but not be sending a small army to their home?

It felt like the same questions kept coming up.  First with Natalie Teale and Ben.  ‘Io’.  Then Davie.

Was the answer the same?  Could it be something stupid like maybe he or Mia were sleepwalking, going to the nearest computer, and giving people selective information.

Silly.

Could it be Valentina?

Dark thought, that.

But he put that question into the message and then let the program run.  The message was encoded into the image, hidden in pixels.  Metadata would be updated.  Mia could get it, then unpack it.

He sent it to her.

Highland left.  As he closed the door and went to the hatch, red lights went on above various doors.  Only one door could open at a time.  The override was complicated.

If Highland wanted to tie Carson up for ten minutes, he could leave the hatch open.

He didn’t.  The hatch closed.

Carson prepared himself, getting a rifle out of a locked cabinet, then stood, passing through the tunnel door, then the hatch.  He eased it shut, wary of dogs, now.

Other noise had drawn their attention.  Gunshots.

Highland was not Bolden, their survivalist who hunted people in the woods with a bow or with a crossbow.  Highland found an opening and took it, flanking the group they’d marked on the map with an ‘x’.

More gunshots- a flurry.  Dogs barked.  One howled.

Carson, setting up in the window, waited.

All the commotion drew others running.  They stopped caring as much about the trail cameras, but some took longer routes, dipping into the woods where the camera’s view was best.

They know.  They’re finding out too much.

Highland was still shooting.  He ran into a fresh group, and the gunshots took on a different tone.

Carson moved slowly, leveling the rifle with the barrel pointed out the window.

Dark woods, dark transformer towers, now without transformers or wires between them.  A dark, overcast sky, dark gray over black trees and field.

Dark shapes, moving against that backdrop.  Carson had a clear shot, but decided to wait.

Because the moment he shot, he became a target.

Highland, moving through the edge of the woods, made no mistakes that Carson could see.  Gave no clear opportunity to aim a gun at him and get lucky with the way the bullet traveled.

Carson settled in, watching through the scope as Highland worked.  The dogs ran from the violence, reached another group of Cavalcanti soldiers, and hid behind the group.  Even from a distance, Carson could see floppy ears move back and forth, wrinkled foreheads and expressions changing, heads tilting, as they struggled to make sense of what was happening.  Around them, more men converged on Highland’s point.

He doesn’t even think he’s that good?  That there are people out there so much better than him that he laughs?

Maybe it was a weird thing to focus on, when it was all crumbling around them.  Davie knew too much, and they didn’t know how he knew.

Carson waited until they were settling into their positions before he picked his first target, aimed the bolt-action rifle, and fired.

He wasn’t a sniper.  But he’d fired rifles before, and he had plenty of friends whose good time was a visit to the range.

He aimed for groups first.  Where a stray would hit someone else.

How did he get us?

We’re going to have to move the prisoners, Carson thought.  And that gets a thousand times harder when we don’t have the security of this bunker and the three rooms.  Captives are a special sort of hell to manage.

Exhale.  Squeeze.

Fire.

They were wholly focused on Max Highland, and left flanks exposed.  Carson shot, reloaded, then shot again, over and over, picking out the best targets he could.

At this distance, with his aim, in this lighting, with erratic targets and some tree cover, he didn’t hit reliably.  But three different men dropped to the ground, and unless it was coincidence, it was Carson’s bullets that had dropped them.

More than anything, it gave Highland more space to do what he did best: damage.  No fuss, no muss, no complications- one minor suspicion they’d cleared up already.  A reliable gun.

Answering fire came, in the direction of the house so Carson pulled back, taking cover behind the car.

He changed locations, then fired- one shot at the nearest target.  He didn’t even wait or stop to see if he’d hit his target.

New location again.

His phone was buzzing, and he took the moment to check it, just in case.  He caught one word before a bullet pinged off a piece of metal above him and made him flinch.

He put the phone away.

Satellites.

Theory?  Fact?  Or the only reasonable conclusion?

He’d joked about it once, he didn’t remember when, but it had come up.  She’d said that good satellite was the realm of government, military, and big corporations.  Did the possibility there was now some connection mean Davie Cavalcanti made more sense?  Or did he make less?  How high and how far was this man reaching?  How had he done this?

Carson’s thoughts on the subject were cut off by several men with assault rifles unloading on the abandoned building from multiple directions.

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