WHITE CROWS

A Mira Morales Thriller

By T. J. MacGregor

A Gordian Knot Thriller

Gordian Knot is an imprint of Crossroad Press

Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

Smashwords edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press

Crossroad Press digital edition 2022

Copyright © 2022 by T. J. MacGregor

ISBN: ePub Digital Edition—978-1-63789-812-3

ISBN: Trade Paperback Edition—978-1-63789-811-6

LICENSE NOTES

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Meet the Author

T. J. MacGregor is the author of 42 novels and in 2003 won the Edgar Allan Poe award for Out of Sight. She was born at Ballantine Books in 1987, when her editor told her that her maiden name, Trish Janeshutz, was too difficult to pronounce and that mysteries by men were outselling mysteries by women. Could she please come up with a name that had initials? By then, she was married to novelist Rob MacGregor, so she became T.J. MacGregor. A few years later, she wrote Tango Key and by then, mysteries by women were outselling mysteries by men and her editor asked her to create a new female name for that book. So, she became Alison Drake.

She lives in South Florida with her husband, novelist Rob MacGregor, their daughter, Megan, two cats and two dogs.

Bibliography

The Quin St. James Mystery Series

Dark Fields

Kill Flash

Death Sweet

On Ice

Kin Dread

Death Flats

Spree

Storm Surge

Blue Pearl

Mistress of the Bones

The Mira Morales Series

Hanged Man

Black Water

Total Silence

Category Five

Cold as Death

White Crows

The Nora McKee & Alex Kincaid Series

Kill Time

Running Time

Standalone Thrillers

The Seventh Sense

Skin Shifters

You Are Mine

Vanished

You Are Mine

The Other Extreme

Out of Sight

In Shadow

Hidden Lake

Lagoon

The Tango Key Mysteries

Tango Key

Fevered

Black Moon

High Strangeness

The Hungry Ghosts Series

Esperanza

Ghost Key

Apparition

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With much love for

Megan, Rob, and my sister Mary

Thanks to my dog park buddies who help keep me sane

during these surreal times:

Arlene Ortner, Estelle Momrow, Paula Bruce, and Lloyd Walton

“If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, you mustn’t seek to show that no crows are; it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white.”

- William James

PART 1

The Early Arrivals

“Is the boundary between the present and

the past so flimsy that we can, under the right

circumstances, stroll back into the past with the

same ease with which we can stroll into a garden?”

- Michael Talbot

The Holographic Universe

1

The Stone Woman

February

Mira Morales followed Old Post Road north from Tango Key toward the wilderness preserve at the northern end of the island. The ascent from sea level to the highest point usually took ten or fifteen minutes along here. But the snowbird season was in full swing, with at least thirty thousand tourists on the island, and traffic jammed the road.

Once upon a time, Old Post was the only road on Tango, created so that the farmers who lived here could receive mail. It probably had taken the postman days to travel the dirt road on horseback and that was only after getting to the island by ferry from Key West. Now and then when she drove Old Post, she caught glimpses of that past, the spirits of farmers hauling their harvests in horse-drawn wagons to the ferry docks, campesinos whacking away in the sugar cane fields. Farms still existed in these hills, but every year their number diminished. The properties were sold for exorbitant amounts of money to builders who erected new housing communities.

She turned onto one of the unpaved roads that connected the east and west sides of the island and picked up Old Post on the Gulf side of the island. Traffic headed north wasn’t quite as bad on this side. She passed the towering lighthouse, built in 1568, which made the island the second oldest spot in the U.S., after St. Augustine.

The island’s rich history was often the source of its secrets and mysteries. In the past, when Mira had helped her husband, Wayne Sheppard, on FBI investigations, she’d delved into many of those secrets. Among her favorites were the buried pirate’s treasure found in someone’s back yard in Pirate’s Cove, the alleged haunting of a house not unlike Hill House in the Shirley Jackson novel, the discovery of an alien body on the cliff where the lighthouse was built.

Detective Carlos Delgado, Tango’s chief of police, had called her thirty minutes ago and had sounded so hyped up she suspected that whatever had been found would fall into one of those odd island categories. I really need you to get over here, Mira. This is the strangest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.

As long as this discovery didn’t involve a crime, she was fine with taking a look. She’d stopped working for cops and feds six years ago and had been superficially happier, but less whole, less complete. The work had taken too much out of her and had nearly destroyed her relationship with Sheppard. Delgado knew this, of course, and she’d heard the hesitation in his voice when he’d called. She also understood he was desperate for answers, so she’d agreed to meet him at the preserve.

She drove around, looking for a parking spot. But because it was the height of tourist season, every space was taken. Families unloaded kayaks and canoes at the dock, kids ran around with dogs that were off leash, several teachers herded students into the preserve, and cop cars had blocked off the western section.

Mira finally nosed into a spot for employees, and got out of her car, bag slung over her shoulder, cell in hand. If anyone called her on it, she would refer them to Delgado. I’m here, she texted. Where r u?

I’ll come to you.

She waited, watching the people around her, especially the young kids running around, laughing, excited. Mira clearly remembered when her daughter, Annie, was one of these young kids and she was a widowed mother the same age Annie was now—twenty-five. She now worked at the Dolphin Research Center here on the island.

Where the hell had the time gone? Yeah, it sounded like a cliché, but it was exactly how she felt right this second. She was forty-seven, considered herself a reasonably attractive woman, owned a thriving bookstore, loved her husband, and yet… She wasn’t doing enough of what she loved for fear of losing the man she loved. Another stupid cliché.

Delgado came trotting out of the woods and waved. Tall and thin, he reminded her of the ad for the Duracell battery, imbued with endless energy. He shared her Cuban heritage—his grandparents, like hers, had been immigrants—and although he was seven years younger, that bond was strong.

“Hola, Mira. Thanks so much for coming over here.”

“I couldn’t resist that pitch, Carlos.”

He laughed and hugged her hello. Most Cubans she knew were huggers. “True, true. I’m shameless when it comes to getting what I want.”

“At least you’re honest about it.”

He took her hand. “C’mon, this will blow you away.”

They headed into the preserve, a vast area that covered the entire northern end of Tango Key. Within the canopy of trees, everything was green, alive, huge. Birds sang from the branches of ancient banyan trees, a breeze rustled through leaves, the air smelled fresh, vibrant. But as they walked a mile in she wished she hadn’t worn sandals. Weeds scratched at her bare feet, bugs bit her, spiderwebs brushed her face. This was why she hated tent camping.

When they reached a clutch of people on the jogging path, she recognized Ian Rincon, the county coroner, who had already spotted her. He hurried over. “Mira!” He threw his arms around her, hugging her.

Rincon, a black Cuban-American in his early sixties, had been coroner on the island for thirty years. Mira had met him through her grandmother, Nadine, who had known his parents when they all lived in Havana. In those days, he’d had a full head of hair. He was now as bald as a radish, father of three, grandfather of four. When Nadine had died last year at the age of a hundred and one, Rincon had given the eulogy.

“It’s been too long, mi amor,” he said. “Good to see you.”

“You, too, Ian.”

She stepped back, looking at the man standing next to Rincon. Bearded, early thirties, she recognized him. Jon O’Hara, her favorite writer at the Tango Key Gazette. “I love your column.”

“I’ve spent a fortune at your bookstore.”

“Then I love your column even more.”

He laughed and Mira glanced at the young woman in jogging clothes standing nearby. She seemed uneasy. “I don’t know either of you,” she said. “But…”

“Lucia, these are the two people who were mentioned,” Delgado said. “Please tell them what you told Dr. Rincon and me.”

She looked stressed, but started talking as though she couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “I’m, like, jogging along, minding my own business, and this woman suddenly leaps out in front of me, blocking my way. She asks where she can find Mira Morales and Jon O’Hara. I’d never heard of either of you, that’s what I told her. I’m a tourist. It’s my first time here. After I said that, she went… berserk. She rushed toward me, shrieking, Tell me or I’ll turn you to stone! I thought she was going to kill me, so I hurled my knife at her. She fell… over there.”

She pointed several yards to their left. Mira and O’Hara exchanged a glance and moved to the area she indicated. A stone statue of a woman lay on its back on the ground, every detail precise. The waves of her hair curved around her jaw. The lines of her clothing were delineated—a long shirt, pants that ended at her shins. A knife stuck out of her right eye, hands reaching for it, tendons protruded, suggesting panic, agonizing pain.

It chilled Mira. “It looks biblical to me. A woman turned to stone. See that grimace on her face?”

O’Hara moved around the statue, snapping photos with his cell. “Awesome. I’ve been writing about anomalies since my teens. I’ve never run up against anything like this. Here’s my next column.”

“Are you going to mention that she asked for you by name?” Mira asked.

His excitement pedaled backward. “I… don’t know. It’s creepy.”

“Yeah. Very.”

“Hey, think about what kind of creepiness this was for me,” Lucia exclaimed. “My knife sank into her eye and she died and turned to stone. But here’s something else. When she first appeared, I got a short videotape of her. You can hear her on the video, asking for Mira and Jon.”

She brought it up on her phone. The woman’s skin was brown, her features looked vaguely Asian. Her body was compact, her arms muscular, and the shirt and pants she wore looked similar to yoga attire, except the pants were looser. Mira had never seen her before. When the woman spoke, she had a slight accent that Mira couldn’t identify. She enunciated her name and Jon’s in a sharp, commanding way, then charged Lucia, screaming how she would turn her to stone.

“Jon, do you recognize her?”

“Nope. Could you text me the video, Lucia?”

“To all of us,” Delgado added.

She entered their cell numbers in her phone and sent a group text. Mira didn’t really want this video on her cell, but what the hell. She would text it later to Sheppard, who was in Miami on an extended FBI investigation.

“Let’s take some X-rays,” Rincon said, and brought over a portable X-ray machine. “Find out if she was human.”

“Hey,” Lucia said. “You just saw the video. Of course she was human. That’s my knife in her eye. It was self-defense. I thought she was going to attack me.”

“We just need to confirm that she looks human inside,” Rincon said.

“Does the machine need a power source?” O’Hara asked.

“Nope. It has a rechargeable lithium-ion polymer battery that’ll last for about three hundred exposures.”

O’Hara helped Rincon set up the machine and Mira kept staring at the stone statue. Then she looked at Lucia. “Did she look crazed?”

“Yeah. Her eyes were kinda wild. Do you remember what you felt when you heard about the planes crashing into the World Trade Center?”

“Uh, yeah,” Mira replied. “Probably the same thing people felt when they heard Kennedy was assassinated. Or RFK. Or MLK.”

“Exactly. Both my parents worked in the WTC. They got out alive. But when my mom talks about it, her eyes are like this woman’s. Unhinged. Haunted.”

“You don’t have to stay, Lucia. I’ve got your contact info and the video,” Delgado told her. “We’re not pressing charges.”

“So she was human and now she’s not,” Mira remarked.

Delgado nodded. “And knives don’t turn people to stone. If I need anything more, Lucia, I’ll be in touch.”

“Thanks. I’ve had enough weird shit for one day.” She looked at Mira and O’Hara. “And if you two have people after you who can turn you to stone, you might consider getting weapons.”

Lucia jogged off toward the parking lot and Mira suddenly wanted to do the same. She had the feeling that if she stuck around, she would get sucked in. It was the sort of impossible weirdness that appealed to her, that good old twilight zone where she felt at home.

“You own a gun?” O’Hara asked her.

“No. But my husband does. And he made sure I know how to use one. You?”

“Nope. But that’s about to change.”

More X-ray images began appearing on Rincon’s iPad, two dozen that clearly showed the stone woman’s heart, lungs, kidneys, intestines, arteries, bones, muscles, tendons, and brain. And everything looked calcified.

“You can see where the knife penetrated the brain,” Rincon said.

“Christ,” Delgado muttered. “How do I explain this in my report?”

Mira touched the screen of Rincon’s iPad, enlarging one of the images. “What’s this?” She pointed at an object in the stone woman’s shoulder. She figured it was maybe an inch long and looked like a sliver of something that also had turned to stone. Maybe she was imagining it, but she thought she could see a mark etched into the sliver. “Do you have any more images that show it closer up?”

“I think so.” Rincon scrolled through the X-rays. “Here we go. Look at this.”

He passed the iPad to Mira, O’Hara looking on. “Words. There are words etched into this sliver.”

“And numbers,” O’Hara added. “See the numbers, Mira?”

She nodded. Delgado peered over their shoulders. “Damn, you’re right.”

“Could it be some sort of microchip?” Mira asked.

“Too big for any kind of chip we use on patients,” Rincon said. “Or on pets.”

“You microchip people, Ian?” Mira asked.

“Experimentally. On some Alzheimer’s patients. Wanderers.”

“The first letters of the first word look like WH,” Mira said.

O’Hara nodded. “WH… and I think the third letter is I.”

“W-H-I,” Mira said. “And it looks like the last letter is T. WHIT. What the hell does that mean?”

“We need an X-ray that shows that sucker much more clearly.” Rincon moved the machine closer to the stone woman, took X-rays of the top of her left arm. The stone statue was so heavy it took four of them to turn her on her right side. Rincon took several more shots of the underside of her raised arm, her hand straining to reach that knife.

Rincon sat on the ground and Mira and the two men plopped down on either side of him and in front of him. He brought up the images, enlarged them, and Mira’s mouth flashed bone dry. White Crow 1440 June ‘44. Her resistance to reading the stone woman started crumbling, falling apart. Right now the only question was when she would do it, how she should prepare for it, and whether preparation was even possible or would make a difference.

“White Crow,” Rincon said. “It sounds like it could be a reference to William James’s famous line. ‘If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, you mustn’t seek to show that no crows are; it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white.’ Turning to stone when you die is certainly unique.”

O’Hara frowned. “What about the numbers? Do they refer to June 1944?”

Delgado shook his head. “C’mon, amigo. This technology didn’t exist in 1944.”

“It doesn’t exist now, either,” Rincon said. “So maybe 2044?”

“Or 2144 or 2244,” Mira remarked. “The point is that thing on the ground is impossible. But it’s here. And if these numbers are dates in the future, how’d it—she—get here?”

Rincon ran his hand over his head. “Jesus, we sound like mental patients. For now, I’m just going to store this statue in a forensics freezer. But we’ll need a truck to move it. Sucker is heavy.”

“I’ll arrange it,” Delgado said.

“How’re you going to report this, Carlos?” Rincon asked.

“I don’t know. Police reports are public. Jon, you going to write this one up?”

“Write it up?” He laughed. “As what? And what, exactly, would I say? That someone maybe from an undetermined future confronted a jogger and demanded to know how she could find me and Mira Morales? And when the jogger told her she didn’t know either of these people, the woman rushed her and the jogger hurled a knife at her and this strange woman turned to stone as she died? Yeah, sure. It may be too weird even for my column. And way too personal.” He paused, looked disgusted, and murmured, “Christ. I’ll run it past my editor.”

“Jon, you’re the expert on anomalies,” Mira said. “Have you ever heard of anything like this?”

“Definitely not.”

“Is there anything in medical literature about a phenomenon like this, Ian?”

“Seriously?” Rincon laughed. “I don’t even know what we’d call this. Transfiguration?”

“Mind fuck,” O’Hara said.

“That works,” Mira agreed.

“You going to read it, Mira?” Rincon asked.

She felt that inner wall of resistance snap into place. “Ian, I haven’t done this kind of work in six years.”

“Maybe once I’ve got it back in forensics?” He sounded hopeful.

“Give me a call when it’s in forensics and in the meantime, I’ll think about it.”

“At least we’ve got video of what she looked like,” Rincon said. “Carlos can run it through the facial recognition database.”

Even if the stone woman showed up in a federal database, Mira thought, it wouldn’t explain how the impossible wasn’t just possible, but the evidence lay on the ground in front of them. And it wouldn’t explain how this impossible stone woman had known her name or O’Hara’s.

“It would be really helpful if you could read her, Mira.” Delgado sounded almost desperate—and hopeful..

“Like I told Ian, I have to give this some thought. It’s been a long time.”

O’Hara ran his hands over the ridges and curves of the stone woman’s clothes, the curls in her hair, the edge of the knife that stuck out of her eye. “Who the hell were you?” he muttered. “Where’d you come from? Why were you looking for me and Mira? How’d she know our names, Carlos?”

“When we figure that out, we’ll know everything we need to know.” Delgado moved around the stone woman, snapping photos. “I’m closing down this section of the preserve.”

“Jon, I’d rather my name not be mentioned in your article.” Mira said. “I’ve got a business to run and this is my busiest season.” Huh? Am I really saying that? What the hell’s wrong with me? “Actually, I don’t know why I said that,” she rushed on. “I’ll be glad to go on the record, Jon.” It wasn’t like she could be fired or lose clients over this.

And Sheppard was in Miami and would never know.

“Given the public’s taste for weird shit, Mira, your name in the piece probably would increase business at the bookstore,” Delgado remarked.

Rincon looked excited. “If your editor goes for it, Jon, write it as it happened. People should be made aware just in case some other crow appears. And I’ve got to write up my report, which is public.”

“Then the three of us should be on the same page,” Delgado said. “Let’s coordinate before any of us publish anything officially.”

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” O’Hara said. “I’m going to buy a gun. Carlos, what would you recommend for personal security?”

Delgado pulled out his weapon, set it flat against his palm. “The Glock 19 is what most law enforcement people use. The clips carry fifteen 9 millimeter rounds, but can also accept 17 and 33 round Glock magazines. The gun is lightweight and smaller than the Glock 22, so it’s easier to conceal. It would be a good weapon for you, Jon.”

“I keep one in my store,” Mira said.

O’Hara glanced at her, his expression puzzled. “Why? Are bookstores robbed? Has your store been robbed?”

No, no. It was nothing like that. Sheppard had insisted. “Just in case.” Her reply sounded lame, she thought, and knew he thought so, too.

“If I buy a dozen of those 33-round clips, that would certainly be enough to kill any anomaly like the stone woman, right?” O’Hara glanced back at Delgado. .

“Four hundred rounds?” Delgado looked shocked. “Christ, Jon, that would be enough to hold off an army of these stone women.”

Mira touched O’Hara’s arm. “Could you send me your article before you publish it?”

“Sure thing.”

A while later, Rincon walked Mira back to her car. “Mi amor, I understand your reluctance about reading this monstrosity. But once I’ve got it in forensics, where there’s no audience, would you maybe read it?”

Would she? The question now was should she? Maybe it would be fine because it wasn’t Sheppard’s case. That seemed to be where the problem had lain in the past, with her becoming too immersed in details that Sheppard’s skepticism had questioned. Never mind that her psychic input into these investigations had often led to arrests and convictions. The point was that even now, after more than a dozen years of marriage, her ability continued to challenge his skepticism, to unravel his reasonable left-brain worldview. As long as she restricted herself to private clients, their relationship worked beautifully.

She resented that.

Sheppard had been in Miami for the last four months, coming home a couple of weekends a month, and she wasn’t supposed to resent that, but she did. In fact, since Delgado’s call, her resentments seemed to be piling up quickly.

At this point in her life, she should have felt fulfilled. Instead, for way too long now, she’d been keeping the most significant aspect of who she was hidden away to keep the peace.

Fuck that. “Give me a call when the stone woman is in forensics.”

And if she decided to read the monstrosity, Sheppard wouldn’t be here and wouldn’t have to know about it.

“This isn’t like the other investigations you’ve done.” Rincon slung an arm around her shoulders. “It’s not about homicides, child abductions, political intrigues, the corruption of the human spirit. This is something entirely different, an anomaly, an impossibility, and we really need to know as much as we can about how this happened and who this stone woman was. I suspect Nadine would advise you to dive in.”

Nadine. Her Cuban grandmother had raised her, been her business partner in the bookstore, and had mentored her until her she’d died a year ago. She still popped in now and then, a spirit who dropped by for a visit, to make her presence known. She initially hadn’t liked Sheppard because he wasn’t Hispanic. But the real reason was his skepticism and Nadine’s certainty that it eventually would stifle Mira’s ability.

“Yeah, she probably would, Ian.” They reached her Chevy Volt. “Call me.”

And she would decide, yes or no. Until then, she would roll it around in her head, arguing the pros and cons, driving herself half crazy.

2

As soon as Mira walked into her store, she felt calmer. It was her world, built step by step over many years so that now One World Book was the largest and most prosperous bookstore in the Florida keys. Two floors, open, spacious, plenty of windows and sunlight. Several dozen customers wandered around on the first floor, more people browsed on the second, and even more stood in line at the registers. Her manager and two employees were ringing up sales and her daughter stood at the information desk, waiting on another customer.

Annie saw her, waved, and caught up with Mira before she reached her office at the back of the store. “Hey, Mom. I heard.”

Like Mira, she was a brunette. She had her dad’s stubborn chin, Mira’s blue eyes and thick hair, and the rest of her was a perfect amalgam of them both. She wore a t-shirt with Dolphin Research Center stitched across the front. “Yeah? What’d you hear?”

“About the stone woman. Dr. Rincon just texted me photos and X-rays. You really need to try to read that thing, Mom.”

“Now I get pressure from my kid. Clever of him.”

“Shep’s in Miami. For weeks. Months. But even if he was here, so what? Why are you hiding who you are?”

Annie Morales, shrink. “I’m not hiding anything. I still do private readings.”

“C’mon. How is two readings a month comparable to what you used to do?”

“Annie, it’s been six years. I don’t know if I can even read anything connected with a crime scene.”

“This isn’t about crime scenes. That abducted kid six years ago survived because of you.”

And her relationship with Sheppard had nearly died. “Your point?”

“If you’re able to read that statue, then maybe it’s time for Shep to step up to the plate.”

“Wow, who wound you up?”

“Just sayin’. Oh, and Dr. Rincon said to tell you the stone woman is now at forensics.”

Yes? No? Forget it? “Noted. Don’t you work today?”

“Late shift. Four to midnight.”

“So you’ll be here for a while?”

“That’s the plan.”

“I need to get some coffee and a bite of something, then I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

“You going to give the statue a shot?”

“Yes. And I’d already decided before you said anything.”

Annie grinned and pumped her fist in the air.

Mira laughed. “What? A call to arms?”

“Just go, Mom. Go. I’ll take care of things here.”

“Going going.”

“A bump.”

They bumped fists, and Mira made her way over to the cafe to get an expresso and a sandwich for the ride.

2

The Journalist

O’Hara drove back to downtown Tango, where the Gazette office occupied the first floor of a building that faced the Tango Key Marina. It had stood here for nearly fifty years until a category five hurricane in 2005 had wiped out the lower half of the island, the power grid, most of the twelve-mile bridge to Key West, and plunged Tango Key into the dark ages for months.

In the aftermath, the land had been raised, the building had been reconstructed on a thirty-foot hill, and his office had a picture window that overlooked the marina. He sat in front of his computer for a while, staring through the window, watching boats enter and leave the marina, and tried to find an entry into the story of the stone woman. He kept comparing the video of what she looked like as a human to the photos of her as stone. He never got beyond the word the.

In the nine years he’d worked here, starting straight out of college, he’d written about so many kind of anomalies that he’d believed he was well-prepared for almost any kind of experience—an encounter with aliens, Big Foot lumbering out of the wilderness preserve, dogs and cats who spoke English. But this? A woman who had turned to stone as she died? And who asked for him by name before it happened?

Around ten, his editor hurried into his office. “Hey, Jon. I heard about some…”

“Yeah.” He swiveled around in his chair, facing her, Kay Helm with the big, puffy dark hair from the 1980s, the small round glasses that John Lennon had popularized, and disheveled, urban chic clothing. Jeans faded and cut at the knees, a colorful Gazette t-shirt, old sandals. She epitomized a woman pushing fifty who was conflicted about who she was. Where am I going? Who the fuck am I? What am I doing? That was what she radiated, at least to him. “It’s true, it’s all true,” and he blurted out the story. “How much should I tell, Kay?” he asked.

“You have photos, right?”

“Sure. And a video.”

He brought everything up on his phone. She watched the video, scrolled through the photos. “My God, Jon, this is totally bizarre. I think we should run your piece as a feature on our website, with the video. A jogger in the preserve was nearly assaulted by a woman—and use the photo of her as a, uh, human—and when she defended herself, the perpetrator died and turned to stone. We’ll run some of the X-rays, too, and photos of the statue, knife in the eye and all.”

“It’ll read like something out of the National Enquirer,” he remarked.

“Probably. Who else was there? Anyone we can quote? Anyone who would add some wallop to the story?”

“Coroner, detective, a small business owner.”

“Name of small business owner?”

“Mira Morales.”

“One World Books?” Now she looked interested. “Shit, Jon. A quote from her would be great. Until she quit reading crime scenes several years ago, she was the state’s most famous psychic.”

“I’ll text her.”

“And make sure you mention that sliver or chip or whatever it is, with the word and numbers on it. And get a quote from Doc Rincon.”

“He, Carlos and I want to be on the same page with this. Okay with you?”

“Even better. Any idea why this woman asked how to find you and Mira?”

“None. But when I leave work today, I’m heading over to the gun shop to buy a weapon.”

“Smart. I’d do the same.”

He spent the rest of the morning writing the piece, emailing back and forth with Delgado and the doc until they agreed on the basics. Then he texted Mira, asking her for a quote. She responded quickly. “Say this: The stone woman is a complete anomaly. Why is there a chip in her shoulder with words and numbers on it? White Crow1404, June ‘44. Is that a date?” And FYI, am headed over to Rincon’s to read the statue.

Perfect. Thanks! I’ll upload this.

He ran the column past Kay, she loved it. “Upload it, Jon. What’s your headline?”

“The Stone Woman in the Preserve.”

“Good.”

He uploaded the piece with the video and five photos: the human woman, her stone counterpart, and three X-rays. He knew that his ex-wife, a local attorney, would explode with laughter when she saw it and that her current live-in, a shrink, would make some snide remark about O’Hara’s mental instability. But he’d long since gotten over giving a shit what other people thought about his interests.

He gathered up his stuff and left, eager to see Mira do what she was known for—psychically reading crime scenes.

2

Mira thought the forensics building in downtown Tango Key looked like something out of Miami’s Art Deco era—pale blue, with decorative white shutters at the sides of the windows, a facade that whispered, I may be something other than what I appear to be. It had stood on this same cobbled road since it was built fifty or sixty years ago and was one of the few buildings that hadn’t flooded in Hurricane Danielle in 2005. It supposedly had been spared because it sat on a slight rise of land. But Mira figured the spirits of the dead who had passed through that office might have had something to do with it.

Inside, she found Rincon at the front desk, typing madly away at the computer. “Is she in cold storage, Ian?”

“Had to find the largest drawer because of the way her hand is positioned.” He got up. “I’ll take you back there. I really appreciate your doing this, mi amor.”

“I was pretty much convinced when I left the preserve, but Annie twisted my arm.”

He snickered. “Guilty. She and I had lunch some months back. She told me how worried she was about you.”

Yeah, Mira remembered that period. “That probably was around the time she was advising me to go to a counselor. So I went. It was a joke, Ian. The counselor didn’t know what to do with my peculiar dilemma, a psychic who couldn’t read crime scenes anymore. But the counselor’s life was in the pits, so I ended up reading for her.”

Rincon chuckled. “Figures.” He opened the door to the cold storage area.

It felt excessive—too cold, too large, too silent, too strange. Mira thought of it as a miniature cemetery, a first stop after death. She zipped up her jacket, blew into her hands to warm them. Rincon pulled out the storage drawer where the stone woman was being kept.

“Should I move her, Mira? It’s warmer in the autopsy room.”

“No, this is fine. I can’t guarantee anything, Ian.”

“I know. No problem.”

Suddenly the door opened and Delgado rushed in with Annie. Behind them was O’Hara.

“Don’t worry, Mom,” said Annie. “The manager is in charge. I wanted to be here.”

“Me, too,” Delgado added.

O’Hara shrugged. “I was afraid I’d be late and wasn’t even sure if I was invited.”

Mira laughed. “So much for no audience. But hey, maybe an audience will help.” She glanced at O’Hara and Annie. “Have you two met?”

“Carlos just introduced us.” Annie glanced at O’Hara. “My favorite column anywhere. Mom, how can we help?”

“Video and record, let me talk. I just hope I can do this.”

Mira slipped off her shoes, twisted her bare feet against the concrete floor. She inhaled noisily, deeply, then exhaled. She walked from one side of the body drawer to the other, twisted her feet again, then brought her hands to the statue’s feet. The stone felt cold against her skin and the structure of the statue’s shoes was discernible—the way they fit tightly at the heels, like cloth, and extended above the ankles. She couldn’t tell how they were fastened because the statue’s pants covered that part of her legs.

Nothing happened—no impressions, not even an inkling. She adjusted her breathing, shut her eyes.

Nothing.

Then she suddenly gasped. Images raced through her head and words tumbled out.

“I’m running, I’m scared, they’re after me, after us, all of us. We scatter throughout the dome, but there are more of them than of us, we’re always outnumbered, and they’ve activated our chips so we can’t defend ourselves, can’t fight back. I stumble, pitch forward, land hard on the ground and am swept up. The dome is falling apart, I think that’s what I’m hearing…”

Mira jerked her hands away from the statue’s feet.

“Dios mio.” Rincon made a hasty sign of the cross on his forehead. “A dome? She lived in a dome? What kind of dome? Where? When?”

Mira brushed her hands together, took the bottle of water Annie handed her, sipped. The inside of her mouth felt bone dry and tasted like dust. “A domed city. In the future. There may be several domes, I’m not sure.”

“How far into the future?” Delgado asked.

“I don’t know.” Mira set the bottle of water next to her, twisted her bare feet against the floor again, brought her hands to the statue’s face. “C’mon,” she whispered. “Talk to me.”

Then it came to her, a rush of words. “I… don’t know how long I’ve been here. I’m given a choice. If I work for the government, I’ll live well, freely, and they need my skill to… I don’t know… It all changes so fast.” Her hands moved to the statue’s shoulders, arms, torso. “Trying to find my way in again.”

“Into where?” O’Hara asked.

“Into her.”

“Do you pick up a year, Mira?” Rincon asked. “A date?

“Like the chip said, ’44. I think… 2144.”

“My God,” Annie exclaimed. “More than a century from now. How’d she get here?”

“And what’s outside the dome?” Delgado wanted to know.

Mira knuckled her eyes. “Outside, it’s a wasteland. The environment is ruined, the air is toxic. Don’t know yet how she got here.” She shed her jacket, paced from one side of the drawer to the other, vigilant for the right spot to enter. She finally cupped the sides of the stone woman’s head, ran her palms over it, leaned in close. “Give it to me. The rest of it.”

And after a moment, she was in.

She stands at the southern wall with the dome president, a Normal, a cruel man she despises. Fissures run through the dome here, cracks at the base as visible as veins. He demands that she turns those fissures to stone.

She drops her head back and peers upward, eyes following other, smaller fissures, some of them hastily patched, others widening. The wall seems impossibly high to her; she can’t even see where it curves, has no idea how large it is.

“Mom? You aren’t saying anything.”

Mira’s consciousness seemed to split apart. She was in the dome and yet heard Annie’s voice—distant, like something in a dream—and spoke to that. “I don’t know if I can turn the fissures to stone. I don’t want to destabilize everything. I try over and over again. The dome prez gets really agitated. I’m terrified he’ll hit me or have one of his men grab me and haul me back to that windowless place where they’ll flood my body with drugs. But right now, I’m free of drugs. Right now, if the fucker comes near me, if he hits me, I’ll turn him to stone.”

“My God,” Rincon said softly. Then: “What’s the dome made of? Who built it?”

Mira hears his question, but if she answers him right now, she’ll lose her connection with Stoner—the name this woman went by—and she needed to hold onto her for a bit. “Okay, I’m trying, I’m trying this.” Her arms flapped around wildly, she felt it, knew her arms were also the arms of Stoner, struggling to patch the fissures by turning them to stone. “I did it! But… just above the largest patched fissure, an eight-foot-square piece of the wall blows out.”

Mira stumbled back, just as Stoner did, arms pinwheeling for balance, and the outside air rushed in. “The president throws up his arms to protect his face from flying sand and debris, I’m coughing, I can barely breathe, my eyes are tearing… I quickly turn the southern wall to stone.”

Breathing hard, Mira kicked the drawer shut, hurried over to the sink, and scrubbed her hands and arms free of that toxic dust.

“Mira, what’s the dome made of?” Rincon trotted after her. “Who built it?”

“Don’t know.” She shut off the water, yanked paper towels from the dispenser, then sank to the floor, legs clutched against her chest. She felt dizzy, nauseated. She wiped her arm over her face. Annie pressed a bottle of water into her hands and she drank.

“There’s more?” Delgado asked.

“There’s always more,” Annie remarked.

Mira, still sitting on the floor in front of a sink, nodded. Her eyes rolled back in their sockets and she watched events as they transpired. “There’re hundreds of White Crows. As a group, they’re able to pull the past around them and… and move into it. That’s how they get here. That’s what I saw them doing. They steep themselves in what they know of this time and conjure it somehow through their collective intensity. Hal came up with the idea after he read Jack Finney’s novel, Time and Again, from the dome archive. He’s their leader. But the travel is dangerous. It broke Stoner’s mind. More are coming. The dolphins will know. They intend to seize Tango Key. Shit, this changes everything.”

Her eyes rolled back into place and she thought, Shut up, Mira, just shut up. You sound like a fucking nutcase.

“Mom, how will the dolphins know? What do you mean? What the hell are you talking about?

She felt herself seeking out the remnants of that part of the story. “They’ll sense it. They freak out. You have security cams, right?”

“Sure. I can keep track with a cell app.”

“Seizing Tango?” Rincon asked. “Who? When?”

“Soon. Those like Stoner. She was the recent first. There was another in the mid-eighties.”

“One who came here? To Tango?” Rincon asked.

Mira explained what she saw—a dead man on a narrow cobbled street, and a tourist map of Key West.

“Mid-eighties, okay,” Rincon murmured. “The coroner then was Risa Griffin. I’ll give her a call.”

“How did Hal get a copy of Time and Again?” Annie asked.

Mira knuckled her eyes. “They have some sort of archive of books and newspapers from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.”

“How do we defend ourselves?” Delgado asked.

“I don’t know. Look, Carlos. It sounds nuts. Demented. Wacko. No one is going to believe any of this until something big happens. Maybe not even then.”

3

As O’Hara left the gun shop, he turned his cell back on. Before he reached the Gazette parking lot to pick up his car, he had more than fifty new emails and his article had gotten several hundred comments and 2,122 likes. Every newspaper in South Florida had picked up the piece and he suspected that in the next several days, the weirdos would arrive on Tango in droves. That was what had happened several years ago, after the discovery of an alien body at the lighthouse. Every alien and UFO hunter and their respective TV shows had shown up on the island.

And because his name was on the piece and both Delgado and Rincon had been quoted, he expected they would be besieged with questions and requests for interviews. He was tempted to just turn off his phone for the next few days, a noble idea except that he lived on his cell. It was his conduit to the world.

He stopped by his office first to pick up his iPad and was surprised that Kay was still at her desk. He stuck his head through the door. “Bought my gun.”

She glanced up. “What kind?”

“Glock 19. And a dozen boxes of cartridges. The owner let me do some practice shooting.”

“Let’s hope none of this comes to guns. Listen, I’ve been getting calls nearly nonstop about the stone woman, Jon. Good work.” She rifled through the papers on her desk, tore a sheet off a yellow pad. “I’d like you to call this woman back. She’s a TV producer who’s vacationing on Tango and…”

“I really don’t want to talk to TV producers, Kay.”

“Are you kidding?” She sat back, genuinely surprised. “Any mention of the Gazette could boost our circulation significantly.”

He knew that tone of hers. It wasn’t exactly a line drawn in the sand, but it was close. Even though they had a good professional relationship, he’d seen how brutal she could be when a journalist crossed her about something she considered significant. Suspended. Fired. “What TV show?”

“New show on the History Channel called The Unknown.”

“I’ll call her. Beyond that, I’m not committing to anything.”

“Fine, that’s fine. If she’s a nut, forget it.”

He took the piece of paper from her, ducked into his office for his iPad, and called the woman on the way to his car.

4

He and Pam Gibbons agreed to meet at Island Grill, a popular fish place on Tango Boulevard, the main street through downtown Tango. Its open deck faced the water and it served the best fish in the keys. O’Hara had been eating here more frequently since he and his ex had split up eight months ago. He hated cooking for himself. Even if the information this Gibbons woman claimed she had turned out to be bullshit, it didn’t matter. He would enjoy his fish tacos.

When he went up to the bar, Gibbons spotted him immediately and introduced herself. Late forties, early fifties, he guessed. An attractive blonde in jeans and a touristy Tango Fritter t-shirt, a large handbag hanging from her shoulder. “Thanks so much for agreeing to meet with me, Jon. I bet you’ve been inundated with media requests.”

Well, not exactly, but it was nice she thought so. “It’s been nuts.”

They ordered drinks, a table opened up at the far corner of the deck, and they sat down. Water view. Nice breeze. He was hungry. Just beyond the railing, in the encroaching dusk, stood a wishing fountain filled with loose change. In the past, he had tossed pennies into that stupid fountain. They had some privacy due to the tall flower boxes on two sides of their table.

They both ordered fish tacos and iced tea and when the waitress had left, Pam said, “I gather from your article that you were in the preserve when this stone woman was found.”

He nodded. “Detective Delgado called me. Because my name was, uh, mentioned, along with Mira’s.”

“I’m intrigued by the object found in her arm.” Pam removed an iPad from her bag, set it on the table. “It’s not the first. In our research for this initial episode of The Unknown, we came across an identical object in a museum in Key West.” She turned the iPad so he could see it and O’Hara sat forward, fascinated by the photos she scrolled through.

The object lay on a little bed of white silk, inside a metal box with a transparent lid. It looked to be metallic and slightly longer than the object on the X-rays that Rincon had taken, maybe three inches long. The word and numbers on it were clearly visible. White Crow 919, 2120. “Wow.” He enlarged the image. “Where was it found? When?”

“It was extracted from the leg of a dead man in 1985.”

“Mira mentioned that when she read the statue.” Confirmation one, he thought, surprised that at some level he’d been keeping track.

“He was found in an alley in old town Key West. They ran his fingerprints—nothing came up. The autopsy revealed that he’d died of an apparent heart attack. He had an injury on the back of his leg that prompted the coroner to take X-rays and that’s how she found the object.”

“Who was the coroner?”

“Dr. Griffin. Risa Griffin.”

“Is she still around?”

“Retired. She didn’t answer my calls,” Pam added.

“Too bad. Maybe she could have told us what a White Crow is. I mean, I know what William James was referring to but…” He shrugged. “And the dates—more than a hundred years in the future. What the fuck’s going on?”

Even to himself, he sounded a little panicked and was grateful the server arrived with their drinks. “Do you think we should evacuate, Mr. O’Hara?” she asked. “I hear some snowbirds are leaving because of your column.”

“I live and work here. I can’t afford to evacuate.”

She shrugged in an endearing way. “Yeah, me too. But… I would if you recommended it.”

“I don’t.”

She looked relieved. “If you need a refill on those drinks, let me know. On the house. And the tacos will be out in a couple minutes.

When the server left, Pam said, “That’s the power of your column, Jon. We’d like to hire you as a consultant on the show.” She slid a sheet of paper toward him. “We’ve approached Ms. Morales, too.”

O’Hara glanced at the contract, pushed it back across the table. “Look, I’m glad to help you in any way I can, Pam. But I’m not signing any contract. I have a job.”

“You’d be an outsourced consultant.”

“I’ll think about it.”

She wisely changed the subject and after senseless conversations about the columns he’d written over the years, their fish tacos arrived. Eat and run, he thought. He wolfed down two of the tacos and just as Pam brought up the contracts again, O’Hara dropped a twenty on the table and stood. “I’ll be in touch. Thanks for your insights, Pam.”

He nearly ran out of Island Grill and as soon as he was outside, tore across the parking lot to his car. He had trouble getting the remote to unlock the door, but once it worked he hurled himself inside, then sat there, arms clutched against him, shaking as if from a high fever. His head churned with thoughts, all of them bonkers.

He was being stalked by someone from the future. The woman in the preserve was a time traveler. The dead man found in Key West in 1985 was from that same future, both of them White Crows, whatever the fuck that meant. And who could he talk to about any of it? Mira, but they’d just met. His parents were dead, he was an only child, and for most of his thirty-two years, he’d cut himself off from a lot of people because they made fun of his obsession with the weird and the strange.

O’Hara knew he could call Delgado or Rincon and they would gladly sit and talk with him. But they had families, lives. He didn’t even have a goddamn pet. He lived alone in a small house in the hills, the place he and his ex had shared for three years until she’d told him she’d fallen in love with someone else. The Freudian shrink.

Why not a Jungian shrink? At least that would be positive.

He turned on his car and raced away from the Island Grill, tears running down his cheeks. He would make it clear to Kay that he wasn’t writing any sequels. He would get a dog. He and the dog would take off on an extended road trip. He had the leave time to do it. He would get the hell outta here.

But first, he wanted to know more about the dolphin early warning system Mira had mentioned when reading the statue. And he intended to check in with Annie at the Dolphin Research Center for another facet to the evolving story.

Then he would get his dog and leave town.

3

Sheppard

Miami had never been Wayne Sheppard’s favorite spot. The sprawling megapolis of Dade County consumed most of the southern tip of the peninsula. But he loved certain neighborhoods—the classic Deco area on Miami Beach, parts of Coconut Grove, and Little Havana.

He and his bureau partner, Juan “Goot” Gutierrez, sat in a Cuban restaurant on Calle Ocho, working their way through platters of black beans and rice, baked plantains, Cuban bread to die for. In his forty-eight years, Sheppard had eaten this same food throughout South America and most of the Caribbean and this hole in Little Havana had the best of everything outside of Havana, Cuba, itself.

He, Mira, Nadine, and Annie had traveled to Cuba in early 2017, during that small window of time after Obama had opened up the island to American tourism and before Trump had closed it again. It had been one of the best trips of his life.

Havana rocked with music, color, art, literature, and a kind of raw, primitive joy. The owner of the Airbnb where they had stayed was so delighted to have American tourists that he had come in every morning and whipped up a buffet of breakfast delights. Posters of Obama, the hero who had opened Cuba to American tourism, were everywhere around Havana.

El Floridita, the bar in Old Town Havana where Hemingway had hung out had been one of their favorite spots. Nadine claimed that she and Hemingway had gone drinking there on numerous occasions and that she’d been a frequent guest at his and Mary’s villa. Sheppard had doubted the story until he’d seen pictures of a much younger Nadine at El Floridita with Hemingway and more photos of her with Hemingway and Mary that were displayed at their finca in Havana.

But for the moment, this spot in Little Havana satisfied him. And then Annie’s text came through with three videos—that of a raving woman shouting Mira’s and O’Hara’s names, the same woman turned to stone, and then Mira reading the stone woman. Sheppard turned his phone so Gutierrez could see the videos too. They watched, mesmerized.

“Fuck, it’s starting again, Goot. After six years. What the hell am I supposed to make of this? Maybe she’s getting, uh, you know, help.”

“Help from the dead?”

“She still communicates with Nadine and Tom.” Sheppard lowered his voice. It embarrassed him to say it.

“Of course she does, Shep. Nadine was her grandmother, her mentor, and business partner. Just because she died doesn’t mean that connection ends, not for a psychic like Mira. As for Tom… he was Annie’s dad. And he was also, well, what we Cubans call el amor del alma. It means…”

“I speak Spanish, Goot. I know what the hell it means.”

The love of the soul. And what does that make me? The thought depressed him. How many men competed with a dead spouse who dropped in periodically to say hello?

Sheppard picked up the check and made his way to the register. A part of him seethed, another part of him contracted with horror. Gutierrez had a better grasp and acceptance of this spirit contact thing than Sheppard ever would. He came from a long line of Cuban santeros for whom spirit contact was common. Sheppard was a white guy with a mystical streak that included a screaming diehard skepticism: Prove it to me.

Outside in the parking lot, Gutierrez stopped, faced Sheppard. “Look, amigo. Mira’s tuned into something in that video. This is heavy duty shit. I’ve never seen her like this.”

“C’mon, this is way the hell out there. A mutant from nearly two centuries in the future?”

“Dude, you really need to lose your skepticism, okay? It’s fucked up. Mira has helped us solve dozens of cases over the years.”

“I guess I just want proof.”

“What the hell kinda proof do you need? Look at Ian Rincon’s X-rays, look at the photos of the stone woman. Read O’Hara’s column. You need to get back to Tango. Go home, Shep. Find out what’s going on. I’ll stay here and tie things up. “

“I’ll go tomorrow. So you believe this is true?”

Gutierrez rolled his eyes. “C’mon, it’s what she picked up.”

“It could be a metaphor or…”

“Christ, Shep. Listen to yourself. Maybe your skepticism is why she has been dry for the last six years. See you back at the office.”

Gutierrez got into his car, slammed the door. Sheppard stared stupidly as his phone, as if waiting for Siri to talk to him, advise him, reassure him he wasn’t acting like an asshole. But Siri said nothing. He slipped inside his SUV and watched the video again. He brought up Jon O’Hara’s most recent column, read through it, studied the X-rays and the photo of the woman who had turned to stone, and the picture of her as a human. She looked normal—attractive in an offbeat way, dark hair that sprang away from her skull in wild curls, Asian features. Her clothes suggested that she had come from a yoga class or the gym—not from the future.

On his way back to the Miami office, he called Ian Rincon. “Shep. I was going to give you a call tonight. Did you see any of the videos?”

“All three. It’s been six years since she has done anything like this. How’d she seem to you?”

“You mean, during the reading?”

“And before. And after.”

“Initially, she said she didn’t think she could do it, that the spark just wasn’t there anymore. But Annie and I pressured her. Hell, I practically begged her.”

“And you buy this future scenario, Ian?”

“Look, I’m not a woo-woo kind of guy, Shep. You know that. I dissect the dead. But right now, it makes as much sense as anything else. What happened is medically impossible. But the X-rays clearly showed that the statue has the same organs we do, all of them calcified. You headed here?”

“Tomorrow sometime.”

“Great. I know Carlos can use the help. And Shep, do yourself and Mira a favor, okay? Retain an open mind.”

“I will.” If I can.

2

Sheppard didn’t make it out of Miami until after two the next afternoon. At any time other than the snowbird season, the drive would take him about three hours. But traffic on the two lanes of U.S. 1 was bumper to bumper in both directions and his traffic app didn’t indicate any accidents. Judging by the number of our-of-state license plates, this traffic was snowbirds. He figured he might make it to Tango in four or five hours. He texted Mira and asked her to meet him in Key West, at their favorite Mexican restaurant.

Mexican sounds great! Text me when you’re 30 min out so I can leave here. Traffic is nuts.

As he drove, he listened again to the video of Mira reading the statue. He wanted it to be more credible the second time, but it wasn’t. She believed an invasion of Tango was imminent or already underway by what sounded like avengers from the future and yes, of course they had awesome powers. It was Marvel Comics kind of stuff. It was, This is the deep state. Or something.

Yet, in the years he and Mira had been together, he had understood they inhabited different universes. He’d also learned that her ability was often eerily accurate and that if he completely dismissed her insights, he did so at his own peril. Missing children, homicides, corruption, sex rings, even Annie’s disappearance into the black water: her psychic input had made the difference. But fuck, avengers from the future? Avengers with powers that even Hollywood hadn’t thought of yet? He still had trouble with that one.

Since Nadine’s death a year ago, the only person from whom he could expect a somewhat rational assessment of the situation was Annie. She was more reliable than Nadine had been because Mira’s grandmother had had issues with him, namely that he wasn’t Cuban or, at the very least, Hispanic. Never mind that he’d traveled all over the Caribbean and South America and spoke Spanish as fluently as Nadine and Mira. With Nadine, it had been about lineage and birth place.

He connected his cell to Bluetooth, called Annie on FaceTime, and as soon as her face appeared, he felt better. She was an extraordinarily pretty young woman, shoulder length dark hair like her mother, eyes the color of the Aegean Sea. She sat at the edge of a dolphin tank. “Shep, you on your way back?”

“Traffic’s a bitch. I won’t be there until around seven. Meeting your mom in Key West for a bite to eat. What’s going on?”

“You got everything I sent you, right?”

“Yeah. It’s impressive, but it sounds pretty far out there, Annie.”

“It is. But Jon, Carlos, and the Doc saw the stone woman in the preserve and Mom read her after the statue was moved to a body drawer in forensics.”

“Have you seen this stone woman?”

“Yeah. Jon O’Hara and I drove over to forensics a few hours ago. She looks just like the photos.”

O’Hara, the journalist who wrote the oddball column in the Tango Gazette. “So you’re hanging out with him?”

“Before the woman turned to stone, she asked for Mom—and for Jon. “

“You buy this whole thing?”

“Which thing, Shep? The future?”

“Uh, yeah.”

Her expression shifted—mouth more rigid now, eyes hardening. “Well, I don’t see how someone with a microchip embedded in her body, who turns to stone as she dies, is from the past, Shep. Unless it’s some sort of alternative past.”

He laughed, he couldn’t help it. “Could she be some weird anomaly?”

“Yeah? And what kind of anomaly would that be? Of the Fortean sort? Frogs raining from the sky, extreme archaeology, spontaneous human combustion… Like, I don’t even know what the equivalent would be of a woman who turns to stone as she dies.”

Well, he didn’t, either. “Were Tom or Nadine giving Mira information, Annie?” Were the dead talking to her? How many men had to ask that about their wives?

“I have no idea. Even if they were, so what? That’s nothing new. The point is that Mom’s reading says these mutants like the stone woman are after the island, Shep. Listen, I need to get going. Gotta feed the dolphins.”

And she disconnected. Exhaustion crept through him. This prolonged investigation in Miami—political corruptions—had pretty much done him in. He almost preferred Mira’s weird shit.

3

Several hours later, he and Mira sat in their favorite Mexican restaurant in Key West, their tacos and enchiladas half-eaten. Latino music played in the background, the tension between them felt thick and unpleasant. Mira finally pushed her plate away and leaned toward him. “Christ, Shep, just talk to me. You watched the videos, right? That’s what this silent treatment is about?”

The videos. What the hell could he say about any of what he’d seen and heard? “I’m stunned that after six years, you’re able to do this again. But Mira, how is that information genuine? A woman from 2144 who turns to stone when she dies? A domed city? It’s science fiction.”

“Yeah. And it happened. Back in the eighties, smart phones and Google would’ve sounded like science fiction. “

True. But. “How’d she get here? How does she time travel? How…”

“It’s on the video, Shep.”

“Explain it to me.”

Obviously exasperated, she sat back. “As a group consciousness, they’re able to pull the past around them. Then they walk into it. I think the leader, Hal, got the idea from Jack Finney’s book Time and Again. The dome—or domes—has an archive with books and stuff from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.”

“What kind of archive?” He wanted details. A description. Something he might be able to imagine, to define in his own head.

“Digital. That was my impression. But Shep, none of that is the point, okay? Hundreds of these Crows have targeted Tango. We’re going to see more of them. And we don’t have a defense against them. That sums it up.”

Sheppard picked up the check. “I just don’t buy it. Let’s go home. I’ll follow you.”

“I took an Uber over here. I have to ride with you.” She paused. “On second thought, I’ll just Uber back.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“Hey, I’m supposed to be thrilled by your reaction?”

“I’m not reacting, okay? I’m just saying I don’t buy into this future scenario you saw.”

“Then why the hell did you text me about meeting you here?

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe a romantic dinner since we haven’t seen each other for—what? A month?”

He’d thrown it back to her, she thought, and done it cleverly by making it personal in a non-threatening way. “Almost a month. Did you wrap up your investigation?”

“Goot’s staying behind. He thought I should find out what’s, uh, going on here.”

Mira couldn’t help herself and blurted, “That means he watched the videos and found them credible.”

“Pretty much.”

Mira rolled her eyes. “But you didn’t.”

“Look, it’s not you, Mira. It’s just that I have trouble believing the info you picked up.”

They stopped at the front register, Sheppard paid the bill. The tension between them escalated when they were in Sheppard’s SUV and he pulled out of the restaurant lot and onto U.S. 1. He wanted to say something to ease what now felt like an impenetrable wall between them, then felt it probably would be smartest to keep his mouth shut.

A rising full moon illuminated the twelve-mile bridge between Key West and Tango, an architectural marvel rebuilt in 2005, after Hurricane Danielle had destroyed it. The eastbound traffic into Key West looked like a commuter nightmare. The outbound traffic from Tango Key looked even worse.

“A mass exodus,” he remarked.

“Blame Jon’s column and the fact that it’s snowbird season.”

“That piece read like something out of a tabloid.” So much for shutting up. “I doubt if that’s the cause.”

Mira ignored the remark, lowered her window, and scrolled through her phone. Sheppard turned onto the bridge, traffic crawled forward.

“What has happened to us, Shep?”

He sensed where this conversation was headed and felt a wall of resistance rising up against it. “Nothing happened to us except I’ve been stuck in Miami for months. But I’m getting paid twice my normal salary while I’m there. We can save for a good trip somewhere.”

He clearly remembered the years before Mira when he had worked for a year, saved his money, then had taken off overseas for months at a time. Back then, he invariably had come home nearly broke. It felt gratifying to no longer be in that place.

“No, I’m talking about something deeper,” Mira said. “Until that child abduction case, you used to sift through what I picked up and use it in a positive way. But that case nearly ruined our marriage and afterward, my ability pretty much went dry.”

“You’re blaming me for that?”

“I’m blaming myself for letting anyone affect me like that.”

“Wow. You don’t think that what you picked up on this is really far out there?”

“It’s what I saw,” she snapped. “How do you explain the fact that she turned to stone?”

“I can’t. It’s an anomaly. Like ball lightning. Or spontaneous human combustion. Just because it’s inexplicable doesn’t mean it’s from the future.”

“Jesus, Shep. Listen to yourself.”

Sheppard’s head now ached, he struggled to keep his mouth shut, but failed. “Sometimes in the past, what you’ve perceived wasn’t right, Mira. Sometimes it was metaphor. Maybe what you picked up this time was a metaphor for her turning to stone.”

“This wasn’t any goddamn metaphor, Shep. I was there, in the dome, connected to her, watching as the dome president told her to turn the fissures to stone.”

A dome. How large a dome? How many people lived inside it? Did anyone live outside? What was outside? Who built it? All these questions spewed out at once and Mira gave him a withering look. “Christ , Shep. There’s nothing outside the dome. It’s a fucking wasteland. Environmental collapse.”

Then traffic in both directions came to a complete stop on the bridge.

4

O’Hara helped Annie and two other employees with the dolphin feeding, just as he had yesterday, and enjoyed it. The dolphins clicked and twittered constantly, swam around the tanks with raw exuberance, and when he tossed them fish, they leaped to catch it, water spewing from their blowholes.

He stood at the edge of the largest tank, about half the size of a football field, big enough for a display of fish, but not for a dozen or more dolphins. He shot a three-minute video of the three youngest dolphins—Prissy, Boss, and Rose—whom Annie had taken care of after they were rescued three years ago. They tossed around a huge floating ball, whistled and trilled at each other, and Annie walked over to watch.

“They’re doing a little performance for you, Jon. I think they like you.”

“You think they have preferences for certain people?”

“Sure. They tend to read people well. They really love it when a pregnant woman visits the center. They gather around, using their echolocation to see the fetus. Some years back, when I was doing my internship, a guy who was wanted for a double homicide came here. The dolphins went nuts. They sprayed him, hit him with the flotation ball, and he got so pissed off he stupidly leaped into the tank. I don’t know what he thought he was going to do to them. But they were on him like that.” She snapped her fingers. “They rammed him against the walls of the tank, pummeled him with their flukes. The trainer who was here at the time had to rescue him.”

“Was he badly hurt?”

“Badly enough so they sent him to ER. That’s where he was identified. He’s now in prison.”

O’Hara reached down into the bucket for another fish, but suddenly, the dolphins, all of them, went berserk, leaping, trilling, ramming the fence between the tank and the canal. Alarmed, Annie shouted, “It means a freak has arrived, Jon! Get away from the edge!”

And then an explosion rocked the air.

5

“Now what?” Mira grumbled. Drivers were getting out of their cars to see what was going on, so she did the same. Since her view was blocked by cars, she climbed onto the sideboard so she could see over them—and gasped.

A thin, tall woman—six feet, maybe more—stood in the middle of the two lanes of traffic, illuminated by the full moon and the lightning that crackled through her luminous blue body. She looked around wildly, then lightning shot out of her hands and struck the nearest cars. Windows shattered, doors flew off their hinges, people leaped out, shrieking.

Sheppard bolted from the car and tore toward the woman. Then three cars blew up, an explosion Mira felt in her bones, her blood, her very cells. Flaming debris spewed into the air. Mira grabbed Sheppard’s pack and her bag from the front seat, and loped after him, dodging panicked, screeching people fleeing in both directions to get away from the woman and off the bridge.

The lightning woman now spun with the grace of an aquatic creature. She swung her arms upward and lightning shot from her fingers and crackled through the steel struts overhead that kept the bridge suspended.

The bridge swayed hard enough so that Mira nearly lost her balance. Pandemonium erupted in the already terrified crowd, people scrambling across cars to get off the bridge. The woman shot lightning at the struts again. A crackling blue light sped through every metallic surface of the bridge. The entire structure groaned like some mythological beast, triggering more bedlam.

Mira followed closely behind Sheppard, moving as he moved—dodging flames from burning cars, throngs of terrified people, more lightning bolts. At one point, Mira thought she could hear an eerie, cackling laughter from the lightning woman.

As they reached the meridian that separated the two lanes, the bridge shook violently.

Sheppard aimed at the woman, fired repeatedly, but the bridge shook so hard his shots missed. Mira was thrown to the bridge, Sheppard dived down next to her, and took aim again. The woman saw them and hurled lightning their way.

Cars behind and around them burst into flames. The bridge struts started melting, Mira smelled the molten metal, could see it as it happened, the melt glistening in the backlight of burning cars.

Sheppard fired again and the woman pitched back, dead before she hit the bridge. “Shep, the bridge is going to collapse!” Mira shouted.

“We’re taking her body with us.”

The bridge creaked, moaned, shook violently again. Mira ran back toward Sheppard’s SUV, clinging to some dim hope they would be able to drive off the bridge. But it was completely blocked in by abandoned cars. She stumbled back toward Sheppard. He now had the lightning woman draped around his shoulders, her pack hanging from a shoulder. Mira frantically stabbed her hand from one side to the other. “Five miles to Tango, seven to Key West.”

He looked up at the melting struts. “Shit, this bridge isn’t going to last a mile.”

The bridge moaned and swayed violently, and Mira nearly lost her footing again. “Fuck this. I’m not dying up here.”

She ran over to a Range Rover with two people inside, the engine sputtering, the rear fender crushed, and threw open the driver’s door. The teenage boy behind the wheel, a kid with pimpled cheeks who looked all of sixteen, drew back. “Who the hell are you?”

His sobbing companion, a teenage girl, screamed, “You’re flooding it! We need to walk!

“Move over,” Mira snapped. “We’re FBI. We’re getting off this goddamn bridge.”

The boy scooted over quickly into the passenger seat with the girl, Sheppard yanked open the rear passenger door and scrambled inside with the lightning woman’s body.

Mira, now behind the wheel, slammed the door. She tossed Sheppard’s pack on the floor in front of the passenger seat, kept her bag over her shoulder, squashed against her side, and turned off the stuttering ignition. The groaning bridge swayed again, buckling upward, as if heaving in pain. Terrified the bridge would drop into the Atlantic any second, she turned the key and pumped the accelerator hard and fast. The engine finally kicked over and she slammed the Range Rover into gear, and started working her way out of the blockage of cars.

“Ram your way through!” Sheppard shouted.

The teenage boy freaked out. “No, this is my dad’s car!”

Mira crashed into the car behind her. “You’d rather die on this bridge?”

The sobbing girl gripped her thighs and shrieked, “I don’t want to die up here!”

Mira, heart hammering, gunned the accelerator again and the Range Rover slammed into the car in front of her. Now she had enough space to pull away from the blockade and maybe get the hell off the bridge.

She turned the steering wheel hard, pulled out onto the bridge, rammed two empty cars in front of her, reached the bridge’s sidewalk. It was clear of cars, but not people.

“Go! Just go!” Sheppard yelled.

“Stop shouting!” she shouted, and laid on the horn.

People scrambled out of the way.

Mira spotted an opening just ahead on the bridge and tore toward it, horn blaring, tires shrieking. She swung back onto the sidewalk where she saw a narrow path off the bridge and slammed her way through abandoned cars. Every collision and bump and scrape triggered new protests and panic from the boy, fresh sobs from the girl, and more shouts from Sheppard to do this, do that.

Mira ignored what Sheppard said. It wasn’t that she thought his directives were wrong, just that she believed differently. She swerved violently to the right, the SUV shot off the bridge, screeched to a stop, and she threw open her door and leaped out. Cop cars, ambulances, and fire trucks were everywhere, screeching sirens tore apart the air, blue and red spinning lights transformed the chaos into a surreal landscape of impossible things. Dozens of police and first responders fanned out across the mouth of the bridge, trying to get people to safety.

Throngs of panicked people raced the final distance to Tango Key, then the struts snapped, six miles of the bridge collapsed, and cars and people plunged fifty feet into the water. The echo of the screams, sobs, and shrieks of metal would echo through Mira for years to come.

Paralyzed with shock, tears ran down her cheeks. Sheppard, now standing beside her, turned to her, his face ravaged with sorrow, regret. “I’m sorry I was such a dick. Can you forgive me?”

Too choked up to speak, Mira took Sheppard’s hand, drew his arm around her shoulders. “We can’t let these fuckers take Tango Key.” She gestured at the open back door of the Range Rover. “And we need to get her body to Ian’s office.”

4

Afterward

O’Hara felt like he stood at the edge of an abyss, peering into the planet’s future. Most of the bridge was gone. Choppers circled overhead, sirens shrieked, the mouth of the bridge was jammed with vehicles, first responders, survivors of the catastrophe. He watched the bedlam from one of the ferry docks while Annie paced back and forth, texting and calling her mother and Sheppard.

She trotted over to him, alarm scrawled all over face. “They aren’t responding. I’m going down into the crowd, they might be there.”

Unless they died when the bridge collapsed. Neither of them said it, but he knew they both were thinking it. Annie spun away from him and started down the steep hill toward the mouth of the bridge. O’Hara ran after her, his shoes knocking loose pebbles and rocks. “Hey, wait for me.” He caught up to her, grasped her hand, and they made their way down the twisting, narrow path, knocking loose stones, dirt, prickly shrubs, and reached the bottom.

The chaos of terrified, traumatized people was so extreme they couldn’t get near the mouth of the bridge. Just the noise level felt like a violation. But Annie charged on through the crowd and he gripped her hand more tightly so they wouldn’t get separated.

Then O’Hara spotted Sheppard, a giant in the crowd, and made his way toward him, pulling Annie along behind him. She kept shouting, “Mom, Shep!” But her voice was swallowed by all the noise and then they were stopped by a wall of cops, yelling at them to get back, get back.

“We’re with FBI agent Sheppard,” O’Hara shouted. “He’s right over there.” He stabbed his hand toward Sheppard and Mira, one of the cops glanced in that direction, and Sheppard saw them.

He and Mira pushed their way toward him and Annie. The reunion was so powerful and strange and overwhelming that for the first time in his life, O’Hara understood what family meant.

Sheppard pulled him to one side. “We’ve got a body to take to Ian’s.”

“The woman who destroyed the bridge?”

“Yeah.”

“We want to be there for the autopsy report.”

“We’ll meet you at Ian’s tomorrow morning. I’ll text you.”

2

They got home around 4:30 the next morning. Mira showered, then collapsed on her own bed, in her own home, next to Sheppard, already snoring. She stared at the ceiling, disjointed images cascading through her.

Videos of what had happened on the bridge had gone viral within minutes of being posted on social media. Florida’s governor called it a “terrorist attack.” But that conjured images of planes slamming into buildings on 9-11 by Mideastern men, a lousy attempt to distract from the truth—that the woman on the bridge with lightning shooting from her hands was something else entirely.

First, Stoner, then Lightning Woman. 2144. Not science fiction. In a few hours when Rincon conducted an autopsy on her, Mira felt sure he would find an identifying chip in her.

Mira rolled onto her side and reached for Sheppard’s hand. His fingers twitched closed around hers. Can you forgive me? In all their years together, he never had said that to her, never apologized to her for anything. It changed things on a personal level and did so within the context of a broader, more dangerous change. Tango Key was under attack and invasion by people from the future who possessed extraordinary powers.

She pulled a pillow over her head and shut her eyes.

The autopsy room in Rincon’s office felt colder today than it had yesterday, Mira thought, but maybe it was due to her exhaustion, lack of sleep, the uncertainty of everything. They were all here—Sheppard, Delgado, Annie and O’Hara—sitting around the room, staring at the body of the lightning woman. In the bright overhead lights, Mira thought the woman looked vastly diminished from how she’d appeared on the bridge with that lightning pulsing through her.

Yet, her wild, curly hair still held a shine. Those powerful hands that burned with lightning lay motionless at her sides, fingers long, nails short, neatly clipped, no polish, the hands of a pianist or a sculptor. Her expression in death seemed startled, mouth slightly open, as though she had uttered something as she died.

“She looks human enough,” Rincon remarked.

Sheppard nodded. “Yeah. But how does a human possibly do what she did?”

“Maybe like an electric eel,” Rincon replied. “I’ll know more when I autopsy her.”

“Can you explain about the eel?” Mira asked.

Rincon ran his hand over his bald head and paced as he spoke. “My grasp of marine biology is limited, okay? But my understanding is that an eel has three pairs of abdominal organs that enable it to generate two kinds of electricity—low voltage and high. But like I said, I’ll know more once I do the autopsy.”

“Mom, when you were reading the stone woman, you said something about how the dolphins would know,” Annie said. “About fifteen minutes before stuff started happening on the bridge last night, Jon and I were at the center for the last feeding. The dolphins went batshit.”

“In what way?” Delgado asked.

“They were frantic, ramming the walls of their tanks, just freaking out.” Annie’s hands moved around as she spoke, describing the event in gestures. “Two of them escaped into the canal. Then we heard the first explosion.”

“So maybe they really are our early monitoring system,” Mira said. “How’re you keeping tabs on them, Annie?”

“App on my phone. Security cams. My boss is headed here with some marine biologists.”

“The ferries are packed,” Rincon said. “It may be a while before they get here.”

“So where do we go now?” Mira asked.

“X-rays,” Rincon said. “An autopsy. And first, a reading, if you’re up to it, Mira.”

Forget it. That was what she wanted to say. But it was too late for that. She was involved, immersed. “I’ll try.”

“After that, we need a plan,” Sheppard remarked.

“Hey, there’s an exodus underway,” O’Hara said. “And not just snowbirds. Is that what we should do? Get out? People have been emailing me, asking.”

“No way I’m going anywhere,” Delgado said. “Tango is my home, my family is here.”

“I think that’s how we all feel,” Sheppard said.

“Jon’s column about the bridge tragedy went up early this morning and already has been picked up by every major newspaper in Florida and the TV networks,” Annie said. “Nearly all of them are calling it a terrorist attack.”

“That started with the governor,”Mira said. “It’s ludicrous unless ISIS now has super powers.”

“Hey,” Sheppard said, holding up his cell. “It’s not just the media. I got a text from Goot. Within the next hour or so, the governor’s going to declare a state of emergency in the keys and inform us that two thousand National Guard troops are headed here.”

That would mean a run on food and supplies, Mira thought. Like before a hurricane. “No one’s going to believe this terrorist attack routine. Social media has it all—photos, videos, closeups,”

“Regardless,” Delgado said. “Everything here is about to go haywire. The panicked buying, ferries crowded beyond capacity, the airport closing, a curfew.”

“Shit. So it’s like another Hurricane Danielle,” Sheppard said. “That kind of panic.”

Rincon nodded. “We all remember, Shep. We were living here. We’re the old-timers.”

“I’m not,” O’Hara said. “Fifteen years ago I was a kid In Fort Lauderdale with my own ghost hunting group. My parents were riveted to the news about Danielle. My dad wanted to evacuate because at one point her predicted landfall was between Miami and Lauderdale.”

“Did you evacuate?” Mira asked.

O’Hara shook his head. “My mom refused. She said she had a gut feeling. She used to have a lot of those. And they usually were right. It hit Tango and in Lauderdale we didn’t feel a thing.”

Right then, Mira decided she liked O’Hara. And since he would become her daughter’s lover—or already was—she really had wanted to like the man. Now she did.

“I’ll see what I can pick up.”

Mira slipped off her shoes, got up, and started twisting her bare feet against the floor. She deepened her breathing. Then she walked around the autopsy table, surveying the woman from different angles, and grasped the sides of her head. She didn’t pick up anything, didn’t feel anything. She removed the dead woman’s shoes, ran her hands over her feet. Moved to her arms and shoulders. “Nothing’s here. Or I’m just not seeing it.”

“Is it because she’s dead?” O’Hara asked.

“Maybe. But it feels like… it requires skills I don’t have.”

Rincon said, “It’s probably for the best right now. We all need to stock up on gas and supplies.”

“Let’s touch base after the governor’s announcement, see where things stand,” Sheppard suggested. “Ian, text us if the autopsy turns up something unusual.”

“I’m going to stick around and help Ian with the autopsy or whatever he needs,” Delgado said.

While the others gathered up their things, Mira leaned in close to the lightning woman, whispered to her. “What is it I don’t have that would break through that wall around you? What is it I have that I’m not using? Huh? Because I feel like that’s what’s going on here.” She stroked the dead woman’s cheeks with her knuckles and clearly heard four words: Hal fucked me over.

Surprised, Mira cupped the woman’s face in her hands and spoke to her again. “Who’s Hal?”

No voice this time, but her head exploded with a vision.

Inside a warehouse in the dome, a handsome biracial man speaks to several dozen people who listen with rapt attention. Mira hears only a white noise, a low static that keeps her from discerning speech. But the members of the audience line up, all of them holding an object of some kind. One by one, they come forward and demonstrate an ability. Telekinesis. Invisibility. Fire starter. Chameleon. Shape shifter. There are more, but these shock her so deeply she snaps out of it and wrenches back, away from the body drawer.

“Jesus.”

She turned quickly, anxious to get away from the body, and found all the others still in the room, staring at her. “What happened, Mom?”

She thought the information might slip away from her if she didn’t say anything, and blurted out what she’d seen. “Their powers… the ones I saw… are… staggering.”

“What kind of staggering?” Sheppard asked. “Like what we’ve already seen?”

“Stephen King staggering?” Annie asked. “Or like the monster in Stranger Things?”

“Both. More.” And she told them.

“Fuck,” O’Hara said.

3

O’Hara and Annie made their way to the parking lot. He’d crashed on her couch after they’d reunited with Mira and Sheppard at the decimated bridge, and right now, he didn’t have any desire to go back to his place alone. When they reached her car, he felt as awkward as a teen on a first date.

“How’re you set for supplies and food?” he asked.

“Good, I’m good.” Then she suddenly blurted, “Hey, you want to come to my place again? I’ll fix us omelets. Or something. I’m a basic cook, but my fridge is full, and mi casa es tu casa. And honestly, I don’t want to spend any more time alone in my apartment, waiting for the fucking Apocalypse.”

He laughed. He had his iPad, a pack in the trunk that held essentials—toiletries, a change of clothes, chargers, extra cash. “Me, either. I’ll follow you.”

And just like that, it was decided. Everything with her felt easy, comfortable.

Her apartment lay a couple of miles from the Dolphin Research Center, a one-bedroom place above a barn on an old equestrian estate. He hadn’t noticed details earlier, he’d been too wiped out. Now he realized the estate covered several acres and most of the windows looked out onto a training ring, pasture, trees, conferring a sense of spaciousness. It was colorful and haphazardly furnished—Offerup, eBay, flea markets—but felt strangely comfortable to him.

“You can set up over there,” she said, pointing at a desk in front of the window. “I’ll get started on those omelets.” She dropped her bag in a chair and headed for the kitchen.

O’Hara set his iPad on the desk, next to her MacBook Pro, dropped his pack on the couch, sat down and went to work. This column would be his second about the bridge fiasco, with a focus on the aftermath. But halfway through it, the smell of food drew him to the kitchen doorway. Annie chopped up veggies and wore earbuds, her slender hips swaying to whatever she was listening to. Now and then she bopped from the counter to the fridge and back again, everything about her rhythmic, beautiful, natural. But beneath it rippled an undercurrent of wildness, as if at any second her body might explode into some mind-blowing dance performance.

The small kitchen table held four bamboo placemats, one in front of each chair, and a fifth placement in the center with a ceramic dolphin on it. There was a basket of warm rolls, butter, jellies, honey. She grabbed paper napkins from a holder on the counter, pulled open the silverware drawer and brought out four forks and four knives, and turned to put them on the table and saw him. She popped out her earbuds. He heard Taylor Swift.

“Nearly ready,” she announced. Take these….” Napkins, silverware. “And tell me what you’d like to drink. Coffee, lemonade, water, beer…”

“Beer with omelets?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Okay, beer.” He started setting out the napkins and silverware. “Who’re the other two settings for?”

“The head of the table, to the north, is for my great-grandmother, Nadine. The south end is for my dad. They drop in sometimes.”

Oh. Shit. “You see them?”

“Not like my mom does. I mean, she has regular conversations with Tom and Nadine. But sometimes, I see vague silhouettes of one or the other and if I really focus, I can sort of see them.” She set two beers on the table, Tango Tasters, from a local brewery. “I’m better at talking with animals.”

“And the fifth setting with the dolphin sculpture on it?”

“That symbolizes dolphins in the wild. They don’t belong in captivity. When I started working at the center three years ago, I was just out of college and needed a job. I was assigned to Boss, Prissy and Rose, our newest rescues, babies. The four of us got close and I promised them that when they were old enough to survive in the wild, I would free them. Free all of them.”

“Are they old enough now?”

“Yup.”

“And?”

“I’d been planning how to do it, but then all this chaos happened. But the chaos might actually make it easier.”

She planned to free captive dolphins. Right then, whatever residual affection he held for his ex-partner evaporated.

Annie returned to the stove and started whipping up the omelets. He turned his head to the north end of the table, the south end, didn’t see or sense anything. “So you always keep these places set for your dad and Nadine?” he asked.

“Yeah. I don’t really remember much about my dad. He died when I was three and for most of my life, Shep has been my dad. But I feel like I should have a place for him, you know?”

O’Hara suddenly wondered where the hell she’d been most of his life. He walked up behind her, slipped an arm around her waist, took the spatula out of her hand and flipped the omelets. Then she turned and they stared at each other and she touched her finger to his mouth and said, “Holy shit,” and he kissed her.

After that, it was all animal instinct and hormones. They tore off each other’s clothes and before they stumbled toward the bedroom, one of them had the presence of mind to move the frying pan from the burner and turn off stove. They fell back onto the softest bed he’d ever known.

Making love to Annie ended whatever nostalgia he still felt about his ex, their fucked up marriage, its lingering aftermath. He felt like he’d come home and didn’t have any idea what that meant. Afterward, they lay on this incredibly wonderful bed, fingers threaded together, and whispered in the dark.

“What was your marriage like?” she asked.

“Awful. We were mismatched from the start.”

“Hmm. I’ve had relationships like that. As soon as I mention stuff like what we’ve talked about the guy is gone.”

“I’ve been writing about this weird shit all my life, but when I saw that stone woman, Annie, I knew I wasn’t ready to confront or experience the things I write about.”

“Yeah?” She lifted up on her elbow and leaned down and kissed him. “And look where you ended up.”

They made love again, then she poked him in the side. “Let’s go polish off those omelets. It’s, like, nine in the morning and I have to get to the center after we go to Dr. Rincon’s.”

“And I need to finish my article and get it uploaded. But I’d like to hear more about your plan to free the dolphins.”

“Yeah? It’s illegal, but frankly, I don’t give a shit about that anymore. When I’ve freed the dolphins at this center, I’d like to do the same for the facility in Key Largo. They at least take in injured dolphins and nurse them back to health until they can be released. But the center here keeps them for entertainment.”

She was sitting at the edge of the bed then, pulling on her clothes, and glanced back at him, the wash of light from the kitchen capturing her determined expression. “Annie Morales, rogue,” he remarked.

“And who will then be unemployed.” She shrugged. “I guess I’ll go back to work at the bookstore.”

“Unless they toss you in jail.”

“Not likely. It’s going to look like a weakness in the fence that separates the main tank and the canal.”

“Count me in.”

“Really?” She looked delighted—and surprised, and leaned toward him and kissed him.

It didn’t even matter to him if the Apocalypse happened in the next five minutes. Right now, at this instant as he pulled on clothes, he felt happier than he had in years.

5

By noon, commercial flights into and out of Tango Key had been cancelled, all private planes were grounded, and the airport was still closed to everything except military transport planes. Sheppard’s federal ID got him into the terminal, deserted except for a handful of local cops, and now he stood at the large front window, watching a military transport plane on final approach.

As it landed, another plane circled the airport and touched down minutes later. Both of them taxied to the far side of the airport. Humvees, Jeeps, and a tank drove off, followed by several hundred National Guard troops. Sheppard spotted Gutierrez hopping into a Jeep with a soldier. It sped across the runway and swerved to a stop in front of the terminal.

Gutierrez got out. He had ditched the suit and tie he’d worn in Miami and now looked like a Tango Fritter, island casual in jeans, a cotton shirt, and windbreaker. His bulging pack, slung over his shoulder, bounced against his hip. Sheppard walked out to greet him and Gutierrez, true to his Cuban roots, gave him an abrazo, the male version of a hug.

“Amigo. Getting here was iffy. Had to show my ID probably half a dozen times.”

“The National Guard is acting like the Gestapo. Weird, seeing you with all those soldiers.”

“It was weird flying here with them. They seem to think this is an Orson Welles broadcast and it’s all bullshit.”

“It’s not bullshit.”

“So your skeptic demon took a hike, Shep?”

“After what I saw on that bridge, Goot, I’m in the school of anything is possible.”

“Well, goddamn. Never thought I’d hear that. There may be hope yet for you and Mira.”

“Very funny.”

“Has she filed for divorce yet?”

“No. But she probably should have.”

“Damn straight.”

It was like something Nadine would say, Sheppard thought, a dig at him, at his skepticism. “Hey, I get it, okay? I fucked up. All along.”

Gutierrez made a hasty sign of the cross in the air, muttered something in Spanish that roughly translated to, All is forgiven, son.

Sheppard laughed. “Yeah, right, Padre.”

They went through the terminal, out the front door, and headed to the parking lot. “So what’s going on, Shep?”

Just then, a lean man in camouflage clothes trotted up alongside them. Short graying hair, dark sunglasses. “Sorry to interrupt, gentlemen. I understand you’re FBI?”

Sheppard and Gutierrez introduced themselves. “And you’re…?” Sheppard asked.

“Frank Keel, head of these troops, and I believe you’re my contact, Agent Sheppard.”

“Right. My most recent text from the Miami bureau office said we’d be meeting at our office here on Tango in an hour. Glad we don’t have to wait.”

“I’d like to make my position clear.” Keel tugged at his shirt as though it didn’t fit comfortably. “The governor can call this whatever he wants, terrorist attack or invasion by Martians. But we’ve all seen the videos. It’s considerably stranger. And more dangerous.”

Gutierrez snorted. “I don’t think that’s how your troops feel. I just flew over here with a bunch of them. They seem to think it’s all fake news, a joke. But I gotta tell you, amigo, to me this looks like a sci-fi movie—an invasion by powerful weirdos who may have come from nearly two hundred years in the future, where the planet has been fucked by climate change.”

“It’s not a movie, Sergeant Gutierrez.”

“Agent. I’m Agent Gutierrez. With the FBI.”

“Whatever. Their intentions aren’t good.” Keel stopped in front of a black SUV with an ID tag tucked under a windshield wiper. “Here I am.”

“We’re headed over to the coroner’s office first to get the results of an autopsy on the lightning woman,” Sheppard said. “Why don’t you follow us?

“Sounds good.”

“We’re a row behind you,” Gutierrez told him.

“See you at the coroner’s office,” Keel said.

Sheppard and Gutierrez hurried on toward Sheppard’s car. Gutierrez glanced back at Keel. “Uh, Shep. He’s a strange dude. Are they in charge or are we?”

“That’s part of what we’re going to clarify.”

“Saw the videos, your report, Delgado’s report, Rincon’s report, and Jon O’Hara’s piece. What defense do we have against something like this?”

Ask me something simple. “Guns? Grenades? Tanks? Nukes? I don’t know. But dolphins may be our early warning system. The ones where Annie works were freaking before the events on the bridge. When they go nuts, it apparently means more of these Crows have arrived.”

“I don’t suppose they give us geographical coordinates or any indication of how many.”

“Annie’s our interpreter. So far, it’s just an arrival warning.”

Gutierrez looked skyward as another transport plane circled. “Don’t know why, Shep, but the fact that Keel is in charge of two thousand troops disturbs me.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.”

They got into Sheppard’s Highlander. “Your car died on the bridge?” Gutierrez asked.

“The bureau’s car died on the bridge. My car needs a new battery. This is a rental.”

“Battery dead? Doesn’t that qualify as something significant in Mira’s scheme of things?”

Sheppard often wondered if Gutierrez was the brother he’d never had, the believer to his skeptic, the mystic to his give me the facts. “Probably a synchronicity. The inner reflected in the outer. Or, more specifically, we nearly got killed on that bridge and the battery in my car is dead.”

“Better the battery than you and Mira, amigo. Among Cubans, those moments are called, el voz del alma, Shep. The…”

“… voice of the soul.” Sheppard didn’t feel like going into the mystical shit. “Yeah. I’m fluent, remember?” Sheppard knew he sounded defensive.

“Hey, I’m not Nadine. In fact, I bet she now regrets her bias against you.”

“Yeah? She learned something after she died?”

“So say the Cuban Santeros.”

As they headed toward Rincon’s office, they passed long lines at gas stations and convenience stores and jammed supermarket parking lots. Gutierrez whistled softly. “The island is locked in panic mode, Shep. Just like it was before Danielle hit.”

“You’re welcome to stay with us. Mira is restocking the cabin.”

“Probably safer than either of our houses. More remote.”

“After what I saw last night, I’m not sure anywhere is safe.”

6

The lightning woman lay on the autopsy table, stitched up from head to toe. The shine in her hair had vanished, Mira thought, and nothing about her looked special. She was as dead as a fallen leaf.

Rincon brought up the autopsy images on his iPad, and they all looked on—Mira, Sheppard, Gutierrez, Keel.

“First off, she has a chip in her arm—white crow 919, May 2134. She has two hearts, the right one smaller than the left. She has three pairs of abdominal organs, like I suspected, same as an electric eel. But for an eel, those abdominal organs comprise most of its body. Not so for her.” He paused, glanced up at each of them. “I don’t have any idea how this would work in a human. I’m just telling you what I found.”

“Hold on.” Sheppard held up his hands as if to ward off something threatening. “Are we supposed to believed her DNA was fiddled with? Is that how this electrical thing originated?”

Keel looked amused. “That’s one possibility, Agent Sheppard. But it’s more likely to be the result of a rapid evolutionary change. Recent research tells us that environmental changes trigger these evolutionary changes in a matter of generations instead of millennia. I think that’s what we’re seeing here.”

Rincon nodded in agreement. “Based on what Mira has told us so far my guess is that on that decades-long journey inland from the coasts, infants were born with these abilities. By 2144, the date Mira pinpointed, these Crows were fully established, powerful. But they were badly outnumbered by the Normals, who subdued them with drugs and any other means they had.”

“They’re refugees,” Mira said. “Like your grandparents, like mine. But they intend to seize Tango, establish a colony here. And then move on out to the rest of the planet.”

Keel looked at her, his expression one that Mira had seen throughout her life—of skepticism, incredulity. Then he laughed. “And you know this how?”

Right then, she didn’t like Keel at all. He challenged her to prove herself in the way skeptics often did, like Sheppard initially had about all this. It felt like some ancient episode of Dragnet. Just the facts, ma’am.

So she gave him facts. “I know this the same way that I know your ex-wife is bearing the brunt of responsibility for your autistic son, who feels his dad is so emotionally absent that he…”

“You made your point.” He cut her off quickly. “I thought you had to touch something or someone to pick up information.”

“Sometimes the information is so close to the surface it’s like skimming cream off milk.” Something else about Keel bugged her, but it lay deeper inside him and she couldn’t define it. At some point, she would have to touch him to find it.

“I’d like copies of your findings, Dr. Rincon,” said Keel.

“Everyone will get copies.” Rincon brought up another set of images. “Her hippocampus is huge. That part of the brain is the source of psi. Hers is twice as large as that of an ordinary human. Yours is probably similar, Mira.”

“I’m sure mine shrank during the last six years. And compared to what we’ve seen these people do… mine is microscopic.”

“It doesn’t matter what your ability is,” Rincon said. “If you have something, it shows up here.”

Gutierrez shook his head. “My hippocampus is probably the size of a microbe. How do we defend ourselves?”

“Right now, we use what we have.” Mira pulled a nine-millimeter out of her bag. “I’m no gun advocate, but I think we all need to be armed.”

Keel nodded. “We’ve got two thousand troops, armed and ready, divided between here and the rest of the keys.”

Just the number of National Guard troops made Mira uncomfortable. And that discomfort escalated when Keel added, “It would be terrific to capture one of these Crows.”

Sheppard laughed, a sharp biting sound. “Considering their abilities, that might be impossible.”

“Not with tranquilizing darts,” Keel said.

“One step at a time. We may have a tool that’s going to help.” Sheppard reached into his bag, brought out a smaller pack, set it on the counter. “I found this pack on the bridge last night, next to the crow. With everything that went on, I forgot about it until I woke up.”

Gutierrez ran his hands over the pack. “Looks like something from Old Navy,” he remarked.

“No zipper,” Mira said. “Just buckles. Feels like it’s made of heavy fabric.”

“So here goes.” Sheppard opened the pack, brought out a drawstring bag and a snow globe. “I found these wrapped in some clothes.” He opened the drawstring bag and poured what looked like gold nuggets into his palm.

“Wow,” Mira exclaimed.

“Coño, hombre. Gold,” Gutierrez said.

Keel picked up a nugget, bit into it. “Could be. The only reliable test is nitric acid. How many ounces are there?”

“It’s six pounds,” Sheppard replied. “Ninety-six ounces.”

Rincon looked shocked. “Holy shit. Gold is going for, like, fifteen or eighteen hundred an ounce, maybe more. If it’s really gold, that bag is worth at least $144,000.”

“There’re two bags,” Sheppard said. “Same weight. So we’re talking a minimum of $288,000.”

Keel whistled softly. “You sending it to the Miami office for analysis?

“I’ll be delivering it in person and sticking around for the analysis. But not until this is all over.”

“Good call,” Keel said. “It could easily end up in someone’s pocket.”

Sheppard looked disgusted. “That’s a damning indictment, Frank.”

“But probably true.”

Mira picked up the snow globe. “This looks like it came from the Target toy department.”

“If this little globe exists anywhere, it’s in fiction.” Sheppard shook the globe. A perfect replica of Tango Key appeared inside—marina, ferry, docks, the bridge, trees.

Mira had never seen anything quite like this. “It’s like seeing a Google Earth image of Tango in 3-D.”

“The island was their initial target,” Rincon said.

Sheppard nodded. “Exactly. Now watch this.”

He shook the globe again and the wilderness preserve took shape inside, everything lush and green. Mira saw that it even had a suggestion of running trails and she pointed them out. “Where the stone woman appeared.”

“Uh-huh.” Another shake and the bridge between Key West and Tango Key took shape, the rendition so perfect the intricate design of the suspension cables was visible.

“So Harry Potter played with this sucker as a kid,” Gutierrez remarked. “Shit, this is an agenda.”

“Any idea how it’s controlled?” Keel asked.

“Nope.” Sheppard shook it again. “Here come their next two targets.”

The globe revealed a restaurant with an open deck, a view of water, and on the other side of a railing, a wishing fountain brimming with coins. Mira recognized it. “The Island Grill.”

“And now this,” Sheppard said. “Something we all recognize.”

The fifth shake brought up the Tango lighthouse.

“So if this thing is a road map for these freaks, then we know where we need troops,” Keel said. “Unless it’s a trick.”

“Pretty elaborate trick.” Sheppard returned the snow globe to the smaller pack. “Let’s stick to what it shows. We need troops there, but not hundreds at once. We need troops inside and out that are hidden.”

“We’ve taken over the airport terminal as our command center and the preserve campground for tents and supplies,” Keel said. “We’ve extended the curfew to nine p.m. so the ferries can get in here with supplies. It’ll be dark before the curfew starts. But we’ll be in place.”

5

The Weather Freak

Early that afternoon, Mira arrived at their cabin with bags of groceries and supplies. The place stood at the edge of the wilderness preserve, on the last stretch of land where private homes could be built. She and Sheppard had bought it shortly after they’d gotten married, a weekend retreat that was private, solar-powered, with its own server, so they were essentially off the grid.

But not really.

Since real estate records in Florida were public, they’d purchased the place under a corporate name—MS Dreams, which was short for Morales/Sheppard Dreams. At the time, she hadn’t had any idea what their common dreams were and she didn’t think Sheppard did, either. But they’d both loved the idea, a takeoff, she supposed, from Spielberg’s DreamWorks. But as the years had passed, as those dreams had begun to clarify, their individual dreams hadn’t coalesced into a common collective dream until those moments after they’d escaped the bridge. She didn’t have any idea where this admission would go from here, but for the moment it was enough.

She hurried around the cabin, putting away the stuff she’d bought in the madhouse that had been Tango Market. She made the beds in the three bedrooms, put out clean towels and fresh bars of soap, made up the sleeper in the living room, arranged the stuff in the fridge for easy access. On the second floor, she pulled down the ramp to the rooftop and walked up into the afternoon sky.

They’d installed the ramp—and the electric chair that hooked to the staircase railing—during the last year of Nadine’s life, when she needed a wheelchair most of the time to get around. She used to love it up here. She had created an herb garden on the eastern side of the roof and every week or so Mira harvested cilantro, lemon grass, mint, basil, and a host of other herbs.

The roof wasn’t flat, not like so many buildings constructed here in the seventies, but it had a flat section that served as a great barbecue area. It boasted a grill, a cabinet for supplies, a built-in cooler, even a canopy to protect against the brutal summer sun. The cooler was solar-powered like the rest of the house and had an ice maker that had been working overtime since this had started and now was jammed with ice.

Mira stocked it with bottled water and other supplies that might be necessary if this area became their first defense. Sheppard had installed spotlights around the periphery and tonight she would turn them on. Just in case. She didn’t like thinking like that, out of a place of fear, a place of Plan Bs and Cs. But the emotion was genuine, and she honored it.

She paused at the formidable wall around this area and gazed out into the preserve and then to her right, across the bay between Tango and Key West, and then toward the lighthouse. Will more of them arrive tonight? Tomorrow? From which direction? What will their abilities be? Chameleon? Shape shifter? Telekinetic?

It sounded like a list for a presentation at a comic book convention. For some reason, comic books reminded Mira she hadn’t been to the bookstore all day. It hadn’t opened today, not many businesses had, but she needed to secure it for the night. She hurried back downstairs, grabbed her bag, and ran out to her car.

She took Old Post Road but traffic came to a complete standstill about a mile from the ferry docks. Some of the cars in the long lines were probably locals who were evacuating. But she guessed the campers, vans, and SUVs loaded with bicycles, kayaks, and canoes were snowbirds trying to get the hell off the island before curfew started. Snowbirds had been evacuating all day, and the ferries, on their return journeys, brought in trucks of supplies to replenish the emptying shelves at the markets, hardware stores, restaurants.

Basically, they were stocking for the diehard holdouts who wouldn’t evacuate and for the feds and local law enforcement and emergency personnel who remained. But who would be around to open those stores? Man those gas stations? How many health personnel had left?

Two traffic cops directed drivers around the line of cars, but it was slow. When she moved past it, the next holdup was at the bottom of the hill, the turnoff for the bridge. It had been completely blocked off by cop cars, trucks, vans, and tractor trailers. But drivers nonetheless had pulled to the side of the road to snap photos.

The afternoon light revealed the gaping hole in the middle of the bridge, at least six miles of it, gone along with cables, struts, siding, sidewalks. The burned-out hulks of cars were being removed by cranes. Coast Guard cutters still churned through the Atlantic waters, searching for bodies and survivors. Workers in yellow hard hats were clustered in several groups, and cops kept urging drivers along, directing them to the right, away from the bridge, or straight ahead.

She remembered what the bridge had looked like after Hurricane Danielle had slammed into Tango in 2005. This was worse. This devastation looked like some massive giant had taken a massive sledge hammer to the bridge and tossed in grenades for good measure. After Danielle, it had taken months for the bridge to be rebuilt.

This might take years.

The scope of the destruction terrified her. They couldn’t defend themselves against something like this, Sheppard was right. What other abilities might these freaks have besides what she’d seen when she’d read Stoner? Beyond what the lightning freak had done?

Hiding out in the cabin was cowardly, yet it might ensure their survival. But suppose nothing happened tonight? Would they hide out in the cabin for another night? And another? It wasn’t like waiting for a hurricane to make landfall.

For a hurricane, you prepared and then the wind and rain ramped up and started howling and pounding. But most hurricanes moved on quickly. Except for Dorian. The night before Dorian was supposed to travel up the East coast of Florida—and then stalled—the bookstore had hosted Bill Homan, author and proprietor of the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull. He had inherited it from Anna Mitchell-Hedges, the adopted daughter of a British adventurer and traveler, F. A. Mitchell-Hedges. She discovered it in the early 1920s beneath the altar of a Mayan temple in Lubaantun, a ruined city in Belize. She was just seventeen at the time.

It was one of the most exquisite objects Mira had ever seen, carved from a translucent crystal, its haunted eyes like portals to other times and worlds. Given the hurricane preparations and warnings about Dorian, the group that had turned out for Homan’s presentation was small. But each person had the opportunity to meditate with the skull and then they had meditated with it as a group. Their intention was to turn Dorian away from the East coast of the U.S. and send it back out to sea to churn endlessly northward to cold waters.

The turning away part worked but the rest of it didn’t. Four days later, over Labor Day weekend, Dorian crashed into the Abacos in the Bahamas. It stalled there with 185 mph winds for forty hours, dumped several feet of rain, and basically wiped the island off the map. Was Dorian a preliminary taste of the climate change that ultimately had necessitated life in domes?

Were these Crows Dorian in human form?

2

Downtown Tango Key was eerily quiet, not many people on the street, most of the shops and businesses closed. Island Grill, one of the spots the weird snow globe had shown, was still open and Mira popped in there first to buy a package of their tacos, the best on the island, and another 12-pack of water. The restaurant area was empty, but the bar was jammed with locals and old-timers who probably would ignore the curfew and the Grill would accommodate them by closing up and continuing to serve them until sunrise.

Pam Gibbons, the TV producer, stood at the other end of the bar, talking animatedly with an older woman with salt-and-pepper hair and a kind of dignified air about her. Mira hoped she could get out of here without Pam noticing her. She already had spoken with the woman and didn’t have any desire to do so again. She wasn’t interested in being in a documentary.

She selected a package of tacos and the water from the wall fridge and hurried over to the other end of the bar, where the register was. The two servers were so busy she had to wait. And wait. By the time a server rang up her purchases, Pam had seen her and hurried over, the older woman beside her.

“Mira, I was hoping to catch you at your store today, but it was closed.”

“With everything that’s been going on, it seemed like the wisest thing to do.”

“Do you have some time now to talk?” She motioned at the older woman. “This is Risa Griffin, the physician who was the Key West coroner in 1985. She autopsied the Crow who had a chip in his leg. I think Ian Rincon told you about that. Risa, this is Mira Morales.”

“A pleasure, but we’ve met.” Risa shook Mira’s outstretched hand. “Years ago, you did a reading for me. It was spot on.”

Mira wished she remembered, but over the years she had read for so many people that if she’d tried to recall every face, every reading, there wouldn’t be any room left on her brain’s hard drive. “How was I accurate?”

“I was going through a divorce at the time and you accurately called the outcome, that I would win fifty percent of everything even if it wasn’t joint property. You also told me there would be four wives.”

“Were there?”

Risa laughed. “Yup. The divorce was the best thing that ever happened to me. You were right about that, too.”

“Let’s walk over to the store and talk,” Mira said. “I’m curious about your autopsy on the Crow back in 1985.”

“And I’ve got a zillion questions for both of you,” Pam added. “Starting with what really happened on the bridge?”

Mira wasn’t in the mood for chatting with Pam, but felt obligated because she had brought O’Hara into Mira’s life, and thus into Annie’s. However, she really wanted to talk with Risa. “I can whip us up a bite to eat and we can talk privately, the three of us.”

“Great,” Pam said. “My crew and I have been out here most of the day, talking to people, shooting footage of the bridge, the ferry dock, the Humvees and Jeeps that rolled into town. Anyone who has seen the YouTube videos isn’t buying the official story about a terrorist attack. The usual conspiracy nuts are all over the place on this one—that the lightning freak was created in a government lab, illegal immigrants are behind it, she was an alien, that it’s all an elaborate hoax that Hollywood enacted because they’re all extreme left-wing liberals.”

“Not an alien,” Risa remarked. “But remarkably different from us.” She paused, looked at Mira. “Ian has kept me in the loop about what’s going on.”

“Explain what you found,” Mira said.

“Nothing like what Ian discovered about the lightning woman. But the man I autopsied in 1985—crow 919—had a nictitating eyelid, much like cats have.”‘

“A third eyelid?” Pam exclaimed.

Risa nodded. “Most species have them, but not humans and only some primates. Usually, it’s large enough to completely cover the cornea. I think of it as a kind of windshield wiper blade that clears away stuff and redistributes tears over the cornea. And maybe it did that for 919, but his third eyelid was darkly tinted, like sunglasses.”

It made a kind of sense to Mira. What she’d seen through the eyes of the dead Crows had caused her to believe that the world outside of the dome was not only toxic, but besieged by frequent and violent tempests, and pounded by sunlight so bright it could blind you.

“What else?” Mira asked.

“His lungs were larger than ours. And then the metallic strip found in his leg bone, with White Crow 919 and the date 2120 on it. In other words, human but changed.”

“Any indication of what kind of ability he had?” Mira asked.

“Nothing. But in 1985, this guy was just a weird anomaly. A fluke. I was twenty-eight years old. I knew there was something important in the discovery, but there wasn’t any context for it. For someone like him.”

“I’d like to show you two a book that may have predicted the dome life,” Mira said. “You may want to reference it on your show, Pam.”

“Really? What’s it called?”

“Mass Dreams of the Future by Chet Snow and Helen Wambaugh.”

“Never heard of it. Have you, Risa?”

“No.”

They entered the store and Mira went into the aisle where she shelved her favorite books. “In the early 1980s, psychologist Wambaugh progressed 2,500 Europeans to the year 2100 and asked them to report on where they were living, what they saw and experienced. Several different scenarios emerged: humanity was living in space stations, in underground caverns, in rustic spiritual communities, or in domes that protected them against the devastated environment.”

“Incredible!” Pam exclaimed.

Mira pulled out two copies of Mass Dreams and handed one to each of them. “Wait a sec,” Risa said, staring at the cover, “I know this story. Wambaugh died before the book was finished and Snow, her assistant, finished it. There’re some maps about how the U.S. will look in the future.”

Mira nodded. “Most of Florida and the East and West coasts are gone, the Mississippi has flooded, the Gulf waters reach clear to the Great Lakes, and the Pacific reaches up through Arizona to Idaho. Now here’s a strange personal note about this book. Several years before it was published, my grandmother, Nadine, led a group of her friends in a progression. I was just in my teens at the time, but she always let me sit in on stuff like this. I saw myself as a tall, bald woman living in a dome because the outside world was so toxic and ruined. When I found the book a couple of years later, I was floored.”

Pam glanced up, frowning. “Do you think that influenced your reading of the stone woman?”

“I hope not.”

“I’d like to buy this,” Risa said.

“Me, too,” Pam added.

“Keep them. Courtesy of the store. How about expressos, ladies?”

“I’d love one, thanks,” Risa said. “But I need to catch the last ferry out. I’ll be in touch.”

They walked to the front door with Risa, then Mira and Pam returned to the cafe. “Where do you think this dome is located, Mira?”

“No idea. But the migration inland from the coasts apparently took years.”

Pam settled at a table next to the window and Mira ducked behind the counter to make their expressos. A breeze had kicked up outside, coming in off the Gulf, and it was starting to cloud over, dark tendrils swirling against the grayish sky. Even here inside the store, the air smelled of rain. Distantly, thunder rumbled.

Mira checked the weather app on her phone, but no rain appeared on the Tango radar or forecast. The radar app showed clear skies. The weather this evening was supposed to be cool and clear.

Alarm whipped through her. She paid closer attention to her immediate environment, things outside the store, her internal climate. She made two expressos, then warmed up a couple of cheese croissants, carried everything over to the table, and sat down. Rain started pelting the window as she talked, explaining what she knew and how she’d discovered it, more details than Pam had asked for or needed, but what the hell. It felt good to talk about it to a virtual stranger, to hear the sound of her own voice trying to make sense of everything. She even told Pam about what she and Sheppard had experienced on the bridge, the visceral terror and horror, and that a chip had been found in the lightning freak’s shoulder.

Pam’s recorder was on, capturing not only what Mira said, but the way the storm was picking up speed and intensity. The wind howled now, rain lashed against the window, the cacophony of this strange storm that had come out of nowhere. This weird, abrupt storm was the source of her alarm.

She stood, rubbing her hand over the fogging glass of the front window, clearing a circle on it. And through that circle, she saw something moving outside and wasn’t sure what it was. She stood up, rubbing her sleeve over a wider area of the glass.

Someone in a jacket, hood raised, stumbled around through the tempest.

Pam stood beside Mira. “Some idiot’s wandering around out there in this storm.”

Mira didn’t get the impression that the person was wandering. Or an idiot. It looked to her as if he or she relished spinning through the storm, arms thrown out, head dropped back, moving steadily up the road. Her cell suddenly rang, Annie’s name came up in the window. Mira took the call but before she could say anything, Annie blurted, “Mom, where are you?”

“In the store with…” Pam, now running toward the front door.

“The dolphins are going bonkers, something’s happening, I’m texting everyone…”

“Jesus, I think one of the Crows is outside,” Mira hissed.

She thrust her cell into her back pocket, grabbed the weapon from her bag, and ran after Pam, now outside, standing in the middle of the street, in a wall of rain. Pam shouted at the man, gestured wildly at the store. The dry store. Her unmistakable invitation to take shelter was met with a single, graceful spin, then he flung his arms into the air, and twirled them counter clockwise.

A tornado appeared in the sky, dark and low and menacing, then it abruptly dropped into the street, and raced toward them. Windows shattered, debris flew, trash cans clattered through the road.

Fuck. A weather freak.

Mira flung open the door, the wind hurled rain into her face. She took aim, fired. The shot pierced the tornado, and now Pam tore back toward the store. Mira darted under the awning, hoping Pam ran toward her. As Mira steadied herself for another shot, a Humvee turned onto the road, a yellow monster that picked up speed.

The weather freak spun toward it, moved his arms in a certain way, hands fisted, and hail the size of basketballs pelted the road, the Humvee, and Pam. She covered her head with her arms and ran faster, the tornado chasing her, hail hitting her, and stumbled. Mira steadied her right hand with her left and took aim. Fired.

But the fucker in the middle of the road evaded the shot and suddenly turned all the rain to ice and grabbed two long spears of it. He hurled one at the Humvee—it struck the windshield and broke—and threw the other at Pam. It slammed into her back and pierced her body all the way through to the front of her chest. Her hands flew to the long pole of ice sticking out of her, then she fell forward.

Mira fired again, repeatedly, emptying the clip, and as the weather freak was falling, the Humvee slammed into him with such force that his body was thrown forward thirty yards.

The storm abruptly stopped—no cold, no ice, no wind, no rain, no tornado, no tempest at all. The afternoon sun was bright, shadows formed against the road. Mira sank to her knees. The gun dropped from her hand, the Humvee stopped just short of Pam’s body. A man in camouflage leaped out—Frank Keel, head of the National Guard troops—and ran over to Pam. He checked for vitals and moved on to the weather freak’s body, checking him to make sure he was dead, too.

He spoke into a radio clipped to his collar, then hurried over to Mira. She was trying to stand, but her legs gave her trouble and he immediately extended a hand. “Are you okay, Mira?”

She grasped his hand and for moments, felt information about him pass into her, but was too distracted to clarify it. He pulled her up. “Yes, I’m okay. But Pam…”

“She’s gone,” he said.

“And that weather fuck out there? He’s dead, right? Since the weather cleared up?”

“Yeah.” Keel paused and looked slowly around, taking it all in. “Once Detective Delgado gets here to pick up the bodies, I can follow you home, Mira. This is one of the areas where some of our men are supposed to be when the curfew starts.”

“In front of my store?”

“No, around the Island Grill half a block from here. That’s where he first appeared.”

“The weather guy… has to go to forensics.”

“I already spoke to Dr. Rincon. That’s why Delgado is on the way.”

Mira felt steady enough to walk now without falling on her face and made a beeline to the weather freak’s body. She crouched beside it, beside him, noting his odd clothing, and ran her hands over his trousers and shirt. They weren’t made of a fabric she recognized, not cotton or rayon, not silk or polyester or any combination of them. She felt something in the right pocket of his trousers, brought it out.

“Mr. Keel…” She held up a small fabric bag. “You want to take a look first or should I?”

He came over, crouched on the other side of the body, took the bag, opened it. He brought out an object that looked like a red laser light identical to the one that drove cats crazy as they tried to leap on it and seize the moving red dot. But when he turned it on, a holographic image of a woman and a young girl took shape.

The woman was tall, completely bald, drop-dead gorgeous. The girl was maybe eight or nine. They held hands, crying—not hysterically, but in a measured way that required great self-control. “Come back to us, Daddy,” the girl pleaded.

“We love you,” the woman said, swiping at her eyes.

Aw, shit. I shot him.

But he had killed Pam, destroyed half the shops on this street, and for what?

Mira’s guilt ebbed.

“You really shouldn’t be removing anything from his body,” Keel said. “Let forensics do it.” He dropped the object in an evidence bag.

Mira resented it. She already had unbuttoned the freak’s shirt. Now she folded the sides back, laying his chest bare. She pressed her hands against the skin there, the skin that covered his heart, skin so pale it was as if it hadn’t met the sun in decades. And in those moments, she saw his life in the dome, one image after another, one compromise after another, so that his family could eat, survive, and perhaps one day escape—if there was somewhere to escape to.

And, as she’d seen initially with the stone statue, he was one of hundreds making their way into the twenty-first. These outliers, psychic freaks, abnormals, White Crows, whatever they were called, were desperate enough to try anything, even traveling back to this century in spite of evidence that the journey might break them, render them crazy, or kill them.

How do you Crows get here? she asked.

The image that came to mind was of a room filled with these people, meditating and using their extraordinary abilities to gather the past around them. They literally pulled it into their experience, just as she’d seen when she’d read the stone statue. A confirmation of an earlier vision.

And Tango was their target. It was isolated, small enough to imagine. They apparently had some information about the island and considered it ground zero in terms of climate change. They hoped to alter the status quo that had led to the mess that was their world, a noble enough intention. Yet, Mira sensed a weakness in all this, something she couldn’t pinpoint, a deeper motive. Hal’s motive, Hal’s narrative. But fuck them for trying to get here by killing hundreds on the bridge and killing Pam as she ran out into the storm to offer the man shelter.

“Mira?” Keel said.

“Let me finish.” She pressed her hands to either side of the man’s head and whispered, “Please help me.”

This time she didn’t feel that information was being blocked from her or that she lacked the skills. It was simply more difficult because the man was dead and the dead didn’t surrender their secrets easily. She counted in her head, one thousand, two thousand, three thousand, as though she were trying to measure the distance between lightning and a clap of thunder. She reached eleven thousand before her hands started heating up. And then the story poured through her.

Weather Wizard and Hal meet in a park in the dome. “You’re staying?” Hal asks.

“The resistance needs help.”

Hal slaps his hand against the dome wall. “It won’t hold, Wizard. It’s a futile battle. Join us.”

“No way. You know this journey back may drive us insane, but you’re sending people anyway. Sending the ones who believe in you, early arrivals to pave the way for you and Red or whoever you deem worthy of accompanying you.”

“I should melt you, Wizard.”

“You may be the most powerful among us, Hal, but my tornadoes could suck you up in seconds and chew you up before you could melt me. You’ve got another agenda. Go fuck yourself.”

Hal throws his arms out to his sides. “Hey, go save everyone. Be a hero. But you’ll die trying.”

And the journey had broken the weather freak Wizard and killed him and Pam, and here Mira stood, grappling with the reality that she had shot him.

“Mira?” Keel’s voice, sharp and urgent, then he touched her shoulder, urging her back from Wizard’s body.

Pissed, Mira shrugged off his hand, rocked back onto her heels and stabbed her finger at Keel. “You. Something about you doesn’t add up.” She blurted it and immediately regretted it.

Keel’s brows shot up, throwing his forehead into a chaos of lines. “Yeah? I’m one of them in disguise?”

“Maybe you’d like to be.”

They were at eye level. She could see herself reflected in his pupils. “I find what these Crows can do absolutely fascinating,” Keel said. “They look like us, they appear to be human, but their abilities are so far beyond anything we know that it’s mind-blowing. Have you ever encountered anyone who can control electricity or lightning or whatever it was like the woman who destroyed the bridge? Or who can control the weather? Think about it, Mira. How could these abilities mitigate climate change?”

She brushed her hands against her thighs, pushed to her feet. Keel was still crouched by Wizard’s body, looking up at her. Who the hell was this strange man with an autistic son, head of the 2,000 troops on the island?

“That sounds politically correct, Frank. But you’ve already said you’d like to capture one of them and I think your agenda is to study a Crow like it’s some sort of lab rat.”

His hand moved almost casually to his weapon and rested there. She sensed it was one of those macho reflexive cop things, a show of force, nothing more. But maybe not. Maybe a psychopath lurked inside him, too deep for her to see. “Really?” She stabbed her thumb at his hand. “What’s that about? Hand on the gun and all.”

His eyes held hers for long uncomfortable moments, as though he was considering what she said, then he laughed and stood upright, his hand falling away from his gun. “Anyone ever tell you you’re paranoid, Mira?”

“Sounds like projection. You’ve got something to hide. You shouldn’t have offered me your hand, Frank.”

“Good point.”

“Your day job. You work in a lab. You’re a scientist who researches molecular structures. For a department that hopes to weaponize these abilities if you can duplicate them. Something fucked up like that.”

He looked surprised, then quickly tried to cover it with a laugh. “Yeah. Right. So you’re a paranoid conspiracy nut.”

“You nailed it. That’s me.”

Keel gestured at the van coming up behind them. “There’s Detective Delgado to pick up the bodies. I can follow you home now. Where’re you parked?”

“I can drive myself home. I’m armed, remember? And I need to finish locking up my store.”

The van pulled alongside the Humvee and Delgado got out. He looked at the two bodies, trotted over to Mira and Keel. “You two okay?”

“We’re fine,” Keel said.

“Better than she is.” Mira gestured at Pam’s body.

“The doc is going to need details, but for now, can you help me get the bodies into the van, Frank?”

“Sure thing.”

“I have to lock up the store,” Mira said. “See you at the cabin, Carlos.”

She hurried back into One World Books, troubled by Keel, by the strange, unsettled feelings she had. In the cafe, she unplugged everything. As she picked up the cups and plates with half-eaten croissants on them, she caught sight of her reflection in the glass. She looked like some crazed woman who had stumbled out of an apocalypse, hair wild, eyes wild, everything about her wild and uncertain.

Then her dead husband took shape in the glass, standing just behind her, Tom with his dark hair, his handsome face. Mira spun around so fast the plates and cups dropped to the floor, shattering, and the half-eaten croissants skittered away like startled roaches. Tom still looked so transparent she could see through him to a table and chairs.

“Tom.” She could barely speak around the pounding lump in her throat.

When he spoke, his voice was soft, but audible. “Elementary school, the girl who bullied you, Mira. Remember? You’re going to need the tool you used.”

Just as quickly as he appeared, he faded away. She was left standing there, sobbing, shards of the shattered plates and cups at her feet, the old wound of his death more than twenty years ago tearing open her heart again. And what the hell had he meant about the girl in elementary school?

Furious at herself for getting involved in this by reading the stone woman, at Tom for offering some stupid riddle she couldn’t decipher, she kicked the remains of an expresso cup across the cafe. Then she grabbed her purse, turned off her cell, swept Mass Dreams of the Future off the table where Pam had left it, and locked up the store. She fled out the back door to the parking lot.

3

What now? What the hell was she supposed to do now? Cower and hide in the cabin and wait for the apocalypse? Read the dead weather dude? All she wanted was for her life to return to normal. But what was normal?

For the last six years, normal had been running the bookstore, scheduling events and author signings, seeing a couple of private clients every week, traveling when time allowed, and stifling her ability so she could keep peace in her marriage. She didn’t want that last part anymore, but she couldn’t embrace this chaos, either.

So here she was, stuck in a situation that had been thrust upon them, Tom’s riddle rolling around inside her. The girl who bullied you… you’re going to need the tool you used. What tool? What girl? When?

Mira scrambled into her car, pulled out of the lot onto Tango Boulevard, then turned onto Old Post. The line for the ferry to Key West was considerably shorter, but it looked like the inbound ferry had just arrived. Supply trucks were driving off, military Jeeps, state police cars. She drove past and at a high point just beyond the docks, stopped at a lookout area, where she could see across the bay to Key West. Off to her right, in between here and there, of course, lay the gaping hole that had been the bridge.

Mira got out and walked to the railing at the farthest point. That weather freak, Pam’s death, and Tom appearing to her for the first time in six years: pivotal moments, all within a period of—what? An hour? Two?

Elementary school. A bully. Think, think. Who? What was the situation?

The problem with remembering: she had blocked out much of her childhood. Born to parents who often had believed she was possessed or just evil, she had learned to keep her psychic insights to herself. If it hadn’t been for Nadine, those conditions might have persisted for years.

And then it came to her, what Tom had meant.

In third grade, she’d been bullied by a girl who disliked her because she was part Latina and spoke Spanish. Her most horrendous prank was dumping used cat litter into Mira’s backpack and when she’d brought out her books during a class, clumped cat shit had come out, too.

Mira had gotten detention, the bully had gotten popular.

Eventually, Mira had gotten even.

One afternoon when the class was in the PE locker room, Bully was bragging about something. Mira, without touching the girl, had yanked down her gym shorts and the bully had been so freaked out she had peed on the floor. She claimed Mira had assaulted her and Mira was suspended for three days from school. Her parents had grounded her for two weeks. And that summer, they shipped her off to Tango Key to stay with Nadine, who subsequently raised her and had made all the difference.

You’re going to need… Could she do it again? Could she affect matter without touching it? Was it, as Tom had implied, an ability she had squashed for nearly forty years? And if so, how the hell was she supposed to wake it up?

She threw her arms into the air and shouted, “Pull her gym shorts down!”

Nothing happened.

She exploded with laughter. “C’mon, Mira.”

There was no little kid here, much less one wearing gym shorts. But the memory stood here with her—bright, vivid, powerful—and on her fourth try, with her arms stretching skyward, pebbles on the ground suddenly shot upward and the wooden railing crackled and popped with fissures.

“Holy shit!”

The pebbles fell to the ground, she wrenched back from the railing. The wood was so splintered it looked like it might crumble in the next hard rain. The heightened energy still coursed through her, so she pointed at the ruined bridge and shouted, “Repair!”

Nothing changed with the bridge. It didn’t magically knit back together. But one of the tires on her car blew. She ran over to it, examined it. She didn’t have to look hard to see how it had torn apart at the tire’s rim. “You were supposed to heal—not destroy.”

She slapped her hands against the tire, but nothing changed. She laughed again. She thought of that third grade bully and how her gym shorts had fallen to her ankles and doubled over, laughing until she sobbed. How gratifying it had been.

“I can do this. I can. I will. Shit. I sound like The Little Engine That Could.”

She got into her car and drove slowly toward the cabin, the flat tire slapping against the pavement.

PART 2

The Others

“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil,

but by those who watch them without doing anything.”

- Albert Einstein

6

Hal

Key West

Hal’s first inhalation of the twenty-first century was the most exquisite thing he’d ever experienced. The air tasted sweet, smelled of flowers and plants and trees for which he had no names. But it was the odor of the ocean that humbled him, that fragrance of salt and seaweed and wildlife that infused him with hope.

We can live here. We can flourish.

Then he promptly fell to the rocky beach on his hands and knees and threw up. “Fuck.” His pack slipped off his shoulder. His stomach heaved again and he felt like he was ridding himself of the past, of his lifetime in the dome, where he had been monitored and followed since his birth to a pair of Normals.

He finally raised up, fumbled with the buckle on his pack, dug inside for a flask of water, and gulped at it. The water dribbled down his chin. He dropped the flask on the rocks, tore off his shoes, and raced toward the irresistible ocean, a blue so blue and clear it made his heart ache.

Hal hurled himself into the splendid blue water, and started sobbing. He had never seen an ocean before or a place like this with a genuine sky above him, wisps of white clouds drifting by. The water was so clear he could see little fish swimming in and out of the sunlight.

Then he remembered he couldn’t swim, and dropped his legs, bare feet searching frantically for the bottom. His toes sank into `sand, an exhilarating sensation, the soft coolness squishing between them. He splashed the salt water on his face, ran his tongue over his lower lip to taste it. He’d never seen an ocean, except in ancient photos and movies his mother had borrowed from the dome archives.

His arms thrashed against the water, his sobs collapsed into hysterical laughter, then sobs again. He made his way back toward shore and collapsed against the beach, cheek pressed to the warm rocks, arms thrown out at his sides. In the dome, there had been no ocean, no beach, no genuine fresh air that had smelled of salt and seaweed and heat. In the dome, none of this incredible beauty had existed. Yes, there had been parks, blue skies, sunlight, but all of it was a facade, phony.

He heard a cry somewhere above him and rolled onto his back, arms thrown out at his sides, and peered upward into the afternoon sky. The sunlight was so bright, his third eyelids immediately slipped into place, protecting his vision. Much better, he thought, and watched a pair of birds wheeling through the sky. He’d seen images of these birds. Ibises? Flamingos?

No, gulls, they were seagulls. He vaguely recalled a book his mother had given him from the archives—Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Hal sat up, spellbound, watching as they made their way up the coast. The only birds he’d ever seen before were vultures outside of the dome.

“You lucky fuckers.” He spoke softly, vehemently. “You don’t know how good you have it.”

He glanced around, making sure the rocky beach was still empty, and stripped off his drenched shirt and pants. He pulled on dry clothes he dug from his pack, clothes that looked like they came from this century—khaki shorts, a tropical shirt, comfortable cloth shoes. They had been specially made by a historian in his group. Within his tribe of Crows, he could request almost anything and get it.

He was Hal, after all, named after the evil artificial intelligence in Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the committee had selected him to lead because of the mythology Kubrick had created about that name. He’d seen the movie when he was a kid, one his mother had borrowed from the archives, a choppy, faded copy. But it had driven home a personal message: he’d been chosen.

Suddenly, a redheaded woman faded into view just in front of him, coughing violently, and fell to her hands and knees.

“Red!”

Hal scrambled over to her, held her head as she puked, her thick copper hair falling along the sides of her face. He pressed the flask of water into her hands. She raised it to her mouth, eyes wide with astonishment, then swallowed, coughed, sipped.

“My God… ocean… And the air, Hal, the air… And real sunlight.” She choked up, tears rolled down her cheeks. “Shit, I made it. We made it. Thank you, Jack Finney.” And she started to sob, fists pressed into her eyes.

“Take it easy, Red. Just sit for a few minutes.”

“So much…beauty.” Her hands fell away from her eyes. “How can their hearts take in all this beauty….” She started weeping again, strangled sounds torn from her heart.

Hal sat beside her, picked up one of the rocks, smooth and warm from the sun. “Feel that, Red.” He pressed it into her right hand. “That’s a piece of the twenty-first century.”

Nodding, she sniffled loudly, wiped her left hand across her eyes, then opened her fingers and stared at the rock she held. “Do you really believe the island can be ours, Hal?”

“We wouldn’t be here otherwise.” He got to his feet, held out his hand and she grasped it and he pulled her up.

“Did Wind make it?” Red asked.

Wind, her sister. The love of his life. “Not yet.”

“But we were together.”

“Don’t worry. She’ll get here.” She had to. “Everyone will.” He suddenly frowned, glanced around. The destroyed bridge to the west told him they were in Key West, not Tango Key. How had that happened? He pointed across the bay. “There’s Tango Key. Lightning did what the committee asked. The bridge is useless.”

“But she didn’t survive.”

“She knew what the risks were.”

“How come we’re in Key West and not over there?”

“I don’t know.”

Red lifted her hand, brushed the sand off of it, made a fist twice, opened it. Writing appeared against her palm. She touched it, enlarging the image. “I downloaded Jon’s most recent column before I left. There are links to videos the archives didn’t have. It sounds like Lightning lost her fucking mind when she came through. She didn’t just destroy the bridge, Hal. A whole bunch of people died.”

Hal read the column from her palm and experienced the level of alarm he often had felt in the dome. “National Guard troops? A state of emergency? A curfew? This could mean big problems for us.”

“What’s a national guard?”

“I don’t know. But troops mean soldiers. Let’s go find a car. Once we’re on the island, we’ll figure out where to stay. How many others left when you did?”

“Five. There were going to be more groups of five until no one was left. But I don’t know how many made it. The dome walls were starting to collapse, alarms were shrieking. Some of the Crows had been captured. The Normals were using them to get themselves to freedom.”

“Nothing new there. They’ve always considered us their slaves.”

“Maybe some people changed their minds after reading what the travel did to Lightning and Stoner. There was some talk, Hal, that you were using the early ones to pave the way for your own arrival.”

“That’s a lie,” he snapped. “The tribe voted on who should go first.”

Red shrugged. “Whatever. We need phones. My research says everyone has a phone. There’s so much we don’t know. Like, how’s our presence here going to impact our time? Can we prevent the domed cities from becoming a necessity? Can we prevent ice shelves from collapsing? Just how much of the past can we change?”

He and his parents and Wind had talked frequently about changing the past. Could they delay the catastrophic effects of climate change and create a different future for themselves? Could they avoid the global pandemic that was supposed to break out this spring or summer? The skeptics always sited the grandfather paradox. It basically presented a potential problem in logic—if you traveled to a time before your grandfather had children and killed him, it would make your own birth impossible. Hal considered it too simplistic. He leaned toward the Many Worlds theory, that for every choice you made, an alternate world branched off. Similar to the famous poem by Robert Frost about the road not taken.

“Maybe. Think about what Wizard could do for this time—bring rain to drought areas, restore the ice shelves…”

“I hope he makes it.”

“He will. In the meantime, we need to claim Tango Key as ours.”

Red finally said, “Do I look twenty-first century enough?”

Her jeans were faded, her shirt was black, tied at her tiny waist, and created the perfect backdrop for the tumble of her copper hair. “You look beautiful. Perfect.” Like her sister, he thought, except Wind was a brunette. “Let’s head into town and steal a car.”

“We should wait here for Wind.”

“She’ll find us, just like you found me.”

Red hesitated, a sign that told him she might move quickly forward.

On the walk into old town Key West, they didn’t talk much. Hal suspected she felt as overwhelmed as he did. Even though they had studied the archive data and photos on the Florida Keys in the twenty-first, none of it had prepared them for the reality. The fresh sea air, plants, trees, flowers, and the ever-present water—all of it struck him at such a visceral level that Hal felt like crying again. Add to this the shops, boats, restaurants, markets, vehicles of all shapes and sizes, and that people had complete freedom to move about freely. Hal suddenly hated these twenty-firsters for not appreciating everything they had.

And what was this presence of military jeeps and armed soldiers about?

They walked into an old neighborhood with cobbled streets and cars parked along every inch of the curbs. “I’d like to find something large enough to accommodate at least seven or eight of us,” he said.

“I hope we have that many, with most of us as Lethals. But I don’t feel good about the numbers, Hal. How much cash do you have?”

“Eleven thousand. And the bogus card and ID the committee created.”

“I’ve got about eight. And the card and ID. And I have a lot of nuggets.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

“Is it suspicious to use them?”

“My research says people in this century love gold,” Hal said. “But it’s a cash and credit economy.”

“Let’s find the car you want, then offer to buy it with cash. I don’t like the idea of stealing. It makes us just like the Normals who stole from us for centuries.”

“The fucking Normals were never normal. And we were never abnormal or any of the other names they gave us. And this White Crow shit… like we’re rarities. They just called us that to make us feel like freaks.”

“Hey, I’d rather be called a White Crow than an Abnormal, the way it used to be.”

He wondered if she’d ever read the William James quote about white crows. His mother had introduced him to James around the same time the government started calling them White Crows. She had laughed about the new name. They’re always looking for names for you guys, Hal. Abnormals was too offensive to some of the parents. Freaks was just as bad. He shook off these thoughts of the past.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave a trail of nuggets. It might make it too easy to track us,” he said.

“It’s stupid to steal a car that can be tracked,” she argued. “And we’re not ready yet to confront these twenty-first century people. You and I can’t do it by ourselves.” She stopped, nodded at a shop on their left. “Look. They sell phones. We need phones.”

“Let’s get a car first.”

“I’m going inside to buy a phone.”

He caught her arm as she started to move toward the shop. “I said, our priority is to find a car.”

Red jerked her arm away, her fury evident. “Let’s get something straight, Hal. You’re not my boss or my leader. We’re not in the dome anymore. I won’t be told what to do or not do by a wannabe dictator. Clear?”

“I still lead the Crows.”

“Yeah? Says who? You see a bunch of us here, dude?” She threw her arms out to her sides. “You don’t lead me. No wonder Wind got fed up with you.”

“I’m not a wannabe dictator. And Wind loved me. She didn’t get fed up with me. She got too possessive.”

“For shit’s sake, you’re delusional.”

She flicked her wrist so her fingers pointed at his feet and flames leaped out and scorched the tips of his shoes. He jumped back. “What the fuck, Red. I could liquify you in seconds.”

She exploded with laughter. “And I could sure as hell fry you before I melted completely. And then one of us would be here alone or neither of us would be here. I’m buying phones. You coming in or not?”

Hal didn’t want to give in to her, but he didn’t intend to stand out here waiting for her, either.

2

Inside the shop, two customers studied different walls of displayed phones in a variety of colors, shapes, prices. Red went up to the male clerk at the front desk and Hal could see how taken back the man was by her astounding good looks.

“Excuse me, sir. What cell phone would you recommend that I can buy minutes for?”

“Just calling minutes?”

“No. Internet and text minutes, too.”

It surprised Hal that she sounded like she knew what she was talking about. But then, she’d always been an excellent researcher. The clerk came out from behind the desk and went over to the north wall. “Well, uh, any of these phones. They’re refurbished iPhones. The service is with Grasshopper, the minutes are inexpensive. But, full disclosure here, the coverage isn’t that good with this service.”

“Does it work in the Keys?” Hal asked.

“Sure. But it’s spotty in other parts of Florida.”

“And how do you buy the minutes?” Red asked.

“Credit or debit. I’d recommend credit. Putting your debit card on the Internet is too risky these days.”

Hal needed a couple of answers. “It’s easy to do?”

“Self-explanatory. Just follow the directions.”

“Can you show us?” Hal asked.

“Sure. Once you buy the phones, I’ll set them up for you.”

Red handed over her card, the man charged them, the sale went through. He then proceeded to set them up with minutes and unlimited texts and fifty gigs of data. Hal watched closely. And when the two people who’d been looking at phones left, he said, “Thanks so much for your help.” Then he rapped his knuckles against the man’s forehead. “Go to sleep now and forget you ever saw us.”

The clerk immediately slumped to the counter and Red caught him before he slipped off and hit the floor. She set him down carefully. “What the hell did you do that for, Hal?”

“We need phones for everyone else.”

“We don’t have any idea how many will make it.”

“Let’s take six for now. We can always come back for more.” He hurried around the shop, selecting phones from different display cases, and dropped them into his pack.

Red stared at the snoozing clerk. “We should leave him something, Hal.”

“You already paid him.”

“With a bogus card.” She set three gold nuggets on the counter.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Hal cautioned.

“No, you wouldn’t. But I just did.”

“Let’s get out of here and find a car.”

3

The blue Subaru was the perfect vehicle. Hal liked the name, the way it rolled off his tongue in three tidy syllables. Since there was about an hour left of sunlight, it would be easier and more efficient to steal it. But he now held a grudging admiration for the way Red had handled things in the phone shop and decided to buy the car from the owner.

“That’s the car.” Hal pointed at the Subaru.

“Do you, uh, know how to drive?”

“Learned on the simulator, same as you.”

“The real thing may be totally different than the simulator, Hal.”

“Maybe. But you don’t have to do anything. I’ll negotiate with the owner. I’ll drive.”

“Go buy the car. I’ll get our phones lined up.”

“Been thinking, Red. We should agree to never turn on each other.”

She was fiddling with one of the phones and looked up at him. “And why’s that, Hal? Because I could fry you before you melted me? Done that, been there.”

“In this century, they say, been there, done that. But you may actually have a point about being… nice.” From his pack, Hal removed a wad of cash and six gold nuggets that he pocketed. “So I’m buying us a car. I’m Mr. Nice Guy.” He turned toward the apartment building.

But as he started up the sidewalk, panic fluttered in the pit of his stomach. He quelled it with a breathing exercise Lightning had taught him months ago, when she was selected by their committee to blow up the bridge. Three deep breaths, hold for three seconds, exhale for three seconds, and repeat three times. He wondered how often she’d used that technique when she’d been on the bridge. Once he and his Crows were in full possession of the island, he intended to honor Lightning and Stoner in some way—statues, plaques with their names on it, a park named after them. Something.

By the time he reached the front door, he felt a little calmer. He stepped into the building, rapped at the door on the right.

No answer. He knocked at the door on the left. The young woman who opened it looked harried, and held a grouchy, teary toddler on her right hip. “Please don’t complain to me about her crying, okay? She’s got a fever, she’s cutting teeth, and I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with…”

“No, no, I’m not here to complain,” Hal said quickly. “Do you own the blue Subaru out front?”

She laughed. “My ex gave it to me so he doesn’t have to pay child support and…” She stopped, ran a hand over her face. “Shit, sorry to rant. Am I blocking you in or something?”

“I’d like to buy the car from you. What’s your price?”

“My price? I… uh, I have no idea. It’s a 2014. I can Google it. I…”

The little girl in her arms started wailing. The woman put her in a gizmo on the floor, a little chair with wheels, and she moved it around with her feet, but continued fussing. Hal leaned toward her. “You need a nap, cutie. A bit of sleep.”

The child looked at him, yawned, then her head promptly dropped to her folded arms and she went to sleep.

“Wow! How’d you do that?” the woman exclaimed.

“It’s all in the voice. Take care of her. Where I come from, people are sterilized. Sometimes they miss a few, but not often.”

“Jesus, that’s barbaric. Where’re you from?”

“A country you wouldn’t recognize. Will this do for payment on the car?” He gave her a handful of gold nuggets and a wad of cash. He had no idea how much.

“What the hell?” She stared at the gold, the cash she clutched, looked at him. “This is a scam, right? You go around offering to buy people’s cars and there’s a catch of some kind.”

“No catch. I just like your car. It’s what I’m looking for.”

She sat on the floor now, counting the cash, studying the nuggets. “I used to be a jeweler.” She bit into one of the nuggets. “And I think this is real gold, dude. You overpaid me. I’ve got, like, six grand in cash here and if this is real gold, then even more than that. The car needs a lot of work. It’s got more than a hundred thousand miles on it. Needs new brakes. New tires. A general overhaul.”

“That’s fine,” Hal said.

“My God.” She shook her head, got up and went over to a worn couch. She dug around inside her handbag, brought back keys, pressed them into his hand. “The registration is tucked into the visor. I think you’ve just freed me. Thank you, whoever you are.”

“Hal. The name’s Hal.”

His fingers closed over the keys and as he turned to leave the building, she called out, “Hey, Hal, in case you haven’t heard, a nine p.m. curfew has been imposed here in the keys. Because of the terrorist attack on the bridge. It was supposed to be dusk to dawn, but they’ve lengthened it to so the evening ferry can bring in supplies to Tango.”

“Thanks for letting me know.”

Hal hurried out of the building, eager to get inside his new car and to the ferry.

“It’s ours,” he said to Red.

“I hope you didn’t melt the owner.”

“I know how to restrain myself, Red.” She really pissed him off at times. “She seemed really happy with what I paid her.”

“And don’t you feel good about being nice, Hal?”

He shrugged. “Stealing it would’ve been faster.”

She slapped a cell into his hand. “It’s set up.”

They got into the Subaru. It smelled of leather and spilled juice. Cookie crumbs powdered the floor and seats. The tray of the child’s car seat in the back held a nearly empty box of animal crackers. It would do, Hal decided, and eyed the dashboard. He remembered from his simulator training that the object with the knob was a radio, the thing to the right of it was the lid to a glove compartment, and the instruments directly in from of him were the odometer, gas tank indicator, lights that would come on when there was a problem of some sort. There was also a gadget on the wiper arm that protruded from the steering column that turned the headlights on and off. The basics.

Hal started the car, gave it too much gas, and it jerked away from the curb. “Seat belt,” Red said, and snapped hers into place. “I thought you said that driving wouldn’t be a problem.”

“It’ll be fine. I just need a little practice.” The Subaru moved in erratic burps over the bumpy cobblestones to the corner. “Where’s the ferry? Does the phone tell us?”

“Yup. I’ve got yours and mine set up. The GPS is good. Take a right. Go half a mile, the ferry docks will come up on the left. I already used the card to pay for an Airbnb apartment on Tango. It’s in the hills.”

“What’s Airbnb?”

“A website for booking homes, apartments, rooms.”

“How do you know about it, Red?”

“All those long days in the dome, I read a lot. Researched until I could almost taste the air here.”

Like him, though his focus had been different. “How large is the apartment?”

“Three bedrooms.”

“Not big enough.”

“It’ll do. Look, Hal, we’re going to need real food. We’ve been eating plant-based shit for too long now. We need something else, native foods. There’re several markets on this island. It’s how you build your immune system.”

“It’s on my list.”

The ferry depot appeared on his left, just a short line waiting to drive on, mostly huge supply trucks and gasoline tankers. While they waited, Hal picked up the phone Red had prepared for him, navigated to Siri, the AI voice. “Siri, what’s the home address for Mira Morales?”

Siri replied: “Checking, Hal.”

“Why do you want to know that?” Red asked.

“Because Jon’s articles indicate she’s a seer.”

“So you’re going to introduce yourself?”

It would be interesting, he thought. If she was as good as Jon’s columns implied, maybe he could recruit her. “It’s always good to know where the seers live, Red.”

“The address for Mira Morales is 918 Pirate’s Cove Road,” Siri said.

“And the address for One World Books?”

“One World Books is located at 111 Tango Boulevard, Hal.”

“Thanks, Siri.”

“You’re welcome, Hal.”

He turned Siri off. “I love her voice.”

Red rolled her eyes. “C’mon. She’s a basic AI.”

“I’d love to walk through a real bookstore,” Hal said.

“Me, too. But not tonight. We need to get ready for the arrival of the others. And that means real food first.”

He turned the knob for the headlights. “We’ll play that by ear.”

“You’re getting bossy and dictatorial again.”

Her remark irritated him. “I’m just telling you what I would like to do.”

“Kinda sounded to me like you were giving orders, Hal.”

“Kinda sounds to me like you’re misinterpreting what I said.” It wouldn’t take much to dislike her.

Hal finally was waved onto the ferry. Four armed soldiers directed cars into parking spaces and he nosed the Subaru into a spot on the open upper deck. Passengers stood at the railings as vehicles continued to drive onto the ferry. He didn’t feel like waiting in the car, so he and Red got out and made their way to the closest railing.

Blend in. Act like you belong.

A breeze blew in off the water, carrying such intoxicating scents that Hal briefly shut his eyes and filled his lungs with all of it.

Sometimes, when they’d been preparing for this trip, they’d gotten—or remembered—data that had contradicted what they currently had known about the twenty-first and Tango Key. He remembered, for instance, that when he was in his teens, his mother had told him that once they were ready to leave the dome, they would have to choose a year other than the early 2020s because a pandemic would be raging. But no one had mentioned pandemic in the subsequent years and clearly, no pandemic raged here now.

Not long before his mother was killed by the Normals, he’d asked her about that pandemic in the early 2020s. She’d looked at him, frowning. What pandemic, Hal?

He’d started to tell her about what she’d told him when he was in his teens, but knew she wouldn’t remember because for her that conversation never had happened. Hal later learned about the Mandela Effect, where some people remembered something in a particular way, but it was incorrect. The name of the theory came about because so many people remember Nelson Mandela dying while he was still in prison back in the 1980s. Yet, his actual death occurred on Dec. 5, 2013. For Hal, this confirmed the Many Worlds theory.

In some alternate version of reality, Mandela had died in prison in the 1980s and had never become president of South Africa. How many other events like that had divided time? Maybe in one version of events, a pandemic was sweeping across the globe and hundreds of thousands were dying. If so, then in that reality, the planet was resetting itself so that up the line, life in a dome might not happen. In this reality, Hal thought, the Crows taking over Tango Key would reset the planet. He wasn’t sure exactly how that would happen, but if enough of them arrived, he felt sure it would happen.

A sudden burst of wind snapped him out of his reverie and Squirt appeared between him and Red, fell to his hands and knees, alternately choking and gasping for air, his pack sliding off his shoulder. Hal quickly slung his arm around the kid and hoped no one around them had noticed his abrupt appearance. Red hugged Squirt.

“Breathe, Squirt,” she said. “Breathe deeply. I know you feel unsteady, but we’ve got you. You’ll feel better in a few minutes.”

The short, plump kid of thirteen took a deep, shuddering breath, fixed the strap of his pack hanging from his shoulder, grabbed onto the railing to steady himself. His third eyelids slid into place. “My glasses, where’re my glasses?”

Hal spotted the glasses on the deck, scooped them up, handed them to Squirt. He put them on, the glasses lopsided on his face. He looked at Hal, at Red, and then out at the sea, and burst out crying.

“I’m… here. I made it. My God… it’s so… awesome. Look at those… waves. Smell the salt in the air? The green of everything? The…”

“It’s wonderful to see you, Squirt,” Red said.

“You too. Both you guys. I kept searching for the color of your hair, Red.” He paused, frowned, glanced around. “Why’re we on a ferry?”

“We’re headed to Tango Key,” Hal said.

“Are you guys the only two?”

“For right now,” Hal replied.

“Who were you with?” Red asked.

“The ones who were left. Maybe thirty or forty of us. I’m not sure of the exact number.” He poked at his glasses, pushing them farther up on the bridge of his nose. “We had trouble holding the past in place, it was hard to concentrate… so much noise around us, the dome falling apart, Normals running around, freaked out…”

He started crying again and Red slipped her arm around his shoulders. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re here with us.”

The ferry finally started moving. Squirt calmed down and gestured at the ruined bridge. “Lightning’s work?”

Hal nodded.

“Awesome.”

His favorite word, Hal thought.

“Not awesome at all,” Red said. “Lightning died and so did a lot of other people. They aren’t going to welcome us here, that’s for sure.”

Squirt frowned. “But that was never the point, was it?”

Hal chuckled. “Smart kid.” He gave Red a look that made it clear Squirt had the right attitude.

4

The ferry approached Tango Key in the gathering dusk. It looked lush and inviting, Hal thought, an emerald floating in a mysterious sea. He was eager to drive off the ferry and onto the island. Tango Key had obsessed him for most of his thirty-eight years, ever since his mother had shown him archived clips of the Florida Keys before they’d been submerged by rising oceans.

He was five at the time, his ability evident but subdued by a time-release drug that his embedded chip controlled. Even though his mother had been a Normal, she refused to follow dome protocol where he was concerned. She got away with it because she was the president’s half-sister and her parents had money. And as the dome archivist, his mother had access to the vast collection of material from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, most of it digitalized.

But there were also collections of things the early climate change refugees, those fleeing the coasts, had carried with them—books, clothing, cellphones, batteries, blankets, photographs, family albums, candles, flashlights, stuff. They had been preserved and could be seen in the historical museum. Some of these items had been used as prototypes to create twenty-second century facsimiles.

Few Crows had enjoyed his advantages or had Normal parents who encouraged the development of the very ability that made them freaks. His mother’s belief was that abundant love and encouragement would keep Hal from inflicting injury on anyone and that he and others could be integrated into dome life. She provided him with an antidote for the drug that suppressed his ability and he never violated her trust.

Until Wind.

More than a decade ago, he’d witnessed a pair of soldiers preparing to hang a young Crow in a private courtyard. It had triggered such rage in him that he’d liquified both men and had taken the girl home with him. His parents had taken her in. That girl had been Wind, Red’s younger sister.

Over time, as the Normals increased their attacks on Crows, there had been many other rescues under similar conditions, attempted private hangings, murders, rapes. His father eventually moved the rescued Crows to a warehouse he owned on the dome’s east side and rebuilt the inside of it to accommodate them. All were provided with the antidote to the drug that suppressed their abilities. Eventually, as the rescued recruited more of their kind, Hal’s group had grown into the hundreds.

When it was discovered what his parents had done, they were put to death, and Hal and his army unleashed their fury on the dome. The president was killed, his brother assumed power, some of the Crows were caught, drugged, tortured, killed. The rest went underground and planned their escape. What they hadn’t counted on was the rapid deterioration of the dome walls.

As the ferry moved in to dock, he, Red and Squirt got into the car, their excitement palpable until Hal noticed soldiers going from car to car, asking for ID. “Shit, this is like the dome.”

“We’ve got IDs,” Red said quickly, and snapped her fingers. “Squirt, have your ID handy.”

“Just so you know,” Squirt said quickly, “… the committee wasn’t sure if the IDs would work.”

Typical, Hal thought. The committee had never been sure about anything they replicated.

A soldier stopped at Hal’s window. “Evening, sir. ID for you and your passengers, please.”

“Here’s mine,” Red said cheerfully, and handed it to Hal.

“And mine.” Squirt passed his ID forward.

Hal handed over his ID first. The soldier slid it through an electronic gizmo in his hand that suddenly beeped loudly. “Please get out of the car, sir.”

He left Red’s and Squirt’s IDs on the console and hoped it was a clear indication this wasn’t unfolding as they’d hoped. “What’s the problem?”

The soldier drew his weapon and stepped back. “I said, Get. Out. Of. The. Car.”

“Okay, getting out.”

“Arms raised,” the soldier snapped.

Hal raised his arms and heard the hum of the back window as Squirt lowered it. “Sir?”

“You, too, son,” the soldier said to Squirt. “You and your mom get out of the car.”

More soldiers ran over, weapons drawn.

Hal swung his legs to the ground. Red’s door opened. And Squirt’s.

`“Fuck this shit,” Hal muttered, and the beast inside him leaped at the soldier.

The man’s weapon started melting and before he had a chance to drop it or scream, his legs turned to water and down he went, the rest of him liquifying so quickly that he was a pool of blood and water within seconds. Red threw her arms into the air and the next two soldiers went up in flames. The fourth soldier backpedaled as he fired. Hal melted the bullets, then his gun, and Squirt flipped something at him—a disk, a Frisbee, a blade, Hal couldn’t tell for sure. The object moved too fast. Whatever it was struck the fourth soldier at the throat with such speed and power that it severed his head.

It rolled across the deck.

Screams and shrieks filled the air, people stampeded for the ramp, cars swerved out of line, Red and Squirt leaped back into the Subaru. Hal gunned the accelerator and slammed into cars that stood between him and the exit ramp. As soon as the tires touched land, he tore right on the closest road and raced uphill until the headlights illuminated a turnoff into trees. He swung left and followed a maze of dirt roads through the woods, turning wildly in one direction after another until he found a safe spot deep in the trees. The screech of sirens seemed more distant here.

He slammed on the brakes, killed the headlights, shut off the engine, leaped out.

“Fuck, fuck, we need to get rid of this car, find another. Get your stuff out. C’mon, people, c’mon, out. Fast.”

“We may have a ways to walk to find another car,” Red said.

“Wonderful!” Squirt exclaimed. “We’ll be walking around in real trees, in real darkness. Shit, melt the car, Hal, and let’s get moving.”

“The curfew will be in effect,” Hal said.

“So we keep to the trees,” Red said. “Make our way to the Airbnb.”

“What’d you throw at that soldier, Squirt?” Hal asked.

“A picture book I found tucked in the netting on the back of the driver’s seat. Anything will do.”

“Well, we were hoping for more Lethals,” Red said. “And you’re definitely that, Squirt.”

“Yeah,” the kid said. “Think about all the names they’ve given us over the years. Aberrants, Abnormals, Divergents, Freaks, Outliers, Abnormals, White Crows. Each name was supposed to make us feel worse about ourselves. But with every name, I only felt stronger. Because really, what we are is alchemists.”

Red grinned. “Oh, I love that idea.”

Squirt now stood to Hal’s left, Red on his right, packs over their shoulders. Hal placed his palms on the hood of the Subaru. It saddened him to liquify this car. He liked it. But as the hood started melting, he assured himself they would find another, better vehicle.

7

Wormhole

Sheppard was on his way to the cabin, driving north on Old Post on the western side of the island, past the lighthouse, when three things happened simultaneously. Annie texted that the dolphins were acting up. Keel called and announced something had happened at the ferry docks. Sirens all over the island started shrieking.

These sirens weren’t just those of first responders—cops, ambulances, fire trucks. It was part of the Global Consciousness Project, a system that had originated at Princeton and been put into place on Tango a year after Hurricane Danielle. It had gone offline in 2006, brought back online for the 2017 hurricane season, when Irma had been predicted to hit the Florida keys. Then offline again until this morning, when it was activated by the bureau’s Miami IT team. It was triggered by a variety of factors.

The external factors included abrupt environmental changes in temperature, barometric pressure, and wind speed. Then there were readings from dozens of random number generators situated around the world—and on Tango Key—that measured changes in collective consciousness.

In recent training, the GCP had been explained in a way he hadn’t understood until the events on the bridge. As mind moves, so does matter. In other words, this tool operated according to principles in Mira’s world. And one of those principles was that the impact of consciousness could be measured.

As soon as those sirens went off, he made an abrupt U-turn and raced back down Old Post, through Tango’s downtown and up Old Post on the eastern side of the island to the ferry docks. Bright security lights had clicked on around the docks as soon as the sirens had gone off and illuminated absolute chaos everywhere. People were trying to escape the ferry all at once. Huge supply trucks trundled out onto Old Post, tires screeching against the pavement, their cabs swaying violently into erratic turns while smaller vehicles tried to speed past them and crashed into each other in the process. People who had abandoned their cars on the ferry ran out into the road, waving their arms, shouting for help. The air reeked of panic.

Sheppard parked alongside the equipment at the mouth of the bridge, grabbed his rifle from the passenger seat, and raced uphill toward the docks. He saw Delgado and three other cops trying to divert traffic either north or south, and ran over to him.

“What the hell happened, Carlos?”

“Fuckers were here. Goot’s up on deck. It’s a goddamn mess, Shep. We need help. Some of Keel’s troops are headed here.”

Sheppard ran past people fleeing the docks, the constant screech of sirens pounding against him, his cell ringing and dinging and singing continually. When he reached the ferry’s deck, it looked like a war zone of abandoned cars, many of them smoking, most smashed beyond repair, shattered glass everywhere. Gutierrez and a woman—nurse, social worker, volunteer, Sheppard had no idea—were comforting several wailing children. A man’s severed head lay nearby, his grotesque expression a testament to his shock.

Gutierrez disentangled himself from the kids and hurried over to Sheppard, his face ravaged. “Jesus God, Shep. Three of them. Three of these freaks. The redhead shot fire. The black man turned a soldier to liquid. The kid hurled something that sliced off that soldier’s head. The…” His voice faltered, he swiped at his eyes.

“You saw all this?”

Gutierrez nodded. “We’re fucked, amigo.” He stumbled toward a bench next to the railing and sank onto it, twisting his fists against his eyes. “We have no defense against something like this.”

“Of course we do. Drones. Planes.”

“Nukes?” Gutierrez’s fists dropped away for his eyes and he looked at Sheppard. “Because that’s what it may take. I’ve never seen anything like this. Ever.”

Sheppard had no comforting words, no reassurances. He squeezed Gutierrez’s shoulder. “We’ll figure this out.” It sounded lame, but it was the only thing that came to mind.

He hurried over to Rincon, who was pulling a body bag over the remains of the man who had been decapitated. “Ian, how many casualties?”

“Six so far. Four guards, three passengers. But there’s so much rubble I’m sure we’ll find more. We’re making our way to, uh, the… head.”

“Any idea where the ferry’s captain is?”

Rincon gestured at a tall man standing at the back of the deck, a cell mashed to his ear. “He’s trying to get more ferries here from Key Largo. We need at least two of them operating so people can evacuate and we can keep Tango stocked with supplies.”

“Is there security video?”

“Yeah. Keel’s in the pilot house, viewing it.” He pointed at the stairs.

“Got it.”

“Shep.” Rincon pushed his shades back onto the top of his head and looked up from the corpse he was putting in a body bag. “We’re in really deep shit here.”

“And the shit’s probably going to get deeper.”

Sheppard took the stairs two at a time and ducked into the pilot house. Keel glanced up from the computer. “You’ve got to see this, Shep. The security camera is positioned just above the upper deck of cars. Perfect angle.”

“Faces visible?”

“Yes.”

He started the video. Sheppard noted the time stamp: 6:23 p.m. Then he watched with mounting horror as a soldier’s weapon melted in his hands and his body turned to water and he went down like an imploded building. The redhead set two soldiers on fire and the weird-looking plump kid with the crooked black-framed glasses hurled something at the fourth soldier that sent his head flying.

Sheppard slowed the video down so he could see what the kid had thrown. But even in slow motion, the object moved too fast for him to tell for sure what it was. “What’s that look like to you, Frank?”

“A guy lost his head. His fucking head. That’s what it looks like.”

“I meant the kid. What’s he throwing?”

Keel shrugged. “Damned if I know. But his ability is apparently the speed and precision at which he can throw something. What the fuck, Shep. We need to plaster their faces all over the Internet and post this security footage to the bureau’s YouTube site.”

“My thinking exactly. People need to know what these freaks are capable of doing and what they look like. Send everyone a copy, will you? And that Subaru. Can we zoom in on the plate? I’ll run it.”

Keel zoomed in on it, Sheppard jotted it down, and ran it. The car was registered to Amanda Crowley in Key West. He tracked down her phone number and called her. She answered on the second ring.

“Ms. Crowley?”

“Speaking.”

“I’m FBI Agent Wayne Sheppard and I’m calling about your 2014 Subaru. Did you report it stolen?”

“Stolen? Uh, no. I sold it to this guy who came to the door this afternoon. Nice man, he loved the car, and he paid in cash and gold nuggets. Weird, huh?”

Gold nuggets. Like the ones the lightning woman had been carrying? “Can you describe him?”

“Dark brown skin, curly black hair, under six feet, slender.”

The man on the video, Sheppard thought. “Did he give you his name?”

“Hal.”

Like Mira had picked up. “That’s it? No last name?”

“Just Hal.”

“Thanks, I appreciate the information.”

“Did something happen, Agent Sheppard?”

“He and his passengers were responsible for half a dozen deaths on one of the ferries this evening.”

“My God, yeah, I just heard about the ferry. But he seemed so nice.”

They usually do, Sheppard thought. “If you hear from him or see him again, please text me at this number.”

“Of course. I definitely will. You know, he did say something strange about how where he comes from, people like him are sterilized. Oh, and he also told my daughter she should take a little nap and she immediately fell asleep in her walker.”

Huh? These Crows had multiple abilities? Sheppard already felt like he lived inside a Marvel comic book, but this was beyond Marvel. “Can you tell me anything else about him?”

“He had a slight accent. I couldn’t place it.”

“Was he alone?”

“He came to the door alone. But a redheaded woman waited for him outside. She was fiddling with a couple of cell phones.”

“Did you see a plump kid wearing glasses with them?”

“No. Just Hal and the redhead.”

“About what time was this?”

“Probably two thirty, three.”

So the kid had arrived at some point between then and once they were on the ferry. “If you think of anything else, Ms. Crowley, please text or call me.”

“You bet.”

They disconnected. “Frank, can you take the video back to before the ferry left Key West?”

“Sure.” He played around with it. “Here, as the last vehicle is coming on and the gate is closing.”

“Mostly semis hauling food and supplies, first responder vehicles, and locals coming home for the night.”

“Locals coming home from where? Work? Really? The bridge to their home was pretty much destroyed and they went to work today?” Keel said.

“Type A’s,” Sheppard remarked.

“Well, shit, we worked, Shep. What does that make us?”

“Type A Assholes.” Sheppard tapped the screen. “There’s the Subaru.”

The footage captured the moments as the ferry pulled away from the Key West dock. People got out of their vehicles to stand at the railing. The Subaru was parked near the front of the ferry and when Hal and the redhead got out, Keel said, “Okay, it’s still just the two of them.”

“Maybe they locked the kid in the trunk.”

Hal and the redhead remained in sight at the railing, easy to see because the deck was well lit. Six minutes into the footage, something in the space between them changed or shifted or ebbed, Sheppard couldn’t tell exactly what was going on. He took the footage back thirty seconds, slowed it down.

Now he saw it, the way the air turned as black as India ink and the plump kid tumbled out of it, onto his hand and knees. Hal glanced around nervously, helped the boy to his feet. The redhead hugged him hello. The kid took one look beyond the railing and started crying.

“My God,” Keel said. “Now we know that time travel looks like an ink well.”

“A wormhole,” Sheppard said softly.

But was it? He remembered an article he’d read last year about astronomers who had captured a picture of a gigantic black hole at the core of a nearby galaxy, Messier 87. It looked like a ring of fire around a deep, dark shadow. But there hadn’t been any ring of fire around the inkiness he’d seen. The inky blackness, then the kid. That was it. Yet, if it was true the kid was a Crow from 2141, and that he’d gotten here through some intense focus of collective consciousness, then maybe the inkwell was exactly what a personal black hole looked like. What the hell did he know?

“We’ve just seen something no one else on the planet has seen, Shep. At least, not that we know of.”

What Sheppard heard just then was the awe in Keel’s voice, raw and genuine, and understood it was the emotion that lay behind his remark about capturing a Crow. The thrill for him lay in what he, a biologist, might discover about the nature of reality. But Sheppard cared less about what a black hole might look like than he did about his team seeing this video footage and exposing the Crows’ faces to the general public.

“The time stamp for the beginning of this is 6:29,” Keel said.

Sheppard texted the footage to everyone in their loop. “We all need the information. I’ll get their images sent out as APBs throughout the state and post the video onto our YouTube.”

Keel started to say something else, but his cell rang, and he glanced at it. “Need to get this.” He turned his back on Sheppard, making it clear the call was private. As Sheppard started out of the pilot’s house, he heard Keel say, “Yeah, Rudy. More arrived. I’m playing it all by ear.”

Rudy? Who’s Rudy?

Sheppard paused outside the pilot house to load the video onto the FBI’s official YouTube channel with a short explanation about who, what, and where and asked people to call or email with any information they might have. He included his personal cell number.

By the time he reached the deck with all the ruined cars—just a matter of minutes—the video already had been viewed dozens of times and comments were stacking up.

People were scared.

These freaks, outliers, Crows, whatever name you gave them, wouldn’t be able to show their faces on the island now without being recognized.

2

Shortly after midnight, Mira and Annie started setting out food on the cabin’s long dining room table, along with paper plates, cups, and bowls. It was mostly nibble food that people could snack on throughout the night. Salads, cold cuts, cheese and crackers, sliced fruits, cold casseroles, even peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. There were pitchers of iced tea, water, lemonade, and a coffee maker with Cuba’s best beside it.

Gutierrez’s fiancée, Blanca, a third-grade teacher on the island, had brought flan, black beans, and baked plantains that she now set on the table, the flan chilled, everything else piping hot. “With classes cancelled, I had plenty of time today to shop and cook,” she said.

“A throwback to that life in Salem, Blanca,” remarked Mira. “When you cooked for all the accused witches.”

She laughed. “You think?”

Blanca was a couple years younger than Mira, a pretty brunette married and divorced when she was still in her twenties, with an eighteen-year-old son now in college. She and Gutierrez had been together for three years and she balanced him in a way none of his other women ever had. She was also a book person. Two Saturdays a month, she held events for her students at One World Books.

“You had a life in Salem?” exclaimed Carmen, Rincon’s wife.

She hurried in with a basket of Cuban bread, arepas, chicken and vegetarian empanadas—and her Golden Retriever. Nigel trotted alongside her, a gorgeous blond retriever with a handsome face and soulful dark eyes. He lifted his snout into the air, sniffing loudly at the scents.

“So my dreams tells me,” Blanca replied.

“Were you a rebel?”

Blanca nodded. “I think so. And then in the end I was burned at the stake along with a couple of accused witches.”

“You remember it?” Carmen asked.

“Dreams, like I said. And a regression a few years back with Carol Bowman. Mira carries her books.”

“Terrific books,” Mira said. “Groundbreaking.”

“Damn, girl.” Carmen was an attractive, slender woman of sixty, a yoga instructor who had studied under Nadine, and was also an incredible cook. “So you’ve left us with questions. What did you remember when Carol regressed you?”

Blanca now looked like she might vomit. “Being burned.”

Carmen hugged her. “Honey, no bonfire here.” Then she stepped back. “There’s some arroz con pollo cooling off on the stove that we can bring out when everyone’s really hungry.”

“For me, that’s right now.” Annie picked up a bowl and went into the kitchen.

“When we do we get our turn at surveillance on the roof, Mira?” Carmen asked.

“I think we should take some food and get up there now and let the men grab a few hours of sleep. You two know how to use a weapon?”

Carmen said, “I wish I could tell you I don’t, that I’ve never had a reason to learn how to shoot a weapon. But yes, I can shoot with almost anything. What about you and Annie?”

Mira nodded. “We’re good. Shep made sure. What about you, Blanca?”

“Ha. It’s a relationship hazard, Mira. You know how it is.”

Yeah, she did.

“And we’ll have Nigel,” Carmen said. “No dog has a nose equal to his.”

Mira drew her fingers through Nigel’s fur and he dropped his head and looked up at her with those dark, soulful eyes. “Is that true, Nigel? Can you detect one of these freaks if they come anywhere near here?”

Nigel licked her hand and barked.

“That sounds like a definite yes, Carmen.”

“I’m telling you, Mira, there’s a human soul in there.”

Annie hurried out of the kitchen with a bowl of arroz con pollo in one hand, her cell in another. “The dolphins are restless.”

“Frantic? Nuts?” Mira asked.

“Not yet. But this restless swimming has become the prelude. And it’s been going on for a while.”

“Is your boss at the center?” Blanca asked.

“Yeah. I don’t need to go over there.”

“Good,” Mira said. “So, ladies, let’s take our food up top and join the guys.”

Nigel barked, Mira tossed him a bite of chicken, and he hurried along with them, up to the second floor and then up the ramp to the rooftop defense area.

The idea of everyone being in the same spot for tonight had evolved throughout the day. It was more about convenience than fear, although there was a certain comfort in being with friends and loved ones.

The night was cool and shockingly clear, the moon still nearly full and so bright that it illuminated the area around the cabin—the preserve to the north, east and west, Pirate’s Cove a glow just south of them. They carried the food over to the barbecue area and the picnic table and Sheppard, O’Hara, Gutierrez, Delgado, Rincon, Keel and two of his men, hurried over to eat.

“We’re taking over the watch for a few hours,” Mira announced. “You guys eat, get a few hours of sleep.”

“No way we’re leaving a bunch of women in charge of defenses up here,” Gutierrez said, then laughed and threw up his hands. “Just kidding, ladies. I’d love a reprieve.”

“I need a couple hours of sleep,” Rincon said. “And a shower. I smell like death.”

“Dios mio, Ian.” Carmen wrinkled her nose. “Eat, then go shower.”

Sheppard came over to Mira and handed her an AR-15. She slung it over her shoulder. “You look like an updated Patricia Hearst,” he remarked.

“Thanks a lot. That would be after she’d become so brainwashed by her captors that she joined them, right?”

“Yeah.” Sheppard grinned, leaned down, and kissed her.

His scent lingered. She felt like wrapping her arms around his neck and whispering, Let’s go do it. When Annie was young and either napping or over at a friend’s house, they’d often sneaked away. But even before the events on the bridge, that urge had dried up for Mira. Sex had taken a back seat to everything else.

“I really don’t like it, Shep.” She indicated the AR-15. “But after seeing that You Tube video of what they did on the ferry…” She shrugged. “I don’t see any other choice.”

As she said this, energy coursed through her hands, the same kind of energy she’d experienced on that lookout bluff yesterday, in the moments before pebbles had lifted from the ground. It reminded her there were other options. She immediately pushed the energy away. Not now.

The energy ebbed.

“Just so you know,” Keel said. “We’ve got four Humvees and three hundred troops patrolling the island. The rest are set up in the campground in the wilderness preserve and in Key West. And as soon as we eat, we’ve got to give some of the troops a respite.”

After they’d eaten and the men started retreating downstairs, O’Hara lingered behind to whisper and laugh with Annie.

“She’s happy, Mira,” Carmen remarked, coming over to her. “And he’s a good guy. I like him.”

“Me, too.”

“I hear the BUT in your voice.”

“Psychic women need partners who aren’t threatened by it.”

“C’mon, Mira. Jon has been writing about this kind of phenomena as long as he has worked at the Gazette. He’s wide open to it. He’s not Shep.”

It irritated her that Carmen assumed Sheppard couldn’t—hadn’t—changed. “The bridge was Shep’s turning point, I think.”

“But suppose—when this is over—it’s the same skepticism all over again, Mira?”

She didn’t have to think about the answer. “Then I’m done. I can’t afford to stifle a huge part of my life for the rest of my life to keep peace in my marriage.”

Carmen held up a finger as if testing the temperature of the air. “Cuidado, mi amor. Remember: we all choose. We have free will.”

Mira marveled that in the midst of this entire bizarre situation, with the island under curfew and a state of emergency, they were talking like women often did about what was important to them. Their partners, their children. Both Carmen and Blanca knew about her first marriage to Tom, Annie’s father, and that he and Nadine sometimes appeared to her. But neither of them nor Annie knew that Tom had appeared to her yesterday afternoon in the aftermath of Pam Gibbons’s death.

On her cell, Mira brought up the YouTube video, the APB videos and photos and stared at Hal. He disturbed her. All he did was raise his hand and the soldier’s weapon melted and then his legs and body turned to water. The moment in the video when the soldier’s head struck the puddle of blood and water and started melting, that energy coursed back through her hands.

Mira gestured at the used paper plates—directing the energy, controlling it—and to her shock, the plates lifted up a couple of inches from the table. She raised her hands and the plates drifted upward until they were even with her hands, about a foot above the table. Mira moved her hands slowly to the right, toward the trash can, and the plates also moved. When they hovered directly above the trash can, she brought her hands down slowly, and the plates dropped into it.

Stunned that it had worked so easily, Mira hurried over to the trash can. Carmen, Blanca and Annie applauded and crowded around her. “Uh, Mom, you’ve been holding out on us.”

Carmen: “Really.”

Blanca: “I knew it! I knew you were with me in Salem! You led the resistance!”

I did? Mira walked back to the picnic table, sat down, set her rifle on the floor, rubbed her eyes. The energy kept vibrating through her hands.

Annie and the other two women joined her at the table. “Has this kind of thing happened before, Mom? I mean, at some point earlier in your life?”

“It’s interesting that you ask.” She told them how Tom had appeared to her yesterday for the first time in six years. “He was there just long enough to say, ‘The girl who bullied you… you’re going to need that tool.’ I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about, what he meant.”

“You were bullied?” Carmen exclaimed. “Sorry, I just can’t see that. For what?”

“It took me a while to remember. On the way here yesterday, I pulled off in a lookout area and it came to me.”

As Mira told them about the bullying incident in elementary school and what had happened in the lookout area, the energy kept pulsing through her—not just in her hands, but in her entire body, through organs, tendons, veins and arteries. It pulsed at her temples. Two of the platters lifted slowly from the table.

Annie blurted, “Holy shit, my mom is Carrie.”

“Caramba, chica.” Carmen plucked one of the hovering platters out of the air and set it on the table.

“We have a chance,” Blanca said softly, and lowered the second platter to the table. “What else can you do?”

“I… don’t know. There’s something about this guy Hal in the video. I have a psychic connection with him. I don’t know how or why, but it’s there.”

“You can… melt stuff?” Annie asked. “Liquify people?”

“No. I think part of his ability to do that is due to necessity, defense, survival, consent, fear.”

Carmen plucked a slice of apple off one of the platters, bit into it. “Ian’s father wasn’t just an M.D., he was a santero. In the early years of our marriage, when we lived in Little Havana with him and Ian’s mother, I used to attend some of his private sessions with clients. I witnessed things that are still considered impossible. When his santo came through him, his entire demeanor changed. He became hunchbacked, spoke in a voice that wasn’t his own, and with a spin of his hand, objects in the room levitated. He was able to tap into the same matrix of reality, of power, that the Crows do. The difference is that for Ian’s dad, the ability took years to develop and perfect. I think the Crows were born with that access, and this matrix is available to them all the time.” She sliced her hands through the air. “Siempre. They just dip in and use it.”

“Nana Nadine could dip into that matrix, too,” Annie said. “All good psychics can.”

Spoken like someone who had experienced it, Mira thought.

“Goot’s grandmother was a Santera,” Blanca said. “She studied with Nadine in the old days, in Cuba, when they were both, like, in their teens, early twenties. I… had a reading with Nadine a couple years before she died, before I’d met Goot. She told me that at some point early in the 2020s, Tango Key would be invaded by psychic freaks from the future. She didn’t think we’d win because the person who might make a difference would be terrified. At the time, I thought it sounded wacko.”

“Nadine told you that?” Mira exclaimed. “My grandmother?”

“Yup.”

“Damn, she never said anything like that to me.”

“Hey, it wasn’t your reading. But I think she was referring to you, Mira.”

In the later years of her life, Nadine rarely had done individual readings. The fact that she’d read for Blanca before she even had met Gutierrez, Sheppard’s long-time bureau partner, made Mira wonder just how detailed Nadine’s visions had been. Had she seen Mira with these women, in these circumstances, at some point in the future?

“What else did she say, Blanca?” asked Annie.

“She felt that if this person—this woman—could grasp something essential, we might have a chance.”

Mira pressed her knuckles against her eyes. Grasp something essential? What the hell did that mean? Throughout her life, she’d tried to provide psychically specific information to her clients, whoever they were—cops, feds, ordinary people. If she couldn’t find at least one specific detail, she said nothing. What was she supposed to grasp?

Nigel suddenly snarled and barked ferociously, ran over to the closest wall, and leaped up against it, his front legs resting there so he could see over the top of it. They all scattered to their lookout areas. Mira scanned the area below with binoculars, but didn’t see anything unusual. She hit the switch so the security lights blazed in every direction. Nothing.

“It was probably an animal,” Annie remarked, then her cell beeped and sang repeatedly. “Uh-oh, the dolphins are going nuts now.”

She held the phone so Mira and the other women could see it, the dolphins leaping, whistling, agitated. To Mira, it looked like a collective visceral reaction to something she and the others couldn’t sense, but that perhaps Nigel had. Other than an early warning system that alerted them to the arrival of more Crows, it didn’t tell them where the Crows had appeared, how many of them there were or what their abilities were.

“Now what?” Carmen bit worriedly at her lower lip.

“Should we wake the guys?” Blanca asked. “Text Frank Keel?”

Mira thought about it, but not for long. “No, let’s wait and see if anything more happens. If the dolphins keep acting up, if Nigel senses something…”

Annie nodded. “Even if more Crows show up, we don’t have any idea where they are. We need more info.”

It was now going on three a.m., and that F. Scott Fitzgerald line came to mind: In the real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day. He probably had written that during one of Zelda’s stays in a mental institution when he was six sheets to the wind. Even so, Mira felt like she was locked inside one of those three a.m. moments, and that she needed to move, to do something.

So with her gun in hand, she went over to her perch at the wall, the security light off now, and pulled up a chair and sat down. To her right, Carmen murmured, “Vigilance.”

To her left, Blanca said, “Ojo pelao.” It was an idiom that meant, Keep a sharp eye.

Annie, unarmed, pulled a chair up next to Mira’s. “Eu coosi dao, Mom.”

Their private—and limited—language. I love you.

Mira glanced at Annie, legs raised and shoes pressed against the wall. “Are you thinking I shouldn’t have gotten involved?” Mira asked.

“I’m thinking thank you thank you that you did,” Annie replied. “Listen, should I, uh, have a weapon? Everyone else does.”

“I hate guns,” Mira said. “But here I am. Do you feel like you need a gun?”

“Do you?” Annie shot back.

“Hey, that stone woman asked for me and Jon by name. Why?”

“Mom, listen up, okay? After what I saw you do tonight, you don’t need a fucking gun.” With that, Annie got up and walked downstairs. Mira sat there, then set her weapon on the floor, and stared out into the darkness.

8

At the Tango Market

Hal thought the Airbnb apartment was comfortable enough for the three of them, but not for a dozen. Or for several dozens. Or for a hundred. But the longer they waited for the others to arrive, the more convinced he became that Red probably was right. No one else had made it.

He had known from the beginning that some might not make it to the twenty-first. But how had his calculations been this wrong? At last count, a couple of weeks before he’d arrived here, his Crows had numbered nine hundred and forty-five. And only three had made it? Less than one percent?

He wandered around the kitchen, studying everything, all the appliances—the refrigerator, stove, microwave, can opener, dishwasher, and the thing called a garbage disposal that ground up leftover food. So many conveniences, so many things that made life simpler, easier.

Red and Squirt stood at the kitchen counter, emptying their packs, arranging items they’d brought with them in neat piles. “I’m so fucking hungry,” Squirt groaned. “And there’s nothing to eat here except these protein bars we brought with us that taste like dirt. And bread from this loaf that was left in the fridge.” He slapped it down on the counter, opened it, brought out two slices of seeded bread. “I need something to spread on it.”

“Try this.” Red slid a jar across the counter. “It’s called peanut butter. I tried it, delish.”

Squirt slathered peanut butter on his two slices of bread, bit into one, and his expression went ecstatic. “Fantastic. But I need real food. Let’s go shopping.”

“It’s the middle of the fucking night,” Hal said. “And because of the curfew they’ll be looking for anyone who is out and about.”

“So what? We can defend ourselves. And we’ve had plenty of practice skulking around.”

“Let’s try one of the other apartments first,” Red suggested. “Keep things safer and simpler.”

Squirt didn’t look too happy about it, Hal thought, but he usually went along with the majority. When Squirt initially had arrived at the warehouse six months back, a referred recruit three or four times removed, the equivalent of a distant cousin, Hal hadn’t thought much of him. He couldn’t imagine what kind of talent a young fat kid with glasses might have that could be useful to his group, his tribe of Crows.

“So let’s see what you’ve got, kid,” Hal had said.

“You have any targets?”

They’d been inside the small room in the warehouse where Hal had conducted his initial interviews with prospective recruits. A table, a few chairs, a computer. No targets. “Uh, yeah, we have targets. What kind do you need?”

Squirt poked at his glasses, nudging them farther up onto the bridge of his nose. “Preferably something living. Like a Normal.” Then he chuckled, a weird, low sound. “But I don’t suppose you have any of those.”

“Nope. How about an animal?”

“One we can eat?”

“Yeah.”

“That’ll do.”

Hal had taken him out back, behind the warehouse, where cloned fish lived in a pond surrounded by a field of cloned rabbits, chickens, pigs. Squirt nodded, grinned, rubbed his palms together. “Yeah, this will do.”

Then he’d snapped his fingers and an old-world Frisbee had appeared in his hands. He twirled it between his fingers, eyeing the moving targets. “That one.” He pointed at a large rabbit just beyond them, standing upright on its haunches, and let the Frisbee fly.

The disk moved so fast Hal lost sight of it. The next thing he knew, Squirt ran toward the field, and there in the fake grass, the fake field, the fake pool of sunlight, lay a decapitated rabbit. Squirt swept the body off the ground, held it high, and shouted, “Rabbit stew!”

A Lethal. Hal had recruited him on the spot.

Now Squirt darted across the hall to another apartment, Hal and Red close behind him. He rattled the knob, the door was locked. Hal moved up next to him, gripped the handle with both hands, and melted it. The door swung open into an apartment empty of people, probably evacuees, and they moved inside with the stealth of thieves, paused, listened. Then Hal flicked on the lights and they hurried into the kitchen, to the fridge.

Squirt jerked the door open and Red gasped. “My God, look at all this stuff.”

Hal stood behind them, staring, unable to absorb it all immediately. Milk—skim, almond, whole, vanilla—vegetarian eggs, rolls, biscuits, cheeses, fruits, veggies, raw chicken and beef patties, yogurts of every imaginable flavor, juices, gallons of water, flours, chocolates, and food items he couldn’t identify.

“Load it all up.”

Hal grabbed fabric bags from a rack on the wall next to the fridge, gave Squirt and Red one each, kept another for himself. Then the three of them emptied the fridge, the freezer, the pantry, and needed more bags. Red found some plastic bags in a cabinet and handed them out.

During their pillage, a black and white cat emerged from somewhere, mewing pitifully. Whoever had lived here had left the pet behind. Hal scooped the animal up in his arms, rubbed his face against its beautiful, soft fur, and whispered, “Go to sleep for a little while.”

The cat went limp in his arms, and he collected food, bowls, a litter box. When they returned to their apartment, Hal set the cat gently on the couch. He filled a bowl with dry cat food, a second bowl with wet food, a third bowl with water, and put the litter box in the bathroom.

Throughout his childhood, his mother had shown him images of cats, videos of cats, books about cats, and he had grown to love them without ever seeing a real cat. Now he stood by the couch, staring at this black and white male cat, petting it, stroking it, whispering to it, enthralled. And the cat woke up, took one look at him, leaped off the couch and ran for the kitchen, where the food was.

Red and Squirt, whipping up concoctions in the kitchen, laughed. “You freaked him out,” Red remarked.

“I saved his life.”

“Yeah. Probably. Bacon, eggs, and French toast coming up.”

“What’s French toast?” Hal asked.

“Bread saturated in butter and cinnamon and powdered sugar,” Red replied. “I just found a recipe on the back of the bread package. We’ve also got fresh orange juice.”

“We’ve never had oranges,” Hal said.

“Well, we do now.” Squirt filled three glasses.

They stuffed their faces and afterward, Hal could barely keep his eyes open. He stretched out on the couch and the cat jumped up and joined him, purring loudly, and settled in the curve of Hal’s arm. He felt loved. “I’m calling you Whiskers, you beautiful cat.”

Louder purrs. Whiskers licked the back of his hand, his tongue warm and rough against Hal’s skin. Hal dozed off to the sound of that purring, content and hopeful for the first time in his life, certain that when he woke, the others would be here.

But when he bolted awake, Red was standing over him, her expression skewed with anger, fear, irritation, fatigue. “Squirt left, Hal. He took off on one of the bicycles in the utility room.”

“Shit.” He swung his legs over the side of the couch, rubbed his hands over his face. “When? When did he leave?”

“I don’t have any idea. I was recharging, just like you.”

But not Squirt. “So he’s taking a bike tour of the goddamn island?”

“I think he headed for the Tango Market. I Googled it and it’s the closest grocery store.”

Hal drew his fingers through Whiskers’s fur, got to his feet. “How many bikes are left?”

“Two. Let’s get going.”

They hurried into the utility room and walked the bikes through the apartment to the front door. “A car would be faster,” Hal said.

“Not really. First we’d have to find a car, then we have to steal it. By then, Squirt might be seen. I, uh, found our faces on Google, Hal. Something called an APB has been issued on us, because of what happened on the ferry. It means we’re going to have to disguise ourselves in some way if we go out during the day.”

“I’m starting to hate this century’s Internet. You know how to ride a bike?”

“Sort of. You?”

“Sort of.”

“A car is looking like a better option.”

“Let’s give the bikes a try.” Hal opened the door and pushed his bike onto the front porch.

Outside, nothing moved, nothing whispered. The dark air was so still, the soft squeaks of the pedals on Red’s bike sounded preternaturally loud. Their bikes bumped down the porch steps, then they both mounted. Hal promptly fell off, but Red managed to stay on and pedaled, weaving, down the sidewalk. It irritated him that she showed off like that. He remounted, still shaky, the handlebars wobbly, but he managed to stay on and caught up to her.

“Where’s the market?”

She held up her phone. “Got it on GPS. I think we should get off this main road, though, use a side road.”

They turned onto a side road that didn’t have street lights, so the pooled shadows were deeper, darker. Seconds later, Hal heard the trundling noise of one of those monstrous vehicles the soldiers drove, and he and Red pedaled madly into the trees to wait until it passed. Yes, the two of them could take on that monster and whoever was driving it, but then sirens would shriek all over the island like they had last night after the ferry fiasco. Best to stay low until they found Squirt and the others had arrived.

The monster passed and they continued down the side road and came up behind the Tango Market. They stashed the bikes in the bushes and Red pointed at a third bike. “He’s here.”

“Little shit. He isn’t supposed to leave the group.”

“Don’t pull your dictator thing on him, Hal. He won’t like it.”

“I’m not…”

“Yeah, yeah. Talk to the hand, dude.” She held up her right hand and tiny flames shot from her fingertips.

“Fuck you, Red.” He hurried toward the back door, certain he would have to melt the knob and the lock to get in. But in the dim light from his phone, the door looked like it had been attacked by a wild animal, the knob sitting cockeyed on the wood, the lock sliced in half. What the hell had the kid thrown to do that kind of damage?

Hal touched the door with the tip of his right sneaker. It swung inward, the dim inner lights enough to illuminate the incredible abundance of fruits and vegetables in the bins directly in front of him. Even the dome farms had never looked like this.

“My God,” he whispered.

“Is it real?” Red sounded incredulous.

“Let’s go find out.”

He and Red moved quickly inside, into a richness of odors and colors that nearly overwhelmed him. Everything was labeled, too, the name and the price. He picked up something called a papaya and ran his hands over its skin, marveling at the deep gold. He brought out a pocketknife and cut two small slices from it. “Red, try this. Papaya.”

She took it, bit into the soft center, and nearly swooned. Hal nibbled at his slice and every bite melted on his tongue. He cut the papaya in half, scraped out the black seeds, handed one half to Red, and stood there savoring his half. Juice dribbled down his chin, tears burned at the backs of his eyes. Denied so much for so long, he thought.

When nothing remained but the papaya skin, he dropped it on the floor with the seeds and tried to decide what to savor next. Avocado? Tangelo? Grapefruit?

Red suddenly said, “Hal, I’ve been thinking. Maybe it would be smarter for us to just try to blend. We don’t know much of anything about how commerce here operates. We don’t have a clue about how to restock this store. We don’t know how businesses work here. I’d be perfectly comfortable just staying and trying to establish some sort of life.”

“That’s treasonous,” he snapped. “This place is our mission.”

Red flicked her hair off her shoulders. “It’s your mission. The only thing I ever wanted was to get out of the fucking dome.”

Hal marched up the aisle away from her, his fury so great he could feel the beast within slamming around inside him, screaming to get out, to melt Red. How could she talk like that?

But when he reached the cheese section, the fury leaked away. Squirt, whom he and Red had forgotten about completely, was sprawled on the floor, food spread out around him. He feasted on cheeses, breads, containers of freshly cut fruit, yogurt, anything and everything within reach. He was in such a blissful state that when he dropped his head back and looked up at Hal, his eyes were wide with ecstasy. He belched, then laughed.

“Oh my fucking God, Hal. They have… so much.” He burst into tears and kept right on stuffing his face.

“What the hell, Squirt.” Red came up alongside Squirt and patted his head like he was a beloved pet. “We can’t stay in here indefinitely and pig out. So load up one of those fabric bags with whatever you want and let’s get going.”

“I’m so stuffed,” he groaned.

Hal grabbed two fabric bags off a hook, thrust them at Squirt. “C’mon, man. Grab what you want.”

Hal nabbed two more bags, tossed one to Red, kept the other, and moved up and down aisles, selecting anything that looked good. Never mind that they already had enough food in the apartment to last for months. When you’d been deprived as long as they had, more was the way to go.

At one point, Red tapped his shoulder and pointed at a security cam mounted on the wall. He nodded and the monster within him leaped at it just as flames shot from her fingers. The poor cam, attacked on dual sides, melted in the space of a heartbeat, and the molten metal dripped down the wall, crackling with sparks. Then the last bit of it broke away from the wall and dropped into a bin of chocolate candy.

Hal flashed her a thumbs up, his anger toward her ebbing, and they both moved along their aisles, filling their bags. Squirt stayed where he was, gobbling up food as quickly as he could. When Hal reached the wine and beer section, he selected beer from Mexico, wine from Chile, Argentina, California. He was about to tell Squirt and Red they needed to leave when the air around the registers thickened with a mist like smoke that quickly swelled to black fog.

Two of his own stumbled out of it, skinny albino Nico and drop-dead gorgeous Trixie, her skin a rich black, her short black hair wild around her head. Nico fell to his hands and knees, gasping for breath. He sounded like he was choking. Red ran over to him.

“Didn’t think… I’d make it,” he gasped.

“Take it easy, Nico,” she said. “We’re here. You’ll be fine, keep pulling air into your lungs.”

Trixie lurched forward, clutching her trademark staff, then pitched forward and hit the floor on her side. Hal helped her to her feet. The staff she clutched transformed into a garden hose swollen with water, and she aimed it at Hal, dousing him.

He leaped back. “What the hell kind of greeting is that, Trixie?”

She looked beyond pissed. “Exactly what you deserve, asshole.”

The hose became a staff again. “We downloaded Jon’s latest column before we left. How do we fight an army, Hal?” She leaned into his face and he wrenched back. “The odds on that really suck. We never anticipated this kind of response. And we’re only five right now—you, me, Red, Nico, and Squirt. We never anticipated that, either. You told us there would be hundreds, with at least half of them Lethals.”

“More are on the way,” Nico assured them, and erupted in a coughing spasm.

The coughing fit saved Hal from having to respond and he noticed how really sick Nico looked. It wasn’t just because he was pale—he had always been thin and pale, with red eyes—but now he looked frail. His face seemed thinner, the wrinkles at the corners of his red eyes and in his forehead, were deeper, permanently etched into his alabaster skin.

“Yeah, sure,” Trixie exclaimed. “If they can get through. If they survive the journey. If, if, if.”

“I think we five are enough,” Hal said. “Especially with you and Nico here now.”

Trixie looked at him like he’d lost his mind, and exploded with laughter. “Yeah, sure, Hal. You’re either delusional or a naive optimist. Or you’re lying.” She paused and finally noticed Squirt sitting on the floor, gobbling up food. “Squirt, you made it! Don’t I get a hug?”

He grunted, wiped his arm across his mouth, and got clumsily to his feet. “I missed you,” Squirt said, and threw his plump arms around her.

“Ditto, kid.”

Trixie extricated herself from Squirt, scooped up an apple, bit into it, and consumed it. She flicked her hand and the apple core soared through the air and dropped into a nearby garbage can. Squirt clapped. “Love it when you do that, Trixie.”

“Do we have somewhere to stay?” she asked.

“An apartment,” Red replied.

“And now we’ve got plenty of food,” Squirt added.

“Frankly, I’d rather have plenty of our own kind,” Trixie said. “I’m not willing to even try to seize this island, Hal, until there are more of us.”

“Exactly how I feel,” Red agreed. “We could blend in here, create lives for ourselves.”

“That’s not the fucking mission.” Hal barely kept the anger out of his voice. “If that’s what you prefer, Red, then let’s part ways here. Go blend in.”

“Hold on.” Nico waved his thin white arms. “More are coming, we just have to be patient. I don’t want to have to blend in. I’ve been doing that my whole life. I want to live in a place where I can be who I am without fear.”

They all stared at him, then Trixie applauded. “Goddamn, Nico. Never thought I’d hear such passion from you.”

“Well, shit, isn’t that why we came here?”

“We came here,” Red said, “to escape life in the dome.”

Nico shook his head. “I came here to seize an island and make it ours. Somewhere we would be safer, where we could be who we are without hiding and pretending and sneaking around. As far as fleeing the dome… we could’ve done that with any of the Normals escaping to wherever they went.”

“And nothing would’ve change,” Red said. “They’d still be in charge.”

Trixie held a handful of grapes that she popped into her mouth one at a time. “Okay, deep breaths. We all need to calm down. Personally, I don’t want to sit around some apartment stuffing my face until the others arrive. With Nico, we can go anywhere on the island without being seen. So let’s explore.”

“There’re soldiers everywhere and they have weapons and monstrous vehicles,” Hal said.

“You’re afraid of them?” Squirt exclaimed. “You?”

Hal really wished the kid hadn’t asked that. It made him look bad to the others. “I’m not afraid of them. I want to win. The five of us could get into their headquarters and take out the lot of them before they would even know what hit them.”

“Then let’s do it!” Nico sounded as excited as a kid.

Hal shook his head. “We’re not ready yet.”

“Personally, I’d like to visit the bookstore Jon mentions in his column,” Trixie said. “It’s the middle of the night, we won’t be seen, we can get in. Let’s be fucking tourists for five minutes, okay, Hal? We all need a break.”

“A bookstore! Wow!” Nico exclaimed. “C’mon, let’s go! How far is it?”

Hal realized Nico was excited by everything here, by the prospect of experiencing anything in the twenty-first. “Too far to walk,” Hal said. “We need a car.”

“Then let’s find a goddamn car,” Trixie said, and headed for the door.

“You don’t lead here, Trixie,” Hal shouted after her. “I’m the….”

“The what?”

She spun around, threw her right arm into the air and Hal lifted up and shot into a shelf of cans and bottled juices that toppled to the floor and shattered. Some of the cans split open and the contents spilled as they rolled. Hal landed hard on his ass and the beast leaped out of him and everything in front of him instantly liquified.

“Enough!” Red shouted, and shot fire at Hal, the flames tall and hot.

Hal leaped to his feet. But now a wall of fire crackled and danced between him and Red, licked at the market ceiling, and set rolls of paper towels and packs of toilet paper on fire. The ceiling sprinklers whipped into action, the flames hissed and sizzled. Thick, noxious smoke filled the air.

Hal slipped in the puddles, arms swiveling for balance, but pitched backward into shelves of bread, rolls, biscuits, cookies, cakes, knocking everything to the floor.

“No more!” Squirt yelled, and hurled something at the ceiling sprinklers that cut many of them in half, pieces falling to the floor, the water going dry. “What the fuck. This is how adults act? Go ahead and kill each other. I’m going to find that bookstore.”

He waddled out of the market with a bag of food hanging from either shoulder. Trixie followed Squirt out the door, Red hurried after them. Nico went over to Hal, extended his hand, and Hal grasped it. “Thanks.”

Nico pulled him to his feet with surprising strength. “What a fucking mess, Hal. Look at this place. We really need to do better than this.”

Hal’s exhaustion was suddenly so great he could barely stand. All he wanted to do right then was return to the apartment and stretch out on the couch with Whiskers, his new pet. “Fuck this century. Fuck these people. Fuck this island. It was supposed to be our paradise. It’s tuned into our nightmare.”

“It’s not that bad, Hal,” said Nico. “We just need to take a break, do some sightseeing, have fun. You coming to the bookstore or not?”

“Yeah, I’m coming.” His drenched clothes clung to him and reeked of juices, smeared beans, spilled soups.

And, although he would never admit it, he welcomed the idea of entering a real bookstore for the first time in his life.

2

There were no cars nearby to steal, so they ended up walking from the market toward the bookstore. Even though they were loaded down with groceries, Hal welcomed the walk. It mitigated his fatigue. It felt liberating to move through the darkness on the hard-packed earth, breathing real air, beneath real stars, moving into and out of real woods. He filled his lungs with the rich, fecund smells of plants and trees and water and always that salty scent of ocean.

One time, his parents had taken him to a place in the south of the dome reserved just for government employees and their families. He supposed it was the closest thing to a resort the dome had—a swimming pool with a slide, a diving board, a fake river where adults could drift in a raft with drinks and kids had cold lemonades supposedly made from the lemon orchards at the resort. The fake river poured into a fake lake large enough for boats. He had tried to swim there, it wasn’t like he was clueless about swimming, but his life hadn’t depended on it so he hadn’t tried too hard.

The restaurants at that resort had served the best of the best grown in the dome. They had a large, comfortable room, room service, movies from the archives. But his favorite part had been a tour beyond the dome, into the outside world after a violent storm had swept through and cleansed the air.

He remembered the window for leaving had been small, calculated by the resort meteorologists who had kept tabs on these storms and the quality of the external air. Eight guests, with a pilot and navigator, had left the dome in a specially equipped vehicle that had been rebuilt from blueprints of the Mars Rover in the NASA archives. It had taken them to a spot about thirty minutes west of the dome, just outside a labyrinth of unexplored caves beneath a range of mountains.

As Hal had stepped outside the vehicle, his first time in the world beyond the dome, he had stood there between his parents, a kid of eight clutching their hands. He breathed real air, a real blue sky stretched over him from horizon to horizon, he felt real sunlight and heat on his face. His knees had buckled and he had sunk into the mountains of sand that covered the outer world like a skin. And he’d sobbed, he remembered that much, his eight-year-old self crying for the beauty of it, for its denial in the dome. In his grieving, he inadvertently had melted some strategic mechanism in the vehicle that the pilot hadn’t discovered until the group had prepared for the return journey.

The pilot had radioed for help, but the instruments had indicated the storm would reach them first. So he’d secured the vehicle by allowing it to sink deeply into the sand, the most singularly horrifying thing Hal had experienced up to that point in his life. They had sat in the absolute darkness, ten terrified people—the pilot and navigator, two couples, three teenage friends, and Hal, the only young kid—while the storm howled. The sound of the blowing, shifting sand was like the continual shattering of glass. At one point, the vehicle started shuddering and several women got hysterical, screaming they couldn’t breathe.

His dad, a man so black that his mother’s bone-white skin had diluted Hal’s blackness, moved toward the woman closest to him. He held her and that physical closeness calmed her. “A century ago,” his dad said quietly, “I can’t breathe became the battle cry of a cultural movement, a phenomenon called Black Lives Matter.”

And he’d remembered wondering what the hell they were talking about. Now he understood what it meant. When they had driven onto the ferry from Key West, the guy who had taken their tickets looked at Hal suspiciously. He was a black guy with a redheaded white woman and a plump white kid. He was driving a Subaru. Never mind that it was an older model and needed a lot of work. To this ticket guy, the Subaru was the equivalent of a Mercedes. So now Hal became a suspicious black guy driving an expensive car he couldn’t possibly afford.

Back then, he didn’t have a word for it. But the woman his dad had comforted, Hal’s mother, kept crying, softly, and Hal had struggled with the beast within from liquifying them just so they’d shut up.

Hal couldn’t remember how long it had gone on, how many mini dramas had unfolded. But when they finally had surfaced again, the landscape had changed. The storm had blown away sand that had covered a rock cliff and the mouth of a cavern. Months later, his mother had told him a group of scientists had explored the cavern and recovered artifacts from inside of it that dated back to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

He’d never left the dome again until he’d arrived here.

Squirt stopped just ahead and sat down on a rock. “Gotta rest a few minutes,” he said, breathing hard. “I think it’s the altitude.”

Hal stifled a laugh. “I doubt it. We’re maybe twenty or thirty feet above sea level.”

“’Cause of… time change.” Squirt slammed his fist against his chest and suddenly seemed to be breathing more easily. “What do they call it in this time, Hal? I know there’s a word for it. “

“Jet lag.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. I’m… really jet lagged.”

Nico and Trixie stopped next to him. She handed the kid a bottle of water. “You need to stay hydrated, Squirt.”

“I’ll carry your bags,” Nico offered, and slung them over his own skinny shoulders.

“You need to lose weight.” Red sat down on the ground next to Squirt. “Hon, it’s not the altitude. It’s the weight. I guarantee that if you get out and walk like this every day, those extra pounds will melt away in no time. C’mon.” She stood and held out her hand. “I’ll show you a great pace for losing weight.”

He grasped her hand, she pulled him up and he and Red started walking at a fast clip down the hill, still holding hands, Trixie and Nico right behind them. Hal hung back for a moment, watching the four of them. Yeah, they often irritated him, enraged him, but he felt a swell of familial love for them that surprised him.

He caught up to them and asked, “Will my cat be okay?”

The question wasn’t directed to anyone in particular, but Red answered. “Of course he will. He’s got food, water, a comfortable spot to sleep. And we’ll take him with us wherever we end up.”

Hal liked that idea. He remembered his mother once saying that she was envious of people in the past who had real pets because pets made a home complete. He picked up his pace, eager to see the inside of Mira’s bookstore.

9

The Snow Globe

Sheppard’s cell shrieked seconds before the alarm did. It startled him out of a sleep so deep that when he bolted upright, blinking against the darkness, he didn’t know where he was, what day or time it was, or what the alarm meant. He groped for the bedside light, but it wasn’t there. Then a nearby lamp blazed and he realized he was on one of the couches in the cabin’s living room. Gutierrez, sitting up on the other couch, stared at his shrieking phone, trying to make sense of it. Delgado was still asleep in one of the recliners and O’Hara stood next to the other one, scrolling through his cell. He apparently had turned on the lamp.

“What the hell’s happening, Jon?” Sheppard pushed to his feet.

“The GCP is registering something. I’m trying to get a fix on the exact location.”

“You can’t do it with those random number generators,” Gutierrez said. “We need all the security cams online.”

As Sheppard reached for his iPad on the coffee table, the snow globe caught his attention. It looked as if it had been shaken seconds ago. Inside the damn thing, a violent storm raged—snow or sand, he couldn’t tell which—but as the stuff settled, the Tango Market took shape, clearly defined. “Holy shit. The snow globe says Tango Market.” He handed it to Gutierrez and texted Keel.

Check Tango Market’s cams. Snow globe pinpoints it.

Keel replied: Checking security cam footage… got something. Will send. Meet you there.

“Tango Market it is,” Sheppard shouted.

The women pounded down the stairs, with Nigel in the lead. Rincon stumbled out of a spare bedroom. Everyone looked sleep deprived, anxious, scared, Sheppard thought.

“What’s happening?” Mira asked.

“Tango Market.”

The security footage appeared on Sheppard’s cell, which meant everyone else had it, too. He tried to absorb what he was seeing—the chubby kid on the floor by the cheese, stuffing his face, the air at the end of an aisle turning ink black, two Crows tumbling forward as if the blackness had spat them out. A tall, beautiful black woman, a skinny albino man. No sound. As the images unfolded, Sheppard didn’t need sound to understand that a disagreement had broken out.

The tall woman flung her arms into the air and Hal was hurled into a shelf, toppling it. He melted everything within sight and fire shot out of the redhead’s fingertips, creating a barrier of fire between Hal and the others.

The chubby kid just kept eating, but Sheppard already knew what his talent was. He’d been responsible for the soldier’s decapitated head on the ferry.

“Holy shit,” O’Hara muttered, and slung his pack over his shoulder. “Armageddon among the Crows. How lucky can we get?”

“I’ll drive,” Gutierrez said.

“I just dispatched my A team to the market,” Delgado said.

“What A team?” Blanca asked.

“Snipers.”

Mira shook her head. “I don’t think the Crows will be there.”

“Maybe not,” Sheppard said. “But we have to start somewhere.”

Carmen grabbed her purse from the couch. “We’ll come with you.”

“It’s better if you stand guard on the roof,” Rincon said. “Just in case this is a ploy.”

“That’s bullshit,” Annie countered. “You just don’t want us there.”

“You aren’t cops,” Sheppard said.

Annie laughed, a sharp, ugly sound. “And Ian and Jon aren’t, either.”

Sheppard knew this could trigger a gender war. “We need someone to stay here and keep this place safe.”

Mira slipped her arm around Annie. “Fine, we’re staying. But take Nigel.”

The dog now howled, a strangely mournful sound that prompted Sheppard to slap his hand against his thigh. “You join us, Nigel. C’mon, boy.”

The dog hesitated, looked at Carmen, then at Rincon, and the doc said, “Claro que si, Nigel! We need your nose!”

The dog shot toward the front door, tail whipping back and forth, and followed the men outside.

2

The door of the market stood open and the large front window held a spider’s web of cracks and fissures. The Crows, Sheppard thought, had come and gone.

The inside of the market looked like a bomb had exploded. Shelves lay on their sides, bins of fruits and vegetables had been overturned, and avocados, oranges, grapefruits, berries, mangos, cantaloupes and apples were scattered across the floor. A security cam had melted off the wall and its remains had fallen into a bin of chocolates, now a gooey mess. Cans lay all over the place, some of them split open, contents spilling out. Puddles of water added more chaos to the area, the ceiling sprinklers looked like someone had taken a machete to them.

Nigel darted forward, snout to the floor, pursuing scents. Sheppard followed the dog while the others spread throughout the store and Delgado’s team of snipers remained outside, vigilant. Just in case. Keel and two of his men walked around, snapping photos, and Sheppard wondered if those photos would go to Rudy, whoever he was.

He caught up to the dog, “What do you smell in here, Nigel?”

The Golden, tail wagging, looked up at him with those huge dark eyes, then sniffed his way through puddles. He stopped in front of piles of canned goods, glanced at Sheppard, barked, and started pawing through the cans. Sheppard crouched and helped him. When the cans were cleared away, Nigel dropped to his belly and tried to dig something out from under the shelf. But his legs weren’t long enough.

Sheppard stretched out alongside the dog, swung his arm under the shelf and knocked out a disk the size of a man’s hand, but thicker. “Good boy, Nigel.”

Nigel barked, Sheppard scooted back and rocked onto his heels. He set the disk in the palm of his left hand, snapped a couple of photos of it, then sat down on the floor, Nigel next to him, and tried to figure out what this sucker might be.

He turned it over, ran his fingers over the rounded edges, pinched it between his fingers. Was it some sort of device like the snow globe? Like the red laser light Mira had found on the weather freak? The snow globe depicted targets. The laser light held a message from the weather freak’s wife and daughter. What secrets did the metal disk contain?

“You find something, Shep?” O’Hara crouched in front of him.

“Nigel did, but damned if I know what it is. Here, take a look.”

He passed it to O’Hara, who ran his fingertip over the top and bottom. “I feel grooves or something on the surface.” He turned on his cell’s flashlight, shone it on the surface, held it at eye level. “There, see it? A word, Shep.”

What Sheppard saw was HAL, engraved so lightly into the surface that it was visible only in direct light. “Hal, the head dude.”

“So is this a battery pack? A holographic memory storage? Something like the snow globe?” O’Hara asked.

Sheppard shrugged. “No idea.”

Nigel pawed at the floor and whimpered. O’Hara held out his hand to the dog, the disk in the center of it. Nigel sniffed, then did something that struck Sheppard as bizarre. The dog licked the damn thing, it stuck to his tongue, his tongue vanished into his mouth, and he trotted away from them, tail wagging.

Sheppard and O’Hara leaped up and ran after him, Sheppard shouting, “Nigel, hey, stop!”

But the dog didn’t stop until he reached Rincon, who was lifting a sample of blood from some drops that had dried on the floor. “Hey, big boy,” Rincon said. “Why’re they shouting at you?”

“He’s got something in his mouth, Ian.” Sheppard reached them. “If he swallows it, we lose a clue.”

“And it’s metal,” O’Hara added. “It could hurt him.”

Rincon set his blood sample to one side, peeled off his gloves, and tapped the floor. “Drop it, Nigel. Gently.”

The dog’s tail thumped the floor. He looked mischievous, his eyes darting from Rincon to Sheppard to O’Hara. “Please drop it,” Sheppard pleaded.

“Treat,” Rincon said, and brought out a small dog cookie from his pocket and set it on the floor.

Nigel lowered his head, set the disk down gently, and gobbled up the treat.

Just as Sheppard started to pick up the disk, it abruptly burst with light so brilliant it hurt his eyes. He glanced away, wondering if the wetness of Nigel’s saliva had activated it. When he looked back, scenes unrolled of a young boy and an adult woman in what appeared to be a massive library of some kind. As the images marched forward, Sheppard realized he was watching a kind of memory movie of Hal’s life in the dome.

The others gathered around, staring, fascinated, enthralled, repulsed. The memory movie took them right up to the point where Hal had sent Lightning into the past to blow up the Tango Key bridge. Then the light went black and Nigel slapped his paw over it.

“What the fuck,” Keel snapped. “We need that thing. Get your paw off of it, dog.” He leaned over to grab Nigel’s paw, but the dog bared his teeth and snapped at Keel’s hand. He jerked back. “Goldens aren’t ’sposed to do that.”

“You threatened him. You’d do the same thing.” Rincon slung an arm over Nigel’s back and glared at Keel. “Never threaten my fucking dog, Frank. It may be that the warmth of his tongue and mouth activated that disk.”

“I want that disk, Ian.”

“I found it,” Sheppard said. “So it’s now the property of the bureau, Frank.”

“You’re not in charge here.”

“Think again.” Gutierrez aimed his weapon at Keel.

Behind Keel, his two men drew their guns, but Delgado and O’Hara already had them at gunpoint. “Tell your boys to fucking back off,” Sheppard said.

Keel gestured at his men. “That disk belongs to the National Guard, Sheppard.”

“Sue me.” Sheppard touched Nigel’s paw gently, the dog’s leg slipped to the side, away from the disk. Sheppard picked it up, pocketed it. “And who’s Rudy, Frank? Why’re you reporting to someone named Rudy? Who’s he work for?”

The expression on Keel’s face told Sheppard everything he needed to know.

Keel threw up his arms, a half-hearted gesture of surrender. “We’re outta here. You’ll be hearing from our attorney, Sheppard.”

“Yeah, good luck with that, Frank.”

Delgado motioned with his weapon. “I’ll escort you boys to the door.”

Once Keel and his two sidekicks were outside the market, O’Hara said, “We may have just fucked ourselves, Shep. His troops outnumber us by, uh, well, several thousand.”

“Let’s gather up our stuff and get out of here,” Sheppard suggested.

No one argued or suggested otherwise.

3

One World Books surpassed any expectations Hal had about a physical bookstore in the twenty-first. Nothing he ever had seen in the dome archives had prepared him for the reality. The spaciousness, the shelves, the sheer numbers of books, magazines, displays of novels turned into TV shows and movies, the collection of Dystopian fiction, the biographies, historical books, self-improvement tomes, everything so neatly categorized.

He couldn’t remember how he’d learned to read. But he clearly remembered the moment when his dad had shown him a comic book, a tattered copy of Superman from the 1950s, preserved by some secret process the archives had created. He was maybe two at the time, they were at one of the parks, and he promptly had sat on the ground and started reading. Aloud. To his dad.

His father stood there staring at him, in shock. When did you learn how to read, Hal?

He’d shrugged, murmured that he didn’t know, and continued reading about Superman’s exploits and his secret life as Clark Kent.

That memory and the joy he felt just then, surrounded by so much to read and explore, led him to believe that he—and perhaps the other Crows—had known how to read and speak within days or weeks of their births. Perhaps the Crows were an evolutionary version of humanity jammed in fast forward. Or maybe they were just an evolutionary mistake. So much about his own nature and that of the other Crows remained unknown and perhaps unknowable, at least for him.

Hal ended up in a specialized area on the first floor of the bookstore called Visionary. It appeared to be a mix of fiction and non-fiction on health, quantum physics, time, the future, the nature of reality, UFOs, the paranormal, famous psychics, seers. For the next few hours, Hal rapidly scanned numerous books but from what he could glean, few of them got the details right about the future.

Here and there, he found pieces of the world he’d left behind, but only the Dystopian fiction captured some of the emotional horror. 1984. The Hunger Games. The Handmaid’s Tale. Minority Report. His world had held elements of all these books—yet none had captured the specific details. A non-fiction book, Mass Dreams of the Future, mentioned the domes. Stephen King’s The Dome was a more temperate version of life early on in the dome, but both missed the mark in terms of real dome life.

In the end, Hal was most impressed with the predictions by Edgar Cayce about the dramatic changes in the earth. Cayce had pinpointed the spiking temperatures that would melt ice caps, the rising oceans, the quakes that would destroy the west coast, the proliferation of plastics and garbage and the overpopulation that would destroy life as his ancestors had known it. But Cayce’s timing had been off by decades.

In some of the books, Hal crossed out sections and scribbled his own notes. In a book by Jane Roberts, described as a poet, medium, and channeler, he flipped to the blank pages at the back and scribbled memories of how his group had begun, his parents’ involvement. In the front of 1984, he jotted notes about his mother removing forbidden books from the archives and making them available to him. In Mass Dreams of the Future, he wrote about his daily life in the dome and redrew Chet Snow’s map of the U.S. for 2100.

The sun started to rise. He put all the books back on a shelf, lumped together in a new category he thought of as Hal’s Corrections, and went into the cafe where the others had made themselves at home. Trixie sat by a window, reading, books spread out across her table. Squirt sat across from her, engrossed in graphic novels—the comic books of this century. Nico sat at another table, madly scribbling notes. Red sipped at coffee and paged through a magazine. They looked remarkably comfortable, normal, as if they belonged here.

He reached into his pocket for his disc, so he could record this moment, capture it, but it wasn’t where it was supposed to be. He turned the pocket inside out. Empty. Near panic, he slapped the other pockets in his jeans, his shirt, he even went through the bags of groceries. Nothing. It must have fallen out when Trixie had hurled him across the market.

“Fuck.” He started toward Trixie to tell her off, but through the front window, Hal spotted one of the yellow monsters turning onto the road out front. The driver would be able to see them once the vehicle got closer to the bookstore. “Uh, Nico?”

The albino glanced up and Hal stabbed his hand toward the window.

Nico looked, leaped to his feet and hurried deeper into the café. “Shit.” He motioned the others over. “C’mon, squeeze in tightly, clasp hands.”

“Can you hold all of us?” Red asked.

“I can hold the entire room if I have to, but if the driver decides to come in here, it will look weird. And suspicious.”

And just like that, Hal could no longer see the others. “It worked.”

“And not too soon,” Squirt said. “That monster’s drawing even with the window.”

“You don’t have to hold hands,” Nico explained. “But I suggest we head toward the rear exit. Wherever that is.”

“Unless we want to take on whoever’s in there.” Trixie made a small sound, a mischievous giggle. “It would be a good practice run for us.”

“A premature, foolish move,” Red cautioned.

Hal watched the driver and five soldiers exit the monster, fully armed, wearing helmets. They came over to the front window, peered inside. Hal could tell that the driver—the older and shorter man in the group—was in charge. He disliked the man’s thin, twitchy mouth, small dark eyes, and the weapons he carried. The other four men—early twenties, he guessed—looked less certain about being outside of the vehicle.

The man in charge nodded toward the door, where the melted lock was a dead giveaway. He and the others lowered their helmet visors into place, covering their faces.

“Yes or no?” Hal whispered. “Majority rules.”

Trixie, Nico, and Squirt flashed a thumbs up. So did Hal. Red looked disgusted. “Shit, okay. If we’re going to do this, there’s one for each of us, and two of us will have to take on two. Unless you can do something other than turn us invisible, Nico.”

“That’s not enough?” Nico sounded pissed.

“It’s just not lethal.”

“I can do things even better than you Lethals.”

“Dude, telling doesn’t count. Showing does,” Trixie said. “I’m down for two.”

“Me, too,” Hal added.

“Then Squirt and I are backups,” Red finished.

They moved apart.

4

As the men entered the bookstore, their visors in place, Hal saw that their names were imprinted across the fronts of their vests. Lexington and Blake were first and moved left toward the cafe, Gustavo and Thomas moved off to the right, Watkins and Keel peeled away to the left and right. Keel, the head guy, motioned them ahead and then he opened fire, a spray of bullets that caused Hal and the others to hit the floor or dive behind tables.

Enraged, Hal scrambled around the edge of a bookcase just as Lexington was hurled into the air and Blake’s clothes started burning, and something severed one or both of Gustavo’s legs at the knees. He heard Keel shouting and then he sprayed bullets across the cafe and the beast inside Hal busted free. He melted the floor, part of the front counter, a cash register, shelves of books. And he loved the power of it, the stink of melting metal, wood, paper, tile, leather.

Then the ceiling sprinklers whipped to life, probably triggered by the flames that engulfed Blake, and the water drenched their clothes until they were exposed like bones in an X-ray. They hurried toward the rear of the bookstore, hurling up a wall of chaos around themselves of flames and melting objects and stuff that Trixie threw through the front window.

As soon as they were outside, they cut through the woods to remain hidden. When they were deep in the trees, Squirt suddenly stumbled and pitched to the ground. Hal hurried over to him, realized Squirt had been shot, and was losing a lot of blood.

He and Nico started to pick him up so they could carry him to the apartment, but Trixie intervened. “Let me do this. It’ll be less jarring for him.” She raised her arms and he drifted up slowly from the ground, unconscious now, blood saturating his clothes.

They broke into a run and Squirt’s body moved along with them through the air.

Nico rendered them all invisible as they neared the apartment. Once they were inside, he lifted the shrouding and Hal tore around, grabbing towels and looking for a first aid kit. He finally found it in one of the bathrooms and hurried back into the living room. Trixie had lowered Squirt to the floor and Red and Nico removed his shirt carefully, peeling it away from the skin, exposing an abdominal injury that bled profusely. Red grabbed the towel, pressed it over the wound.

“Shit, we need more than a first aid kit. This injury is bad.”

Nico grabbed a bottle of something from the kit, moved the towel off the wound, and poured whatever it was over the injury. Squirt bolted upright, screaming in pain. Red pressed the towel over the injury again and stroked his face, speaking to him softly, calmly, coaxing him to lay back against the floor.

Trixie slipped a couch pillow under his head. “He needs to see a doctor.”

“We can’t do that,” Hal said. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Then he’s going to fucking die,” Red snapped.

“I may be able to help him,” Nico said. “But you’ve got to keep the blood sopped up so I can see how deep it is. If there’re bullets lodged inside him, they’ll have to come out first.”

It was news to Hal that Nico knew anything about medicine. “You have medical training?”

“I was in medical school when I got identified. Red, keep the towel over the injury, maintain pressure on it. I also need plenty of hot water, clean towels, this one is saturated, a sharp knife, alcohol, needle and strong thread, and whatever we’ve got to deaden pain.”

“I’ll put him to sleep, that’ll help,” Hal said.

“Good. Yeah, that’s good. Do it.” Nico sounded rattled.

Hal thumped his knuckles against Squirt’s forehead. “Take a deep nap, dude. Rest.”

Squirt went still.

“Needle and thread?” Hal said. “Where would we find that?”

“Some of those things are in my pack,” Nico replied. “Kitchen counter. Just hurry before he bleeds to death.”

They all scattered. Hal found Nico’s pack on the kitchen counter, rifled through it and brought out a lightweight, rectangular metal box with a red cross on the front. He ran back into the living room with it, set it on the floor, flipped open the top. “What do you need?”

“Alcohol,” Nico said.

Hal handed him a large packet labeled ALCOHOL. Nico tore it open and rubbed it vigorously over his hands, between his fingers, up his arms. “Move the towel a little, Red,” Nico said.

She did, and in the moments before the blood started flowing from it again, Hal saw what looked like a bottomless abyss in Squirt’s abdomen. He nearly gagged. But, even worse, was the guilt he felt. Squirt was the youngest in his tribe, thirteen. He looked at Hal, Red and Trixie as surrogate parents.

“Okay, Trixie, he’s still got bullets in there,” Nico said. “Can you move them out?”

She crouched beside Nico and looked like she might pass out. “Wow. I… don’t know. I’ve never tried… something so… so specific.”

“The other option would be you, Hal, if you can liquify the bullets,” said Nico.

“I might inadvertently melt part of him. Besides, what would melted bullets do to him?”

Nico nodded. “Probably nothing good. Trixie, can you try? I really don’t want to dig around inside there with a knife. It might kill him.”

“Shit. Okay. I’ll try, Nico. I’ll try. But I’m not promising anything.”

Red wiped away some more blood, then Trixie gently placed her hands over the injury and drew them slowly upward. She repeated this again and again until Squirt’s blood covered her hands and smeared between her fingers, beads of sweat popped out on her forehead and sliced across her upper lip like a perforated line. And then three bloody bullets followed her hands into the air. She flicked her fingers at the floor and the bullets clinked against the tile.

“I can’t swear that’s all of them,” she said. “What do you think, Nico?”

“Let’s go with it.”

Squirt stirred, his plump face drawn in pain. Nico looked at Hal. “I need a really deep sleep.”

“Okay.” Hal moved in front of Squirt’s head, placed his hands at either side of it, then leaned forward and brushed his mouth across Squirt’s forehead. “Sleep, Squirt. A deep, deep sleep.”

He heard the abrupt deepening in Squirt’s breathing and watched his shoulders relax against the floor. “Okay, Nico. I think he’s really out.”

“Good.”

Nico picked up the needle, threaded it, stuck two of his fingers deep inside the wound, widening it, while the fingers of his other hand dipped down into the bloody tissue and stuck the end of the needle through it. Squirt made a small, startled sound, so Hal pressed his knuckles to the side of his skull again and whispered, “Deeper, Squirt. Deeper.”

“We’ll need our herbal antibiotics,” Nico said.

“You think it can treat something like this?” Trixie’s face skewed with worry.

“I don’t know,” Nico admitted. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

Every time that needle stuck its way through bloody tissue and skin, Hal nearly puked. And his hatred of these twenty-first century people metastasized.

5

When Sheppard and Gutierrez arrived at the bookstore, they found bedlam. Cop cars, ambulances, a fire truck, the coroner’s van, paramedics loading bodies into the ambulances, glass and debris covered the front sidewalk.

“Jesus God,” Sheppard muttered.

Gutierrez made a hasty sign of the cross on his forehead.

They made their way toward Delgado, standing next to the yellow Humvee, talking with two of Keel’s soldiers, Thomas and Watkins. Both men looked deeply shaken. Delgado looked pissed.

“These two soldiers and the two dead men inside arrived here with Frank Keel.”

“Why?” Sheppard snapped. “Why here?”

Thomas wiped the back of his hand across his broad forehead. A tall, muscular guy. Sheppard guessed he was in his twenties. “Frank… had a hunch. After you made him leave the market, he came back to the airport and tagged his five best snipers. He felt the market Crows might come here since the weather freak had and the stone woman had asked for Mira.”

“And they were inside?” Gutierrez asked.

“Yeah. Five of them. They were… invisible. We all wore thermal visors and could… could see the blobs of their body heat.”

Watkins had been standing there listening. “Frank started shooting and… and before any of us could do the same, they… attacked.”

“Where’s Frank?” Sheppard asked.

“Over there.” Thomas gestured at the coroner’s van.

“Be right back, Goot.” Sheppard hurried over to where Rincon stood at the rear of the van. Keel sat inside, his legs dangling over the edge, and gripped a bottle of water that he kept rolling across his face. His pallor, his obvious unease and anxiety, spoke tomes about what he’d experienced inside the store.

Sheppard nodded at Rincon, but spoke to Keel. ”What the fuck were you doing here, Frank?”

“My job.”

“Your job is to help protect the island, not destroy it.”

“Don’t tell me what my goddamn job is, Sheppard. As head of the troops who are here, I’m in charge.”

“Yeah?” Sheppard leaned into him. “You’re in charge? Fine.” He flung his arm toward One World Books. “Then you’re in charge of paying for its restoration, Frank.”

Keel got to his feet, but Sheppard towered over him by at least half a foot and didn’t move, which forced Keel to sidestep. “Listen closely, Sheppard. We were snipers. Well armed. And within fifteen seconds… two of us were killed, two more were badly injured, and two of us escaped. We don’t stand a fucking chance against these Crows.”

“All the more reason you shouldn’t have come here without backup. So let’s get something straight, Frank. You do your job and take care of your soldiers and protecting the island and the local PD. The FBI will take care of the rest of it. And stay the fuck away from the bookstore unless you’ve got a check to cover the damage.”

Then Sheppard turned away from him and forced himself to walk to the front door to assess the damage.

10

Cam & Liz

When Nico was finished stitching up Squirt, he dropped his instruments in a bowl and shuffled toward the shower without uttering a word. Hal could see his exhaustion in the way he moved and carried himself. He looked down at Squirt. “We need to move him into one of the bedrooms.”

“I’ll do it.” Trixie floated him out of the kitchen and into the hall.

They all took turns sitting with him. Hal grabbed a couple of restless hours of sleep, not the full recharge he so desperately needed, then woke and went into the kitchen to fix everyone breakfast, lunch, dinner, he had no idea what time it was.

Cooking distracted him, calmed him, forced him to be fully present. He popped whole grain bread into the toaster, then brought out two frying pans, poured avocado oil into both, laid out strips of vegetarian bacon in one, and dropped chopped vegetables into the other. The container of eggs on the counter held something he’d never seen before—real eggs, brown eggs. On the side of the carton of Happy Eggs! it said the chickens that had produced the eggs were cage free, fed fresh organic grain, and had happy lives.

Good sales pitch. He sampled a bite of an omelet. It tasted extraordinary. Combined with the toast, slathered with butter and blueberry jam, the fresh strawberries, he felt he could just nibble away for hours, savoring every bite. He called the others into the kitchen and they all eagerly started helping themselves to the food.

When Red had eaten everything on her plate, she said, “Squirt needs something to eat.”

“It should be really soft food,” Nico said. “Or liquid.”

“Liquid with fruit in it.” Red got up, went over to an appliance on the counter. “This blender will do the trick.”

“How do you know that’s what the appliance is called?” Hal asked.

She rolled her eyes. “I did my homework, Hal. I think we’ve had this conversation before.” She sliced up bananas, apples, papaya, strawberries, poured in milk, dropped in cubes of ice, and flipped the switch. The grinding noise drowned out conversation and got on Hal’s nerves. “And what I’m making him now is called a smoothie.”

The air in the kitchen abruptly turned ink black, a fine mist that quickly thickened.

“Wow,” Trixie said softly. “Here comes someone.”

An elderly man and a teenage girl stumbled out of the mist and across the kitchen. Red turned off the blender and ran over to them. “Cam! Liz!” she squealed, and threw her arms around them.

Trixie tore toward them and did the same thing. “We didn’t think you were going to make it.”

Cam sucked noisily at the air and held onto Trixie to steady himself. Hal pushed a chair over to the old man and he sank into it. Liz, only a year older than Squirt, eyed all the food on the table and made her way toward it in a kind of trance. “My God,” she whispered, and grabbed a fork and stabbed a piece of toast slathered in butter and jam and devoured it. “Incredible.”

Hal saw Nico quickly dish up eggs, bacon, chopped vegetables, and set them on the table. He filled glasses with freshly squeezed orange juice. Cam and Liz guzzled down the juice, Liz devoured the food sloppily, and although Cam ate ravenously, his movements were measured, tidy, precise. Then Cam sat back, rubbing his face.

“Incredibly delicious,” he whispered.

Where’s Wind? Hal thought. Each time one of his Crows arrived and Wind wasn’t with him, a piece of Hal’s heart broke away. “Was Wind with you?”

Cam shook his head. “I don’t know where she was.”

“Tell us what happened,” Hal said.

“Total bedlam at the end.” Cam’s hands fell to his skinny thighs. The overhead light made his bald head shine. “There were only fifteen of us left. We could barely hold the past around us. So we tore toward the image simultaneously and…”

“And we don’t know where we went,” Liz finished. “We, like, flashed in and out of different places, I think.”

“Different times,” Cam added.

“Did anyone else make it through?” Trixie asked.

“I don’t know,” Cam replied. “But we know who has died.” His appearance abruptly morphed into Stoner, Lightning, Weather Wizard, and dozens of others in Hal’s group, his tribe.

With every familiar face, Hal died a little inside.

“Is Wind dead?” asked Red.

“If you didn’t see her, then she isn’t dead,” Cam replied.

Relief coursed through Hal.

“Did Squirt make it here?” Liz asked.

“Yeah.” Trixie nodded. “But he, uh, got shot. He’s in the other room. Nico worked on him.”

“Shot?” Cam sounded alarmed. “Here? How?”
Now the others joined them at the table and they filled in Cam and Liz about what had been happening. Liz’s condor wings suddenly unfolded from her shoulders, beating the air, knocking things off the counters, and Trixie leaned toward her, grabbed her hands before they turned into a condor’s legs. “Liz, it’s okay. The seven of us made it.”

“Seven?” Her wings vanished into her shoulders. “We’re supposed to be thrilled by seven? Seven of us can’t take on a whole island. Seven of us can’t take on armed soldiers, airplanes, bombs, grenades… What the fuck, Hal. You told us we would number in the hundreds, that we…”

“I didn’t understand the effect the travel would have.”

Red sat forward. “Personally, I think we should just try to blend in here. Establish lives. I keep saying this. We’ve all got gold, cash, ID. We could do it.”

Hal slammed his fist down so hard on the table the silverware rattled, glasses fell over. “That’s treasonous, Red.” He could barely control the anger in his voice. “I told you that before. Seizing this island is our mission. We can’t fucking blend in here. We…”

“Not so fast, Hal.” Cam patted the air with his hands, his fingers long, like those of a pianist. “I think Red and Liz may be on to something. The seven of us—seven assuming that Squirt survives—aren’t equipped to fight an army. And frankly, I’m tired of fighting. I’ve spent my entire seventy years in the dome fighting the Normals for some semblance of a life.”

“Yeah,” Red said. “Forty years for me.”

“Thirty-eight,” Trixie said.

“Thirty-four,” Nico said. “Thirteen for Squirt and…”

“Fourteen for me,” Liz added.

Dissension. Hal felt the mission sliding away from him and knew that if he didn’t say something fast, all his planning and strategizing, all the sacrifices he’d made over the years, would collapse into this lame dream that they could integrate into a normal twenty-first century world. It would be a repeat of the horrors they’d lived in the dome. They eventually would be herded up, corralled, drugged, imprisoned, killed.

“I have a plan,” he said. “But we’ll talk about it tomorrow. Right now, we all need to recharge. There’s plenty of room for everyone. Find a bed, sleep. We’re safe here.”

“I don’t need much sleep,” Liz remarked. “I’ll watch over Squirt.”

“Liz, no offense,” Nico said. “But you don’t know anything about medicine. I’ll take this watch. It’s still iffy with him.”

“You’re a doc, Nico?” she snapped back.

“Five years of med school before the gov figured out what I really was.”

“Oh.” She looked shocked. “I didn’t know. Sorry. Look, if at any point it seems hopeless, just remember that I might be able to change him so he does what I do. A blood transfusion could do it.” She paused. “I think.”

“I don’t have the equipment for that and I don’t think we’ll need to do it,” Nico said. “But I appreciate the offer.”

So polite, Hal thought. “That’s good, Nico. Thanks. And hopefully by morning, more of us will be here.” It sounded optimistic, but Hal didn’t believe it. Right now, he just wanted to distance himself from all of them. “Or the herbs will have done their magic.” Or both.

“Whoever stays up with him can feed him this.” Red poured her blended fruit concoction into a glass.

Hal cleared dishes from the table, set them in the sink, ran water over them. He found comfort and solace in small tasks that inadvertently revealed the marvels of the twenty-first. Hot running water that poured out clear of smudge and dirt. A dishwasher that he now loaded with plates, glasses, silverware. A growling garbage disposal deep inside the sink that ground up leftovers. A television that Cam turned on and fiddled with until he found news. An Internet connection that was fast enough to deliver entertainment twenty-four/seven. Shelves in the bedrooms loaded with real books. They had real beds, real food.

A kernel of a plan began taking shape in his head.

Liz came over to him as he finished up loading the dishes. “I need to move around outside, Hal. Get a sense of this place. I’m not asking your permission, okay? Let’s be clear on that. Red told me how you’re trying to control everything, like a dictator, like…”

“That’s bullshit. I just want everyone to stay focused. And safe.” He dried his hands on a dish towel, slammed the door of the dishwasher, and examined the controls, trying to find a way to start the damn thing. “How do I start this, anyway?”

Liz pointed at the pile of dirty dishes that remained in the sink. “What about those?”

“They don’t fit.”

“Oh.” She examined the buttons and punched START and the dishwasher started churning.

They looked at each other and laughed, an acknowledgement of the differences between this century and their own.

“I’ll take off from the back porch. Darker there. I’ll bring info.”

“I’ll walk out with you. They’re headquartered in the airport terminal. Take a look there.”

She nodded and as they walked toward the back door, her unfurled wings fluttered in anticipation of her flight. Hal envied that anticipation. Liz was one of a kind among the Crows, a shape shifter with incredible vision at heights that would render anyone else comatose in minutes. He had recruited her when she was just nine or ten, a drugged captive of a couple of Normal soldiers who were about to chop off her wings. He had melted both of them and taken her home and his parents had protected her just as they had protected Wind and all the others. She was loyal to him. He never had doubted that. But he disliked the way she had seemed to side with Red about blending in. Of them all, she was least likely to blend in.

Outside on the back porch, her wings unfurled, eighteen feet from tip to tip, and she exhaled softly, deeply, almost a sigh. She dropped her head back, taking in the star-strewn sky, the moon rising in the distance. “They have so much here in the twenty-first, Hal. Where the hell did we go wrong?”

“I don’t know. Nature tried her best to compensate, but there were never enough of us. Or if there were, if there was ever a point where Crows outnumbered Normals, those numbers were drugged and killed quickly.”

She looked at him then, Liz with her young, strangely beautiful face, eyes already turning to topaz, feathers replacing the hair on her head. “Do you really have a plan, Hal?”

Did he? Maybe.

Would it work? Maybe.

Was it solid? No.

Would she remain loyal regardless? Yes, yes.

“I think so.”

She held his gaze a moment longer and he hugged her, Liz, the only shape shifter in existence, rescued from their sordid past, her feathers now tickling his face, his arms. “Find out what you can. I love you, Liz.”

“Ditto. Bigger than Google. That’s their concept here of really big, Hal.”

With that, she stepped away from him, her head transforming, her legs melting into her body, her long wings flapping so rapidly that he moved farther back. Then she lifted away from the porch, into the starlit sky, and he watched until he couldn’t see her anymore.

So many emotions scrambled around inside him that part of the porch railing melted. He felt like weeping. This mission was supposed to have been simple. After the early arrivals had accomplished what they’d been sent here to do, hundreds of them were supposed to sweep in and conquer the island within a few hours. But he hadn’t factored in the deterioration of the dome, the collapse of the dome walls, and the destabilization of their collective vision of Tango Key in the twenty-first century. He hadn’t considered that anyone in his tribe would be trapped somewhere in time, rendered nuts, or killed in the travel process. All he had focused on was getting the fuck out and taking his tribe with him.

The idea of trying to blend in here was preposterous. These twenty-first century people weren’t so different from the Normals in his time. They feared outliers, anything and anyone who was different. In this century, the groups of outliers ranged from people with brown and black skin to people of certain religions and those who spoke languages other than English. They included immigrants, the poor, uneducated, chronically ill.

And even if they succeeded at blending in, at least initially, what would they do here? He hadn’t thought that through, either. It hadn’t occurred to him to do anything other than seize the island and make it theirs. But even if they succeeded at doing that, the question remained. What would they do then? And who would they be as a group?

None of them knew how commerce worked here, Red was right about that. Would they look for work? They didn’t have to; they had enough gold and cash among them. But. How else could they integrate into the society? None of the women in his tribe could have children, but some of the men—himself, Nico, Cam—had escaped sterilization. In order to grow the tribe, they would have to partner with those outside of it. A beginning of integration, he thought. And then what? Would their offspring attend school? Would that be a way to get to know people, to blend in, to integrate?

How could someone like Liz integrate into the twenty-first? Or an albino like Nico? Or Trixie? Or Squirt? Red might be able to do it because she was attractive, personable, and seductive. But she couldn’t conceive. Cam would be able to integrate, too, a thin old man who looked harmless, benign, and could appear as virtually anyone, living, dead, imaginary. Even though he hadn’t been sterilized, there was the issue of his age. What woman in this time would want to have sex with a seventy-year-old man? For that matter, would any woman in this century desire him?

Hal knew he might be able to integrate for a while, perhaps even meet a normal woman, develop a relationship that might evolve into something deeper. Whether he could have children of his own or become a stepfather to someone else’s children, at some point in his integration, something would set him off. He would melt an object or person and others would see it. And that would be it.

He would rather marry Wind.

Fuck integration, he decided. He wanted this island. And he suddenly knew that his plan, which had seemed so stupid earlier, now struck him as brilliant. He would take Mira hostage.

2

Mira stood in the doorway of One World Books, eyes wandering through the destruction. In the morning light that streamed through the shattered windows, the store looked like the aftermath of a violent earthquake or a cat five hurricane. For only the second time in her life, she couldn’t speak. The first time, in 2005, also had involved her store.

After Danielle had devastated the island and moved on, Mira had returned to the store to remove the shutters and take stock. She’d found the first floor submerged in four feet of water, most of the inventory destroyed, and the second floor in ruins because part of the roof had collapsed. She, Sheppard, Annie, and Nadine had boxed up and moved hundreds of books before the storm, all their collective favorites, and stored them at their house. Those books and several hundred more that had been stored in a back room, had survived the hurricane.

Even though the store had been heavily insured, she’d been facing bankruptcy. Her relationship with Sheppard had also been ripped apart during that storm and she remembered standing where she was now, feeling abandoned and utterly alone.

But what she felt right now was rage. The ceiling sprinklers had gone off during whatever had happened here, so water had soaked through everything. The front windows were shattered, books were strewn all over the place, shelves had been overturned, scorch marks marred the ceiling and floor, one of the four registers had melted, another lay in pieces on the sidewalk. Part of the checkout counter had melted, the cafe was mostly rubble, all the chairs had been reduced to splintered wood. Just a single table remained intact, and it was on its side, filled with bullet holes just like the walls, the ceiling, the front of the cafe counter. Overhead lights had shattered.

Mira made her way across the wet carpet of glass to her favorite aisle in the store, where the visionary books had been shelved. Most of the bookcases lay on their backs or sides, some of the books still wedged on the shelves, others on the floor. She rushed around, gathering up the books that had gotten wet and set them on an empty cart. She took them back to her office and opened them randomly to dry. Eventually, she would have to take a hair dryer to them and maybe some of them could be salvaged.

She returned to the front of the store to salvage more books, but Blanca and Carmen had arrived with Annie. They looked like a professional cleaning crew, carrying vacuum cleaners, brooms, hand vacs, mops and buckets, dust pans, garbage bags, tools, several cans of paint and brushes, caulking to fix the holes in the walls, replacement light bulbs. A team of carpenters came in behind them with a load of wood to rebuild the front counter. Sheppard, Gutierrez, Delgado, and Rincon arrived next with new appliances and supplies for the cafe. Then Keel and some of his soldiers drove up in a truck loaded with furniture.

Mira stood in the doorway, hands on her hips. “You and your troops aren’t welcome here, Frank.”

He no longer wore fatigues, just jeans and a Tango Key t-shirt and running shoes. A regular dude. “It was my fault your store got trashed. So the National Guard is replacing everything.”

“Yeah? And three months from now I’m going to get a bill for twenty or thirty grand?”

“No. We’ve paid for it.”

“I’d like to see the receipt and get a copy of it.”

She could tell her request rankled him. “I figured.” He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and produced the receipt and a copy of the bill from an upscale furniture store here on the island. $11,111.01. The numbers shocked her. To her, all those elevens meant he was telling the truth.

“Oh, wait. And this one.”

From the front pocket of his jeans, he withdrew two receipts from another upscale place for $13,700. This number—137—had been described by one author as the DNA of light and had haunted Nobel Laureate Wolfgang Pauli for his entire life. When he had entered the hospital in his late fifties for what was believed to be minor surgery and learned his room number was 137, he’d said that he would never get out of there alive. And he hadn’t. But for her, this number was magic because Pauli himself had been a telekinetic. He would walk into a lab and equipment stuff would break, shatter. This phenomenon was so well known among his colleagues that he eventually was banned from labs.

This number, 137, was what had happened to her when she’d jerked down the bully’s gym shorts in third grade without touching her. It was what had happened the evening on the rise when she’d moved pebbles without touching them. And it had happened with the napkins and paper plates that night on the rooftop of her home in the preserve when she was with her daughter and the other women. Her number for now. Pauli could have it back if and when she lived up to its promise.

“Interesting numbers, Frank. I’ll take my receipts and please come in.”

So he did.

3

At one point during the long hours that everyone cleaned and worked and rebuilt, Keel pulled Mira aside. “I’m so deeply sorry for what I caused here, Mira. I… I was an asshole at the Tango Market, and earlier and…”

“Yeah, c’mon, Frank. Going for your weapon out there in the road. Is that the kind of tactic you used on your ex and your autistic son?”

As soon as she’d said the words, she regretted them. She shouldn’t have done that, peeked inside him that way and then weaponized it. He looked startled that she asked, then laughed uneasily, a chopped up sound. “Maybe… I did.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“I thought… you had to touch someone to…”

“Not always. Look, I don’t want people to be pitted against each other. That undermines our strength as a group. Truce, okay?”

He held up his right hand and she slapped it with her left, a high five that might have yielded additional info about him but didn’t. She stepped back, relieved that she hadn’t picked up anything new about him. “How’re your guys who were injured?”

Such pain showed in his expression that she wished she hadn’t asked. “Lexington died at the scene. Gustavo bled out, both his legs were severed at the knees. Blake… is in critical condition. But he’ll pull through. In his daily life, he’s a fireman. He knew what to do.”

“Christ, I’m so sorry, Frank.”

“Here’s something you need to know, Mira. There were five of these Crows. They were invisible. One of the five has the power to render people invisible. We saw them because we wore thermal visors for the first time.”

“I’ve seen the security footage—the ferry, the market.”

“Hal melted all the shit in here. The redhead set fire to Blake. The chubby kid threw something at Gustavo that severed his legs. Those three were known quantities because of what they did on the ferry. Then there’s the black woman and the albino. She’s the telekinetic so that means the albino is the one with the power of invisibility.” Keel ran his hand over his face, as if to contain whatever he felt just then. “I thought… they wouldn’t be a match for our weapons. But, fuck, five of us armed to the hilt against five of them… they took out three of my men within fifteen seconds, Mira. If there are hundreds of them, we don’t stand a chance in hell. I don’t care how much artillery we have.”

She heard the despair and fear in his voice and sensed he wasn’t a man who felt either emotion often. “Any ideas about where we should go from here?”

Keel looked around the bookstore, at the cleanup and renovation underway, and shook his head. “Not in a physical sense. But there’s a central question we need to answer that may be the clue to all of it. Like I said to Ian, if they can pull the past around them and walk into it, then they could have gone anywhere. So why are they here on Tango in the twenty-first? What or who drew them here?”

Mira suddenly knew he had sensed she felt a psychic connection of some sort to Hal. She wasn’t in the mood for games. “No idea. What’s your theory?”

“The stone woman asked for you and O’Hara by name. Why? The weather guy chose the front of your bookstore for his Armageddon. Why? They returned to your bookstore today. Why?”

“It’s not like they were invited, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“I’m not implying anything. I’m just trying to connect the dots. Is there a link between you and Hal?”

“Jesus, I’d rather have a connection to the clown in IT, Frank.”

He laughed but it sounded phony. “I’m back to work here. We’ll have your store functional by sunset.”

Mira finished gathering up books from her special section, loaded them onto another empty cart and pushed it into her office. She shut the door and leaned back against it, her heart drumming, sweat seeping from her pores Please, she thought. Give me some answers. I need to know what the fuck is going on.

She hoped that Tom or Nadine would appear and offer guidance, insight.

They didn’t.

She pushed a cart loaded with books ready to be shelved and walked over to an empty shelf and started removing books from the cart. She paged through each one, making sure it wasn’t wet or damp. If it was, she placed it open on her desk so the pages would dry naturally or because she used a hair dryer. But when she did this with 1984, she found handwriting on the blank pages at the back.

My mother was in charge of the dome archives, one of the most important government positions. She was appointed to that position when her older half-brother, my corrupt uncle, became president. He has held that position for twenty-one years and is—was?—our last elected president. When he dies, his younger brother will become prez. He’s even worse. Most of the archives are digitalized—books, movies, magazines, music, art, newspapers, websites. We had copies of many of Jon O’Hara’s columns in the Tango Gazette, which was how we kept tabs on the success or failure of the early arrivals. There was also a small collection of physical books, real books, the ones you can hold and smell and page through, like this book. And sometimes my mother brought those home for me to read. These books came with the early climate refugees and were preserved so they didn’t fall apart. It was how I read physical copies of The Hunger Games, Carrie, Watchers, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, The Running Man, Harry Potter, how I first heard about Tango Key.

My mother got away with treating me like a normal kid because of her relationship with the prez. But I think that even if there hadn’t been a connection between them, she would have done the same. She was a rebel. She hated the way we Crows were discriminated against and always believed we could be integrated into Normal society if we were treated like everyone else. She gave me—and the rest of those we rescued—an antidote for the drug that kept our abilities subdued. For the longest time, I never did anything to violate her trust. But then I witnessed, a Normal soldier trying to rape a young Crow woman, and I melted him and took the girl home with me. Her name was Wind and she became the first member of my group. I fell in love with her. My group eventually grew into hundreds. My dad moved us into a warehouse he owned. My parents were like Harriet Tubman’s underground railroad.

Mira snapped photos of the pages, then set the book open on her desk, and flipped through every book on the cart. Hal had scribbled notes in other books, too, and had crossed through entire sections of some books and jotted notes about how his future had evolved. She snapped photos of these notes as well and devoured every word, every detail.

Hal had been born in 2106, long after his parents, grandparents, and extended family had reached the dome. This fact didn’t negate Keel’s ideas about how environmental changes triggered rapid evolutionary changes in a species in a matter of generations instead of millennia. Instead, it made it more likely those changes had continued to occur throughout the migration and long after the dome had been reached and that they still occurred. Had someone else in Hal’s family line had abilities? A parent? Grandparent? A relative farther back?

The only environment he’d ever known was the dome, and he had questions about it. Who had built it? When had it been built? Who had arrived there first? How had something so large been constructed at all and how had it stood for so long? Had it once been a government facility built as a refuge for politicians in the early days of climate change? The speculation among Crows was that it had been built by NASA engineers as a prototype for the eventual habitation of the moon, Mars, or an asteroid. If Hal had ever found the real answers to the dome’s origins, he hadn’t included it in the notes she read.

Mira finally set aside fourteen books from the cart in which Hal had scribbled notes or rewritten paragraphs and pages to reflect the reality of life in the dome. It was as if he’d written in a kind of fever to set the record straight.

In the front and back of The Shining, he’d drawn a complicated family tree that began in 2144 and worked back through time to 2025. But many entries were missing or lacked names and places that could be cross-checked. Under the years from 2025—2050, he’d jotted extensive notes:

In the early years of the migration by climate change refugees, many people lost partners and forged new relationships that produced children. Some of those children were born with abilities and as the migration continued, they grew into teens who partnered early, and had children of their own. My exact lineage lies somewhere in this mess of possibilities. But I still believe I’m related to Mira, Nadine, Annie and Jon.

Mira read that last line over and over again, bile rising in her throat, nearly choking her. She snapped pictures of this section, a part of her hoping it magically would change, that she wasn’t reading it correctly, that the names belonged to some other Mira, Nadine, Annie, and Jon O’Hara. Maybe he’d written it figuring she would see the scribblings eventually and would be tricked into believing a lie, that it would freak her out, make her careless. But if Hal was their descendant, if that much was true, then it explained the psychic connection she’d felt when she first had seen the video of him.

It explained a lot.

His mere existence meant she had come face to face with her own failings. Hal didn’t hesitate to use his ability whenever he could; her ability had snoozed for six years until she’d read the Crow who had tuned to stone when she died. Hal wasn’t just her nemesis and descendant, he was also her catalyst.

But if it any of this was true, it also meant that Annie and O’Hara would be part of that early climate refugee migration inland from the Florida keys and the East coast of the U.S.

Mira glanced again at the dates Hal had noted: 2025—2050. In 2025, her daughter would be thirty. By 2050, she would be fifty-five. So if she and O’Hara had kids, it probably would be on the early side of those dates, 2025 to 2035, when Annie was between the ages of thirty and forty. O’Hara would be between the ages of thirty-six and forty-six. By then, Mira would be between fifty-two to sixty-two. Sheppard would be a year older on either side.

“Fuck,” she spat.

Did it mean they should all uproot themselves and move well inland before this migration started? Would that prevent Hal from being born? And how far inland? Kansas? Wisconsin? Minnesota? The Canadian wilderness? Should they use Chet Snow’s map in Mass Dreams of the Future, the map Hal had redrawn, as a blueprint of where to move? Should they sell everything this week and get out?

And is Annie going to marry O’Hara?

Such extreme panic poured through her she could barely breathe. Then the door to her office slammed open and her daughter rushed in. Mira stood there, staring at her, fists pressed against her chest, trying to quiet the awful pounding of her heart.

“Mom, the…” She stopped. “Wow, what’s going on? You’re wearing that expression that screams, oh my God, we’re fucked.”

Mira’s arms dropped to her sides. She had no idea what that expression looked like. “Annie, how serious is this relationship with Jon? Are you two getting married? Are you…”

“Married?” Annie burst out laughing. “What’re you talking about?”

Mira stammered, “So you’re, uh, just, involved?”

Annie shut the door, came over to the cart, glanced at the books on Mira’s desk, read a couple of the scribbled entries, looked at Mira. “There’s some sort of big psychic download happening here, right?”

“Or some big mind fuck, I’m not sure which.” Mira provided the condensed version of Hal’s notes.

Annie’s eyes widened, but this time she didn’t laugh. “Wow.” She sank into the nearest chair. “Okay, honest answer. Jon and I get along really well. He’s the first guy I’ve been with who isn’t freaked out that I set places at my kitchen table for dad and Nadine. He’s awed by you, by what you do. Awed, Mom, not freaked out. He likes Shep. He’s an evolved Shep who got past skepticism a long time ago. He…”

“Annie, I’d feel a lot better about all this if the two of you evacuated Tango until this plays out.”

“Evacuate for where? My job is here. My life is here. Same for Jon. We…”

“Suppose someone in Hal’s group wants to prevent this invasion from ever happening? If it’s true that he’s our descendant, all they’d have to do is kill you and Hal wouldn’t be born.”

“Isn’t that like, you know, the grandfather paradox on steroids?”

Mira plucked 1984 off her desk. “Read this. You’ll understand something about the evolution of his group.”

Annie took the book and read through the entry Hal had scrawled. “Incredible. His parents were like Tubman? How does he know about her?”

“Probably from historical info from the dome archives.”

“Look, Mom, Tango is as much my home and Jon’s as it is yours and Shep’s. I’m staying. And after all this is over, we can talk about relocating. If he’s really our descendant, it explains why you felt a psychic connection to him, why it triggered this other latent ability in you.”

Mira wasn’t convinced that anything they knew would explain what had happened.

“C’mon, let’s gather up the rest of the books in our favorite section and find out if he scribbled notes in any of the others,” Annie suggested. “We’re making progress out there.”

“Maybe all of us should stay here tonight,” Mira said. “Just in case.”

Annie threw out her arms. “Nowhere to sleep, the place is a wreck, but hey, we’ve got plenty of food and coffee and new furniture and tons to read.”

“Actually there’re cots and bedding in the storage room we can use. I’d just feel better staying here. And for now, keep this descendant stuff to yourself. And what you ladies saw last night.”

“Why? Why keep any of this secret?”

Mira didn’t know. “It just feels right for now.”

“Okay. I can live with that.”

Mira grabbed the empty basket and followed Annie out of her office.

11

The Dolphins

With half an hour to spare before dusk and the beginning of the curfew, O’Hara and Annie stopped by the center so she could check on the dolphins. He had a feeling something else was going on with her, but couldn’t figure out what it was. Sometimes, she was difficult to read.

“The marine biologists have been preparing all the dolphins for transfer tomorrow to Dolphins Plus in Key Largo because they’re so agitated by events here,” she explained as they got out of the car, slinging her large bag over her shoulder. “I think it’s a huge mistake, even more traumatic for them. So I’m freeing them.”

“Good thing I’m wearing my swim trunks.”

She looked surprised. “How’d you know to do that?”

O’Hara laughed. “You kidding? Every time I’ve been here, I’ve left soaked to the bone.”

Annie patted her bag. “I’ve got my tools.”

“So we’re going to bust them out?”

She nodded.

“I assume you’ve got a plan?”

“Absolutely.” She paused, then added, “I just hope it works.”

They entered the tank area, lit up like high noon by security lights. Veronica—the marine biologist who was Annie’s boss—was feeding the dolphins. She waved them over. Tall and thin, with wild, curly hair, she reminded O’Hara of a cartoonish mad scientist.

“Hey guys, what’s up?”

“I forgot some stuff in my office this morning,” Annie replied. “You here alone?”

“Yeah, I told Barb to get home. She has to catch the ferry to Key West. We all know how long these lines are at the docks.”

“You need some help?” O’Hara asked.

“That’d be great, Jon. You’ve fed them before. Annie, my son just called and he needs a ride before curfew. So can you close up?”

“Sure. Is everything ready for the transfer tomorrow?”

Veronica nodded, wiped her hands on a towel wrapped around her skinny waist. “As ready as possible. We’ve got five vessels with two slings apiece that will be here at six tomorrow morning.”

O’Hara walked over to her. “How long will it take to get them to Dolphins Plus?”

“Most of the day. They’re going to be much better off there until things here are resolved.”

Yeah, sure they are. Like an obliterated bridge and an island invaded by psychic freaks would be resolved in a few days, he thought, but kept his mouth shut. He stripped down to his bathing trunks and draped his clothes over the back of a nearby chair. He plucked a slimy fish from the bucket and tossed it toward the tank. One of the three bottlenose dolphins Annie had nurtured leaped into the air, flukes slapping the water, splashing O’Hara.

“Priscilla has been like that all day,” Veronica said. “Little hissy fits. She’s agitated.” She untied the towel at her waist, handed it to O’Hara. “I appreciate you two doing this. Text me if there’re any problems, Annie. And let’s hope for a quiet night.”

Then she hurried off with a wave and O’Hara and Annie exchanged a look. “Isn’t it going to be obvious that we freed them since we’re the last ones leaving?”

“Naw. Let’s give her a few minutes, then I’m turning off the security cams.”

“Won’t Veronica know?”

“Eventually. But she’ll think the electronics went haywire. And if she’s busy with her son, she won’t check her app for a while.”

“Since Priscilla, Boss, and Rose have grown up with humans, isn’t it possible that could endanger them in the wild?”

“It could. But I think they’re smarter than that. What would really endanger them is being transferred to another dolphin facility and possibly separated from each other and enduring hours of more tricks for live audiences and long periods of utter boredom.”

It wasn’t what she said that convinced him, but the passion with which she said it. “Okay, what next in this grand scheme of yours, Annie?”

“Be right back.”

Annie hurried out of the tank area and ducked under an awning without cameras. While she was there, O’Hara crouched at the edge of the tank and snapped his fingers. “Hey, guys. We’re going to bust you outta here. It may be a felony because you’re worth a shit ton of moola, but it feels like the right thing to do, you know?”

The dolphins chittered and squealed and splashed him. Fifteen minutes passed before Annie returned to the open tank area and announced, “The security cams just blew out.”

“You did that from your phone?”

“I installed those cams. I know how to make it look like something it isn’t.” She stripped down to her bathing suit, set her bag on the ground, dug around inside it. She brought out pairs of wire cutters, head lanterns, masks. “What we’re going to do is snip the wire along the top of the divider between the tank and the canal and use our feet to push it toward the canal, bending it down so the edges don’t cut the dolphins as they swim out.”

“I think it’d be easier to do this from the canal side, Annie.”

“How about one of us on each side?”

“That’ll work. You think we need tanks?”

“Not with both of us doing this.”

“I’ll take the canal side,” he said.

The dolphins twittered and whistled and O’Hara figured they knew something was going on. He made sure the mask fit, let it slide down his face to his throat, secured the head lantern. It fit snugly across his forehead and the back of his skull, and the bright light worked. He picked up the wire cutters and went over to the far side of the tank, where the wire mesh fence divided the tank from the canal. At the edge of it, he eased his bare feet into the cool water.

“You have a spot where you can stand?” Annie called.

“Don’t know yet.”

As she slipped into the tank, the three younger dolphins—Priscilla, Boss, and Rose—swam up alongside her, twittering, clicking, whistling. O’Hara raised his mask, turned on the head lantern, took a deep breath, then sank under the water, and started snipping along the top of the rusted wire mesh. He could see Annie on the other side of the fence, cutting quickly while the three dolphins at her sides peered at him. Then more dolphins lined up and started butting their heads against the wire mesh.

He and Annie surfaced for a gulp of air, she flashed him a thumbs up, and sank again. When he’d cut through much of the mesh, O’Hara slipped the wire cutters into a pocket in his swimming trunks and hoped neither of the blades stabbed him in the ass. His fingers slipped through the mesh, and started pulling. On the other side, Annie pressed her feet against the mesh.

They both came up for a final gulp of air and when he went under again, he counted twelve dolphins lined up on either side of Annie. Six each. And more were behind them. They battered the mesh with their heads and flukes and the stuff surrendered with creaks and groans. O’Hara quickly swam out of their way. Just before Priscilla, Boss, and Rose slipped through the opening, all three of them came up to Annie and touched their beaks gently to her mask. Then they swam free with seventeen other bottlenose dolphins.

He scrambled onto land and moments later, so did Annie. They tore off their masks and head lanterns and ran after the dolphins along the narrow seawall. They surfaced before they reached the mouth of the Atlantic, the air filled with their happy whistles, clicks and chatter. Annie blew them a kiss and she and O’Hara watched them swim in the starlight until they dived again.

“Awesome,” she whispered, tears beading on her cheeks.

“And we’ve just committed a felony.”

“And I’m now unemployed.”

“And it was the right thing to do.”

They laughed. “We sound like co-conspirators, Jon. Should we check the fence to see if it looks like the wires were cut?”

“They beat it so hard with their flukes and heads, most of the mesh just tore away,” he replied. “That’s our story. We should be on the same page.”

“They freaked and hit the fence full force. We saw it happen,” Annie added. “How’s that?”

“What’s the first thing Veronica will do?”

“Ask to see the security footage.” She paused, frowned. “Yeah, forget that version.”

“What time did you short-circuit the cams?”

She glanced at her phone. “4:47.”

“Do you usually text her when you finish the final feeding for the day?”

“Shit, yeah. I get paid by the hour.”

“So tell her we left at 4:30.”

“It’s 5:17 right now. Is that time gap suspicious?” “With everything else that’s going on here? Unlikely.”

“Texting her.”

“I’m starving,” O’Hara said. “How about if I fix dinner tonight?”

“I think my mom, Shep, and the others are making the bookstore their safe haven tonight. I feel like I should stay there, too. We’ve got cots and bedding and plenty of food. Feel like cooking for the clan, Jon?”

“What the hell. Sure.”

“I’ll set up our cots in the yoga room in the back, so we have some privacy.”

His eyes met hers. It would be weird making love to her in a yoga studio, he thought, in her mother’s bookstore. But he appreciated her suggestion and took her hand. “Hey, on this long trek inland we supposedly may take, we’ll be sure to have our own tent.”

“Do you think we’re actually going to do that?”

O’Hara shrugged. “Things are so strange now it feels like anything is possible.”

They made their way back along the seawall to retrieve their clothes and close up for the night. The tank area seemed eerily quiet, especially when Annie flipped off the security lights. Then, in the light of the stars, the pod’s song drifted through the air, a cacophony so hauntingly beautiful they both whipped out their cells and recorded it.

2

By nightfall, One World Books looked nearly normal again and Mira felt more hopeful. The place wasn’t just her livelihood. It was her child, nurtured for more than twenty-five years, cared for, tended to when injured. She had raised it with her daughter and grandmother and it mirrored her own unconscious—emotions, beliefs, issues, failures, triumphs. And what she saw now would be perfect once a new front window was installed.

In metaphorical terms, she supposed that new window represented Sheppard, and how he had integrated himself into all this after the events on the bridge.

Blanca and Carmen had gone by the cabin and picked up most of the food there and now O’Hara whipped up meals for everyone who had helped restore One World Books. Nigel wandered from one group to another, barking encouragement, tail wagging when Gutierrez, Delgado, and Sheppard pushed the new tables together so they could all eat in the same area. Then the dog followed Mira and Annie outside and watched as they pulled the shutters across the bookstore’s shattered windows, closing up the place to looters. It wouldn’t keep Crows out, Mira thought, but it was better than gaping holes. She didn’t have any idea when she would be able to have windows replaced and until then, the shutters would stay shut.

“What’s up with you, Nigel?” Annie nuzzled her face against his head. “You keeping an eye on us?”

Nigel barked and pawed at the ground. “What’s that mean?” Mira asked.

“Beats me. What about the windows at the back of the building, Mom?”

“Nothing broken back there. They’ll be fine.”

Annie motioned up and down the street, where other businesses had also put up shutters. “No one’s taking chances. Even the Island Grille has shut down.”

“Have the dolphins acted up this evening?”

“Uh, no.”

Mira heard something in her daughter’s voice that meant trouble. Her first thought: Annie was pregnant. But she hadn’t known O’Hara long enough to know if she was pregnant and before him, Mira knew, Annie hadn’t slept with anyone for a year.

“You can’t be pregnant. So what is it?”

“Pregnant?” Annie laughed. “C’mon, give me some credit. I’ve been on birth control for a while to regulate my periods.”

“Then what’s the big but I heard in your voice?”

For the first time ever, Annie hesitated. “How much do you want to know, Mom?”

Everything. “Whatever you feel comfortable telling me.”

Annie held Mira’s gaze, then burst out laughing. “Yeah. Right. That sounds like it came from some Internet website or self-help book about mothers and daughters.”

Mira had read dozens of books of that kind and in the end, had decided she understood her daughter better than any book did. She’d opted for complete honesty.

“Just give it to me.”

“Jon and I freed the twenty dolphins at the center… and I think Nigel sensed it.”

“You… wow.” Of the various possibilities on her list, that one hadn’t even made her list.

“I couldn’t stand it anymore, Mom. When I first started there, they had mostly rescued dolphins like Prissy, Boss, Rose. But then they started trading dolphins with other facilities and selling and buying them and before this whole fiasco began with the Crows, the center was like fucking Sea World, okay? They tripled their entrance price, charged ridiculous amounts of money for dolphin swims, kept them in shallow tanks in totally boring environments… and tomorrow they were going to move all of them to Key Largo because they’ve been so agitated since the Crows arrived.”

Images clicked through Mira’s head, snippets of memories that shouted, Yes, of course, she’d do something like this. “Well, it was a stupidly illegal thing to do and considering what those dolphins are worth, it’s probably a felony.” Mira paused. Annie looked shocked. “But frankly, I think you did the right thing. It took guts and conviction.”

The shock froze Annie’s expression. Mouth partially open, eyes wide. “I thought you were going to say you disowned me.”

“Oh, c’mon, Annie. You did what I would have done if I’d worked there.”

Her daughter laughed, a soft, melodic sound, and squeezed Mira’s hand. “I didn’t really think that.” She reclaimed her hand. “Jon said the same thing about a felony. I think I covered our tracks well.” She paused. “I hope.”

“And now you’re unemployed so I’m officially putting you back on the store payroll.”

Annie hugged her. “Jon cut the wire on the canal side, I cut it on the tank side. We followed them along the seawall as they went through the canal and on out to sea. It was incredible. And beautiful.”

She talked fast, with passion, excitement, and right then, Mira knew her daughter had met her soul mate in O’Hara.

Annie played the recording she’d made of the dolphin sounds as they swam to freedom. It was the most beautiful music Mira had ever heard, nuanced, vibrant, haunting, forever. Nigel dropped his head back and howled.

“Nigel recognizes what those sounds are,” Mira said. “And if there’s a time stamp on that recording, you should send it to me and then delete it. Just in case you’re arrested and they confiscate your phone.”

“Very funny, Mom.”

“I’m half-serious. You need to cover your tracks that way, too.”

“I’m sending it to you.” She tapped away at the phone. “But I’m not deleting it. It’s too beautiful to delete.”

Nigel barked at the door to go back inside. Mira opened it and they followed him in. Blanca and Carmen were setting out paper plates and utensils and Rincon and Keel started carrying over platters of food. She was still suspicious of Keel and his motives, but considering what he’d done for the store today, she couldn’t exactly tell him he wasn’t welcome at dinner.

The food included a shrimp casserole, a vegetarian dish, a fresh fruit salad sprinkled with walnuts and pumpkin seeds, and several choices of beverages—white or red wine, lemonade, iced tea or any coffee concoction. Everyone chose wine.

Before Carmen joined them, she set a bowl of food in front of Nigel.

“What’re we celebrating?” Blanca asked, holding up her paper cup.

“That we’ve survived three nights with the Crows among us,” Rincon replied.

“That I’m not suing the FBI for Hal’s disk,” Keel said. “And that at least one of them was injured in here last night.”

“Which one?” Sheppard asked. “Any idea?”

“Nope,” Keel replied.

“We’re all here together,” Blanca said. “That’s what matters right now. Salud, amigos!”

Throughout dinner, cells dinged and sang with emails and text messages, most of them ignored. Everyone, Mira thought, needed a break from the twenty-four/seven focus on these recent events. But when O’Hara brought over dessert, Sheppard broke the info fast by turning on the TV mounted on the wall.

“The lower Florida keys are still under a state of emergency tonight,” an MSNBC anchor said. “Two thousand National Guard troops are there, most of them on Tango Key, which seems to be the main target of the terrorists. Two nights ago, the destruction of the bridge that connects Tango Key to Key West and the rest of the keys killed a hundred and eighty-two people and more than a hundred are still missing. We’re going now to our team on the ground for the latest.”

The scene switched to the Tango airport terminal, where Richard Engel stood with some of Keel’s troops, discussing the current situation on the island. It unnerved Mira to see Engel on Tango Key. As NBC’s chief foreign correspondent, she associated him with reporting on madness in the Mideast. In the Russian/Ukraine situation.

“While the government labels these events in the keys as terrorism, a number of videos taken on the Tango bridge as it was being destroyed show a kind of terrorist we’ve never dealt with before,” Engel said. A video clip of the lightning woman filled the screen. “Instead of an assault rifle, this woman appears to have electrical currents running through her body that she’s able to direct and release. Earlier today, I spoke to the island coroner, Dr. Ian Rincon. He has autopsied three of these terrorists, including the one people are calling Lightning Woman.”

Sheppard muted the TV and everyone at the table looked at Rincon, who shrugged. “Hey, I like the guy. He’s a good journalist. And Jon, he said your columns were what first caught his attention. Engel is making our situation here visual and powerful. Anyone in his or her right mind already knows these freaks aren’t terrorists in the traditional sense. Engel is confirming that.”

“You should’ve invited him for dinner,” Mira said.

“He has an open invitation to visit any of us.”

Another cell dinged and Delgado got up and walked into the main room to take the call. When he returned, he didn’t look happy. “All the dolphins have escaped, Annie. Veronica’s reporting it to the police just so there’s a record of it. For insurance purposes.”

“What? When did this happen?”

“Apparently it happened shortly after you and Jon left this afternoon,” Delgado replied. “The security footage is fried, so we don’t know the details. Veronica is concerned that the escape is indicative of another weird turn with the Crows.”

“It might be.” Annie glanced at her cell, shook her head. “The security footage ends at 4:57 this afternoon.”

Mira thought Annie was a good actress. A believable liar. She also looked completely innocent. “Can they survive in the wild?” Mira asked.

“Absolutely.” Annie tapped her phone several times. “They’re all chipped. Right now, the youngest three are hovering about two miles offshore of Tango. The rest of the pod is farther out, six miles east of the ferry docks.”

“Does Veronica have that info, Annie?” Delgado asked.

“Sure.”

“She intends to talk to you and Jon tomorrow to confirm her conviction that the dolphins escaped to protect the island.”

“Really?” Annie exclaimed. “That’s what she thinks? She actually said that?”

“Just now,” Delgado replied. “So you’re our dolphin expert, Annie. You think it’s true about the dolphins protecting the island?”

“Remember Elian Gonzales, Carlos?” Annie asked.

“Sure, the Cuban kid who came to the U.S. clinging to an inner tube in, what, 1998? 1999?”

“1999,” Annie replied. “The refugee boat he was on sank. He was clinging to an inner tube and said that every time he lost strength and started slipping off, three dolphins helped him stay above water and that they saved his life.”

Diego nodded. “Yeah, I remember that!”

“There’re countless stories like that about dolphins saving lives,” Annie went on. “So why wouldn’t they try to save an island? This island? It’s been their home.”

“It’s a great angle for a story.” O’Hara said. “And there’s some pretty solid scientific research on it, too. Some of the world’s foremost dolphin experts say that rescue behavior in dolphins isn’t automatic or purely instinctual. They apparently make conscious decisions about when to intervene and they’re selective about who and in which circumstances they help.”

Annie looked surprised. “How do you know that?”

“For one of my columns, I interviewed an Aussie wildlife filmmaker who was doing some underwater filming of four dolphins when a great white shot toward him in attack mode. The dolphins intervened and saved his life.”

Carmen blessed herself. “Dios mio. This is hopeful.”

And this, Mira thought, was where O’Hara’s brilliance lay. His column would add to the mystique about the dolphins’ escape, the media would jump on it, and any suspicion Annie’s boss might harbor that she and O’Hara were responsible would vanish. Mira knew she should be appalled that her daughter had committed a felony. But she was proud of Annie and O’Hara. They’d done the right thing.

“Dolphins, mermaids, whales, aliens. We need all the help we can get,” Keel remarked, and got up and started clearing the table.

3

Hal woke suddenly.

Whiskers was snuggled into the curve of his neck, purring loudly, and he rolled onto his side, running his fingers through the cat’s fur. Whiskers drew his tongue across the back of Hal’s hand, as if to thank him for the temporary sanctuary. And in that moment, he experienced something he’d never felt before, a profound camaraderie and connection with an animal.

The overall emotion seemed similar to the kind of love he’d experienced with Wind for years after he’d rescued her. Yet, it was strangely different. This cat asked him for hardly anything. Lend me your neck so I can cuddle. Feed me when I’m hungry. Let me chase lizards. Whiskers didn’t expect anything. Wind had asked him to change and, like her sister Red, had begged him to blend, not invade. But Red hadn’t embraced that idea until after she’d gotten here and all these nightmare events had unfolded. Wind had always embraced that idea.

The cat lived moment to moment.

Had he?

No.

For his entire life, he’d lived from strategy to strategy, from Plan A to B to C and on down through the alphabet. And here he was, in the midst of Plan Z. Only a handful of his Crows had made it, not the hundreds he’d anticipated. One of them was badly injured and the others were entertaining second thoughts about all this. He couldn’t blame them. He was beginning to think Wind had been right all along—blend into the twenty-first or stay behind in the dome. But in his head, he’d been through this a million times already.

He rolled onto his back, sat up, dropped his legs over the side of the couch. Whiskers lifted his head briefly, meowed softly as if to say, Hey, dude, what’s going on? Then he curled up in the blanket and shut his eyes again.

Hal glanced at the time on his phone—nearly five a.m.—and made his way down the hall to the bedroom where they’d put Squirt. Nico had fallen asleep in the chair beside Squirt’s bed, his head slumped to one side, his hand resting against Squirt’s arm. The blended concoction Red had made was half gone, but Hal didn’t know if Nico or Squirt had consumed it. He didn’t want to wake either of them, so he leaned over Squirt and touched his forehead.

Burning up. His skin felt like it might explode any minute.

He needed antibiotics, real drugs, twenty-first century drugs, not the shitty herbal concoction from the dome. Hal rushed out of the room, fingers working his phone, Googling madly. By the time he’d torn open a yogurt and grabbed a bottle of water, he’d decided that Squirt needed amoxicillin. Or something else

He Googled the closest pharmacy, a lone building across the street from the market they’d nearly destroyed earlier. In, out, save Squirt. Simple. He hurried out to the porch and was shocked to see Liz sitting on the steps, staring out into the darkness, her wings not fully extended, but fluttering.

“Hey,” he said. “I thought you were inside, asleep.”

“I can’t sleep much these days, Hal.”

“Squirt’s going to die unless we get drugs into him. Real drugs.”

She looked up at him. “Shit. Where do we get drugs? You know where to go? What drugs to look for?”

“I think so.”

“Then let’s get there fast. I’ll carry you.”

“You aren’t big enough.”

“Ha.”

She started shifting, her hair going first, feathers sprouting from her head, her neck, then the beak, around her eyes, then her human legs morphed into the condor body and finally, those wings unfurled, longer than he’d ever seen them before. Her transformation, singularly beautiful and mysterious, always astounded and thrilled him. But this would be a first.

Hal approached her, wondered where the hell he was supposed to sit, and finally threw his left leg over the widest part of her condor body and leaned forward, arms closing around her neck. She twisted her head several times until the position of his arms was comfortable enough for her, flapped her massive wings, and took off.

Hal felt so disoriented by the rapid ascension he nearly threw up. Wind whistled in his ears, a sound his Wind often made when they having sex. Or making love, as these people of the twenty-first called it. Once he overcame the nausea, it thrilled him to be flying like some mythic figure of the ancient world. His eyes watered from the wind, so he couldn’t see much below, but he found he could guide her with the pressure of his arms. Up, down, right, left. And when he spotted the pharmacy, he squeezed his arms once, and down she went. She’d seen the place, too.

The air bit into his eyes. Dizziness seized him. He hoped she landed before he puked.

She touched down smoothly in the rear parking lot and Hal realized they’d covered the mile in a fraction of what it would have taken him on foot. He slipped off of her, still nauseated, his legs shaky, and vomited.

She quickly shifted back into her human form. “Wow,” she whispered. “No one has ridden me since I tried to fly my dad out of the dome years ago. I was too small then and he was too big. You okay?

The nausea had ebbed. He nodded. “What’s it like to fly when there’s no limit to the sky?”

“Like… being divine.”

This was why he loved her. Being divine. Could she actually feel it, the proximity to that kind of greatness? “Back door, Liz.”

They ran toward it.

The lock liquified easily enough and when he pulled on the knob the door swung open. The inside of the pharmacy seemed hallucinatory. Rows and aisles and shelves held vitamins and herbs, makeup, creams, lotions for this and that, shampoos and toilet paper and paper towels, bottles of sleep-aids, pain killers, Band-Aids and bandages, school supplies, dog and cat food, a refrigerated wall of water, beer, wine, pizzas. Like a little grocery store without the fresh foods and meats.

“Back here.” Liz motioned him toward the pharmacy sign at the rear of the store. Here, the shelves were compact, well-labeled, but there were endless rows and bottles, containers, packets. He didn’t know where to begin.

He and Liz moved along the shelves, periodically calling out the names of drugs, remedies. Then, on a shelf behind the desk, where the prescription items were kept, he found amoxicillin. .He grabbed one, read the label. If you are pregnant or lactating…

Squirt wasn’t pregnant or lactating. He was dying. Hal scooped a handful of packets in the bag that hung from his shoulder, then moved along the shelf, helping himself to other drugs.Augmentin,Vicodin, Zocor, lisinopril. He would read the labels and warnings later.

“We need vitamin C,” Liz called out from some other spot in the store. “Vitamin C, COQ-10, papaya…”

“Take whatever you want.” He kept moving along the aisles, no longer looking at what he dumped into his backpack. It didn’t matter. They could use it all. Welcome to the twenty-first century, he thought, where there seemed to be a remedy for almost anything that ailed you.

4

Nigel, Frisbee in his mouth, nudged Mira awake, his tail whipping from side to side. She rolled off the cot in her office, scratched Nigel’s head. “You have to go out, Big Guy?” she whispered.

His tail thumped the floor.

“Okay, let me find my shoes, my phone.”

She didn’t want to wake Sheppard, snoring on the other cot. Mira scooped up her phone, noted it was 5:42 a.m., texted Sheppard that she was taking Nigel out. His phone was muted, but he eventually would see the message. She pocketed her cell, slung her bag over her shoulder, weapon inside, picked up her shoes. She and the dog crept quietly out the rear door, into a massive, eerie silence. Mira dropped her shoes, slipped them on.

Still dark. Nothing moved, not a breath of a breeze. Then birds twittered, as if in greeting, and Nigel trotted over to a strip of grass alongside the parking lot and peed. He still held the Frisbee in his mouth. She didn’t have a leash for him, but he didn’t seem to need one. His snout lifted into the air again and he sniffed noisily. Mira checked her cell for news, emails, anything new, and when she glanced up, Nigel was gone.

“Nigel,” she called softly. “Hey, where’d you go?”

Mira ran out to the front of the store and there he was, paused on the sidewalk, head cocked, listening to something she couldn’t hear, then moving from side to side as he sniffed loudly. “Nigel, we need to go back inside. C’mon, boy.” She turned toward the bookstore but he took off down the sidewalk.

“Shit.” She should’ve grabbed a leash before she’d left the bookstore.

Mira loped after him, through dim puddles of light from the stars and the setting moon, into deeper shadows. She didn’t want to shout for him. In this stillness, her voice really would wake the dead, a cliché that defined the depth of this silence. So she broke into a run. Nigel was locked into a scent, though, and moved fast, vanishing around a corner long before she reached it.

When she finally got to that corner, she spotted him just ahead, frozen on the sidewalk, staring at a pharmacy across the street from the Tango Market. Mira caught up to him, crouched, slung her arm across his back, fingers burrowing through his thick fur, searching for his collar. “What?” she whispered.

Nigel turned his head, licked her face, then took off toward the pharmacy. She ran after him to the edge of trees that bordered the parking lot behind the building. The dog had dropped to his belly, his tail thumped the ground. Mira knelt next to him, slipped her cell from her back pocket, started to text Sheppard, but decided to wait until she could check things out. She turned on her recorder instead, described what was happening, that it might be nothing more than Nigel pursuing a squirrel.

She wanted a personal record.

Nigel darted forward, Mira loped after him to the back door of the pharmacy.

Not a squirrel.

The door knob and lock were gone, an ooze of metal marred the surface of the wood, the door hung by a single hinge. Mira changed her mind and quickly texted Sheppard. Tango pharmacy. They’ve been here.

Then: voices, male and female.

“I think vitamin E is supposed to be really good for you, Hal. And I could use some shampoo and a bar of soap that smells really good.”

“Pick out whatever you want, Liz.”

“And my wings are kinda sore from you riding on me, so I’m going to get something for that.”

“Fine.” He paused. “Like what? Advil? Tylenol?”

“No, a homeopathic thing made from marigold flowers.” She waved the small package in the air. “I’ve been Googling it.”

“Okay, sure, whatever you think will help, Liz.”

Mira could tell he didn’t have any idea what she was talking about.

She brought out her weapon, started backing away. Even though she was armed, she’d seen the videos of what Hal could do. He could liquify her before she fired a single shot. That aside, she had no desire to shoot anyone. Her weapon was strictly for defense.

Suddenly, Nigel shot forward, not making a sound, tail wagging, and vanished through the doorway. Fuck. Mira lunged after him, but when she barreled into the store, Nigel was already past the end of the row. She heard Liz squeal, “Oh my God, a dog, it’s a real dog!”

Nigel leaped at Liz, licking her, whimpering, perhaps sensing she wasn’t entirely human. She threw her arms around him, rubbed her face against his fur, and Nigel ate it up, wallowing in the attention. Then Hal appeared at the end of an aisle directly across from Mira and they just stared at each other. She knew he recognized her, but nothing about him appeared to be threatening.

Not yet.

Can I take them both before Hal liquifies me?

“Is that dog yours?” he asked.

He said it casually, like they were two dog owners in a park, inquiring about each other’s pooches. “Right now he is.” Mira snapped her fingers, whistled. “Nigel, come.” He reluctantly left Liz’s side and trotted over to Mira. She hooked her fingers under his collar. “Sit, Nigel.” He sat. “Good boy.”

“I really like him,” Liz said. “He could be my pet just like Whiskers is yours, Hal.”

But Hal didn’t look at Liz. Or the dog. His eyes were on Mira, and it unnerved her. “What’re you doing here, Mira?”

Blunt. Vaguely threatening. “What’re you doing here, Hal?”

He looked amused. “I asked you first.”

“Nigel woke me up. He needed to pee. Then he apparently sensed you two and took off and ended up here.”

“I should melt you both.”

“Don’t you dare hurt that dog, Hal.” Liz stepped forward, wings starting to unfurl, to beat the air, knocking stuff from the shelves.

“Okay, okay.” Hal patted the air with his hands. “Just stop with the wings. I won’t hurt the dog.” He leaned forward, palms against his thighs, and called softly to Nigel. “Hey, will you lick me, too?”

Nigel’s wagging tail slowed to a languid swish. He stepped forward hesitantly, then backed up, looked at Mira. “I think Hal wants to be your friend, Nigel,” she said.

But the dog wasn’t convinced. He moved to Mira’s side, then darted over to Liz once more and licked her legs. “Oh, the things I can show you, Nigel,” she said, and rubbed her face against his fur again.

He retreated to Mira’s side again.

“So you didn’t come here looking for me?” Hal asked.

“Like I said, Nigel had to go to the bathroom and woke me up. The last thing I’d do is look for you, Hal. You really tore apart my store and by destroying the bridge, you fucks have set Tango Key back at least twenty years.”

She felt that familiar current racing through her, causing her arms and hands to tingle. But could she ramp it up and conjure it quickly enough? She doubted it. Her fear of Hal—of his ability—loomed, an impenetrable wall. “You and your people should leave before you get killed.”

He snickered. “You are going to kill us? I don’t think so, Mira.”

“Not me. But drones, bombs, and grenades might. You don’t have a defense against any of that. You can’t do shit against an army. Yeah, you can melt anything, Trixie can teleport stuff, I don’t know what Cam and Nico can do, and Squirt has that wicked throw. But…”

“Tell me about the amoxicillin.”

The abrupt switch threw her off. She guessed the antibiotic was for the Crow who had been wounded in her store by Keel and his team. “I’m not a doctor.”

“Have you taken it?”

“Yeah. And its derivatives. The Z-pack, Augmentin, they’re all basically the same. One pharma at a time. For fever, grab Advil or Tylenol. What do you have in your time for infections?”

“A remedy,” Hal replied. “Herbal. But it isn’t strong enough for Squirt.”

“And we have healers,” Liz added. “But unfortunately, none of them made it.”

“Uh-huh.” Mira kept them talking as she stepped back toward the door, the frantic drumbeat of her heart pounding in her ears. Her fingers curled under the top of Nigel’s collar, urging him to move back with her. He did. “Since I didn’t come here looking for you, Nigel and I are going back to where we’re staying and…”

“And tell the rest of your group, soldiers and all, where we are?” Hal laughed. “Nope. You’re coming with us.”

Mira moved her fingers away from the dog’s collar. “What can you possibly gain from that?”

Hal grinned, his teeth lining up in his mouth like a mottled picket fence. “You’re my hostage.”

“No one’s going to pay anything for me, Hal.”

“We don’t need money. We want the island.”

Mira started sweating. Could either of them smell her fear? She struggled to keep her expression and voice neutral. “And you think you can exchange me for the island?” She laughed and hoped it didn’t sound phony. “Yeah, sure. You don’t know much about this century.”

She stroked Nigel’s head and continued stepping back, closer to the door. Then she looked down at him and whispered the magical words that Blanca and Rincon had taught him. “A la casa, Nigel.” Home.

He looked at her with those soulful eyes that struck her as so human she nearly threw her arms around him, to keep him close to her. “Corre!” Run!

Nigel spun around and flew through the door. Mira leaped out of the way and dropped to her knees as Hal raced after the dog, everything within a few feet of him liquifying—pieces of shelves and products, part of the floor near the door, then the door and its frame and part of the wall.

“Not the dog!” Liz shrieked.

Impossibly long wings suddenly sprouted from her shoulders, flapping so fast and wildly that a single flap sent Hal sideways into a shelf that toppled, spilling bottles and containers and vials that crashed to the floor. Liz ran over to him, wings still pumping. “You will never hurt that dog, Hal. Give me your word or I take off now.”

Hal, on his back, lifting up on his elbows, looked shocked that she’d challenged him.

With the two of them distracted by each other, Mira whipped around and ran through the door. Behind her, she heard Hal shout, “Her too? You’re going to let Mira escape, Liz?”

Mira raced harder and faster toward the woods. The sky had lightened to the east, but didn’t offer enough illumination yet for her to even glimpse Nigel. She heard the constant beat of Liz’s wings behind her, a throbbing, like a heart.

She sent Annie and Sheppard a voice text: Taken. Pharmacy. Then she hurled her cell into the brush to her right, and hoped their find my phone was on. She threw the gun in the other direction.

When a giant condor landed in front of her, its eyes said it all. Liz. Mira threw up her arms. “You win.”

The bird immediately morphed back into young, skinny Liz. “That was smart of you, Mira.”

“Was it? And what’s with you anyway, Liz? Why’re you so loyal to that psychopath?”

She cocked her head. “Psychopath? That’s like, what, a real crazy? Hal’s not a psycho anything. In the dome, he saved my life.”

“The clever ones do.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Liz snapped.

“The clever psychopaths often save lives in return for loyalty.”

As soon as Mira said it, she knew it was the wrong thing to say to this shape shifting weirdo blinded by her loyalty to Hal. “That’s a crock of shit,” Liz said.

Before Mira could reply, Hal reached them. He looked pissed. “Check her pockets, Liz. I might inadvertently liquify her if I touch her.”

Liz patted Mira down. “No phone, no weapon, nothing. She’s clean, Hal.”

“That dog is going to alert the others. We need to get out of here.”

“I can’t carry both of you,” Liz said.

Hal gestured at the electric cart in the corner of the lot. “Mira and I will take that. Get back to the apartment and wake the others.”

Liz nodded and her physical form started shifting. Mira watched, fascinated and horrified, intrigued and repulsed, certain this image would stay with her forever. It would be the kind of thing that would move with her from life to life, a soul image that would remind her of this life as Mira, granddaughter of Nadine, mother of Annie, wife of Sheppard, bookstore owner, psychic whose descendant hailed from the twenty-second century.

The condor rose up into the brightening sky and looked magnificent flying through the light—unless you knew what it really was.

Hal poked his finger into Mira’s back. “Move.”

The sensations swept through her again, up through her fingertips, into her hands, arms, shoulders, and seemed to be daring her to take him on, to use the ability his presence had awakened in her. But fear seized her. She wasn’t ready yet.

Maybe she would never be ready.

Disgusted with herself and now terrified that he might melt her once they were in the electric cart, she said, “None of this will work, Hal. Even with hundreds of you here, it won’t work. The military will just bomb the island into fucking oblivion.”

“We’ll see.” He grabbed her roughly by the arm and moved toward the electric cart.

If she made a break for it right now, how far would she have to get before he was unable to liquify her? Better to delay him, give her peeps time to bring in troops, more cops, something. But if Hal was killed, they wouldn’t know where the rest of the Crows were staying. The situation might worsen. Only Keel had confronted them so far and that had resulted in three deaths in less than a minute. She realized she was in an ideal position. Undermine them from the inside out.

But how?

Hal gave Mira a final push into the cart, then swung into the driver’s side. No key, she noticed, but when he gripped the steering wheel, a green light flashed on the console and he slammed the cart into gear and drove out of the lot.

`

12

The Pharmacy

Barely awake, Sheppard groped for his cell phone and saw Mira’s text messages. He bolted upward and forwarded the texts to the group. Just then, he heard Nigel howling outside the rear door of the bookstore. Sheppard loped over, opened the door, and the dog ran inside, barking urgently, panting hard, running back and forth from Sheppard to the door.

“It’s okay, Nigel. I got her text. I know where she is. Where they are.”

Like the dog understood English. Hell, Sheppard thought, maybe he did. Nigel went over to his bowls, lapped at water, gobbled down some dry food, then ran to the door, barking frantically.

Ten minutes later, Sheppard and Nigel hurried outside into the predawn stillness, the dog now leashed. They scrambled into a JLTV—which Sheppard still thought of as a Humvee—with Keel, Gutierrez, Delgado, Rincon, O’Hara and Annie. Sheppard started to tell Annie to get out, but she anticipated it and gave him such a fierce look that Sheppard said nothing. She was Mira’s daughter, after all, knew how to defend herself, and had more right than any of them to be included.

Ahead of and behind them were Jeeps and another Humvee manned with troops that would remain in the background—backups if needed, Keel explained. Sheppard thought the procession of vehicles was impressive but hardly subtle, and asked Keel to stop two blocks short of the pharmacy. “We need subtlety, Frank.” Sheppard threw open the door.

“We need to go in unified,” Keel argued.

“Then go. But we’re outta here.” He, Gutierrez and Nigel got out, and the dog yanked so hard on his leash that Sheppard lost his grip on it.

They loped after Nigel, across the street to the pharmacy and then behind it to the parking lot, the first light spilling across the island. Gutierrez ran to the back door, Sheppard followed Nigel as he pursued a scent to a distant corner in the lot, near the trees. The dog hesitated briefly, nose to the ground, then took off into the woods.

Sheppard tore after him, crashing through shrubs, fallen branches, dead leaves, circling around, then looping back, just as the dog was doing. Nigel finally stopped, nose to the ground, and picked up something. Sheppard stopped beside him. “What’ve you got, big guy?”

He extended his hand and Nigel dropped a cell into it. Mira’s cell. Sheppard tapped in the code, went to messages. Her last text to him and Annie was vocal, and had been sent at 6:02 a.m. Taken. Pharmacy. It was now 6:38. He guessed she’d thrown the cell into the trees so Hal wouldn’t be able to confiscate it. Where was her weapon?

Nigel answered that minutes later when he located her gun near a pile of dead leaves in the woods. No phone, no weapon. No way to communicate or to defend herself. Such despair filled Sheppard that he just stood there, looking from her gun to her cell. Now what? But his mind had emptied.

The dog whimpered and Sheppard glanced at him. “You did great, Nigel.”

He howled and dropped abruptly to the ground, as if in shame. Panting hard, he rested his head against his paws and shut his eyes. Sheppard sat beside him, stroking him with one hand, scrolling through Mira’s cell with the other, a part of him hoping to find something on her phone that would provide a clue, a hint.

He realized the recorder was on and quickly stopped it, took it back to the beginning, and started listening.

Mira: Nigel got loose. I think he’s after a squirrel, but I’m not sure. The Tango Pharmacy is across the street from me. That’s where he’s headed. Where I’m headed.

Nigel, still on the ground beside Sheppard, lifted his head. Cocked it. He recognized his name, Mira’s voice.

A few minutes later, a woman’s voice: I think vitamin E is supposed to be really good for you, Hal. And I could use some shampoo and a bar of soap that smells good.

Hal: Pick out whatever you want, Liz.

Hal and Liz, the shape shifter. He fast-forwarded to Hal again: What are you doing here, Mira?

Mira: Nigel woke me up. He needed to go pee. Then he apparently sensed you two and took off.

Hal: I should melt you both.

Liz: Don’t you dare hurt that dog, Hal.

Noise erupted, things falling off shelves. Then Hal’s voice: Okay, okay. Just stop with the wings. I won’t hurt the dog… Hey, will you lick me, too? So you didn’t come here looking for me?

Mira: The last thing I’d do is look for you, Hal. You really damaged my store and by destroying the bridge, you fucks have set Tango Key back twenty years. You and your people should leave before you get killed.

Hal laughed and made fun of her. Mira mentioned drones, bombs, grenades and why he didn’t have a defense against any of that. Then Hal abruptly changed the subject and asked about antibiotics. For the freak wounded in her store by Keel and his team, Sheppard thought, and listened to their exchange, what followed afterward, then heard Hal say, You’re my hostage.

He listened to the rest of it. By then, Sheppard’s mouth had gone dry and pieces of his heart had shriveled up and died. In the next exchange, he could hear Mira struggling to keep her voice calm, neutral, then her forced laugh as she told him he didn’t know much about this century. And finally, her shout at Nigel: Go! A la casa!

Nigel sprang to his feet.

“It’s okay, boy.” Sheppard stroked him until he sank to the ground again. “It’s already happened.”

The final sounds of the recording were a resounding thud, probably when her cell struck the ground, then his shouts for the dog, and Nigel’s panting. The last noise was the clatter of Nigel picking up the phone.

Sheppard turned off the recorder and went through Mira’s photos. He found pictures of some of the scribblings in an array of the damaged books. Hal’s scribblings. Sheppard started reading, his horror deepening, and was still reading when Nigel barked and Annie reached him.

“Shep? Did Nigel lose the scent?”

“Not entirely.” He held up Mira’s cell, her weapon. “Did you read Hal’s notes in the backs of those books?”

Annie’s expression told him everything. She lowered herself to the ground on the other side of Nigel. “Yeah. Some of them. Mom wanted it kept between us until she could figure things out.”

“Why? This is important, Annie. If it’s true that he’s your descendant, then it explains why he came to Tango Key in the twenty-first.”

“How? How does it explain that? He wanted to meet us? Warn us? Give us his life story in the dome? I don’t think so. Did he hope we’d become his allies? I doubt it. I don’t think it explains anything.”

“Regardless, you and Mira should’ve shared this with everyone.”

When she replied, she sounded angry. “Hey, look, it’s her experience, Shep. Not yours. Not mine. She has the right to do whatever she wants with it. I think Mom was going to tell you and the others, but in her own time. The only reason I found out is because I went into her office while she was reading the stuff.”

Sheppard nodded. Annie had hit it, of course, that he had no claim over Mira’s experience or what she chose to do with it. But hadn’t the dynamics between them always been like that? “Listen to this.” Sheppard started the recording.

Annie stroked Nigel and listened closely. She didn’t say anything until the recording was finished. “Do you have any idea how all this has affected her, Shep? Did she tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“Shep, she turned into Carrie.” Annie’s hands burst upward from her knees. A quick, violent motion.

What the hell is she talking about? “Who’s Carrie?”

“Oh my God, c’mon, Shep. Stephen King’s Carrie. I think Mom’s proximity to Hal, a guy who blows past anything we understand about telekinesis, triggered these latent abilities in her. That night the ladies took over the guard on the cabin roof, I saw what she can do, so did Blanca and Carmen.”

Sheppard envisioned his wife waving her arms and things whirling around in the air. Carrie. He’d read the book, seen the movie with Sissy Spacek. And he remembered thinking it was entertaining—but. “Then why didn’t she use it in the pharmacy?”

“Probably because she was terrified he’d melt her and Nigel before she could do anything to him.”

Sheppard couldn’t quite wrap his head around what she was saying. Not yet. He forwarded the photos of Hal’s scribblings to himself, then they got up and walked through the trees, toward the parking lot, Nigel leading the way. “Describe what she did on the rooftop, Annie.”

Annie told him, and also related a story he’d never heard about Mira being bullied in elementary school and how she’d gotten even with the bully. Why hadn’t she ever confided any of this to him?

As soon as he thought it, the answer was obvious. Because of his absurd skepticism, she’d stopped working with any law enforcement agency. Her personal readings had dwindled to several a month. A large, significant portion of her life had dropped away because of him, so she could keep peace in their marriage, and he hadn’t begun to understand the magnitude of that until that night on the bridge. And until now. By closing herself off from her passion, she had closed herself off to him.

“I’ve been such an idiot, Annie.”

She slipped her arm around his waist. “Sometimes, yeah. But you’re a great dad, Shep.”

Sheppard hugged her. There were times like right now when Annie felt like an equal, not like his twenty-five-year-old stepdaughter. “Here’s what I’m thinking.” They paused at the edge of the trees and stared out into the parking lot behind the pharmacy. Several Jeeps were parked out there now, soldiers milling around, and the JLTV, Humvee, whatever the hell you called that yellow monster, was close to them.

“Direct confrontation with these Crows, like what Keel pulled in the bookstore, isn’t the way to go. It’s too dangerous. But we can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing, either. Hiding out. Cowering. Sequestering and barricading ourselves in our homes. There must be—what? Eight or ten thousand people left on the island?”

“A Miami TV station gave a count of ten to twelve. Considering there were, like, thirty thousand plus at the height of snowbird season, before all this started, that sounds about right.”

“I think everyone has to be evacuated—snowbirds, residents, everyone except law enforcement and the National Guard. Let’s isolate them, the Crows. Yeah, they have these extraordinary powers, but they aren’t invincible or immortal. We know what some of them look like, so they won’t dare come out in daylight.”

“Only the governor can order a complete evacuation, right?”

“Of Tango County? Yeah, I think so.”

“Would he do that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe if Keel is on board.”

Annie didn’t reply right away. “How long would it take to evacuate everyone?”

Good question. It had taken several days for the evacuation of the fifteen thousand or so since O’Hara’s story on the stone woman had gone viral. But for one of those days, the bridge and two ferries had been accessible. Now they were down to no bridge and only one ferry unless Keel or someone else in the state or federal government could arrange for more ferries.

“We could aim for forty-eight hours. Twenty-four would be much better, but I don’t know. Depends on resources.”

“What would a complete evacuation do?”

“Give us more latitude. No worry about collateral damage. We’d need at least three more ferries to get people out of here. And more troops. And we’d have to go building to building to flush them out. But with Mira as their hostage, I don’t think it would get to that. I think they would try to bargain first.”

“I’m not leaving, Shep. Jon isn’t either, just so you understand that.”

Loud and clear. “Honestly, I’d be disappointed if you said otherwise.”

“Shep, Frank Keel works as a molecular biologist for the DOD. They want at least one of these Crows. Make a deal with him. Even though I don’t trust him, I think we should get him on board with this evacuation idea.” Then she squeezed his hand. “Let’s get this plan going. What can I do?”

2

Advil. Two doses of the antibiotics. A thermometer.

Squirt’s fever already had dropped—from 105 to 103, then 101, and finally to 98.0, about normal for the Crows. When Hal pressed his hand to Squirt’s forehead at noon, the skin was sweaty but cooler. Squirt asked for water, something to eat. Hal fed him the Jell-O Trixie had fixed, and even though he ate it, the act of eating seemed to exhaust him.

“Have we… won yet, Hal?”

“We’re closer. We’ve got a hostage now.”

“Okay.” He flopped back against the pillow, shut his eyes, and went back to sleep.

Whiskers had been following Hal around the house and now the cat jumped up in the windowsill and settled down, watching him and Squirt.

Hal drew the sheet back over Squirt. When he turned, Cam stood in the doorway, arms folded across his chest. The old man looked more rested now and wore clean clothes—jeans, a work shirt, running shoes. “How is he?”

“At least he ate something.”

“Good.” Cam held out his right foot. “Found these shoes in a closet. And they fit. And oh man, are they comfortable. And these clothes. Much better. Where’s everyone else?”

“Trixie, Red, and Nico went off to steal a car large enough to accommodate all of us. Just you, me, and Squirt are here.”

“And the hostage. Where’s she?”

“Back bedroom.”

“Mind if I take a look?”

“Go ahead. She’s awake, unrestrained. The door is locked.”

“Has she eaten?”

Hal shook his head. “I first wanted to make sure that Squirt was taken care of.”

“I’ll take her some food. Might be a way to get her talking. She’s the seer Jon mentioned in his columns, right?”

“Yeah, she’s the one. But I haven’t seen any evidence of her ability. Would you look in on Squirt when you’re done, Cam? I need to recharge for a bit longer.” This century wore him out.

“Sure thing.”

“Thanks.” Hal weaved into the living room, kicked off his shoes and flopped back on the couch, his fatigue so extreme he was asleep in seconds.

3

The room wasn’t particularly large, but it was comfortable enough, Mira thought. Double bed, a dresser with a TV on it, a small desk with a stack of magazines, a pen, yellow pad, and cell charger in the top drawer, and printed directions about using the remote for the TV. A cheap painting of an island scene—beach, water, palm trees—hung on the wall. Airbnb, she thought.

In the closet, she found a set of clean sheets, an extra blanket and pillow. The room had an adjoining bathroom, with two clean towels, soap, a shower, a bathmat. She opened the medicine cabinet and found a can of shaving cream, a packet of razors, hand lotion, shampoo, a hair dryer, and other amenities.

Nothing as useful as a cell phone.

She raised the wooden blinds on the window. Bolted shut. No surprise. She might be able to break the window, unless it was high impact. It looked out into a pretty backyard—sculpted flowerbeds that surrounded a fountain where several blackbirds hopped around in the water. A looming banyan tree offered ample shade for a patio with a table, chairs, a built-in barbecue.

It was dark when Hal had led her in here a couple hours ago, said he’d be back, and locked the door. Now she was hungry, scared, and uncertain. She turned on the TV, kept the volume low, and clicked through the channels, looking for local news. A Key West station reported that “terrorists” had raided the Tango Pharmacy and an unidentified woman had been taken hostage. The broadcaster, a young man, continued, “My sources are telling me that a mandatory evacuation from Tango Key will be implemented. But there hasn’t been any official announcement. We’ll keep you posted.”

Mandatory evacuation?

It made sense. Remove everyone except troops and law enforcement, no more cowering and hiding, then go after the Crows without fear of anyone else getting hurt. Great idea, except that one of them had the power of invisibility. Or had that one been injured in the confrontation with Keel and his team?

Had Hal and the others heard this rumor?

The outside lock rattled and she quickly turned off the TV. A tall, elderly bald man came into the room with a tray of food. He was new. Mira hadn’t seen him on any videos yet.

“I bet you’re hungry, Mira.”

“Starving.”

He shut the door with his foot and set the tray on the dresser. “It’s some sort of vegetarian stew. Incredibly good. I’ve never tasted vegetables so fresh.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it. And you are?”

“Cam. The name’s Cam.”

Mira stood at the dresser and in between delicious bites, said, “And what’s your ability, Cam?”

“Camouflage.”

She looked up at him and watched his face become her own, then Sheppard’s, Annie’s, Nadine’s, and even Tom’s. It happened with shocking speed. Then he did it more slowly, so she noticed it wasn’t just the faces he mimicked. With her, Annie, and Nadine, it was also the bodies. He looked female. “Holy shit. You can camouflage yourself to look like another gender? And to look like the dead? How?”

He sat at the foot of the bed, looking like himself now. “When I looked like you, I had access to your memories, voice, mannerisms, nearly all of you.”

“Even my soul?” Mira polished off the rest of the food, then sat in the closest chair. “Do you go that deep?”

“Not your soul.” He looked bemused. “You may be the only person who has ever asked me that.”

“So when you’re camouflaged like me, do you have my ability?”

His frown brought his large dark eyes closer together. “Just once I camouflaged myself as Liz and I couldn’t shape-shift. Couldn’t fly. There are limits. But with other abilities, yes, to differing degrees. The exception is Hal. I can’t duplicate what he does. But I haven’t tried camouflaging anyone or anything yet it in this century. Should we experiment?”

Was this some sort of trick? A Vulcan mind lock? A mind fuck? Find out, Mira. “Sure.”

“Wonderful.”

Cam immediately camouflaged himself and looked exactly as she did, right down to her jeans and shirt and bare feet. Even his eyes were hers, the same brilliant blue. It felt eerie, like staring at her doppelgänger or identical twin. When Cam spoke, his voice sounded like hers.

“You prefer touching objects or people. That’s how you read Stoner and Lightning.”

Okay, this old man was good. “Can you also speak the languages that I speak?”

“English, of course.” He paused. “And Spanish. Cómo andas, Mira? Tu abuelita siempre me preguntó.”

Perfect accent, like he’d been speaking it all his life. “I’m impressed.”

“My vocabulary is sometimes limited, but Spanish is easier than Chinese.”

Yeah, okay. Mira removed her wedding ring, held it out. “See if you can read this, Cam.” As he took it, she saw the wedding ring on his finger and gestured at it. “Then we’ll trade.”

“Fair enough.” His fingers—hers!—closed over her wedding ring and for a full two minutes, he didn’t say anything. His head bobbed, as if he was listening to someone, and once, his eyes rolled back in their sockets and only the whites showed, which sometimes happened to her. “Six years ago, you worked on a child abduction case. It caused a terrible rift in your relationship with your husband, so you quit reading crime scenes. In fact, you pretty much squashed your own ability until Stoner.”

Very good. “Can you tell me something I don’t know?”

Beneath his lids, his eyeballs flicked back and forth, like they did in REM sleep. When his eyes opened again, all that blue had brightened, deepened. “The ability you demonstrated on the rooftop of the building where you were staying is your greatest weapon. But you have to allow yourself to use it. You could have prevented yourself from being taken hostage but your fear kicked in—and so you did something… practical?” He cocked his head. “Your strategy wasn’t working and you knew it. Hiding didn’t work. So deep down, you seized on the idea of working from the inside out. And if you go after your needs rather than your wants, you may succeed.”

What the fuck. “Explain what you mean, Cam.”

The illusion of her identical twin sat forward, her ring dangling at the tip of his index finger, his thumb slipping over the gold. “Before Lightning destroyed the bridge, you just wanted your life to return to normal, back to what it was before you read Stoner. Except you weren’t really satisfied with that life because you felt incomplete psychically. But once the bridge was gone, you realized your normal life wasn’t going to happen ever again and your want, your burning desire, became defeating Hal and his group. But your need, Mira, your deepest need, is to tap into your full potential regardless.”

Accurate. And how weird that it had come from a facsimile of herself. “You’re really good, Cam. Let’s trade.”

They exchanged rings. As soon as Mira’s fingers closed over Cam’s wedding ring, images exploded in her head: the death of Cam’s wife, a Crow, at the hands of a small militia, the death of his son, also a Crow, born because Cam and his wife had escaped sterilization. After those deaths, Cam had used his camouflage to elude the police, work at odd jobs, occupy housing that belonged to other domers. And then one day, searching for information about the twenty-first century, he had entered the archives camouflaged as Hal’s mother. She had shown up while he was there, recognized him as what he was, and recruited him for Hal’s group.

All of this story tumbled from Mira as she held his wedding ring. When the spigot of information ran dry, she looked at Cam. He stood at the window, facing her. Tears dampened his cheeks.

“True,” he whispered. “All of it. Hal’s mother—and his dad—pretty much saved my life. Hal put everyone through a stupid loyalty test, but I got a break because of my age. The only thing I wanted at that point was to get out of the dome, to live some place where I didn’t have to pretend to be someone I wasn’t.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I don’t want to fight anymore. I don’t want to seize this island. I just want to live out the rest of my life in peace.”

He sounded so tired that Mira got up, took his left hand, and slipped the wedding ring back onto it. “If we can trust each other, Cam, maybe we can help each other.”

Just then the door swung open and Red and Trixie rushed in, looking triumphant. “We have the perfect SUV, Cam!” Red announced.

“And Nico’s out there right now, experimenting with rendering the whole thing invisible,” Trixie added, then her eyes went to Mira. “You, hostage. Can we trade you for the island?”

“I doubt it,” Mira replied. “People own pieces of this island but no one owns the whole thing. You’d be smarter to blend in.”

“I knew it!” Red exclaimed. “I’ve been saying this all along.”

“Yeah?” Trixie said. “Blend in how? Where? As what? And why? I don’t know if I can’t blend into this place. How do I find work? A partner? Where do I live? How do I act? The only way any of us are going to blend is if the island is ours. From there, we can negotiate for certain rights, for…”

“Negotiate with who?” Red asked.

“Negotiate with whoever’s in charge in exchange for the hostage’s life,” Trixie said. “Give us the island, we return her.”

“My name’s Mira.”

“Honey, I don’t give a shit what your name is. You’re a Normal, just like the monsters who…”

“Wrong,” Cam said. “She’s the seer mentioned in Jon’s columns.”

Trixie’s eyes widened. “You? You’re the one who read Stoner and Lightning and Weather Wizard and…”

“It was through Stoner that I learned about the dome and through Lightning that I learned she felt betrayed by Hal.”

“Wait, what’s your name again?” Trixie asked.

“Mira. Morales.”

“Well, Mira Morales, that’s bullshit about Lightning. She knew just like the rest of us that without Hal, we wouldn’t be here.”

“Now, hold on, just hold on.” Red patted the air with her hands. “I can see why Lightning felt betrayed by Hal. She completed the job she was assigned—and died because of it. Hal could’ve pulled off that job by himself, but I think he knew it might kill him. And look at what happened to Stoner and Wizard. They both went nuts, just like Lightning, and also were killed.”

“That’s such bullshit, Red,” Trixie spat. “Hal couldn’t be first. We couldn’t risk losing him. He isn’t just the most powerful among us, he’s our leader.”

Red laughed. “Shit. He’s not my leader. Not here. I don’t take orders from some wannabe dictator.”

“He’s not a dictator. He’s…”

“Authoritarian,” Mira said.

“Focused,” Cam offered.

“Yeah, focused.” Trixie snapped her fingers. “He’s been focused for, like, forever.”

“Dictator,” Red repeated.

“Then why the hell are you hanging around?” Trixie shot back.

“Because he may succeed.”

Fractures existed within Hal’s little group, Mira thought, and she intended to find a way to deepen them. “You’re the telekinetic. I saw video of what you did. You could have decimated the Tango bridge.”

“Yeah, I could’ve. But not with Lightning’s dramatic flair. That’s why the committee selected her for the task.”

“What committee?” Mira asked. “Who’s on this committee?”

“No one knows,” Cam said. “Not even Hal.”

Ha, Mira thought. “How’s it work, then?”

“Wrong question,” Red said. “How DID it work before the dome collapsed?”

The door swung open just then and Squirt stood there in bloodstained clothes, his skin the color of Wonder Bread, eyes bulging in their sockets, right hand gripping the door frame so he didn’t fall over. “You all… talkin’ shit about Hal.”

A ragged Frisbee appeared in his left hand. He tried to lift it, presumably to hurl it at one or all of them, but his arm refused to move. “I think… I’m pretty fucked up.” Then he pitched forward and Cam caught him before he slammed into the floor.

“He’s not breathing,” Cam announced.

He set Squirt gently on the floor and tore open his shirt, exposing his chest, all that pudgy, pale skin. Cam pressed his mouth to Squirt’s for one deep inhalation followed by a sharp exhalation. But beyond this, the resuscitation was like nothing Mira had ever seen.

Cam raised up, pressed his hand to Squirt’s bare chest, then Red and Trixie did the same. Flames from Red’s fingertips pierced Squirt’s chest without burning the skin, without leaving any marks at all. Powerful pulses of energy traveled through him, pulses Mira felt, pulses that caused Squirt’s body to jerk up from the floor, then fall back against it. He briefly changed appearances—a man Mira had never seen, then looked like himself again and he snapped upright, wheezing, coughing, struggling to catch his breath. Mira caught him and slapped him hard on the back.

Squirt coughed violently, expelling a large wad of phlegm from his throat, then dropped to the floor again, panting. Mira’s hands lingered on his forehead and face, inadvertently reading his short life in the dome—and his life here—and knew he wouldn’t survive unless he saw an actual doctor. She blurted, “He needs to see a real doctor.”

“That’s me.” Nico strolled into the room like he owned it. Tall, thin, white as bone, he stooped over Squirt, pressed his hand to the kid’s forehead. “Fever’s way down. Can someone help me get him onto the bed?”

Trixie stepped forward and slipped her arms under Squirt’s shoulders, Nico took hold of his feet and they lifted him onto the bed. “It’s not just his fever,” Mira said. “His heart stopped. He really should see a doctor.”

“I had five years of med school,” Nico snapped. “How many have you had, Mira?”

The scorn in his voice annoyed her. “You’re not concerned that his heart stopped?”

“I feel like shit.” Squirt whimpered, tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. “My legs hurt, my back hurts, my face hurts, I hurt all over.”

“Well, it’s not like we can take you to an emergency room,” Nico told him. “We risked a lot just to get you antibiotics.”

“Can you bring a doctor here?” Squirt pleaded.

“Not without Hal’s permission.”

Red exploded. “Fuck that. We don’t need Hal’s permission. You can shroud us and the car and we can bring the doc here. Squirt is our responsibility, Nico, not just Hal’s.”

“I agree on that,” Trixie said.

“Me, too,” Cam added.

Nico looked at Mira and when he spoke, his voice sounded almost conciliatory. “Do we have to go to a hospital to nab a doc?”

“No,” Mira replied. “Plenty of doctors have offices. But I don’t how many are left on the island. Nearly everyone evacuated. And it’s not like just any doc will do. A dermatologist wouldn’t be able to help him since his problem isn’t skin-related.”

Nico rolled his red eyes. “I know what dermatologist means. Who’s your doctor? We’ll go to your doctor.”

Ian Rincon. “He’s downtown.”

“Has he left the island?”

“No.”

Nico looked relieved. “You and I are going to pay him a visit, Mira. I’ll need one of you Lethals with us. Just in case.”

“I’ll go,” Trixie said. “And keep the bitch in line.”

“That’s cool,” Red said. “Cam and I will stay with you, Squirt. Get you something really good to eat.”

He sniffled and wiped at his tearing eyes. “Just hurry, Nico. Please.”

Nico scooped up Mira’s sandals, thrust them at her. “Let’s go, Mira.”

Please be there, Ian.

13

Mandatory Evacuation

Around ten that morning, the governor announced the mandatory evacuation of Tango Key. It came later than Sheppard had anticipated, but later was better than not at all. It was broadcast on all the national and local TV and radio networks, websites, in every Florida newspaper. It went out on the state’s emergency broadcast system, the Gazette website, and through PA systems on ten National Guard jeeps that drove through every neighborhood on the island.

Sheppard’s office, like every other law enforcement agency on Tango, slammed into emergency mode, as did all health facilities and health care professionals who hadn’t evacuated already. Several hundred National Guard troops were dispatched throughout neighborhoods to ensure orderly evacuations, others were assigned to the ferry docks, where three more ferries now awaited passengers and their cars. And another group of soldiers were at the marina, supervising the evacuations by private boats and seaplanes.

Sheppard and Gutierrez helped evacuate a nursing home and an assisted living facility. The patients would be taken to the airport and transported to facilities in Key West. Since the hospital was short on staff, its patients were evacuated by air to the Key West Naval Hospital. By the time that flight left, the knot of dread in the pit of Sheppard’s stomach had reached epidemic proportions.

He spent a couple of hours at the dock, checking the ID of everyone leaving the island. Then he drove over to the bookstore, the place where he felt closest to Mira. He was surprised to find Annie and O’Hara at the side of the building, battening down the hurricane shutters on the three large windows.

“Hey, what’s going on? No broken windows back here. Do the shutters need to go up?”

“Suppose they get really pissed by this mass evacuation and turn that fire woman loose on the store?” Annie said. “The building is concrete, the roof is metallic, so they won’t burn. But the windows are vulnerable.”

“We also put up shutters over the rear door,” O’Hara said. “It’s wood.”

Sheppard stabbed his thumb over his shoulder. “So is the front door.”

“That’s last.” Annie tightened another bolt in a metal panel. “I just want to do a walkthrough when we’re done here.”

“If you shutter all the windows and both doors, how’re we supposed to get out?”
Annie grinned. “Just kidding about the front door, Shep.”

Maybe, Sheppard thought. “Very funny.”

“We’re nearly finished,” O’Hara said. “How’s the evac going?”

“Slow. Lots of red tape.”

Because one of these Crows could render the group invisible, security cameras at the docks and the marina were now equipped with heat sensors and every soldier assigned to the docks wore a thermal visor. Every evacuee was required to show government ID. before boarding a ferry. Each ID had to be checked electronically, the very thing that had flagged Hal’s license as bogus and triggered the entire episode on the ferry several days ago. The evacuation wasn’t just about isolating the Crows, Sheppard thought, but also was intended to prevent them from leaving.

He went inside the store, way too dark because the outside shutters blocked most of the daylight, and hit the wall switches for the lights. It was uncomfortably still and quiet, almost as if the place was holding its breath. Sheppard disliked it. He suddenly felt like racing through the store, waving his arms and yelling until he was hoarse.

Instead, he headed for the cafe, plugged in the expresso machine, and opened the fridge to find something to eat. He made six small vegetarian wraps and struggled not to think about Mira with the Crows, how they were treating her, what they might do to her, and how all of this might end.

Annie and O’Hara came in with Gutierrez, who already looked worn out, dark circles under his eyes, shoulders slumped. “There’re so many cars stacked up at the docks that Keel is tapping soldiers in the campground to spell some of us for lunch.”

“Any reported sightings of the crows?” Sheppard asked.

“Not yet.”

Sheppard set the wraps on a plate and brought it and a container of iced tea over to the table where O’Hara and Gutierrez were sitting. Annie set down paper plates, utensils, glasses. And there the four of them sat, the island growing emptier by the minute, none of them saying a damn thing because there was nothing left to say. But Sheppard suspected they were all thinking the same thing: did we make the right choice about pushing for mandatory evacuation?

Since they no longer had dolphins as an early warning system about the arrival of additional Crows, they had no way of knowing if more of them had made it here. Perhaps the hundreds Mira initially had seen on their way here had reached the twenty-first century safely and were now in secure places throughout the lower keys, planning their attack. Their siege.

Annie broke the silence with a choked sob. “Jesus, what next? I need to know if my mom is okay.”

Before Sheppard could offer reassurance he didn’t feel, that would be bullshit, Gutierrez spoke up. “Blanca told me what happened on the cabin rooftop the night you ladies took over sentry duty, Annie. If Mira can muster that power, embrace it, she’ll tip the scales for the rest of us.”

“If,” Annie said.

Sheppard stared at his half-eaten wrap and wished to hell he knew where to go from here.

2

For Mira, it felt like a Shakespearean moment, Do I survive or am I fucked? Is this the right decision?

It wasn’t fair to involve Rincon. She might be better off directing Nico to the ER, where doctors would be better prepared to treat whatever was ailing Squirt. But that might put a number of people at risk. Besides, Rincon knew the situation. He’d autopsied two of these Crows. He knew Mira, knew her history. They trusted each other. They were friends.

Outside, the afternoon light set the lawn on fire. But the porch, where they paused, was shadowed. “Wait here,” Nico said. “I need to shroud the vehicle first.”

Trixie grabbed his arm. “Nico, maybe we should bring Squirt to the doc rather than the other way around.”

Nico considered it for about five seconds, then shook his head. “Bringing the doc to us gives us more control. You and I go in shrouded, Mira is visible when she approaches Rincon.”

“I think we should wake Hal, see what he thinks.”

Nico looked exasperated. “He’s not a doctor, Trixie. Besides, he needs to recharge before he’s fully functional.”

Nico trotted on down the steps and Mira waited with Trixie, who seemed particularly agitated, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, glancing around suspiciously. “When you guys talk about recharging, it sounds like an electrical device that has to be plugged in until it’s at a hundred percent.”

Trixie’s dark eyes impaled Mira. “You don’t know shit, hostage.”

“I know you’re treating me the way you were treated in the dome. You’re scared shitless about being here in a century where you’re basically clueless about how anything works. I know that your partner—husband? lover?—was a Normal who worked for the government and turned you in, betrayed you, and that Hal rescued you and…”

Trixie flicked here hand in the air and Mira was thrown suddenly back across the porch and slammed into the railing on the far side. It knocked the breath out of her.

“You’re not allowed to look into my life, hostage.”

Mira, flat on her back on the porch floor, felt the pulsating waves of energy coursing through her body. She flung it at Trixie’s lower legs and feet, the only part of her body Mira could see clearly from the floor. Trixie’s left leg abruptly buckled, her right foot slipped on the porch step, and she bounced down the stairs on her ass.

Then she just sat there at the bottom of the steps, rubbing her legs, saying nothing at all. Nico started toward her along the sidewalk, snickering. “Well, that was fucking clumsy, Trix.”

“It hurt. These steps are slippery as shit.”

Mira pushed up on her elbows, her upper back throbbing where she had struck the railing, the pulsating waves still charging through her. She pressed her hands to the floor, hoping the excess energy would bleed into the ground. Instead, the wood under her hands fissured and the fissures spread outward from her hands to her feet, widening until she thought the entire porch floor would collapse, taking her with it.

She struggled to her feet and made it to the top step before Nico quickly came over to her, grasped her arm. “Don’t even think about taking off, lady.”

“Taking off? After getting hurled into a railing? I can barely walk.”

“Yeah. Well, too bad.” He made a sweeping gesture with his arm. “Your invisible chariot awaits you, ladies.”

“I don’t see it,” Trixie said.

“You’re not supposed to.” Nico sounded annoyed. “And it’s not like this is the first time you’ve done this, Trixie. Stop sounding like a Normal. I can see it, that’s all that counts.”

He tightened his grasp on Mira’s arm, took Trixie’s hand. Midway down the sidewalk, Mira’s experience of her own body changed dramatically. She felt strangely lighter, less dense, almost ephemeral. Since she could no longer see Trixie or Nico, she figured he had just rendered the three of them invisible. His ability apparently allowed him to see the objects and people he had shrouded, so he guided them into what he described as a white Mazda CX7.

Once Mira was inside, in the passenger seat, she discovered she could see Nico and Trixie and the inside of the SUV. Trixie grabbed onto the back of Mira’s neck. “Bitch hostage, if you do anything weird, I’ll fry your brain. Got it?”

“What I get is that you’re a fucking bully.” Mira wrenched her head to the right and Trixie’s hand fell away from her neck.

“You say the word, Nico, I’ll take her out.”

“Right now, we need her. Just keep her in check. The doctor’s address, Mira? For the GPS.”

Mira ticked off Rincon’s office address, Nico entered it into the GPS. “Are there smart phones in your time, Nico?”

His weird red eyes impaled her. “Well beyond what you have here.”

“In what way?” Mira asked.

Trixie thrust herself between them. “Don’t tell her anything, Nico.”

“Why not? The more she knows about dome life, about our technology, about the entire fucking climate fiasco that led to it, the more accurate her understanding will be. And maybe she’ll do readings for us. Jon called her the most famous seer in Florida.”

Trixie laughed. “Yeah, right. I’ve seen zero evidence of that. And who the hell would want to get a reading from her?”

“Oh, maybe we could start with your dad,” Mira said. “And the ideals he upheld and how you’ve failed at every single one of them.”

“You don’t know shit about my daddy, hostage.”

“He was a Crow who could manipulate people’s perceptions. That’s how he won political office. But even his political clout couldn’t do much to help you after you obliterated another politician’s son.”

Trixie looked stunned. “You… he… You know what the son did, hostage? He was eighteen, I was thirteen. He tried to rape me. I hurled him into a wall and he died on impact. Good riddance, fucker. That’s when I went on the run.”

Nico held up his hands. “We all have stories like that, Trix. Our focus is now. The present.” He opened and closed his right hand twice, then held up his palm so Mira could see it. An image appeared on the skin—or inside the skin, she wasn’t sure which.

“You can enlarge the image just like you would on a phone or tablet.”

She touched her index finger and thumb to his palm, enlarged the image, and realized she was looking at video taken inside the dome, perhaps in the warehouse she’d seen when she’d read one of the dead Crows. But in this particular scene, the warehouse was crowded with noisy Crows. Their voices sounded like an orchestra out of tune, discordant notes rising and falling until Hal stood in front of them on a slightly elevated platform and raised his arms like some sort of messiah. Then the crowd went silent.

“Thank you all for coming. I know you’re eager for news about Stoner and Lightning. Both arrived in the twenty-first, but the, uh, journey broke them in some way. Stoner acted erratically and was killed. Lightning carried out her assignment, but not in the way she was instructed to, and also perished. I know some of you here have volunteered to be early arrivals, but I would like you to think this over and give me your answer tomorrow. I completely understand if you change your minds and would rather journey as a group.”

Several Crows shouted questions. Hal raised his arms again. “Please, one at a time.”

Nico closed his hand. “You get the idea about our technology.”

Uh, yeah. Immediately, she had questions. How did the writing appear on their palms? How could their abilities and the technology in the dome be so advanced but their biases so retro? What was the true nature of this archive?

“That’s extraordinary. But if your technology was so advanced, why couldn’t you do something about the toxic environment outside? Why didn’t you come up with some innovative techie way to defeat the Normals?”

“We tried,” Trixie piped up. “We had dozens of plans and strategies for fighting and defeating Normals, but we were badly outnumbered. We finally decided to forget about defeating them. Going back seemed to be a better option.”

“Your earliest arrival got here in 1985,” Mira said. “The chip that was in his leg is now in a museum in Key West. It says, White Crow 919, 2120.”

Nico glanced over at her, frowning. It brought his bright red eyes closer together, so they looked like drops of blood against his bone-white skin. “You picked that up psychically?”

“I saw it when I initially read Stoner. But the movie producer the weather Crow killed found it in the museum and told Jon O’Hara about it. She was going to use it on her show. If you knew then how to go back in time, why did you choose the twenty-first? You could’ve gone anywhere, in any time. Why Tango now?”

Neither of them was quick to answer.

“That’s a secret?” Mira prodded.

Nico shrugged. “Hal convinced us that Tango now a paradise. Personally, I think we would’ve fit fine into the Renaissance. A traveling festival of freaks. Squirt had this thing about the Sixties, Red liked the Roaring Twenties, Trixie chose the Fifties. But Hal was in charge, so here we are.”

“How many of you went early on?” Mira asked.

“Eight of us went,” Nico replied. “Various times. None of them ever returned.”

“At least now you know what happened to the guy who made it to Key West in 1985,” Mira remarked.

“Hold on,” Trixie said. “What did happen to that early Crow?”

“He died of a heart attack and his body was discovered in an alley,” Mira replied. “The chip was found in his injured leg by the coroner at that time.”

“Who was he, Nico?” Trixie leaned forward. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard this part of our history.”

“His name was Kurt,” Nico said. “He was one of the older Crows and his ability was also invisibility, but he wasn’t an albino. I met him when I was five and for a year, until he went back, he was my mentor.”

“What?” Trixie sat forward. “You had a mentor at five?”

Nico shrugged. “I had progressive parents. My maternal grandfather had the ability. He was born during the migration, partnered early on, and became a father at nineteen. My father was born on the day his father died. He was forty. I was born twenty-one years later. We met Kurt during the last phase of our migration.”

Based on what little Mira knew about the climate change refugees, his story sounded feasible. “When you reached the dome, how old were you, Nico?”

“Six. A few months later, Kurt went back. At that point, Hal’s group was really small, maybe a dozen of us. For a long time, I kept myself and my parents shrouded so we were able to survive the purges the Normals initiated.”

Like Cam’s continual camouflages to keep himself safe during those years, Mira thought. “I’m sort of confused by the timeline.”

“Bitch, you don’t need the goddamn timeline,” Trixie said. “Here we are.”

“Hey, I’m not the Normal who turned you in, okay?” Mira shot back. “No need to be so hostile.”

Trixie grabbed her by the back of the neck again. “I told you before. You aren’t allowed to look into my life.”

Nico reached back and grabbed Trixie’s arm. Her hand dropped away from Mira’s neck. “Cut it out, Trixie. You’re making trouble. And here we are.” Nico slowed and pulled up in front of Rincon’s office.

“It’s better if you park in the rear lot,” Mira said. “That door’s usually unlocked.”

Nico nodded, pulled away from the curb, and Mira directed him to turn down a narrow alley. As he pulled the invisible car into a parking space near the building, Trixie said, “Just remember, bitch. Me and Nico are your invisible companions when you go in there. You try to pull any shit, you’ll regret it. And so will your doc.”

Mira swung her legs outside the car, looked back at Trixie. “Your threats are tedious.”

Then the three of them got out of the car and Nico touched the back of Mira’s head. She felt herself fading into view and stood there for a few moments in the full sunlight, feeling dense and heavy again. The pulsating wave of energy coursed through her, but not like it had after Trixie had thrown her against the porch railing. She felt certain she could accelerate the pulsing if she needed to, as long as Hal wasn’t around, but for the moment, this was enough.

“So the three of us are going to walk into the building.” Nico whispered on her left.

To her right, Trixie spoke softly. “And you’re going to tell him that…”

“I know how to talk to him.” Mira was so fed up with Trixie—her directions, her sarcasm and hostility—that she suddenly blurted details of her life in the dome that Nico probably didn’t know about. “So I bet you never told Nico or anyone else how you and your Normal husband worked against Hal for a while because you really wanted him to accept you. The…”

“Goddamn hostage bitch.”

She grabbed the back of Mira’s hair and yanked her head back. Her fetid breath nearly made Mira puke. Nico pulled her away from Mira.

“Trixie, I don’t give a shit what you’ve done or not done in the past,” Nico barked. “The only thing that matters is what you do now.”

She released Mira’s hair. “I really don’t like you, bitch.”

Feeling’s mutual.

They stopped at the rear door. Mira turned the knob, rattled it, pretended it was locked. “I can’t get in. I don’t think he’s here.”

“I’ll get us in.”

“No, wait,” Nico said, and stabbed his thumb at the only car in the lot. “Whose car is that?”

“The doc’s, but his wife may have picked him up,” Mira replied. “Or, if the car doors are unlocked, then he probably fell asleep inside. He does that sometimes.” He never sleeps in his car.

“I’ll check,” Trixie said, and trotted away.

Mira rapped at the door. “Ian?”

With Trixie now in the parking lot and Nico staring after her, distracted, Mira turned the knob, opened the door, slipped quickly inside, slid the dead bolt into place. As far as she knew, Nico wasn’t a Lethal. She figured she had about thirty seconds before Nico removed the shrouding and Trixie blew the door off its hinges.

She ran into the autopsy room, locked the door behind her. Rincon, at his computer, glanced at her, and his shocked expression told her everything she needed to know about her absence. “Jesus. Mira.”

Words tumbled out of her. “Two of the Crows are outside and are going to bust in here any second. They’re staying at 120 Mango Road, apartment on first floor. One of them needs a doc. Run into the bathroom, lock the door, text Shep, then mute and hide your cell.”

“Done.”

He shot to his feet, raced into the bathroom, and Mira ran back to the door of the autopsy room and unlocked it. As she crossed the room again, the door exploded open and Trixie and Nico barreled in. Trixie tore the bathroom door off its hinges, exposing Rincon sitting on the toilet. “What… the fuck,” he stammered.

“Get up,” Trixie demanded.

“My God. Do you mind? A little privacy while I take a shit.” He grabbed a wad of toilet paper and Nico grasped Trixie’s arm, pulling her back.

“Christ. Let him finish, Trixie.”

She backed off, staring at Rincon, then at Mira. “Nico said you deliberately slammed the door in his face and locked it.”

“You really didn’t give me any other choice, Trixie. You’re such a hothead, I wasn’t about to risk your rushing in here and injuring him.”

“She has a good point,” Nico said. “You’re a hothead, Trix.” He turned to Rincon. “We need a doc.”

Trixie glared at Rincon. “Hurry the fuck up, old man.”

“Calm down,” Rincon shouted, and stood, pulled up his jeans, flushed the toilet.

Nico hurried into the bathroom, gestured at the door. “You’re coming with us. Load up your medical bag with all the drugs you’ve got.”

Rincon patted the air. “Calm down, son.” He washed his hands at the sink. “No drugs in the bathroom. I need to get in there to the cabinets if I’m supposed to load up on drugs.”

Nico let him pass and Rincon went over to the cabinets. “What’s the problem? Who’s the patient? What kind of injury are we talking about?”

“Leg injury, gunshot wound,” Mira said. “Possibly botched surgery.”

“Surgery for what?”

“To remove a bullet,” Nico replied. “I had five years of medical school before I was exposed as a Crow, so the surgery wasn’t botched.” He looked accusingly at Mira. “But I lacked tools, I didn’t have…”

“I understand,” Rincon said. “Describe the patient’s symptoms.”

“High fever,” Nico said. “Even though we’ve given him Advil and two doses of amoxicillin. And he aches all over and…”

“And he might have been hallucinating or something,” Trixie added. “And he was real weepy.”

“How high was his fever?” Rincon asked.

Nico shook his head. “Scorching hot.”

“What degree?”

“Maybe a hundred and four,” Trixie said. “Or maybe a little higher than that.”

“My God. How old is he?”

“Young,” Nico replied. “Twelve.”

“Thirteen.” Trixie said. “Hal’s in charge of him and Liz, the two youngest of the crows.”

“He’s the kid with the wicked throw?” Rincon continued to load supplies into his medical bag.

“Yeah.” Nico frowned. “How’d you know that?”

“Saw the video of the ferry fiasco. Along with three million other people.”

“Three million?” Trixie sounded shocked. “How do you know that?”

Rincon dropped something else into his bag, turned to face them. “YouTube. Don’t you have YouTube in your time?”

“We have some YouTube videos in the archive,” Nico said. “But we don’t have anything like it. Our videos are here.” He opened and closed his fingers twice, then held up his palm.

The video that played was a continuation of the one Mira had seen, of Hal telling the crowd of Crows about Stoner and Lightning. Rincon watched, eyes wide.

“Dios mio. Qué barbaridad.”

Mira realized Rincon was stalling and hoped that meant he’d texted Sheppard and was giving him time to get to the apartment.

“Do you shoot the video with your hand?” Rincon asked.

“Yeah.” Trixie shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “We should get going, Nico. Squirt needs whatever this doc can do.”

Nico abruptly closed his fingers, opened them again. His palm had gone blank. “Got your stuff, Doc?”

“Yeah, based on what I know. Which isn’t much.”

Mira noticed that Rincon left the cabinet doors open, something he never did, and she suddenly knew his text to Sheppard hadn’t gone through. Or he hadn’t had a chance to send it. Sheppard would recognize that the open cabinet doors were a message. Dread clawed across the pit of her stomach.

“Okay, here’s the deal,” Nico said. “I’ll shroud the four of us before we leave the building. Trixie blew off some doors. Sorry about that.”

“I can think of better uses for your talent, young lady,” Rincon remarked. “Like, maybe go to Cuba and hurl Raul into the harbor along with the rest of his corrupt cronies so the island is open and free again.”

“The only thing in the archives about Cuba was how some famous writer spent time there,” Trixie said. “Homway, Hillway, something like that.”

“Hemingway,” Mira said. “You can find his books in my store.”

Scorn etched its way across Trixie’s face. “Oh, well, I’ll be right over, hostage. Like I give a shit about Cuba. Or Hemway.”

“You should,” Rincon said. “Take out the Castro government and Cubanos will join your cause.”

Yeah, right. After decades of despots, Mira thought, Cubanos would rise up against an army of Crows. But Trixie and the rest of them didn’t know that. Mira guessed their knowledge of the twenty-first century was general—until it came to Tango Key. And even then, it had gaping holes.

They reached what remained of the rear door—large pieces of splintered wood that littered the floor. Even the doorframe was splintered, and one hinge hung by a rusted thread. Beyond it lay the parking lot with a single visible car and the invisible vehicle. Nico touched Rincon’s shoulder, then Mira’s, then Trixie’s, rendering them invisible. Rincon gasped and Mira grabbed his arm to steady him.

“Carajo,” he muttered. “It’s disorienting.”

“It’ll get better once we’re in the car,” Mira assured him.

“Will the invisibility affect the antibiotics?” Rincon asked.

“I don’t know,” Nico replied. “But in the past, it sometimes has changed food or clothing.”

“Changed it how?” Rincon asked as they stepped outside.

“The texture.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“Soft clothing becomes rough. Fruit and vegetables ripen too fast and rot.”

They reached the car and Rincon slid into the passenger seat, and Mira sat in the back seat with Trixie. They were invisible, inside an invisible car, but were able to see each other. What kind of science made that possible?

Rincon’s medical bag was on the console between him and Nico. “Can you leave my medical kit visible? I don’t want to compromise any of the meds or equipment.”

“Uh, yeah, sure,” Nico replied. “But it’s going to look weird to anyone outside this car who sees a med kit moving along all by itself.”

“Weird is fine,” Rincon said. “With the mandatory evacuation underway, there won’t be any witnesses if you take Old Post up the Gulf side of the island. Avoid the ferry area. And the bridge.”

“Okay. Turning now.” Nico swung onto a connector road that led to Old Post on the west side of the island.

“It might be a trick, Nico,” warned Trixie.

Mira rolled her eyes. “Oh, c’mon. Do no harm. The Hippocratic Oath.”

For once, Trixie didn’t call her bitch hostage. She just turned her head toward the window, ignoring her.

“I’m not doing anything that might endanger Squirt,” Rincon said.

Nico touched the medical bag and it took on density, substance, and he quickly passed it to Rincon. “Check it.”

Rincon took the bag, set it on his lap, unzipped it, dug around inside. “I think I’ve got nearly everything I might need. It looks normal. I just hope it isn’t altered in some way at a molecular level.”

Mira, feeling dislocated and overwhelmed by all the strangeness, forced herself to consider how she might describe all this to skeptical Sheppard. Invisible, I feel lighter, less substantial, more magical, and less connected to physical reality. I feel like a hot air balloon, about to float away until the balloon is punctured.

But it wasn’t just the invisibility. Or that the medical bag was the only visible thing among them, moving as the car moved, as if it were a conscious being propelled through its own volition. Her feelings were multiplied by the Crows around her, their collective history, abilities, their utter strangeness.

Nico pulled up in front of the house and they all got out, the medical bag visible as they hurried up the sidewalk. They faded back into view on the front porch and the door abruptly opened and Hal stood there, irate. “What the fuck is going on?”

“We’ve got a doctor for Squirt,” Nico replied.

Hal glared at Mira. “I suppose this was your idea.”

“You want him to die?” Mira shot back. “That’s how you treat your tribe?”

“Look, son,” said Rincon. “From what your friends have described about Nico’s condition, I might be able to help him.”

“He needs the kind of medical attention I can’t give him.” Nico sounded like he was pleading his case. “Twenty-first century medical help. It was my idea.”

Hal stabbed his finger at Rincon. “And I’m not your goddamn son.”

“Uh, hey, I’m not being literal, okay? By calling you son, I’m acknowledging I’m old enough to be your father.”

“Oh.” Hal paused, as if to catch his breath. “Well.” He cleared his throat. “Just so we’re clear. My father was a fucking hero to Crows. What the hell have you done, old man?”

“I may be able to save the life of a Crow you seem to consider a son.”

Mira noted the way Hal’s eyes widened until they looked like twin abysses—not dark, bottomless holes but pools of strange blue light. Enter those pools, she thought, and you would lose yourself forever.

“Shit,” Hal hissed. “Okay, get in here. Hurry up.”

He stood to the side and they all hurried into the house.

14

Hull & Eden

Sheppard waited on the airport tarmac with Keel, watching the DOD chopper as it touched down. He didn’t want to be here. But in the event they needed Keel’s two thousand troops, he felt he should try to work with the man.

“So why is your boss coming here?” Sheppard asked.

“His chief engineer apparently has a theory about these Crows. They want to go to the most recent spot where the Crows were seen.”

“The bookstore, in other words.”

Keel nodded. He didn’t look too happy about the situation.

A couple emerged from the chopper, both of them dressed like tourists. Hull, a short man with thinning, curly salt-and-pepper hair, carried a laptop case and walked briskly alongside a slender blonde in skin-tight jeans. Her sleeveless black silk shirt set off the color of her long hair. She carried a voluminous shoulder bag and looked as if she’d walked off a movie screen.

“She’s the engineer?” Sheppard asked.

“Yeah. Eden Curry. She has so many initials after her name I can’t keep track of them.”

They came over to Sheppard and Keel, who made the introductions. “So I understand you want to go to where the Crows were seen most recently,” Sheppard said.

“That’s the best place to take readings,” Eden said.

“For?”

“My suspicion is that in those areas we’ll find electromagnetic fields that aren’t generated by power lines or household and industrial appliances,” Eden said.

They were on their way to the parking lot then and Keel looked over at her, frowning. “So? What will that tell you?”

“That these Crows generate their own EM fields, much like machines do.”

“You’re saying they’re machines?” Sheppard asked.

“AIs, Agent Sheppard,” replied Hull.

Keel burst out laughing. “No. I don’t think so. They’re biologically different. During the autopsy on the lightning woman, the coroner found two hearts and the organ just beneath them that acted as an electrical transformer. That’s not artificial intelligence. It’s biological evolution. Rapid biological evolution. We don’t know enough about how that happens to completely dismiss the fact that it might entail generating an EM field.”

Eden listened closely, then shrugged. “Maybe. We’ll see.”

“See how?” Sheppard asked.

They stopped between Sheppard’s SUV and Keel’s Jeep.

“Okay, basic EM stuff here, gentlemen,” said Eden. “EM waves are carried by particles called quanta. Quanta of higher frequency waves—shorter wavelengths—carry more energy than lower frequency or longer wavelength fields. You with me so far?” She slipped on her sunglasses as she said this and flicked her pretty hair off her shoulders.

Sheppard decided it wouldn’t take much to dislike this woman. “We’re with you,” he said. “Or ahead of you. Some EM waves carry so much energy per quantum that they have the ability to break bonds between molecules. So you’re assuming it’s the shorter wavelengths that you’re going to find at the site.”

She tipped her sunglasses forward and peered at him over the rims, as if seeing him for the first time. “Very good, Agent Sheppard. That’s exactly it.”

Like he was a student. “Then follow me to the bookstore and I’ll unlock the place so you can get in.”

Keel unlocked his car, rolled his eyes at Sheppard. “We’ll follow you.”

Halfway to the bookstore, Sheppard’s cell rang and Carmen Rincon’s name came up. “Hey, Carmen, what’s…”

“The door of Ian’s office… it’s been blown off the hinges and he isn’t here, Shep.” She sounded frantic, her voice broken up with sobs. “Inside, dios mio… it’s a mess of broken wood, glass… and all the cabinet doors are open and he never leaves those doors open.”

“Did you just get there?”

“I walked in, like, two minutes ago.”

“Was Ian at the office?”

“Yes, yes, he went in earlier this morning and he… he wasn’t answering his phone, so I drove over… here.” Her voice broke again. “Something’s happened, Shep.”

“Shit. I’m on my way.”

He made an erratic U-turn and in the mirror, saw that Keel did the same, and sped toward Rincon’s office. His imagination tossed up various possibilities, each one worse than the last. He pulled into the rear lot, Keel screeched to a stop beside him and leaped out. “Ian?”

“He’s missing.”

They both ran toward the rear entrance, where the door hung on a single hinge and creaked as it swung in the breeze. Nigel stood there like a sentry, barking excitedly, tail wagging. “Hey, you gorgeous dog,” Sheppard said.

Nigel barked again and vanished through the gaping hole where the door had been. Sheppard’s alarm deepened. It looked as if a wrecking ball had been taken to the door and knocked out huge chunks of the wall on either side of it. Debris littered the area, concrete and splintered wood.

“Jesus,” Keel muttered.

“Carmen?” Sheppard called out.

“Back here, Shep.”

“Give me five minutes or so with her.”

Keel nodded.

Sheppard hurried through the scattered debris. Carmen stood in the middle of the autopsy room, her face frozen with fear, eyes wet with tears. Nigel, panting hard, had plopped down on the floor in front of her.

“I… I found it like this.” Carmen threw her arms out to her sides, a gesture that encompassed the entire wrecked room.

The bathroom door had been ripped off its hinges, the open cabinets revealed a total lack of order, shit knocked over—drugs and syringes and boxes of gauze and instruments. Definitely not the way orderly Rincon did things.

“And the computer was on when I arrived. He doesn’t do that, either, Shep. It all looks like the Crows took him.”

“Probably because one of them was injured and needs medical help. If you’re being hunted you don’t go to ER, Carmen.”

She bit at her lower lip, crossed her arms at her waist. “You think Mira suggested Ian?”

“It would make sense.”

Her tears spilled then and Sheppard put his arms around her. It wasn’t entirely clear who was comforting whom. Nigel poked his snout between them and Carmen hugged the dog.

“You and Ian are on the same cell plan, right?”

“Carajo. I was so upset it didn’t even occur to me to check.” She brought out her cell, clicked on the app for finding your phone. “Yesssss. Look.”

Rincon’s cell was in the building somewhere—not quite what Sheppard had hoped, but maybe it would reveal something. Carmen tapped the screen and a loud, shrill noise erupted from the bathroom. They both hurried in there. Sheppard retrieved the cell from under some towels in the linen closet. “What’s the code, Carmen?”

“Six sevens.”

Sheppard tapped in the numbers and the cell opened to text messages, where it looked as if Rincon had started texting him but hadn’t had the chance to finish. Mira here w/invisible crows, one injured needs med attn they’re

“Christ,” he whispered.

Carmen squeezed his shoulder. “At least Mira and Ian are together, Shep. They’ll have each other’s backs.”

But what would that mean in terms of the abilities of these Crows?

Just then, Keel came into the room with Hull and Eden. Nigel barked and trotted over to them, tailing wagging. Sheppard introduced them to Nigel, then to Carmen. “Why don’t you explain your theory to Carmen, Ms. Curry?”

“Sure.”

“Hold on.” Carmen patted the air with her hands. “What possible interest does the Department of Defense have in all this?”

“These Crows are terrorists,” Hull said. “We’re trying to figure out how to defeat them.”

Eden spoke up again. “I understand that when your husband autopsied the body of the lightning woman, he discovered she had an organ just under the heart that he believed might function like an electrical transformer. If he was right, then it’s possible the other Crows have something similar that enables them to do what they do. And if that’s true, it may show up on my equipment.”

“So your implication is that they’re part machine?” Carmen asked.

“Pretty much,” Eden replied.

“And just so we’re clear,” Keel piped up. “I completely disagree. They’re evolutionary outliers. White Crows.”

“What the hell difference does it make?” Sheppard asked.

Hull answered that one. “If these crows are machines or even AIs, then once the island is completely evacuated, we’ll annihilate them.”

His words and the way he uttered them, with a kind of gleeful delight, chilled Sheppard. He stepped up to Hull, who stood at least half a foot shorter, got right in the fucker’s face, and sank his finger into the man’s bony chest. “I’ve got news for you, Mr. D-O-D. You are NOT going to annihilate Crows while my wife and Carmen’s husband are their hostages. Clear?”

Hull drew back, calmly pushed Sheppard’s arm to the side, and laughed. “The DOD is in charge of this operation, Agent Sheppard. You don’t tell me what to do.”

Wanna bet, fucker? “Likewise.”

He was certain a call to the governor would clear that up. But before he could say anything, Keel spat, “Jesus. Knock it off, Rudy.”

Hull spun and turned on Keel with a fierceness completely disproportionate to what had just happened. “Fuck off, Frank.”

Keel’s expression told Sheppard that Hull had just moved Keel into the FBI’s court. Eden regarded them all like they were first graders who had just taken a shit on the classroom floor. “Testosterone exhausted now, guys?”

She wasn’t warm and fuzzy, Sheppard thought, and he should have liked her better because she’d mocked them. But it wasn’t due to moral outrage on her part. She just wanted to get on with her EM testing without being embroiled in a power struggle.

“It’s not clear to me why you’re even here, Ms. Curry,” said Sheppard. “You’re not in the National Guard, you aren’t wearing a DOD badge, so who the hell do you work for?”

She set her bag on the computer chair, brought out an EM field reader, then turned and faced him. “I work in the artificial intelligence division of the Department of Defense, Agent Sheppard. After studying the videos and all the other evidence we have, my suspicion is that White Crows were artificially enhanced and then programmed with a false narrative about their origins.” She wiggled her hands in the air. “On that long migration inland, nature made these extraordinary evolutionary leaps that usually take centuries and voila, children with incredible powers came into being.” Her arms fell to her sides. “What crap.”

“You haven’t seen what I have,” Keel countered. “How does artificial enhancement enable someone to render things and people invisible? How does it create the ability to liquify people and solid objects or enable someone to shoot fire from their hands?”

Eden shrugged. “I don’t know, Frank. That’s what we’re trying to figure out. I’ve seen the videos, you know.”

Keel laughed, a sharp, derisive sound. “You don’t know enough to conclude they’re AIs. You haven’t seen it up close and personal.”

“You think an AI did all this?” Carmen threw her arms open. “If artificial intelligence means superior intelligence, then these Crows aren’t AIs. They’re like street terrorists.”

“Is it okay with you if I take some readings, Mrs. Rincon?”

“Fine.”

Eden moved around the room with her field reader and reminded Sheppard of the old codgers who often scoured Tango’s beaches with metal detectors, searching for pieces of eight from some sunken pirate’s ship centuries ago. The reader clicked just like the detectors, an irritating, rhythmic sound. Nigel moved alongside Eden, perhaps drawn by the repetitive noise. He sniffed loudly, then suddenly veered away from Eden, pursuing a scent.

“Where’d Ian go, Nigel?” Sheppard asked him.

“Encuentra Papi,” Carmen instructed.

Find dad. He looked up at her, barked, and headed for the door, nose to the floor. Sheppard and Carmen hurried after the dog, leaving Keel and Hull and Eden to their EM field search. They veered around the debris and moved out into the parking lot, where Nigel trotted along, tail wagging, still pursuing a scent.

“Shep, if Mira and Ian are still hostages when they made their move against the crows…”

“The Crows aren’t AIs, Carmen. Annie says that Hal is her and Mira’s descendant. Maybe it’s true their abilities have been enhanced in some way, but they’re as human as we are.”

“How do you explain that lightning woman’s two hearts? Or some of the other physical anomalies?”

“I can’t. But Frank’s theory about rapid evolutionary change makes more sense to me than these crows as AIs. I’m thinking the DOD is trying to come up with a theory that will withstand Congressional scrutiny if they decide to obliterate them. Or to render them unconscious so they can all become property of the federal government and used however they want.”

Nigel stopped at Rincon’s car in a corner of the lot and trotted around it, sniffing at the tires, the metal, the bumpers. From there, he moved to another spot, sat down, dropped his head back and howled.

“That sounds mournful,” Sheppard remarked.

“It is.” Carmen nodded. “Ian’s scent dried up. My guess is that he was herded into a vehicle back here that headed into the trees. And beyond these trees, are dozens of sleepy neighborhoods, Shep. Apartments, homes, Airbnbs, seasonal rentals.”

“Which should all be evacuated by dark.”

“There are always holdouts.” She went over to Nigel, wrapped her arms around him. “We need dozens of Nigels, dogs that can find the holdouts and teams that go from neighborhood to neighborhood, house to house. We can flush them out that way.”

“Carlos has ordered a canine unit that should arrive by dusk. But I think we may want to find a compromise, something the Crows can live with. If they release Mira and Ian, we will…” What? Just what the hell could they do? Help them integrate into a twenty-first century society? Promise them immunity from prosecution for the dozens they already had killed? Convince the government or academic institutions or think tanks to hire them as experts on climate change? On time travel?

Sheppard felt lost, directionless, and terrified he might never see Mira again.

2

Hal, standing with the others in Squirt’s bedroom, watched Rincon checking out Squirt, his hands gloved. Hal liked that he explained what he was doing and why. Temperature. Blood pressure. Flexibility in joints. Muscle tension. He also vocalized his findings and Mira jotted them on a yellow pad Hal had handed her. Rincon’s last test was with a device that vaguely resembled something from Hal’s own time.

“What’s that?” Hal asked.

“New technology. A handheld MRI. It arrived yesterday. I’ve never used it before. Squirt will be the first.”

“So you can get rid of that bulky mobile X-ray machine you used on the woman who turned to stone?” Mira asked.

“Yes. Let’s take a look inside of Squirt.”

Just then, Whiskers strolled into the room and rubbed up against Mira, purring. She leaned over and picked him up. “Did he come with you?” she asked.

“Of course not.” Hal took Whiskers out of her arms, rubbed his face against the cat’s beautiful fur, then set him gently on the floor. “He was left behind by his owners. He’s mine now.”

That word mine: Mira reacted to it, he saw it in her expression. “You have a problem with that, Mira? That the cat is mine?”

“As long as the cat’s happy, no problem. But the way you said that word, Hal, tells me that your tribe, Ian and I and Tango Key are all part of the package called mine.”

Her remark startled him. Not that long ago, Wind had said something similar but specific to their relationship. You don’t own me, I don’t belong to you, I’m not yours, we clear on that Hal?

And her sister, Red: You’re not my leader.

“You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” Hal snapped.

“And no one asked for your opinion, hostage,” Trixie added.

“I’m starting here.” Rincon turned on the device and began running it over Squirt’s body.

Images appeared on the iPad set up next to the bed. Even Hal, who knew pathetically little about the physical body, recognized the anomaly in Squirt’s brain, but Rincon provided the name. “The primary motor cortex generates neural impulses that control movement. It’s located in the rear portion of the frontal lobe.” He tapped the iPad screen, indicating the area he was talking about. “In Squirt’s brain, the part of the motor complex that controls hand and arm movements is at least three times larger than that of a normal brain.”

“Is that why he can throw like he does?” Trixie asked.

“It could be one reason.”

Rincon continued scanning Squirt’s body. “The ligaments and muscles in his arms and shoulders are well developed and he has double jointed wrists.”

“Sounds about right,” Cam remarked. “Maybe you should scan all of us, Doc. So we better understand why we’re Crows. How we evolved.”

“I don’t know if any of this will explain how you evolved, but it would be illuminating in terms of your own physiologies.” He scanned Squirt’s face, nodded to himself. “He has a really bad sinus infection. That would explain the high fever. He needs a stronger drug. A Z-pack.”

“Why didn’t the amoxicillin work?” Hal asked.

“I don’t know. He might be resistant to it. Your physiology is different than ours.”

“Suppose the Z-pack doesn’t work?” Hal asked.

“Then we’ll try something else. We’ve got plenty of drugs at our disposal. Mira, could you get the Z pack from my bag?”

“Sure.”

“And Betadine and Hydrogen Peroxide.”

Mira went over to his bag. Whiskers brushed past her and leaped into the windowsill and settled down. Red leaned in closer to Squirt, ran her palm over the side of his face. A maternal gesture.

“He won’t wake up for a while,” Hal said. “He was so uncomfortable I made him go deeply asleep. Can you give him a shot for now and we can start the pills when he comes to?”

Rincon nodded. “Yes. Mira, a syringe, please.”

“Got it.” She handed it to him.

Hal watched them carefully, certain one of them would try to trick him. Rincon gave Squirt the shot, Mira set two containers on the nightstand, and Hal turned them so he could read them. Amoxicillin pills and a package of sterile gauze pads. Rincon handed her the spent syringe and she dropped it in the trash can. Hal didn’t think any tricks had been involved.

“Let’s take a look at his stomach.” Rincon unwrapped the dressing from Squirt’s abdomen and examined the injury and Nico’s work. “Beautifully stitched, Nico.”

Hal flashed Nico a thumbs up and he grinned.

“I don’t see any inflammation around the wound, no pus, and it looks like it’s healing really well. Just to be sure, a bit of hydrogen peroxide will tell us.” Rincon poured a little from the second bottle over Squirt’s injury. “No bubbling. Excellent.” He dabbed it dry with a piece of sterile gauze, then covered the stitched area with Betadine. “When did you stitch this up, Nico?”

“Yesterday.”

Rincon’s head snapped up, eyes wide. “My God, these stitches will be ready to come out tomorrow. Do you Crows always heal quickly?”

Did they? Hal didn’t have any idea. He’d never been injured. “Beats me. Red? Cam? Nico? Trix? Liz?”

He could tell from the expressions on their faces that they were either clueless or didn’t want to talk about it.

“You don’t know?” Mira asked.

“I know. Maybe,” Liz said. “Once, before Hal rescued me, during one of the purges, I was caught. They tortured me by… by cutting off part of my wings. By the next day, when they came back to torture me some more, my wings had healed and were stronger and better than before. I shifted right in front of them and tore at them with my claws and beat them with my wings and escaped. So, yeah, I heal quickly.”

Now Cam spoke up. “When I was in my twenties, I was caught in a purge. Shot with a tranquilizer that also tore off part of the skin at my waist. As I was losing consciousness, I camouflaged myself as my mother and leaped up and ran.”

“If it’s just a different appearance, how could you get up and run?” Rincon asked.

“Because I basically become the person I camouflage.”

“With access to the person’s memories, talents, immune system, all of it,” Liz added.

“Well, most of it,” Cam corrected. “Even if I looked like you, Liz, I couldn’t do what you do. We tried that once, remember? Same with Hal.”

“I remember.” Liz grinned. “It was actually kinda funny.”

“That’s… incredible.” Rincon applied a fresh bandage to Squirt’s abdomen. “So if you camouflaged yourself as me, Cam, would you have my medical knowledge?”

“Some of it.”

Hal wondered why no one had ever told him any of this. “How come I never knew this about you, Cam?”

The old man’s eyes held Hal’s for an uncomfortable moment. “You never asked, Hal.”

Trixie laughed. “Shit, that’s how Hal is. Totally non-curious about any of us.”

“That’s not true,” Liz snapped. “Hal has asked me plenty of times about my life, what I can do.”

“Your relationship with him is different,” Red said. “You’re like his kid.”

They talked about him like he wasn’t here. “Hey!” Hal waved his arms. “Talk to me about me.”

“Cam has a point,” Nico said. “The only interest you’ve shown in most of us, Hal, is in terms of how our abilities can augment your mission.”

Is that true? But as soon as he thought it, he knew it was. Except for Liz and Wind, of course, it had never even occurred to him to ask if they had other abilities or to ask about their earlier lives or their families or anything else that was personal. He just didn’t give a shit.

“Well, he made it possible for you to go back nearly two hundred years,” Mira said.

“And you were able to escape the dome,” Rincon added.

“Damn right,” Liz said. “If it weren’t for Hal, I would’ve died a long time ago.”

Trixie, pacing back and forth across the room, suddenly stopped. “Look, none of this matters. We’re here. Squirt’s going to improve, and we’ve now got these two.” She nodded at Mira and Rincon. “What the hell’re we going to do with them?”

“For now, we’re going to keep them around,” Hal replied.

Red shook her finger at him. “You’re doing that wannabe dictator shit again. I say we vote on what we do with them. The majority rules, Hal.”

3

Mira and Rincon exchanged a glance and she knew he was thinking the same thing she was. Talk fast. Sound convincing. Rincon didn’t blurt out anything, didn’t stutter or hesitate. He sounded calm when he spoke. “If you’re smart, you’ll vote on getting the hell off Tango Key. By tonight the entire island will be empty except for cops and soldiers. They’ll bring in dogs to find you. And if the Department of Defense decides you’re part machine, no telling what they’ll do.”

Red exploded. “Machines? What the fuck. We’re not machines. We’re as human as you two are.”

“I’m not entirely human,” Liz said. “But I’m not a machine, either.”

Cam held up his long thin hands. “That goes for all of us.”

“I suppose you could fight two or three thousand soldiers on your own if you had to,” Mira said. “Unless they decide to bomb your location.”

“They’d have to find us first,” Hal said. “And if we’re shrouded, that’ll be tough.”

Mira shrugged, feigning an indifference she didn’t feel. “More challenging, but not impossible. The DOD has a lot of classified technology.”

“If they locate us and bomb this place, they’ll be taking out you and Dr. Rincon, too,” Hal said. “They won’t do that. Which is why I want to keep you two here for the time being. Anyone else have a suggestion we should vote on?”

As Hal glanced around at the others, seeming to dare them to speak up, to offer something to vote on, Mira felt tension mounting in the room. Then Cam said: “Frankly, I think we should get off this island while we still can. Try to blend in. We’ve got enough gold and cash to set up new lives for ourselves. Mira and Rincon can be helpful in getting us elsewhere. Then we let them go. That’s a suggestion that I’d like to put to a vote.”

“It a fucking terrible suggestion,” Hal said.

“So is yours,” Cam snapped.

“Anyone else?” Hal glanced around at each of them.

Red, Trixie, and Nico looked down at the floor. Mira sensed they were afraid to go against what Hal wanted. Then Red glanced up. “Not exactly fair to vote since Squirt is asleep.”

“Squirt would vote with me,” Hal said.

Red looked irritated. “You don’t know that, Hal.”

“Yeah, I do. When we talked about this on the ferry, Nico said we weren’t here to play nice. You were there, Red. You heard him say that.”

“Things have changed since then,” Red pointed out. “He got shot. His heart stopped. It’s not fair to count his vote as on your side unless he himself votes that way. Democracy says the majority rules of those who cast their vote. Dictatorships rig the vote. Which are we?”

Confronted in such a direct way, color rose in Hals neck and cheeks, his mouth pursed, his eyes burned with fury. And suddenly, the wall he leaned against started liquifying and he leaped away from it, muttering, “Shit, fuck,” and ran out of the room.

Mira grabbed a pitcher of water from the nightstand and hurled the contents at the liquifying wall. But it kept melting away. The cat leaped off the windowsill and ran past them and vanished through the door.

Rincon and Cam shoved Squirt’s bed away across the room, but the liquifying kept advancing, taking part of the floor, the front of the nightstand, then the wall under the window, so the frame gave way and crashed to the floor, glass shattering. Cam and Nico scooped up Squirt, and ran for the door. Mira grabbed Rincon’s medical bag, Liz swung Squirt’s pack over her shoulder, and fled the room with Red shrieking from the hallway, “Do something, Trixie! Stop him! Stop the melting!”

Mira made it into the kitchen and stared at Hal, dancing around in the front room, shaking his arms and hands as if to rid himself of the destructive energy. He didn’t melt, but things around him did—couch, TV, front windows.

Trixie hurled her staff at him and it slammed into the backs of Hal’s knees and he pitched forward. But before he hit the floor, she lifted him again. Three, five, six feet above the floor, then he crashed down and was knocked out.

Trixie’s staff flew back into her hand and became a hose spewing something that instantly froze everything that was liquifying. For moments afterward, no one moved or spoke, then Trixie dropped the staff and it rolled across the floor. She rushed over to Hal, dropped to her knees beside him, lifted his head.

“Fuck, Hal, I didn’t mean to… But my God, you lost control, you… you ruined this place.”

Mira hooked her arm through Rincon’s and they stepped back, carefully, slowly, away from the others. “You have morphine with you?” she whispered.

“In the bag.”

Mira set the bag on the kitchen counter, found the syringe of morphine, pressed it into Rincon’s hand. “Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

She squeezed his shoulder, then he moved toward Trixie and the others now crowded around her and Hal. “I can calm him,” Rincon said.

Trixie’s head snapped toward him, her expression torn between suspicion and surrender. “And it could be something that’ll kill him.”

“Jesus. We went through this earlier. I’m a doctor, Trixie. Do no harm.”

Mira knew Trixie wasn’t convinced. But Cam came over, took her gently by the shoulders, and spoke to her in a calm, measured voice. “Let him be a physician, Trixie. Hal’s been under a lot of pressure. He’s in desperate need of recharging.”

Her head bobbed, she looked at Hal, drew her knuckles across his cheek, stifled a sob. Then she moved away from him. Rincon injected him and within seconds, Hal’s features went slack, his body looked rubbery against the floor, his bladder let loose.

Red hurried over with towels and Liz hovered around him, her wings partially visible, fluttering. Nico slipped his arms under Hal’s shoulders. “Where should I move him?”

“The couch,” Cam suggested. “We need to get out of here. This place is a fucking wreck. They’ll find us if we stay.”

Nico and Cam set Hal on the couch. They all crowded around him.

“Get out of here to where?” Liz paced, biting at her nails.

“Hey, since the island’s emptying out, we have a lot of choices for places to hide until we can catch a ferry out of here,” Nico said.

“But they’ll turn us in!” Liz gestured at Mira and Rincon, her voice broken, terrified.

“We’ll take them with us,” Red said. “We’ll steal a car and Nico will shroud us and Mira and the doc will direct us about where to go.”

Yeah? We will? But Mira said nothing.

“Let’s vote on it,” Trixie said. “Without Squirt. Everyone in favor?”

Nico, Cam, Trixie, and Red raised their hands. Liz was the only holdout.

“Shit,” Liz said. “You’re going against Hal’s original mission.”

“That mission failed,” Red said.

“I’ll go with you on one condition. I fly outta here, following you.”

“I don’t think any of us would object to that condition.” Cam glanced around at the others. No one objected. “Then let’s start packing up our food and belongings and find somewhere else to stay until Squirt can walk on his own.”

“What about Hal?” Nico asked.

“We carry him out to the car,” Cam said. “Nico will shroud us.”

“The cat, where’s Hal’s cat?” Nico glanced around.

“Probably hiding,” Mira said.

“We have to find him.” Trixie started whistling and calling for Whiskers.

“He may have taken off through the broken windows.” Rincon nodded toward what remained of the windows, jagged peaks of glass that surrounded a huge, gaping hole.

“He’ll find us,” Cam said.

“Okay, gather up your stuff,” Nico said. “We’re outta here.”

With that decided, the group dispersed to different areas of the apartment and Mira and Rincon remained in the living room with Hal, curled up on the couch like a fetus. Mira took in the extensive damage—the pools of carnage that had been windows, melted furniture and floor, melted counters, and the looming hole in front of them. The outside beyond that hole beckoned, whispered, C’mon, you and Ian can make it. Run, leap, and run again. She and Rincon looked at each other and she knew they were thinking the same thing.

“You go, Mira,” he whispered. “Now, while you can.”

“You. I’ll cover for you.”

“No. I’m staying.”

“Me, too.” Mira squeezed his arm. “How much morphine did you give him?”

“If he were one of us, he would be out a good twelve hours. But I don’t have any idea how his body metabolizes anything. Look at what happened with Squirt. The drug he’d taken should have licked that sinus infection.”

She hoped twelve hours was enough time for her and Rincon to sow dissent in a group whose unity was fracturing.

15

1st Amendment Rights

Since nothing was open on Tango Key, the National Guard had secured a ferry to transport soldiers, law enforcement, and supplies from Key West. Sheppard and Delgado waited in a short line behind a couple of Humvees and Jeeps and within five minutes, Sheppard drove the DOD truck onto the ferry. It wasn’t crowded. They had their choice of spaces on the top deck.

They got out and stood at the railing, watching the long lines of cars, vans and campers that waited to board the other three ferries for evacuees. The stragglers, Sheppard thought. The holdouts. They’d ignored the initial evacuation orders and at the last minute, decided to get out.

“You sure Home Depot is open, Shep?”

“Until six. Key West is still under curfew, but there’s no mass exodus out of there. Everything’s open until curfew begins. Carmen and I made a list of what we need to fix up Ian’s office. We can at least get a front door installed before dark.”

“The island’s going to be so empty by nightfall that robbery won’t be an issue.”

“And a new door won’t keep out the Crows if they decide to return for more medical supplies. But it’ll put Carmen’s mind at ease. Where’re the canine units coming from?”

“Miami.”

“How many dogs?” Sheppard asked.

“At least a dozen. They’re trained specifically for combing through disaster areas—after a hurricane, quake, explosion—to find survivors.”

Sheppard nodded and tried not to think beyond this second and the next and the next. Keel’s DOD sidekick had found several EM fields in Rincon’s office, but said she had to analyze them before she could determine whether they were generated by equipment in the office or by the crows. If that wasn’t bullshit, it had bought them a little time, he thought, to track down the Crows, Mira, and Rincon before the DOD initiated whatever horror they had in mind.

But how much time? Even if Eden determined the EM fields were generated by the Crows, Hull probably would go forward with the neighborhood searches because otherwise it would make the DOD look bad. But how long after that would they make their move? A few hours? Ten? Twelve?

Since Keel had admitted they wanted at least one of the Crows, Sheppard assumed he would do whatever he could to avert their annihilation. But with Keel, everything smacked of I may change my mind. Maybe a dead Crow would work just as well for any experiments Keel and the DOD had in mind.

The ferry pulled away from the dock, its whistle a forlorn sound. In addition to military vehicles, there were two sanitation trucks, a nursing home van, a recycling truck, a pair of vans from the Tango Key Historical Society, and a large gasoline truck with NATIONAL GUARD across the side.

“Carlos, can you find out when the dogs are getting here?”

“Sure.” He tapped away at his cell. “Driver says they’ll be arriving with their handlers by military transport before dusk. He wants to know who’s going to be in charge of the house to house searches.”

“FBI and the Tango PD.”

Delgado snickered. “Good. Keel and Hull aren’t going to like that.”

“We should be back on Tango well before they arrive and can meet the dogs at the airport. I’ll let Goot know and have him alert your guys.”

Sheppard texted Gutierrez, then glanced back at what remained of the bridge. Reconstruction had stopped with the mandatory evacuation orders. Cranes stood motionless, tall and majestic in the afternoon sun. Steel girders glinted in the light. And the six-mile hole in the bridge gaped like a giant’s mouth. The night it had happened felt like the distant past, but had occurred only a matter of days ago. How many days? Sheppard could figure it out if he looked at a calendar, but right this second, he didn’t know. Events, time, emotions, everything had melted together.

“How about if Annie and O’Hara join our dog teams?” Sheppard asked.

“That’s a given, amigo. I already texted them. O’Hara’s two new pieces just went up and holy shit, Hull is going to lose it. Maybe Keel will, too. Depends on which side he’s on. Go take a look.”

Sheppard brought it up on his phone.

Evacuation of Tango Key

If you live on the island or are visiting, you’re now under a

mandatory evacuation order from the governor. Holdouts will be

arrested. This order came down because the Crows abducted Mira

Morales, owner of One World Books, and just this morning, they also

abducted the island coroner, Ian Rincon.

There’s speculation that the Department of Defense believes

these Crows are machines—AIs—and are planning on obliterating them—

and the island.

“Jesus,” Sheppard remarked.

Delgado nodded. “Yeah, no kidding. Makes the DOD look like a bunch of terrorists. Read the second piece.”

1st Amendment Rights

My editor and I have been threatened with arrest if we don’t

remove the article I posted earlier this morning, an article that

told the truth. I’ll continue to report on the situation here as long

as I can.

Rudy Hull, who works for the Department of Defense, plans

to annihilate the Crows even though Mira Morales and Ian Rincon

are still their hostages. I believe that any such attack must be ordered

by the governor, who has been notified. If you’re planning on staying here,

I advise you to reconsider leaving ASAP.

In the event our website is taken down, contact me @ my personal

email: jonoha@gmail.com and leave your email address and cell # so

I can keep you updated.

Hull had really overstepped himself, Sheppard thought, but at the moment, the only person who could rectify that was the governor.

The ferry slowed as it approached the Key West ferry depot. Beyond the dock, Sheppard could see traffic on U.S. 1, a slow parade of cars that was normal for the snowbird season. Tourists apparently weren’t deterred by the curfew or by the events on Tango Key, and he suspected most of them were arriving to witness the event, as though it were a huge concert. Or the total eclipse of the sun.

As they docked, Sheppard called O’Hara. He answered on the first ring. “Shep.”

“I just read your latest two pieces. Have you gotten any flack, Jon?”

He laughed, a quick, nervous sound. “Flack? Are you fucking kidding? That asshole Rudy Hull has ordered my editor to take it down and threatened to arrest both of us for disclosure of classified info.”

“Where’re you staying?”

“Right now, Annie and I are at my place.”

“Find someplace safer. Carlos and I just docked in Key West for supplies. When we get back to Tango, let’s meet at the bureau office. The search dogs are arriving this evening and we’ll start the searches as soon as the island is completely evacuated.” On the other end of the call, Sheppard heard the tick-tock of silence. “Jon?”

“Yeah, I’m here. Shep, this is totally messed up. First we hide from the Crows. Now we’re supposed to hide from the DOD? Fuck that. The first amendment says…”

“I know what the first amendment says. Thing is, we’re in a state of emergency and no telling how Hull and his cronies may spin that. So keep your readers engaged. Keep reminding them you’re being threatened with arrest for telling the truth.”

“Done. Hold on. Annie wants to talk to you.”

“Put her on.”

“Shep? Anything new on Mom?”

“Not yet. But maybe Jon’s columns will flush out the crows. Just keep in touch, Annie.”

“Where’re you?” she asked.

He explained, then added, “We’re going to find her.”

“Love you,” she said, her voice soft, choked, and the connection went dead.

2

Within an hour, O’Hara and Annie had left his place and retreated to the two bedroom apartment at the dolphin center. Annie’s boss used it when she was tending to baby dolphins and had to stay overnight to feed them. The place was comfortable enough, had Wi-Fi, and a stocked fridge.

His most recent two columns had gone viral. Thousands of comments and emails with cell numbers poured in. A community. He and Annie sat at the tiny kitchen table with their iPads and started compiling a mailing and cell number list.

“You’re going to win a Pulitzer for your coverage, Jon.”

“Yeah, sure. I can see the headline now. Jailed journalist wins Pulitzer for releasing classified information. To avoid prison, I’ll join Snowden in Russia.”

His cell rang, Keel’s name came up. Ignore it or answer? He decided to answer and put it on speaker so Annie could hear it, too. “Hey, Frank, what’s going on?”

“I honestly didn’t think you’d pick up.”

“I almost didn’t. But I figure it’s possible you’re not on board with your boss’s intention to arrest me or my editor or to annihilate the crows.”

“My only concern is finding them and freeing Mira and Rincon, then figuring out what makes them tick.”

“Yeah, by doing what, exactly? Capturing one so you can experiment on it?” O’Hara asked.

“No. Rudy’s sidekick thinks they’re not human, that they’re AIs who are a threat to national security, therefore they’re expendable.”

“I doubt if even an AI can turn to stone when he or she dies.”

“Well, not only does Rudy want you arrested, but he’s going to try to stop the canine search.”

“Then maybe he’s the one who needs to be arrested,” Annie snapped.

“My thoughts exactly,” Keel said. “Are Shep and Goot with you two?”

“Shep and Carlos went to Home Depot in Key West,” O’Hara said. “I think Gutierrez is in the office.”

“Okay, thanks. I’ll call him.”

“My editor also wrote the governor about what’s going on,” O’Hara added. “I don’t know if she has heard back yet.”

“I’ll call the governor. Keep me in the loop and I’ll do the same.”

They disconnected. “You trust him?” Annie asked.

“More than I trust the DOD.”

“Let’s see if the dolphins are around.” Annie pushed back from the table, walked into the adjoining living room, and threw open the wooden porch doors. It overlooked part of the canal and beyond it, the Atlantic that lay between here and Key West. Two ferries plied the twelve miles between them. Off to their right, the remnants of the bridge loomed.

They stood at the railing and Annie turned on the recording of the dolphins’ songs the night they had freed them. O’Hara turned on his, too, they cranked up the volumes, and that orchestra of exquisite music drifted out into the afternoon air. After a few minutes, O’Hara heard an echoing sound.

They turned off the recordings. The echoing music continued. “It’s them,” Annie whispered. “The three of them.”

They flew down the porch steps and ran over to the canal. Prissy, Boss, and Rose were visible now, rising from the ocean, water shooting from their blowholes. Their songs were so joyous that O’Hara felt choked up and Annie’s eyes filled with tears. They stretched out on their bellies, their upper bodies dangling over the edge of the seawall, and all three dolphins came right up to the wall to greet them. Boss blew water on O’Hara and he laughed and stroked the dolphin’s head.

“I hope you guys are okay out there,” Annie said. “I’ll always call you with your own music. I wish you could find my mom. And Ian.”

The dolphins swam to the end of the canal adjacent to where their former tank was, then let out delighted squeals, turned and dived. They surfaced midway up the canal and O’Hara and Annie trotted along the seawall, following them as they made their way back out to sea.

3

Until now, Mira only had driven through this upscale neighborhood on the west side of the island. The house where they’d taken refuge sat on a shallow rise above the Gulf, about a mile from the Airbnb place Hal had wrecked. The lots here were two or three acres, surrounded by tall hedges and gorgeous trees, so there was plenty of privacy. Mira figured the place was worth a high seven figures.

Some of the furnishings—like the hot tub on the screened back porch and the fifty-five-inch TV mounted on the wall in the living room—held a particular fascination for the Crows. Nico, Cam, and Red were glued to the big screen and Trixie and Liz yucked it up in the hot tub on the screened back porch, where the pool also was. They passed their second bottle of wine back and forth and got progressively shitfaced, making so much noise that Mira and Rincon could talk without being overheard.

They sat at a wicker table nearby, whispering in Spanish. “I think the wine may be our best way out,” Rincon said.

“And maybe Cam.” With Squirt sleeping in one of the bedrooms and Hal snoozing on in his morphine- induced sleep, they had a chance. “He doesn’t want to seize the island, says he’s tired of fighting.”

“Interesting. And I’d just as soon get outta here before Hal wakes up. He’s been out for more than four hours now. He should last at least another eight, but… It’s also possible he could wake up in the next five minutes, too.”

“Hey, Normals,” Trixie called. “Come join us for wine. Tell us what it’s like being a Normal in the twenty-first.”

Rincon shook his head. “Thanks, but I don’t drink.”

“Me, either,” Mira added.

“I said, join us for a drink.”

Trixie threw her arms up in the air and Mira’s chair slammed back against the floor, knocking the air out of her. The chair kept sliding toward the hot tub with her still in it, Trixie and Liz cracking up. Rincon, moving toward them, shouted, “Knock it off, you’re hurting her!”

“Shut up, you old fart.”

With a flick of her arm, Trixie threw Rincon back against the wall and he slumped to the floor. Their laughter got louder.

“Make her dance, Trix,” laughed Liz. “I’d love to see the bitch dance!”

Mira felt the energy pounding through her, one powerful wave after another, a tsunami of such incredible magnitude that every muscle and tendon in her body snapped to attention, every capillary and vein burst open, her heart felt like it exploded. And she was back in that locker room, jerking down the bully’s gym shorts.

She tore free of Trixie’s hold on her, leaped to her feet, and directed the energy at the hot tub. Trixie shot up from the tub, arms flailing, her shriek of surprise so shrill it shattered the wine bottles and glasses. She slammed through the screen and crashed to the ground outside. Liz scrambled out of the tub, Mira snapped her right hand, catapulting Liz back against one of the poles that held the screened pool area intact. It knocked her out.

Mira ran toward the torn screen. Trixie, groaning loudly, pushed up from the grass, her right arm bleeding, her cheek smeared with blood, and before she could do anything, Mira attacked her again. Trixie jerked up from the ground like a marionette and Mira hurled her into the closest tree. It felt so deeply satisfying that as Trixie slumped to the ground, Mira lifted her up and tossed her into the air again. When she glanced back to check on Liz, Rincon was getting to his feet, favoring his left arm, and Cam, Nico, and Red stood in the doorway, aghast.

“Don’t get in my way,” Mira shouted.

Cam instantly camouflaged himself as Mira and now the same powerful energy coursed through him, she could actually see it, the waves like brilliant white flames that he hurled at Nico and Red. They pitched forward and hit the floor.

“Take Trixie!” Cam shouted in her voice. “I’ve got Liz!”

Mira spun and launched herself through the hole in the screen and landed upright just three feet from Trixie, who spat, “You fucking hostage bitch.”

She catapulted Mira back through the screen, and Mira’s energy wrapped around her and pulled Trixie with her, back into the pool area, as if they were conjoined. They landed in the deep end of the pool and Trixie instantly panicked, kicking her legs wildly, beating the water with her fists, screaming, “I can’t swim, oh my God I’m drowning…”

Mira scrambled out of the pool seconds before a dazed Liz struck the surface of the water and started sinking. Rincon, Cam, and Mira raced through the patio door. As they swept out into the darkness beyond the house lights, Cam camouflaged them as armed soldiers—Cam and Rincon as men, Mira as a woman—thank you, thank you! She pulled out her weapon, hoping it was real enough so she could shoot it if she had to.

They made their way down a shallow dune overgrown with shrubs and reached the beach. They paused briefly and Mira got her bearings—the lighthouse ahead of them, the wilderness preserve and her and Sheppard’s cabin beyond it. Three miles max. If they could make it there, if the crows remained out of commission, if, if, if.

Cam ended the camouflages and Rincon sank to his knees in the sand. Mira rushed over to him. “Are you hurt, Ian?”

“My right shoulder aches but otherwise I’ll live. What about you, mi amor?”

“Bruises, aches, nothing broken.”

“What you did—shit, it was incredible, Mira.”

“It… busted out of me when she threw you against that wall, Ian. But I don’t know if I could have gone on without Cam’s help. I’m forever grateful to you, Cam.”

“Hey, you gave me an excuse. I’d been sitting in the living room with Nico and Red for hours, listening to their shit about how great Hal is and how they were going to turn Tango into a Crow paradise and what they were going to do to you and Ian. I felt like I was going to explode. And then we heard all the commotion out here, Trixie’s shrieks, and came barreling out and… and there you were.”

Rincon glanced around nervously. “We need to keep moving. We…”

Cam said, “Ssshhhh.” Then: “Someone’s coming. We’re about to become dolphins.”

He clutched Mira’s hand, she grabbed Rincon’s, and they splashed into the water until they were deep enough so even tall Cam couldn’t stand, and he camouflaged them and they dived.

Mira didn’t know what she had expected, but this wasn’t camouflage. It was immersion. In the ways that mattered, she had become a dolphin. Yet, once she was underwater, she panicked because she couldn’t breathe. Then she suddenly did what dolphins did, surfaced for air, water shooting from her blowhole, and her entire sensory experience blew wide open. As a dolphin, she had never been alone.

From the moment of her first breath, she was connected to other dolphins through their collective memory and consciousness as a species. She could communicate with dolphins on the other side of the world or with dolphins in her vicinity, even camouflaged dolphins like Rincon and Cam. Their language was comprised mostly of sounds, an emotional complexity that humans lacked.

Rincon and Cam felt her initial panic, she felt Rincon’s shock, Cam’s joy. And then it all became beside the point. They were connected at such a profound level that they moved in unison, dived simultaneously, surfaced at the same, clicking, whistling. Within minutes, three other dolphins joined them and Mira recognized them: Boss, Prissy, and Rose.

Her heart swelled at the sight of them. They swam over to her, squealing, chittering. Boss brushed his snout against the side of her face, and an image of Annie and O’Hara filled her consciousness.

Where? she asked.

Another one of the three slipped up beside Mira. Rose, she thought. This one was Rose. She made a sound that Mira translated as, We’ll show you.

Then Prissy moved in between Mira and Cam on one side and Boss swam between her and Rincon on the other, and they followed Rose through the clear blue waters.

When Mira surfaced, she saw a beachcomber moving along the beach. Not any of the Crows.

Not yet.

They dived again.

16

Reckonings

While Sheppard and Delgado got the front door installed at Rincon’s office, a small piece of the overall damage, Gutierrez and Keel texted them about where things stood with Hull. A call with the governor was scheduled for five p.m. at the bureau office.

“What’s the official count now on the evacuation, Shep?” Delgado asked.

He glanced at his text messages. “The most recent figure is ten thousand, two hundred and twenty-two.”

“I think we’re pretty close to a complete evacuation. That’ll be a fucking tick-tock for Hull.”

And for us, Sheppard thought. And for Mira and Rincon.

Half an hour later, Rincon’s office had a front door again. It wouldn’t hold against a Crow and might not even hold against a strong wind. Chunks of concrete and wood were missing from the frame and wall. But it was a small piece of normalcy in a strange, chaotic time. They locked up and drove over to the bureau office.

At 4:50, they walked in and found Hull arguing with Gutierrez and Keel, and Eden standing there, clutching her iPad case, looking bored out of her mind.

“What’s going on?” Delgado asked.

Eden rolled her eyes like she just couldn’t be bothered. “Testosterone.”

Gutierrez glanced at Sheppard and pointed at Hull. “Este puto cabron…” This fucking asshole…

“Just the two men I wanted to see,” Hull snapped. “The DOD is in charge here and Mr. Gutierrez doesn’t seem to get that.” Hull pressed his fist to his chest. “I’m the DOD rep here. I didn’t order a canine search and there won’t be a search without my approval.”

You haughty little shit. Sheppard felt like wiping Hull’s smug smile off his face. “As long as residents of this island are hostages to these Crows, Mr. Hull, there definitely will be a search.”

“And you can take it up with the governor, Rudy,” Keel said, and held out his cell.

From where Sheppard stood, he could see the screen of Keel’s phone, the governor’s face filling it, gray hair perfectly coiffed, his dark eyes narrowed with anger. “Mr. Keel has kept me apprised of the situation on the island, Mr. Hull, and you are to back down immediately from your demands. As governor, I declared the state of emergency, I ordered the National Guard to be brought in, and I placed Detective Delgado, as chief of police, and FBI agents Sheppard and Gutierrez in charge. I don’t know why the Department of Defense is even there, Mr. Hull, except that Frank works as a biologist for the department when he’s not serving his country. You will stand down. Immediately.”

Hull looked shocked. “But…”

“Excuse me, Governor.” Eden moved closer to Hull, so she was visible on the screen of Keel’s phone, and introduced herself. “I have ample evidence that the Crows are AIs and present a national security threat.”

“I don’t give a damn if they’re aliens from Neptune, Ms. Curry. I ordered the evacuation to save lives. I’m ordering the canine search for the same reason. Once we’ve rescued the hostages, then I will make a decision about the next step. If you and Mr. Hull refuse to abide by that, then you’ll be taken into custody and removed from the island. Are we clear?”

The tendons in Hull’s neck tightened, blood rushed into his face, and then he exploded. Hull kicked Keel’s cell out of his hand and dived for Delgado’s weapon. Sheppard tackled him at the knees, they both crashed to the floor. Hull wasn’t a match for Sheppard, who was nearly a foot taller and outweighed him by at least sixty pounds. He quickly pinned Hull face down against the floor, yanked his arms behind his back, and Gutierrez restrained his wrists and jerked him to his feet.

“This is a goddamn illegal arrest,” Hull shouted. “I have the right to call my attorney, to…”

“Right now, amigo, you don’t have squat,” Gutierrez snapped. “Take it up with the governor. We’ve got the perfect holding cell for you here, Mr. Hull.” Then, shouting to the others: “Guys, Eden’s running”

Keel spun around and grabbed her by the back of her jacket before she reached the front door. He twisted one arm behind her, tightened his other arm around her neck. Sheppard hurried over, cuffed her, and said, “We’ve got another cell for you, Eden.”

She finally lost her cool. “I want to see my fucking attorney. That’s my right, my…”

“Nope.” Keel shook his head. “You don’t have any rights until the state of emergency is over.”

“You idiots are making a big mistake,” she bellowed. “These crows are… the biggest threat this country has ever faced. They’re…”

“Get them outta here,” Sheppard snapped, and tapped a code into his phone to unlock the cell block door. “Take Eden’s iPad, their cell phones, car keys.”

Gutierrez did so, set everything on Sheppard’s desk, and he and Keel took Hull and Eden inside.

Delgado stared after them, then looked worriedly at Sheppard. “Okay, since we’re now officially in charge, what’s next?”

“The search. Are the dogs on the way?”

Delgado checked his phone. “They’re boarding the military transport now.”

“To the airport.”

“There’s no one here to check on Hull and Eden. To bring them food or water or anything else.”

“We can leave them food and water.” Sheppard said. “They’ll just have to forego showers and attorneys until this is over.” They went into the employee room, Sheppard opened the fridge, and brought out what was inside—a couple of sandwiches, a six-pack of water, a brick of cheese, four hard boiled eggs, a bottle of mango juice. “They won’t starve.”

“With them in custody, Jon should be here.”

“Texting him now. Okay, he and Annie can meet us at the airport.”

“Perfect.”

They loaded the food and drinks into a fabric shopping bag and Gutierrez headed into the cell block. Sheppard returned to the lobby and stood at the picture window, unsettled, worried. He looked out into the empty road out front, the lengthening shadows, the eerie stillness of a nearly evacuated island.

Please be alive, Mira. He felt sure that if she was dead, he would know it. He would feel it in his bones. His blood. His very cells.

And what do you feel?

That she was alive. He didn’t have any clue about the state of her “aliveness,” whether she was restrained or locked up or being tortured. But that she was alive was enough for now.

And you know that how, Shep? asked that habitual, inner skeptic.

Sheppard slapped masking tape over that skeptic’s mouth.

Delgado, Keel, and Gutierrez returned to the front room, pursued by a cascade of obscenities from Hull and Eden. We’ll sue your fucking asses….

“Yeah, yeah.” Sheppard locked the front door, engaged the multiple security cams in the cell block.

“Not happy campers,” Gutierrez snickered.

“They rarely are,” Keel said.

They left through the rear door, into the parking lot, where the only cars were their SUV and the Mini-Cooper Hull and Eden drove. Sheppard locked this door, too, fully aware that if the Crows wanted in, locked doors wouldn’t stop them.

2

Hal sat up suddenly, blinking hard to clear his vision, and was so disoriented he didn’t know where the hell he was, why his head ached, why the inside of his mouth tasted like shit. He swung his legs over the side of the couch—a new couch, a wooden floor, a huge living room with a large TV mounted on the wall. He definitely wasn’t in the Airbnb apartment.

He sat there, curling and uncurling his fingers against the cushions, and struggled to remember something. Anything. Then it came back to him, a flood of images that made his head pound, stoked his rage, and the table next to the couch started liquifying.

“Shit.” Hal leaped to his feet, but felt so unsteady he nearly fell forward. He grabbed onto the edge of a chair and his rubbery body slumped into it. He sat there, breathing hard, almost panting, and the couch stopped melting. Not much of it was left.

His feet and legs felt like they belonged to someone else, his lungs breathed for someone else, his heart beat for someone else. Hal leaned forward, clasping his knees, struggling to breathe, to feel the air flowing into his lungs, trying desperately to bring his own body under his control. Minutes ticked by. He remembered Wind’s story about when she’d been caught and drugged by Normals and how she’d moved beyond it.

The secret lies in your breathing, Hal. Deep, focused breaths, like you’re trying to breathe underwater.

I’ve never been in a body of water.

C’mon, you’ve been in a bathtub, right? It’s like that. You sink, you hold our breath, but instead of surfacing when your lungs are exploding, you sink deeper and count to ten.

They’d been lying in his bedroom in the warehouse when she’d said this, her arms folded under her head, her svelte body naked and exposed in all its incredible beauty. He didn’t have any idea what she was talking about, so they’d gone into a bathroom with a tub. She’d filled it, climbed in, and gestured for him to join her and he had. She’d shown him exactly what she meant and for the next hour, he had practiced until he’d gotten it.

Hal now found that place within himself and in several minutes, could breathe normally again. He could move. His body belonged to him once more. He got up from the couch and stumbled past what was obviously the sick room, Squirt curled up under the sheet. Whiskers, in the windowsill, stared outside. Hal followed the whimpering noises to the patio. There, Nico, Red, and Liz lay like wet laundry near the pool.

No Cam. No Mira. No Rincon. He noted the gaping hole in the screen. “Fuck. What the hell happened here?”

Nico pushed up on his elbows. He looked like he’d been run over by a truck. Bruises stained his bone-white skin, one of his eyes was swollen shut, blood had dried in a corner of his mouth. “What happened? The power in Mira woke up, that’s what fucking happened. And then… then Cam camouflaged himself as her and took on that… ability himself. We never had a fucking chance against the two of them. Trix tried, but…” Nico shook his head. “Shit show, it was such a shit show.”

Trixie coughed violently and rolled onto her side. Her soaked clothes clung to her like a second skin. “I… I nearly drowned.”

“Me… too.” Red rocked back onto her heels, water dripping from her hair and clothes.

“I… never had a chance to shift,” Liz said. “That’s how fast it happened.”

“She and… Cam… so powerful,” Trixie said. “She…. she caught me by surprise. Us by surprise. No one said anything about her… being able to do what I do.”

“Where’s my cat?” Hal asked.

“He must’ve taken off when we moved,” Nico said.

He felt a stab of disappointment. Not a good sign. None of it was good. “How long was I out?”

“Hours,” Nico said. “You had a temper tantrum, Hal, and pretty much wrecked the apartment. We had to find another place.”

“Where are we? On the west side of the island?”

Trixie nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Shit. On a beach. A beach made it easier for them to escape.”

“Hey.” Red’s voice cut through his criticism. “We’re lucky we found anything.”

“Yeah.” Trixie wiped her hands over her damp face. “We coulda just left you back in that fucking ruined apartment, Hal.”

“Look, I get that. I’m grateful you moved me.” He patted the air with his hands, something Wind had done the few times they argued. “It’s just…”

Red opened her arms. “This is ideal, Hal. Secluded. Back from the road. We weren’t thinking no beach, no this or that when we fled the place you destroyed.”

He wished she’d stopped referring to that. His meltdown. “Whatever. We’re here. And they’re gone.”

“Once I dry off a little more, I can look for them.” Liz’s damp wings fluttered, then she got up and went over to the hot tub and picked up one of the folded towels. She rubbed it across her shoulders and over her face. Her wings fluttered again. “Just a little longer, Hal.”

“Even if you spot them, it won’t matter because by the time you get back here, they’ll be gone.”

“I can follow them to wherever they’re going and race back here.”

Could she? Hal felt worn down, low on energy despite his recharges and, worse, low on hope. Unless dozens of Crows arrived—and it would have to be many dozens—they weren’t going to be able to seize this island. And if they couldn’t take the island, they needed to get out of here and try to blend in elsewhere, just as Red had said. But right now, with the evacuation nearly completed, they might die trying to get out even if they were shrouded.

“We need them,” Hal said. “They’re our ticket to safety. I’m done with this goddamn island. You were right, Red. We should’ve gotten out when it was easy and tried to blend in.”

Red rolled her eyes. “Finally. The wannabe admits he isn’t always right.”

“A few hours ago, I would have used your own words, Hal, that the idea is treasonous,” Trixie said. “But now I agree with you and Red. What about Squirt?”

“He’s on the mend.” Hal hoped it was true but regardless, they would take Squirt with them. “He comes with us. No one is left behind.”

Liz fluttered her wings again. “I think I’m ready.”

Hal walked out into the backyard with her, into the gathering dusk. A breeze kicked in off the Gulf, swollen with the scent of salt water, the fragrance of flowers, the lush greenness of the garden and trees. He let these smells seep through him and into memory. He hugged Liz, then watched her transform. As a condor, she hopped to the edge of the shallow rise, then flapped her wings and soared, a magnificent and humbling sight.

She would find them, he thought. She would follow Mira, Rincon, and Cam to their destination and would return here with the information. Then they—what? What’s my plan?

A car. Did they still have a car? Or had they left it at the Airbnb apartment?

He hurried back to the pool area. “Do we still have a car?”

“Yeah. We drove it over here from the apartment,” Nico said. “But it won’t be shrouded now. Once I got knocked out, shrouding ended.”

“When Liz locates them, we’ll need the car to go there. Then they’re going to get us off the island.”

“We’d better check the local news,” Nico said. “Find out what’s going on with the evacuation, when the ferries are running.”

“Thanks to the hostage bitch, our phones are waterlogged,” Trixie said.

“Mine’s in the living room,” Hal said.

“Mine, too,” Nico echoed.

The two of them went back inside the house, retrieved their phones, Googled. On the Gazette website, Hal read O’Hara’s latest entry, 1st Amendment Rights. Some asshole, Rudy Hull, who worked for the Department of Defense, had threatened to arrest O’Hara and his editor if they didn’t remove his previous article about how the DOD planned to annihilate the Crows once the island was evacuated.

Annihilate them how? Bombs? Drones? Ten thousand soldiers with tanks and guns? He definitely wanted updates, so he clicked on O’Hara’s email address at the end of the article and typed in the address Red had set up for him when they’d first gotten the phones—crow1@gmail.com. Short of emailing O’Hara directly, this seemed like the better choice right now. But judging from the number of comments under the article—more than a thousand—O’Hara might not even notice crow1. But maybe he would recognize the email as an opportunity for direct communication.

“This article is alarming, Hal.” Nico glanced up from his phone, his pale skin even whiter than usual, which made his swollen eye even more prominent.

“Yeah. And that’s why we need those hostages.”

“Sounds to me like this Hull idiot doesn’t give a shit if there’s collateral damage as long as he gets rid of us.”

“He may not give a shit, but others will,” Hal assured him. “These twenty-first-century people dislike despots.”

“They elected one,” Nico said.

“He was an aberration and was impeached.”

“Then how come he and his followers think he’s still president?”

“Twenty-firsters are easily brainwashed? Their legal system is really fucked up? Or they just don’t connect the dots? Shit, I don’t know.”

“Which brings us back to one of my earlier observations,” Red said, standing in the doorway, arms folded across her waist. “About wannabe dictators. Remember, Hal?”

“Hey, when we were out on the patio, I admitted that you were right about leaving and trying to blend in.”

“That’s true. It means there’s hope for you. But there’s probably no hope for this Hull guy. If we’re going for a vote, I vote for waiting for Liz to get back with her report.”

Nico nodded. “Me, too.”

Trixie hurried over to the doorway, her clothes still dripping water. “Me three, Hal.”

“That’s my vote also,” Hal said. “So it’s unanimous.”

3

Mira sensed it took considerable energy for Cam to hold the camouflage of the three of them as dolphins. So it didn’t surprise her when two miles into their swim, Cam emitted a series of sounds that meant move toward shore.

She and Rincon followed him into shallow water and the camouflage wore off. Mira, fully human again, trudged out of the ocean, her wet clothes sucking at her skin as she made her way to the beach. She struggled to breathe through her nose, then sucked hungrily at the air.

Hey, Shep. I was a dolphin. What’s your skepticism say about that?

The darkness, punctuated only by stars peeking out from between drifting clouds, disoriented her, and she sank to the sand, pulled her legs up against her chest, wrapped her arms around them, and rested her chin against her knees. I was a dolphin! Sort of. And yet, she’d been real enough as a dolphin to experience what that species felt in terms of connectivity with their environment and with their own. Real enough for Boss, Prissy and Rose to communicate with her. Real enough so that being human again made her feel diminished, small, incomplete.

Even though Cam wasn’t a Lethal in the way Crows defined it, his ability struck her as the most valuable of what she’d seen so far among the Crows. He didn’t just assume someone else’s appearance. He took on the personality, mannerism, issues, talents, and characteristics that led to a deeper understanding of other people, other species, of reality itself. Immersion, as she’d told him earlier. She’d learned that when they had traded readings, but hadn’t realized until now just how profound his ability was. He was the oldest among them and had lived through the worst of the horrors perpetrated against the Crows.

“Mira?” Rincon leaned in closer to her. “You okay?”

“Just trying to get used to having been a dolphin, Ian.”

His laugh sounded choked up. “After this, regardless of how it all shakes out in the end, I’ll never be able to look at anything in the same way.”

He sounded overwhelmed and Mira slipped her arm around his shoulders. “I know.”

Cam came over to them, his tall, slender body silhouetted against the starlight, water dripping from his clothes. “So?”

“Just trying to, uh, recover from being dolphins,” Mira said.

“Me, too. There aren’t any dolphins in the dome. I studied them for months in the archives, so this was as exhilarating for me as it was for you two.”

“Is there anything you can’t camouflage?” Rincon asked.

“Rocks, shells, objects, the so-called inanimate. I mean, everything is energy, but the energy of living things is easier to replicate.”

“What about plants? Or trees?”

“If it’s living, I can assume its appearance. But it’s much harder to hold the camouflage for any length of time when it’s not human. How about if we get off the beach? I feel uneasy out here.”

Mira and Rincon rose shakily to their feet and moved toward the trees along the top of the shallow rise that bordered Old Post Road on the west side of the island. The distant songs of the dolphins prompted her to pause at the top and look back. The three dolphins leaped out of the water and the symphony of the sounds they made were identical to the one Annie had recorded and sent to her. Mira suddenly understood what this meant.

“I know where Annie and O’Hara are.” The words exploded from her. “At the dolphin center. That’s why those three dolphins came up to me. Annie took care of them after they were rescued as babies. I used to hang out there with her. They know me because of her. We’ll be safe there. Annie and O’Hara will have cell phones, they’ll be in touch with Shep and the others.”

“Where is it?” Cam asked.

“On the east side of the island. Shortest route is through the woods.”

“Let’s move,” Rincon said.

They got about two hundred feet into the trees when Cam suddenly hissed, “Go still.” He dropped his head back and peered up through the umbrella of branches. “Shit. Liz. She’s looking for us.” He kept watching, then whispered, “Drop slowly to the ground, flatten out on your stomachs, as close as possible to the trunks of trees.”

Mira and Rincon slowly lowered themselves to the ground. They moved up against the trunk of the same giant banyan tree, and Mira rolled into a ball, thighs up against her chest, forehead pressed to her knees, and hardly breathed.

A bug—ant, beetle, roach, she couldn’t tell—scampered down the back of her leg. She desperately wanted to slap at it but didn’t dare move. Rincon was close enough to her so she could hear his rapid breathing. But when she shifted her head slightly to see him, he wasn’t there. Neither was Cam. Tall grass, shrubs, weeds, and fallen leaves surrounded her and blocked her sight of Rincon and Cam.

Unless they’re camouflaged as the grass and shrubs and weeds.

“Ian,” she whispered.

He didn’t reply, but she could still hear him breathing.

Am I a weed? Shrub? A blade of grass?

The thought was weirder than the reality of being a dolphin. At least dolphins were mammals. But shrubs and weeds were what people stepped on, where dogs shit.

She squeezed her eyes shut and after what felt like hours, Cam whispered, “She flew on. We’d better keep moving. Her eyesight is incredible, so it’s possible she saw us.”

Mira rolled forward onto the balls of her feet, and both Cam and Rincon emerged from behind the greenery. Rincon glanced quickly around, as if to orient himself, then darted ahead through the trees and Mira and Cam moved alongside him. Their shoes crunched through fallen leaves, they moved around protruding roots, the darkness slowed them down. Mira desperately wanted to turn on her cell’s flashlight. But if Liz was still in the vicinity, she might spot it.

“Was I just a shrub?” Rincon asked. “Or tall weeds? What the hell happened back there, Cam?”

“Not a camouflage. I need to recharge before I can do that again so soon. It was just a trick of perception.”

Like they were supposed to know what that meant, Mira thought. “Recharge. I heard Hal say that too. Like you’re cell phones or iPads.”

“Crows aren’t AIs, Mira. But our abilities do come with a price. If we don’t have downtime, it can kill us.”

“Downtime like sleep?”

“Sleep, yes, But the deepest sleep, delta.”

“How long can Hal sustain his ability without downtime?”

“Not long enough to kill an army. His entire idiotic scheme about seizing the island might have worked if hundreds of Crows had made it. That way, when the front line of Crows was exhausted, others could step in. But with just four Lethals—Hal, Red, Trixie, and an injured Squirt—no way they can take on an army. My plan all along was that if I made it here, I would get away from them as soon as possible.”

Mira felt he had provided them with an essential key to defeating the Crows. Wear them out.

4

While they waited at the airport for the transport plane to arrive, Sheppard’s sense of urgency deepened. He had hoped to begin this search while it was still light out, but the plane was running late and now it was dark. The delay, though, had given them time to get a dozen Jeeps to the tarmac that would take the dogs and their handlers to various neighborhoods around the island to search door to door for stragglers—and for the Crows. Each group would have a backup of soldiers.

The plan was to dispatch two teams apiece to the three main areas on the island—in and around Pirate’s Cove, the hills, and in and around the town of Tango. Each of them—he, Gutierrez, Keel, and Delgado—would ride with a team. O’Hara and Annie would be with one of the teams to cover the story for the Gazette and his thousands of subscribers.

They might find a few diehard holdouts who had stayed behind, but none of this guaranteed they would find Mira and Rincon or even the Crows. Right now, though, it was the best plan they had.

Sheppard worried that while they focused on this canine search the Crows might be preparing to leave the island. Or had left already. If the albino Crow shrouded a stolen car and everyone in the group, escaping wouldn’t be a problem unless it started raining, and the water exposed them. Or, if they were on a crowded ferry and no other drivers could see their car and someone backed into it. This fact caused Sheppard to consider the possibility that they hadn’t left yet and might be waiting for the last evacuation ferry that would depart two hours from now, at eight-thirty. Fewer cars. Fewer soldiers. Less of a chance that something would go south.

He went over to Keel, who was talking to the driver of one of the Jeeps. “How many soldiers are at the ferry dock? The marina?”

“Eight apiece. And there’re only two ferries left at the dock—ours and the one for the last evacuation. Why?”

Sheppard explained.

“Good point, Shep. We know one of them is hurt, so that may have slowed them down. But do you think more soldiers at the docks and the marina is the answer? They might freak and go ballistic.”

“Or they might kill everyone and hijack a ferry or steal a boat. We need to be prepared to move regardless.”

“Agreed. I’ll assign more soldiers but instruct them to stay out of sight and contact us if they notice any irregularities.”

“Explain the types of irregularities—the sound of a car when no engines are running or there’s no car in sight. Evidence of a collision with something no one can see. That kind of thing.”

“Done.” Keel started texting. “How’re Hull and Eden doing?”

On his phone, Sheppard brought up images and sound from the security cams in the cell block. One of them showed Hull body-slamming the cell door. Another captured Eden gripping the bars that separated her cell from Hull’s, her angst visible in her facial expression, in her emotional outburst. “What the fuck, Rudy. How’d this happen?”

Keel laughed. “Assholes. Both of them.” He paused. “Okay, ferry dock will be covered.”

Twenty minutes later, the dozen Jeeps fanned out across the tarmac and away from the airport, headed toward their designated areas of the island.

17

The Dolphin Center

Mira, Rincon, and Cam stood at the edge of the woods, tree rustling around them, and peered out across Old Post Road on the east side of the island. The dolphin center was directly across from them. No cars in the lot, no movement at all, just a single security light out front that illuminated the closed door, the empty parking spaces, the canal at the right side of the facility.

If Annie and O’Hara were inside, they had hidden their car somewhere.

“Looks empty,” Rincon said.

“How do we get in, Mira?” Cam asked.

“Well, short of someone blowing off the door, which none of us can do…”

“C’mon,” Cam said. “I saw what you did back at the house.”

“It’s erratic. It only seems to work really well when Hal isn’t around.” She paused. “Which is pretty much what you told me.”

“What would you do if it was just you and Hal, Mira? No one around that you would have to worry about Hal destroying.”

“I… don’t know.”

“Well, here’s what I felt when I camouflaged myself as you back at the house. If it was just you and Hal—no witnesses, no one around whom you love, who risked being killed in Hal’s presence, if it was just you and your descendant—I don’t think you’d have any problem taking him on.”

“I hope you’re right, Cam. But honestly, in a situation where it was just me and Hal, a gun would be quicker, easier.”

He nodded, but didn’t comment, and pointed across the road. “How do we get in?”

“Along the canal side, where the tank is open.”

“You think it’s safe for us to leave the trees and cross the road?” Rincon asked.

“I hope so,” Mira said. “But I’m not picking up anything one way or another.”

“I’ll test it out.” Cam immediately camouflaged himself as a squirrel and scampered across the dark, empty road, tail twitching, and vanished near the canal.

Mira glanced at Rincon. “Ian, we’re living in an alternate universe.”

“Dios mio, I feel like I’ve been waiting for this universe my entire life, Mira. No way I’m going back to being a coroner. I can do more good by treating the living. C’mon, let’s move!”

He darted out across the road, a man whom Nadine had considered a compadre, a kindred soul, and whom Mira loved like an older brother. She quickly followed him.

Cam, appearing as himself again, waited for them by a tall wire mesh fence that ran between the wall of the facility’s building on the left and the seawall on the right. Part of the fence had been cut away from the center’s wall and they squeezed through the opening one at a time.

Fortunately, it was low tide and they were able to climb down to the narrow, muddy bank and moved along in single file for about two hundred feet. Then they climbed up onto the seawall and into the tank area, open to the night sky. So few lights were in this area that the sky burned with stars.

All the tanks were empty, of course, and only the main tank was dimly lit. It provided sufficient illumination for them to make their way across the open area to the apartment at the back. Mira rapped at the door. “Annie?”

No answer.

She tried the knob, turned it, the door swung open. Empty. But all the lights were on and the odor of food lingered in the air. Mira guessed Annie and O’Hara had been here recently, cooked something, and hadn’t bothered turning off the lights when they left, a typical Annie thing from when she’d lived at home. The blinds were drawn across the windows. Mira moved inside, Rincon and Cam behind her.

“The dolphins were right,” she remarked. “Annie and Jon have been here—and left.”

“Uh, Mira,” Rincon said, glancing around. “No landline in here.”

“There should be a computer with an Internet connection somewhere.” Mira said. “I’ll look. In the meantime, check out the fridge. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m starving.”

The apartment had two bedrooms and Annie’s boss had set up one of them as her office. But there was no computer. The boss probably used an iPad. “On to Plan B.”

But she didn’t have a Plan B. Mira hadn’t thought beyond getting here, finding Annie and O’Hara, and calling Sheppard. The gnawing ache of panic and uncertainty crawled through her. She became aware of how sticky her drying clothes felt against her skin.

She returned to the kitchen, where Cam and Rincon were setting out food—cheese and crackers, slices of fresh fruit, glasses of ice tea, and some sort of pasta salad. “No computer,” she announced.

“Let’s eat and decide what to do,” Rincon said. “There’s no TV here, either, so we can’t get any news. We need current info.”

“For now, it’s probably safest to stay put.” Cam sat down. “They’ll be looking for us. We should dim the lights, too, just in case Liz is still searching from the air.”

Mira went over to an electrical panel in the wall and hit the master switch for the back of the apartment, plunging it into darkness. She lit two of the Yankee candles in the center of the table, flicked off the lights. “How’s that?”

“Ideal,” Cam said.

Mira joined them at the table and their collective focus became food, not conversation. As the hole in Mira’s stomach filled, her mind clicked along again, seeking and discarding options. Finally, she broke the silence. “Cam, do you think you could blend into this century?”

“I don’t know.” He dabbed at his mouth, dropped his wadded paper napkin on top of his empty paper plate. “But given the chance, I’d love to try.”

“I’d hire you,” Rincon said.

“Me, too,” Mira said.

“Thank you both, I appreciate it,” Cam said. “But I think I would be more effective here as a voice about climate change. I’ve lived through it. I have data. I can provide dates when certain catastrophes will occur.”

“You probably could do it anonymously, through the Internet,” Mira said.

“Anonymously?” Cam looked horrified. “Nope. I’ve been hiding all my life. People need to hear what I know and why I know it. There’s still a chance the worst of it can be mitigated if certain steps are taken now. You’ve still got five or six years before the catastrophes become too numerous to just do nothing.”

“Do the Florida keys still exist in 2141?” Rincon asked.

“I don’t have first-hand knowledge, but from what I’ve read in the archives, most of the keys were submerged by 2030, Ian. The lower third of Tango went under around the same time, but everything forty feet above sea level remained intact.”

“That would be from the ferry dock area on up to the wilderness preserve,” Mira said. “Your office, Ian, and my bookstore wouldn’t make it.” Mira had so many questions for Cam she didn’t know where to start. Even though she could sometimes see into the future, she lacked specifics, the connect-the-dot events that led to what she saw and held its own kind of secrets. “Should we move out of the keys? Do you see us doing that?”

“Only if you win this battle.”

With Hal. Against Hal. Against his Crows. “Wouldn’t we flee if we lost this battle?”

“If you lose this battle, Mira, you won’t be alive.”

Well, that was blunt.

“Around 2150, there were some odd fluctuations in the sea levels and water receded from some of the islands, including the lower third of Tango,” Cam went on. “That’s when Dutch engineers and the Army Corp of Engineers—what was left of them—started building dikes around the lowest part of the island.”

“Who lived here then?” Mira asked.

“People with boats—fishermen and their families—and the very wealthy who had fled other parts of the country when it was obvious society had collapsed.”

“Jesus, this all sounds so dismal,” Rincon said. “What can be done now to mitigate any of this?”

“C’mon, Ian. You already know. Go solar, ban plastic worldwide, start building those seawalls in vulnerable areas, relocate people farther inland, restore mangroves and dunes along the coasts, move people inland, put the oil companies out of business, go electric with cars, work with the climate accords, stop traveling by air and a million other similar things.”

“Nothing new there,” Rincon said.

“The problem is that within your power structure, there’s a politically expedient contingency that denies the science. Their voices are loud, their funding is deep.”

Mira felt the staggering weight of impossibility. “I don’t know if all that can be done in five or six years, Cam.”

Rincon leaned back in his chair, his expression contemplative. “Maybe it can be if Cam becomes the voice about climate change and people know the truth—that he’s from nearly two centuries in our future and has lived through the results.”

And then he’d go on a hit list somewhere, Mira thought. “How was energy generated in the dome?”

“Zero-point.”

Rincon looked surprised. “Really? So Richard Feynman and John Wheeler were right?”

Cam nodded. “But it took a lot of scientists after them to learn how to tap into it.”

“I know scientific teams are working now on how to tap into zero-point energy for a trip to Mars,” Mira said. “But other than that, I’m out of my depth. How’s it work?”

Cam now struck her as a consummate professorial type, and perhaps his expression adjusted slightly, she wasn’t sure. But when he spoke, his voice was that of authority. “Well, basically, zero-point is a type of energy that exists in molecules and atoms even at near absolute zero temperatures in a vacuum.”

Rincon nodded. “Feynman and Wheeler calculated that there’s enough zero-point energy in the vacuum inside just one light bulb to boil all the world’s oceans. Do I have that about right, Cam?”

“As far as I understand it.”

Intrigued by Cam’s openness and willingness to answer questions, Mira rushed on. “Who built the dome?”

Cam had helped himself to more food and picked at it before he replied. “Everyone asked that, but no one really knew. Speculation is that it was some sort of NASA prototype, built between the late 2020s and 2050, maybe something funded by Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or one of their peeps. The zero-point energy technology was already in place when the first climate change refugees arrived.”

“So maybe it grows out of what they’re trying now for this trip to Mars?” Mira asked.

“Could be.”

Just then, the indescribably beautiful symphony of dolphins drifted through the open windows, the music haunting, mysterious, joyful. “It’s them!” Mira exclaimed.

They all hurried out onto the back porch and watched three dolphins—Rose, Boss, Prissy—making their way up the canal that ran parallel to the center. As they surfaced, they sang and swam faster, their excited clicks and squeals an expression of recognition. Mira was so deeply moved by their appearance, that she had communed with them, that they’d led her and Rincon and Cam here, that she hurried down the porch steps with the men and ran to the seawall to greet them.

But suddenly they sounded alarmed, their squeals and chatter more urgent. One of them turned abruptly and headed back to the ocean.

“Something’s not right here,” Cam said.

“Maybe they’re just freaked out because they’re approaching the center where they were held captive for so long,” Rincon remarked.

Mira squatted on the seawall, hands held out. “Guys, hey, it’s us.”

Suddenly, a large bird swept down over the canal, hissing and snorting. Liz the condor skimmed the water right behind the two remaining dolphins, which dived. Then Hal, Red, Trixie, and Nico barreled down the back steps and raced toward them.

Flames shot from Red’s hands and struck the ground, igniting shrubs, weeds, palm trees. Hal melted part of the seawall, so the water sucked one of the dolphins into the swirling maelstrom. Liz swept down again, her massive wings flapping madly, stirring up dirt and dust and debris, then Trixie made fists of her hands and pulses of energy shot out of them, catapulting the dolphin into the air.

Hal threw his arms up and the dolphin—which one? Boss? Rose? Prissy? Mira couldn’t tell—started liquifying. Dorsal fins first, an excruciatingly slow and cruel process that underscored Hal’s complete disregard for life. The dolphin writhed and squealed in agony and as it started falling, a blind white rage seized Mira. It exploded open when the remains of the liquified dolphin struck the water.

“You fucker!” she shrieked, and threw herself at him.

She slammed into him from behind and they pitched forward and crashed to the ground, dangerously close to where he had liquified the seawall. Physically, Hal was shockingly strong and threw her to the side as though she were a bothersome palm frond that had fallen on him. As he pushed to his feet, she scrambled up and launched her body at his knees, a move Sheppard had taught her in their early years together.

Hal went down, crashing face first into the ground, and she fell on top of him. She struggled to summon that coursing power that had served her so well earlier, but it just wasn’t there. He threw her off, caught her before she could scramble to her feet, and flipped her onto her back, pinning her to the seawall. She sank her teeth into the back of his hand, tasting blood, tasting their connection, and read his intent to flee the island on the last ferry out. Then she slammed her knee into his groin and he fell back, grunting and moaning, clutching himself.

As Mira struggled to her feet, two facts registered immediately—Trixie held Cam suspended in midair, his appearance shifting wildly, and Red shot fire at Rincon, forcing him back closer and closer to the edge of the seawall. Then Hal was on her again, grabbing her arms, locking them behind her. He spun her around and leaned in so close to her she smelled mint on his warm breath. Her heart hammered.

“If you fight me, I’ll liquify Ian and Cam.”

“I won’t fight you. But tell Trixie and Red to lay off.”

“Only if you agree to leave the island with us and help us find a place to live, to blend in. And we still need the doctor because Squirt isn’t a hundred percent yet.”

“That’s two conditions, Hal. But okay, I agree. Just so you know, the only reason Cam is here is because we drugged him and forced him to get us out.”

Still holding onto Mira, Hal shouted, “Hey, Cam. Did they drug you?”

“Yeah, fuck, it was like being back in the dome.”

“Let him down, Trixie,” Hal called.

“You believe him?”

“Yeah. Red, leave the doc alone.”

“Shit, it was so much fun watching him dance.”

Cam plunged to the ground, Red shot one final flame at Rincon, and Hal shoved Mira away from him. As she stumbled back, a tingling raced up and down her arms and fingers, but it felt like a reminder, nothing more, that she should have summoned the power earlier, when the four Crows had raced down those porch steps. Terror had held her back. Terror that she wouldn’t be able to duplicate what she’d done at the house when Hal had been sleeping off the morphine. Terror that he would kill her, Rincon and Cam before she could act.

Terror.

And fuck, she’d blown it.

Mira’s despair deepened. It was possible that she and Rincon might not survive this. Or if they did, the Crows would hold them indefinitely as their point people in this century. Rincon would be their personal physician and the two of them would be the ones who went out into the world to purchase stuff—houses, businesses, maybe even mundane shit like groceries.

She wouldn’t see Annie or Sheppard again. Annie would take over the bookstore. Rincon would never see his wife, kids or grandkids. Essentially, their lives would be over, stolen from them by the Crows, and all because her fear of Hal and his ability had prevented her from acting as soon as they’d raced down those steps.

Her feelings about Hal had solidified the instant he attacked the dolphin. She didn’t just fear him, she hated him. Could she somehow use that emotion to overcome her fear of him and repeat what she’d done at the house? She didn’t know. That earlier situation had been different because Hal had been sleeping off the morphine and the other Lethals had been so drunk.

But.

2

Hal snapped his fingers at Mira. “Help the doc, Mira. Make sure Cam’s okay.”

She gave a mock salute and hurried over to Rincon. Hal felt enormous satisfaction that she did what he told her to. He liked it when women did that. It rarely had happened with Wind and only when she thought she had something to gain. And look at how Red had defied him time and again since they’d gotten to the twenty-first.

Mira helped Rincon sit up, get to his feet and by then, Cam was standing. “I’m fine, just got the wind knocked outta me,” Cam said.

“That was the point, you lying sack of shit,” Trixie said.

Cam walked over to her, got right in her face, and camouflaged himself as people Trixie apparently recognized, one face after another, men and women and children. Trixie jerked back and started crying. Then sobbing. “Stop it. Please, stop it, Cam.”

Hal assumed these camouflages were of people Trixie loved or had loved. He’d never seen her cry before. And he’d never seen Cam do something like this. It intrigued him. Within seconds, Cam had reduced Trixie to a blubbering mass of emotions.

Cam looked amused. “Stop? Don’t you want to know what your dad would say, Trix?” He camouflaged himself as a tall, black, handsome man with a mustache. In a completely different voice, he said, “My beautiful Trixie. Don’t ever compromise what makes you a White Crow.”

She cried harder.

“Or your mom, Trixie.” Cam now looked like a chronically fatigued woman in her late forties whose raspy voice, thinness and obvious fatigue spoke of some underlying disease. “You’re the reason I’m dying…”

“I didn’t make you sick!” Trixie shouted at the camouflage of her mother.

Hal grabbed Cam’s shoulder. “Hey, you made your point.”

“Did I?” Cam wrenched back, Hal’s hand slipped off his shoulder, and he turned. Now that Cam faced Hal, he suddenly camouflaged himself as Hal’s father, the replica so stunning and accurate that Hal stumbled back. When the camouflage spoke, it was in Hal’s father’s voice, a deep baritone. “The warehouse belongs to you and your recruits, Hal. All I ask is that you Crows become a force of good in this fucked up world.”

Then Cam looked like himself again. “You pretty much failed at that, Hal. Want to see and hear more?”

Hal felt the beast within slamming around, eager to get out, to liquify Cam. But he restrained it. “Show me Wind.”

“Ah, right. Wind.”

Cam suddenly looked exactly like her, that thick, shiny black hair falling to her shoulders, hair that Hal had loved drawing through his fingers, that seductive mouth, the intense dark eyes. “Hal.” That soft, melodious voice was Wind’s. “I’ve missed you.”

The sound of that voice nearly tore his heart apart and he moved toward her, desperate to hug her, hold her, kiss her. But Red suddenly lunged between them.

“Fuck it. That is NOT Wind, Hal. That imposter isn’t my sister.”

Cam looked like himself again and Hal felt like grinding his fist into Cam’s smile.

“Kinda sucks, doesn’t it, Hal.”

“Fuck off, Cam.”

Liz landed on the seawall, quickly transformed into her human self, and marched over to Hal. “We don’t need them.”

She sounded indignant, cocky, and Hal disliked it. “Yeah, we actually do. We need the doc for Squirt. We need Cam because he’s a Crow. And we need Mira—and the doc—as our go to people once we’re off the island.”

“I’m calling for a vote,” Red shouted. “We eliminate the three of them now.”

Red and Liz waved their arms wildly and chanted, “Yes, yes.” No one else joined in.

“The majority wins,” Hal said.

“Like before, Squirt didn’t vote,” Red said. “So if he did, what would split the tie?”

“Me,” Cam said. “Would you like to see your parents, Red? Lovers? Friends?”

“Give me a fucking break,” Red said.

“Okay. Chew on this one.” He camouflaged himself as a woman onstage somewhere in a strange, colorful costume, her hair wild as she sang, “When the moon is in the seventh house And Jupiter aligns with Mars, then peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars…”

Cam paused and Hal thought Red looked on the verge of a meltdown. She stammered, “How can you…”

“Get over it, Red.” His appearance shifted to his own again. “This is what I do. You’re the descendant of the woman who sang that in the 1968 production of the Broadway musical Hair. She’s a part-time resident in the keys. Hal is Mira’s descendant. And I’m descended from Ian Rincon and…”

Cam threw out his arms, a gesture that encompassed all of them in the backyard and maybe the entire island and the rest of the Florida Keys, the state, the country… Hal didn’t know, couldn’t tell.

“We’re all connected,” Cam said. “Those of us who made it through are related to someone in this time who is alive now. That’s why we made it through and the others didn’t.”

“My God,” Rincon said softly. “How’re we connected, Cam?”

“Sons and grandsons and great grandsons many times removed.”

“Absurd,” Hal snapped. He was the only Crow connected to someone alive now.

“Is it?” Cam snapped. “Would you like me to spell out the other connections I’ve uncovered, Hal?”

“No. You’re a demented old man and I’ve heard enough of your bullshit. Nico, is the car still shrouded?”

“Hold on,” Trixie said, sniffling. “Just hold on a minute. I’m curious. Who am I descended from, Cam?”

“A young man who used to work at a library in Miami,” Cam said, and his appearance shifted again into that of a muscular black man in his early twenties.

“I want to meet him.”

“He left Florida.”

“And me?” Liz asked.

Cam shook his head. “I haven’t found that information. I think you made it through, Liz, because Hal is like a father or big brother for you.”

“True, he is. But c’mon, Cam.” She giggled. “Isn’t there a human somewhere in my lineage who fucked a condor?”

“More than likely there’s a human in your lineage whose DNA was an experiment,” Cam said.

Hal had seen enough. Cam was showing off. “We’re wasting time. Is the car still out front, Nico?”

“Yeah. That was another shit show, man.”

“What about you, Nico?” Cam asked. “You want to know?”

“Not really. But I suppose you’re going to show me, anyway.”

“Nope. Not worth my time.”

Nico pointed a long, skinny white finger at Cam. “I really dislike you, old man.”

Hal needed to get them and himself back on track. And fast. “What’s the news on the last ferry out, Nico?”

Nico’s eyes remained latched onto Cam for a moment, then he checked his phone. “It’s been delayed for two hours. Canine search parties are going neighborhood to neighborhood, house to house, looking for holdouts and probably for us, too, although the article doesn’t say that. The last ferry will leave around ten thirty tonight.”

“Says who?” Hal asked.

“Jon O’Hara, in his latest Gazette post.”

“Okay, I’ll accept that. Jon’s posts have been reliable.”

“Things have changed since his early articles,” Trixie said. “Maybe he’s trying to manipulate us. Maybe it’s a ploy.”

“If that’s what his post says, then it’s true,” Mira said. “Jon doesn’t lie.”

“Shut up, hostage,” Trixie said. “No one asked you.”

“Check the ferry schedule, see what it says,” Hal instructed Nico.

He tapped at his phone. “Yeah, ten thirty.”

“Good. It’s seven twenty-two now,” Hal said. “That gives us time to eat and get Squirt into the apartment so the doc can take a look at him before we board that last ferry. Can you get Squirt by yourself, Nico?”

“Sure. Be back shortly.”

He trotted off toward the front gate, and Hal and Trixie nudged Mira and the doc along in front of them. He figured the two of them were planning their next attempt at a coup, an overthrow, some epic battle. Fine. Let them try. Convinced that the telekinetic shit she’d pulled off at the house was an anomaly, a one-timer, he no longer saw Mira as an adversary. He could manipulate her any way he wanted. She was his.

Yeah? You sure about that?

He’d thought he could liquify her at any point back there by the seawall, during their confrontation, but when he’d tried, nothing had happened. Why? Maybe he hadn’t tried hard enough. Or maybe he’d needed to recharge completely. And why hadn’t she been able to duplicate what she’d done in the house when she and Rincon had escaped? Was it due to their blood connection?

Hal never had run up against any boundary or limitation to his ability, except for the need to recharge, so he didn’t have any definite answer. He had only theories, suppositions, what ifs and maybes. It all disturbed him.

3

Inside the apartment, Mira’s despair deepened. She disliked being in these small rooms with a bunch of Crows. The air felt cramped and much too warm, as if each of them radiated extreme body heat. Hal shoved her into a chair at the kitchen table, Trixie jerked out another chair and motioned for Rincon to sit. Red threw open the fridge doors. “I’m ravenous.”

“We’re going to fix dinner,” Hal announced, and eyed the table and sink. “I can see you three have already eaten.”

“We snacked,” Mira said.

Mira glanced at Rincon. He was like home to her. He was familiar and comforting, a beacon that lit up not only her life, but her family history through Nadine, back to Cuba. In the contours of his face, she found their personal connections—his eulogy for Nadine, his and Carmen’s help after Hurricane Danielle, their presence at her wedding. He was in this situation because of her. Because of her fear of Hal.

Guilt and despair somersaulted inside her, she felt sick inside. Mira reached out and touched the back of Rincon’s hand. I’m sorry, she mouthed. I should’ve kept you out of this.

He squeezed her fingers quickly and shook his head. We can do this. One by one.

She didn’t think he meant they should—or even could—pick them off one by one. That obviously hadn’t worked earlier when her fear of Hal had crippled her. But if they somehow could separate the Crows from each other, maybe she could take them one at a time, even if Hal was present.

“Trixie, how about if you and I cook,” Hal suggested. “That way there’s no chance for the doc to drug any of us.”

“In case you didn’t notice, I don’t have my medical bag,” Rincon said. “It’s still at the house you destroyed, Hal. So I’m drugless.”

“Shit,” Hal spat. “Then how the hell can you treat Squirt?”

“I can’t.”

“Then someone has to return to the house and get it.”

Mira didn’t think it had been intentional on Rincon’s part. He practiced medicine according to his Hippocratic oath. But the oversight might be in their favor.

“Have Nico go back and get it,” Red said, removing items from the fridge, setting them on the counter.

“Have me get what?” Nico came through the door with one arm around Squirt’s waist. Cam went over to help him.

“Go back to the house and get the doc’s medical bag,” Red said.

“I don’t need more medicine.” Squirt stumbled over to a vacant chair, Cam and Nico still holding him up.

“You look pretty bad, son,” Rincon remarked. “Can you eat something?”

“Whatever Hal’s cooking smells really good.”

“That’s just some oil warming in a frying pan,” Mira said.

He poked at his glasses. “It still smells good.”

“While we’re cooking, Nico, you and Liz go back to the house and find the doc’s bag,” Hal suggested.

“I can get there faster than any car,” Liz said. “I’ll go. By myself.”

Hal looked pleased, Mira thought, the way a parent would be if his kid had done something good. “Thanks, Liz.”

And just like that, she left the apartment and moments later, through the window, Mira saw a giant condor lifting away from the tank area, into the starlight.

Holy shit, Mira thought. One down and four to go.

Rincon flashed a quick smile that said, Let’s do it right this time.

PART 3

End Game

“The only thing permanent in life is impermanence.”

- Thor, Avengers: Endgame

18

Liz

Sheppard, in his SUV with two search dogs and their handlers, followed a Humvee toward a neighborhood in the foothills. The windows were open and the warm night air drifted through the car. The island felt preternaturally quiet, empty, like a dystopian landscape in the aftermath of some great catastrophe. It reminded him of scenes from The Road, long stretches of nothing except trees and deserted homes and buildings. Now and then, one of the two search dogs in the back seat whined. No one spoke.

The Humvee stopped at the entrance to the neighborhood and Keel and half a dozen soldiers got out. Sheppard pulled in next to it and he and the dogs and their handlers exited the SUV. White noise crackled in his earbud, then Keels’ voice came through. “You all know the drill. The troops will shadow the dogs and handlers into the neighborhood. The dogs know their job, so let them take the lead.”

The dogs took off, snouts to the ground. The handlers and dogs were all equipped with GPS and Sheppard could follow their signals on his phone. He raised his binoculars and scanned the dark street for movement, anything off kilter. He rubbed his stiff neck and dropped his head back to stretch it. Long hours, not enough sleep, and constant worry about Mira, he thought. He felt it throughout his body.

Suddenly, he saw something in the sky that shouldn’t have been there. A bird with a huge wingspan, flying at about a thousand feet, a giant against the starlight. The condor, he thought, it had to be.

“Frank. You see it?”

“Shit. Yeah.”

Sheppard heard the awe in his voice. “It looks like it’s circling down in Golden Hills. About half a mile from here. Carlos and his team are just arriving. I’ll alert them and get over there.”

“If you need backup, holler. Otherwise we’ll meet you.”

2

Sheppard drove like a madman toward Golden Hills, kept the headlights off, and hoped to hell he didn’t hit a giant pothole. He no longer saw the condor.

He radioed Delgado. “I spotted the condor. It looked like she was circling down into your area.”

“I knew something had happened. Nigel started whining and pawing at the door. We’re just pulling in.”

“I’m nearly there.”

“If it’s her, if it’s really that crow, the TASERS are loaded,” Delgado said. “I’ve also got a couple syringes of morphine for her.”

“We’ll have to shoot her when she’s low or on the ground, otherwise the fall could kill her.”

“I’ll alert the others.”

Sheppard entered Golden Hills, a wealthy neighborhood with sprawling homes on properties of three or more acres. He stopped next to Delgado’s car, leaped out and ran over to him and Nigel, already straining at his leash. Delgado passed him a TASER. “O’Hara and Annie and Goot are on their way with backups.”

“Let Nigel do his thing.” Sheppard took the dog’s leash, but Nigel didn’t move. His snout moved through the air, sniffing, tracking scents, then he abruptly lunged forward, jerking the leash from Sheppard’s hand. He tore up the block and across the street toward one of the mansions set back from the road.

“I think he’s got it, Shep,” Delgado whispered.

They raced after him and approached the house on the darkest side, at the south. Nigel moved slowly, cautiously, snout to the ground, tail tucked between his legs. Sheppard didn’t reach for his leash. A side door stood open. They paused outside and when Nigel moved slowly and cautiously inside, they were right behind him.

They stepped into a utility room.

Then Nigel tore away from them, barking excitedly, and ran out into the massive living room and greeted Liz the shifter like a long-lost friend. Human again, she threw open her arms, and squealed, “Nigel!” He leaped at her, barking, licking her madly, and she laughed and got down on the floor with him.

Of course. When Mira had taken Nigel for a walk and they’d ended up at the pharmacy where Hal had taken her hostage, Liz had been with him. Nigel had met Liz then. Sheppard had heard Liz’s voice on Mira’s recording.

Right now, Liz didn’t seem aware of their presence, but maybe that had been Nigel’s intention. Delgado thumbed right, Sheppard nodded left and moved in closer, his TASER aimed at her.

“Liz,” Sheppard said.

Her head snapped up. She kept stroking Nigel but didn’t stand. “Agent Sheppard. And Detective Delgado. How foolish of you both to come here.”

“I think it’s the other way around,” Sheppard said. “Where are they?”

She laughed. “Not for you guys to know.”

With that, her hair started disappearing, feathers sprouted from her head, and Nigel freaked. Barking wildly, he backed away from her, and Sheppard caught his leash and pulled him to his side and fired. The TASER hit her in the leg, but didn’t affect her at all. She made a cackling sound, part human, mostly bird. Her head was now that of a condor, beak, feathers, eyes, and all, and Delgado moved in closer and fired. His shot hit her in the back and by then, her arms and hands had been absorbed into the condor’s body and she shuddered and squealed and continued to transform.

As she was falling to the side, her wings fluttered, one of them started opening and struck a large floor lamp. The blow apparently injured the wing and Delgado had his chance. He moved in swiftly and jabbed the needle into the condor’s side and she slumped to the floor, only partially transformed.

Liz still had human shoulders, but her limbs had been absorbed completely into the front of her condor body. She still had her human hips and butt, but only one condor leg had emerged, claws fully formed. And her head was that of a condor. She looked like something in a carnie show, a 1950s horror movie, an episode of Twilight Zone.

“Jesus.” Delgado pulled out the syringe, dropped it in a nearby wastebasket, and backed rapidly away from her, as if whatever had happened to her might be contagious.

“Bizarre,” Sheppard said. “Fucking bizarre. She’s still breathing.”

“What the hell are we going to do with her?”

“Before we figure that out, I’d like to know why she was here alone. Was she looking for something? Or someone? I’m going to check out the rest of the house. We don’t know how long that morphine will last, so keep your weapon handy, Carlos.”

“Count on it. I’ll text the others.”

Sheppard moved out of the front room, Nigel trotting alongside him, and entered the huge kitchen. Dirty dishes filled the sink, more dishes were on the table, the counter, and the dishwasher door was open and partially stacked. Apparently Liz hadn’t been here alone. In the pool area, the hot tub was still on, water bubbling, steam rising from it. Several empty wine glasses stood on the wide edge of the tub and shards of glass littered the patio floor around it. A broken wine bottle. Or several. The screen had been torn open. The Crows had been enjoying some twenty-first-century pursuits, he thought, and something unexpected had happened.

“C’mon, Nigel, let’s check out the bedrooms.”

He sniffed through the patio, tail wagging, and darted back into the house, following a scent down the hallway. They passed one room where it looked as if Hal had let loose—just about everything had been liquified, including part of the floor, where a huge hole had opened in the middle of it. Nigel turned away from the bedrooms and sniffed his way back up the hall. In the kitchen, he stopped in front of the fridge and barked.

Sheppard open the fridge door. Nothing unusual in here, just a ton of food. Nigel barked again and stuck his snout between the fridge and the edge of the counter and Sheppard spotted Rincon’s medical bag wedged into the space. It looked as if it had slipped off the counter with some dish towels.

“Good boy, Nigel.” Sheppard opened the medical bag, revealing a variety of antibiotics and supplies that included several syringes of morphine.

A black and white cat darted in from somewhere and went up to Nigel, rubbing its head against his snout. Nigel licked it, the cat came over to Sheppard and snaked between his legs, purring loudly. Sheppard picked him up. “Where’d you come from, guy? Did you get left behind by your humans or by Hal?”

Then the cat heard voices and jumped out of his arms and darted away.

The others had arrived. In the front room, Sheppard found O’Hara moving around Liz, snapping photos of her, Gutierrez and Keel were readying a body bag, and Annie was crouched next to Liz, stroking the feathers on her skull and wings.

“She came back for this.” Sheppard held up what he’d found. “Ian’s medical bag. I think it means the injured Crow is still ailing, that Ian’s alive because he can treat the Crow, and if Ian’s alive, I think Mira is, too. We should divvy up these syringes of morphine.”

“I don’t suppose Liz told you anything before you put her out?” Annie asked.

“Only that we were making a big mistake,” Delgado replied.

“Yeah, right.”

Keel and Gutierrez drew the body bag up over Liz, but kept her head free. Keel glanced up. “This seems like the safest way to transport her.”

“To where?” O’Hara asked.

Since she’d come back to get Rincon’s medical bag, Sheppard thought, then presumably Hal and the others knew this. When she didn’t show up, it was likely they would come here to find her. So it made sense to move Liz elsewhere and set up a trap for the Crows in this house. But what kind of trap? If the Crows were killed, he might never find out where Mira and Rincon were being held.

“I think the safest thing is to move her to the bureau’s cell block with Hull and Eden,” Sheppard said.

Keel grinned. “Ha. What horror Rudy will go through, having one of these crows in the cell block.”

Sheppard went on. “Once we’ve moved her, how about if you post an update to the Gazette site, Jon, that one of the crows has been captured and the police are open to negotiating an exchange. If they’re interested, they should email you since you’ve already included your address in earlier posts.”

“Wow,” O’Hara exclaimed. “I like it.”

“Where would this exchange take place?” Annie asked.

“We would work that out,” Delgado said. “Yeah, let’s try it.”

“I’m in,” Keel said. “Goot?”

“In.”

“C’mon,” Annie burst out. “Mom and Ian aren’t sitting around hoping to be saved and liberated. You can be damn sure they’ve got a plan. Or maybe they’ve already pulled it off and are free.”

“Unless they’re trying to beat them from within. But even if they’re free now, it would be all the more reason for Hal to try to negotiate an exchange.” Sheppard glanced around, no one disagreed. “Let’s get Liz moved.”

3

“Is there any chicken soup in this apartment?” Rincon asked.

Mira suspected he was thinking the same thing she was, that the absence of his medical bag might present them with an unexpected opportunity and that the crow’s ignorance of this century might be used against them. Might, of course, was the operative word.

Her erratic ability and Cam’s talent for profound camouflage could be powerful weapons. But first, they had to outwit Hal and his Crows. The ignorance weapon.

“I saw some soup in the pantry earlier.” Along with a zillion other cans, all of the center’s hurricane supplies, Mira thought.

“He’s still hot,” Cam said, touching his hand to Squirt’s forehead.

Squirt sipped at his glass of Gatorade. “Not as hot as before. The fever’s going down. I think the drugs are working.”

Rincon shook his head. “You shouldn’t even have a fever by now. The chicken soup will help fortify you.”

Trixie opened the pantry door and whistled softly. “Wow, I’ve never seen so much stuff jammed into a closet like this. Lotta cans in here. We didn’t have cans in the dome. Where’s the chicken soup, hostage bitch?”

“Third shelf down, I think that’s where I saw it.”

“Show me.”

Mira pushed back from the table, went over to the pantry, found half a dozen cans of chicken soup, set them on the counter next to Trixie. “There you go. Soup for all of us.”

“We busted a bunch of these in the market. What a mess that left. So what do I do with them?”

Did she really ask that? “Heat them up in a saucepan.”

Trixie returned to the counter, got out two large saucepans, filled them with water, turned on a pair of burners. She set the six unopened cans in the pots. Mira and Rincon exchanged a quick glance.

“While the soup’s getting warm, we’ll wait for Liz to get back here with Dr. Rincon’s medical bag,” Hal said.

“Where’s the bathroom?” Red asked. “I really need to pee.”

“And I’d like to shower,” Trixie said.

Two more down? “Up the hall,” Mira replied. “Off the bedroom.”

Trixie glanced toward the pitch-black hall. “Uh-uh. Too damn black.”

“The power for that part of the apartment has been turned off. I’ll get it.” Mira walked with them to the kitchen doorway, opened the wall panel, and flicked on the switch that controlled the lights at the back of the apartment. “How’s that?”

“Perfect.” Trixie nodded. “I hate the dark. Once, the Normals stuck me in a dark place for weeks.”

“Well, there’s plenty of light back there now,” Mira said.

As Red and Trixie vanished around the corner and into the hall, Mira quickly glanced back at the other three, all of them engaged in something. She quietly shut the hallway door and turned the lock in the knob. It might buy them fifteen seconds before Trixie tore the door off the hinges or Red set fire to it.

Three down and three to go. Nico, Squirt, Hal.

Nico wouldn’t be a problem unless he rendered himself and the others invisible. Squirt wasn’t physically capable of much of anything right now. Hal was the problem. Hal had been the problem from the beginning.

Hal and Nico slapped together bulging sandwiches slathered in both mustard and ketchup. Hal glanced over at Rincon. “Is that Gatorade stuff, like, from an alligator?”

Rincon chuckled. “No, nothing like that. It’s a drink with electrolytes in it—minerals with an electric charge. It’ll be good for Nico.”

“It better not be a trick, old man.” Hal’s voice promised repercussions.

“Google it,” Rincon told him.

Hal did and nodded. “Not a trick.”

“Food smells fantastic, Hal,” Squirt said, then folded his arms on the table and rested his head against them.

“Soup first for you. It’ll help.” Rincon went over to the stove and fiddled with the controls. “It shouldn’t be taking this long.”

“We need plates for the sandwiches,” Nico said. “And bowls, right? Or do we eat out of the cans?”

“I’ll get the bowls,” Cam said. “I’m taller. I can reach them.”

“Pass them over,” Mira said. “I’ll set the table.”

Hal glanced back at her, suspicion nested in his eyes. “All of a sudden you’re compliant, Mira?”

“I’m famished,” she replied.

Hal had left his cell on the table and as Mira set out the bowls and silverware, she noticed it was still unlocked, a generic photo of a sunset as the screen saver. Touch settings, phone and find his number. The thought seemed random and stupid when she could just as easily pocket the phone. But she paid attention. Squirt was still resting his head in his arms and Nico and Hal were fussing with the food, their backs turned to her, so she touched settings, quickly scrolled down to phone, and memorized his number. 305-362-7804.

In that brief touch, an impression came to her of Hal with a female Crow, a brunette whom he loved. Wind, Red’s sister. She moved away from his cell and finished setting the table. “Who’s Wind?”

Hal glanced back at her and when he spoke, his tone was sharp, defensive. “None of your goddamn business.”

Red reappeared, which meant the lock on the hallway door didn’t work, Mira thought. “Wind’s my sister,” Red said. “She didn’t make it. But that’s not psychic. You heard all that outside, when Cam looked like Wind.” She laughed. “You’re no more psychic than I am, Mira.”

“Hey, my fingers don’t spit fire. That makes you more psychic than me, Red.”

Looking indignant, Red snapped. “I evolved like this. You developed your ability. That’s the big difference between us.”

Yeah? Really?

The water in the saucepan started to boil. Mira looked over at Rincon and he tilted his head toward the door, his expression screaming, As soon as the cans of soup explode, run like hell.

Cam moved to the fridge and opened it, the door a barrier between him and the stove, and looked back at Mira and Rincon. He gave a quick nod. Her heart hammered. Do what you have to.

When the six cans blew apart simultaneously, chicken noodle soup exploded against the ceiling, the stove, the walls, and in the faces of both Red and Hal. He yelped and danced around, swiping frantically at his eyes. She squealed and rubbed at her eyes. Mira grabbed the closest chair and swung it at Hal. It smacked him in the back and he fell sideways, screaming, “My eyes, my eyes!” He slammed to the floor and went still.

Mira swung again and the chair struck Red in the shoulder and she cried out and stumbled forward. Another swing of the chair brought her down.

Before Nico could spin around, Rincon swung a chair at the back of his knees. He gasped, his legs crumpled, and his head slammed against the sink and cabinet as he went down, knocking him out.

Noodles and bits of chicken that clung to the ceiling started dropping. Squirt tried to get up from the table, but was still so weak his feet slid through puddles of soup. Cam locked his arm around the kid’s neck and he slumped to the floor, unconscious.

“Fast!” Rincon hissed. “Before Trixie shows up.”

The three of them ran for the door. Mira worried that any second now Trixie would come barreling after them or that Hal hadn’t been knocked out completely and was already rousing himself from the floor. But they made it through the front gate of the dolphin center and into the road. The Crows’ SUV was parked off to the side of the building, so they raced away from it, into the trees, and turned south toward downtown Tango and Rincon’s office.

Distantly, she heard the mournful songs of the two remaining dolphins that Annie had cared for. Had they gone back for their dead friend? In her head, she could see Hal liquifying that dolphin as it was in midair. Its terrible squeals of agony would echo within her forever.

Next time, fucker.

19

The New Plan

Sheppard and Keel got the body bag out of the car, Liz’s condor head protruding from it. She was still breathing but so deeply asleep that her head lolled from side to side. He noticed how Keel stared at her, undoubtedly fascinated by this biological aberration.

“Shep, when she’s human do you think she still retains the senses of a condor? Is her consciousness split in two? Is her awareness as a human connected to the condor consciousness?”

“Beats me, Frank. That’s more your area than mine. But it seems to me there would have to be some connection between the two.”

Gutierrez hurried along in front of them, unlocked the rear door, locked it behind them, flicked on the lights and unlocked the cell block door. The lights in the block were dim and Gutierrez left them that way. Hull and Eden heard them—but couldn’t see them yet—and Hull shouted, “We demand to call our attorneys!”

“Got something better than that for you, Rudy,” Keel called out.

“And it’s going in a cell close to yours,” Gutierrez added.

Sheppard and Keel stopped between Hull and Eden’s cells. Hull took one look at Liz in the body bag and drew back. “Jesus,” he hissed. “What…”

“The shape shifter didn’t quite complete her shift,” Sheppard said.

Eden looked like she might puke. “She’s… grotesque.”

“Hardly an AI,” Keel remarked.

Gutierrez unlocked the cell two down from Hull’s. “Unless AIs can shape-shift.”

They carried Liz into the cell and set her on the cot, still in the body bag. Sheppard felt almost sorry for her. “Let’s leave her in the body bag. It’ll keep her busy when she comes to.”

Keel nodded. “Good idea.”

“What’d you give her?” Hull asked.

“Morphine,” Sheppard replied.

“If you could bring me my bag, my equipment’s inside,” Eden said. “I’d like to see if…”

Keel laughed. “Yeah, yeah. The EMF. Nope.”

“Hey, look on the bright side,” Gutierrez said. “You two can interview her when she comes to.”

“Can she… do you think she can break through the bars?” Eden asked.

“In that state, she’ll be lucky if she gets out of the body bag,” Sheppard replied.

The three of them hurried out of the cell, Gutierrez locked it and they started back up the cell block.

“Hey,” Eden shouted. “Hold on, just hold on. What the fuck are we supposed to do when she comes to?”

Sheppard and Keel paused between Liz’s cell and Eden’s. She and Hull both looked near panic and Sheppard felt a smug satisfaction. Hull was the man, after all, who had talked about annihilating Tango Key before Mira and Rincon had been found. Before he could say anything, Keel jumped in with a remark. “If she comes to, my recommendation is that you hide. Anywhere you can.”

As they left the cell block, Hull’s shouts echoed behind them.

2

“Hal, c’mon, wake up.”

Red’s voice, Red shaking him.

Hal knew he’d lost consciousness, but had no idea for how long. Even as he lay there on the floor, wiping at the soup smeared all over his face, a breeze touched him. It meant the apartment door was open, the hostages had escaped.

He rolled onto his side, stumbled to the sink. He slammed his hand against the faucet and splashed water on his face, clearing his eyes of the goddamn soup, gulping from the stream of cool water that gushed from the faucet. When he finally felt almost normal again, he turned.

Red and Trixie stood there, both of them breathing hard, staring at him. The hallway door had been ripped off its hinges and lay in the other room. Nico paced and held a wad of paper towels to his bleeding temple. Squirt, sprawled on the floor in a pool of soup, whined, “My neck aches, Cam did something to my neck, maybe it’s broken, maybe…”

“You’re fine, Squirt,” snapped Red. “Stop your whining. What’s not fine is that our hostages got away—again—and Cam went with them—again. That lying traitor. You believed what he claimed, Hal, that Mira and the doctor drugged him, forced him to leave with them. And Liz hasn’t returned. So we need to find Liz and get the hell off this island.”

“And we need to go now.” Nico sounded shaken. “I’ll shroud the car. Can you walk, Squirt?”

“Yeah.” He pushed up on his elbows and swiped at the noodles and bits of chicken stuck on his clothes. “Yeah, I think so. But shit, I smell like chicken soup.” He snapped his fingers and half of a ragged Frisbee appeared in his hand. “Almost back to normal.”

“We need the hostages,” Hal said. “Once we get off the island, they can help orient us, show us around…”

“For fuck’s sake, Hal,” Trixie burst out. “You’re talking like we’re morons. You want to look for them, fine, go ahead. But we’re going to fetch Liz and get outta here. We’ll be gone when you get back.”

“Wait, hold on, just hold on.” Nico patted the air with his skinny white hands and still clutched the bloody paper towel he’d been holding to his head. “Hal, I think it’s more important to look for one of our own. Maybe Liz got into trouble. Maybe she’s injured, maybe…”

The thought of Liz injured, incapable of getting to them, filled Hal with unimagined horror. What had possessed him to put her second? “Liz first. And from there, we go to the dock and seize the goddamn ferry.”

“Can you shroud an entire ferry, Nico?” Squirt asked.

“A car I can do, but I don’t know about something as large as that ferry.”

“So if you can’t shroud a ferry and it leaves before its scheduled time, they’ll know it’s us and may bomb it or something,” Squirt said.

Hal hadn’t thought of that, but now that Squirt had brought it up, he admitted it was a distinct possibility. “Then we have a couple of other options. There are speedboats in the Tango marina. A speedboat is about as large as that SUV you shrouded, Nico, so we steal one, get to Key West, take the first car we see.”

Nico nodded enthusiastically, poked his glasses higher onto the bridge of his nose. “I like this idea much better. I can definitely do a speedboat and all of us.”

“There weren’t any boat simulators in the dome,” Squirt said. “So who’s going to drive this boat?

“I am,” Hal replied. “I’m going to drive, I’ve done it before. We used to vacation at this place in the south of the dome for government employees. There was a lake, boats…” I sort of learned to swim there. Or, more accurately, he sort of learned to float.

“Then let’s do it,” Red said.

He looked around the kitchen at the mess they’d made, the door torn from its hinges, soup splattered everywhere, their packs in a heap against the wall on either side of the pantry. “Grab your packs, bottles of water, snacks, then we’re outta here.”

His cell dinged, Hal glanced at the screen. A message appeared that the Gazette had published an emergency update. Hal clicked it:

Update: Captured Crow

There have been several important developments:

The last ferry for evacuation has been cancelled due to mechanical problems. If you’re still on the island, stay sheltered.

One of the Crows has been captured by police and is being held in a secure location. The police are open to negotiating for the Crow’s release. If interested, please contact me at my email address: jonoh@gmail.com

Stay tuned for further developments.

At the end of the update was a horrifying photo of Liz, most of her wrapped up in a body bag, her condor head visible. Hal stared at the picture, his heart breaking. Captured. He blurted, “Jon’s latest post went up. They’ve got Liz.”

The stunned silence broke with the soft tapping at their phones. “Fuckers,” Trixie spat.

Red gasped. “My God, they got her as she was shifting.”

“Now we know why she didn’t come back,” Nico said.

Squirt looked deeply shaken. “What location would these twenty-firsters consider safe?”

“Probably a locked room,” Hal replied.

Nico glanced up from his phone. “How’re you going to negotiate, Hal? We don’t have anything to negotiate with. No hostages.”

“They don’t know that,” Hal said.

Trixie brightened up. “Good point.”

Hal didn’t doubt they had Liz. The photo proved it. But even if there hadn’t been a photo, it was the only thing that explained why she hadn’t returned. However, since they believed he had both Mira and the doc, he might be in the stronger position to set the terms for the exchange. In addition to getting Liz back, he intended to ask for guaranteed safe passage off the island—on the ferry. He didn’t buy the bullshit that the last ferry out had developed mechanical problems.

But if they got safe passage out of Florida, where would they go?

Miami might be okay, but farther north would be preferable. How far north? Inland mountains would be safest. He remembered reading about the Blue Ridge mountains, more than 6,000 feet in altitude, high enough to keep out the rising seas. But the Rockies were even better. They stretched for 3,000 miles, protecting parts of the states of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico. Their highest point was 12,183 feet above sea level. He seemed to remember most of what he’d read. Facts, figures, science. It was possible to drive there and if Nico couldn’t hold the shroud indefinitely throughout the trip, they could stop frequently. Pull into campsites. Sleep in the car.

Drawbacks?

The distance. And if he remembered the history correctly, at some point in the near future, a series of quakes would destroy the Rockies. Also, what they all needed now was a place to call home, at least for several months. A closer refuge would be best.

Adirondacks? Appalachians? Maybe the latter. The southern end of the Appalachians ran into Alabama, much closer to Florida than the Rockies. But was Alabama one of the places that would flood when the Mississippi River overflowed its banks? He couldn’t remember. He had read so much over the years, studied so many different sources, that it was all jumbled and mixed up now.

The holes in his memories aside, events had to be set in motion before they reached the point of finding a place to live.

“What’re you going to say?” Nico asked.

Red flicked her hair off her shoulders and leaned back against the sink, arms folded at her waist. “And where should the exchange take place?”

“Do they bring Liz to the exchange place?” Trixie asked. “How’s this going to work exactly?”

“I don’t know yet. I need to think things through.”

“Fuck thinking it through,” Nico said. “The plan will change. Just tell them you’re open to negotiating and see what they say.”

Hal thought about Liz, held captive somewhere, probably restrained and drugged, separated from him and the other Crows, and knew she was terrified. She was his responsibility in ways the others were not. He loved her like a daughter and she always had been loyal to him.

When he had first proposed fleeing the dome and seizing an idyllic island in the twenty-first century, she had been the first Crow to embrace the idea. When he’d asked for volunteers to lay the groundwork for their invasion—to find Mira and O’Hara, to destroy the bridge—Liz had been the first to volunteer. He’d told her she didn’t qualify because she wasn’t a Lethal, so she’d offered to have explosives strapped to her body and sacrifice herself.

His email to O’Hara consisted of one word: yes.

“We’ll see what they say. In the meantime, I don’t want to put any of you at more risk than you already are. I think you should leave, take the shrouded speedboat like we talked about, and once I’ve got Liz, we’ll meet you in Key West. You’ve got your phones, we can keep in touch that way. You’ll have to steal a car in Key West, but that shouldn’t be difficult for you to pull off.”

“You want us to leave?” Nico exclaimed.

“It’ll be safer for you.”

“But it may not be safer for you,” Squirt argued. “You and Liz won’t be shrouded.”

“We’ll take our chances. It’ll be dark.” He looked at Trixie, at Red. “Ladies?”

“Suits me,” said Trixie.

“Me, too,” echoed Red. “But how’re you and Liz going to get to Key West, Hal?”

“Probably steal a boat. Start gathering up your packs and whatever else you want to take with you and we’ll head to the marina in the shrouded SUV. I’ll make sure you get off the island.”

3

By the time Mira, Rincon and Cam reached the edge of the woods at the rear of the bureau office, the air was so still it felt as if the island itself waited to exhale. The lights back here were on, a Mini-Cooper was parked in the lot. Mira wondered whose car it was.

They darted across the dark lot and paused at the rear door. Mira keyed in the code in the security box, the door swung open. She didn’t hear anything and decided the car had been left here by someone in Sheppard’s group. They hurried inside, she shut the door. Locked it behind them. Rincon and Cam continued to the front of the building and she made a beeline for Sheppard’s office.

The door stood open, she flicked on the light, and went over to the top left desk drawer and opened it. No spare cell, no weapon, too bad. No landline. It had been removed a few years back. Sheppard no longer had a desktop computer in here, either. These days, he carried his iPad Pro everywhere.

Just to be sure, though, she opened all the drawers and in the lowest on the right, found two cells, the latest model iPhones, and a set of car keys. She pocketed the keys and hoped they belonged to the Mini-Cooper in the lot. Mira didn’t recognize the screensavers on either cell phone. One was of a sailboat at sunset. The other featured a pretty blonde in her thirties with her arm slung around the shoulders of a handsome man in a business suit whose smile looked phony.

She pocketed the cell with the sailboat screen saver and touched her finger to the other image and dozens of notifications appeared on the screen. The one that seized her attention read: Gazette: Update, Captured Crow.

She clicked it, but the cell asked for either her retinal scan or the passcode.

Mira hurried into the front room where Cam and Rincon were. Cam suddenly hissed, “I hear something.”

He moved soundlessly toward the cell block, Mira and Rincon behind him.

They moved in close to the steel door and Mira clearly heard a woman shouting, “Hey, get us out of here!”

She tapped the code into the security box, the door clicked, swung open. The woman’s shouts were now interspersed with those of a man. “We have the right to call our attorneys, we have…”

“Just shut the fuck up, Rudy,” the woman snapped. “You…”

“Hey.” Mira trotted through the cell block with Cam and Rincon and stopped in front of the woman’s cell.

She was the blonde in the phone’s screen saver and came right up to the cell door, hands clutching the bars, her expression so furious, her face so flushed, it wouldn’t surprise Mira if she had a heart attack or a stroke before she uttered a word.

“Who the hell…wait, you’re Mira Morales.”

“And you are?” Mira asked.

“Eden. Eden Curry. AI specialist with the DOD.”

“Ian Rincon, county coroner,” Rincon said.

Cam moved closer to the cell. “And I’m Cam, White Crow.”

“What the…” Eden backed away, hands held in front of her as if to fend off an enemy. “A Crow. Really? You? Shit. Fucking shit, Rudy!”

She screamed his name, but he didn’t respond. He was backed up to the far wall two cells down, his face contorted with terror.

Mira moved in front of his cell. “Rudy. You’re Keel’s boss at the DOD, right?”

His hands dropped away for his face. “And you… are you Mira? Sheppard’s wife?”

She bristled at that. She didn’t want her identity connected to anyone else’s. “I own One World Books, Rudy. Hal ripped my store apart.”

He rushed to the door, hands gripping the bars over to the door. “Let me the fuck outta here.”

Before she could respond to Hull, Mira heard Eden stammer, “And you, uh, do what exactly, Cam? I don’t think I’ve seen any videos of your ability.”

“Too bad,” Cam replied.

“He camouflages,” Mira snapped, then looked back at Rudy Hull. “And what do you do, Mr. Hull, that’s so special I should let you outta here?”

“I’m… Director of the Department of Defense’s Bio Warfare Department in Florida and I… I demand that we be released immediately.”

“What’re you and Eden doing in the bureau’s jail?” Rincon asked.

“Agent Sheppard interfered with the chain of command,” Hull replied.

“Unlikely, Mr. Hull.” Mira held up Eden’s cell phone. “What’s the passcode, Ms. Curry?”

“You’re the psychic, you figure it out.”

“Cam?” Mira held out the phone. “Would you do the honor?”

He grinned, took the cell from her. “My pleasure.”

“We’re providing you with the up close and personal version of what Cam can do, Eden,” said Mira.

His appearance shifted rapidly until he looked like an exact duplicate of Eden, right down to the dimples in the corners of her mouth. The real Eden recoiled in shock.

“And why do you want the code to my phone, Mira?” His voice sounded exactly like Eden’s.

“So I can text Shep.”

“It’s my birthdate,” the camouflaged Eden said. “Eleven sixteen eighty-three.”

“Holy mother of God,” the real Eden muttered.

“A Scorpio.” Mira laughed. “Like me. You gotta love it.” Cam passed the cell to Mira and she tapped the numbers into the password area and the phone opened. “Perfect. That worked.”

“Still think I’m an AI, Eden?” Cam asked.

“I… I don’t know what…the hell to think.”

Cam looked disgusted. “You’re a troublemaker and you’ve been sowing discord for a long time.” He resumed his own appearance. “I’m not an AI. I’m just one of the unfortunate fucks who got stranded in the wrong place at the wrong time. You want to make a difference in the world? Then declare climate change as the national emergency it is.”

Eden grabbed onto a bar to steady herself. “Is that thing two cells down the result of climate change, Cam? Huh? Is it?”

“My God, Eden, they’re all the result of climate change,” Mira said. “How can you not get that?” She moved two cells down and there was Liz, snug inside a body bag on a cot, just her condor head showing. “She’s proof of Frank’s theory about rapid evolutionary change. All the Crows are.”

“You’re not a scientist,” Eden snapped. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’ve seen their evolutionary history in a way that you can’t.”

Cam moved in next to Mira and when he spoke, the authority in his voice was evident. “Liz is one of a kind among us. So is Hal. I think that’s part of the bond between them.”

“Sweet Christ, Rudy.” Eden rubbed her hands over her face. “Do something about this. About them.”

Hull, now perched at the edge of his cot, exploded with hysterical laughter. “What would you like me to do, Eden? Snap my fingers?” He snapped his fingers. “Wave my goddamn wand?” He waved his hand around. “What the hell can I do?”

Mira entered Liz’s cell with Rincon, who proceeded to check her out.

He took Liz’s pulse. “She’s still deeply under.” He unzipped the bag, exposing her in between shapes. “Is this an AI, Eden?” he asked.

She stood at the bars between her and Hull’s cell and stared at Liz.

“Huh? Is it?” Rincon persisted.

“I… I… can’t be sure without my…”

“Yeah, your equipment,” Rincon said. “Bullshit.”

“I need to contact Shep,” Mira said.

“I’m going to stay here for a few minutes and educate the Department of Defense on climate change,” Cam said.

Mira nodded. “Wonderful. They need to hear things from your perspective.”

“I do, too,” Rincon said.

As Mira hurried up the cell block to the front office, she used Eden’s cell phone, navigated to the Gazette site, read O’Hara’s latest update with the photo of Liz. Interesting, she thought, that Hal would try to bargain even though he didn’t have his hostages.

She texted Sheppard. They don’t have us, so don’t negotiate w/them yet. Am w/Ian and Cam, who’s on our side. Luv u

She pressed send. Sheppard responded immediately. WTF. You’re at the bureau office? Eden’s name came up.

Just met them.

U ok?

Am now. Cam, Ian, & I escaped from dolphin center where they were hiding out.

I’ll get a unit up there ASAP.

They’ve probably left. Fuckers killed one of the dolphins.

Christ.

Forward me Hal’s response about negotiation.

Not much to it. Just, Yes.

Have u replied yet?

No. Any insights?

I’ll see what I can pick up.

Mira disconnected and realized she was in the front office and that Ca, and Rincon were on either side of her. They’d read the text exchange. “Dios mio, I don’t get it,” Rincon burst out. “They’re four Lethals against two thousand troops on the island. These Crows don’t have a chance, Mira.”

“C’mon, Ian, you saw what happened at the bookstore. When Keel went up against them, he lost three men in about fifteen seconds. And that’s while gunfire was ongoing. At that rate, it would take about four minutes for them to decimate the National Guard troops. And if they’re fully charged, they can do it without breaking a sweat. We have to do better than that.”

She quickly texted Annie to let her know she was okay and what had happened, but didn’t mention the killing of the dolphin. Annie’s reply was a string of heart emojis and the recording she’d made of the haunting song of the dolphins.

luv you bigger than google.

What Mira wanted to try might be a long shot, but she couldn’t think of any other way to get a handle on Hal’s plan. She entered his cell number in Eden’s contacts, named him H, tapped in a message.

20

Desperate Measures

Crickets cried out and somewhere nearby a bird of some kind hooted, but those sounds weren’t enough to drown out the noise the SUV’s engine made. The island was so empty, though, Hal doubted anyone was around to hear it. Just the same, his paranoia had soared to such extremes that he avoided the main roads and drove side roads and dirt roads that cut through the woods.

In the back seat, leaning out the open window, Red said, “The island’s creepy without any people.”

“We’ll be outta here soon,” Nico said from the passenger seat.

Hal nodded. “Not too far now.”

At the end of the dirt road that led to the western side of the island, Hal turned left and descended toward the Tango Key Marina at the southern tip of the island. The headlights weren’t on, but all the street lamps offered enough light for him to see Old Post Road.

“You’ll have to show one of us how to drive the boat,” Trixie said.

“It’s easier than driving a car. But really noisy.”

Squirt sat forward. “So when we get to Key West, we steal a car and then wait for you and Liz? Is that the plan?”

“Right. Wait wherever you feel safest. Just text me. Liz and I will find you.”

“And then what?” Squirt always wanted to know the plan.

“I’m not sure. Right now, the plan is to get off this island.”

“I’m nearly back to normal, Hal. That doc knew what he was doing.”

“Glad for that, Squirt. You know I am. But…”

“Yeah, I know. He split.”

“Split? That’s, like, a retro word, Squirt. 1960s.”

“Uh-huh. I’ve been reading about the hippies. We shouda gone back to the late sixties, Hal. Maybe we still can. I could fit in there. All of us could. Weird was accepted.”

The Sixties? Nothing lay back there for them, Hal thought. But even if it had, he doubted that just the six of them they would be able to get there or anywhere else. The movement through time hadn’t worked until more than several dozen of them had trained their consciousness as a group on the twenty-first century. Was that magic number initially fifteen? Eighteen? He couldn’t remember the exact number that had made the difference. The bottom line was that the more Crows in a group, the more intense their focus, the faster you got there. Yet. The travel could break you.

Hal pulled into the marina parking lot and what he saw nearly paralyzed him. One boat. A fucking canoe with a small outboard engine. He forced himself to speak normally. “You should be able to shroud that pretty easily, Nico.” A cinch. But that canoe looks like it’s meant for kids. I’m going to remove the shroud for right now so I don’t get worn out,” Nico said.

“Good idea. More important to be shrouded for the trip to Key West.”

Just as they got out of the car, Hal’s cell dinged. A text message. He didn’t recognize the number and everyone who might text him was with him.

Except for Liz.

Hal clicked the message.

Got a phone. They gave me heavy drugs, Hal. I’m locked in a… I don’t know.

Relief coursed through him. Describe it.

Have turned one of my condor legs to a hand. Small room, no windows, cool not freezing. I’m surrounded by… drugs? Are these drugs? Yeah, drugs, packages & containers of pharma stuff. The pharmacy, Hal. A secure room there.

I’ll come to you. His heart soared.

R others w/you?

They’re leaving from the marina in a canoe. Nico will shroud them. We’ll meet them in Key West. We’re going to create lives in the 21st that we can embrace, Liz. I promise u that.

How will we get to Key West?

I’ll hijack a boat, a ferry, something. Or you can fly us out.”

If I could fly, I’d be gone by now.

Hal sent her one of the stupid emojis, throbbing double hearts, then followed the others down to the pier where the lone canoe was docked. They loaded their packs inside. Nico sat at the back, ready to steer the canoe to Key West. In front of him sat Trixie, with Squirt wedged between her and Red, the navigator at the front.

He hugged each of them. “How far out will you be before the shrouding on me and the car drops away, Nico?”

“I don’t know. I really need to recharge, but I’ll do my best, Hal.”

“I know you will.” Hal showed him how the outboard engine worked, how to steer, then untied the rope from the dock, pressed his foot against the back of the canoe, and pushed it gently away from the dock. “Paddle out for a ways, then start the engine.”

“I ordered us an Uber in Key West,” Red said. “It’ll meet us at the dock there.”

“Even with the curfew?” Hal asked.

“Uh, yeah. Apparently several thousand people in town are defying the curfew and having a street party,” Red said, consulting her cell. “The street party spills across most of downtown Key West, so Ubers are busy.”

“You can steal the Uber car,” Hal told her.

Then Nico shrouded all of them and the canoe and shrouded the SUV again, too. Hal heard their paddles slapping the water as they moved away from shore.

He loped back into the parking lot to the yet invisible SUV. He found it only because he knew exactly where he’d parked. Second row, fourth space. Even so, getting inside was awkward, his hands slapping the air until they struck something solid. He felt the handle, jerked on it, and slipped inside, where everything was now visible to him.

Pharmacy.

2

Mira’s hope surged. Hal believed her texts were from Liz. She told Cam and Rincon what was going on, then texted Sheppard and his group about where Trixie, Red, Nico, and Squirt were. They’re invisible, she added.

And Hal? Sheppard asked.

He thinks he’s rescuing Liz.

Where?

Just go after the others.

She read the messages to Rincon and Cam. Rincon’s response was what she’d expected. “You can’t take on Hal by yourself, Mira.”

“Actually, she probably can,” said Cam. “But there’ll be two of her, just like before at the house.”

Mira went over to the gun cabinet, keyed in the code, and removed two weapons with additional clips that she handed to Rincon. “Can you stay here and make sure Liz and the other two don’t escape?”

“And shoot any Crows that barrel through the front door?” Cam asked.

Rincon regarded them with a WTF expression. “Yes to both. Let’s just end this shit show. But I have a question, Mira. How do you know all the security codes in here?”

“It goes back to when I read crime scenes for the bureau.”

Mira started to reach into the cabinet again to get a weapon for herself, but stopped. Did she really need more weapons? She already had several in her pack from when this all had first started, before she had known what she knew now. More weapons would be like telling herself she couldn’t take him on one to one.

She eyed the Glock 22 with what felt like a sense of longing. Then she withdrew her hand and locked the cabinet again. Should she remove the weapons in her pack? If she was really serious about taking on Hal with her own ability, then yes, she should. But couldn’t she be serious about that and also have a Plan B? A just in case backup?

Fuck, yeah. The point was for them all to survive. She had enough weapons in her bag.

“They haven’t changed the codes for six years?” Rincon asked.

“What?” She’d been so immersed in her own thoughts she couldn’t remember what they’d been talking about.

“The codes to everything in here,” Rincon said. “How do you have them?”

“Shep updates me whenever the codes change.”

Cam’s brows shot up. “Really? And that’s an expression of his skepticism about your abilities?” He shook his head. “You need to reconsider all this, Mira. Maybe your struggles all these years have been self-inflicted.” He paused. “A matter of perception.”

His words startled her. “Really? My perception was fucked up when he remarked that what I picked up from reading the stone woman was skewed? That he couldn’t believe what I’d picked up about the Crows being from the future? About the effects of climate change in your time? That he thought I was full of shit? Really, Cam?”

He patted the air with his long pale hands, a gesture he often made when he sought to fend off hostility. “Okay, Mira. I get it. This is a raw wound.”

“Damn straight. I gave up a lot in the last six years.”

“By choice,” Cam said. “You took the easy way out.”

That caught her by surprise, then pissed her off. She started to say as much, but he wasn’t finished. “The bigger and more difficult challenge would’ve been to continue doing what you were doing. You and Shep are separate people who inhabit sovereign kingdoms. Shep’s skepticism is his challenge, not yours. Your ability is your challenge, not his.”

The intensity of what she felt just then told her Cam was right. At the time, the battle hadn’t seemed worth the time or energy. In one way or another it had been a battle she’d fought since she was that third grader who’d been suspended from school for yanking down the bully’s gym shorts without physically touching her. But that incident had led her to Nadine, her grandmother, surrogate mother, business partner, psychic mentor. That incident had spun her life around. Suddenly, it was fine to talk about spirits she’d seen, the glimmers of the future she saw, the details she’d sensed about people’s lives. Suddenly, it was fine to be who she was.

“Well, for taking the easy way out, I’m paying for it now.”

“Time out!” Rincon made a time out signal with his hands. “It doesn’t fucking matter right now!” He slapped keys down on the desk. “Take the Mini-Coop out there that Eden and Hull were driving. Get your asses to the pharmacy. I’ve got this place covered!”

“Cam?”

His appearance abruptly switched into a replica of Mira. “I’m ready.” He spoke in her voice, looked like her, acted like her. It disoriented Mira.

Once they were outside in the parking lot, the energy coursed through her—a current so powerful and ubiquitous that she kept flinging it away from herself. At rocks, weeds, trees, the ground, the water. Cam finally touched her shoulder. “Mira, it’s probably a good idea if you stop doing that. You’re essentially telling the energy it’s unwanted.”

“I’m… I’m just trying to get rid of the excess.”

“I can’t duplicate that.”

“Why not?”

“I can only duplicate what’s authentic, Mira.”

“Look, we’re about to go head to head with Hal. I don’t want to burn up or implode before I get there.”

Their shoes crunched over mulch, dried twigs, roots, beds of fallen leaves. The darkness made her feel uneasy, uncertain. Cam hooked his arm through hers, Mira turned on her cell’s flashlight and aimed it at the ground.

“That’s not it,” Cam said.

“What? My cell flashlight?”

“No, I mean you’re trying to rid yourself of the talent that belongs to you.”

She stopped. He stopped. They looked at each other in one of those ridiculous movie moments when nothing made sense, yet everything made sense. Mira clasped his hands. “Tell me what you know, Cam. You’ve hinted at it, teased me with it. Just spit it out, okay?”

He drew in air, held it, then exhaled deeply and his breath seemed to seep into her body at a molecular level. She felt those molecules penetrating her skin muscles, bones, blood. She suddenly saw herself and Cam in an auditorium somewhere, addressing thousands about climate change and how 2025—2030 seemed to spell the end dates.

“You want…” he stammered.

“I…”

She what? She wanted to know everything Cam knew. Wanted an immediate download of information that would direct her toward the right decision: Leave Tango? And if so, when? Where should they go? Is there an alternative to the dome? Can we change anything in our future from right now?

There in the parking lot, in the muted light of stars and a rising moon, Cam tightened his grasp on her hands. “I can give you this.” The current that raced through her, from his hands into hers, was an entire blueprint of possibilities and what ifs, horrors and triumphs, a grid of numbers, images, and alternative realities that moved through her so quickly, in the space of a breath, that she couldn’t fully grasp it.

Mira wrenched back, breaking the physical connection between them. “What the hell, Cam.”

“I know that was… a lot,” Cam said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to overwhelm you.”

“Some of it… sailed right past me.”

“You’ll remember it. At some level. And look, we write our own futures. Moment to moment. Choice to choice. Let’s choose wisely.”

She nodded. “C’mon.”

They got in the car, Mira behind the wheel, and she pulled out of the lot. Cam’s appearance changed again. He now looked like Wind and in her soft, gentle voice, he said, “See, the truth is that Hal has loved me ever since he rescued me from a bunch of Normals who intended to rape and kill me. He and his parents saved my life. He really wanted me to join him on this insane trip. I tried, I was with Cam and Trixie, but when they walked into the past, I… couldn’t follow them.”

“Why not?” Mira asked.

“It didn’t feel right, not for me. I felt I could fight for all us here. And because of this. Because of where we are now.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m more than Wind. All Crows are more than what they appear to be. I saw many of these moments in the wind a long time ago.”

“You saw—what? All this? Me?” Mira asked.

“Some of it, yes.”

“How?”

“Complex.”

Cam morphed into himself again. “There’s something you and I aren’t seeing right now. I think Hal has a failsafe, but I don’t know what it is.”

“That’s unsettling, Cam.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“So Wind is a precog?”

“A what?”

Okay, so he’d never seen Minority Report or read Philip K. Dick. “Precognitive. She can see the future.”

“When it’s riding in the wind, yes.”

“Do you have access to Wind’s ability?” Mira asked.

Cam nodded. “And yours, when I look like you, like what had happened back at the house. And with Red when I really focus and sometimes, Trixie. But not with Liz or Squirt or Nico. And I definitely can’t do what Hal does.”

“Can we win this, Cam?”

He didn’t answer immediately. “Maybe.” He rocked one of his long, thin hands from side to side. “Fifty/fifty.”

“C’mon. Those odds suck. How about an eighty/twenty? Or a ninety/ten? Fifty/fifty sucks.”

Distraught, he blurted, “It’s what I see.”

She knew what that was like. “Tell me about Wind’s power.”

He camouflaged himself once more as Wind. He seemed as comfortable in Wind’s skin as he did in his own. Kindred souls. A Jungian anima/animus.

“You experienced Weather’s power.” Cam spoke in Wind’s voice. “But Weather was always all over the place. In some ways, my ability as Wind is more powerful because it’s so specific and focused.”

“Hurricanes?”

“Sure.” She lowered the window and her hands moved slowly through the outside air. The trees they passed, illuminated by the head lights, whipped back and forth. “Tornadic winds, strange winds, precognitive winds.” When she spoke, her voice sounded like wind. “Time rides that wind. It’s all there—past, present, future. Einstein was wrong about time as a river. Time is the wind, on the wind, within the wind. Not everyone can catch it. But I believe you can, Mira.”

She now made elegant, wavelike motions with her hands and a flurry of leaves pinwheeled across the road in front of them.

Mira’s cell rang, Annie’s name came up. Mira suspected Sheppard had put her up to it, hoping she could find out where Cam was headed and what Mira was up to. But she didn’t want cops and soldiers descending on the pharmacy. This was her battle, it had been since the beginning, and now it was Cam’s as well.

She let the call go to voicemail, texted Annie a heart emoji, and turned off the location setting on her phone.

3

At the ferry dock, Sheppard and Gutierrez took one airboat, Keel and Delgado took another. Both were equipped with powerful searchlights and could reach speeds of more than a hundred miles an hour. Sheppard, like the others, had brought his own arsenal with him and they all wore thermal sensitive goggles.

Gutierrez, straddling the raised seat in the pilot’s roost, shouted, “Clear!” As if the airboat were a plane upon takeoff. Then the airboat shot away from the dock, turned slightly, and searchlights stripped away the plateau of darkness between Tango and Key West.

To the naked eye, the darkness would look as empty as a stage the morning after a rock concert. Thanks to the goggles, Sheppard saw four red blobs of heat in the distance. “See them, Goot?” He spoke into the mike connected to his collar and hoped Gutierrez could hear him in spite of the whine of the engine.

“Got them, yeah. About a mile north of us.”. Sheppard raised his binoculars to his goggles. They didn’t appear to be moving very fast, the boat sat low in the water, the blobs were crowded closely together. He guessed their collective weight was too much for a boat with a puny outboard.

He positioned himself at the front of the airboat with his bag of weapons, unzipped it, pulled out his M4. Its maximum range was 3,600 meters, about two and a quarter miles. It became less accurate with distance, of course, but for this moment, it was perfect.

“Head straight toward them, Goot.”

Gutierrez flashed a thumbs up and the airboat picked up speed. Keel and Delgado’s airboat came up alongside them, searchlight brilliant. Keel piloted, Delgado was positioned at the front, like Sheppard. Delgado’s voice crackled in Sheppard’s earbud. “Low, at the outboard.”

“Now!”

Sheppard aimed low at the back of their boat, where the engine was, and he and Delgado fired simultaneously. Within seconds, a tremendous wave of energy slammed into them, spun them around like a needle on a compass. Sheppard grabbed onto the railing in front of him, Gutierrez whipped the airboat around, waves crashed over the sides. Sheppard took aim again, and fired repeatedly at the area where the blobs seemed to meet the surface of the water.

Flames arced into the sky and struck the water to the right of the airboat. “Searchlight off!” Sheppard shouted.

Their light winked out and so did the one on the other airboat. It meant Gutierrez and Keel had to navigate on instruments and both cut back slightly on speed. Sheppard aimed and fired repeatedly. The blobs trembled, shook, then they all melted together and Sheppard guessed their vessel had capsized.

Gutierrez turned on the searchlight again. The capsized boat was now visible. Two Crows clung to it and a third floundered in the water, struggling to keep the fourth crow afloat. A wounded Crow. Given that they were visible, Sheppard guessed the injured C

row was Nico. But he didn’t have any idea what to do with this information. Charge them or fall back?

They moved in closer, Keel and Delgado on the north side of the capsized canoe, Sheppard and Gutierrez on the south side, their boat idling now. Sheppard realized Red was in the water, trying to keep Nico from drowning, and Trixie struggled to keep Squirt above water as he clutched the capsized canoe. In other words, the three Lethals weren’t in any position to defend themselves. He could get clear, fatal shots at all of them.

And that would be murder, not self-defense.

He signaled Gutierrez to stop. The throbbing of the engine died and in that silence Sheppard heard the panicked shouts and cries from the crows. His earbud crackled and Keel’s voice came through. “What’s your plan?”

Keel’s voice, so loud and direct, snapped Sheppard out of his uncertainty. “We come along them on either side. Rescue the injured crow—Nico, the albino—and get plump boy out of the water and stun the two women.”

“That order of things sucks, Shep. We stun, then rescue.”

“Fine. Let’s do it. And then we continue to the Key West dock.”

“I’ll take Trixie,” Sheppard said, and he and Delgado fired their stun guns.

Red and Trixie flailed, arms and legs thrashing wildly, and Sheppard leaped into the water to grab onto them before they went under. He reached Red first, slung his arm around her neck and grabbed onto the back of Nico’s shirt and pulled him along as he kicked his way to the airboat.

Gutierrez hauled Red on board, then slid his arms under Nico’s shoulders and pulled him up and out. As he scrambled up the ladder, Sheppard glanced at the other airboat. Keel was at the foot of the ladder with Trixie and Squirt, who was coughing and sobbing. Delgado pulled the kid up first and he stumbled across the foot of the airboat, then fell to his knees. Then Delgado grabbed onto Trixie and brought her onboard too.

In front of him, Red groaned and Gutierrez slipped a needle into her arm, injecting her with morphine. Sheppard hurried over to Nico, turned him over. Blood covered the front of his shirt. Sheppard tore it open and nearly gagged at the sight of the blood that poured from an injury to his stomach. “Jesus, he’s going to bleed to death, Goot. Get us to Key West. Is there a medical kit on this airboat?”

“Not that I’ve seen.” He thrust a towel at Sheppard. “Press this over his injury.” He ran toward the controls.

Sheppard had basic paramedic training for administering first aid, but it hadn’t covered anything like this. He kept pressure on the towel and radioed their position to the Key West bureau office. The dispatcher told him an ambulance waited at the dock, that the holding area was ready, and a public health doc would be standing by.

“One of them is bleeding out,” Sheppard added.

“I’ll patch you through to the doc,” the dispatcher said, and moments later, a woman spoke.

“Agent Sheppard, this is Dr. Risa Griffin. I removed the chip from the man found in the alley in 1985. Dr. Rincon brought me back in on this when the stone woman was found. What’s the Crow’s injury?”

Sheppard vaguely recalled Mira mentioning this woman. She’d been with Mira and Pam the producer the evening the weather Crow had killed Pam. Things seemed to be coming full circle. “He’s losing a lot of blood. Injury to the stomach area.” My fault, shit, I fired that last shot.

“Keep pressure applied to the area. Which, uh, Crow is this?”

“The albino. Invisibility.”

“I’m assuming he’s visible now?”

“Yes.”

“I suspect that if he starts to fade, you’ll know he’s dying.”

“We’re nearly to the Key West dock.”

“I’m waiting there now.”

“Thanks.”

He disconnected and leaned in close to Nico. “I’m doing what I can, I didn’t want to hurt or kill any of you. But you… you took Mira and Ian, you… decimated Tango. You…”

Nico’s eyes fluttered open. “… need water…”

Sheppard thrust his hand into his pack and pulled out a bottle of water. He spun the cap, lifted Nico’s head, brought the bottle to his mouth. “Sip.”

He sipped, then his hands gripped the bottle and he gulped. The movement seemed to exhaust him. His hands fell to his sides again and he breathed heavily, panting like a dog. “You… have to… defeat him… Hal tricked… all of us into… coming here.”

“Don’t talk. Conserve your strength.”

“No… you need to… listen. He… I believe he has a failsafe… a way to annihilate the island if he’s… killed… He’s a con… a liar.”

“Where is he?”

“Liz… got taken. She contacted Hal… said they… put her in the pharmacy. He’s going to rescue her… says they’ll join us… he’s full of shit…”

Yeah, dude, we took her but not to any pharmacy. Sheppard suddenly understood that Mira had messaged Hal, pretending to be Liz.

“Hang on, man, just hang on.”

Nico gasped for air, started convulsing, then fading. He went motionless—and invisible—in Sheppard’s arms.

21

Loops

Mira pulled into a bank lot three blocks from the pharmacy and parked. The lot was empty, no surprise, and she and Cam got out. Right now, Cam looked like himself. But suddenly, he camouflaged himself as Hal—tall, lanky, skin a light brown, dark eyes narrowed.

Shocked, Mira wrenched back, wondering if this was some sort of trick, if all along Cam had been on Hal’s side, if everything he’d told her and Rincon was a lie. “What the hell. Cam?”

“Christ, it’s awful.” Cam quickly looked like himself again and swept his hands over his jeans, shirt, arms, face, trying to rid himself of the energy. Then he blurted, “Hal figured out the pharmacy is a setup. He was thinking jail, jail. County? State? Federal? I think he’s headed to the bureau office. Or will head there. I don’t know if it’s happened yet.”

“Shit.”

They ran back to the car. She thought of that day years ago when she’d quit smoking. She and Nadine had been sitting on a windy beach and she’d been trying to light a cigarette. But every match she’d lit had gone out and her lighter had died and there she was, a silly fool on a beach of non-smokers. In that moment, she’d picked up the dead lighter, the matches, her pack of cigarettes, and had walked down the beach to a large trash can and tossed in all of it. And from that point forward, everything that could change in her life had.

Six days after tossing away her smokes, she’d met Tom Morales, Annie’s father, the love of her life. Three years after Annie was born, he’d been shot down in a robbery when he’d walked into a convenience store to buy a pack of cigarettes. It had started with cigarettes and ended with cigarettes, a weird loop.

And this loop had begun with the stone woman in the wilderness preserve, a woman sent by Hal, and now it would end with Hal.

Back in the car, Cam became Wind again and tapped the crown of Mira’s head. As she drove, she felt a current humming through her from head to toe. She realized that Cam as Wind was transmitting the same kind of information to her that Cam had, but now it came at a slower, more comprehensible pace. Within this energy current lay smells—of greenery, darkness, ocean, sunlight, sickness and death, joy and triumph, every scent an emotion. Images popped in and out of her awareness. She stopped the car and turned to him/her—to Cam as Wind.

“Tell me,” she whispered, and Wind brought both hands to her crown and now she saw images of Tango’s distant past, its actual origin during the last ice age some hundred thousand years ago. The sea level had dropped, exposing the ancient coral reefs and sand bars which had become fossilized over time to form the rocks that comprised the chain of the Florida Keys.

Other images were of Cam’s world, life in the dome, the devastation of climate change. A handful of images depicted the mass migrations inland, the tent cities, deserted towns, the RVs, trucks, car, motorcycles, campers, bikes. She saw the abandoned vehicles that had run out of gas or broken down, and littered the landscape, landmarks of bedlam. These images struck her viscerally. She felt the hopelessness, desperation, fear, and raw instinct for survival among the migrants.

Vigilante groups sprang up, tyrants rose and fell, revolution broke out. It was around that time that the first group of Crows had been born, children with strange and extraordinary abilities. They became the migrants’ most closely held secret, then their defenders, then their greatest hope. Hal’s group had the most evolved and sophisticated abilities and for a long time, they were able to sabotage the Normals’ structure of things. But eventually they were so badly outnumbered that Normals had done what the people in power always did—clung to that power by pummeling everyone else.

The final image Wind gave Mira overpowered her. A TV screen. The Weather Channel’s Jim Cantori stood on a wind-torn beach, tall, violent waves rolling in and crashing behind him. The sky sagged with black clouds, rain lashed Cantori, his face peeked out from the hood of his jacket. He had trouble remaining upright, rain smeared the camera’s lens.

“This is Jim Cantori, standing—trying to stand—on a beach on the west side of Tango Key, Florida, where we’re getting pounded by early bands of Hurricane Beatrice as she moves toward her landfall on the island. She’s still thirty-six hours away, but her winds are already over two hundred miles an hour and are expected to be around two forty when she makes landfall. Her central pressure has set a new record—eight sixty—and that’s twenty degrees lower than Wilma’s eight eighty in 2005, and twelve degrees lower than Patricia’s in the Eastern Pacific in 2015. This makes Beatrice the strongest storm seen anywhere on this planet since records were first started back in the late eighteen hundreds.”

The sheer power and force of what Mira saw snapped her head up and Wind’s hands slipped away from her. She was vaguely aware of Wind or Cam—or both of them—calling to her, but she couldn’t see them. All she saw was the image of Cantori on the beach below the lighthouse. And all she heard now was his voice.

“Beatrice’s eye is only thirty miles wide; Andrew’s in 1992 was ten. But some of these outer bands feature gusts that fall in the cat three category, up to a hundred and twenty-five miles an hour. And let’s not overlook the fact that nature apparently likes showing us who’s boss: Beatrice will hit Tango as a category of hurricane we’ve never seen before. A cat eight? Ten? And landfall will happen on October 23, on the seventh-year anniversary of Patricia…”

That would be 2022, Mira thought, and rested her head against the steering wheel, her hands clutching it. They needed to move out of here soon, before Tango was inundated by rising oceans. Some place more than a hundred feet above sea level, she thought, and turned her head and looked at Wind, really looked at her, the pretty, delicate features, the simplicity of her beauty. Her face and body rapidly shifted into that of Cam.

“What you do isn’t camouflage, Cam. It’s immersion. I know I’ve said that before. Maybe it’s actual soul immersion.”

He wrapped his arms around his long legs, now pulled up against his chest, heels resting against the edge of the passenger seat. “Immersion.” He nodded. “Yeah, that fits. We now have about twenty minutes before Hal starts melting everything in sight. I believe that’s his failsafe. What’s it going to be, Mira?”

A part of her wanted to run, to race home and slap together stuff for their exodus. She would list the house and bookstore for sale now, in the tourist season when—in normal times—demand was high and people paid top dollar. Still, best case scenario, she and Sheppard, Annie and O’Hara, could move to the exact center of the continental U.S.—Lebanon, Kansas.

She once had Googled this and researched Lebanon, a town of several hundred people more than eighteen hundred feet above sea level, a place where she would die of absolute boredom. Was this where NASA had built the dome? Was it, like Area 51, already heavily guarded?

Can I take my bookstore inventory and build a One World Books there? Will publishers still exist? Will anyone be reading books? Selling them? Publishing them? If Amazon still exists, will it be delivering exclusively by drone? These questions rolled through her, one after another, an endless, stupid loop that only deepened her confusion and fear.

Cam touched her arm. “Seventeen minutes, Mira.”

Tick-tock, tick-tock.

She thrust her right hand into her pack, reminding herself she had four grenades, her handgun, taser, weapons she’d had since the aftermath of lightning woman blowing up the Tango bridge. But more importantly, her allies were Cam and her own erratic ability.

“How much damage can you do?”

“As Wind, considerable,” he replied.

“Can you bring down Hal?”

“Only with your help.”

Mira threw her arms around Cam, who became Wind, then Hal, Liz, Red, Nico, Squirt, Weather, the stone woman, Lightning, a dolphin, then her dead husband, Tom. And he whispered, “You can do this, mi amor.” Then Cam was himself again. He did all this between one breath and another. Mira pulled back, awed, humbled.

Her right hand dropped to the key in the ignition. Turned it. The engine hummed to life.

“Then let’s do this.”

2

As they neared the dock, there was enough light so that Sheppard spotted the airboat, with Keel and Delgado already off, talking with a woman he assumed was Dr. Risa Griffin. She appeared to be checking over Trixie and Squirt. Several Key West cops stood nearby.

The airboat bumped up against the edge of the dock, Sheppard grabbed a post, quickly tied it up. A middle-aged cop hurried over. “How many do you have?”

“Two. One is dead. He’s invisible,” Sheppard replied.

“I’ll put him in the electric cart where we’re going to put the others.”

Sheppard picked up Nico and placed him in the cop’s outstretched arms. “Got him?”

“Uh, yeah. Fucking weird. I feel him but can’t see him. I’ll get him in the cart. Handcuff him just in case he can come back to life. Or something. What about the redhead?”

“She’ll be out for a while. I’ll get her.”

Sheppard went over to Red, slid his arms under her and carried her off the boat. Her head hung over his arms, her arms dangled loosely. Sheppard lifted her right hand, then her left, searching for burn marks, scorched skin, some indication that flames had shot out of her fingertips, her hands, flames he’d seen it on video. But the skin on her hands was as pale and flawless as the skin on her face, the kind of skin that beauty products promised could be yours.

When he reached the cart where the cop was positioning Nico’s invisible body, Sheppard stood there, waiting for him to figure out the arrangements of the Crows. What was Red’s story, anyway? Had she possessed this ability since she was born? In Stephen King’s Firestarter, his only means of comparison, Charlie’s pyrotechnic ability had been the genetic result of LSD experiments on her parents. From what he knew, which wasn’t much, he felt that Keel’s theory of rapid evolution was a plausible explanation. It meant that human beings, during their long migration inland, evolved with a kind of precognitive awareness of what would be needed to ensure survival.

If true, this implied a profound connection among all people, the kind of we are one belief that was common among indigenous people, writers, scientists, and thinkers whose books occupied the Visionary aisle in Mira’s bookstore. The aisle where Hal had scribbled parts of his bio at the front and back of books.

“Okay, I’ve got a good spot for her,” the cop said, and Sheppard looked up.

The cop held out his arms, Sheppard passed Red to him, and hoped that at some point in the near future he might be able to actually converse with her. “And where are you taking her?”

“Doc Griffin has a secure place, in the morgue, concrete room.”

“What will happen to the dead Crow?”

“I don’t have any idea. Talk to Dr. Griffin.”

Sheppard turned away and hurried over to the woman on the dock. Risa Griffin looked to be in her early sixties, with the sinewy body of a runner or a vegan or both, and short, windblown blonde hair. He introduced himself.

“Good to meet you in person,” she said. “I met your wife at the Island Grille several days ago, Agent Sheppard, when Pam Gibbons was killed. Shortly before I spoke to you, I got a text from Ian, asking me to contact you and help out in any way I can. You beat me to it with your call.”

Keel and Delgado joined them.

“I understand you have a concrete room in the morgue for them,” Sheppard said.

“And no one else knows about it.”

“If Trixie or Red come to, a morgue won’t hold them,” Keel remarked.

“Not much of anything will,” Delgado added.

Dr. Griffin smiled. “Morphine will.”

Sheppard liked her calm, assured voice. “How can you be sure?”

“The amount Ian apparently injected into Hal should have kept him out twelve or fourteen hours. It lasted for about half that. Their physiology is different. I’ll keep them as long as I can.”

“You may have to get them out of state,” Keel said.

“Then I guess I’ll need a whole lot of morphine. There’s no way I’m taking them elsewhere without it.”

Sheppard nodded. “The FBI will help any way we can, Dr. Griffin.”

Keel glanced down at his cell. “Uh, Shep? Our intel says Hal is headed away from the pharmacy.”

“And my wife?” Sheppard snapped.

“No intel on her.”

“I’ll be in touch, Dr. Griffin,” Sheppard said, and ran back toward the airboat, anxious to get back to Tango.

Sheppard didn’t need intel on Mira or Hal or anyone else. His job was to protect. Always start where you are, Nadine had once told him, and now he understood what she’d meant.

Mira would be headed toward the bureau office, where she already had been, where Liz the Crow and Eden and Hull were. Beyond that, he felt only an urgency.

“Frank, how many soldiers do you have around the bureau office?” Sheppard asked.

“Six. Why?”

“Tell them to remain hidden.”

3

O’Hara and Annie moved around his office at the Gazette, gathering up his stuff. There wasn’t all that much—a dozen books, supplies of paper and print cartridges, his framed degree from University of Florida—B.A. in journalism. From the walls, he removed four paintings he’d bought locally and took these and his rarely used MacAir.

It technically belonged to the Gazette. But it held every article he’d written for the last five or six years and even though he had backups, he didn’t want to leave it here. He felt that at some point the office might be sabotaged, plundered by a shadow group that believed the invasion by the Crows was some government hoax perpetrated by the deep state and that it had gone viral through his columns.

As he started to shut down the iPad, an email pinged on the screen from crow1@gmail. Listen to this, Jon.

Annie peered over his shoulder. “Crow one? Really? All along you’ve had Hal’s email address?”

He had? “News to me. Besides, we don’t know that’s him.”

“Ha,” Annie said. “Click it.”

He clicked the link and it opened into darkness with Hal’s voice speaking in a distinctive accent. “So here we are, Jon, just you and me, moving through this darkness. I don’t trust your columns now. I think you’re helping the police. I considered exchanging Mira for Liz, but I don’t need to now. I found her. So Mira will be leaving the island with Liz and me and the rest of us. At some point, I’ll decide to do one of several things: release her, use her to bargain, or kill her.”

O’Hara and Annie glanced at each other. “Asshole,” Annie muttered. “He doesn’t realize we know Mom and Ian escaped. What’re you going to say?”

“I’ll play him.” O’Hara clicked on his phone’s recorder. “Hey, Hal. Jon O’Hara here. Why the darkness in your video? Let’s talk face to face.” He sent the audio message to the Crow’s Gmail address.

While they waited for Hal to reply, they finished gathering up O’Hara’s belongings and loaded everything into the Jeep they’d driven over here. He and Annie both received a text from Sheppard. All Crows captured except Hal. He’s headed to the bureau office, where Liz is being held. We’re on our way back to Tango. Mira tricked him with an email he believes came from Liz.

Where’s Mira? O’Hara texted.

Not sure at this point.

“This sucks,” Annie said.

“Why’s your mom doing this?” O’Hara asked. “Why’s she taking risks like this?”

“She’s a Scorpio with Aries rising and an Aquarius moon in the fifth house.”

“That’s a foreign language to me, Annie.”

“I think she has to prove something to herself. And just wait until I study your chart, Jon. Ha. Born September 11, 1988, Virgo sun and moon, and communicative Gemini rising.”

O’Hara just stared at her. She might as well have been speaking Russian. But it obviously meant something to her about him. Did it mean that he was the cursed Virgo for being born on 9-11?

“Tell me about this after, okay?”

Annie motioned him to move forward. “Yeah, sure. Just go, Jon.”

As they entered the building once more to turn off the lights and lock up, O’Hara’s cell beeped. A FaceTime call. From Hal.

“I’ll take this in the restroom, so I don’t give away my location.”

“I’m going, too. I’ll stand out of his line of sight.”

O’Hara nodded. They hurried up the first floor hall and slipped into the men’s room. O’Hara flicked the wall switch, Annie went over to the window in front of him, out of the phone’s sight. Mr. Cool, Mr. Bring It On. Yeah, right. His heart hammered, the inside of his mouth tasted like dust, he thought he might puke. Then he clicked the FaceTime link.

He already knew what Hal looked like. But up close like this, O’Hara felt like he saw Hal for the first time. Not very tall, under six feet. Head now shaved bald. Features that looked almost Asian, but not quite. Light chocolate skin. Intense dark eyes that made O’Hara’s skin crawl. A fussy mouth. Bottom line? If he saw this guy in a crowd, O’Hara would run. Fast and far. But why?

Instinct? Intuition?

“So,” O’Hara said. “Now what?”

“You tell me,” Hal said. “You’re the one who suggested a face-to-face.”

“I like to see who I’m talking to.”

“So now you can see me.”

“Has it all been worth it, Hal?”

“We would’ve died in the dome.”

“You may die here, too.”

He looked amused, his prissy mouth twitching with a slight smile. “I doubt it. Your weapons are no match for us.”

Such bravado.

On the other side of the bathroom, Annie made faces and gestures. She rolled her eyes, flicked Hal the middle finger, did a downward-facing dog yoga pose, and peered at O’Hara between her legs and stuck out her tongue.

“You’re grossly outnumbered, Hal—not just by people, but with the kind of sustained attacks that end civilizations.”

Hal laughed. “Such bullshit, Jon.”

O’Hara debated about calling his bluff, telling him they knew Mira and Rincon had escaped, that he didn’t have anything with which to bargain. But something strange and terrible happened deep within Hal’s dark eyes, a kind of inner volcanic explosion. O’Hara, certain his cell might melt any second now, said, “Good luck, Hal,” and quickly disconnected from the call.

4

Hal stood in the middle of a dark, empty road, staring at his cell, pissed that O’Hara had disconnected, that he’d gotten the last word. Everything about the conversation disturbed him and he suddenly questioned whether that text message actually had come from Liz.

He read through it again, called the number. He needed to hear her voice, to talk to her. But the number rang and rang and she didn’t answer. Was she unconscious? Had she died? Those possibilities scared him, but what frightened him even more was his own doubt. Had Liz joined the enemy? If so, then all this could be a setup.

But she wouldn’t do that. Through all these years, she’d been loyal.

If anything, this text was a ploy from someone else, someone who had his number, who knew what was going on, and had a score to settle.

Mira.

And Cam, the great pretender, the traitor. We’ll corner him in the pharmacy.

He could almost hear them commiserating. Fools, you stupid goddamn fools.

He texted the number. Nearly there.

When he didn’t get any response, he thought of the photo of Liz in the Gazette, incomplete, frozen between two shapes, and despaired that he hadn’t taken better care of her. He shouldn’t have allowed her to return to the house to find Rincon’s medical kit. He should have gone. And Stoner, Lightning, Weather Man: why had he sent them back as the early arrivals?

He should have gone. He was their leader, he should have paved the way for the rest of the crows. He could have melted the bridge. It would have lacked the flamboyance of Lightning’s show, but would have been quicker, more deadly, more shocking, and he wouldn’t have died.

He couldn’t fail Liz. He owed her. And he felt absolutely certain now that she hadn’t sent that text about being in the pharmacy. They had stashed her in a place where these twenty-first century people always put undesirables. A jail. A prison. A Guantanamo. The city jail? A jail where Sheppard worked?

These Americans prided themselves on their laws, their agreements with allies, their pacts with the United Nations. But they assassinated foreign leaders who spelled trouble. They rigged elections, interfered with or tried to manipulate the affairs of foreign countries, cozied up to dictators. They invaded countries with rich resources that couldn’t defend themselves, then absconded with their resources or held them hostage to debt they would never be able to repay. Their greed fucked up the planet and the dome had been the result.

They all deserved to die. He headed toward the bureau office.

22

Closing In

Hal approached the bureau office on foot, through a wooded area, his pack slung over his shoulder. It was the same pack he’d hoisted onto his back the afternoon he and Red had prepared to move into the twenty-first. Wind had helped him pack strategically—clothes, food, water, toiletries, the gold nuggets. Given all the shit that had gone down since then, the pack felt considerably lighter. At the edge of the trees, he stopped, crouched.

The only light back here came from the stars. He perused the area slowly. He didn’t see anyone, but felt the presence of men hidden in the surrounding trees, in the darkness. Hal could almost hear their collective breath, the collective beats of their hearts. If he tried to liquify them one at a time, the rest of them would unleash their weapons and that would be it for him. If he drew on his full power to melt them simultaneously, he wouldn’t have much of anything left to take on whoever or whatever was inside the office.

Hal decided to take his chances with the building.

He stretched out on his stomach against the damp dead leaves and thought of the most hideous thing he ever had experienced at the hands of the Normals. The deaths of his parents, their assassinations. His father had been arrested first, hauled before the president’s tribunal and interrogated. His mother had texted Hal about it and had instructed him to take all the Crows as quickly as possible to the warehouse. And stay there, shrouded, until you hear from me.

Nico had kept them shrouded for three days in the warehouse. No outside news, minimal movement in the warehouse, no cooking or doing anything that might allow their presence to be detected. On the fourth day, Wind and Hal, disguised, had slipped out to gather news and learned that Hal’s parents had been crucified hours earlier. They had made their way to the public square where they hung, their bodies splayed out on wooden crosses.

His mother was already dead, her head drooped to one side, mouth open, eyes open and fixed on the ground. Her beautiful dark hair hung along the sides of her face, smeared with blood, and he knew they’d tortured her before crucifying her.

His dad raised his head slightly, eyes swollen with pain, shadowed with death. Hal had moved toward him, trying to restrain himself so he didn’t draw attention from the crowd around them. When he stood in front of the cross, he had looked up at his father. Dad. I’m so sorry. This is my fault. He nearly threw his arms around his dad’s feet, nailed to the wooden cross, blood drying against the skin. But Wind had slipped her arm through his and whispered, No. Normals are watching.

His dad’s mouth had moved, spittle ran out the corner his mouth. No fault. Love you, Hal. Either get out fast or take them on.

Hal’s vitriol and hatred toward these Normals swelled. He bolted to his feet and the beast pounded out of him from every pore, every organ, one powerful wave after another. Within ten or fifteen seconds, everything had melted. The men and their weapons, the grass, bushes, trees, the back porch and wall of the bureau office. A couple of soldiers didn’t die immediately and their screams of agony echoed briefly in the darkness, a music unlike anything Hal had ever heard. If the beast was still this powerful, it would annihilate anyone who got in his way and would succeed getting himself and Liz off Tango Key.

Then his knees buckled and he sank to the ground, barely able to breathe, his body enveloped in sweat, his mouth as dry and toxic as the wastelands outside the dome. Despite his efforts to hold back his emotions, he started weeping. His body ached, his muscles screamed. Liz is in there. Move, asshole, move.

2

Sheppard drove his SUV away from the dock, tires kicking up clouds of dust. Pebbles and stones pinged against the sides of the car. His mind raced, stumbled, backtracked, sped forward again. “Goot, find out where Keel is. He needs to tell the troops around the bureau that Hal is on his way there. And so are Mira and Cam.”

Gutierrez already was texting madly. “There were eight soldiers standing guard around the bureau building. Frank says none of them are answering, phones are either muted or turned off. He’ll meet us in the trees behind the parking lot. How do we want to be armed?”

“With everything.”

Gutierrez twisted around, leaned into the back seat, rummaged through their arsenal. “Handguns, assault weapons, grenades… Do we really want to carry all this shit with us?”

The Jeep slammed through a pothole, Sheppard saw the end of the trees just ahead of them. “Grab what’s most lethal.”

“Well, shit, amigo. We’ve got two AK-47s and two additional clips for them.”

“Two apiece or one each?”

“One each.”

The AK-47 magazines held thirty shots. Two magazines gave them sixty each. Combined, it was one twenty. If they couldn’t eliminate Hal with a hundred and twenty shots, then they needed to find another line of work. “Let’s do it,” Sheppard said. “And grab a TASER. And our handguns.”

What the hell. Plans A, B, C, D.

3

Hal dodged pools of blood, bones and clothing that hadn’t liquified. He felt he should say something to these pools of blood—I’m sorry, please forgive me. But he wasn’t sorry and didn’t want or need anyone’s forgiveness. All he wanted was Liz.

The entire back wall with its metal door and impact proof windows had melted. But when he stepped inside, it was all intact. On his right, a flickering light revealed an empty office with a desk and computer, filing cabinets, a bookcase jammed with books. To his left was a much larger room with a rectangular-shaped wooden table and chairs. Directly in front of him stretched an empty hall with several more flickering lights that created weird shadows against the wall.

The silence was so thick, so pervasive, he could hear the drip drip drip of a faucet somewhere in the building. Then, hollering: “Hey, we’re back here! We demand to see our attorneys!”

Hal hurried through the hall to the front office. Several desks and a computer stood to the left, five or six chairs were against the front window, and off to the right were machines for water and snacks, an employee kitchen, an informal eating area. Directly in front of him was a steel door. He went over to it, shouted, “Hello, are you all right in there? Is anyone injured?”

A man: “Get us out of here! They put us in cells!”

“Yes, sir,” Hal called back. “Have to get my tools. Who are you?”

“Rudy Hull, Director of DOD’s bio unit in the Florida keys.”

“And Eden Curry, I work in artificial intelligence for the DOD,” a woman shouted.

“Is the Crow back there?”

“Yes, Christ, yes… two cells down,” Hull yelled. “Grotesque, she’s… in between shapes. Or something.”

“I’ll get this door open, just hang in there!”

Hal clenched his fists, struggling to conjure whatever remaining energy he had, then pressed his palms to the steel. The metal felt cold, solid, indifferent. He withdrew his hands, shook them hard, pressed his palms to the door again. He focused, concentrated, and in his head saw the door melting away. He saw it as vividly as he’d seen Tango in the twenty-first in the moments before he’d journeyed into this century and ended up on that rocky beach in Key West.

Nothing happened.

Panic seized him. He shook, clasped his arms around himself, squeezed his eyes shut.

“Hey, mister,” Eden shouted. “Can you call someone for us?”

His arms dropped to his sides, he snapped to attention. “Sure. What’s the number?”

She called it out and he entered it into google to find out what it was. DOD Key West. Ha.

“No one’s picking up. My crew is on their way over. What’s the Crow doing?”

“Nothing,” Hull replied. “She’s in a body bag and from where I am, I don’t see any movement.”

Shit. Was she dead? Had Liz died?

Hal now breathed as Wind had taught him, three rapid inhalations, one rapid exhalation, over and over again until the rhythmic beat infused him, claimed him, took him away. The next thing he knew, he was on the floor, staring down a corridor of cells, a pool of soft metal oozing along in front of him. He tried to stand but his knees, legs, joints and tendons, refused to cooperate. They felt like they were filled with concrete. He pressed his hands against the floor, managed to push himself up to a squat, and there he sat, breathing hard, his vision fuzzy, the inside of his mouth a desert.

Then he heard the woman—Eden Curry—shriek. “Oh my fucking God, the door, something happened to the door, and Rudy… she’s moving, the Crow is moving, do something, shit…”

Hal shot to his feet, nearly bowled over backward, caught himself, and moved clumsily down the cell block, alongside the now cooling molten shit of the metal door, and shouted, “Liz…”

When he was even with the cell where Eden danced around, shouting at Hull to do something, he wished she would just shut up. And since he didn’t intend to squander his energy by melting her, he snapped, “Hey, you. Eden. That’s your name, right?”

She stopped screaming and cowered against the back wall, her flaming red hair wild and unkempt, her face smeared with tears, and held up her hands. “I… I… you’re Hal. I… I saw the videos…”

“Good, that’s good, Eden. Now just go to sleep, okay? It’s safer in sleep, less stressful…” His hypnotic voice still worked and she slumped to the floor of her cell, rolled onto her side, stuck her thumb in her mouth, and fell asleep. She started snoring.

He moved on and two cells later, there was Rudy Hull on his knees, sobbing and clutching the bars, his forehead pressed against them. Hal didn’t stop, didn’t say anything, just glanced at him and moved on to Liz’s cell.

She lay on a cot, emerging from her transformation, her mouth fully human, one wing free of the body bag, one leg morphing back into a human arm and hand, the feathers on top of her head vanishing. “Liz, fight this. Stay with me.”

“Hal.” Her whispered voice sounded tinny, desperate. “You made it.”

“And so will you. I promise.”

He didn’t have the energy to melt her cell door. But it was controlled electronically, probably from an app on a phone or on one of the computers. Or maybe from an electronic panel. He loped back up the hallway, Hull’s sobs, Eden’s snores, and Liz’s soft pleas pursuing him. Just outside the cell block door, he spotted a wall panel and jerked open the door. He quickly scanned the panel of unlabeled buttons—eenie, meanie, miney, moe, isn’t that how the saying goes?—and flipped the master switch.

The building went dark, a cell door clattered, Hull yelled, “Eden, Eden…”

Hal hit the switches one by one, bringing the building back to life, and ran back into the cell block, past Hull in Eden’s cell, trying to revive her. He hurried into Liz’s cell, where she had wormed halfway out of the bag, her condor head partially human now and one of the condor’s legs a complete human arm. The hand on that arm clawed at the edge of body bag, trying to push it down, away, to free herself. Hal rushed over to her, jerked the body bag off of her and within a few minutes, she was fully transformed, human again. But she was too weak to get off the cot.

“It’s okay, Liz. I’ve got you.” Hal slid his arms under her and picked her up. She hardly weighed anything at all. For the first time, he understood that even in her human form, her body structure was vastly different than his own, her bones thinner, lighter, fit for flight. She moaned, her head lolling from one side to the other. “Are you injured, Liz? Is anything broken?”

“No… just exhausted,” she whispered.

“I’m getting you out of here. I need to carry you on my shoulders.”

“Okay. Squirt? How’s Squirt?”

“Better. He’s meeting us in Key West with the others.”

“We need… to go far from here, Hal. Really… far.”

“We will. We are.” Hal draped her around his shoulders, adjusting her body until it fit comfortably, her cheek resting against his shoulder, mouth close enough to his ear so she didn’t have to speak above a whisper. He hurried up the cell block, realized the cells were empty, and guessed that Hull had carried Eden out of here.

He reached the front lobby, grabbed a bottle of cold water for Liz, and she grasped it tightly and rolled it across her forehead. He eyed the hall that led to the back of the building, its wall and door and windows now gone, melted away, and saw Hull scurrying along, Eden in his arms, a dead weight. “Hey, Mr. D-O-D,” Hal called.

Hull glanced around, his expression panicked, and tried to move faster. But he stumbled, pitched forward. His hands shot out to break his fall and Eden’s body thudded against the floor. Hull collapsed on top of her, groaning. Hal wished he had sufficient energy left to melt them, but needed to conserve what he had.

He hurried toward the front door, anxious to get out of here, steal a car, and find a safe place where he could recharge long enough to get them off the island. “Hal, I think I can stand now,” Liz said. “Can you put me down?”

He slipped her off his shoulders, but kept an arm around her waist, steadying her until she could stand upright on her own. Her breath heaved and she gradually straightened, still wobbly, but fully human and aware. “Can you walk? Run? Or fly?”

“Walk and run, but not fly. Not yet.”

This small, frail woman flung her skinny arm around Hal. “You saved my fucking life. Again.”

He hugged her back, Liz the most loyal, Liz who loved him. They moved to the window and peered out through the wooden blinds. A single street lamp cast a dim light across the empty front lawn. No pedestrians, no moving cars, just two vehicles parked on the road and another across the street in a small parking lot in front of what looked like an office. Three choices of cars to steal. Perfect.

“We can do this, Hal.”

He looked over at her, clothes torn, dirt smeared across her face, a bare shoulder badly bruised. It hurt him to see her like this. “Has it been worth it, Liz? Would you do this again?” “Yes. All the way.”

Choked up with emotion, he barely held back tears. “Then let’s get moving. We take the closest car.” He grasped her hand, pressed down on the handle, and the door swung open. They ran toward the closest car.

Before they reached it, the car suddenly leaped to life—horn blaring, an alarm shrieking, headlights burning through the dimly lit road—and a woman raced toward them from the left, waving her arms and shouting. “Hal! Hal, I made it!”

Wind? “It’s Wind, she’s here, finally!” And he broke into a run, his arms thrown out.

Wind ran into his arms and he slathered her neck in wet, sloppy kisses. The way she smelled—her skin, hair, the fragrance of sky and rain and wind—infused him. He felt the pressure of her body, its reality. “Wind, my God, no one thought you would make it. Everyone said…”

She rocked back, brought her hands to the sides of his face. “Oh, Hal. Since when do you listen to anyone about anything?”

He slipped his fingers through her soft black hair and looked deeply into the bottomless depth of her dark eyes. “I…”

Then Wind spat, “You stupid fuck,” and backed away from him.

But it was Mira who threw her arms open, Mira whose body was flung back, Mira in the grips of something so powerful it hurled him into the street and slammed him into one of the cars. Air rushed out of his lungs, his head struck the windshield, stunning him, and he slipped off the hood of the car to the ground.

He felt blood oozing down the side of his face, heard the bones and joints in his body screaming in pain, his head pounded. He rolled onto his stomach, pressed his hands against the ground and pushed up. The waves kept pouring out of Mira, destroying windows, uprooting trees, and now that traitorous Cam ran toward her, threw himself at her, and Hal scrambled to his feet and raced across the street.

He didn’t have any idea where Liz was and he couldn’t go back and look for her. He tore into a driveway that emptied into an alley running parallel to a long fence. He scrambled onto the closest Dumpster, scaled the fence, and dropped into a large field surrounded by giant banyan trees. Beyond the trees lay road.

He stood there a moment, panicked, breathing hard, looking around wildly, confused about where he was, where to run. Think, think. What’s Plan Z? But all he could think of was Wind. For moments he’d believed Wind had made it to the twenty-first. He’d held her, smelled her, felt her body up close and tight against his own, and had felt such joy he’d believed his own lie, that they could flourish here in the twenty-first, set up lives for themselves. Then Mira and Cam’s treachery shattered that illusion.

Think. He needed to keep moving. He needed a car.

He ran toward the trees.

4

Sheppard saw it all, his wife transformed, Hal and Liz flung in opposite directions, windows shattered, branches and trees flying around, and then another Mira raced toward his Mira and threw her arms around her. And just like that, his Mira crumpled to the ground and the other Mira became Cam and it all stopped.

A tight, eerie silence gripped the air. “What the fuck,” Sheppard whispered, and came unrooted from the ground where he stood and loped over to Mira and Cam. He dropped to his knees next to her.

Her head rested against Cam’s skinny thigh, one arm thrown across her nearby bag. Cam’s thumbs massaged her temples. “She’s okay, just… exhausted.”

Sheppard cupped her face in his hands. “Mira.”

No reaction. He felt for a pulse in her neck. Strong, steady.

“That ability had been pent up inside her for decades,” Cam said.

Sheppard understood the remark was directed at him. “Did you see where Hal went?”

“He ran.” Cam gestured across the street. “He’ll try to steal a car first. I don’t know if he has any power left at this point. But if he does, your best bet is to exhaust him. Wear the fucker out.”

“And Liz?” “Behind you.”

Keel appeared, holding Liz in his arms. One of her wings was partially visible and bleeding. “I had one dose of morphine left. What should I do with her?”

“Put her in one of the cruisers,” Sheppard replied. “Contact Ian. He’ll need to take a look at her wing.”

The others ran over, crowding around, asking if Mira was all right. Sheppard handed Cam his car keys. “Can you get Mira in the black SUV out in the lot? You two will be safer there than here.”

“Good idea,” Cam replied. “And Mr. Keel, be sure to handcuff Liz. That way when she comes to, she won’t be able to shift. You people need to take down Hal. Otherwise this won’t end.”

Keel hurried off with Liz in his arms and Cam trotted after him, carrying Mira, her bag slung over his shoulder. “Hal ran this way,” Sheppard said, and he, Delgado and Gutierrez took off across the street to hunt him down.

23

The Loose Ends

When O’Hara peeled into the lot behind the bureau’s building, his headlights struck Keel, carrying the shape shifter, and Cam, carrying Mira.

“Shit,” Annie muttered, and leaped out of the car and ran over to them.

O’Hara slammed on the brakes, hurried over to Keel. He stared at Liz, her bleeding wing, dirt smeared on her angelic face. “Is she dead?”

“I gave her a dose of morphine. Do you have any idea where Ian is?”

“His office, with his wife.”

“I’ll take Liz there.”

“And Hal? Where’s Hal?”

“He got away, Sheppard and the others went after him.” He set Liz in the back seat, cuffed her hand to the door.

“What’re you going to do with Liz?”

“Keep her safe.”

“In a lab?”

The question rankled him, O’Hara could see it in the way his expression tightened. “Actually, my wife and I are adopting her.”

O’Hara recognized a human interest story when he heard one. “You’ve got my number, Frank. I’d like to touch base about six months from now and hear this story.”

“Right now, Mira should be your story, Jon. What she did?” He shook his head. “Never seen anything like it. Got it on video. I’ll text it to you. I need to shove off and get that wing treated.”

Keel got into the cruiser and sped away. O’Hara didn’t have any idea what Keel was referring to. Right now, Mira was outside the SUV, trying to steady herself by holding onto both Annie and Cam. Just as O’Hara reached them, Annie said, “Mom, just sit down for a few minutes. Are you hurt?”

“No. Just… spent…” Mira eased herself into the passenger seat.

“I’ll get you some water,” Annie said. “There’s always cold water in the bureau’s fridge.”

“I’ll get it.” O’Hara sprinted across the lot, toward the gaping hole where the back door had been, the door that had once opened onto a porch, now liquified along with the back wall, the window, door frame, and part of the floor.

He turned on his cell’s video and walked into the staggering wreckage, worse than Rincon’s office, worse than the bookstore. O’Hara dodged debris as he made his way up the hall to the front office, saw that the cell block door lay in a cold pool of molten steel. “Hello,” he called. “Anyone in here?” He stuck his head inside the cell block, but all the cell doors were open, the cells empty.

He found the fridge against the wall in the lobby, selected four bottles of water. When he turned around, there stood Rudy Hull, looking like he’d been through a war—his face scraped and cut up, the back of his right hand bloody, his clothes torn and filthy. “You… you’re that reporter.”

“Jon O’Hara.”

“That… that monster put… put Eden to sleep. I can’t… rouse her.”

Monster Hal. “Where is she?”

“I… I was hiding. Back here.”

O’Hara slipped his cell back in his pocket and followed Hull into a small storage room that was pretty much intact. Eden lay on her back on the floor, thumb stuck in her mouth. “If you’d take these water bottles, I’ll get her. Is your car in the lot?”

“It… was… I thought the monster… was going to come back, so we hid.”

Hull picked up the bottles and O’Hara picked up Eden. “Hal did all this?”

“Ye… yes, to rescue the… the aberration, that thing with the wings… He was alone.”

O’Hara went back down the hall, carrying a woman just as Keel and Cam had done. He hated the archetypal image of the helpless maiden being rescued by a knight. It wasn’t the full picture and wouldn’t work for bringing down Hal.

He followed Hull over to his car, opened the back door, and O’Hara set Eden in the back seat. Hull handed him a bottle of water.

“Are you sure you can drive, Mr. Hull?”

“Yes. But… where the hell should I go?”

“Wherever you’ve been staying.”

A light winked on in his eyes. “Right. Of course.” He managed a quick, nervous laugh, ducked into the car, and it weaved away.

Just as O’Hara scooped up the remaining bottles of water, his cell dinged. A text message, from Keel. O’Hara clicked it and watched the twenty-second video Keel had shot of Mira. A helpless maiden?

“Holy fuck.”

He ran back to Annie, Cam, and Mira.

2

Without Nico’s gift of invisibility, Red’s flames, Trixie’s PK, Squirt’s wicked throw, and Cam’s camouflage ability, Hal knew he was just one more weirdo whose ability had made him a White Crow. The dome world of the twenty-second century was his past, the Florida Keys in the twenty-first were his future. He had chosen.

But he had gone about it all wrong and now here he was, alone and separated from the rest of the Crows, on the run and without a way to get off Tango Key. He reached the road, spotted a truck, a car. Either one would do. He didn’t know if he could start a car as he had just a few days ago. He didn’t think he had anything left. But if he didn’t, then he might as well just find a tree, sit down, and wait for annihilation.

Then: shouting.

And a volley of gunfire.

Hal dived for the ground, rolled, leaped up and ran for the truck on the other side of the road. He yanked open the door, threw himself inside. He gripped the steering wheel and conjured that image of his parents on those crucifixes, his father’s whispers, his compunction to throw his arms around his father’s feet—and Wind grabbing his arm, pulling him back.

But this time, the image didn’t prod the beast awake. Nothing happened. He was just a hunted man gripping a steering wheel, pleading with a fucking car to start. “Please, please.” The engine hummed to life, stuttered, died. “No, shit, don’t do that.”

He conjured another image, of Wind on the day he’d rescued her from the Normals who had cornered her in an alley, held her down, and started tearing off her clothes. The truck suddenly sprang to life and Hal pressed his forehead against the steering wheel, sobbing with gratitude and relief.

C’mon, get moving. Where to?

3

Sheppard raced across the field, firing repeatedly, peppering the banyans and the space between them with a barrage of bullets. He and Gutierrez reached the road just as the truck on the other side tore out of the lot. They both opened fire, the back windshield shattered, the truck careened. They ran after it, but the truck turned again and took off.

“Shit, we need a car,” Sheppard spat.

“Carlos went back to get one.”

Sheppard radioed their position to the others. “Hal’s in a truck, following the feeder road to Old Post on the Gulf side of Tango. Carlos, where are you?”

“Nearly there, amigos.” Headlights flashed at the far end of the street and moments later, Delgado’s police cruiser screeched to a stop and Sheppard and Gutierrez scrambled in.

4

Mira guzzled the bottle of water O’Hara had handed her, then swung her legs out the door, pressed her feet against the ground, and stood. Annie and Cam immediately reached for her, to steady her, but she didn’t want or need anyone holding her up. She had to be elsewhere. She shrugged off their helping hands and moved awkwardly around the front of the car to the driver’s side. She slid behind the wheel. “Car keys?”

Cam stuck his head inside and passed her the keys and her bag. “You going somewhere?”

“Yes.” She set her bag on the console, stuck the key in the ignition, turned it, and loved that gratifying hum. “Cam, the passenger seat is yours. Annie, Jon, best if you follow us.”

“Follow you where?” Annie asked.

“Hal’s going to be racing up Old Post Road to the preserve. I’m going to meet him.”

“We’ll follow you,” O’Hara said.

Cam shut his door. Mira slammed the SUV into gear and it tore out of the back lot.

“How do you know where he’s headed, Mira?”

“A hunch. I saw him in a truck.” She unzipped the bag next to her, withdrew her handgun, slammed in a clip.

“He’s not just yours, Mira. He’s ours.”. “I know. I realize that.”

“No, I mean all of us. Hal’s the Jungian shadow, the archetypal dark heart that lacks empathy, love, compassion. Hal’s the evil that lives within all of us, our baser instincts, our nemesis if we’re seduced.”

Heady words, she thought. But true.

The empty road was cast in a nicotine-colored light from the street lamps. Insects hummed, frogs croaked, but these sounds only heightened the absence of human noises. It all felt eerie to Mira, surreal, like a scene in a movie seconds before the serial killer appeared, the monster leaped out, the world ended.

They passed the empty dock and climbed into the hills. “He had enough left in him to start the goddamn car, Cam.”

“He’s terrified. That probably stoked it.”

As she came out of a curve, she saw the truck. “Headed into the preserve, just like I saw.”

“May I have your gun?”

Mira thrust it at him, he lowered the window and leaned out of it, aiming, firing. The first three shots missed. The fourth shot flattened one of the rear tires and the truck swerved crazily for a moment, slowed, then regained traction and tore into the parking area of the preserve.

She smashed her foot against the accelerator and the SUV crashed over a curb and raced through the parking lot, closing in on him. Mira bore down on him and slammed into the rear of the truck, knocking it sideways. Cam leaned out the window again and fired twice at the side windows, shattering one of them. Then Hal turned sharply left, aimed at the west side of Old Post.

Mire sped after him, caught the rear of the truck again, and it veered dangerously close to the guardrail, the only thing between the road and the edge of the cliff. “Again,” Mira shouted. “And this time see if you can shoot out the other rear tire.”

“Ready,” Cam yelled.

But when she rear-ended Hal this time, their bumpers locked together, a symbolism she really didn’t like. His car swerved, so did hers. She kept slamming on the brake, hoping the bumpers would disconnect, but they didn’t.

Hal’s truck swung left, toward the guard rail, and Mira shouted, “Jump, Cam! We’re going over the edge!”

Mira slammed on the brakes again, threw open her door, and leaped.

Hal’s truck careened over the edge of the cliff, falling so fast that the rear of the SUV, still hooked to it, bumper to bumper, flipped and hit the roof of the truck, then both vehicles vanished over the edge.

Mira, sprawled on the pavement, heard the cars crash together when they struck the rocky beach a hundred feet below. One or both of them exploded.

The flaming debris lit up Old Post.

Cam lay close to the edge of the cliff, motionless, head turned away from her, and Mira couldn’t tell whether he was knocked out or dead. She rolled onto her knees, fell forward onto her hands, and scrambled toward him. In those moments, she felt like an abruptly exposed cockroach as a human closed in for the kill—a folded magazine, a whack from a shoe, a clenched fist. She felt so mortal that when she reached Cam, she threw her arms around him and pulled him away from the edge, the abyss.

He fell back against her, a bony old man whose destiny, like her own, was now permanently changed. Cam, pressed against her on the road, rolled to the right, out of her embrace and turned his head, looking at her.

“I don’t feel that he’s dead,” Mira said.

“Not yet. If he survives the swim to Key West…”

“Can he swim? The other Crows nearly drowned in that swimming pool.”

“His survival instinct is powerful.”

“If we never find his body…” What then? Would Hal become the bogeyman hiding under their beds? The monster in the closet? “What does that mean for us, Cam?”

Sirens shrieked, brakes squealed, car doors slammed open, people hurried toward them. “I don’t know. We continue with our lives. We strive to make a difference so the dome never becomes a reality.”

“That’s it?” “Right now, that’s all that matters.”

Was it?

EPILOGUE

May

The COVID pandemic was in its third month, the Keys were in the second phase of reopening, and customers were slowly returning to the bookstore. Mira knew it wasn’t an ideal time to even think about moving, but the consensus was that they should try to be out of here before the end of hurricane season on November 30.

Mira sat in her office, hunting through Zillow for a place to move. It had to be a city at least fifty feet—preferably more—above sea level, with enough commerce to support a bookstore, and with reasonably priced homes. Also, an FBI office and a daily newspaper were on her must have list.

Maybe it was too much.

The other problems were logistical. Sheppard would have to request a transfer, O’Hara would have to find a job, Annie and O’Hara would need a place of their own, and so would Cam. Right now, he had his own apartment and worked at the bookstore. Most of the locals knew who he was and every day, people wearing masks came into the store to talk to him. Four colleges in the Florida university system had invited him to speak about climate change this fall. Next week he would have his first remote national interview with NBC. He intended to announce that three of the four Crows that had been taken into government custody when Dr. Griffin’s office was raided had died, supposedly of the coronavirus.

Only Squirt remained alive.

And Liz.

Whom Keel and his wife had adopted. So far, Liz was officially presumed dead.

There was a light rap at the door, then: “Mi amor, cómo andas?”

Rincon stood there in his mask, a shopping bag hanging over his right shoulder, and he looked better than he had in weeks. “Ian! I heard you and Carmen were on vacation.” They started to hug, then both of them laughed and stepped back. She pulled up a chair six from her own and they both lowered their masks. “Where’d you two go, anyway?”

“Not out of the country. No one wants us. Not even the Bahamas. Carmen and I found a place in Orlando and I’m going to open a family practice once we’re in phase three of reopening. As of today, I’m no longer county coroner.”

“Wow!” He had done exactly what he’d said he would. She gestured at her computer. “Zillow. We’re looking, too.”

“The Orlando area is between eighty-two and a hundred feet above sea level. I figure that’s high enough. They also have a fraction of the COVID cases that we do. I emailed Cam and he thinks it’ll be okay.”

“Is it in Orlando or nearby?”

“Neighborhood called Mystical Underground, not far from downtown. It started with the hippies back in the sixties, war resistors. Now it’s large enough to support a family practice and a bookstore, and the Orlando FBI office is hiring. And Disney is close enough for Annie’s dolphin work and there are several newspapers that would nab Jon in a heartbeat.”

“Damn, Ian. You’ve done my job for me.”

“That’s the idea.” He grinned. “Now here’s the other thing. The house Carmen and I put a deposit on has an apartment over the garage and we’re going to ask Cam if he’d like to live there. Two bedrooms, full kitchen, the works.”

“Fantastic.”

“Oh, and I forgot to give this to Shep.” He reached into the bag, brought out the snow globe, set it on her desk.

“I was wondering what had happened to it.” She stared at it for a moment, Tango Key clearly visible inside. “Have you shaken it?”

“Nope.” He held up his hands. “Didn’t want to see.”

“You mind if I shake it?”

He stared at the snow globe, then looked up at her, his eyes haunted. “You really want to know, Mira?”

“That depends on how the globe works. Is it manipulated by something or someone? Or is it a genuine divination device, like the I Ching or tarot cards?”

“Or an actual physical psychic?”

“We don’t know.” She picked up the globe. “I’ve never been as specific as I’ve heard this sucker is.”

“Shake it,” Rincon said. “But think of a question.”

Her question. The problem was that she had so many questions.

Mira turned it upside down twice. Snow flew, Tango Key faded. A strange landscape unfolded, a place of hills and lakes, Mediterranean style buildings, open fields, woods, more lakes. Not South Florida. Not the keys. This was farther north in the state. Around Orlando?

The scene shifted. The Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico encroached on both sides of Florida, creating a corridor of higher land, a kind of land bridge out of the state. That image depicted what central Florida eventually would become. No time frame. It could start next week or decades from now. But in her heart, Mira felt it would not be longer than five years in the future.

Nothing else appeared. “Interesting,” Mira said. “So here’s another question, Ian. If we leave the state, where should we go? What area would be safe?”

“I’d like to clarify that before you shake it.” He paused. “I’d like to know the immediate picture. What place is best for us right now?”

Mira appreciated the way he’d structured his question. Hers had been too broad and probably required more than one answer. The only rule with divination systems, whether it was astrology, the I Ching, tarot or the fall of tea leaves in a cup, was to keep your question simple. It didn’t have to be a yes or no simple, just a focused here’s my situation and what now?

Mira shook the snow globe again. But as the snow settled, nothing new appeared inside. “Did it give up on us?” Rincon asked.

“That’s not allowed. You ask, it’s obligated to give an answer.”

“Yeah? Where’s that written down, Mira?”

She tapped her temple.

Then the snow globe sectioned off into tidy little squares. In the first, Rincon and his wife were in their new home, unpacking, hills visible outside their windows. In the second, Keel and his wife were acclimating their autistic son to Liz, the Crow. Mountains surrounded them. Definitely not Florida, Mira thought.

In the next square, she and Sheppard were in a new place, enjoying a meal with Annie, O’Hara, Hull, Cam, Rincon and Carmen.

The fourth square showed Hal, walking along a moonlit highway in tattered clothes. He walked with a distinct limp and looked old, weakened, defeated.

The last square was foggy, not fully formed, probably indicative of events that were yet to happen.

“So Hal’s not dead,” Rincon remarked.

“Apparently not. But our moves look successful.”

“One more question. Do we run into him again?”

Mira passed the globe back to Rincon. “I don’t want to know, Ian. You shake.”

He thought about it, then suddenly hurled the globe across the room. It didn’t just shatter. It exploded into a million pieces, water and snowy shit everywhere, pieces of stories coalescing, growing, then shriveling up and dying on the bookstore floor.

“I don’t want to know, either,” Rincon said.

Mira stared at all the tiny bits of glass, hoping that a genuine oracle hadn’t been obliterated, but pretty sure that it had. She hugged Rincon. “I hope we’ve done the right thing, Ian.”

“We have. I have to believe that.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”