The Last President

^{THE NEXT DAY. PUEBLO. 6:15 PM MOUNTAIN TIME. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2026.}

“You always said you don’t even like kids,” Leslie Antonowicz said. She had always been the practical one in the partnership.

Under the table, Wonder, her immense dog, made a whimpering sound that was uncannily like agreement.

“These would be teenagers,” James Hendrix pointed out. “Nearly-finished pre-people, like Patrick and his sister.” He wore his best apron.

Leslie had been coming to James’s house for dinner every Monday for years before Daybreak. James loved to cook and she loved to eat, with her constant outdoor sports, running, swimming, climbing, “all the amusements of a ten-year-old boy” as he liked to tease her. It had begun just after she had gently, painfully let him know that they were friends forever but a twenty-five-year age gap was just too much; now, both their distant families had been missing since Daybreak, and each was as much family as the other had.

“So,” Leslie asked again, “all right, granted, not kids, teenagers. But why?”

James shrugged. “Why does the RRC do anything? I hope because we think in the long run it’s for the good of the country, right? Well, weird though it is, and even knowing that Daybreak took him over, the best plan we’ve got for eradicating Daybreak and recreating our country is poor old Arnie Yang’s plan.”

“What about that string-and-card thing Heather has?”

“Who do you think figured out what should be on it? Arnie did the strategy and the rationale; that’s just Heather’s bureaucratic way of implementing it, and we just have to hope we don’t need a major strategic adjustment between now and January 20, 2027. The more I think about it, the more I think we screwed up royally in letting the politicians and cops execute Arnie Yang. I even suspect that his telling us it was the best way and we had to do it might have been Daybreak talking; the advantages of having him alive now really outweigh anything we gained by making an example out of him.”

“The public wanted his blood.”

“Oh, I know, democracy loves melodrama; that’s why it’s always a little stupid at best. But killing the only guy who could tell us how things worked or what might be going on—let alone the author of the only strategy we’ve got—was bone stupid.”

Leslie folded her arms. “He was in process of framing me for what he was doing, and I was close to going to the gallows in his place.”

“Well, I’m not saying he was perfect.”

After a long pause, they both laughed. James grinned. “Of course I would rather have you to laugh about it with. And maybe Arnie was right anyway, the night before we executed him, when he said that he thought the next twenty years would be mostly a matter of getting symbolic things right, and to just keep asking ourselves what Hollywood would do. Which brings me back to why I’m going to launch this Academy of the United States idea, and right away.”

“Arnie told you to?”

“He said a new nation—which we’re going to be, starting over from scratch—needs living heroes, and if it doesn’t have them it will make them. So I think we have to raise some, here, because if we don’t, they will be raised elsewhere and we can only guess at what sort of people they’re going to be.” He lowered the door on the woodstove and drew out the baked trout to go over polenta with asparagus in a butter and pot cheese sauce. “Now, we are at perfection. There will be silent and deeply appreciative reverence for this food until it is consumed.”

“There will be,” Leslie agreed.

Wonder snored, too experienced to worry about people-dinner till it became dog-scraps.

When they had finished and were enjoying the bucket of beer from Dell’s Brew that Leslie had brought along, she said, “You know, the strange thing is, you could argue I was almost born for the world after Daybreak, and I guess I can see why until you caught Arnie everyone else thought I was the Daybreak mole here. I mean, I like hard physical work, I like being out in the bush running around and doing that hard work, I don’t mind being uncomfortable if it’s a chance to be outside, all of that. I guess some ways my attitude was already halfway to Daybreak.

“But you, James, you like comfort and clean sheets and you don’t go outside if you don’t have to, you loved cooking and classical music and guided tours to museums and all that… and I’m still convinced that if I didn’t drag you out for walks you’d be too huge to get through your own door—”

“An accusation which is base, scurrilous, and almost certainly true.”

“Well, yeah. I mean, put that all together. Anybody’d think you’d be just barely functioning if you were even alive, and I’d be the Jungle Queen of Daybreak. But look at us.”

“You’ve done very well,” James said. “On the RRC Board. Important missions completed. You’re a blazing success in this new world.”

“And you’re Heather O’Grainne’s good right hand.” She drained her glass and poured another. “And brilliant at it. So I understand you are proposing this weird mix of Hogwarts and Starfleet Academy, but why do you want to run it personally?”

He shrugged. “Probably what you’ve always called my silent arrogance. There’s no one else I trust to understand that it might be the most important thing we do. Right now we have a core of young-to-middle-aged scouts and agents who remember the old United States in their bones, who get up every morning half-expecting civilization and a President and Congress and a United States, and feel how abnormal it is not to have that.

“But give it twenty years and you’ll have adults raising kids and voting who kind of remember central heating, and airports, but the republic will be a vague concept out of the past, on par with Byzantium—all they’ll know is that there was one. We have to make sure they see what it has to do with them; as long as there are people who remember that we were all one nation once, and what it was that bound us together, then we might not be winning but we won’t have altogether lost, either.”

“So the Academy is like that kid at the end of Camelot that King Arthur says is his victory?”

“Well, Pueblo is not exactly Camelot—”

“You’re telling me. Just try finding a knight in shining armor locally—”

“Hush, shameless. Not so much our last-ditch not-beaten-yet try at a win as much as it’s support for all the other plans; almost everything else would have to fail before that became our main hope. Meanwhile the Academy of the United States will probably be useful, isn’t likely to do any harm, and it’s one of those things like a garden or a life preserver—get it before you need it.”

They sat in silence for a long time, and when they did talk again, it was about the ongoing search through the pamphlet files, looking for things people could use in this wild new age.

^{4 DAYS LATER. MAUCKPORT, INDIANA. 8:30 AM EASTERN TIME. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2026.}

Jenny sternly squelched her envy when the messenger rode up; Jeff had made it abundantly clear that as much as he had appreciated her being a volunteer messenger at the battle of Jeffersonville, and although it had undoubtedly boosted both of their popularity, there would be no repetitions “unless there’s another big mess, and I’d just as soon not have any more of them.” At least he had conceded that since she had remained completely quiet and unobtrusive in his headquarters, it was silly to pretend she’d be in the way there, or more out of danger elsewhere.

So she knew what was going on, which was better, but every messenger seemed to come in from the big, interesting world outside, and she couldn’t help thinking how much more interesting it was out there.

And just in case of another big mess, she’d equipped Buttermilk with two saddlebags: one with rations, canteen, and extra ammo, and the other empty, in case someone happened to hand her a dispatch. Can’t hurt to be prepared.

This messenger wore regular-Army Rorschach jammies and a Stetson he’d probably gotten from the TexICs. He was slim and short, and had a strange band of tattoos around his eyes, something a rebellious high school student might have sported back before. Jenny wondered if he’d lied about his age, or if anyone even checked age anymore. Maybe he just looks young because of the tattoo, or that bewildered expression.

Jeff read the dispatch. “Corporal, what’s your name?”

“Dave McWaine, sir.”

“I’m asking because we’ll be talking a little while. Try to relax, you’re doing your job, and don’t worry about what I might prefer to hear. Did you come directly from Colonel Prewitt?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did he tell you what the dispatch was about?”

“No, sir, but I did guess it. He was standing right there looking at where their campsite had been, and they’re gone. Nothing left but the spots of yellow grass where their tents were, the paths they trampled, a few big piles of bodies, and the charred spots where they had cookfires. Not a trace.”

Grayson nodded. “And those were the things I was going to ask about. Any other evidence that you remember or comes to your mind?”

“It was, well, cleaner than a Daybreaker camp usually is, sir. I think that just means they left a while ago, ’cause we had that big rainstorm yesterday, and it probably washed away a lot of the shit. Sorry, sir.”

Grayson smiled. “I am aware that soldiers sometimes use the word ‘shit,’ Corporal. I was just thinking of using it myself.”

Late that afternoon Bambi Castro flew low over the camp and dropped a reconnaissance dispatch: the whole Daybreaker horde had fled more than thirty miles northward, past Palmyra, and was still moving at a near run, leaving their dead and exhausted behind on the road.

Grayson looked from face to face in the darkening room, and said, “Well, that’s why the patrols didn’t catch them and won’t catch them. Those men will be coming in all night; make sure they’re fed and they get a decent place to sleep, since I made them ride so hard all day for nothing. We’ll send a fast advance guard downstream—have them go out at dawn, and see if it’s the same situation at the next camp. I have an awful feeling it will be.”

“Why ‘awful,’ sir?” The militia colonel who asked that looked like she should be someone’s grandmother. “It puts us ahead of schedule if nothing else.”

“Our schedule was built around being ahead of their schedule. Now they’ve changed it. They won’t have changed it to put themselves behind. Have the tech people set up a radio, for keyed transmission, and give me the voice option too, in case General Phat wants to call back.”

If he’s in a hurry to talk to Shorty Phat, Jenny thought, the situation is much more serious than it’s ever been before.

^{THE NEXT DAY. FACILITY 1, PUEBLO. 7:15 AM MOUNTAIN TIME. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2026.}

James had a meeting later that day, and if he could get anything out of 162, he needed it for the meeting. He knew this had been happening a great deal, lately, but he didn’t see any way around it. Jason was grumpy about coming out to be the backup and stabilizer, but there was apt to be violence, and Izzy was just too small and Beth was pregnant.

Jason understood that as well as James, but seemed to feel entitled to be grouchy anyway.

This time, however, Interrogation Subject 162 was wide awake when they got there. They ran through several exercises which should have triggered seizures, and none did; to all appearances, Daybreak was not active in 162 today.

At last, seeing no clever approach, James asked directly. “So here’s what we are wondering about. Not only did the tribals pull out of Mauckport before we got there, but air reconnaissance shows that they’re pulling back all the way along the line, everywhere, not only abandoning the camps where they were living for months, but scattering and taking different ways home to their tribal camps, traveling in groups of a couple dozen or so. And very often the camps are emptying out too, with tribals heading north and east. It looks like a wide area retreat.”

“Daybreak is sort of a living thing. That’s probably why it’s less active in my mind today; it’s trying to hide, retreat, crawl back under its rock like an octopus, you see? It’s been burned badly and it’s scared and trying to back up. If you press it now—especially if you drive right at the head—you might might might—”

162 began to wave his arms around and fell thrashing to the floor. When he emerged from the seizure, he seemed even more lucid. “Look, you do more than just establish that Daybreak is in retreat. This is where you can turn the war against Daybreak into part of the new national mythology for the Restored Republic. And that mythology is truly vital; you can’t just give people 2023 back in 2028 and say, here we are, everything is normal, sorry about nine-tenths of you dying off in the last five years. The Restored Republic won’t be the old one, and it needs myths of its own, stories like Lexington and Shiloh and the Bulge that define it, that have heroes who can be held up as models, not because the children will really model themselves after them, but because everyone can have the experience of agreeing about the greatness. Well, ‘we beat them up and they backed off and went home for the summer’ is not a great myth, and it won’t make any heroes. ‘We drove right to the enemy capital and smashed it till not stone stood upon stone,’ that’s a myth, and one that’s going to have some heroes. So pick a target—this Castle Earthstone sounds like a good one—and pour it all into taking it and smashing it. Make yourself some heroes.”

Jason must have felt strange about all this, because he ran Interrogation Suspect 162 through half a dozen more seizure-inducing routines, but he passed without difficulty, complained of being sleepy, and curled up under the blankets as soon as they said he was done for this session.

^{AN HOUR LATER. PUEBLO. 9:15 AM MOUNTAIN TIME. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2026.}

“If I win the election there is going to be an executive order that all national security personnel be able to bake.” General Phat spread butter on the thick slice of fresh bread, slid the poached egg onto it, lifted it, and ate reverently; it had only been in the past couple of months that they had gotten egg production up to satisfactory levels, and though they were becoming common again, eggs still tasted like a treat.

A snow-rain mix of big damp flakes and stinging, spitting droplets flung itself against James Hendrix’s windows, but inside, the woodstove had been fired up for hours, and the house was warm and comfortable. Heather sprawled on the couch, with Leo on her lap; Hendrix and Phat leaned back in the armchairs.

When they had finished, Phat said, “All right. Look, I don’t have any more idea than Grayson does what the enemy is up to, but he’s right. The hordes pulling back from the rivers doesn’t look like a retreat; it looks like they’re going to try something different. Whatever it is, Grayson’ll handle it.”

James said, “I’ve got some intel from one of our best interrogation sources that might be relevant.”

Phat nodded, and James explained, “Two things, really. One is that Daybreak apparently can do foolish things just like a more conventional person. Right now it’s overreacting because we’ve scared it and hurt it so it’s pulling back. I guess once you get the momentum going, they’re not likely to stop running. The other is that this campaign is very likely to produce some heroes, if we deliberately create some big battles deep in their territory that really make our people look like conquerors.”

Phat nodded. “Assuming that it’s not a trap. Or that we couldn’t just let them go back to their inadequate farming and hunting and count on starvation to do the job this winter. But your source recommends against that?”

“The argument seems to be that we have them on the ropes and now we should knock them out,” James said.

“Well, since Grayson is the theater commander for this, I don’t intend to second-guess him. I’ll mention the possibility of a knockout, and of course if he’s serious about winning the presidential election, being a bold hero instead of a prudent winner-on-points won’t hurt either. But he can make those decisions himself. I’m not worried about his competence. I am worried about what’s going on inside him, and what’s going to happen if he is handed a big bad surprise, like a major defeat or reversal.”

Heather and James just looked at him, quietly, for a while, until finally Heather said, “Look, he’s a pushy jerk. He’s an entitled spawn of the old ruling class. He’s a deeply weird guy who married a really smart woman who chooses to look like a porno star, and cut a deal to sell out our republic to a bunch of dumbass hick just-barely-graduates of Bible college, and most of all, he assassinated a friend of yours—and mine!—for reasons of purely personal ambition. So you and I both detest him, no question. But for some reason you also think he’s—what? the weak reed? the defective cog in the machine? You talk and act like you expect him to crack up and destroy everything, any minute. And every now and then you hint that you know something really bad about him. Normally I’d regard that as your business and his, but we’ve got the whole future of our country bet on that asshole, and I think we’re entitled to know more than that you don’t like him and don’t really trust him but you think he’s the best we can do. Now for the love of God, tell us what it is. We sure as shit have a right to know.”

Phat turned toward the window, and then seemed to realize, himself, that it was a melodramatic gesture. He raised a hand as if to make a point, then let it flop uselessly at his side. At last he obviously forced himself to look Heather, and then all the others, in the eye, before he blurted out, “I didn’t think I’d ever tell this story.

“Grayson and I were in the same entering class of second lieutenants, back in 1996. Busiest generation of officers with more combat time in more places than any since World War Two, maybe since the Indian Wars. Grayson and I happened to be posted to the same places, more than once. He was an old-family Southerner, ancestors on both sides of the Civil War, too many uniforms to count in the family tree, a trust fund back there someplace he never touched, the kind that saluted when the doctor slapped his bottom.

“My folks thought I was going to be a concert pianist or maybe a brain surgeon, or ideally both, though they’d have settled for CEO of IBM. Remember that stupid old saying that the last people who believed in America were Asians? Well, maybe there was some truth in it. At least we believed in all the work hard and get ahead stuff.

“It was a big rebellion for me to go to West Point; the fact that Uncle Sam paid for it all meant my parents couldn’t cut me off, and they had no connections from which they could pull strings for my career. For Chinese-American parents that’s like being fired. So Grayson belonged there from birth, and I was there in defiance of my upbringing, and we were going to not mix about as thoroughly as any two men were ever going to not mix. We never socialized, only ate at the same table when we happened to land there because of a mutual friend, that sort of thing. I don’t think we traded fifty words before the story I’m about to tell you happened. We went our ways, at the Point, and after graduation, and through the beginnings of our careers. And, like I said, just purely at random, we drew a lot of assignments where we were around each other, but we didn’t get to be friends and we barely interacted.

“Then one night a sergeant named Trimble that I barely knew came to me about something that had happened at a very-out-of-bounds party with, among other things, a couple teenage hookers, and officers fraternizing with enlisted, and some pretty serious drug issues. One of the prostitutes had been hurt badly enough to go to the emergency room—not anything lethal but, well, bad enough for an emergency room.

“By the time I was hearing about it from Trimble, it had already gone to the County Prosecutor. After a night of everybody-take-a-turn-on-the-drunk-girl, somebody had beat her bad enough to crack ribs and put a major hematoma in each breast and buttock, then dumped her in the emergency room.

“Since she left the party with Trimble, it was a real good circumstantial case, but probably not good enough to convict. It was a small-town ER and nobody saw Trimble bring her in; literally the desk attendant came out of the bathroom and there the girl was on the floor, whoever dropped her already gone, and the place was so backwoods there was no surveillance camera.

“Two, the party was in a hotel room, and although Trimble had said he’d take his turn with her and then take her home, witnesses thought they remembered Trimble asleep at the party after, but no one remembered him coming back; only one person remembered him leaving.

“If he kept his mouth shut, probably the judge would dismiss the charges, and he’d leave the Army with a general discharge. And he was even willing to accept the punishment, because… well, the Trimbles of this world seem to think it balances out between what they never get caught doing, which is a lot, and what they get blamed for that they didn’t do. It was just that he wanted one officer to know he didn’t do it.”

Phat turned back toward the window and watched the foul weather.

James Hendrix asked very softly, “Grayson did it?”

Phat nodded. “According to Trimble, he and the girl went down to the parking lot and she realized he was way too drunk to drive, and while they were arguing, Grayson came up and offered to give her a ride if she’d put out on the way home. Trimble said he especially remembered because it gave him the creeps that Grayson had to humiliate the girl, making her agree to trade sex for a ride in front of someone else; he said, come on, of course, she was a hooker, she’d been used all night, one more for a ride home, of course she would, but Grayson made her stand there crying and say exactly what she’d do for a ride, and that made Trimble a little sick.

“Anyway they went off in Grayson’s car, which was the last Trimble ever saw of either of them.”

Heather said, “I was a cop for a long time. I can tell which witness you believe.”

Phat made a face and balanced his hand. “I’m a lousy judge of people and situations. If I’d taken two minutes to put a spine into Norm McIntyre, make Cam Nguyen-Peters back down, and backed up Graham Weisbrod when I had the chance, none of this would matter and we’d have a functioning national government today. I misread all those men right when it was critical to get it right.

“So any judgment I make about people, you shouldn’t be too quick to accept. Still, I still think Trimble was telling the truth, and I wasn’t surprised to hear that about Grayson. Maybe I just disliked him because he’d inherited most of what I worked for, or maybe because he acts weird around Asians, though I’m not sure anyone else would even notice. But whatever. I believed Trimble.

“The case never came to trial. The girl didn’t want to testify, and took off to go live with relatives in another state. By the time I heard about it, the girl had already gone across the state line and Trimble knew he wouldn’t be tried, or court-martialed, but he asked me to put in a word for him; like I said, he just didn’t want all of the officers to think he was that particular kind of monster, ‘just see if you can put in a word for me so people don’t think the worst, okay?’ with a little rising whine on the ‘okay’ that made me want to shake him.

“So I went to my CO and told him, and he took me up to the major, who listened carefully, and made a couple of phone calls.

“I have a lot more experience now. I’d recognize that major as a guy who had decayed slowly on stateside duty.

“You might say there was something in the air. 9/11 hadn’t happened yet, but things nobody remembers anymore like the car bomb in the World Trade Center and the attack on USS Cole had. Without anybody quite knowing or saying why, guys like that major were being routed into time-serving jobs where they’d finish out without doing much more harm.

“Well, maybe he didn’t do much harm. He just told us that Grayson had a lot of family connections and political pull, and we could get into a sticky mess that would hang up everyone’s career, but he’d do it if we wanted to pursue it. Or we could quietly take Trimble’s word and he’d personally do his best to make sure Trimble didn’t get burned.”

“Which meant Grayson would get away with it,” Heather said. Funny, she thought, as a Fed, I saw clowns walk when we just couldn’t get the right guy into a cell for something we knew damned well he did, and I learned to shrug about that, but this story is getting to me.

“Yeah. Some years later Trimble—I kept track of him—was killed instantly by a sniper in Fallujah. The major was allowed to retire at a time when the Army was trying to retain anyone of any value, and I guess that says it all right there, eh?

“And time passed and Grayson and I made general. I can’t prove that Grayson was sidetracked or I was fast-tracked, but I did get it three full years ahead of him, and a couple of times I was his commanding officer. Relations with him always had a little prickle in them, like he was waiting for me to do something obviously unfair, or I was waiting for him to complain about something he had no right to. After a while, I came to think that he knew that I knew. Maybe I couldn’t quite conceal my contempt and distrust, or maybe I treated him like a guilty man and a weak reed, or maybe he’d found out I was Trimble’s protector, but Grayson took it. It felt like, on some weird level, he agreed with me that he was a piece of shit.”

Wind spattered a spray of sleet against the window. The stovepipe moaned. James tented his hands. “Quite a story.”

Heather nodded. “Isn’t it possible that he’s different now?”

Phat shrugged. “We’re modern Americans. We believe in redemption and second chances. But in my experience, some people hug the evil they did inside themselves until it takes them over, like somehow they are always saying ‘This thing I did, and got away with, is the real me, and I’m still getting away with it, and it owns me, and it has a right to’ down inside. I think that Grayson believes, with all his heart, that he’s the kind of phony who does something repulsive and lets another man take the fall for it.”

James’s mouth distorted into a lopsided wince. “If Dickens had written him, he’d set him up with a moment of redemption. ‘It is a far, far better thing I do,’ and so on. Maybe Grayson will surprise himself that way, too.”

“I sincerely hope that happens—and it brings him peace,” Phat said, rising from his chair. “Well. We all have duties.”

Heather looked up from bundling up Leo. “Ambitious, flawed guy with a young sexy wife he has to keep up with. And his boss, who knows his secret, is coming for a visit. Let’s hope he’s being scripted by Dickens. What if it’s Shakespeare?”

James and Phat shared the experience of forcing a laugh.

^{ABOUT 2 WEEKS LATER. ON BOARD USS DISCOVERY, IN CHRISTIANSTED HARBOR. 6:15 AM ATLANTIC TIME. THURSDAY, MARCH 12, 2026.}

The rising sun turned the thin fog in Christiansted harbor a soft gold, and then dissipated it. Red roofs, white walls, a perfect Caribbean sky, and the deep green low hills pulled the eye from one warm, eye-pleasing color to the next. The light breeze from the west smelled clean and fine; the tide was almost fully in.

Highbotham had rowed out to see them off. She and Halleck were reviewing everything that had been settled for at least a week. They paused for a moment by the group of sailor-scholars waiting by the railing, and Halleck said, “Captain Highbotham informs me that there is an opportunity I really should share with all of my junior seamen; I think she’s trying to steal some of my crew.”

Highbotham shook her head. “Couldn’t be done, and besides I wouldn’t be the one stealing you and this wouldn’t be where you’d go. I just got a note from James Hendrix at RRC, the guy who writes the Jamesgrams. They are opening an Academy of the United States in Pueblo, first classes starting in January.” Highbotham shrugged. “For many young people it’s a golden opportunity, I’m sure. Sounds like it would beat being a farmer learning the hard way, or a refugee, or a foot soldier, which are the growth fields right now. But the crewmen on Discovery already have a better start than that. And maybe I flatter myself but I think the Caribbean Academy of Mathematics can take care of local needs for a while. If anyone wants to go a thousand miles inland to enjoy Rocky Mountain weather and spend all their time in a classroom, and live on noodles and potatoes and beef jerky all winter, instead of…” The sweep of her arm took in the town, the harbor, the island, perhaps the whole Caribbean. “Well, it seemed only fair for people to know the chance was available. I just think you’d have to be somewhere well beyond crazy to take it. And since time and tide waiteth et cetera, I’ll wish you bon voyage and get myself off your deck, Captain. My prayers and envy are with you.”

For the next hour, Whorf, Ihor, and every other sailor-scholar were far too busy with all the business of taking a sailing ship out of a harbor to look around much; by the time they had a moment to catch their breath, St. Croix was a low, lumpy green line on the horizon behind them.

^{2 DAYS LATER. PULLMAN, WASHINGTON. 1:00 PM PACIFIC TIME. SATURDAY, MARCH 14, 2026.}

“Did they hurt your mouth bad this time?” Thompson asked, as soon as the other guards had gone. He was just outside the door, opening it a bare crack and keeping his foot planted against it. Not quite ready yet, Darcage thought, but still, he asked without being prompted. He nodded his head, slowly and carefully, as if changing the tension in the straps of the ball gag was hurting his teeth.

His teeth did hurt, but not because he was being beaten in the face, the idea he had been planting in Thompson. It was just that the mouthpiece they gave him could not fully protect him from the Daybreak seizures that they were triggering as a sort of daily ritual. He was not being tortured for the three hours a day he was absent; all that happened, every day, was that they brought him into the padded room, put the mouthpiece and a padded helmet on him, strapped him carefully to the floor, and threatened to force him to repudiate Daybreak. Instantly the world would become dark and confusing; three hours later he would wake up still in the restraints.

But over time he had convinced Thompson that he was being punched in the face for hours. A smarter boy than Thompson might have wondered why his face was never bruised, or why they were injuring a man’s mouth if they wanted him to talk, but then a smarter boy than Thompson would never have opened the door or undone the gag in response to Darcage’s tears, sighs, and whimpers.

“Skootch on over here,” Thompson said, “and I’ll let you out of that gag so’s you can rest your mouth a little.”

Making sure it looked like he was aching all over, Darcage crab-scooted on his ass, pushing with hands that he pretended were tender, and pushed his face upward so that Thompson could undo the gag; as Thompson removed it, Darcage stretched and flexed his jaw. He really was tired and sore there; it didn’t take much acting.

“I’m just as glad to have somebody to talk to,” Thompson said, “but we got to keep it real quiet. You heard ’bout Norman the Spanker?”

Darcage slowly shook his head, though he had overheard, and waited to see if he could learn anything new.

Thompson’s whisper was furious and urgent. “That son of a bitch General Norman McIntyre, a.k.a. The Biggest Fuckin’ Fag in the Army, he got this bug up his ass ’cause he figured out some of us that’s on half-week duty, we been getting ourselves busted and stockaded just at the end of every shift, so’s we wouldn’t have to go home to our civilian jobs canning fish or digging potatoes and all that bullshit, instead we’d draw stockade time, and serve that here for a couple days, hell, it’s a bed and food and no work, just pushups and shit, and then come round to we got out of the stockade, it was time for us to do regular duty here again. If he’d just let us militia soldiers be regulars when we want to he wouldn’t have none of this trouble, but no, he made this big fuckin’ deal out of it and so now there ain’t no stockade no more. Stead of that it’s a caning, like a fuckin’ little kid, they just beat your ass with a stick and send you off to work, sore and all.”

Darcage raised an eyebrow; Thompson made a wincing half-smile. “Yeah, I got my ass caught in that,” he admitted. “Fuckin’ crazy fuckin’ General McIntyre. All them rules and all that bullshit and I can tell you it’s just a pain in the ass. Something weird about a gay guy like that, you know, I mean like, there’s not nothing wrong with it, I had some bosses and some friends in school, usually it ain’t nothing, but some of’em, like McIntyre you know, I think they just like to hurt people. Like tearing skin off my butt for havin’ a beer an hour before I was off duty. Like what they’re doing to you.”

“Makes sense to me,” Darcage murmured, slurring his speech. “I don’t think I can sleep, and it helps to have something to listen to. If you just need to vent, I can listen.”

“Thanks. I really shouldn’t be doing this, you know.”

“You have a kind heart. Don’t let it get you into trouble, but if you need to talk, I’m sure not going anywhere.”

“Guess you got that right, anyway.” Thompson began his litany of complaints slowly; today it was all reruns, but a lot of them. Darcage agreed sympathetically whenever it seemed reasonable, muttering and slurring to force Thompson to listen more and more closely. After a time he found the man’s rhythm and began to reinforce it, fighting down his mounting excitement; he hadn’t gotten this far with any guard before.

Thompson dropped the like-I-just-saids and the and-anothers and all the other acknowledgments of repetition. He began to repeat himself without knowing he was doing it, and the phrases became more and more alike, as Darcage reinforced them with his rhythmic, almost meaningless murmurs.

Ideally he’d have preferred to spend a week working on Thompson, but he didn’t know how soon they would realize what he was and rotate him away. Probably soon; Thompson was probably like this everywhere, with everyone, all the time, whenever he wasn’t actually being shouted at or beaten, and therefore he might be noticed and moved at any time.

Darcage pushed his luck and mumbled something about eye contact and a friendly face and just having a sense that they could have a real rapport, talk about the really important things, and Thompson did it: sat right down on the floor in the doorway, with the door partly open.

Fighting down the excitement he was afraid might leak into his voice, Darcage made more soothing and agreeing noises, and in less than an hour, Thompson was deeply asleep.

Darcage stood cautiously, trying not to clink. They had sewn the chains that joined behind his back to the seat of his pants, but with enough squirming, he pushed his pants down, slid the pant legs up the chain, and sat through so that he could join hands in front of himself. He had nothing to cut the chain, but standing on the pants and sawing back and forth, he quickly rid himself of the pants. He looked at the soles of his feet; after months of not walking much, he would definitely need Thompson’s shoes.

He kept muttering the rhythmic suggestions so that Thompson barely woke as the chain wrapped his throat. As he pinned Thompson to the floor, tightening the chain to prevent any noise, he looked into the dying man’s eyes and caught a miserable expression of betrayal. Darcage laughed so hard he began to fear he would make a noise, but he didn’t, not while Thompson died, not while claiming his shoes and soiled but workable pants, not even when he noticed that the strangulation had given the poor dumbshit an erection that wobbled around like a failing flagpole when he gave the corpse a final kick.

^{2 DAYS LATER. PULLMAN, WASHINGTON. 1:15 PM PACIFIC TIME. SATURDAY, MARCH 14, 2026.}

“All right, war crimes are bad, but clearing out tribals really shouldn’t be counted as war, it’s more of a public service like sewage or trash removal.” Allie was losing all patience with her husband and with Norm McIntyre; she didn’t mind the exclamations of outrage but the constant disappointed little winces were getting on her nerves. “Tribals get a chance to surrender, a brief one because they’re dangerous and treacherous, and if they surrender we help them through an initial seizure. If they don’t come out of it able to talk to us freely, then they don’t have enough mind to be set free, so we just put them down like any dangerous nuisance animal. If they do come out talking like people, we send them to re-education camp—at taxpayer expense, mind you. Then either they recover and return to society minus certain rights like voting, owning property, and carrying weapons, or they revert, which proves they can’t be rehabbed, and we put them down. I’m not looking to be gruesome but the spike in the back of the head is escape-proof, doesn’t waste precious ammunition and powder, and with this etherizing jig that Doctor Jolly has invented, the process is literally fast and painless. So if we catch’em we convert’em or kill’em, and after a while, there are no more tribals.”

McIntyre said, “I don’t love’em either, but whether they recognize America or not, they are American citizens, and freedom of belief—”

“Daybreak isn’t a belief. It’s contagious evil that eats your soul. You’ve seen Darcage—”

President Weisbrod’s voice was soft and calm as ever. “And what are you going to do with the ones like Darcage?”

“Weren’t you listening? Doctor Jolly’s neat little device. Which any decent blacksmith can build and which requires only a little ether, which we’re already set up to make in industrial quantities.”

Norm McIntyre leaned forward. “Because you intend to do all this to American citizens in ‘industrial quantities’?”

“Well, yes. Mass production is efficient and quick. A few years’ unpleasantness and we won’t have to do it again.”

Graham Weisbrod slid his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose. “More than seven billion dead, less than a billion left alive, and you think we need more killing?” He watched her like a fencer looking for an opening.

She shrugged. “The percentages are even worse in the US than they are worldwide, Graham. We were more dependent on technology, and we had more Daybreakers releasing nanospawn and biotes on Daybreak day, and we got hit with two superbombs. Three, really, if you count the way the California radiological bomb killed everything including cockroaches and moss between Irvine and Oakland. The rest of the world lost maybe eighty-five percent of the population, with us and China and Russia it was more like ninety-five, Europe probably ninety-seven. There are places that had worse death rates than us, and places that had much better. So what? You don’t win a moral prize either way, and if you did—”

McIntyre seemed to be gaining confidence, and he asserted firmly, “In a country that has lost so many, every life should be precious.”

“But that’s where you’re wrong. Every life that makes things better, or tries to, or will try to as soon as they can, or even would if they could, is precious, sure. But we’ve got a solid couple million or so trying to kill or at least immiserate the rest of us, because they have something the First Amendment was never ever intended to cover—a contagious madness—”

Weisbrod shook his head. “Even the most conservative Supreme Court justices ruled that—”

“Under the Old Republic. Nowadays—”

“Ms. Sok Banh!” They all jumped at the pounding on the door.

“Yes, Brianna?”

“Darcage has escaped!”

She rushed through the door and down the hall; she could straighten these two old men out later.