Marley had been assuming Lyric was in the room with the mattresses, but when they looked for her, she wasn’t there. They were just turning around to check the kitchen when a computer voice called from the dining room:
“Perimeter breach,” it said. “There are two armed individuals outside the building. Update: there are now four armed individuals outside the building.”
The hackers were running to a set of displays Marley had seen earlier, ones that showed views outside. They now showed people in black uniforms moving toward the restaurant, each one emphasized with a red glow. Two of the soldiers were approaching the front of the building, and two were in back. There was little hope the soldiers would think the place was empty: both of the vans were parked in back. There was another shape back there too, among the live oaks, but Marley only caught a glimpse of streaming dark hair—Lyric. They sent an urgent voice message to her.
“Lyric, stay away from the building!” they said. “There are soldiers!”
“I see them. Is there some way for you to get out of here?” Lyric’s voice came back. Her words had that flattened inflection you get when you subvocalize.
“Not yet,” said Marley. “I’m sure they’re working on something. Just run! We’ll find you after.”
Marley was not actually sure the Louvre had anything they could pull out of their magic hat for this situation. There was a good chance they wouldn’t be getting out without being captured, or even that the Louvre’s backup plan involved something more dire than letting themselves be captured. They weren’t going to say anything like that if it might make Lyric hesitate, though.
“We need drones, someone!” Tobias-Henry shouted. “Does anyone have a line on drones nearby?”
“Delivery drones!” called a woman with dark hair in a Caesar cut. “Fourteen of them, at a hardware store about a kilometer from here! They’re running on Paris 140s.”
Marley couldn’t begin to guess what a Paris 140 was, but they heard sighs of relief all around them. Whatever that was, it was obviously helpful.
“I’m assigning them to Fulang,” the dark-haired woman shouted. “I told him to get them as close as possible to the soldiers’ faces—just keep knocking into them, don’t give them room to shoot.”
“Dongmei, you’re my favorite person right now,” said Tobias-Henry. “How long?”
The dark-haired woman, Dongmei, shook her head in frustration. “Three minutes?”
“Shit,” said Alice. She was watching the monitors. Marley looked. The soldiers were nearly at the doors.
“Hey!” said a distant voice. It took a moment for Marley to register that it was coming from the surveillance screens, from outside the building. In the video feed, the soldiers in back turned, and one’s lips moved as she subvocalized something. The soldiers in front stopped advancing, but they pointed their weapons at the front door, waiting.
It was another few seconds before Marley could see what the soldiers in back were seeing: it was Lyric, stepping out from the trees, her hands in the air. The two soldiers there leveled their weapons at her and moved closer. Their movements were slow and exaggerated, like water birds.
“Don’t move, please,” said the lead soldier, the one who had subvocalized before. “Cox, are you looking her up?”
“Records don’t link her to the Louvre,” said the other soldier, apparently Cox. “But listen to this: she’s a wanted insurgent from the Mountain Republic.”
“Out here?” said the lead soldier.
“I guess they’ve got to hide somewhere,” said Cox.
“OK, not my job to figure out why. Cuff her to the bicycle rack. There must be more inside.”
Lyric looked around her with an expression not of panic, but of livid anger. Inside the restaurant, everyone stared, silent.
“Where are those drones?” Alice snapped.
“They only go so fast,” said Dongmei. “Wait.”
Alice made a fierce noise.
Marley teetered, wanting to run out there and do something—but that wouldn’t help anyone, and it might mean someone would get shot. They had to hope the drones would arrive and create enough confusion for Lyric to get away.
Why was this happening? Marley had thought they’d be safe with the Louvre.
“How could they possibly know we were here?” Marley said.
Samantha, Gene’s daughter, shot a look across a table at the young man she’d been hip-to-hip with earlier. “Lawrence. He sent the call my dad was making through an insecure connection.”
“I fixed it!” Lawrence said. “It was barely open for thirty seconds!”
“I guess that was long enough,” said Tobias-Henry.
Cox, in back, was stepping forward, pulling a loop of cord off his belt, while the lead soldier kept her rifle trained on Lyric. Lyric turned her head to look at the building, then back to Cox. Suddenly, she dashed into the trees.
“Stop where you are!” said the lead soldier. “Miss! Please don’t run!”
One of the views was an overhead camera, and someone made it pull back to show more area as Lyric dashed into the trees. There was a sound like a crack, and for a second Marley thought a branch was falling. Lyric stumbled, then spilled forward, crashing into a heap at the base of a tree. She lay there crumpled, her head folded forward, her body disarranged, absolutely still. The two soldiers ran toward her.
The soldiers in front, at the sound of the rifle, ran out back, guns at the ready, advancing cautiously, sweeping from side to side. Marley was reminded, sickeningly, of how accurate those self-aiming guns were.
“We need to run now!” someone behind Marley said.
“No!” shouted Alice. “There won’t be enough time. Jesus, I hope—”
The lead soldier and Cox had reached Lyric, and the leader hauled Lyric into a sitting position against the tree and put her fingers on the side of Lyric’s throat. Cox said something, but it was too quiet for the mics to pick up. The lead soldier stood, turning away from Lyric, subvocalizing something, and Cox followed.
“No,” said Marley. “They ...” Words failed them, and they looked at Lyric’s still form, slumped against the tree, until they couldn’t look any more. They clamped their hands over their mouth to keep from howling and ran into the kitchen. They could hear someone following, but they made it to the back door first. They opened the lock, wrenched the door open, and threw themself out into the parking lot. The soldiers, now all in the open, stopped short in surprise, and then Cox swung his rifle up so that all Marley could see in his hands was a little black object with a round hole in the center. When it was pointed right at you, it didn’t even look like a gun anymore. It looked like some kind of navigational instrument, as though Cox was trying to sight a way forward through Marley.
Then an orange drone emblazoned with a green logo that said “Robinson’s Hardware” dropped down between Marley and the soldier. Within moments, thirteen more appeared, all from the same direction, surrounding the Americans.
“What the fuck?” said the lead soldier.
The drones, which were shaped like round-cornered, slanting boxes, each with three angled rotors sprouting from its top, lurched suddenly toward the soldiers. Marley heard Cox’s rifle go off, and a fraction of a second later a noise like a nail gun, but Marley never saw the bullet. In the next moment, the drones had engulfed the soldiers, butting at them until they were backed up together in a tangle. As the soldiers tried to dodge or duck out of the group, the drones moved with them as though tethered, keeping their rotors just clear of the soldiers’ heads. Within moments, the attempts to duck under the drones had left the soldiers trapped in an awkward, crouching position. One of the soldiers tried to grab one of the drones, but it tilted suddenly, its rotor slashing open the soldier’s hand.
Marley ran past this bizarre display into the woods, straight to where Lyric lay slumped against the tree. Vivid blood had streamed down the left side of her chest, staining her dress down to her thighs. Her eyes were open, but they were fixed and unfocused.
Marley gestured spasmodically for a voice command, then had to do it again, more slowly, for the gesture to be recognized. “How do I check for a pulse?” they cried. A phantom hand on their lenses demonstrated as a patient voice explained the process. Marley reached forward and put their fingers on Lyric’s throat, just where the phantom hand had been, but it was still as rock.
“Lyric?” Marley said. “Lyric, come on! We have to go now, come on!”
Someone grabbed Marley from behind, and Marley jabbed an elbow viciously into their chest. “Ow! Marley!” they shouted—Alice’s voice. “We have to go now.”
“Lyric—!” Marley shouted.
“Honey, I know,” Alice said, gasping for breath. “And we have to go. Lawrence?”
Marley felt someone’s arms wrap around them and pull them up, and this time they didn’t fight, their eyes fixed on Lyric’s face, as they were dragged out of the trees and into the parking lot. The soldiers were still struggling with the drones, but three of the drones had been damaged somehow and were lying on the ground. Marley saw without interest that the vans were both crammed with people, and that someone was helping Tracey lift one of the coolers in. Gene jumped down from the other van and picked up Marley’s feet, and Marley felt themself suspended in air as they were heaved into the van. Lawrence and Gene piled in, and then the van began to roll away before the door could even slide closed. All the seats were full, but someone held Marley between their knees as the van took a sharp turn and accelerated away, hard. Marley could see the sunrise through the rear window. The trees raced away behind them, but the sun never grew smaller.
No one talked in the van. Gene slid down to sit on the floor opposite Marley and took their hand. Marley tried fitfully to pull it away, but Gene held on—not gripping hard, not unshakable, but tightly enough that Marley would have had to make a concerted effort, and they didn’t care enough to do that. They closed their eyes as the van shot along the road, and the only presence they could really feel was Gene’s hand holding theirs.
Gene and Samantha stayed with Marley in a hotel room in Stockton for the next several days, watching over them there, though Marley hadn’t asked them to. They gave Marley food, and sometimes Marley ate some of it, never paying attention to what it was. The first day, Alice sent so many unanswered messages that Marley took out their lenses. Samantha tried to console Marley at first, but Gene took her aside and said something to her, and she stopped. Later that day, Samantha brought in an external display, and she seemed to go back to her Louvre work. Or she could have been doing anything at all—Marley didn’t care.
Gene said very little, but he was there, always a few feet away. He had gotten his hand on some old-style books somewhere and spent much of his time reading them. The sound of the pages turning sedately was like the wingbeats of a moth, slowed nearly to stillness. Sometimes Marley cried, and then Gene would put down his book, sit on Marley’s bed, and put his hand on their back.
On the third day, Gene said something about going out and left. When he wasn’t back hours later, Marley got up and looked around. Samantha was in the corner at her display, but she wasn’t working, and her cheeks were shiny with tears.
“Where did Gene go?” Marley croaked. They weren’t sure, but it might have been the first thing they’d said in days.
Samantha looked up at them in amazement and, Marley thought, irritation. “He turned himself in,” she said. “He told you.”
“I’m sorry,” Marley said. “I’m really sorry. Is he going to be OK?”
“No, he’s not going to be OK! He’s under arrest for some huge crime he had nothing to do with!”
“I’m sorry,” Marley said again, stupidly. They stood there for an uncomfortable stretch of silence, then they went over and very awkwardly hugged Samantha. Samantha started crying in earnest now. Marley held her tighter, and Samantha held tighter back.
When Samantha was cried out, she went and washed her face, and then she went to the room’s mini-kitchen to get tea. Marley, realizing they hadn’t washed properly in days, shut themself in the bathroom, where they found a bioplastic bag full of supplies and a stack of fresh clothes with a little piece of paper on top that said “Marley.” They brushed their teeth, shaved their scraggly version of stubble, and took a shower. They put on a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt with a pair of crossed arrows that said “Stockton CA 1850.” They felt no better, but at least they weren’t filthy.
Back in the hotel room, they searched for their lenses, not wanting to disturb Samantha. They found them in a labeled envelope inside a drawer in their bedside table. They put in the earpiece, went into the bathroom, swirled the lenses in some cleaning fluid, rinsed them, and put them in. They had hundreds of messages. The most recent one was from Gia. The subject was “If you don’t message me back, I get to keep your dog.”
Gia had been sending messages for a day and a half now, wondering where Marley and Lyric were and whether they were still OK. Marley sent a quick update to her saying, “Just got your messages, reading now.” They couldn’t say they were OK, because it wasn’t true, and because they wouldn’t be able to say that Lyric was OK, too.
From the messages, Marley found that Gia had run after Anthem for hours until finally catching up with her. Anthem had snagged her leash between two trees. Some of the fires were out by then, and Gia had gone to the nearest town, where she’d been rounded up with some other citizens by American soldiers. They were kept in a guarded sports arena and given water and food that Gia described as “literally the most disgusting sandwiches I have ever eaten.” Gia had no idea why they’d been held there. They’d taken Anthem away from her, but one of the American soldiers, whom Gia described as “not entirely not cute for an imperialist shit” had brought the dog back and told Gia just to keep her out of sight.
“Anthem is the world’s smartest dog and would not eat the disgusting sandwiches,” Gia said. “All she ate for two days was corn chips we stole from the vending area. She was into those. She might not eat dog food anymore.”
Gia had woken the previous morning to find the American soldiers had left. “They didn’t even leave a note,” she said. “But they left the sandwiches. I don’t blame them. If I were them, I would have left the sandwiches, too.”
Marley put off replying to Gia by reading messages from Alice first. There were too many to read in their entirety, so they skimmed them instead. The first messages asked how Marley was over and over, and over and over Alice said how sorry she was, and that it was her fault. Those topics of discussion disappeared from the messages suddenly. The next one mentioned that she had talked to Gene, and Marley read between the lines that he’d told Alice to stop.
The e-mails after that became more upbeat. Alice talked about an “amazing” AI that Audrey had somehow brought from America; it sounded from the letters that it was somehow in a scarf. Marley puzzled over that for a few minutes before coming to the conclusion that the word “scarf” must have some special technical meaning.
Marley didn’t remember well who Tyler Godbout was, though apparently, he was some kind of high-powered American. In any case, he had gotten in serious trouble. With the help of information from Audrey and some assistance from her “scarf,” the Louvre apparently had uncovered not only the gruesome details of Godbout’s attempt to frame many Cascadians whose property he wanted to acquire, but also the fact that he’d sent unauthorized, armed missions both into Cascadia during the current war and into the Mountain Republic during the annexation. He’d had a number of personal enemies in both places killed, including a young woman from the Mountain Republic who was currently living in Cascadia, found shot dead in the woods near a shuttered restaurant. She’d had an information tab with her that turned out to have yet more incriminating information about Godbout. Then, most spectacularly, he was revealed as the architect of both the attempt to defraud Cascadia’s Citizen Dividend system and the war itself, which turned out to have been in preparation since well before the incidents President Jimenez had claimed had fomented it. The public might not have been so interested in that information if it hadn’t been for a speech they’d watched, given by Audrey Adams, a former American intelligence operative who’d worked under Godbout in the Cascadian fraud.
Alice’s most recent letter, from that morning, just said “stream the news,” and it had an untitled link. Marley opened it to find it played one of the leading streaming news shows, “Cascadia Now.” The lead story was a peace deal Cascadia had offered the U.S. It made a long series of demands, but it offered reunification. Cascadians were arguing violently about the offer all across the networks, but in America the deal, which had been immediately rejected by the Jimenez administration, had upwards of sixty-five percent popular support. A cease fire had been negotiated. For now, the war was halted.
Marley turned their lenses back off and lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling.
Two hours later, they got up and composed a short message to Gia explaining what had happened to Lyric. Then they hugged Samantha goodbye and left to find a train back to Stone. Their house hadn’t sold yet. They still, in a sense, had a home.
Marley wandered through the empty rooms of their house, trying to decide whether to move back in or leave again, but several hours of this hadn’t gotten them to care enough to make any kind of a decision.
Outside, a dog barked. It was a familiar bark, and Marley was running to the front of the house before they even consciously realized what it meant. When they yanked the door open, Gia hurled herself at Marley and nearly knocked them over.
“Mwah mwah mwah!” Gia cried, kissing Marley exaggeratedly on each cheek. Anthem shoved herself into the tangle and began licking Marley’s face. Her breath smelled of corn chips. Marley hugged both friend and dog to their chest until Anthem struggled away and ran through the house, barking joyfully.
Later in the day, they were eating takeout Thai food on the floor of the empty dining room. Marley had forbidden further corn chips but had gotten Anthem a sow’s ear to chew, and the dog lay against Marley’s back, cheerfully destroying the ear.
“You should come back to Lewis Lake,” Gia said, pointing her chopsticks at Marley. “You don’t want to live here.”
“No,” Marley said, “Probably true, but—hey, don’t point your chopsticks. It’s rude.”
Gia rolled her eyes. “OK,” she said, spearing a piece of chicken with one chopstick. Marley shook their head and gave up.
They wouldn’t—couldn’t—go back to Lewis Lake, but it looked like Gia was settling there, so they decided to hold off telling her until later. They wouldn’t stay in Stone, either. There would be some new place to be. As averse as they were to the idea, they would probably go back to doing interviews for No Divide. An edited version of the cut-short interview Marley had done with Scotty Ross had already aired, which was a surprise to Marley but perfectly in line with their agreement with the organization. In light of the war and especially after the reunification proposal, its popularity had skyrocketed, making it No Divide’s most popular program to date. Gia had done Marley the favor of letting No Divide know that Marley wasn’t available for now and shouldn’t be contacted, but as Marley looked into the days stretching on into the future, they knew they would need to do something, and No Divide was the one meaningful thing they had found apart from their short collaboration with the Louvre.
They would not be going back to the Louvre, though. That kind of work still didn’t appeal to them, and they needed to move for a while, not stay put. Maybe some day soon, after the reunification, they’d go to Vermont. Lyric had grown up there.
Their range of possible destinations, the people they could speak to, might soon expand. If the reunification actually went through, Cascadia would soon become a lot larger—or America would, depending on who was telling the story—and help bridging differences might be needed more than ever.