Daybreak Zero

^{TWO WEEKS LATER. THE HARBOR OF PUT-IN-BAY, ON SOUTH BASS ISLAND (FORMERLY IN OHIO, NOW ASSIGNED TO THE NEW STATE OF SUPERIOR). 11:15 AM EST. MONDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2025.}

“That’s Put-in-Bay,” Rosie said. He was a heavy, solidly muscled man with stark white hair and brick-red skin; he and his wife Barbara were the crew of Kelleys Dancer. “Sorry this took so long.”

Although it was only a few air miles from Catawba Point to South Bass Island, the wind was light and variable that morning, and tacking Kelleys Dancer out of Sandusky Bay, around the point, and out to Put-in-Bay harbor itself had consumed the whole morning since dawn.

Jason asked, “Hey, is that a lighthouse or something?”

“Perry’s Monument,” Barbara said.

“Perry who?”

“Oh, man, you’d have had a hard time when I was teaching American history.” She sighed. “Oliver Hazard Perry. War of 1812. ‘We have met the enemy and they are ours.’”

“They buried him there or something?”

“No, he won the only naval battle of any size that ever happened on the lake.” She sighed. “I wonder if kids will learn more or less history now that history’s starting over. Hard to see how they could learn less, actually. There could well be a battle bigger than Perry’s next spring—over between Buffalo and Erie there’s getting to be a pirate problem, or maybe a tribals-in-boats problem, it’s hard to tell. At least we’ll have work, anyway.”

“You’d be in the battle?”

“I hope not, but we’ll probably guide them there,” Rosie said. “We know that area—actually we know the whole lake pretty well. Barb’n’me spent ten years after retirement as rental crew for old farts that cruised the lake; that’s where we got Kelleys Dancer, the owner died right after Daybreak once there wasn’t no fridge for his insulin.”

Closer to Put-in-Bay, there was more and steadier wind. Rosie said, “I’m impressed that you’re going to Cooke Castle. Gotta be the last place in North America where they still use the right fork for each course. They might dip you all in bleach before they let you in the front door.”

“They’re not that stuffy.” Barbara hugged her husband. “Just because the world has ended doesn’t mean people can’t wear a clean shirt now and then.”

Gibraltar Island sheltered the eastern half of Put-in-Bay; it looked like a nineteenth-century millionaire’s estate or a twentieth-century college campus, and had been both. “They have electric power over here!” Chris said, realizing an electric winch was pulling them into their berth.

“Some of the time, yeah, whenever they’re not wiping for nanos. Some engineers from OSU built them windmills you see over there south of town, and another guy from Tri-State U’s got a wave-power generator running.”

They had been told that Dr. Fred Rhodes would meet them at the wharf; the squat, wide-shouldered black man waiting there wore an old Ohio State hoodie, homemade deerhide trousers, wingtips, and a black crusher. His full beard probably hadn’t been trimmed for many years before Daybreak, and reached beyond his lower ribs, about as far down as his dreads reached in the back. He pumped Larry’s hand eagerly, then Chris’s and Jason’s, and said, “Everyone is so excited; the first report on an overland traverse of the Lost Quarter.”

“I was never any good at oral reports in school,” Larry said. “In fact I hated them.”

“Too late. Bet you hated field trips, too, and I’ll never be forgiven if I don’t take you around and show you Stone Lab.”

Stone had been OSU’s field limnology lab before Daybreak. Just after Daybreak, about a hundred scientists had come to Stone from Ohio State and other universities. They had ridden out the big wave and the fallout from the Chicago superbomb, the fires and the destroyed gear from the Pittsburgh EMP strike, the tribal raids across the ice in the winter and the pirate attacks a few weeks before, and they had rebuilt and gone on.

Now, after the destruction of Mota Elliptica, they were quite possibly the most advanced scientific facility on the continent. Because limnology draws on every other science, Stone Lab could do at least basic work in every field.

Gibraltar, not really much bigger than a couple of city blocks, was threaded all over with blacktop pathways that were breaking down. “We’re less than ten miles off shore,” Rhodes said. “Biotes blow right on over from all that urban area west and northwest of here.”

“What’s all that doing to the lake?” Chris asked.

“We’ve got about twenty scientists with about sixty opinions on exactly what it will mean, but all round the Great Lakes, you have all that plastic, rubber, and gasoline rotting, and the fallout kill zone covered southern Ontario, so you have more decaying biomass and less to keep it out of the water than there’s ever been and all that’s washing into Lake Erie, and you know, the whole western side of Erie is only about forty feet deep at most, usually less. A decade or two of fast-growing green goo, and maybe we’ll be looking at the Great Erie Swamp, or the Erieglades, and this pretty little island might just be a high hill in the middle of it.”

Cooke Castle had been a nineteenth-century millionaire’s summer house; a big stone mansion wrapped in faux-medieval frouf, Chris scribbled in his notebook. With its tessellated tower, it stuck out of the remaining gold, red, and yellow fall foliage like a fantasy Hollywood castle or an imaginary private school.

The auditorium that afternoon was jammed, with the crowd spilling over into the aisles.

“The Wapak Scouts know the local ecology much better than I do,” Larry pointed out, “so I’d suggest you see about bringing them over if you want more observations. Plus they’re smart, hard workers, and mostly young and until recently you were a university—I think they belong here. And I do think that as long as you didn’t run right onto a tribal encampment, one or two of you in the company of five to ten Wapak Scouts could travel pretty safely to anywhere. At least, I’d go anywhere with them.”

That evening, they rowed across the harbor to South Bass Island, for a feast of roasted perch and new potatoes, with plenty of the island wine to wash it down. In Put-in-Bay Chris found an honest-to-God newsstand, with back issues of the Post-Times, Weekly Insight, and Olympia Observer, plus half a dozen other papers; he could rent a complete set of what he wanted for the rest of the afternoon, and they took Pueblo scrip. Off to paradise by himself, complaining only at the absence of coffee, he vanished into the back reading solarium.

Larry and Jason were trying out fried lake fish (Rhodes had assured them that tritium did not biocentrate) and the local white wine at a dock-side bar, and agreeing that life hadn’t been this comfortable in a long time, when Chris burst in, waving the paper and one of his notebooks.

“Did you find a typo or something?” Larry said.

“No, I found the biggest mistake of all time,” Chris said. “Look at this.”

“Damn. So Leslie was the traitor? I always liked her,” Jason said, “even if she was pretty condescending to Beth; I think she just didn’t know how to talk to somebody outside her own lifestyle.”

Chris said, “Now look here. A couple weeks later. This is the accounts from Deb Mensche, Dan Samson, and Roger Jackson, about their expeditions into the Lost Quarter.”

Larry sat back and said, “Shit.”

“What?” Jason said.

“We were being followed at least from crossing the Tippecanoe on, right? And how many days’ walk from Castle Earthstone is that? So, so far, so good. If Leslie was the traitor, then she found out about our operation, and set us up to be ambushed and fed. But if she knew about that, she’d have known about these three other missions—and those are plain as day Heather using the two-source method for locating a traitor. Leslie would have known that—it had less security than we did, by far—and made it point at someone else. If she was far enough inside to know about us, she couldn’t possibly have missed that.”

Jason said, “But the real traitor would not only have put Castle Earthstone on our trail, he’d have made the traitor trap point at someone else—like Leslie. Shit, did they execute her?”

“Not that I’ve seen, but I think we better radio Heather and everyone else we can think of.” Larry’s voice was grim. “We just have to take the chance that one of the people we contact will be the traitor, and hope the others catch him or her before any more damage is done.”

Larry had a long fight with the local authorities about breaking radio silence—they were terrified of the idea, and kept pointing out that they had nothing like Mota Elliptica’s defenses against EMP—but he wore them down, and finally sat down with his one-time pad to send messages to everyone relevant. Extracting the promise that someone would listen all night for a response, he handed over his stack of messages. Then, because there was nothing more to do, the three agents went to the fish-fry, and did their best to enjoy the fish and potatoes, the crowd of healthy, well-fed people, and the lights of a town where they could sleep safe, warm, and bathed tonight. No reply came before bedtime.

^{THAT EVENING. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 5:30 PM MST. MONDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2025.}

Heather had barely sat down to eat at the communal mess hall when Patrick, out of breath, delivered the urgent eyes-only message from Larry Mensche; it had FAR stamped on it. Grumbling, and hastily dumping her plate of noodles and grouse-nuggets into a go-bag, she headed back for her office, reminding herself over and over that Larry didn’t send messages of that kind in any situation except one where most agents would have been screaming for a regiment of infantry.

With Leo settled into his crib, she opened the envelope, read, and sat up as if she’d been shocked. Leo did his nervous cry, the one that meant he felt something wrong, and she went over to comfort him. “Me, too, kid.”

Larry had provided her with a cc: list; she could see at once what he was doing, making sure no one could intercept or sweep it under the rug.

She said, “Come in,” to the knock at the door before she had time to think.

Debbie Mensche was there, with Beth, Ysabel, Dan Samson, and Roger Jackson. “I kind of thought you’d want to have your team together,” she said, “after I got the note from Dad, so I rounded’em up and brought them here.”

It was everyone from the cc: list except for James and Arnie. Heather said, “I think we’d all better sit for a moment, if you can all find somewhere to do it. Deb, brilliant idea, you’re right. I take it you didn’t bring Arnie or James because—”

“Because they’re the only two other guys it can be,” Debbie said. “I grabbed Beth first because I wasn’t gonna believe Beth would’ve betrayed Jason; she alibied Izzy. I knew our missions were decoys, but you’d kept that information from Roger and Dan, so they were clean. That leaves James and Arnie. James is probably at home, this time of day; Arnie’s teaching a math class over in the literacy program. By now I bet they’ve both read Dad’s note. I don’t know how we can—”

James burst in, panting, out of breath. He looked at who else was in the room. His expression of relief was amazing and overwhelming. “All right,” he said. “It looks like everyone is here, and I’ll be happy to explain why it’s Arnie you want, and not me, but you’d better get someone over to the secure holding facility, now, to protect Leslie. If they just stand outside and don’t let Arnie in, we can probably—”

“Dan—” Heather didn’t speak the rest of her sentence because Samson and Jackson were both already gone.

^{5 MINUTES LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 5:15 PM MST. MONDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2025.}

James was surprised that he wasn’t panting as he squatted next to Debbie. “We’ll intercept them about five blocks further on,” she breathed, “but we have to wait till Arnie gets turned away, and then see which way he goes. The guy in the blanket over there still hasn’t seen us.”

“How did you know he’d be there?”

“I didn’t know he would. I knew it would be possible.”

“And the other guys didn’t spot him?”

“He probably got here after they did. Dan’s inside, probably with Leslie, which is where you have to be to guard someone that close, so Dan hasn’t seen blanket man. Roger’s going to be a damned fine agent in about five years, but he’s got no instincts right now; he’s watching for Arnie because Arnie’s the only thing he’s been told to watch for.” The slim woman squatted beside him. “If I have to move fast, I will. If it comes to a fight, don’t get all fussy and worry about catching them alive. It’ll be more than enough if we just stop them.” She stretched, as if preparing to sprint. “Once I’m in striking range of Arnie I’m going to follow him and his little shadow from a distance, and see how much I can hear and see before I have to move, but when it’s time to move, I’ll move, and you catch up then. Till then, hang two blocks back, try to stay in the shadows, and make no noise. Now let’s—there.”

James didn’t see what she saw, but he saw where she went, and sprinted after her along the shadowed side of a high wall, through an alley, and through an overgrown public park along the brick pathways. The next ten minutes were an obstacle course of alleys, schoolyards, passages between boarded houses, and underpasses, between rows of abandoned cars and around piles of junk, until, as they squeezed between Dumpsters and garbage piles toward the mouth of an alley, Debbie pointed at the ground. He hoped that meant “wait here” and that her pointing down the street meant “watch me go this way,” because that was what he did. He peeked around the corner.

Debbie ran silently, at top speed, seemingly touching nothing. As she passed a point he judged to be two blocks away, James ran after, trying to breathe quietly enough, trying not to think about having old, less-flexible ankles, making occasional scuffing noises but not many and not close together.

At a recessed storefront, Debbie caught him by the shoulder, and told James, “Look ahead. See Arnie? See where his little shadow went into that doorway?”

“The guy that just slipped into the bushes by that house?”

“You got talent. Get ready, any sec now—”

As they watched, Arnie slowed, dragged his feet, as if some invisible cord were pulling him backward. “Okay, James, throw your distraction, and make it loud.”

James emerged from the alley, waving his pistol, and yelled “Yang, you son of a bitch, your fucking Daybreak hippie friend killed Leslie!” Keeping his gun leveled (I hope it’s too far away for him to see I haven’t cocked it), he walked slowly toward Arnie, who stood paralyzed in the street, the gun leveled at him. “He killed Leslie!” he repeated. “I’m gonna shoot your worthless ass!” He kept walking toward the slender figure of Arnie Yang. Oh, man, let him just have those knives he carries, this would be totally the worst time ever to get shot, he thought, and tried not to smile at his mental imitation of Leslie.

Debbie said, “It’s done,” firmly and loudly.

The corpse of Arnie’s watcher plunged out from the bushes and lay still. Arnie made a strange noise and pelted away as if his feet had a will of their own; Debbie shouted “Shit!” and ran after.

Not sure what to do, and having run about as much as he could already, James walked after. He paused to look at the corpse. Debbie’s wire garrote was sunk deep into the flesh of the thin young man’s neck, and his eyes bulged and tongue protruded. His hands were at his throat, where he’d made a futile try, probably, to dig the wire out. He wore several layers of shabby old clothing, a full beard, and long curly hair.

James looked up to see Deb returning, with Arnie in a hammerlock-and-nelson, bent backward brutally.

“Well,” James said, “I guess one of us needs to go get Heather, and she’ll want to bring along—”

“One meal ticket,” a voice said, behind him. He turned and saw Patrick, who was grinning. “For one meal ticket I will go find anybody you like and send them here.”

“How the hell—”

“Hey, Mister Hendrix, it is not my fault if you’re way more interesting when you’re not teaching us to read Great Expectations.” Patrick was bursting with pride. “I saw you guys following Doctor Yang and followed you here, ’cause I knew you’d both got those special messages.”

Debbie winked at James, and said, “See what happens when you don’t look for things? How’s this guy doing with Dickens?”

“Top of the class.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” she said. “Any agent I’m going to train can’t have enough Dickens.”

Between them, James and Debbie figured out who Patrick needed to bring, and he went on his way with “a slightly swollen wallet and a slightly swollen head,” James said. “And hey, why does a spy need Dickens?”

“Because you’re making me read it in the adult class, and if I have to, so does any poor bastard I train. Same principle as fraternity hazing, if I went through it, so does everyone.”

The sun descended slowly, the shadows lengthened, and it was the better part of two hours before everything was sorted out, but at the end of it, people were where they belonged: Aaron was on his way to the morgue, Arnie was in Leslie’s cell (and the guards had been carefully coached by James about the four different ways someone could get in, and fixed them), and everyone else, including Leo, was at James’s house. “Even Wonder,” Leslie said, her face buried in the big dog’s fur.

“Well, he’s been living here.”

“I can tell,” she said, thumping the big dog’s sides. “Too much good food and not enough exercise, you lazy old goof, you’re gonna be running your ass off for a couple months. And you too, Wonder.”

“That was an evening,” Heather said. “I guess I’ve never been happier to miss out on meat lumps and noodles.”

Leslie looked up from Wonder, and said, “James, it’s Monday night, still,” and pausing only to consider that he had enough in the larder, James said, “There’re three big jugs of wine in the lower drawer in the living room hutch, and glasses on the top two shelves. Everybody grab a glass and fill it, and then sit down and stay out of the way—I’m about to cook.”

^{THE NEXT DAY. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 9:30 AM MST. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2025.}

“I’m really not totally cool with this,” Izzy said. “He might be able to send me into a seizure, and even though Beth has never had one, she’s pregnant. I don’t like doing this at all.”

“Me either,” James said, “but it’s all I can come up with.”

Since five o’clock that morning, James, Izzy, and Beth had been practicing the “mutual correction” protocol that he had evolved to keep Leslie from slipping into Daybreak. It had begun as a pure desperation measure, with James adapting tricks from a twenty-year-old pamphlet, Interrogation Tips: Avoiding Implanting False Memories. But it seemed to have kept Leslie out of Daybreak, and even to help her develop some immunity—whatever it was that immunity might mean in this case. It was as good a protection as they knew how to do against the version of Daybreak in Arnie.

According to the guards, Arnie had been sitting upright on the bench-bed ever since his arrest. He had risen to stretch twice, and to use the chamber pot once. Mostly he sat and stared into space.

Arnie looked up and said, “Hello,” tonelessly, when they came in.

James said, “Sit up and look at me.” It wasn’t a sharp command, or a harsh order, but it was clear he expected to be obeyed.

Arnie sat up, and by visible effort, made himself look at James.

“Now.” James held his voice flat and neutral. “Tell me about what you think happened. Start with the first time you thought about Daybreak as anything other than a problem to be solved.”

Arnie stared off into space. “I am visualizing reading a paper in a journal and the title is, ‘On the identification of Daybreak in the Psyche of Test Subject AY.’ The abstract says, ‘Keller’s Conjecture [2003]’—”

James found it impossible not to laugh.

“Yes,” Arnie said, “I really am seeing it in my head, brackets and all, and if I read from that imaginary journal article, I can speak. So the abstract says,

“‘Theory of mind’?” Beth asked.

“The mental model each of us has of other people’s mental processes,” Arnie explained. “The thing in your mind that you use to guess what the other person is thinking. What you need to run con games, get jokes, and understand what your mom is mad about. The thing that doesn’t work right in Asperger’s syndrome and maybe isn’t there at all in autism.”

Ysabel asked, “So what you’re saying is, Daybreak gets to you through your process of rejecting it, because to reject it you have to understand it first?”

“It takes over minds that try to understand it; it doesn’t matter why they try to understand it. Most Daybreakers wanted to understand it because some part of it was attractive to them. Some found it so repellent that they studied it to fight it, like St. Paul studying Christians, or witch finders studying witchcraft, or the way spy-agency analysts in the Cold War sometimes quietly converted to the other side. As for me… God, it was the most fascinating thing a guy in my field could have hoped for, and I wanted to plant my name on the first real study of it.”

James asked, “So who’s immune?”

“Stupid people, because they never try to understand anything. Bigots, ditto. Anybody with a strong enough belief system who becomes aware, before Daybreak takes over, that it contradicts what they believe—doesn’t matter much what it is if they really believe it.”

“But most people believe something, so how could so many people catch Daybreak? Even if it was only a few million people worldwide, that’s still a lot.”

“Well, Daybreak is pretty good at mimicking beliefs, so people who are shaky about what they believe, or used to giving lip service to some vague version, can be vulnerable. Compulsively fair-minded people are toast. And most of all, if there’s a basic contradiction—if the basic belief is that you need to believe because you’re bad or evil—it double binds you and you’re either bad for not believing or bad because you believe. Unfortunately that’s basic to all the monotheistic religions, many other religions, and some of the biggest secular political movements. I wrote a lot more about it in all in the notebooks you found under my mattress tress tress—” Arnie Yang screamed. His hands flew wildly around and his legs thrashed; they backed out and let the guards handle him.

“That looked like it hurt,” Beth said.

“It did, I guarantee it,” Izzy replied. “We’d better run the mutual confirmation protocol, James; I don’t think he tried anything but that’s kind of like thinking your sex partner was probably okay.”

“If Arnie’s telling the truth, it’s exactly like it,” James said. “All right, remember he only talked about Daybreak because we asked. What did he say and was it true?”

There didn’t seem to be much to correct this time, but they still checked to make sure he hadn’t referred to anything that hadn’t happened. “Just the notebooks under the mattress,” Izzy said. “Dude, we are such a bunch of amateurs. Wouldn’t a professional operation have torn his place apart two minutes after he was arrested?”

Beth nodded. “Prolly right, but we are all amateurs here. The pros are mostly dead, and the ones we have like Heather and Larry can’t be everywhere. If we’re gonna win the amateurs’ll have to win it.”

The door opened. A guard said, “He wants to talk to you again.”

Arnie looked pale and sick but determined. “Read those notebooks, but make sure people read them together and keep stopping and questioning each other, exactly like what you’re doing right now. If you can find a few rock-hard believers in anything—I don’t care if it’s a Republican or a Communist, a Catholic or an atheist, just so they’re dead certain they’re right—who have the rhetorical chops to approach it in a completely detached way, that would be best, but they still need to check with each other constantly.” His grin was ragged but real. “I finally beat it, just then. I made myself assume you’d found the notebooks, and that tricked it into letting me give the information. I don’t know why but it couldn’t seem to stop me from writing those, after everything it could make me do or keep me from doing, that was one thing that was outside its power. Maybe because keeping good records of research is the only thing I really believe in.”

“Maybe,” James said. “Arnie, you know that everything you tell us is making it crystal clear we can’t keep you as a research subject. The people interrogating you would be in danger.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said, quietly. “And I don’t think Daybreak will let go of me… let go of me…” and he began to scream. He was still shrieking Let go of me! when they decided he wouldn’t be coming back for a while, and left the building. They could still hear him a block away.

^{THAT EVENING. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 5:45 PM MST. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2025.}

Heather would rather have been alone with Arnie, but everyone, including Arnie, had agreed that it would be just too dangerous. So MaryBeth Abrams and James Hendrix sat with her and Arnie while they waited for the time. They had found a secure-enough room with windows; it was too cold to have them open.

He’d had his requests: a pitcher of Dell’s beer, a fresh steamed trout and fried potatoes, and a can of pineapple for dessert. Every now and then, a tear ran down his face, but otherwise he didn’t talk much.

Finally Heather said, “Arnie, it’s getting to be time. I didn’t mention it before now because I didn’t want to trigger a seizure, but we found the notebooks. Nobody will ever be alone with them, and we’ll watch everyone who reads any part of them like a cat at a mouse hole. I wish we could keep you; your ability to analyze—”

“Would only make me brilliant at devising traps, sending you down wrong alleys, and hiding the truth,” Arnie said. “And eventually I’d find a way to plant Daybreak in some of you. I’m a smart guy and I spent my life studying how ideas move, Heather. In the long run you can’t safely talk to me with Daybreak in me, and you have no way to be sure Daybreak isn’t in me.

“Besides, having me pay for it, in public, will do you a thousand times more good as an example than I would as a research subject. Just hit the obvious themes about it: nobody’s above the law, nobody’s too big to be seized by Daybreak, be alert, never never never talk to it, fight it. Don’t save my reputation; you can’t afford to have anyone find anything attractive about this.”

The sun descended; it was inadvisable to let Arnie talk without interruption, but what he seemed to want to do most was just share memories with Heather, about the time before Daybreak, so they took turns interrupting him, encouraging him to skip from one memory to another.

When the time came, as Arnie rose to take the final walk, James said, “Arnie, I know you’ve been touching a piece of paper in your pocket. I have to ask to see it.”

Arnie reached for his pocket and collapsed in a howling seizure. Heather and MaryBeth pinned him down; James picked that pocket. The guards rushed in.

When Arnie was tied to a stretcher, Heather said, “We knew this might happen. We’ll proceed with the plan for the seizure; frankly I hope he doesn’t come out.”

James showed Heather and MaryBeth the note:

Arnie woke up as the stretcher neared the scaffold, but he was too weak to walk, and too disoriented to maintain any dignity. The militiamen lifted him from the stretcher, bound his hands behind him, strapped the sandbag to his feet, hooded him, and fitted the greased aircraft-cable noose to his neck (“uglier but faster than rope,” MaryBeth had promised). In the little square of the trap door, he was weeping, and struggling for his balance, and when he asked Heather for a last hug, his own whining tone must have humiliated him.

She held him tight and close, and said, “Over quick, now. All be over quick. Just stay quiet, now, Arnie. I’m so sorry.”

The muffled sound might have been “Thank you” or “Fuck you.” His breathing was harsh and irregular; MaryBeth said, softly, “He’s close to another seizure.”

“Go in peace, Arn.” Heather hugged him hard, one more time, and stepped back. Arnie had requested no chaplain, and he couldn’t be allowed to say anything to the crowd, so the executioner simply checked to make sure the trap was clear, and pulled the lever. The gallows worked perfectly; afraid of making a mess of things, the engineers had overdone everything, and Dr. Arnold Yang plummeted into a broken neck and pinched carotids.

The vast crowd made no sound until the massed low moan as Arnie dropped; they walked away as if they had all been part of some secret shame.

As soon as they lowered him and wheeled his body into the examining room, MaryBeth swiftly checked for a heartbeat, poured the ice water into the ear, focused a bright light on the pupils of each hideously protruding red eyeball. “All right. This man is dead.” She felt around the cable and added, “And unofficially, you’re lucky you didn’t decapitate him with this rig.”

In Heather’s office, after each of them had had a shot of whiskey, James said, “About that note,” and Heather said, “Yes, of course, you’re right. I’d know that messy block printing anywhere. It’s Allie.”

^{THE NEXT MORNING. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 8:30 AM MST. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2025.}

It was a fine clear October morning, the Indian summer kind that occasionally blesses the Arkansas Valley with clear amber light, a promise of a warm afternoon, and just enough tang in the chill morning air to make everything seem extra-alive, the last brief warmth before the plunge into icy winter. The sooty skies had brought the day about six weeks early, but early or not, the day still tasted clean and fine.

Recent trains had brought sharp cheese from Green Bay, canned spinach from Castle San Jose, and molasses from Morgan City. James had made cheese, elk sausage, and spinach turnovers and molasses and chokecherry muffins, and warmed up some elk sausage for Wonder, who ate with his flank pressed against Leslie.

“Funny how eating breakfast at your place feels like home,” Leslie said. “Got time before you go to work to take a walk down along the river?”

“I’m not going in to the GPO today. Heather’s going to be talking to me about a change of job over lunch. Okay for Wonder to finish off my scraps?”

“No problem, he can wait a day to start his diet.”

On their way down to the river, they barely spoke, not because they didn’t have things to say, but because it was all so overwhelming. Wonder showed no interest in chasing sticks, staying so close to Leslie that she occasionally tripped on him.

Finally, walking by the Arkansas, where ice rafts already floated by, James thought to ask, “So, did you find your place to be too much of a mess?”

“They’d tossed it but they weren’t too rough, I guess ’cause they were trying for thorough; all my underwear disappeared. When you see Heather, tell her she’s got a perv in the staff.” She knelt to scratch Wonder under his collar. “James, how the hell do I say ‘Thank you’?”

“You already did.”

“How about coming to Monday dinners forever? I mean, I know letting you cook for me is a pretty lame way to thank you—”

“It worked just fine this morning, I don’t know why it wouldn’t work forever.”

She reached out and lightly pushed his shoulder, palm flat against it, her little gesture for I like you, I want you to know I appreciate you, but never think it’s any more than that, and as he always did, for a split second he rested his hand on hers.

“Same old deal as before?”

“Always.”

“I’m so glad. So do you have to do anything before you meet with Heather? And when is that?”

“I need to be at Johanna’s at noon. Subject to that constraint, I’m all yours, as always.”

“You’re one of the sweetest deluded old farts I’ve ever allowed to feed me.” She socked him on the arm.

“Ow. Don’t abuse your elders. Isn’t it time for your nap?”

They walked as far as the last guard post along the Arkansas, catching up on gossip, criticizing the technique of the fishermen, and relishing the freedom and safety.

^{1 HOUR LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 12:30 PM MST. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2025.}

James was one of the higher-paid people in Pueblo, with a triple salary: he sat on the RRC Council, was a senior librarian at the GPO, and received a covert stipend from Heather’s black budget. So Heather was surprised that this was his first time at Johanna’s What There Is. “You can afford it,” she pointed out.

He shrugged. “Before Daybreak, I was a civil servant with more than twenty years in, no debt, even a paid-for house. I could have afforded Cuban cigars and high-end French wines, but I don’t smoke and I prefer beer. Besides, Johanna and I are old buds from the local cooking club, and I happen to know I’m a better cook than she is.”

Heather laughed. “Well, let’s give Johanna a shot at beating you today. She was able to get fresh beef tongue, and she’s braised it in wine and onions.”

“That deserves reverence,” James agreed. “So no business till after.”

When they had finished, Heather said, “Here’s what I’m thinking. The position of chief research director is vacant. I want you.”

James gaped at her. “You’ve got to be kidding. I’ve never done anything remotely like—”

“None of us is in a job remotely like what we did before Daybreak.”

“I’ve never done research or managed more than two people—”

“Arnie only directed research when it had to do with crypto or semiotics, and didn’t supervise most of what we do. What he was, was my consigliere. And even before he took up treason, not a very good one, I’m afraid; bouncing ideas off him was sort of like hitting tennis balls against a wall of Jell-O, they always came back messy and often not recognizable. I need a person who wants to improve my thoughts, not make them more creative and subtle. Also somebody who can make it up as they go.”

“Make what up? I don’t think—”

“Make up whatever needs making up, right away, make the people to do it, make it happen. Like how you caught Arnie.”

“Debbie was the one who caught—”

“Debbie tackled. You caught. Without your work I’d have had no idea what to do except arrest you both. You had all the evidence, you just didn’t have any reason to think I’d believe you. Besides, you can’t mean I should hire Debbie. Should I put her behind a desk and start parachuting you into the boondocks?”

James leaned back, looking at the ceiling. “All right. I have to admit I’m already starting to think about how to make it all work. I just want to state for the record that you’re hiring me with no experience—”

She leaned forward and pinned James with her gaze into his eyes. “James, my other possible candidates don’t have nearly the relevant skills you do, and have never done it at all. Whereas you do have the skills and have done it right once.”

“Yeah, but then you’ll expect me to do it right again.”

“Unh-hunh. And over and over. And hold you accountable each time.”

James shrugged. “It’s the kind of deal I’ve been looking for all my life. Okay. I’m in.” He nodded at the handwritten blackboard. “Do you have time for dessert?”

“For raspberry fool? Absolutely!”

“Good, because I’m feeling very much like a fool, myself.”

^{ABOUT THE SAME TIME. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 4:30 PM EST. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2025.}

Cameron Nguyen-Peters walked to the Council meeting with a light step for the first time he could remember. So odd, I even liked Arnie Yang, and I’m sorry for what happened to him. And he did so many good things for me, before Daybreak and after. But he never did a better thing for me than he just did by getting caught.

Whilmire led the prayer, thanking God for making the United States a Christian nation, veering close to thanking him for Daybreak. Hmm. The Board demanded that I start jailing people for false preaching. Wonder how they’d react if I started by arresting Whilmire?

Cam looked around the room after the prayer. He had no expression as he said, “Late yesterday, Doctor Arnold Yang, the former chief director of research at the RRC, was executed for treason in Pueblo; he had been taken over by Daybreak. His Daybreak contact or controller, code-named Aaron, who planned and carried out several of the most damaging attacks on Daybreak day, was killed in the process of capturing Yang. Heather O’Grainne, the director of the RRC, has presented me with convincing evidence that they have completely rolled up the espionage network in Pueblo. Incidentally, Leslie Antonowicz, who was initially arrested, has been exonerated. I thought you might like to know that particularly because several of us worked with Ms. Antonowicz during the recent, aborted summit in Pueblo. Also, James Hendrix has been appointed to take Doctor Yang’s place.”

“‘ ’Scuze me while I kiss the sky,’” the oldest reverend said. This was the first time the old man had spoken and he was making no sense. “James Hendrix,” he said. “Jimi… oh, never mind.”

Grayson, who had been pre-informed, nodded approval. “Good job at Pueblo. Pity they didn’t catch him sooner.”

Cam made himself smile; it didn’t come naturally, though he felt like singing. “Luckily it was soon enough. You will all recall that talks with Olympia in preparation for the restart election broke off just a few weeks ago when it was discovered that Daybreak had penetrated the Pueblo staff. That impediment is now removed. We’ve lost a month, but there’s no reason we can’t make it back in the next thirteen months. Gentlemen, we’re going to put our nation back together under the Constitution.” He waited a moment to see that the reporter from the Weekly Insight was scrawling frantically and looking up with light dawning in his eyes. Now was the moment. “I am therefore contacting Olympia immediately to determine the earliest possible date at which we can meet to resume the process, and I have already received the following message from Ms. O’Grainne in Pueblo, and I quote, ‘For peace and the Constitution, our door is always open. Tell everyone they can have their old room back.’ End quote. I therefore ask the Board to endorse the resumption of this effort to restore our nation, and gentlemen, I’d appreciate it even more if you can make it unanimous.”

It was the least enthusiastic chorus of aye that Cam had ever heard, and at least a third of them did not participate. But the dead silence when he called for the nays allowed him to declare the vote closed and unanimous. When he asked Whilmire, “Reverend, could you lead us in a closing prayer now, so I can send our reply as soon as possible?” he had a clear, confident undertone of threat.

He and Grayson, as usual, were the last ones out. “General, thank you for making this possible.”

“You appealed to my oath. It’s hard to resist that.”

“Of course.” They walked to the end of the corridor in silence, and Cam added, “You’re entitled to be along for the historic moment. Please come along while I do the radio conference. How are the plans going for an expedition against Castle Earthstone?”

“I think we’ve settled on the route north of Terre Haute. The forces will be adequate for the job, and if I have anything to do with it, we’ll be ready as soon as we have dry ground in the spring.”

Cam smiled slightly. “Are you a history buff, at all, General?”

“Most career officers tend to be.”

“Yes. I was just wondering… you know, winning the first battle fought along the Tippecanoe made someone president.”

Grayson laughed. “I assure you, that’s not any part of the reason for the plan, but now that you’ve mentioned it, I’ll always suspect myself. Well, I’ll supply a victory on the Tippecanoe—you supply an election—and perhaps we’ll see. You wouldn’t know any politicians named Tyler, would you?”

Cam laughed as much as he could manage, given that he almost never did, and the two men walked in what was almost companionable silence. Now I’ve got you, he thought, and if that didn’t feed your ego, God alone knows what will.

THE NEXT DAY. PUT-IN-BAY, SOUTH BASS ISLAND, OHIO (OR NEW STATE OF SUPERIOR). 4:30 PM EST. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2025.

“When I was little,” Chris said, “I remember there was some show in reruns, where a midget would yell, ‘The plane! The plane!’ at the beginning of every episode. I just thought the midget was interesting, when I was a kid, but now I realize how interesting a plane is. Especially compared to waiting for fish.” The airplane engine, and the glimpses of a biplane moving in the sky to the south, had just given them an excuse to fold up for the afternoon and head for the airport.

Jason lifted out a stringer holding two decent-sized walleyes, a steel-head, and four perch. “Jeez, I hope Doctor Rhodes doesn’t turn out to be right. The fishing’s so good, I hate to think of all this turning into green goop and then a swamp.”

“Yeah. You know, we thought Daybreakers were environmentalists.”

Jason shrugged. “We thought we were. We worked hard at not being human-centric, but it was just another way of acting out the basic Daybreak idea: humans suck and ought to die. We just wanted to kill people, for being mean and inconsiderate, for being too numerous, mostly for just existing at all.” A cold breeze blew into their faces; Jason’s gaze shifted to the gray sky over the trees, not watching the plane anymore. “If destroying the Great Lakes meant killing more people, Daybreak would do it. Daybreak isn’t right or left, or Green or racist, or anything. It’s just Daybreak—people suck and ought to die.”

They walked the mile of winding, crumbling road in dead silence. At the end of the runway, they found a short-winged little biplane, an Acro Sport, painted in red and yellow stripes, marred by the black and gray smears where the biofuel engine and its lye spray had stained it with burnt-soap exhaust.

Since they couldn’t open the package marked EYES ONLY till they were back in their rooms at the Edgewater Hotel, waiting for the wagon and riding back gave them time to catch up on gossip. Nancy Teirson, the pilot, mostly flew from Green Bay, the capital of the New State of Superior, alternating between the northern mail route to Olympia and a circuit of the Castles and walled towns in Michigan. “And out to here maybe once a month,” she said. “This time I had orders to swing further south and east, overfly the Lost Quarter more than usual.”

“Tell’em,” Larry said.

She lowered her voice, plainly not wanting to be overheard by the wagon driver. “Tribals on the march on the old roads. Bands of hundreds of them, maybe one band more than a thousand.”

Back at the hotel, the instant the door was closed, Larry ripped open the envelope. “Mail for all three of us.” He tossed Beth’s letter to Jason, who went into the other room to read in privacy.

Chris dove into the notes from Cassie and Abel, chuckling and tsking in the corner.

Larry read Heather’s orders—just a few sentences—several times, keeping his eyes on the page to look like he was concentrating intently, or like they were lengthy. He wanted Chris and Jason to have time with their mail before he shared the part he was supposed to share:

When both of them had savored their mail, and asked what the orders were, he showed them.

“Overland in the Lost Quarter, with winter coming?” Chris asked. “Is she nuts or does she hate us?”

“Not mutually exclusive,” Larry pointed out. And if you knew what was in the message that was just for me, you’d be pretty sure the real answer is “Both.”

Chris rose and stretched. “Larry, if you could give me an hour or two to write something for Nancy to take back—”

“You have the night. I’ll need to arrange a ship, and I’m guessing we won’t be able to sail before tomorrow morning, maybe longer. You guys just write what you need to write, so it’s ready to go out, and it’s all right if you sleep all day after we’re on the boat, okay?”

Jason looked almost pathetically grateful. “Yeah, thanks.”

Larry shrugged. “If I just send Debbie a note that she’s a great human being, and to try to only kill people that deserve it, it’ll make both of us happier than we’ve been in years—and won’t take me five. Plan to be packed at dawn tomorrow, and I’ll fill you in sometime before I go to bed. I’d better get down to the docks before everyone buttons up for the night.” He was out the door almost instantly.

Chris and Jason exchanged glances; there was obviously something the senior agent wasn’t telling them, and just as obviously if Larry didn’t want to talk about it, they shouldn’t. As they both sat down to write, Chris said, “Funny thing, I wish I had time to go fishing.”

Jason stared. “You complained about fishing all afternoon.”

“And rightly so. And if I had the time, I’d do something better than go fishing. I just wish I had the time.”

^{THE NEXT DAY. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 4:15 AM EST. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2025.}

The dank cold of predawn early winter mornings in Athens smells like a soggy snowball shoved up your nose. Cam’s warm coat and watch cap felt good as he hurried along the path. No point in varying his route; his awkward shadow, who occasionally crashed around in the bushes behind him, knew perfectly well that he was going to the crypto radio facility. And he knows I’m going there to call Pueblo or Olympia, because I need enemies and neutrals to keep my “friends” from taking over. Must be how the last few Bourbons, Romanovs, and Tokugawas felt.

While Athens techs talked to Pueblo techs, he savored the big mug of coffee that the night tech had waiting for him, concentrating on each sip, drinking it all before it could cool, finishing it before Heather came on the line.

They talked at this hour because it was Cam’s getting-up time, Leo’s middle-of-the-night feeding, and the best time in the ionosphere for long-range radio. But since it looked sneaky, they needed the appearance of a possibly innocent reason for sneaking. So this morning, like every other, they began with the usual array of flirty double-entendres, wasting ten minutes or so out of the half hour in pretending to be on the brink of phone sex.

Next Cam rattled off a list of sentences about colors, animals, and a not-impossible-to-break code for dates and times that coincided with meeting various officials in the TNG government, none of which was at all important, except that since he knew Grayson’s people would be trying to match up codes to people and actions, looking for RRC agents, he sowed suspicion onto some of Grayson’s loyalists.

Today he began with “Brown Hen polishes silverware with Green Dog” and read on down through “Gray Weasel is cooking macaroni for Red Squirrel’s barbecue.” As always, purposely he used Red Dog to refer to a passionately Post Raptural lieutenant he saw for a few minutes every week, implying that he was betraying Grayson’s secrets to Peet.

In fact, all the apparent messages either referred to random events of no real importance, minor matters it didn’t hurt for the opposition to learn, and things it was useful to tell them (whether true or disinformational). If the other side read them, they would gain nothing other than another layer of deception. The real message was in a positional code, one of the World War One era pencil and paper expedients that the absence of computers had forced on them. The first eight and last three sentences were nulls. The number of messages between the first eight and last three was an hour between one and twelve, the first letter of the last word in the eighth sentence indicating a.m. or p.m., and the last letters of the last three null sentences coding urgency, possible topic, and level of danger.

Together, they told Heather what to relay to Red Dog: a safe meeting time and the relative urgency of meeting. Today Cam was sending VERY HIGH URGENCY, POLITICAL MATTER, HIGHER THAN AVERAGE DANGER, TEN THIRTY A.M.

After the cryptic sentences they traded gossip about mutual friends for a few minutes, and Heather gave him a quick summary of what the Lost Quarter expedition had reported. She read him a nonsense text; he memorized every fourth word, after the first number in the text was “seven,” because he added seven to the first number and dropped the high digits. This was a longer message than usual; twenty pairs of words.

They finished by talking longingly about how lonely they were. Cam found that much too easy.

Back at his office, Cam riffled through his dictionary as he did so often; lately he’d made a habit of complaining to his assistants about their limited vocabularies and improper use of words, and leafed through the dictionary often. This time, though, as he waited for his breakfast, he took the first word pair: tear clearance. Tear was the eleventh word on page 648, clearance the third on page 98; reversing pages and positions gave the eleventh word on page 98 (clean) and the third word on 648 (team).

Writing nothing down, he lost his place and had to start over a couple of times, but finally he knew

Heather’s coding always amused him; she was always careful to use synonyms for stop and break so as not to create a pattern that might identify the dictionary to the opposition, but there was something inspired, he felt, about fractionate for break and replete whoa for full stop. Also, he liked astronomical and horrendous; in a dictionary code it is not only as easy to send a big word as a small one, but more secure because it varies the vocabulary.

November 20th at earliest, he thought, pulling his attention away from the interesting coding to the frustrating message. Forty days from today. The time it rained on Noah, or the time Jesus spent in the wilderness. Of course, they had a hell of a lot more and better backup on tap than I have.

^{4 DAYS LATER. CASTLE LARSEN (NEAR THE FORMER JENNER, CALIFORNIA). 2 AM PST. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2025.}

I’m glad the weather held, Bambi Castro thought. She sat on the big chair next to Quattro’s, on the platform at the south end of the hastily hand-mown soccer field. Before them, at least a thousand people were scattered in a gradient of seriousness—the rows up close to the platform were filled with freeholders and their families, all sitting very straight and serious for the investiture and pledging ceremonies that would create the League of Northern Castles. Behind them were prominent locals, trying to look as serious as the freeholders. The less interested and the less serious had arrived later, till the back area faded into Standard California Outdoor Festival, with guys playing hacky sack, mothers chasing babies around and playing silly games with them, friends picnicking on blankets and loudly critiquing everything they saw, hairy shirtless guys playing guitars, and girls in long skirts twirling rhythmlessly wherever there was music.

The one problem with the best seat in the house, Bambi realized, was that she could see everything except what she wanted to see—Quattro in his finery: a splendid combination of French diplomatic corps formal attire, the Marine dress uniform, and German petty king, with tall black boots and a magnificent plumed hat that looked like something between a European doctoral cap and one of the five hundred hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, as re-envisioned by D’Artagnan and modified by a feather salesman. He said Heather had insisted, which didn’t sound anything like her, so Bambi figured it must be some obscure joke.

Anyway, there was no question about it, Quattro was gorgeous, and this was a show all about him—all that Bambi had to do was look nice in her long dress. So it seemed as if, being his wife, she should be allowed a good view of the beautiful front, rather than stuck here watching his back as he accepted the allegiance of seventeen other freeholders and the shouted acclamation of the assembled crowd. Four times the vassals Daddy’s got, representing probably ten times the economic strength and population; no wonder Daddy has that funny expression. He’s got peons envy.

Harrison Castro was seated at the extreme left—the right side of the audience—in the highest spot for visiting dignitaries. Next to him, two chairs stood conspicuously empty: the seats reserved for the PCG and the TNG representatives. They had been invited and had sent the curtest possible snubs. Wonder who Heather had write those notes for them, now that she doesn’t have Arnie?

This just meant more attention for Harrison Castro. Daddy looks like an Imperial bureaucrat from Star Wars or the Postmaster General of San Banana. But all the same, he definitely adds something. Too bad we couldn’t get a bishop.

After the ceremony, they posed for pictures, hoping that state-of-the-art redeveloped photography would produce some acceptable result. Standing between her father and Quattro, Bambi turned on the beauty contestant smile.

Castro said, “Hey, you realize your firstborn child can inherit the Duchy of California?”

Squeezing Bambi’s hand, Quattro said, “Just so you don’t mind my family tradition of naming kids after cars. I kind of like the sound of Duke Lexus of La La Land.”

^{3 DAYS LATER. SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA. 10:30 PM PST. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2025.}

Harrison Castro’s first awareness that anything was wrong, as he entered his bedroom, was when a strong man yanked a bag full of feathers over his head, pinned him to the wall, cuffed him behind his back, and bound his feet. Unable to remove the bag, unable to breathe through the dense feathers, Castro was reeling, red flashes in the blackness of the bag, sucking desperately at the little bit of air that penetrated.

“You can have air and you won’t be further harmed,” a voice said, seemingly from a million miles away. “If you give your word of honor not to shout or try to attract attention, then tap my hand, here, twice.”

Terrified, suffocating, Castro tapped. At once the bag was ripped from his head, and a great mass of dense feathers knocked from his face. He gasped; the air pouring in made him dizzy all over again.

The man in front of him wore black shoes, pants, gloves, and hoodie, with the drawstring hood pulled tight around his face, and a black ski mask. He said, very softly, “Should you break your word I am quite capable of cutting your throat, ethically, and equally capable of escaping, practically. Keep your voice down, Mister Castro, I would dislike cutting your throat over the semantic difference between speaking loudly and shouting. There are so many better differences.”

Still gasping, Castro nodded, and let himself sink backward to sit on his bed. The man moved forward to stand in striking distance, blocking Castro from rising again from his seat. “Here is what you will do. We would like to see your League of South Coast Castles succeed, and we want you to be the sole sovereign in this part of the world. You will stand back and close your doors when the Bright Venus Tribe and its allies strike at the FBI Headquarters, the naval command, and the other Federal offices around the bay. You may accept refugees but only on the condition that they leave the area by the first available ship; there are to be no Federal offices, either Temper or Provi, anywhere south of Los Angeles or west of the mountains, ever again. The authority of the Constitution is ended.

“Once that is accomplished, the tribes will want to discuss alliance—which you and we will both need, to keep the Federals from returning. We will be more than willing to ally with you, and even to swear limited fealty, as long as it is understood that most of this area must become wilderness again; San Diego can be a trading post where we obtain some of the things we’ll need, but it must not grow into a city again. That is what we propose in broad outline; we will tell you details once you agree.”

Castro said, “You’re talking about the future of my land, my family—you have to give me time to think. I don’t need much, but I’d rather die than make a decision of so much importance in two minutes with a knife at my throat.”

“We thought you might feel that way. We will strike in about two weeks against the Federals. You may have ten days, though it would be better to say ‘yes’ sooner.”

“And if my answer is no?”

The man shrugged. “We can get to you. If your answer is no, someone else’s won’t be. After I free you, you will remain quietly in this room for at least half an hour. It would be very inadvisable to shout for help or bring guards in any sooner; I might not be alone and I might not be gone, and we have already established that I am not afraid to die, and you are.”

He hauled Castro painfully to his feet by the hair, turned him, and flung him facedown on the bed. The cuffs fell away. “You may untie your feet.”

Castro rolled over, brought his ankles up, and grasped the rope; the knots came apart in his hands and he kicked them from his feet. When he looked, just a moment later, no one was there, just black rope beside the bed and great wads of feathers scattered everywhere.