CHAPTER 9

As all of Sera has learned, peace is fragile. This new, ruthless enemy has rendered most of Sera’s leaders either helpless or dead. This enemy believes Sera is finished. Some in the Coalition of Ordered Governments also seem to believe Sera is finished—a sick, feeble animal waiting for slaughter. But today, citizens of Sera, we—Tyrus, the heart of the Coalition—will take back our planet. To ensure your safety and cooperation, we are reinstating the Fortification Act. All of Sera will be under martial law. No one is exempt. Survivors should immediately start evacuating to Ephyra. These unclean creatures, these Locust, are unable to penetrate Jacinto’s granite base. Therefore, in Jacinto, we are safe—for now. We won’t let this rampage go further or surrender power. The Coalition will employ Sera’s entire arsenal of orbital beam weapons to scorch all Locust-infested areas. For those citizens who cannot make it to Jacinto, the Coalition appreciates your sacrifice. Please forgive us. This is the only way. (CHAIRMAN RICHARD PRESCOTT, 30TH DAY OF BLOOM, 1 A.E.)

VEHICLE CHECKPOINT, EPHYRA-KINNERLAKE HIGHWAY, 30TH DAY OF BLOOM, 1 A.E., MINUTES AFTER CHAIRMAN PRESCOTT’S

ANNOUNCEMENT.

There was no such thing as a good time or place to hear news like that.

Dom wished that he hadn’t been among civvies at the time. The squad had walked all night along the side of the highway, loaded with salvaged kit from the dead ’Dill, and now they’d reached the bridge over the Tyra River. It was paved with traffic at a complete standstill.

Someone had a radio turned up to full volume, the sound spilling from the open door of a car stopped in the traffic. Dom was caught among people who expected Gears to know what was happening. They looked at him for answers. He had none to give.

“Did we hear right?” a woman whispered. She put her hand on his arm and shook it gently, as if she thought his mind was elsewhere “It’s got to be a mistake. Surely? They can’t mean it. They’ll kill people. What happens to our homes?”

Dom had been leaning on the safety rail of the highway bridge, looking down onto the river, when he heard the broadcast news conference. The words entire arsenal of orbital beam weapons hit him with their full force a minute or so after he heard them. He found himself staring at the glittering reflections of the sun on the water, and every starburst point of light was now etched into his memory. Things were bad, but he’d had no idea how bad. I have to call Maria. I have to get to a phone.

“Ma’am, I don’t know any more than you do.” The woman had her hands cupped over her mouth as she looked up at him, shocked and helpless; how the hell could anyone take in what Prescott had just said? He couldn’t. “It’ll be okay. You’re not far from Ephyra now. You’ll make it.”

“But I don’t want to go to Ephyra,” she said. “I live in New Sherrith. What am I going to do about my son?

He’s in Soteroa.”

The South Islands were on the other side of Sera. Unless the guy had a private aircraft—and that was a privilege even the richest on Sera had been forced to hand over to the war effort—then the poor bastard was weeks away by boat.

If he can get passage at all.

Shit, this is it.

“Ma’am, it’s going to be fine.” Dom knew he was probably lying, but what the hell else could he say? That her son was screwed? “They know what they’re doing. If they didn’t think people could get to Ephyra, they wouldn’t have given them advance warning, would they?”

Dom looked around at the mass of people—scared, confused, unable to move. How the hell was everyone going to get to safety? He didn’t even want to think about it. The enormity would paralyze him and take his mind off what he had to do. He had his orders. He also had his mental list—unnumbered, unplanned, but if forced to recite it, he probably could—of people he would protect whatever the cost.

“Dom? Dom!” Marcus’s voice got his attention. He was on the opposite side of the stationary traffic with Tai and Padrick, talking to a transport sergeant. “Over here. Come on.”

The bombshell dropped by the broadcast was now spreading ripples. Not everyone had heard it live; not everyone had a radio with them. The news was being spread by word of mouth, car to car, truck to truck, person to person, and Dom had to wade through a sea of rising panic. At one point he looked across the bridge in the direction of the checkpoint and saw the Gears there under siege from pedestrians who had now abandoned their vehicles and were trying to cross on foot. The traffic jam was now becoming a permanent, fifty-meter-thick barricade of buses, trucks, and cars. Fuel rationing hadn’t stopped many from taking to the roads in the almost constant ebb and flow of refugees shifting from city to city after each Locust attack. And now that Prescott had announced the decision to smash Sera flat to stop the grubs, the refugee exodus to come would make today look like a minor inconvenience.

“Marcus! Marcus, you heard the announcement? Have you heard the goddamn announcement?”

Dom had to slide on his ass across the hood of a car stopped so close behind a bus that he couldn’t squeeze through. He felt the edge of his holster scrape the paintwork. The driver yelled at him, just a muffled noise with a lot of F s in it, but scratched paint was going to be the last of anyone’s problems. By the time Dom crossed four lanes of nose-to-tail vehicles, the transport sergeant was fending off pedestrians. He was right on the edge, poor bastard, and he looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. The name tab on his shirt said MENDEZ. He seemed to be trying to talk to Marcus in one breath and carry on a radio conversation with Control in the next. And anyone in uniform was now a magnet for terrified, confused, angry civilians who’d heard the world was ending in three days. He was trying to keep a man at bay with one hand, but the guy had a baby in his arms and he wanted answers right now.

“I have to clear this frigging road, sir,” Mendez kept saying. “We’ve already got a traffic jam ten klicks north because the grubs have trashed Andius. Now the bridge is blocked. You’ll have to wait. Don’t leave your car, okay? Don’t abandon it. I can’t get the traffic moving if you dump cars on the bridge. Do you understand?”

“What’s going to happen ?” The guy kept asking that over and over, not hearing a damn word Mendez said.

“Where am I going to go in Ephyra? My wife doesn’t know where I am.”

“Everyone on this road’s got the same problem, sir.” Mendez looked as if he wanted to manhandle him out of the way, but the guy had a baby, and that made everything awkward and emotional. “Look, go sit in your car. When the traffic starts moving again, you can drive straight into Ephyra.”

“Sir,” Marcus said, “give me your wife’s name and a number. I promise we’ll get a call through.”

He held out his hand, and when Marcus made a suggestion, even civvies took it as an order. It was the gravel voice and the steady blue stare, Dom thought, the weird combination of looking like a hard bastard while sounding like a guy you could always rely on.

The man fumbled for his wallet. Padrick helped him extract a business card and scribble details on it, then escorted him back to his car. Marcus watched, jaw muscle twitching.

“You’re good at fobbing them off,” Mendez said. “You should do my job. Now, I got to clear this bridge for military traffic, but you—”

“I meant it.” Marcus read the card, then slipped it inside his armor. “I’ll call her. Now, what do you mean, we have to wait for extraction? We got four pairs of willing hands here. What do you need done?”

“I got my orders, Fenix. Every crossing and VCP’s been told to hold you for pickup.”

“We haven’t been tasked for a mission. We’re just heading home. We can shift the abandoned vehicles.”

“Too late. I’ve flashed CIC and there’s a KR inbound. You’re going home, fast lane, Fenix.”

“Whose idea was that?”

“Hey, why ask me?”

Marcus rocked his head slightly as if he was weighing up something, then shrugged. “We can do something here. We have to clear this route, whether it’s for convoys or refugees. Just tell us what needs doing.”

“You could start driving vehicles or marshaling further back down the road, diverting vehicles onto the side roads. But you’re not going to have time.”

Dom could already hear the Raven approaching. They were getting out. He wondered how the people stranded here would feel when they saw Gears leaving right after the Chairman announced they had three days to get to safe ground before he fried the rest of Sera. He wondered if they’d be seriously pissed off at the Gears’ privilege, for once, getting a lift home out of this chaos while they were trapped here. And Maria’s stuck on her own right now. She watches the damn news channels all day. She’s heard this shit, and she doesn’t know where I am, and she’ll be going crazy with worry.

“My father’s fixed this,” Marcus said. “Why the hell doesn’t he leave things alone?”

“Hey, Marcus, it could be Hoffman. He might have a job for us. Wait and see.”

The Raven set down on the other side of the checkpoint in a parking area. The crew chief jumped out and called to Mendez. “Where’s Fenix?”

Mendez pointed; the crew chief beckoned. Pad and Dom squeezed through the gap, followed by Tai and Marcus, then ran at a crouch to avoid the rotors.

“Whoa, no, we’ve got one space.” The crew chief held up both hands. Dom could see the Raven was loaded to the deckhead with Gears. “Move it, Sergeant. Chairman’s request.”

“Not without my squad.”

“Look, I’m running a shuttle here and I’ve got a shitload of trips to cover with zero downtime in the next three days. Make your mind up.”

Marcus was standing right under the crew bay. One of the Gears leaned down and said something Dom didn’t catch, but Marcus shook his head. “Thanks, buddy, but I can’t let you do that.”

Marcus turned to walk away. Dom had a choice, as everyone did at times like this; he could bleed for strangers whose problems he couldn’t fix, or he could do something solid and real. He shoved Marcus hard so that he fell back on the deck of the Raven, struggling for a moment.

“Go!” Dom yelled at the crew chief. “Get him out. Now. Or he’ll never go.”

The crew chief went to slap a safety line onto Marcus’s belt, but he was already scrambling off the chopper, cursing a blue streak.

“Fuck that,” Marcus said. “I don’t leave my squad.”

Dom tried to block him. “Go.”

“You go, you’ve got a wife who needs you.”

“Just go. We’ll be okay.”

Marcus looked around and made for the cars, ignoring him completely. Dom could see he was heading for the guy with the baby. The crew chief was yelling not to piss around and waste time, and Dom went after Marcus, grabbing at his arm. Marcus shook him off and hauled the father from the car.

“Come on, get going.” Marcus reached into the passenger side to grab the bassinet, complete with sleeping baby. “Forget the car, citizen. You got a ride.”

“Hey, thanks, I—”

Marcus just marched the man up to the Raven and handed the baby to the crew chief. “One space, one passenger. Kids go free. Right?”

“My orders are to get you back, Sergeant.”

“And I’m pulling rank, Corporal. Civilian evac. Send my dad the bill.”

The crew chief strapped in the shocked, bewildered father. “Hey, buddy, you know who just saved your ass?”

he said. “Fenix, the war hero.”

Marcus ducked out of the Raven’s downdraft and the helicopter lifted clear. If he’d heard the word hero, he didn’t react, but Dom knew he hated the label. It didn’t seem to matter to him that people meant it. Padrick just looked at him. “You’re a fucking martyr, Sarge.”

“No, I’m a Gear.” Marcus leaned into the first empty car in the line and felt around for the key. “Our job is saving civvies. Anyway, I didn’t notice any of you jumping aboard, either. Shit. Dom, can you hotwire this wreck?”

“Sure thing.”

Dom didn’t feel so bad right then. The test of any man, his dad had told him, wasn’t how he behaved when things were going fine, but how he handled himself when the shit was up to his neck and rising. Marcus passed the Eduardo Santiago test every time. Dom tried to. He felt he had today; they all had. You’re right, Dad. And I miss you so much.

Dom fumbled under the dash and touched wires, and the car rumbled back to life. “Now all we have to do is make some space.”

“You say that like it’s going to be hard,” Padrick said, sliding into the driver’s seat. And Sera was going to be razed to the ground. Every time Dom forgot that, tied up in the physical effort of shunting cars and yelling at drivers who just wouldn’t follow the marshaling signals, it came back and slapped him, demanding attention.

No, it couldn’t be right. There had to be a mistake, a bluff, some shit even Marcus couldn’t guess at. Dom kept telling himself that right up to the time he saw the first of the convoy trucks rumbling down the shoulder that he’d cleared. This time he’d earned that ride home. He climbed over the tailgate and held out his hand to haul Marcus inside.

VICTOR HOFFMAN’S APARTMENT, EPHYRA, LATER THAT NIGHT.

Margaret never yelled.

Hoffman had often wished she would, because then he would have been able to gauge just how far he’d fallen from grace with her. But perhaps her complete silence was his answer. She stood at her desk in the study, phone wedged between ear and shoulder as she rummaged through the drawers. He stood in the doorway and tried to pick his moment.

“Natalie? Are you still there?” She was talking to her sister. “Damn, it’s taken me all day to get you … No, I don’t care, I know you’ve got casualties … Listen, Nattie … Please, Nattie, I’m serious, I’m coming down to Corren … Yes, I mean it. I’m coming to collect you. Stay at the hospital.”

Margaret laid the phone down again. She must have known he was behind her. But she just tidied the case folders on her desk, slipped them into the drawers, and locked them away. It took her a full five seconds to turn around and face him.

“I’ll get her on a COG transport,” he said, wanting to die of shame. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Oh, I do. Because I can’t trust you any longer.”

“I’m sorry.” He was; he regretted having to do it, so much that it hurt. “I am so, so sorry.”

She made an odd little strangled noise, as if she’d started to laugh and then lost the will to carry it through.

“Sorry? Fuck you, Victor. Fuck you and all your secret little cabals, holed up in your bunkers while the rest of the world dies.”

He’d rarely heard her swear in their entire marriage. He understood why the news had devastated her—she wouldn’t have been human if she’d taken it in stride—and he knew this fight was coming. He also knew that even if changing his mind could turn back the clock and make her respect him again, or even despise him a little less, that he’d still nod and say to Prescott that this had to be done.

“Don’t go down there, Margaret,” he said. “Please. The roads are at a standstill. You won’t get back in time, either of you.”

“And Nattie won’t make it out otherwise. And you knew.”

Hoffman could have begged forgiveness, or told her that it was Prescott’s decision, or that the best estimate now was that the Locust would reach Jacinto Plateau in ten days, probably sooner, in numbers that the whole army couldn’t stop. But there was no point.

“Yes, of course I damn well knew,” he snapped. “I’ve known for a week or more. And what would you have done if I’d told you?”

“Oh, if this is going to be the public-spirited lecture on not spreading panic, Victor, why don’t you switch on the goddamn TV and watch the panic now?”

“You’d have told Natalie. Then she’d have told her colleagues. She’d have tried to move patients early, and the whole thing would have been a hundred times worse, with numbers of refugees worldwide that we just couldn’t handle. And the enemy guessing what was coming, or even knowing, and concentrating on Ephyra—because once they take Ephyra, the human race is finished. Do you seriously think I would go along with this if I thought we weren’t facing extinction?”

Margaret held up her hands to shut him up. “I don’t want to hear this bullshit,” she said. “The longer I listen and try to believe the man I married might still be inside you, the later I’ll be to save someone who actually matters a damn to me.”

“So what’s it about, Margaret?” She couldn’t possibly make him feel like a bigger pile of shit than he already did. “Me not treating us as special cases who need to be saved when every other bastard has to take their chances, or destroying most of Sera? Spit it out, honey. I don’t quite know where the moral outrage is coming from.”

“I don’t have to justify my outrage to you.”

She snatched up her jacket and walked straight at him; he thought of just grabbing her and pushing her back, but that only turned the tide of a fight in movies. She wouldn’t suddenly see how he’d done a necessary thing, weep for her sister, and fall into his arms. She’d just spit in his face.

It had been a long time since she’d fallen into his arms at all. Hoffman stepped aside and followed her down the hall.

I can get her stopped at a checkpoint and turned around. Or detained. And she’ll curse and loathe me, but she won’t get killed, and then she can get on with life without me if she wants. He had a plan, then. She wouldn’t get far out of Ephyra anyway, even if all the traffic was heading into town. The intersections were blocked. She wouldn’t get off the Jacinto ramp, let alone reach Corren. Kill it to save it. Kill Sera, and humanity gets to survive. Kill our marriage, and she lives. Hoffman had traded one catastrophe against another all his army life. “If you want me to explain,” he said,

“it’ll all be clichés. This really is the lesser of two evils. For once, the numbers matter. Because one of them is zero.”

“No, you’re all murderers,” she said. “You must have known that millions wouldn’t be able to reach Ephyra. Not in days, maybe not even in weeks.”

“And I’ll have more deaths on my conscience if we don’t do this. In ten days, more or less, the grubs will be here. In this house. I’ve got nothing left to stop them, and we all know it.”

“Victor—shut up. Just shut up. You can’t argue this with me. You disgust me. This isn’t collateral damage. It’s mass murder. And you kept it from me. How in the name of God did you think I’d react?”

Hoffman gave up at that point. It wasn’t the bigger picture that was pissing her off. Whatever the bleeding hearts said about humanity and its suffering, the only pain they really felt, could feel, was for the faces they knew and would miss. Margaret had been lied to—he admitted it—and she wanted to save her sister. That was it. That was the level of distress he could understand.

“Shit, woman, you expected me to blow your brains out if the bastards got here,” he said. “And you’ve never once asked me how I feel when the body bags come back from the front line. And now you give me this shit when you don’t have a single fucking option to put in its place.”

“I’m going, Victor. I’m taking the car.”

“Are you waiting for me to physically stop you? Prove what a loving husband I am?”

Margaret stopped at the door. The hallway was long, High Tyran style with a dado rail on each side, and an overmantel mirror above the console table on the right. She reached for the car keys without looking. For a moment, her fingers tapped around on the polished table, groping for the key ring, but she wouldn’t take her eyes off him to look down and locate it.

It told him more about the state she was in than anything she’d said. She was completely terrified, disoriented, unable to cope. But she was Margaret, so she looked totally in control of the situation, except for that few seconds’ lapse.

“Would you stop the Hammer strike?” she asked. “Can you?”

He couldn’t make matters any worse, and the only lie he had ever told her in twenty years was by omission, keeping the destruction of Sera to himself.

“I can’t,” he said. “And I wouldn’t.”

“Fuck you, then,” she said, and closed the door behind her.

She didn’t even slam it.

Hoffman waited for a few minutes in case she came back, anger deflated, but he knew she wouldn’t. She meant what she said about getting her sister out of Corren. Natalie was an emergency doctor; she was always busy, and the chances of her voluntarily evacuating now were slim. Margaret would flash her ID card at checkpoints, use his name to bypass the lines, work her contacts. Hoffman had his uses.

“Shit,” he said. “Shit.”

There was nothing more he could do tonight except sleep so that he could function tomorrow, so he poured himself a drink, settled down in front of the TV—should he watch the news or not?—and picked up the phone to CIC.

“Control, I need a favor. Pass a message to all VCPs. My wife’s gone looking for her sister. I want her stopped and turned back—escorted, arrested, whatever it takes. And tell them to ignore her angry lawyer bullshit. Just get her back into Ephyra.”

He hoped it didn’t sound flippant. But it was better for everyone to think he was a callous bastard than to hear a man with a Hammer command key break down and sob.

Either way, the marriage would be over. But Ephyra would survive, and so would Margaret. POMEROY BARRACKS, SOUTH EPHYRA, REGIMENTAL HQ OF THE 26TH ROYAL TYRAN INFANTRY, 0500 HOURS, FORTY-SEVEN HOURS

TO HAMMER STRIKES.

“The phones must be screwed,” Dom said. “They have to be. She wouldn’t just ignore it, not when I’m deployed.”

He kept dialing home, and Maria kept not answering. In the corridor outside it might as well have been midday. The entire regiment was returning a company at a time, filling the accommodation block with smells of breakfast, soap, and vehicle exhaust. The place hadn’t felt this crowded in years. Marcus stood at the basin, shaving for what seemed like the third time in an hour, putting neat edges on the strip of beard down his chin.

“Overloaded exchange,” he said. “Everyone’s trying to call everyone else.”

“Yeah, I think I worked that out, thanks.”

“Dom, it’s five o’clock in the fucking morning. She probably took her meds and slept.”

“But she doesn’t know we’ve been recalled.”

“Okay. Enough.” Marcus wiped his face carefully. “We’re going to go see her. Come on. I’ll talk to the adjutant and beg a ten-hour pass. He owes me.”

“Now? We’re on standby.”

“Just do it, Dom. Then you can get some sleep.”

“What’s the Hammer strike going to be like? What will we see?”

“If you see it, Dom, you can kiss your ass goodbye.”

“Your dad never talks about it, does he?”

“If you’re asking if I already knew about this shit, I didn’t.”

“I never thought you did.”

“I’d have told you if I had.” Marcus tapped his watch. “Back in ten minutes. Stay put.”

Dom tried again to take in the scale of the planned Hammer strike and failed. It was too much to imagine. There was something completely unreal about the way it was being … managed. That was the only word for it. A day and a time, a tidy schedule for what was going to be pretty well the end of the world. He had to repeat that a few times in his head and then actually say it aloud before it started to make his stomach knot in the same way it did when he feared the worst for his family.

Marcus reappeared in the doorway and held up a couple of small blue cards—absence permits. “I’ve got a special way with adjutants.”

“How are we getting there?”

“You’ve seen the traffic. Double time—quick march.”

Even for a city so used to war, Ephyra felt on the edge of panic. People were stuck in traffic, waiting in line for besieged hotels—impatiently, Dom noticed—and arguing with law enforcement patrols about where they could and couldn’t go. He’d never seen anyone getting mouthy with a cop before, except outside the seedier bars. One guy was suddenly pounced on and hauled away to a nearby patrol car. He looked more shocked than angry. And none of these people looked like threadbare refugees. It was probably going to be worse at the temporary camps.

“Shit, is that what we’re going to end up doing?” Dom asked. “Guarding refugee camps?”

“If Ephyra’s all that’s left in a couple of days, what else is there for us to do? ” Marcus began moving at a steady jog. In combat rig, a Gear could go anywhere and civilians would stand aside for them. Gears had a job to do; it was always urgent. “Going to be hell to manage that kind of influx.”

Most milling crowds parted for them—locals, or at least Tyrans. Some didn’t. Marcus had to stop and ask them to clear the way, and they seemed pissed off that he expected it. Marcus, always rigidly polite with civvies, had an edge in his voice when he had to repeat himself.

“Where the hell are we supposed to go? ” The man who stopped Marcus had an accent Dom couldn’t place.

“How do we find—”

“Ask the patrol officer, sir. Over there.”

They had to be from across the border, not even from other regions of Tyrus, Dom thought. It just wasn’t the COG way of doing things. COG citizens—no, Tyrans, that was who he meant, that was who he was— were disciplined and hardy, stoically accepting necessity. They understood that restrictions were there for a reason. It was the former Indie states, the independent alliance the COG had fought for so many decades, who thought orderly government just crimped their style. They were used to protesting in the streets. Tyrans just sucked it up and made the best of a bad job.

“They’re going to get a shock here,” Dom said. “This isn’t Pelles.”

Marcus just moved on through the crowd, leaning slowly against the press of bodies when people didn’t get out of his way fast enough—and it worked. He was like a goddamn mounted patrol. Dom had seen horses trained to do that. For some reason, he found it unbearably funny.

“What’s the joke ?” Marcus said. They were now on a relatively empty backstreet and heading for one of the bridges across the river. “I could—shit, look at that.”

Dom caught up with him. From the approach to the bridge, he had a grandstand view of the southern side of Ephyra. The cityscape was a single mass of stationary lights stretching to the horizon, each road picked out in vehicle headlights.

“I didn’t think there were still that many cars on the road,” Dom said.

Marcus shook his head, just a slight movement as if he was talking to himself. “You won’t see that again.”

It took another fifteen minutes to jog to Dom’s home. It was nearly six in the morning, close to sunrise, but lights were on in pretty well every house. Dom imagined families huddled around the TV or radio trying to make sense of it all.

His house was still in darkness. He sprinted the rest of the way, almost dropped his keys in his hurry to unlock the door, and dashed upstairs two at a time.

“Maria? Maria, baby, it’s me, are you awake?” He didn’t want to sneak up on her and scare her. “We’re back at base. I’ve been trying to call you—”

The bedroom was empty. Their bed hadn’t been slept in. He checked each room, but she was gone. Marcus stood in the hall. “Dom, what’s wrong?”

“She’s gone. Oh shit —shit.” The kitchen was tidy, as if she’d cleaned the place up before leaving. He ran back upstairs to check the closets. The suitcases were there, but an overnight bag was missing; he couldn’t tell if she’d taken any clothes. “Shit, she’s packed and gone. Where the hell would she go?”

Marcus went into the dining room and picked up the phone. “Dom, take it easy. She can’t have gone far.”

“It’s not like we’ve got any family left. She won’t be at my folks’ place or hers. Will she?” Dom was really starting to panic now. Maria only went out for a walk every day. She didn’t have friends to visit, and if she was out tonight, in this chaos, what did she need to pack for? “Shit, I hope she’s not trying to get to Mercy and tend her folks’ graves.”

Marcus stood with the phone to his ear, looking unmoved except for his rapid blinking. That told Dom the worst. Marcus was worried, too. “Why would she go there?” he asked. “She’d have the sense to stay in Ephyra.”

“Marcus, she’s not well. She does weird shit from time to time. Hell, totally normal people do things like that under stress, let alone … oh God …”

Marcus held up his finger for silence as if someone had answered. “Dad? Dad, it’s Marcus. Look, I know it’s early, but I need a favor. We’re back at Dom’s, Maria’s not here, and I need to … Oh God, really?” Marcus shut his eyes for a moment and blew out a slow breath. Dom’s heart was close to hammering its way through his rib cage. “Well, Dom nearly shit himself, so a note would have been good … Okay, we’re coming over … Okay …

Yeah … No, I didn’t. See you later.”

Marcus slammed down the receiver. Dom could hardly bear to hear what he had to say.

“She’s at our place. Panic over.”

Dom’s legs were shaking. He felt like an idiot. “Shit, man …”

“Dad was worried about her hearing the news alone. He sent a car for her and she’s been there for a couple of days.” Marcus had that tight-lipped look that said he was veering between pissed off and embarrassingly relieved.

“Everything’s okay. But nobody thought to leave a frigging message. You okay?”

“Yeah.” Dom just wanted to see Maria and forget everything outside Ephyra’s city limits for a while. “We better get going. It’s a long way on foot.”

“He’s sending transport.”

“How the hell is anything going to get to us? You’ve seen the jams.”

“He’s Professor Adam Fenix. He can make that kind of shit happen.”

And he did.

A COG government car rolled up outside the house, light bar flashing. Dom felt like a complete asshole climbing into it when the rest of the world was going to hell in a handbasket. One of the neighbors watched from her doorstep, maybe thinking he had some urgent official business, or he was being arrested, or something. She just nodded at him as the vehicle roared off.

“So you turn down a Raven ride home, but you’re okay with your old man diverting a car for me.”

“I never said I was consistent.”

“I owe you, man.”

“Shit. You know you don’t.”

“And I owe your dad.” Dom didn’t feel that the few minutes of utter pants-pissing fear for Maria mattered now. Marcus’s father cared enough to look after her when he knew she would be worried out of her mind. “He’s always been good to us.”

Marcus didn’t comment. The driver broke every traffic regulation in the book, mounting sidewalks and ignoring one -way signs, to get to East Barricade. He didn’t say a word, either. Dom could see the guy thinking that he had some VIP’s son on board, wasting his time, and what an easy life someone with a name like Fenix would have.

Not true, buddy.

The car rolled through the big main gates of the Fenix estate and past formal gardens, greenhouses, and trees, scattering gravel along the drive. The house was a mansion. It wasn’t a house at all as far as Dom was concerned, more an antique -filled and wood -paneled museum of a place that had scared him as a kid. He’d always been afraid of breaking something priceless when he visited. It was lavish, imposing, and breathed money; it was also cold and empty. To understand Marcus, you had to see that house.

Adam Fenix was already standing in the doorway. He managed a smile for Dom, but worry was written all over his face.

“How did it go?” he asked. “Are you okay?”

“Bayonet broke again,” Marcus said casually. “We need something better to get through grub hide. Maybe a powered saw of some kind.”

“I’ll have a think about that.” Professor Fenix turned to Dom and shook his hand vigorously. “I’m sorry I worried you, Dom. I’ve been a little preoccupied lately.”

Preoccupied. Poor guy; the Hammer of Dawn was his project, and now he’d always be known as the man who made it possible to wipe out a world. Inside, the house opened up into an echoing marble hall with a film-set staircase and corridors leading off on all sides. Maria, sitting in the kitchen at a table big enough for a banquet, looked tired. The housekeeper was making breakfast.

“Dom, I’m sorry …”

“Hey, doesn’t matter, baby.” He leaned over her chair from behind and hugged her as hard as he dared. How would I cope without her? What would my life be worth if she left? “You okay? I tried to get you. I wanted you to know we were coming home.”

“Isn’t it lovely here? It’s like living in an art gallery.”

Somehow, as all hell broke out beyond Ephyra, the high walls of the Fenix estate shut out the real world, and they ate breakfast. A goddamn breakfast with all the trimmings, even small talk, while Sera counted down to its own destruction.

And the kindly, rather awkward man pouring more coffee for Maria had to help make it happen. Dom gave up trying to grasp it all and settled for holding Maria’s hand so tightly that she had to ask him to let go so she could use her knife and fork.

“Come on, Marcus.” Professor Fenix pushed back his chair and beckoned to Marcus to follow. “Got something to show you.”

Carlos had said that the Fenixes never fought like regular families did. It wasn’t the way that old money behaved. They just looked tense, or raised their eyebrows, or quietly disapproved with a tilt of the head; sometimes they really lost it and expressed grave disappointment. It was no wonder they couldn’t show enough affection. Bottling up all that stuff became a habit, a locked door that nothing could breach, not even the good things that needed saying and doing. Dom sat with his arm around Maria, listening to whispered voices.

“It’s such a shame,” Maria said, looking slightly past Dom as if she was talking to herself. “Does Marcus realize how much his dad loves him?”

If Marcus did, Dom thought, he would never say. After a while, Dom wandered out into the hall to look for them—it was a house you could get lost in, a house where you could hide and shut yourself away from the world

—and realized they were sitting on the main stairs, talking.

Dom could hear them. He shouldn’t have stopped to listen, but he did.

“I didn’t take this decision lightly.”

“I know, Dad.”

“We just ran out of time. I’ve tried every damn way to find … alternatives, but it’s all that’s left now.”

“Dad, I’m out there. I see it. If we don’t do it, nobody’s going to survive.”

“Forgive me.”

“Nothing to forgive.”

“Oh, there’s a lot.”

Marcus didn’t reply for a while.

“Do what you have to do,” he said at last. “That’s the best any of us can manage.”

Dom felt terrible for Marcus, but then he often did. He found himself thinking that if Adam Fenix was Eduardo Santiago, he would have done this or said that, right from the heart with no holds barred, but that would have all been too much for Marcus. Whatever he felt—it was there, all right, but you had to look hard to spot it. This wasn’t the kind of family where people used the word love every day. It was probably wrenched out of them only on their deathbeds, if at all.

Dom looked at his watch. They’d need to get back to HQ soon. Whatever was coming, there would be an aftershock of some kind to deal with. He crept back to the kitchen and sat down to rest his forehead against Maria’s. For a minute or so he thought they were savoring a quiet and intimate moment, but then he moved a little and could see she was somewhere else entirely, eyes focused on something he couldn’t see.

“You okay, baby?” he said.

She took a few moments to drift back. “I need to go for a walk.”

“Not today. It’s a madhouse out there.”

“I have to. I can’t miss a day.”

“I think the exercise can wait awhile.”

“No, I have to. I have to go look.”

Dom couldn’t shrug that off as misunderstanding her. “Look at what?”

“If I don’t keep looking, I’ll never find them.”

He braced himself for an answer he knew he wasn’t ready to hear. “Who, baby?”

“Bennie and Sylvie. I know I saw them. Just once, but they’re out there, and they’ll be so scared—I have to go find them.”

Oh God. He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t. They’re gone, baby. They’re dead.

“It’ll be okay.” Shit. “It can wait a little.”

He held her more tightly. Some days she seemed to go to places in her mind where he couldn’t follow, however hard he tried. Now he knew exactly where she went, in every sense of the word. We stick together however hard it gets. That’s the marriage vow. We don’t quit when it hurts. He’d been crazy about her since he was eleven years old. He couldn’t imagine life without her. She was his life. He had to make sure she never forgot that.

“Hey, baby,” he said. “I haven’t told you I love you today, have I?”