Day One

by Kelly deVos

  We have to get rid of Galloway.

  He steers the car out of the drive and onto a cul-de-sac. The road has been freshly paved, and two other enormous houses are on the street. I have the sudden idea that, all over the world, these kinds of places are exactly the same. I catch a glimpse of a soldier in fatigues crouched down on the coral roof of the house across the street.

  The Spark has commandeered this neighborhood.

  Galloway turns onto a wider street and speeds up past a large market.

  Behind us, the ocean scenery begins to fade in the rearview mirror. It’s gradually replaced by thicker vegetation and deep green trees. It’s late in the afternoon when we hit the highway back to Quintana Roo. I recognize a few landmarks on the road. A fruit stand that advertises beef jerky. A billboard for a beach resort.

  Wait for it. Wait for it. Wait for it.

  Eventually we hit the Sonoran highway toward Santa Ana.

  Terminus tries to make conversation. “How are things back at the base?”

  “Boring,” Galloway says after a long pause.

  You’d think the guy would be thanking us for saving him from certain death. “You seem awfully pissed for someone who’s gonna be sleeping in a comfy bunk tomorrow instead of being shot at by The Opposition.”

  He glares at me again. “I volunteered because I want to do something important. Not babysit the colonel’s disobedient children.”

  Ugh.

  Cars on the highway become fewer and less frequent. The farther we go into Mexico, the longer it’s gonna take us to get back to the border.

  It has to be now.

  Too bad. I always liked Galloway.

  Right now.

  Galloway is bigger. Stronger. Better prepared.

  Jinx once told me that all you really need is nerve.

  Nerve.

  MacKenna, you must become nerve.

  I turn to the side and catch Terminus’s eye. He shakes his head. It’s subtle. Like he knows what I want to do and is warning against it.

  Galloway stares straight ahead. Watching the road.

  I. Am. Nerve.

  Drawing in a deep breath, I use the palm of my hand to hit Galloway in the face, thrusting up from under his nose.

  The Land Rover veers toward the shoulder. I grab the steering wheel while Galloway mumbles something.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  That’s what he says.

  I’m asking myself that question too. My heart thuds in my chest. You can probably hear it beating from the moon.

  Terminus leans forward. He’s got his sweatshirt off and uses the sleeve to put Galloway in a choke hold. I’m surprised he’s going along with this. In for a dime, in for a dollar, I guess.

  The car is slowing down, and we’re swerving from side to side as Galloway pulls at the sleeve around his throat and Terminus breathes heavily and I. Can’t. Breathe.

  We’ve got maybe a minute before Galloway is back in control.

  Leaning over him, I reach for the lock of the driver’s side door. Galloway keeps struggling with Terminus but frees one of his hands to grab my hair. Among my other problems, I’m probably gonna be bald.

  Now’s not the time for that, Mac.

  I ignore the sharp jabs of pain as my hair is ripped from my scalp. I’m able to get the driver’s door unlocked and open. The door bounces open and shut a couple of times before I shove it with enough force that it remains open.

  Terminus thrusts his upper body into the center of the front seat. He presses Galloway in the direction of the open door. The soldier waves his arms wildly and tries to gag out a few words.

  Are we really gonna toss Galloway into the street like a stack of old newspapers?

  Do what you have to do in order to survive.

  Am I following Dr. Doomsday’s rules now?

  I kick Galloway in the side. Hard. With all the energy I can muster. At the same time, Terminus gives Galloway a solid push, and the two of us are able to get the soldier out of the car. He skids along the gravel for a few feet as the car rolls slowly down the almost deserted road.

  Terminus scrambles over the seat, slides behind the wheel, shuts the door.

  He hits the gas hard.

  The old engine roars.

  In the rearview mirror, I can see Galloway get up. He chases the car for a few paces in a useless gesture. He’s mad as hell. But he’ll live.

  “Well...that...was...something,” I pant.

  I rub my scalp to confirm I still have hair. My gut aches and my head aches and everything aches.

  LEAD: Journalist and hacker steal car and go it alone.

  IMPORTANT FACTS:

  -None.

  Terminus grips the steering wheel hard. It takes him a minute to regain his breath. “We have to get off the main road. We need to ditch this car. They’re gonna come looking for us.”

  “Who?” I ask.

  “Everyone.”

  Le Bon said that political influence is a matter of prestige. Crowds follow famous faces. When he said this, it might have been true. Between then and now, information began to flow at a pace the likes of which the Frenchman could never have imagined. The happy hometown mayor can be evil in the next news cycle. A powerful person is a few downvotes from being completely forgotten. Today, building the model of a hero on a foundation of prestige is akin to placing a statue on a pillar of sand.

  Jinx Marshall, the reluctant hero, the girl with no real purpose other than the almost laughably simple notion of getting her brother “back,” wields the inherited authority of the patriarchy. The king of doomsday has died and passed the scepter her way.

  The beauty of Dr. Maxwell’s reputation is that no one agrees on what he did, who he worked for or what he believed. He’s gone. He’s everywhere.

  His prestige can’t be taken away.

  Because it doesn’t really exist.

  —AMELIA AOKI

  Report: The Image of the Second Civil War

  Stamped: Top Secret

  JINX

  I’m getting a logo.

  MacKenna is gone and I’m in an advertising meeting.

  It’s early in the morning, we’re going over the “branding” of our mission. I get to choose from three final logo designs workshopped by the team. Amelia displays them on the screen in a room that was intended for research but has been hastily converted to a conference room. We’re crammed together at a high blue table, similar to what we had in our biology class, while pieces of scientific equipment have been stacked in the corner next to the screen.

  “We need to make sure that you’re not perceived as being associated with any state sanctioned authorities,” Amelia tells us. This is why we don’t get to wear the uniform of the New United States Provisional Army or talk about The Spark in any of our official videos.

  Which is fine because I have no idea what I’d say about The Spark and MacKenna isn’t around to explain everything. With every passing moment, I’m reminded of how much I depended on her.

  The first logo appears in front of us. It’s a stupid-looking tilted J, beveled in bronze. The second one is a cartoony bomb in orange, similar to the cover of Dad’s book.

  Amelia makes a face at the sight of it. “Obviously the team came up with that one before the events in California. It’s probably not a great fit now.”

  Yeah. Probably not.

  It’s the four of us in the briefing room. Me, Navarro, Toby and Amelia. Seeing Amelia outside of Rosenthal’s war room, it’s clear that she’s much younger than I originally thought. She’s probably around Toby’s age. Like yesterday, she’s wearing her own clothes, but today she’s far more casual. She’s got her black hair up in a neat topknot.

  I want to ask why she gets to wear jeans and a cashmere T-shirt while the rest of us are stuck in th
ese scratchy, ugly jumpsuits.

  Amelia presses a button on the remote on the table in front of her.

  The third logo fades onto the screen.

  This one is the best. It’s a silver bird. They’ve created a little animation loop of light flashing across the metallic surface.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “A Cooper’s hawk,” Amelia says, reading off an e-tablet. “According to our brief, you’re from Arizona, right? I guess they have those in the desert?”

  Navarro rests his elbow on the table and leans forward. “We do,” he says, placing his hand on his chin. “They hunt by concealing themselves in the brush and then catching their prey by total surprise.”

  Amelia looks at the screen. “Well, I think the pattern on their feathers is so attractive.”

  “We’d find them sometimes. When we hunted,” Navarro says. I can tell that the we means him and his father. “They’d have broken chest bones or fractured wings from diving through the bushes.”

  Amelia makes a few more taps on her device. “I don’t think the team went that deep with their research.” She replaces the image of the logo on the screen with video of several hawks in flight. They have gorgeous brown-and-white-striped feathers and long tails that sweep the blue sky as the birds glide along gracefully.

  I stare at the screen. “They’re...beautiful.”

  “They’re reckless,” Navarro says flatly.

  I flush at the sound of his voice. We exchange a quick glance.

  “That sounds about right,” Toby adds with a glare.

  I don’t know what passed between Toby and his commanders after we discovered that MacKenna was gone. But whatever it was, he blames us for it.

  Navarro glares back. “If you get too close to their nests, they dive-bomb with enough power to knock a grown man to the ground.”

  “That sounds about right,” I say, trying to lighten the mood.

  It doesn’t work.

  Sigh.

  “Well, if we really need a logo. Then...it has to be the hawk,” I say.

  “Perfect,” Amelia says. She makes a couple of taps on her e-tablet.

  The image on the screen changes to the ridiculous drawing of me that I’d seen during the meeting with Rosenthal. Words, glowing in blue, surround the picture of my face.

  POWER. POISE. POSTURE. PRESTIGE. POLITICS.

  She shines a laser pointer over POLITICS. “I put Politics on there as a decoy.” Amelia stares right at me when she speaks. “Your mission can’t be perceived as political. You need to stay on message. Make sure people think you’re trying to get your brother back.”

  My face heats up. “I am trying to get my brother back.”

  “Good. Yes. Exactly,” she says with an enthusiastic nod. “Stay with that. Our research indicates that crowds respond positively to the brother story. The dead dad angle is fine too. The main thing is to avoid seeming like you’re trying to assist The Spark.”

  My hands ball into fists.

  Navarro shakes his head in confusion. “But we are assisting The Spark.”

  “Yes.” Amelia brushes a stray lock of hair off her neck. “But our focus groups were found to be more persuadable by heroes whose actions align with the principles of The Spark but who resist entrenched political affiliations. We think this explains the ongoing popularity of Dr. Marshall. According to our polling, even among people who generally dislike him, Maxwell Marshall has been able to retain his image as honest and credible.”

  “According to your polling?” I repeat. “The Opposition has been building a cold fusion bomb and The Spark has been polling?”

  Amelia gets up from the table and hands out the e-tablets. As she passes Toby, she gives him an I told you so look.

  So there it is. Us and them.

  “Okay. Now, let’s talk about our mission,” she says, coming to stand next to the screen.

  The slide changes to the word POWER in neon lettering. It pulses and flickers.

  Navarro and I exchange a look.

  We have our own mission.

  And it begins now.

  * * *

  The next day, Toby and Navarro argue over who’s in charge while I do POISE! Apparently, I slouch, mumble, say “um” way too much, use too many “filler words,” make unattractive resting faces and have no inflection when I talk.

  Amelia films me and has me monitor my own image on a large screen. At least my dad never made me stare at my own giant head. “I need a more active face,” she says. “You need to look engaged, even when you’re not speaking. A sentence should flow like a roller coaster. Level inflection in the beginning, upward inflection in the middle and then end on a down note to show that you’re confident in your message.”

  So...basically I’m becoming a walking state fair attraction.

  I finally get a computer. It’s been so long since I had a machine that wasn’t one of the awful beige boxes, my pulse flutters in excitement. It’s a sleek, thin laptop made from a white titanium. The metal is cool under my fingertips.

  “I hope you know I went out on a limb to get this for you,” Amelia tells me as she hands it over. She’s dressed in yet another casual, comfortable outfit. “A lot of people think that letting you have access to a computer without a high level of supervision is a really bad idea.”

  At these words, Toby makes a sanctimonious little nod.

  Clearly, he’s one of the people.

  Amelia smiles. “But I think it’s essential for the success of our mission for you to be able to practice ahead of time.” She hangs on to the computer a couple of seconds longer than necessary. “Don’t make me regret it.”

  My heart drops a little.

  She almost certainly will regret it.

  Sort of.

  I mean, it’s nice to finally have a machine in my possession, but there’s nothing much I can really do with it. Someone has tried to mimic Dad’s security programs and his file architecture. But whoever they got to do it didn’t understand my father’s work. I seriously doubt he’d set up the systems at AIRSTA or Los Alamos this way. And it’s not like I need to practice using their file upload system. My dad had us work on more complicated utilities at computer camp in the third grade.

  After a dinner of macaroni and cheese, I set up the laptop on the coffee table in the common room. I managed to swipe a network cable from the break room, and I find a data port behind the sofa. I’m able to access the drives I saw on the research office computer. A handful of folders appear on the screen, but they’re empty.

  Someone deleted all the files.

  Navarro leans in toward me. He makes the generic soap we’re both using smell incredible.

  “I’m guessing there used to be data in those files?” he asks, checking out my screen.

  I nod and make a few more clicks. “Whoever deleted them knew what they are doing. They did a secure erase and repopulated the server with garbage data. There’s almost no way to recover anything.”

  “MacKenna got caught,” Navarro says.

  He has to be right. It’s the logical conclusion. Copeland, or someone working for him, must have confiscated the e-tablet. That’s how they knew to delete the data.

  “Or betrayed,” I say. We can’t trust Terminus. “This is my fault. Maybe if we hadn’t been...” My face flushes at the memory of the night MacKenna disappeared.

  “It’s not our fault. She could have told us what she planned to do. She didn’t have to take Terminus. It was her choice,” he says.

  We’re always making choices.

  That’s what MacKenna told me back in the desert.

  I don’t know what to say to Navarro. He looks so young and sweet and perfect. I transfer the papers to the table, cover him with one of the scratchy wool blankets and turn off the lamp.

  * * *

  Navarro and
I are awoken early by a loud knock from two soldiers who haul us off to the break room before we can shower or even brush our teeth. We eat breakfast in silence.

  Rosenthal’s creepy assistant, Brian, approaches the table in the mess hall where Navarro and I sit alone. I’m chewing a mouthful of oatmeal and can’t really do much of anything besides grunt a greeting.

  It’s left to Navarro to say, “Morning,” as I nod along.

  “Finish up,” Brian says curtly. “We’re convening the official mission briefing.”

  I gobble up the last of my breakfast and join a crowd that includes Navarro, Toby, Amelia and several soldiers. We walk down the white hall to the area that contains Rosenthal’s quarters. The president is seated at the same table as when I last saw him. He’s dressed the same. Neat slacks. A polo shirt in another pastel color. This time, mint green.

  A male soldier stands near the door and another sits at the table two seats from the president. E-tablets have been placed at every seat at the glossy table. Rosenthal motions for us to sit down.

  “Time to save the world,” he says.

  I take the same seat I had five days ago. Across from Rosenthal.

  Brian remains standing. “We’re sending you in with our top guys,” he says cheerfully. “Our very best!”

  Navarro freezes for a second before sliding into the chair next to me.

  “They’re not all guys,” Rosenthal clarifies.

  “Correct, sir,” Brian says. He moves to the front of the room and begins his presentation. My hawk logo appears on the projection screen.

  We go over the schematics of AIRSTA. Which parts are believed to be abandoned. Which are occupied. Based on satellite imaging, Rosenthal’s people have a good idea which buildings have power and water and security. Which access roads are usable. Which routes are heavily monitored. But Carver took the satellite grid off-line when he implemented the Steel Curtain, so their intel is a month old and they don’t know how many troops may have been deployed there since the war officially began.

  We work until lunch. Brian ends the briefing with and enthusiastic, “Tomorrow, you’ll hit the ground running!” like we’re about to get on a tour bus and participate in a track meet.