Joseph

What the Cat Dragged In

Belle Flower. As Red leaves Magnolia Village in the dust of the rearview, you lift your head slow from behind the dash. The road unwinds ahead. Sunlight on the hood. Wind in your hair. You breathe like it hurts. Like coming back costs something.

Red turns to look at you, his eyes hard, jaw set beneath the moustache gone to frost.

“Kiddo, you brought a lot of heat upon yourself. I’ll help if I can. But if you got something to say, now’s the time to spill it.”

You shift in your seat, the truth clutches in your mouth like a dry stone.

“I got folks after me, Red. Bad folks. But I haven’t done anything wrong. That’s all I know. That’s all I can say.”

He nods. Like a man marking a grave.

“Just so it don’t reach my doorstep, that’s all.”

“I’m grateful. For the ride. For this.” You tell him.

He gives a soft grunt.

“Buck vouches for you. That’s good enough for now. Him and I, we go back. Big Top days. Place never did sit right with me. Felt wrong. I got out. You wanted out, too. Why I drove you to San Diego.”

You looked down, ashamed of what you weren’t saying.

“Thanks, Red. When I know more, I’ll tell you. I swear. You’re not caught up in something you’ll regret. Not knowingly. I just need time.”

Red stares straight ahead. Then glances sideways. A long, unreadable look. He knows you’re lying. But he let’s it ride. For now.

Red’s phone rings. He flips it open and holds it to his ear. Says nothing at first. Just listens. The road kept on.

“Buck,” he says, “she’s with me. She’s safe. Ain’t pretty, but she’s standin’.”

He tilts his head, listening, and then turns to you, handing you the phone.

“He wants a word, kiddo.”

You take the phone. Buck’s voice.

“Belle, honey! You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay. I’m pretty banged up, but I’m trying to figure out my next steps. But, yeah, I’m okay.”

“Thank goodness!” He says. “We just rolled into Phoenix. Gonna pitch tent, get the crew settled. Soon as thats done, I’ll put wheels to pavement, head west. If I push it, I can make San Diego by nightfall. You need anything, Belle? Somethin’ I can lay hands on’ fore I get there?”

“Yeah. Could you get your hands on a phone that I could use? I don’t think there’s any way that I’m gonna be able to get back my own phone. And by now someone’s probably tracking it. I need a phone. Can you get me some clothes? I’m a small, petite. Some clothes and some shoes, please. Once I have my phone, I can take care of everything else.”

“All right, sweetheart, “I’ll see you tonight.” he says and hangs up.

Red doesn’t say a word for the rest of the ride. The tires hum low over the blacktop. You look up at the rearview mirror and scan the horizon behind you. No one’s pursuing you. Just traffic. Then, the sign: Kearny Mobile Home Park. You’ve driven past it a hundred times, a thousand maybe. Never knew he was here. Just down the road all these years.

There’s a wrongness to it.

A man like Red doesn’t live quiet unless he’s hiding from something or waiting on it. And all this time, all these years, you thought him gone to rust or rambling long-haul routes through the desert. Not parked up two miles from you, tucked in behind chainlink and oleander. If he was that close, why didn’t he ever reach out? Why didn’t Buck say?

You stare at the sign and your stomach turns, not from fear exactly, but from the wrongness of it.

Something’s off.

Either Red’s been watching you this whole time… Or he’s not the only one who knew where you’d end up.

Red guides the Bronco slowly through the entrance and weaves between trailers and driveways. He pulls into his slot easy. He reaches across you steady and sure and opens the glovebox. His hand finds a pistol resting there and takes it up without a word. He leaned forward and slipped the thing into the waistband at the small of his back. Metal against spine. His face gave nothing. Like a man readying himself for a past he’d hoped was done with him.

You step out. Across the way, a woman with a hose in her hand watches you like she’s measuring you for a box. Her face cut from something sour. She shakes her head once, low and mean.

“My, my, my. Look what the cat dragged in.”

Red doesn’t so much as glance her way. Just lifts his hand, middle finger in salute.

Under his breath, he mutters, “We had a dalliance a while back, her and me. Since then, she don’t cotton to women I bring home. Rookie mistake. Don’t shit where you eat, kiddo.”

He fishes a key from his pocket, the metal catching what light there is, and unlocks the door.

Swings it wide.

“Welcome to Casa Mathers,” he says. And you step inside.

Red’s trailer is neat in the way a man keeps a space when he’s the only one who’s got to live in it. Sparse. Ordered. The couch is old but well-kept, a throw blanket folded square across the back. There’s a stack of car magazines on the coffee table, an empty ashtray, a battered paperback of Lonesome Dove dog-eared and spine-cracked. No photographs. No clutter. No trace of anyone but Red.

The kitchen’s small, but every dish is washed and put away. The garbage bin’s empty, save for a flattened cigarette pack. The floor swept clean.

But the table in the living room—that’s where it cracks.

There, in the center, sits Red’s kit. A spoon blackened on the underside. A small, glassine bag folded neat like a love letter. Cotton pulled apart and stained faint brown. A capped syringe lying crossways over a strip of rubber tubing. The needle sharp and gleaming. The heroin measured out, waiting to burn. You can almost see him there, rolling the sleeve, tying off, eyes already slipping half-shut in anticipation before Buck’s voice pulled him back.

The rest of the trailer is clean.

But the table tells the truth.

Red looks at the table, then at you. “It’s a free country.” He says. “Bathroom’s in the back. I’ll lay out some clothes. Oughta fit. Close enough.”

You’re no stranger to folks chasing ghosts in bottles, needles, or smoke. You seen it plenty under canvas, behind the sawdust ring, men and women alike unmaking themselves in slow, cruel ways. It doesn’t scare you, but it doesn’t sit right either. You’ve not had luck with the kind who use. Been four years since you laid eyes on Red, and now he looks hollowed out, like something carved from meat and left in the sun. It doesn’t make you feel good being near him. Like you could catch the unraveling.

But you’re slick with sweat and dried blood and city grime. The stink of panic on your skin. You need the water.

You study him and ask, quiet: “Red, are we safe here? How well do you know your neighbors?”

You think of the woman outside—her stare.

“We’re cool. I been here a long while. Too long, maybe. Know some too well. The rest just enough. I wave when I got to. Keep to myself otherwise. What I do in here ain’t no one’s business.”

“So if someone doesn’t belong, you’d know?”

You look to the closed door of the bathroom. “I can’t watch the place while I’m in the shower. Keep an eye out. Just holler if anything doesn’t feel right. I’ll be quick.”

He nods. Then sits himself down like a man settling into old pain. Draws the pistol from his back, lays it on the table, and lights a cigarette. Smoke curls up to the ceiling.

You make your way back and find the bathroom. It is as unadorned as the rest of Red’s home. A man’s place. Functional. No frills.

You strip out of your clothes, the sweat-stiffed fabric peeling from your skin. The stink of the street, the stink of fear and flight, rises off you like steam. You step beneath the spray, the water hot, sluicing dirt and filth from you. The water runs. And you let it. Because there is no washing it clean. But you stand there anyway.

You think on Red. On what he was and what he’s become and what of him you might’ve invented in your head to feel less alone in this world. You wonder what you’ll do if he’s not the man you want beside you now. You don’t know what he’s capable of anymore. You don’t know what he isn’t.

You move quiet through the bathroom, the fan like breath behind the wall. In the medicine cabinet: razors, disposable. Deodorant. A bottle of aspirin with the label peeled halfway. Nothing strange. Nothing out of place. Still. You don’t meet your own eyes in the mirror. Not ready for that.

You think about exits. Bathroom window is small and tight as a coffin lid. You could squeeze through if you had to. Might leave skin behind, but you’d get clear.

You are not helpless. You remind yourself of that. You’ve lived through worse. If it comes to running, you’ll run. If it comes to bleeding, you’ll bleed.

The bathroom’s your excuse. The window’s your plan. The fear is yours and yours alone. And it hums in your bones like a thing with teeth.

The steam curls about the room like smoke and you stand there in the hush of it. You dry yourself. A ritual. The mirror stares back. You catch your reflection and flinch as if struck.

You don’t look long. Don’t linger. Mirrors aren’t safe. Never have been. They call back the old voices, the ones that spoke in praise and pain both. Your mother’s tall shadow, your father’s surgeon’s hands. The freak tent. The blood. The whispers. You don’t understand now, but you will. And maybe you did. And maybe that’s why you can’t look too long without seeing the ruin they left behind.

You check the damage. Bruises like old fruit. A cut on your elbow. A scrape on your thigh. All of it fresh, soon to be counted among the older scars. A map no one else reads. You press your palm to your ribs and breathe deep.

Out there, the world basks. California sun gilding the flesh of bronzed gods and half-naked saints. They move through the light like it owes them something. The cult of body. You are not among them. You walk a different road. Covered in dark fabric, head down, eyes sharp. You don’t wear your pain on the outside. You hide it like a weapon.

You live online. In the hum of servers and glow of screens. Where no one sees. Where no one touches. Outside, the heat presses close, but you wear long sleeves, thick pants. You don’t care to be seen. Not really. Not anymore. You tried that once. All it did was invite the knives.

Outside the bathroom door, folded with care, you find a black tee and pink sweatpants laid neat atop a footstool. Beside them, a pair of pink, bedazzled flip-flops.

You pull the shirt over your head. It clings to your damp skin. Across the chest, the mirror throws it back at you in reverse—“David Allan Coe.” A skull grinning mean beneath a Confederate slouch hat, DAC above the brim. Crossbones beneath, not bone but a Winchester shotgun and a guitar bearing the rebel flag. Behind the skull, a burst of stars and war feathers.

You slide into the sweatpants. Pink as bubblegum and stitched across the ass in faded block letters—“Juicy.” Must belong to one of Red’s lady friends, you figure. You run your hand through the pockets and come up with a pair of folded twenties, faded and sueded. Money that’s been through the wash.

From somewhere in the trailer, a radio plays the low, mournful twang of steel guitar and sorrow.

Then, a knock at the door. Three sharp raps. Measured. Unhurried.

The feeling of ice spills down your spine. You ease the door ajar. Just a slit. The hallway beyond washed in the pale gold of morning. Red is moving. Slow. Deliberate. Toward the front door.

You hiss his name. “Red,” you whisper. “Don’t let anyone in.”

But he does’t turn. Doesn’t answer. Just keeps walking. And the hush that follows is thick enough to drown in.

“Police. Detective Malcolm. Mind if I come in?” says the voice. You recognize the New Orleans accent.

Red’s voice, steady. “Sorry, officer. Not without a warrant.”

“I’ve got one. I’m holding it up. You can see for yourself.”

Red steps to the door, gun in one hand. Presses his eye to the peephole. Then, there is a sound that is not loud but final. Red falls to the floor.

There is a hole in him. Blood comes out.

“Oh, God!” The words don’t rise to your lips but rattle in your chest like dry leaves in a gutter. You dive for Red’s pistol. Your fingers close round the grip like you were born to it. You run. Bare feet on linoleum. The hallway narrows like a throat. Red’s groan follows you like the cry of something already dying.

You slam the bathroom door shut, twist the lock. It clatters beneath your hand like it might come apart. Footsteps. The man’s. Then the door flies inward just as your body clears the sill. Half out the window when the world erupts behind you—gunfire like a cannon from the front of the trailer.

Arms snatch your waist and drag you back inside. Your elbows rake the window frame and split like fruit skin. You hit the floor hard. Bone and tile. The taste of metal in your mouth.

The barrel of his gun presses to your head. Cold. Oily.

“I told you,” he says. “You run, I follow. And here I am.”

His voice is a stone dropped in a still pond.

“We got seconds. You know what I’m here for. What’s not on the laptop? Not on the drives? Don’t lie to me. I’ll know.”

The pistol. Red’s. There, just out of reach. You stretch. Hope flickers. His boot comes down on your wrist like an anvil.

Pain floods you, white and blinding. You twist. Flail. A knee connects, maybe. He grunts. His gun barks. And then the world folds in on itself.

Darkness takes you. Swift. Without mercy.

Chokehold

Agent Nicholas Grayson. The second you slam the Crown Vic door, Guthrie’s already got his foot in it, tires chirping. He’s got one hand on the wheel, the other snatching up the radio. “Control, this is Charlie-1. Requesting a plate check on California, 3-Yankee-Delta-3-2-1. Light Green Bronco.”

The radio spits back static and the voice of Dispatch: “Copy, Charlie-1. Stand by for return.”

Guthrie doesn’t blink. Eyes locked on that Bronco. Deadpan he says, “So what’s the deal, partner? That guy owe you child support? What’d I miss?”

“Spotted the Bronco earlier—stood out. At the time, it had a single occupant. Now it’s got two. That’s a discrepancy.”

The radio comes to life. “Charlie-1, plate comes back to a William Mathers, resident of the Kearny Mobile Home Park.” says the dispatch, providing an address on Convoy Court. “No wants, valid registration.”

“Pull over or pursuit?”

“Let’s just tail on for a while.”

As the words leave your mouth, a black Chevy Impala slides smooth into your lane behind the Bronco, ghostlike, efficient, the way a man moves when they don’t want to be seen moving.

“Interesting,” says Guthrie. “Your rodeo, Agent. What do you advise?”

“Keep tailing. Be discreet.” Maybe another agent from the Bureau, you wonder.

Guthrie leans forward and snatches the mic from the dash.

“Control, this is Charlie-1. Run this plate quietly; no alerts: California, 3-Tango-Delta-4-7-3. Black Impala.”

The reply scratches back across the radio. “Copy, Charlie-1. Stand by.”

“Charlie-1,” Dispatch returns after a spell. “Plate comes back to a David Patel, out of San Diego. No wants, valid registration.”

The black Impala keeps its distance, gliding behind the Bronco like a shadow. You track them both as they roll up Convoy Court, into the sprawl of the Kearny Mobile Home Park.

The Bronco pulls into the driveway of a trailer that could belong to any man. Plain. Faded aluminum siding. The jade paint of the Bronco still catching the light of the sun, gleaming. Bill Mathers, who you think of as the cowboy, reaches across the girl. Pops the glovebox. Something in his hand. Leans forward and slides it down the back of his jeans like it belongs there. Pistol, you think.

Out steps the cowboy. Belle climbs out after, her hair looks like hell. She wears the morning’s ruin on her skin—sweat-stained shirt, feet raw and red.

Across the way a woman with a hose in hand watches them come. She wets her begonias, eyes Belle and scowls at the cowboy and says something to him. The cowboy doesn’t look her way. Just raises his middle finger. Then he and Belle disappear inside the trailer.

The Impala rolls to a stop half a block down. And waits.

You tell Guthrie to hold back, park where the dust won’t kick up, where the sun doesn’t glance off the windshield and give you away. He nods.

You flip open your laptop. Type in the digits. David Patel. Rancho Bernardo. Dentist. That’d make a cool nickname. Clean record, clean car. Clean as a whistle. His photo stares back at you. Wire rims, neat smile. A man who flosses.

You murmur to Guthrie without looking. “Stay here.”

You step out. The heat’s already pressing in. The world smells like rust, dry weeds, and old oil.

You need a disguise.

You move through the trailers. Knock on one—the door opens slowly. A man stands there. Sagging flesh and mottled skin, like someone who’s outlived their own use.

“Can I help you?”

You show the badge. Flash of federal steel. “Sir, I’m sure you’ve heard what’s happening in our nation today. I need your help. Something’s going down. I need a change of clothes. Hat’d help too.”

The man frowns, draws breath like it costs him something. “I pay taxes,” he says. “That means you work for me, son. I’m on a fixed income, and if this was any other day I’d tell you to go to hell!” He shuffles back, opens the door wider. “Take what you need.”

He bitches all the way to the bedroom. The place smells of mildew and time.

You grab what you need. A floral shirt loud as birdsong. Shorts. Sandals. A bucket hat to throw shadow across your eyes. You holster your sidearm and look to the man.

“If I don’t come back,” you say, “you can keep the suit. Worth a couple thousand if you know where to sell it.”

That shuts him up.

You press the mic. “Guthrie. I’m heading in. I’ll be the guy in the hat.”

“Copy that,” he says.

You step into the sun again. Slide around back. The Impala waits. The man who steps from it isn’t Patel. You know it the second he moves. Bald head. Goatee. Gray suit. He pulls gloves on like a man settling into old habits. His walk’s casual. The kind of casual that’s practiced. Something about the set of his shoulders and his stride tugs at your memory, but you can’t place it.

He looks around. Moves behind Red’s trailer. Reappears.

You look through the Impala’s window. Empty.

The man raises a hand. Three knocks on Red’s door. Each one deliberate.

Then he holds up a paper to the peephole. The moment stretches.

“Guthrie,” you say. “We’ve got something. Call it in.”

Of a sudden there comes the sound of muted gunfire—a silencer. Then the door gives way with a crack of splintered wood and the man in the gray suit steps into the gloom like he’s always belonged there.

You run after. Feet finding slick blood on linoleum. The cowboy sprawled on the threshold, gutshot and gasping like a landed fish. His hands clutch at his belly. You leap past.

Down the hall. The man is there. Moving. You fire—the report deafening in the narrow corridor. You miss.

“Guthrie,” you bark into the comm. “Get around the back. He’s going to kill Flower!”

The hallway tightens. The world becomes the width of your shoulders. You push forward—the sound of struggle. A woman crying out.

The bathroom door hangs on busted hinges. And there she is. Belle. Blood in her hair like a crown. The gunman looming over her like judgment itself.

And then you see the shape of him. Something behind the eyes. It’s Mercer.

You crash into him. Get him in a chokehold.

The world becomes motion. Flesh and drywall. The mirror explodes. Shards of it rake Mercer’s face. He doesn’t cry out. He drives backward like a bull. You hit the wall hard enough to rattle teeth.

He tries to throw you. Your grip holds. His strength’s fading. His body goes slack. Collapses under your weight.

You roll him over, wrench his arms back, cuff him with hands still trembling.

Then to Belle. She’s breathing. You press a towel to her wound. It blooms red but slow. A graze. Just a graze.

“Guthrie,” you rasp. “Take him. Flower’s been hit. I’m handling it.”

You gather her up in your arms and push past Guthrie’s bulk as he moves into the trailer.

The street outside is alive now. Sirens. Voices. The stink of heat and cordite.

You find the first-aid kit in the Crown Vic, patch her as best you can.

A crowd gathers. The buzz of it rising.

When the ambulance and cruisers arrive, you grab Guthrie’s shoulder. Look him in the eye.

“You handle this. I’m taking Miss Flower someplace safe.”

He opens his mouth. Closes it again.

And then you’re gone. Her in the backseat. The engine turns over beneath you like a prayer.

Flesh. Hair. Bone.

Senator Wexley. Your limousine rolls south down the FDR like a hearse, black and sealed against the sound of the city. Inside, you sit alone. The tinted glass offers no shelter from what looms beyond it. Smoke pours from the island’s heart. Not a pillar, not a plume—a wound. Thick and rising and without end.

Sirens wail. A procession of red and blue. Streets are choked with fleeing bodies and men walking toward death with the stunned gait of sleepwalkers. You watch them pass.

You see his reflection in the window—hollow-eyed and soiled—and behind it, you. Polished. Whole. The one that stayed behind in Alpine. The one that smiled for the cameras.

The driver says nothing. Eyes fixed forward. The phone buzzes once—Whitman’s number, your political advisor.

“Bryce. You still in the city?”

“Yes. Just left Doherty’s studio.”

“Everyone’s watching it. Everyone will remember it. Which is why you’re going to get out of that damn car and go downtown!” He snarls. “Chaos is the mother of opportunity. You need to be seen. On the ground. Covered in soot. Looking presidential. A man of the people. Not hiding behind tinted glass in Midtown. Now’s your chance to be the one who stood there when the rest ran. Trust me, this photo will outlive you. This is legacy!”

“Well, you do know best. It sounds annoying, but I suppose I must.”

The line clicks dead. You lower the phone. The sirens outside scream like distant birds.

The door opens. You step out, blinking against the smoke and soot. Your shoes splash into the gray water snaking along the curb. A crowd has gathered behind the barricade, dazed and murmuring. Firefighters stagger past. A man collapses near a lamppost.

You will not forget the smell in the air. Not in this life nor in any life to follow. The concrete burnt, the steel ran molten in the girders. But that was not the worst of it. There was plastic and rubber and paper, the foul offal of industry turned to ash. Wiring charred and walls crumbled. Carpets gone to cinders. Thousands of screens gone dark. But more. Flesh. Hair. Bone. The meat of man unmade. The stink of jet fuel and death. A reek that had no place in this world. And yet it came. And it lingered.

You walk forward, slowly, deliberately. A flashbulb pops.

A young photographer lowers her camera. “Senator Wexley? Can I take a few?”

“Of course,” you say “try to catch my good side.”

She raises the camera. The shutter clicks. Soon there’s a gaggle of other photographers taking photos for the newspapers and magazines. Tomorrow they’ll run your likeness above the fold. Sleeves rolled. Jaw set. The hard angle of your chin catching the light. Eyes like flint. The face of vengeance clad in a man’s skin. A leader born not of ballots but of fire.

A crew arrives. A boom mic floats overhead.

“Senator Wexley, any comment?” asks one of the reporters.

You square your shoulders before the ruin, and your voice cuts through the ash-laced air.

“They have woken a sleeping giant,” you say. “And they shall be afraid. For it is we who are strong!”

The wind turns. Carries the cinders like snow, and the sky weeps gray.

Flip the Tables

Bryce Wexley. You glance at Lucky. You squint. And again it comes. The light. Not bright, but warm. A halo like late wheat swaying under heaven’s hush. His face calm. His presence a balm. You feel it in your bones, in the quiet place that knows before knowing. He is not of this place. He is one of the good ones. Of the ones who watch. Who wait.

You step slow. Reverent.

“Lucky, I know that you’re one of the good ones, one of the ones from… from… from outside. I know about the secret deal.”

He turns from the screen where the towers bleed black into a bright morning sky. His eyes distant.

“I’m sorry. What you say?”

“I know,” you tell him. “I know that things aren’t what they seem, that the, you know, those in power are pulling the wool over the eyes of everyone! I need you to help me! They’re chasing me, Lucky! They, they want me for something. They said, I’m, I’m the door.”

He looks at you with a kind of gentle alarm. Like you’d just told him you saw God in a drainpipe. Then he smiles. A soft sad thing.

“All right, I’ll help you. However I can. What you need?”

“They’ve… they’ve replaced me with… with someone that looks like, like me, but he’s better than me, and I can’t get any money from my accounts! I could use, I could really use some money so that I could, I could help. You know, I could, I could figure out what’s going on.

He sighs. Pulls a worn twenty from his apron and presses it into your palm.

You stare at the bill. Rage climbing you like fire up dry wood.

“A twenty isn’t what I need! I need more than that. I can’t, I can’t… What am I supposed to do with a twenty?”

He only shrugs. “Sorry. Best I can do.”

“Don’t you have a spaceship or something, or some, some technology that can protect me?”

He steps back. His face closed now.

“Settle down. Settle down. I think it time you leave.”

“Keep your secrets, then!” you shout.

You straighten your coat. What’s left of it. Shuffle out under the blue sky. He watches you go. Then turns back to serve his patrons, glancing up now and then to watch the horror unfolding on the television.

“This man is an alien!” you yell. Some heads turn. None stay.

Once again, you’re outside. Exposed. Where they can find you. The twenty crumples in your fist. But it’s a start. You can find Caruso.

You walk the streets. North Park. Too early for the kind of help you need. Still, you find a kid—Kangol hat, white tank, pants dragging. You know the look.

You approach him. “Do you happen to know where I could score some drugs?”

He wrinkles his nose. You reek. But then he softens.

“Look, man, you can have this for free.” He pulls out a joint from behind his ear and hands it to you.

“Oh, thank you. Thank you! You know, I’m a veteran.” You lie, “I fought in the war, so the joint, yeah, it’s good for me.”

“All right, man, you have a good day.” He nods and walks off.

You follow him until he enters an apartment building and closes the door behind him.

You realize your plan is flawed. This is taking too long.

Then a number comes to you. Vince. He made you memorize it. “Payphone only,” he’d said.

You see another kid, leaning on a wall, skateboard at his feet.

“Hey, kid,” you say. “Want to buy a joint?”

His eyes widen. “On a day like today? Fuck, yeah!”

You trade smoke for ten bucks. You walk to a nearby laundromat, exchange the money for quarters, and spot a pay phone.

You feed the coins into the slot. The receiver’s slick with old sweat and breath, and you wedge it to your ear with your shoulder, eyes on the nothing stretched out in front of you. Whoever comes after can clean it if they care. The line rings. And rings. Then he answers. Voice flat. Tired or suspicious or both. “Who’s speaking?”

“Vince, it’s Wexley. I need your help. Some, some. I need your help.”

“Hey Senator — caught your little appearance on Tough Talk this morning. Damn shame it got clipped early, real shame. Word is Abu Dhabi TV got a ring from those clowns in the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. They’re saying they’re the ones behind the whole goddamn mess.”

“Oh, that wasn’t me. That’s another me, but they’re after me. They’re after me! Vince, who?”

“What are you talking about?” He sounds confused.

“The, the bad ones, the ones the government has to deal with!”

“Whoa, whoa, man, slow down. What are you talking about? Bad ones?”

“These guys are real bad that make us look like clowns. They’re after me. Vince, you owe me. I need your help!”

“All right, Senator, you and I go way back. How can I help you?”

“I need a new identity. You, you have safe houses, right? You’ve got stuff like that, yeah?”

“Uh, yeah, I can certainly do that for you, Senator. When do you need it?

“Right away.”

“All right, I have connections in New York City, but it’s going to take me a while to get you a safe house there.”

“What can you do for me in the meantime?

“What do you need, Senator?”

“Some money, a weapon.”

“Alright. I can arrange that. Where are you in the City right now? I’ll make some calls and make it happen. See who I can send over.

“I’m not in New York.” you tell him. “I’m in San Diego.”

“No, man, I just saw you on TV. I know you’re in the City.”

“I told you, that’s not me!

“I don’t know what you’re talking about—“

You interrupt him. “Vince, they made a fake me! They made one in a lab.”

“Oh. Ah, sure. Senator, break it down for me ’cause I’m lost. What do you need?”

“I need a safe house. A new passport and at least $5,000. And, uh, a bulletproof vest, and a gun and some ammo.”

You hear him whistle. “That’s some serious shit there, Senator; I can have one of my boys pick you up, and take you to a safe house; where are you at?”

You look at the cross streets you are near and tell Vince.

“All right, Senator. I don’t know what’s going on, but you know, we’ve been scratching each other’s backs for a while now. If that’s what you say, if that’s what you want, I’ll have a man sent to your location in thirty minutes.”

“Thank you, Vince! You’re a good one. I knew, I know I could trust you.”

The line goes dead.

While you wait for Vince’s man, you buy six bacon-wrapped hot dogs from a street vendor, sit on the curb, and eat them. They burn your gut but settle your nerves.

A limo pulls up. Man in slick clothes looks around, confused.

“Hey, hey, hey!” You yell as you approach him, bits of bread and onions spray from your mouth.

The man steps back, putting his hands up, “Man, I don’t got no time for you. Got no money for you. Fuck off.”

“Vincent sent you for me. You’re Vince’s boy, right?”

He looks at you. “What the fuck?”

“I’m Bryce Wexley. I’m Bryce Wexley!”

“All right. All right.” He goes to his trunk, pulls out an expensive blanket, and covers the back seat. “All right, man, if you say so.” Under his breath, you hear him mutter, “What the fuck?” as he opens the door for you.

You collapse into the back seat. “You would smell bad, too, if you had seen what I’d seen.”

“Right, right. Whatever you say, Man, whatever you say.”

As you drive away, he picks up his phone. “Yo, Mister Caruso, Tommy here. I picked up the… Senator. He’s in rough shape.” He turns to you and offers you his phone. “Hey, Senator, he wants to talk to you.”

You hold the phone to your ear. “Senator?”

“Hey, Vince, your man here is not too polite.”

“I’ll take care of that. Tommy’s a good boy. He’s going to take you to a place in La Jolla. You can hole up until we can talk face to face.”

“Vince, thank you, Vince! You’re a saint. The good ones, you know, they’ll, they’ll, they’ll think about you.”

Tommy takes a phone, wipes it on his pant leg, holds it to his ear, listens, and nods.

“All right, all right. Yeah, I’ll get him cleaned up.”

You drive to the outskirts of La Jolla. Tommy pulls up into the driveway of a decent house. He gets out and opens the door for you, treating you with the respect that is your due. You step out and he won’t meet your eye though you see the question there, flickering. The not-knowing. The what-the-hell-happened-to-you.

Tommy knocks on the door of the house, which is answered by a man in his twenties, eyes bloodshot.

You follow the man and Tommy past a kitchen. On the floor is a stained mattress circled by video cameras on tripods. On the kitchen table are several laptops. A girl wearing nothing but a tight T-shirt and panties walks by, bow-legged. She doesn’t look at you so much as through you. She drinks water from a plastic bottle like it’s the only real thing left.

Tommy says, “Senator, anything you need, I’m at your disposal. If you want to clean up, there’s a bathroom down the hall.”

You grab the towel from his hand. You shower. Hot water. Mercy.

Afterward, you clothe yourself in what’s been left. Gym shorts thin at the knees and a t-shirt bearing the faded logo of San Diego State University. You pull it over your head and it smells of detergent and old sweat and something fainter still. You stand before the mirror. The glass is smeared and tired. You wet your fingers and try to set your hair to how it once was or how it ought to be. Like the man on the screen on Tough Talk. The clean one. The one who speaks and the world listens. You rake your hands through the mess of it but it will not hold. It’s hopeless.

“Tommy!” You yell.

“Yo?”

“I need a stylist. I need a shave. I need a suit.”

“You got it. Anything else?”

“And the cash. And the gun. And the bulletproof vest.”

“You got it, Senator.”

The future is looking good. You don’t have a plan yet. You’re still trying to figure out what’s going on with the aliens. But you’re Bryce Wexley, old boy, and you will flip the tables on them.

---

• Chapter One: Operation Watchtower
• Chapter Two: Tough Talk
• Chapter Three: Ground Zero

Wexcess

Bryce Wexley. You drag the back of your hand across your mouth, the bile sour on your tongue, and through the fog of sweat and heat and shame you see him—Lucky. Framed in the glass door of his diner. His eyes dart up from you to the television behind him where the towers burn. Then back to you.

Lucky comes upon you slow and sure, like a man approaching something wounded. His face, it creases not in pity but in the quiet knowledge of pain. He holds out his hand. “Let’s get you inside.”

You raise your eyes and for one moment, his head is engulfed in a dandelion of golden radiance. A crown of fire, wild and tender. You blink. It is gone.

He guides you to a table. “I get you something to eat. Something to settle your stomach.”

You hear your name like it’s been dragged out of a well. Takes a second to realize it’s coming from the TV. You look up, and there you are. Sitting next to Phil Doherty on Tough Talk. That grin of his plastered on like always. Only this isn’t a rerun. It’s live. Now.

And the man sitting beside him—it’s you. But it isn’t.

The man on screen sat straight-backed and sure. He was what you strive to be. What the press hinted you might become. You watch him, that other you, and you feel like you are peeling away. Like he’s shedding you, leaving the husk behind.

Your first thought is that the man on the screen is not a man at all. That he’s a skinwalker, a lizard wrapped in meat, some reptile thing done up in your own hide like a suit bought cheap and ill-fitting. It’s wearing you. Wearing your smile, your gestures, the way you hold your hands just so, like they taught you in the greenrooms.

But it doesn’t make sense. If the skin’s enough, why would they need yours? And yet you watch and you feel it all the same—the shame, deep and black. Your hair stuck flat to your skull with sweat and bile, your clothes a patchwork of filth, your feet raw. And there he is, sharp as a blade, suit pressed, hair combed, the world leaning toward him like flowers to the sun.

Your voice rises from your throat like something choking. “That isn’t me! They replaced me!”

A patron two stools down lifts a finger slow to their lips, eyes sharp over it. “Shhh!”

“Good morning, folks.” Says the television host, “I’m Phil Doherty, and this is Tough Talk. Now listen, I wish we were kicking things off with something a little lighter today, maybe even a little fun. We’ve got Senator Bryce Wexley here with us—yes, that Wexley. His family’s been called the Kennedys of the West Coast. A real political dynasty. And Senator, we appreciate you being here.”

“Thanks, Phil.” The other Bryce says, “It’s a pleasure to be here, as always. And I’ve got to say, nice suit.”

Phil laughs, then turns to look directly into the camera.

“But let’s be honest—we’ve got more pressing business this morning. America is under attack. So we’re going to put your reality show segment, Wexcess, on hold and focus where we need to: the safety of our nation and the facts as we know them. This is no time for fluff.”

Behind the host and the man wearing your face the screens play clips from Wexcess. They’ve stacked the deck for spectacle. The old producers knew their craft. Knew how to gild the rot.

There you are, barreling down some desert highway in that gaudy Humvee like a king of nothing, the sun burnished on chrome and steel. Cut to you again, poolside, flanked by supermodels whose names you never learned, their laughter canned and hollow.

The reel rolls on. Red carpet, flashbulbs, the dumb applause of a thousand strangers. You grinning like a man with no past. No blood on his hands.

Then your boy, Graham. His face lit and sharp. Telling the camera during a talking head segment how you “suck,” and there’s you right after, telling the world Graham’s “very, very sorry for what he said.”

All of it stitched together like some gospel for fools. You watch and you know it’s a lie. But you can’t look away.

Doherty turns to the camera. “Stay with us. Tough Talk returns after these messages.”

And then a commercial plays, some inane morality play of capitalism. A family at breakfast, their smiles carved and hollow, praising a thing they did not make and do not need.

Lucky comes back bearing the plain grace of hot food. A chipped plate. Scrambled eggs. Toast browned and crisp at the edge. Steam rising from the coffee. He sets it down.

“You want jelly?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer. Just smiles that quiet smile of his and lays a packet by your plate. Then he turns and goes.

He doesn’t know you from Adam. doesn’t know the office you hold or the fortune you command. To him you’re just another vagabond off the street.

And still he brought you breakfast. He treats you with dignity and kindness.

You tear the packet open with trembling fingers, the foil splitting like skin, and squeeze the jelly straight to your tongue. It coats your throat sweet and cheap and chemical. You drag the eggs into your mouth like a man starved, which you are, and the toast follows in great wet mouthfuls. The food hits you like morphine. Your hands shake. Your heart beats fast and light.

You look up, eyes flicking sharp like a hunted thing. What’s his angle, this Lucky? Man feeds strays, but why? You’ve seen enough to know nothing comes without a hook. You saw his head glow. Maybe he’s one of them. One of the good ones, maybe. The kind who wears a man’s shape to pass in the daylight.

You think about that radio show, late nights in the dark, Art Bell talking about The Greys, the Reptilians, the ones who made the deals. Maybe the things you saw in Alpine—maybe they were real. And maybe Lucky’s not like them. Maybe he’s something else.

You glance sideways. Real careful. Check your hands. Your mouth. You listening to yourself now, the words running under your breath without your leave. You wonder if anyone’s watching.

And the worst thing is you know they are.

After the meal Lucky comes and takes your plate without a word and wipes the table clean with a rag drawn from the pocket of his apron. He looks at you once.

“Come with me.”

You follow him cautious as a coyote, ready to bolt should the air shift wrong. Your eyes fix on the back of his skull, the smooth dome of it shining faint under the fluorescent light, and you watch for some tell, some hidden seam in the meat of him where the zipper might run, where the mask might peel away and show the thing beneath.

At the front door a mop waits, its head limp and soaked in gray suds. Beside it a bucket, the water inside warm and soapy.

“You clean up,” he says.

You kneel at the bucket like a penitent and dip your hands into the murk, the water warm and citrusy with soap. You bring it to your face and scrub, the suds running down your neck, the sting of it in your eyes, the scent sharp in your nose. You wash as if you might scour something from yourself that the years have left behind. Something that clings. Something that will not come clean.

“No, no.” he says, “You clean up.” He points to your puddle of vomit. The scent of it rises and stings your eyes.

You let out a long breath. You roll your shoulders like a man shouldering a yoke and set to the work. The mop clumsy in your hands, foreign. You drag it across the floor in fits and starts. You move without rhythm, without grace. You reckon you’ve never done a day’s mopping in your life. But you do it anyway. Because there’s nothing else to be done.

And then you see him.

Not straight on. Just a flicker in the corner of your eye. He leans against a wall leading to an alleyway, smoking a cigarette. Watching. He draws on the cigarette slow and easy and flicks it into the street. Its cherry arcs through the air like a meteor before it hits the Earth, and the man turns and walks away.

Down the alley.

You follow his path with your eyes. You see where he goes. You know this street. You know every corner of it. You’ve walked it a hundred times and never once has there been an alley there. Not till now.

The mouth of the alley darkens behind the man’s retreat, swallowing light like a thing alive. Not shadow but absence. A void. As if God himself had turned his gaze from that place and would not look again. You come to the threshold where morning ends. The edge of light. You lift your foot. The air beyond is cold. Frigid.

You place your foot within.

And you know. In your bones. In the red meat of you. One more step, and there is no turning back.

You are not a fool. You turn from the alley and make your way back to the diner, to your mop. You mutter low beneath your breath of dissection tables and cold steel and how wise a man is who knows when to run.

Slyly, you look back at the alley through the tangle of your hair. The alley gone now like it never was. Like the world itself rolled over and smoothed the crease. But there on the pavement, you see it. The cigarette butt still smoldering. Smoke curling thin into the morning air.

Heat

Belle Flower. You’ve been standing in front of the Mira Mesa Public Library so long the shape of you is near worn into the concrete. The sun climbs higher. The shade crawls back. You keep expecting the man in the grey suit to round the corner, to step out from behind the world like he was always part of it. Instead you see the old ones walking. Old Chinese couples bent like river reeds, moving slow through the morning. Filipina mothers pushing strollers heavy with sleeping children. Indian women in their saris speaking low and fast, talking about the towers. The fire. The day the sky came down.

Red pulls up in his Ford Bronco, paint the color of faded jade, light catching on the metal like water in a dry place. It looked new. Lovingly restored. But the man behind the wheel was not new. Not untouched.

Red had lines now, deep and mean. His eyes sunk further in, not cruel, but tired. You remember them clear—sharp once, reckless. A man with miles ahead. Now he wears them all on his face. The years rode him hard. Drove deep. Didn’t let up.

Back then, he was all grin and boot leather. Hair long, engine louder than his conscience. He’d smoked through half a pack before you cleared county lines. Said little. Drove fast. Didn’t ask questions. The kind of kindness you don’t know you need until long after it’s gone.

He leans there against the Bronco, one arm slung careless over the doorframe. He pulls off his aviators slow and squints at you, his eyes pale and run through with age. He takes in the mess of you—hair wild, shirt twisted, sweatpants stained through, bare feet cut and streaked with road-grime and blood.

“Aw, hell. Get in.”

You tell Red about the man in the grey suit. How he killed your doorman and broke into your apartment like he owned the place, and how you escaped, dove through the window, and landed on the hedge like an animal in flight. You tell him you need to go back. Circle the block a few times, make sure the wolf is gone. Maybe get your hands on what’s left—your gear, your papers, a change of clothes. Whatever scraps of your life he didn’t take.

He lights a cigarette, draws on it. Smoke curls from his mouth, drifts past the scar in his lip. He doesn’t look at you, not at first. Just stares out over the parking lot.

“Buck did say you’re in some kind of trouble. Trouble seems to find you, don’t it?”

“I guess so,” you say.

He taps ash to the pavement. Takes another drag, and then you drive away.

Red turns on the radio, twists the dial and the voice comes raw through the static. Another plane has gone down. United Airlines. Flight 93. Crashed 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

He listens a moment. Just a moment. Then he kills the radio with a flick of his fingers and silence folds in.

“Christ. Can you believe this shit? Whole goddamn world’s goin’ to hell. I swear, every time you think we’ve seen the worst of it, somethin’ new comes crawlin’ outta the pit.”

You let the breath leave you slow like something wounded. Say nothing. Your eyes fix on the window and the world beyond it, the sun climbing indifferent over rooftops and powerlines. You will not meet Red’s gaze. You try not to think about the news burning through the radio. There’s too much stirring in you. Too much weight. Like you been sleepwalking and the dream’s caught up to you. And worse than the dream is the knowing you helped bring it to life.

He glances at you and whatever he saw on your face made the words die in his mouth. Like a man realizing too late he’s been talking to a corpse.

“Thunderation, ain’t my place to talk about the end of the world when you look like you’ve been livin’ in it.”

He drums his fingers once on the steering wheel, then scratches at the back of his neck.

“Truth is, I shoulda kept closer, Belle. I shoulda checked in. Stayed on top of you, made sure you weren’t driftin’ too far out. But I didn’t. Life’s got a way of slippin’ past when you ain’t lookin’. Next thing you know, it’s been years.

“So tell me, kiddo. What’s it been like? What you been up to, besides runnin’ from shadows?”

“I’ve just been making it work.” You tell him. “I haven’t had a proper job. I haven’t been able to land any. Things outside of the circus. I mean, I’m not trained to do any of the stuff that normal people do, so I done what I could. It’s not very easy, but I do what I can. Nothing worth telling. Just enough to make it work.”

“You know, you ain’t grown an inch since I last laid eyes on you. But hell, I can see plain as day you’ve grown in ways that matter. You ain’t that scared little doe I hauled across state lines in the dead of night. Back then you looked like a thing that’d bolt if I so much as breathed too loud. Like the world itself was hunting you."

He flicks his cigarette out the window, watches the spark vanish behind him.

“I never asked what you were runnin’ from. Didn’t need to. I saw enough in your eyes to know it was bad. Knew it had your folks’ stink all over it. But you’re different now. There’s steel in you. Might not see it when you look in the mirror, but I see it clear as day. You been carryin’ yourself like someone who’s seen what’s on the other side of fear and decided she wasn’t gonna bow to it.”

He clears his throat, thumb tapping the wheel.

“And look, I ain’t your preacher and I sure as hell ain’t your daddy. But on a day like this—might be worth pickin’ up the phone. Callin’ your mom and dad. Even if it’s just to say you’re still breathin’. World’s comin’ apart at the seams, Belle. Ain’t no shame in lettin’ people know you’re still standin’ in it.”

He grabs his flip phone from the pocket of the shirt and tosses it on your lap.

“Your call. Ha, see what I did there?”

“Yeah,” you say, absolutely not. I have no plans to talk to them. I definitely don’t need them knowing where I am right now, so I hear what you’re saying, but it’s not something I’m comfortable with doing now.”

He sighs. “It’s a free country.”

As the Bronco rounds the corner you see police cruisers stacked four deep, strobes painting the stucco in blood and bruise. Radios crackle. Men in uniforms bustle about.

Red slows the truck. The engine idles rough beneath his calloused hand.

“That’s a lot of heat,” he says.

He turns to you then, eyes narrowed.

“Anything you need to tell me, kiddo?”

“I didn’t do anything wrong! I gotta go inside. And if the police are here, that means that most likely no one else is gonna try to hurt me. So maybe this is a good thing?”

You set your hand on the latch and you pause. Old lessons stitched into your bones like scars. Don’t talk to the law. Don’t let them know your name. You glance down at yourself—barefoot, bleeding, sweatpants fouled. You can’t be seen like this. Not here. Not now. Not with a man dead on the pavement. You let the door click shut and sit there in the heat. Waiting. Watching.

“Park down the block. I need to think this through.”

Red eases the Bronco down to a crawl and without a word he reaches across and shoves you low, one hard hand on the crown of your head, pressing you beneath the dash like he’s hiding contraband. His eyes never leave the road. His mouth set in a line you’ve seen before, a man weighing the cost of something already spent.

“Stay down!” he hisses

“What do you see?”

“Black sedan. I don’t know if they’re cops or not, but they’re definitely law. Guy in the passenger seat looks smart. I think he’s lookin’ for someone. Maybe you, Belle.”

“Gosh, Red, I don’t know what these people want from me! We gotta get out of here then, because this is not good. We gotta go somewhere else.”

“I can take you to my trailer back in Convoy. I got some clean sweat pants and some flip-flops you can wear.”

“All right. Let’s just go to your trailer. Let me sit down. Let me think for a little bit, because this situation’s not safe!”

Bronco

Nicholas Grayson. The plane touches down heavy as a stone on the tarmac, tires screaming beneath the weight of steel. The sky above San Diego blue and unbothered, indifferent to the smoke twisting halfway across the country. You’d been aloft when the first tower fell. Somewhere over Arizona when the second burned.

By the time the word of the Pentagon hit the cabin, it was no longer accident, no longer madness or malfunction. It was war. And every passenger knew it.

The plane docks. There is the slow, somber shuffle of feet, as if you were all walking from one funeral to another.

The badge you carry got you off quicker than most.

The terminal was chaos made flesh. Faces upturned to televisions, mouths slack and eyes burning, herded like cattle by staff who knew nothing and could say even less. You could feel the static charge of grief and terror in the air, a nation realizing it was not untouchable, that something had reached across the oceans and slit its throat.

Then you see him. A man in a suit, holding a placard: GRAYSON in block letters. His shoulders are slumped, his face pale and pinched and hollow-eyed, like someone who’d rather be anywhere but here. A man wanting nothing more than to be home, wherever home was, with the people he loves.

You walk up. Show him your badge. Tell him your name.

He tucks the placard beneath his arm and offers his hand, the shake firm but not unkind.

“Guthrie. Andrew Guthrie. Wish we’d met on a better day. This way.”

He nods toward the parking structure, and you fall in step beside him, the tide of bodies pressing in close all around. People moving like cattle through a chute.

“Can I take your bag?”

“That’s okay. I’ll hold on to it. Thanks, though, Mr. Guthrie”

Something gnaws at you. You slow your pace, your eyes lifting toward the open sky. Empty. Silent. No engines droning in descent.

Guthrie follows your gaze and answers without being asked.

“U.S. airspace shut down soon as the second plane hit. Grounded everything.”

You reach his car. A government sedan, black and anonymous. You slide into the passenger seat.

Guthrie starts the engine, glancing at you sidelong.

“Most agents, they want a minute. Get their bearings. Maybe sleep off the flight. But I read your file. Hell, you’re that Agent Grayson, aren’t you? Reckon you’ll want to get to it. Where to?” Guthrie’s eyes are fixed forward, hands on the wheel at ten and two.

“Miramar. Magnolia Village. Apartment building. I need to have a chat with a Miss Belle Flower.”

You give Guthrie the address and watch him nod once, slow and sure. Then you fish the Blackberry from your pocket, the plastic slick beneath your thumb. You dial your sister’s number without thinking. She picks up on the first ring. You hear her television in the background. News about the World Trade Center. The Pentagon.

“Nick? Oh, thank God. I can’t believe what’s happening! They’re saying it’s terrorists! Do you know anything about it?”

“Not a thing. I just wanted to make sure everybody was okay. I needed to hear your voice. How’s Pete?”

You reckon her husband’s decent as men go though you’ve long thought him touched in the head. A fool maybe but not the kind that means harm. Just a man who don’t know near as much as he thinks he does.

“Oh, you know, Pete. His lawn care business is taking off, but he can’t get his head in the game today. He’s coming home, which is for the best”

“That’s good. Okay, I’ve got to go. Stay safe”

“All right. Well, thanks for calling. You take care of yourself. Love you.”

“Love you, too, Marley.”

Just as you hang up, your BlackBerry pulses and you thumb the screen, and it’s a message from Alicia Hightower, the shrink the bureau paid for. It reads “I’m here to talk if you need me.”

You text back, “Thanks.”

You’re about to slip the thing back in your pocket when it comes to life buzzing in your hand. You look and the number is one you know. Boyd Whitaker. Fellow jarhead. You pulled each other out of the sand more than once in the war. You owe him more than you ever said aloud.

“Boyd, how you doing?”

“Hey there, good buddy. Heard you got yourself transferred. New division, huh? Only good news I heard all damn day. Hell of a day for good news, though, ain’t it? Where you hanging your hat?”

“Well, actually, right now I’m down in San Diego. How’s the life up in Los Angeles?”

“Oh, you know, walking and talking. Working the beat. San Diego? Huh? That don’t beat all. Do you remember Silas?”

“Silas?”

You close your eyes. Of course you remember. Silas Mercer. The man with the dead eyes. The one who liked the work too much. How he slipped through the cracks, past the shrinks and the tests and the red flags—that’s a question you stopped asking long ago.

“Always had a weird feeling about that guy, but then I also had the same feeling about Tim McVeigh. We all know what happened there. Seems like I should listen to those feelings.”

“Word around the campfire is, he’s been seen in San Diego. Few days back. Don’t know if that’s why you’re out there. God, I hope not. He’s a bad hombre, brother. Bad all the way down.”

“Yeah, he was a cold motherfucker.”

“Hey, something just hit my desk. I gotta run. Hang ten, brother. I’ll make my way down to San Diego. And if I can’t, come up to L.A., as long as you’re in town.”

“All right, buddy, good to hear your voice. Give a hug to the wife.”

He laughs. “Copy that.”

You arrive at Belle Flower’s apartment building. The flash of blue and red lights turning the stucco walls into a crime scene mural. Four squad cars. Officers milling at the entrance. One of them bent low beside a shape slumped against the pavement, a black tarp folded neat over what had once been a man. A forensic photographer crouched, camera raised.

You knew the shape of it. The stink of death in the air like something bitter under the tongue. You’d seen it before.

“Agent Guthrie, can you circle the block once? I want to get the lay of the land. Maybe see if Miss Flower is out and about. Keep your eyes open.”

You make your circuit slow and watchful, eyes scanning the crowd for a sign of Flower but she isn’t there. What you do see is a man behind the wheel of a light jade Bronco, the paint near luminous in the sun like something freshly minted. He’s got a cowboy hat stained from years of weather and sweat, aviators low on his nose, a cigarette burning down to the filter in his fingers. He looks like Sam Elliott if Sam Elliott had seen the bottom of a needle more times than a whiskey glass.

You pull into the driveway of Flower’s apartment building. And then you see it. Small and green and mean as sin. A fly crawling the length of the dashboard like it owns the world. Its legs tapping out some measure older than speech. It pauses a moment, its wings shivering in the stillness, and when you crack the door it slips past you into the wide and waiting air. Gone like it was never there at all.

You cross the lot and the officers watch you come like men waiting on bad news. One of them steps forward. Lean and hard-eyed. He looks you over, your suit, your shoes. The weight you carry.

“You murder police?”

“No, sir. Nicholas Grayson. I’m with the Bureau. FBI. Lookout division. I’m not here to cause a scene. Just trying to locate a particular individual listed at this address.” You lift the badge from your coat and hold it where the officer can see. It catches the light. “I’m looking for a young woman. Name’s Belle Flower. Early twenties. Possible connection to an ongoing investigation.”

He looks at you a long moment. Then he turns to the officer beside him, something passing between them that needed no words.

“All right, let me bring you up to speed. Victim’s Harold Nguyen, works the door here—lived on-site.”

He looks to the body shrouded in the black tarp at your feet.

“C.O.D.’s a single G.S.W. to the head, close range. Time of death logged at approximately 0602 hours. We’ve got that timestamp off a voicemail he left for one Belle Flower—tenant in Unit 2B. Nguyen was on the line with her when the shot went off. Suspect made forced entry into Flower’s unit shortly after. Timeline puts him inside within minutes. Flower either bailed out or was forced out of a second-story window."

The officer points to an open window, and then to smashed shrubbery below.

“Witness reports the perp circled back to the apartment after the fact, cleaned house. Took hardware—laptop, portable drives, could be intel, could be leverage. Description’s solid: Male, mid-30s, shaved head, facial hair—goatee. Dressed like a pro, grey business suit, well-built frame. Neighbor clocks him moving with purpose. No hesitation. Tires on Flower’s vehicle were punctured. Whoever this guy is, he came prepared. Knew the layout. Knew the timeline. Wasn’t here for the doorman. He was after Flower. Question is—why?”

The officer’s mouth is still moving when your eyes cut past him, drawn to the jade glint of the Bronco tearing off down the street like a beast loosed from its pen. You don’t hear the rest of what he says. You already know.

“All right,” you mutter, voice flat as the asphalt. “Thank you, officer.”

You slide a card from your coat, hand it to him without looking. “Keep me looped in. Any contact with the young woman, I want to know.”

Then you’re moving, the pavement underfoot, the blood in your ears. You throw yourself back into the sedan.

“Guthrie,” you bark, slamming the door. “we’ve got movement. Follow that Bronco!”

---

• Chapter One: Operation Watchtower
• Chapter Two: Tough Talk
• Chapter Three: Ground Zero

Operation Watchtower

Agent Nicholas Grayson. The drone of the airliner moves through you, slow and rhythmic, a narcotic hum. You drift, thoughts unmoored, slipping backward through time. A stairwell. Cold cinderblock walls. Your steps in tandem with another. The sound of your heels ringing in the emptiness.

General Virek swipes his card. His voice low, measured. “This is important. Don’t scuff the circle.”

You nod. Swipe your own. The MP at the door marks your passing with the briefest of acknowledgments.

Beyond, a vast darkness. A cavernous expanse without measure. The space is unknowable, its borders lost to shadow. A single desk glows dim beneath the feeble light of a lamp. The man seated there is gaunt, his frame stark against the gloom. He lifts his hand, crooks a finger. The movement stretches his shadow long across the floor, reaching for you, the illusion of its touch against your cheek.

A voice not in the air but in your mind. Come.

Your body moves forward of its own accord.

As you near, the chalk line becomes visible. A circle, drawn with intent. You do not question its meaning; you only know that it must not be disturbed. At the last instant, you lift your feet, cross the threshold unmarked.

Sit.

The chair is a cheap, foldable thing. You sit.

On the desk, three manila folders. Names that carry weight. Waco Siege. Unabomber. Oklahoma City Bombing.

His gaze lingers on you, unreadable. Your work has not gone unnoticed, Agent Grayson. That is why you are here.

A sickness coils in your gut. You swallow it down. You wish yourself elsewhere. You are not elsewhere.

Tell me, Agent. What did you see in these operations that others did not? Things only you could see.

“Sir, I’m reporting with the understanding that what I say will remain within the confines of this room and your discretion. What I’m about to tell you is not speculation. It is analysis—drawn from direct field experience, intelligence correlations, and post-incident investigation. I’ll be blunt.

“The official narrative on Oklahoma City and Waco is incomplete—willfully so. McVeigh may have lit the fuse, but he wasn’t the architect. The evidence at the Alfred P. Murrah building suggests multiple explosive sources. Blast-wave patterns contradict a single-device detonation. Residue samples retrieved from interior columns showed chemical compounds that were not consistent with ANFO. We’re talking military-grade accelerants—black budget-level assets. Either McVeigh had help, or we did it ourselves. I lean toward the latter.

“At Waco, similar irregularities persist. Koresh wasn’t just leading a cult—he was running a rite. Ritualistic diagrams were found in the compound, traced in ash and blood. Burn patterns in the main hall showed circular containment glyphs—non-Christian, non-Western, but deliberate. Interviews with survivors indicate coordinated chanting. Sympathetic resonance, possibly. In plain terms, he was summoning something. And he nearly brought it through.

“I pulled twelve kids out before the fire collapsed the west wall. We lost seventy. I carry every one of those names—the kids from Oklahoma, too—daycare center, ground floor. I know the reports. I signed half of them. My shrink says that’s trauma. Fine. But trauma didn’t explain what I saw in that building. Evil did.

“In both cases—Waco and Oklahoma—we’re looking at overlapping anomalies: coded symbols, environmental irregularities, electromagnetic interference pre-detonation. There are threads here, sir. Threads that don’t trace back to standard operational enemies. This isn’t al-Qaeda. It’s not rogue militias. It’s something older. Smarter.

“You know that already.

“I’ve chased conspiracy theories before—most are noise. But some aren’t. I’ve seen enough to believe they’re real. And I’m not afraid to call it what it is: occult influence on domestic soil, cloaked behind anti-government sentiment, weaponized by people who know exactly what they’re doing.

“I’m not asking permission to dig deeper. I’m reporting that I already have. And that I intend to continue.”

His mouth smiles, a smile that is not a smile. His hands move over the folders, sliding them from view. He replaces them with a single file.

Operation Watchtower.

His voice does not change. The weight of the words presses just the same. Events of great portent are unfolding.

You will go to San Diego. You will go alone. There are matters beyond our organization’s conventional understanding. You will find them, and you will put an end to them. What is required is not understanding but resolve. There are movements in the dark. The Order of the Black Star. The Aryan Solar Circle. Their paths converge. What comes of it is unknown. You will see that it does not come to anything at all.

The Order of the Black Star, led by Erik Dunlop. He believes we stand at the edge of the Fourth Aeon, that the world as we know it must be razed to bring about divine order. Their bookstore, The Veil, is their gateway. A meeting place for mystics, drifters, the lost. It is where they are found. It is where they are made.

Clipped to the dossier is a photograph. Erik Dunlop at a lectern in some dim and cavernous hall. The gathered sit in rapt attention, their faces drawn with something like reverence, something like hunger. Their suits tailored, their jewelry discreet, the quiet wealth of those who do not need to announce themselves.

Dunlop stands among them yet apart. The cut of his Armani suit immaculate, the silk sheen catching the light like oil on water. Around his neck a pendant of obsidian, dark as the space between stars. His smile does not reach his eyes. His hands rest upon the wood like those of a man delivering a verdict, not a sermon.

The Aryan Solar Circle. A Nazi faction under Kurt Maurer. They see the West as weak, dying. They seek empire in its place. Their stronghold is a bar in Ocean Beach. Dugin’s.

Clipped to this dossier is another photograph. Kurt Maurer stepping from a black limousine, the door held open by a man whose face is turned from the camera. Maurer is powerfully built, the kind of strength that does not come from vanity but from war. His red hair shorn high and tight, his goatee salted with silver. The sleeves of his expensive shirt rolled back to reveal the ink coiled along his arms, symbols of old allegiances, old gods, the sigil of the Aryan Solar Circle harsh against his skin—a sunwheel encircled by runic inscriptions, jagged script whispering of ascendance through destruction, of blood and fire and the breaking of weak men. A symbol carved from old hate, its lines grim and unbroken.

Behind him the glow of neon, the low slouch of a biker bar, its sign half burned-out. Dugin’s. A den for those who trade in shadows and violence, where men speak of war not as history but as prophecy. Maurer stands as though an empire has already been conquered. A man who does not wait. A man who does not ask. A man who takes.

You listen. You do not interrupt.

Our division is small, Agent Grayson. You will have no backup. You will need allies among the locals. Begin with Miss Belle Flower. A hacker. We have watched her. We have found nothing beyond the petty crimes of her kind. But she has reach. Connections. She will be useful.

He opens the folder. The paper whispers against itself, the weight of what is written there bending the air around it. He lifts a sheaf of pages, crisp, orderly, squared at the edges. Stapled clean. Paper clipped to the top is a photograph of a girl not yet full grown, eighteen maybe. She stands outside a stuccoed building scorched by the western sun, San Diego heat rising off the pavement like breath. Overhead, the iron bellies of jets split the sky and leave nothing behind. She does not smile. She does not frown. Her face is a blank page, unwritten. The wind lifts her hair and lets it fall. She does not move.

You thumb through the dossier. The pages are thin.

She was born into the sawdust and smoke of a traveling circus, her parents fixtures in the freak tent. Giants and grotesques. She was neither. Had no claws, no second head, no forked tongue. Just flesh. And so they made use of her the way a butcher makes use of a carcass. She was theirs. No state had claim to her. No birth recorded. No name but the one they gave.

Her mother was a tower of a woman, her arms thick as fence posts. Her voice could still a crowd or send them howling. Her father was small and clever and with many fingers, nimble as rats, a surgeon by instinct and desire. They took her body like a canvas. Sewed into her the limbs of beasts. Goat tail. Rabbit ears. Small things at first. Later, stranger. She could not animate them. They rotted on her.

The scars remain. Lines drawn in tissue. A map of what was done.

The circus knew. Of course, they knew. It was not hidden. It was spectacle. This is the cost, they said. This is life under the big top. And she—just a contortionist. Folded but not rare. So they let it happen. Every one of them. Not one lifted a hand.

She fled. One night, under a low moon. Buck Flanagan drove the rig. Weathered man. Hair the color of old bone. He saw what they did to her. Maybe not all of it. But enough. He drove her to the edge of the county. Passed her off to a man named Red. No last name needed. That’s how it ends, most stories in the dark. Red took her West.

Next page. A new paragraph. The words are sharper here.

She had eyes on a forum. Lurker’s eyes. Thread after thread. A cell. Plans. Smoke and fire. Her hands on the wire before it burned. But she said nothing. Maybe fear. Maybe she couldn’t believe. But the silence was hers.

Flip again.

A new contact. Anonymous. Knows the circus. Knows what was done. Says they want to help. But she does not trust it. How could she? The past does not reach out a hand unless it means to pull you under. And yet, someone out there knows her. Knows her name, her shape, her history. Knows she ran.

Wants her back.

A silence settles between you.

Then he stands.

And his shadow rises behind him.

You expect the silhouette of a man. What you see is not a man. It is something else.

It is something alien and terrifying. The room does not contain it. Cannot contain it. It does not obey the space it occupies.

The shadow writhed. It breathed and buckled like wind in the grain. Out from it came arms not arms, spindled and black, stretching into the air and gone again like smoke in reverse. It pulsed. Grew. Diminished. You thought you saw teeth in the turning of its head. Long and thin and sharp as awls. But they, too, dissolved, unshaped, and what remained was only the silhouette. A thing unbeheld yet seen. A thing that bore watching. And watched.

You hear a whimper. Thin, dry. You recognize it belatedly as your own.

He extends his hand. You cannot refuse it. The fingers close around yours.

Godspeed, Agent Grayson.

Your memory is a broken thing after that. A series of flashes. The long walk back. The circle unmarred. The door closing behind you. The cool night air and General Virek’s voice, distant, making some empty sound of comfort.

Your apartment. The go-bag waiting by the door, as always. The airport. The ascent into the sky.

Now.

Something stirs against your hand.

You look. A fly. Small. Metallic green, its thorax gleaming like something wet, something unnatural.

The tickle of the fly on your hand is the first thing to call you back. You’ve been gone. Drifted somewhere beneath thought, beneath memory. A hollowness where a man ought to be. You had slipped into the old places, fear-worn paths carved through the meat of you, left there to keep you safe once and long ago. You do not remember where you were. Not truly.

The Agency sent a woman. Alicia Hightower. A therapist, they called her. Said she’d help you root out the rot. Teach you to listen again. To feel. Said it was new science. Revolutionary. But there is nothing new under heaven. The engine hums through the floor. The air is cold. You breathe. In. Out.

You raise your hand and swipe at the insect but it is gone before you move. Drifts to the window. Impacts the glass. Again. Again.

A soft chime sounds through the cabin.

Then again.

And again.

Something shifts. A ripple in the air. You see a steward emerge from the cockpit. His face is pale, unfocused. The other attendants glance at one another. At their hands. At the lights overhead.

You do not know what is wrong.

Only that something is.

Terribly, terribly wrong.

Swift Knees 85

Belle Flower. Your phone rattles against the wood of your nightstand, insistent. Dragging you up from the depths of sleep. A rare sleep untouched by nightmares, and you resent it for that. You turn your head, eyes heavy, the red glow of the clock staring back at you. 6:01 AM. You lie still, listening to the hum of it. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. In another moment, it will tumble to the floor, a thing desperate to cast itself down, to be done with its purpose, to end.

From the next apartment, you hear the faint sound of a television broadcast and your neighbor sobbing.

Your landline rings.

You know what this is. You’ve always known. You sit in the dark with the knowing of it heavy in your chest. As if you’d swallowed iron. You’ve seen it. Not just once. Night after night. The thing circling in your thoughts, a wheel that never stops turning. You did nothing. And now it’s come. You do not answer. You only listen. And wait.

The cell phone stops buzzing. The landline rings on, stubborn in its purpose, until at last it yields to the tape.

“Miss Flower?” It’s Harold Nguyen, your doorman. “Your father is here. Shall I send him up?”

Then a sound. A dull percussive thud, like the popping of a paper bag. A sharp intake of breath. A wet and shuddering gurgle.

Silence.

The line goes dead.

You are in shock. Your father. The thought of him. Why is he here? What could he want? How did he find you? Your breath shallow in your chest. Your heart a drumbeat of old fear. The first thought is to flee and fast. You know he could be just beyond the door. You do not want to see him. You do not want to hear his voice. Of all the men in this wide and wounded world, he is the last you want to meet.

There’s a knock at the door. Three sharp raps. Measured. Unhurried.

“Sorry to bother you, Miss Flower. It’s Jones, your super. There’s a gas leak reported coming from your apartment. Needs to be looked at, pronto.” A southern accent. New Orleans?

The voice flat, even. No urgency in it. No real concern. Just the words, the way they ought to be said.

You take the knife from the kitchen drawer where it waits. You slide it down into the waistband of your sweatpants, where it rests against your hip. Then you go to the door.

“Now’s not a good time. Please leave.”

“I must insist, Miss Flower,” he says. “It’s very dangerous, this gas leak.”

“I don’t smell anything in here. Please go away.”

He knocks on the door again.

“I’m warning you,” you say. “Please leave me alone. It’s not a good time for me.”

The door explodes open, the force of it throwing you to the floor. Above you stands a man in a grey suit, well-fitted. His skull smooth and bare, the shine of it catching the hallway light. Maybe shaved by choice. Maybe not. Maybe a concession to male pattern baldness.

His goatee is trimmed neat, salt and pepper, the kind a man keeps when he cares about control.

He does not fidget. Does not shift his weight. He stands still as stone, his face blank, unreadable. Not waiting. Not impatient. His gun aimed at your face.

The knife slips from your waistband, but you catch it, the blade cold in your palm. Your first thought is flight. The circus had made you fast and limber and hard to hold, and you move before thought betrays you. Down the hall. Into your bedroom. The window waiting. Below, neatly trimmed hedges. You leap. The branches catch you, scrape you. And then you roll to lessen the impact.

Above, the man leans from the window and laughs. “You run, I follow. That’s the way it is.”

Then he ducks back inside.

From your apartment, you hear your parrot squawking the name you use on the dark web: “Swift knees. Eighty-five. Swift knees. Eighty-five.” Over and over. A name that should not be known.

You run. Behind you the footfalls of the man and the silence of his intent. You chance a look and there he is, close now, look of grim determination on his face. His hand finds your shoulder but you twist from it, slip the grip. You feint left and vanish right and you are gone.

And then you feel the dew on your soles like the breath of the earth come up through you, cold and quickening. You tear through a stranger’s yard, leap the fence. Your breath is ragged in your throat, and the sweat rolls off you like oil.

You are compromised. Everything you carried—thumb drives, disks, the laptop—is gone to him now.

You need out. You need to be online. There’s a library in Mira Mesa, public and quiet. You run toward it, cutting through streets and backlots like a hunted thing. Thirty minutes, later you arrive, chest heaving, sides burning, and there it is. Closed. Still dark behind the glass. The hour too early.

So you stand there with nothing.

Except a name.

You cross to the pay phone. You punch the number you haven’t used in years, feel the metal buttons press into your fingertips. The line rings.

An operator’s voice. A pause.

Then Buck.

“Yeah. I’ll accept.”

Street sounds behind him, the hum of the world still turning. He’s driving. Going somewhere.

“Belle, I tried calling you half an hour ago! Have you turned on the TV? Do you know what’s going on?”

“Going on?”

“Two jets. They just crashed into the World Trade Center. We’re under attack. Belle, America’s under attack!”

There’s a sickness low in your gut. A knowing. You are complicit. That much is clear. The blood isn’t on your hands but it’s near enough. Close enough to taste.

This is the reckoning, you think. This is the shadow come knocking. That man at your door, he was no accident. You knew. When the phone rang. When the sobs bled through the wall. You knew. And you did nothing. You turned from it. You looked away. A coward’s silence. A coward’s sin.

“Buck, someone just broke into my apartment. I barely escaped. He claimed he was my father. Oh, God, I think he killed my doorman!”

“Calm down, Belle. Your mom and dad are in the trailer behind me.”

“Oh, God. Okay, so this has nothing to do with my father. Where are you?”

“We’re in Arizona. We’re gonna be in San Diego in two weeks. But if someone’s after you, I’ll ditch this caravan and come scoop you up.”

“If my parents are with you, I don’t want them to know where I am right now, and I still want to avoid them.”

“Belle, they’re the last people I would ever tell. How can I help you?”

You stand there in the morning hush, breath ragged, heart a hammer in the dry well of your chest. You need your laptop. You need money. You’d ask Buck to wire you some, but you realize your ID is back at your apartment. You think furiously.

“Buck, is there anyone in San Diego you know that can help me?” You’ve met unsavory folks during your life in the circus. You hope that Buck knows someone big. Someone aggressive. Someone who’s intimidating who can check on your apartment and see what’s there, and see if they can grab your things so that you can get out of there.

“Belle, remember when I got you out of the circus? Remember Red, the guy who drove you to San Diego? He’s in Convoy. He’s close by. He could be there in like 15 or 30 minutes. I’m gonna give him a call. You stay put.”

3,333 Faces

Bryce Wexley. You are weary. The sun has carved its mark upon you, and the wind has taken its share. Your skin is dry, cracked at the knuckles, the lips. Your clothes stiff with sweat, and with dust. You smell of old concrete and city heat, of grease from borrowed meals and the salt of your own body. The grime has settled in the lines of your hands, beneath your nails, in the creases of your face where sleep has been a fleeting thing.

Three weeks since Alpine. Since the Black Labs. Since you crawled free of that place like something aborted and unwanted. The city has given you nothing but its empty corners, its cold steel benches, its unblinking neon. You’ve kept moving, though the weight in your limbs grows heavier, though the nights stretch long and restless. You’ve seen the way men look at you. The way they look through you. You’ve learned where to hide when the wrong ones are near.

The morning is warm, the air thick with the quiet hum of a city waking. The sun presses against your eyelids, a dull and insistent light. You’d like to sleep. To drift a while longer in the half-world between dreaming and waking. But the sun will not be denied.

You push yourself up, bones stiff, the ache of pavement, and restless nights settling into your skin. It is time.

You think of Wong, known as “Lucky“ to the locals. A light touch. His diner not unfriendly to men like you, men who slip in and out of places without leaving much of a mark. He looks the other way when you take scraps from emptied plates, pretends not to see when you ghost through his diner after closing. Sometimes, if you put a broom to his sidewalk, he’ll press a lunch into your hands, a quiet offering. Then there’s The Big Kitchen. Judy the Beauty and her staff generous with their portions. A kindness that means a long walk, more than a mile, past storefronts, past men who look as if they, too, have woken unwilling. And then, of course, there is Marge Calloway with her soup kitchen, but that’s even further away. You weigh the choice, the day stretching out before you, empty and waiting. Lucky’s it is, then.

You have been nowhere and everywhere. Moving, always moving, because if you stop, they will find you. If you stop, you will think too much. San Diego is too hot, too bright, too full of people who don’t see you. Mission Beach at night, when the ocean air makes it almost bearable. The alleys behind the Gaslamp, where the stink clings to you and no one asks questions. A shelter on Market Street, but you don’t like sleeping there. Too many eyes, too many whispers. The nightmares come fast when you try to rest.

You have seen things. Too much, really. A man bleeding out behind a bar while the world kept moving. Symbols scratched into brick that made your head throb. A man in a perfect suit staring at you from a diner window. Just watching. You left before he could stand up. Once, you saw a cat slinking through the shadows, tail flicking like it had no worries in the world. You almost called out before you realized it wasn’t him. Mister Whiskerford. He probably thinks you abandoned him. He probably hates you. No, scratch that; he probably doesn’t think about you at all.

They are still out there. The ones from Alpine. The Black Labs. You know because you helped them. You thought you were doing your job. You signed the papers, greased the wheels, let them make people disappear without a trace. Then you saw things you weren’t supposed to see. Security footage that moved wrong, shadows twisting behind locked doors, things speaking in voices that didn’t belong to them. The U.S. government has a deal with something not from here. Aliens. Extraterrestrials.

Something happened to you in Alpine. You should have died, but you didn’t. You don’t know why. You remember a voice that wasn’t a voice, something pressing against your skull like it was peeling you open. You can feel things now. Know when someone isn’t what they seem. Know when a place doesn’t belong. It’s like your brain got rewired, but you don’t know what the hell to do with it. It hasn’t saved you from anything, just kept you running.

They haven’t stopped looking. General Conrad Voss is leading them. He was always the one with the orders, the real power behind it all. Maybe he’s the one who made the deal. Lorraine Henshaw, your secretary, must have known something. She was different before it all went down. Colder, watching you like you were already dead. Was she always in on it? Did she try to warn you? No, she would have done more if she cared.

You need help. Vince Caruso is your best shot. You did favors for him when you were in office, greased the right wheels, made his life easier. He owes you. He knows it. If anyone can make you disappear the right way, it’s him. Unless he’s already decided you’re not worth the trouble.

For now, you survive.

The other day, you saw a cat waiting by the back door, watching you. Just for a second, you thought it was Mister Whiskerford. Your chest was tight. You wanted to believe he found you, like he had been looking for you this whole time. But that’s stupid. He’s fine. He moved on. He has probably forgotten you completely. You would if you were him.

You need a plan. A way out. Something. Because you can feel it now, more than ever. They’re getting closer.

Without warning, your head explodes in agony. Like an iron spike driven clean through the crown of your skull. You lurch, knees striking pavement, pedestrians parting round you like water round a stone. The sky blackens. The world peels away. Overhead, stars wheel in unfamiliar patterns. Moons hang low and bright, pale-bellied things that do not belong. Comets trail fire through the heavens, their paths slow and deliberate, as though watching. The constellations shimmer like glass spun thin across the firmament, casting long, strange shadows that move independent of the light.

San Diego still murmurs, its sounds muffled as if heard through water.

You see them then—two black towers, tall and still as grave markers. Between them and beyond, a citadel rises. Immense. Impossible. It recedes even as it sharpens to clarity. You feel it before you see it.

A weight behind your eyes. A pressure in your chest.

Something there is watching. Not with sight but with a mind vast and cold. For a moment, it touches yours. Brief. Wordless. You reel. You are known. And then it is gone. Or worse—it remains.

You blink, and the city is back. But not as it was.

A woman staggers, sits hard on the curb, her hands trembling, staring at her Walkman in disbelief. Cars roll to a halt, their drivers faces a look of stunned confusion. Crows provide a choir with their caws.

No, no, oh, God, that wasn’t real, you think. That wasn’t real. It saw me. It knew me, not like a person knows another person, like a fire knows dry wood, like an ocean knows a drowning man.

You see after images of towers burning.

I shouldn’t have seen that. I wasn’t supposed to. Aliens. It has to be aliens!

The people around you look upon you with disgust. Or they look past you, through you, their gaze skimming the world as if you were never there. And some do not see you at all.

Your flesh begins to tingle. Begins to itch. Rivulets of sweat trickle down your spine. You know you’re about to have another terrible vision. And then it hits you like a sledgehammer burying itself into your skull.

The world disappears.

You are in a hallway that should not exist.

It is endless—narrow, featureless, white, the kind of white that hurts the eyes, the kind that makes everything inside it feel surgical and forgotten. The floor is wet. Not with water. With something else. Something that smells like copper and old grief.

Along either side, at exact intervals, are doors. 3,333 of them.

Each is numbered.

Each bears a single name—and you know them all.

Names you never learned in waking life, but you recognize every one.

Behind each door is a person you helped vanish. Not directly. But by signing something. Ignoring something. Making a call. Just doing your job.

The doors begin to open. Slowly. One by one.

First, soft whispers. Then voices. Then screams.

A child with no mouth sobbing through his eyes.

A woman whose bones are on the outside of her body, still walking.

A man shaped wrong, limbs moving like water.

They emerge, silent at first, then speaking in perfect unison:

“We remember you, Bryce.”

You try to run, but the hallway stretches. The lights flicker.

You stumble. The wetness on the floor is now ankle-deep, now knee-deep, now rising.

You turn back—and the doors have vanished.

Only faces remain, embedded in the walls.

All 3,333 of them.

Their eyes open.

Their mouths open.

And they begin to sing.

A terrible, perfect, hymn of remembrance.

The sound drills into your skull, vibrating through your teeth, through the marrow of you.

Then, there is a last voice, quiet and close. It breathes into your ear:

“You are the last door.”

The vision fades, and the pressure crushing your brain lifts. You find yourself sprawled on the ground. You lay there for a minute, and the sun beats down on you, and you feel piss drying on your leg. You realize that your clothes are in disarray. You were a senator, dammit! Are a senator, and you straighten what, underneath all the filth, is an outrageously expensive blazer.

You stagger towards Lucky’s and hear people around you talking about the towers. How could they know about the towers that you just saw in your vision? Just as you’re about to open the door to Lucky’s, you see a television above the counters broadcasting the World Trade Center. Smoke billowing into the New York City skyline. As you’re about to push open the door, goose bumps rise on your flesh, and the urge to scratch at your skin returns. You scream because you know what will happen next. And it does.

The sky is dark.

The Alpine wind like razors across your skin, slicing without blood. You are bound to the wood. Arms stretched wide. Ankles strapped tight. The grain of the crucifix rough against your back, splinters finding their way home. Your skin shivers in the cold, and your body, unbidden, betrays you. Your member stands erect, throbbing.

Below you, the crowd moves. Robed and hooded. Faces hidden. They chant in an alien tongue. The sound is wet and clotted and old.

Beyond them, soldiers. Rifles cradled like infants. Eyes forward. Breath held. Waiting.

And behind the soldiers, the scientists. Cold-eyed. Watching monitors that glow with terrible colors. Their fingers dance over keys as if in prayer. Not a one looks up. Not a one looks away.

Then, the twins. Thin as bone, white as salt. Sexless and yet obscene in their symmetry. Their faces smooth and expressionless, their movements like glass through still water.

They approach.

One raises a hand.

The other places long fingers on your belly.

There is no blade. No cutting.

Still, you open.

A door. Hinged in the meat.

And from within you issues a torrent. A flood of shapes and smoke and screaming mouths.

Winged things. Crawling things. Things that burn and things that whisper.

They pour from you, shoving past one another, hungry for air, for space, for violence.

The chanting rises.

And through it all, you hear one of the twins whisper—not aloud, but into your marrow:

“You were never one man. You were the lock.”

You find yourself on hands and knees, vomiting the meager contents of your last meal on the sidewalk. It splatters on your knuckles. Your tongue burns from the bile.

---

• Chapter One: Operation Watchtower
• Chapter Two: Tough Talk
• Chapter Three: Ground Zero