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  “Well, I actually can guess why she passed out,” Smith said with the same in-control voice she used during Jo’s counseling sessions, “It’s the same reason she needs to rest now. Of course you’ll need to speak to my patient, but that will have to wait. You see, one of the things the pharmic implant does is act as a governor on her parasympathetic nervous system. Too much adrenaline can actually affect the therapy. It can cause hallucinations, torpidity, even unconsciousness, as the implant fights to keep the right chemical balance in her bloodstream. Of course, I won’t know for sure until I examine the pharmic’s telemetry later. Give me some time to collect data and I’ll be able to give more specific answers.”

  “I’m standing right here, doc.” Jo said, “I can completely hear all of this—watch out lest you shatter your brittle flower with your harsh adult talk.”

  Smith’s shoulders hunched slightly and her head lowered; this was all that Jo could see of her wince from behind. Then Smith gave a short laugh and turned around to fix Jo with the concerned look of consternation Jo knew a thousand ways to evoke. “Jo, your pharmic implant has only a certain capacity to produce the chemicals you need to stay balanced… I’m worried we’re taxing that capacity tonight. Please, get some rest and we’ll make everything right in the morning.”

  Smith must have seen a twinkle in Jo’s eye because she raised the Stern Finger between them. And with that, Jackie led Jo toward her car.

  “I’ll be in touch!” the detective called after them as they moved away.

  ***

  New York City, October 15, 2020 9:14pm

  Awake. Like a switch had been thrown, the electronic beep brought Xian to a state of instant tense awareness. Dimness around him—light from the green face of a clock on the nightstand, blue-white city lights from the edges of the blind drawn over the hotel room window. Movements of the traffic outside could be guessed by the low, shifting light on walls and ceiling. For a second, the silence was broken only by his breathing, then by the second beep from his tablet on the nightstand.

  Sheets ruffled, one smooth movement, and he was sitting on the edge of the bed, the tablet expanded in his hands.

  He glanced quickly at the clock on the nightstand: 9:33pm. He was still lagged from the transcontinental this morning, but he’d make do with the two hours of sleep he’d had.

  The tablet chirped as the connection opened, “Scramble alpha-one.” a male voice said from the tablet.

  “Confirm. Alpha one.” Xian said, swiping at the tablet until he heard the series of tones that told him that the correct encryption was active.

  “We’ve located one of our lost Falcons.” The voice on the line was colored slightly by the encryption.

  “Which one?” Xian asked, eyes ticking involuntarily wider.

  “It’s her, in Chicago.”

  “That’s a long way from where we lost her. Sighted, locked, or already resolved?”

  “We caught some chatter on the police band before they shut everything down.”

  “So she’s in custody. Wait, hunt or snatch?”

  “Snatch. We’ve got eyes on her now and she’s still only lightly guarded. We’ve only got two teams of Falcons in the area, but we’ve got a hypersonic ten minutes out from you and we’re mobilizing Delta and another two teams from the east coast. The first two teams will be onsite but still under the hood when you arrive. We need to pull this off quickly, before they move her somewhere we can’t follow… they’ve got to at least suspect that she’s been discovered. Where’s the best place for the extraction?”

  “Roof of the Hotel Alonso, my current GPS coordinates.”

  There was a slight pause, then “Transport will be on-site in eight minutes. Confirm.”

  “Confirm.” Xian said, closing the tablet and reaching for the pistol on the nightstand.

  ***

  Chicago, October 15, 2020 10:17pm

  Jo slouched in the back of the cab, face turned to the window. Outside the window, the world stuttered between light and darkness as they navigated the streets and tunnels of the city. Black, bright, black: the window strobed between the passing city lights and an empty darkness with only her weary reflection staring back from the dark glass.

  When Jackie realized her keys had been stolen along with everything else, she’d had Smith call them a cab. Jackie sat on the other side of the back seat, a chillpack pressed to her face to keep the swelling around her nose and left eye down. She seemed pensive, like she’d just been mugged and knocked unconscious recently. Jo spared her the discomfort and didn’t try to start a conversation.

  As Jo turned back to her window and her flickering reflection, she realized that she wanted to talk, but not about their shared trauma—she wanted to talk again about the movie, the weather, the school… anything normal. As for the disturbing hallucinogenic violence that had been the capstone of their evening, Jo was concerned, but didn’t want to dwell on it. It happened, it was over, they’d lived—she wanted to talk more about the annoying (or not) dog in the movie, about the nature of love, about their friendship, the flavor of popcorn… whatever.

  From time to time, Jo would look surreptitiously at Jackie, hoping to catch her eye so she could nod reassuringly or something. Jackie looked miserable. She wasn’t crying but she was covering her face with the chill pack more than necessary. To Jo’s inexperienced eye, she looked ashamed, like maybe she’d cry later when she was alone. The thought of her only friend crying alone made Jo sad. Jo knew all about crying alone.

  A strange empathy almost made Jo reach out to take Jackie’s hand or touch her shoulder, but uncertainty stopped her. Turning back to the window and her intermittent reflection, Jo waited in the disappointment of fear and inaction. What kind of person would put her own comfort above that of a friend in trouble?

  The cab turned to the right and they passed from a broad street lined with brightly-lit upscale retail establishments to a side street with smaller, more dimly lit shops and restaurants. The pattern of light and darkness outside her window changed from a shifting and prevalent light to one of prevalent darkness and intermittent light as they passed the wider-spaced and lower powered streetlamps.

  The cab passed these dim islands of electric light like a swimmer diving from a twilight beach into a dark ocean filled with only her drowning reflection on the inside or the window’s glass.

  In this murky dark, Jo tried to look past her reflection, staring deeply into the glass as if she were trying to see the bottom of a midnight lake. She locked her focus on the mercurial shapes of sidewalk and darkened storefronts. Though her eyes seemed capable of penetrating the gloom, she couldn’t completely ignore her reflection in the cab’s window. As the islands of light in the oceans of darkness continued to pass, she tried to avoid both Jackie and herself.

  Fade: The entry to a sparsely populated restaurant slid away and her reflection returned. Hollow eyes fading with the coming of the next light.

  Fade: A lonely bus stop at the center of a pool of cold light slid away and she again saw herself, materializing from the darkness, black eyes deeper pools of shadow.

  Bloom: An upended partially melted trash can lay in the rubble of a cratered street, a woman in dark, minimal armor lay sprawled on the street, bleeding.

  Jo started from her reverie, newly focusing eyes trying to capture this strangely familiar scene, but the vista was already fading like a dream—like the memory of a dream.

  As the light and the scene it revealed slid away, her reflection returned with a harsh new focus, as if it had been etched in blood on the inside of the cab’s window with a frozen razor. Hard eyes glistened in the space between a black helmet and an armored mask. Smoke and fire in the shadows around her, its destruction reflected in laughing eyes. The eyes—her eyes—stared back, slightly creased at the corners by a smile Jo knew hid behind the mask.

  Jo didn’t scream, but her jump was pronounced enough to rouse Jackie. “What? You okay, Jo?”

  Jo’s hands were on her
face, part cover, part tactile assurance that she hadn’t grown a military style helmet/mask combo. Ok, maybe she’d made a small squeak when first startled. Jackie didn’t give up. “Uh… Jo, what’s wrong?”

  Jo gave her reflection a sidelong glance; sure enough, she hadn’t suddenly grown a helmet. She swallowed hard, “Well, you know how I’m a drug abuser…”

  “Very funny, Jo. What’s wrong?”

  “Well, it’s just possible that I’m freaking out.”

  “You want I should take you to the hospital?” their unusually solicitous cabby asked, looking back at them through the mirror.

  Jackie sounded a bit too serious, “Just get us home.” and then Jo saw her shake her head slightly out of the corner of her eye as Jackie and the cabby seemed to share a meaningful stare through the mirror.

  Weird, Jo thought, but out loud she said, “Just hallucinating again… man, teenagers are the only people stupid enough to pay for this kind of experience… it sucks.”

  “What did you see, honey?” Jackie put a hand on Jo’s shoulder. “Remember, you’re with friends.”

  “Yeah, at the Hatter’s tea party… no, you may not have my watch.”

  “What?”

  “Old movie. I think it may have been a book first.”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind. So, other than the robbery and the dark hallucinations, I had fun tonight. Thanks for forcing me to come out.”

  Jackie’s smile almost made it to laughter. She shook her head, rolling her eyes, “It’s not usually so exciting, you know. Mostly it’s just the food and the movie and some idle conversation.”

  “Yeah, one hundred percent of my girls’ night out experience argues against your evaluation.”

  “You’ve been spending too much time with Dr. Smith.” Jackie shook her head again, “Nobody uses the word ‘evaluation’ in polite conversation—nobody—and your lack of experience is no excuse.”

  Jo laughed, “Sorry.”

  “Don’t let it happen again.” Jackie’s eyes again returned to the road before them, “Oh, Alice in Wonderland, right?”

  Jo nodded, realizing that she felt much better. “You know, the most disturbing part wasn’t the robbery…”

  “Yeah, because you slept through it!” Jackie chided, reapplying the chill pack to her face “Try being beaten unconscious next time.”

  “Ha! Right!” Jo resisted the urge to punch Jackie in the shoulder, “No, seriously, the worst part is finding out I’m sicker than I thought.”

  “Because of the hallucinations?”

  “Yeah, partly. But, well… for months now, I’ve been fighting for my memory, to regain who I was, so my life could, you know… resume. Now I find out I’ve got a little machine inside me that’s keeping me awake, maybe keeping me sane… or not totally crazy, or whatever… and sometimes knocking me out when I get too excited… that’s just weird, by the way.” Jo shook her head to clear it, “Now I find out that I might lose who I am right now, that if this little machine doesn’t do its job perfectly, I might slide back into a coma. It sucks to find out I might spend the rest of my life wasting away, forgotten in some hospital bed.” That last thought filled Jo with an anxiety so deep she felt it as a tingle in her fingers, toes, and at the nape of her neck. She shivered.

  “The rest of my life in bed,” Jackie said airily, “some mornings, that sounds great.”

  Jo lost her internal battle and punched Jackie playfully in the shoulder. “Ow!” Jackie said, rubbing her shoulder.

  “Do not toy with the mental patient!” Jo said playfully, “I’m fragile.”

  “Yeah, that was a pretty fragile iron fist.” Jackie hooked a thumb at herself, “beaten unconscious tonight already, remember?”

  “So very girly.” Jo said with faux condemnation. “Didn’t mean to bruise the little princess… ow!” Jo rubbed her own shoulder where Jackie’s fairly intense punch had landed.

  “Are we okay back there?” The cabby said into the laughter from the back seat.

  ***

  The whispercraft hung in the air, still and silent as a hovering wasp. Its two-man cockpit was illuminated only by the muted red light of the instruments. The craft’s operating lights and navigation beacons were illegally disabled and it hung, hidden in the night sky above Chicago’s near north side.

  “Cab ID number TX-594, check. I’ve got the cab sighted.” The spotter said into his helmet comm, “They’re moving west now and are vectoring toward the intercept… four blocks out.” At this altitude, he didn’t need the craft’s telescopic cameras or image enhancers to pick out the yellow cab with the letters and numbers stenciled on the roof. The spotter spared a glance at the pilot and smiled; the pilot nodded fractionally… no way their mark was getting away tonight.

  “Stay high and maintain visual contact until the intercept.” Xian said from the radio, his voice clipped by the deep encryption that secured the channel, “Intercept set. We’re unhooding the Falcons. Advise immediately if the target changes course. Confirm.”

  “Hawk one: confirm.” The pilot grunted.

  ***

  Stillness, darkness, then a subtle squawk of static. Dim red lights bloomed in the back of the brown panel van, revealing four armored men in harnesses, their eyes still closed in the crimson dimness, their weapons locked into mounts next to them. Three solemn electronic tones filled the air, eyelids twitched. “Victory is life.” The four sleepers mumbled in a dreamy unison, still not stirring in their sleep.

  Another deep tone filled the air, a digital representation of a church bell.

  “Give us fire! Through its fury we keep ourselves from darkness. We will bear it with focus. We will burn until we conquer. Victory is life!” The sleepers chanted in unison, their voices clear, their crisp diction a veneer of discipline over their giddy excitement. Their eyelids twitched, but did not yet open.

  The simulated bell tolled again and the sleepers’ eyes snapped open in unison, “Victory is life!” they chanted with an expectant fervor, half a child at the gates of Disneyland, half faithful acolyte at the gates of heaven. “Victory is life!”

  A pneumatic hiss, a metallic clunk, and the restraints on the men and their weapons disengaged.

  “Victory is life!” the liturgy ended and the Falcons busied themselves readying weapons and checking equipment

  ***

  “Intercept one in position.” The woman in the Cadillac a block away from the brown panel van said into the microphone inside her collar. She rechecked the pistol holstered under her blouse in the small of her back, then the MP77 submachine gun clipped to the inside of the driver’s door. She put the car in drive and wrapped her hands around the wheel, trying to keep the tension out of her grip.

  ***

  Xian stood in the small, open booth of the bus stop, far from sleep now. Though he’d spent almost an hour in the supersonic whispercraft, organizing this operation had consumed all of his time. It had been a scramble, but now all the pieces were in place and they were as ready as they could get quickly.

  His eyes moved over the landscape again, looking for anything that might prove an impediment to the mission. There were only a few cars and no pedestrians on the street. Half a block away, Jayda fidgeted in the Cadillac. Half a block beyond her, the traffic signal moved from yellow to red, then quickly back to green as their tech checked the hack. Around the corner, hidden by a low building, the dark van with the Falcons idled.

  “Falcon team Echo unhooded. Weapons check complete. We’re ready.” The handler said through the commlink.

  The sun had long ago abandoned the sky and a deep velvet black had settled in its place above. The streets were damp and the air was fresh with recently departed rain. This was the brink, the best part of the mission. The slow, ordered burn of planning and preparation was behind, the rush of violence, the art of chaos was ahead, and he was fixed between the two, pulled taut with anticipation. He felt like an Olympic skier, perfectly trained and capable at the top of a world
class slope, just waiting for the go—waiting to become for a few sweet moments what he was made to be.

  “Hawk one.” crackled in everyone’s ears, “Target visible in fifteen seconds.”

  Adrenaline, or what passed for it in his system, spiced Xian’s blood and brain—first the tingle, then the luxurious calm. Twenty yards away, a bird floated slowly through the cool night air. Xian counted the flickers of the slowly oscillating streetlight as the seconds crawled by. He keyed his comm, “We’re live. Remember people: this is a snatch, not a hit. They’ve got her muzzled so she shouldn’t be a threat, but stay sharp. It’s not every day you get to meet a legend.”

  His comm clicked off as the cab pulled around the corner.

  ***

  Chicago, 2119

  Ash sat on her couch, eyes glazing as much as gazing at the video screen on the far wall of the small living room. On the screen, a cartoon mouse was using an oversized wooden mallet to inflict grievous bodily harm on a gray tomcat. Long ago the limited fare available on the vids had ceased to entertain her, but at least they filled her small apartment with a little light and sound, and most importantly, distraction. Around the vid’s cartoons, her graying white walls spread, windowless, to the limits of her peripheral vision. Here and there along the walls were small pieces of uninspired furniture: a dresser, a mismatched end table— at the limits of her vision to the left, a sliver of her kitchen table was visible.

  Time passed. Her breath went in and out, the mouse raised and lowered his mallet, stars filled the screen, cries of innocent pain filled the air.

  At least she was training with Phoenix again, so she was only home a tolerable amount of time these days. Even training in the dim non-league simulations was a welcome distraction from this dead place. Training missions lacked the encompassing joy of motion and sensation of league play, but at least she could feel her fingers and toes, feel the weight of weapons and armor, feel the distant burn of exertion as she put her digital body through the training regimes on the track, at the gym, the shooting range, and in mock weapons battles with other teams.