Michelle waited until the sound of the closing garage doors stopped and she heard the van drive off. She put on the night vision goggles and gestured wordlessly to Jennifer to turn off the lights. They both retrieved their pistols from the locked cabinet and turned to the door from the kitchen to the garage. Michelle tipped her head to the door, and Jennifer opened it and entered the garage. The hooded visitor stood in the dark facing the wall in the corner per protocol. Jennifer held her weapon on the visitor while Michelle pulled the door closed behind her.

Michelle nodded and Jennifer approached the hooded figure and tapped them on the shoulder. As instructed, the visitor turned and removed the hood, blinking in the darkness. Even before the exchange of passwords and countersigns was complete, Michelle was sure it was Mrs. Sherfy. Still, they followed the security procedures to completion.

Jennifer instructed Mrs. Sherfy to put the hood back on and led her to the kitchen. They removed their nightvision gear, turned on the lights, and removed Mrs. Sherfy’s hood. She smiled, squinting in the bright kitchen light, visibly tired and appearing even older than the last time Michelle saw her months before. The assistant put both pistols away, locked the cabinet, and returned to the garage and retrieved the two large cases left behind with Mrs. Sherfy.

“Hello, Michelle.”

Overcome with emotion, Michelle stepped forward and pulled the older woman into a long hug.

“It’s good to see you,” the woman murmured into her shoulder, rubbing her back.

Michelle stepped away, wiping an involuntary tear.

“How are you doing?” Mrs. Sherfy continued.

“Good, I guess. It’s hard. The kids seem to be doing okay. Adam has been behaving.”

Mrs. Sherfy nodded. “That case I brought is for him. They said he’d know what to do with it.”

They turned at a noise and saw Adam with the case in the living room, already opened, sorting through the computer hardware inside. He handled each piece, pulling out cables, fitting them together.

“Well, I guess he does,” Michelle observed. Mrs. Sherfy laughed. Michelle turned back to the visitor. “Any word on when we can move to someplace bigger? We’re a little cramped.”

“I don’t know. Communication hasn’t been great with the nodes all dispersed, and I get the sense that other things have also slowed down. Decisions that used to take hours are now taking days. I think this tech is supposed to help with that. Some kind of secure communications and special interfaces for the kids to use.”

“God, I hope it works. Being cut off and cooped up is getting kind of claustrophobic.” She glanced at the room off the kitchen stuffed with equipment, blinds drawn, windows covered, the video screens showing views all around the house and up and down the street. Other displays showed the movement of all the neighbors on graphs illustrating routines, any deviation immediately noted by the AI systems monitoring the feeds. The pervasive paranoid anxiety created by the surveillance added to the sense of imprisonment. “How is your son doing?”

Mrs. Sherfy gave her a sad smile. “You didn’t hear?”

Michelle’s heart sank. “Oh god, no. What?”

Mrs. Sherfy shook her head. “His node was discovered. A crazy mob surrounded the house, then someone threw a Molotov cocktail. They shot some of them as they tried to get out. The rest burned to death.”

“Were you…where?”

“I was running messages between nodes. Just happened to be away. That may be how they discovered us, the coming and going. That’s why we have these new security measures. No one is supposed to know where any other nodes are, blinded, passwords, all that.”

Michelle felt a dawning sense of horror watching the look of desolation on Mrs. Sherfy’s face, eyes wide and welling.

She grasped the other woman’s hands. “You didn’t cause that. It’s not your fault. They should have anticipated it. They were the ones that had you running around. You can’t blame yourself.”

Mrs. Sherfy shook her head. “Thank you for saying that. Coming from you, that really helps. You’ve done such a great job keeping Adam and the others safe. They rely on you a lot, you know.”

Michelle nodded, as much agreeing as accepting the affirmation. When they had communications to the outside world, she used her still active credentials and Tink’s assistance to stay one step ahead of the pursuers and shared that intelligence with the groupmind. It helped keep her distracted, and frankly, sane. But that was over now.

“Your friend Sheriff Spaulding is slowly coming around. Whatever you said to him seems to have persuaded him to assist us. The groupmind seems to be using contacts like him to infiltrate law enforcement agencies like they did at the lab. Same with the intelligence agencies. I guess we need every advantage possible to stay ahead of the crazies.”

Michelle changed the subject. “Are you hungry? Can I get you something?”

“No, thank you. They fed me in the van. I just want to get settled in and then get some sleep. It’s been a long day.”

“Of course. I hope you don’t mind, but we’re sharing a room with Jennifer, my helper. We’re pretty packed in.”

She helped Mrs. Sherfy settle and went back downstairs while she readied for bed. Adam sat on the living room floor, a nest of equipment around him. He stood and dragged the coffee table over, then pushed the books to the floor in a jumble to clear a space. Michelle turned back to the kitchen as he arranged equipment.

She glanced into the surveillance room and saw all the displays showing green. She walked around the house, checking locks, especially the gun cabinet, and straightening up. Jennifer came up from the basement with a box of canned goods and restocked the kitchen shelves. They passed wordlessly as they went through their night routine. Jennifer went up to bed.

Michelle looked around the kitchen, then turned the light off and stood in the dark. She wondered at the sense of guilty gratitude she felt at Mrs. Sherfy’s sad news, that they’d been spared the violence once more.

Mrs. Sherfy’s loss was a jarring reminder of what was at stake in their new existence. The smoldering resentments Michelle wrestled with were rendered trivial by the threats of painful death for her, Adam, and the other McJames students she was charged with protecting. The world was not dealing well with the revelation of Homo iunctus existence, and being cut off from her past life – her friends, Jonah, her work – it all paled in comparison to the responsibilities thrust upon her.

She took out her device and reread the last message from Jonah, before the blackout.

I need to hear from you, princess. The licensing board is squeezing me and unless you can explain your role in that mess, they’re going to pull your license. Once they do that, the company won’t let me keep you on payroll and I’ll have to cut you off. Please let me know how you’re doing.

That was over two weeks ago. With the blackout, she couldn’t check if she still had access, to anything, but Tink especially. Mrs. Sherfy assured her that other resources would be available soon, but so far, they just hid, and waited. She shook her head.

I chose this. I could have walked away.

No, I couldn’t. There’s no way I would have left Adam.

One by one, she deleted the messages from Jonah, each one another step away from her old life into the new one.

God, I miss Tink.

No matter how powerful they might seem to be, she still didn’t trust the groupmind. Her new work assisting with data gathering and threat analysis was motivated mostly by the urgent need to protect Adam. It bothered her that she was now collaborating with the groupmind, like Mrs. Sherfy, another neurotypical adjunct, helper bees to the hivemind. She rubbed her face, leaning against the kitchen counter.

She ran it all back, the decisions in Chicago, investigating the farmer’s death, Dr. Trey Isaac and Bruno Abrams, the creatures at the lab – she was at the center, pulling threads together, setting things in motion, seemingly in control but in reality, herself manipulated by, what? Fate? The groupmind? Her own guilt and family history?

She listened to Adam working in the living room, then climbed the stairs to join the others and rest, for a little while at least.

Chapter 60

Surt paused, listening. Hearing no signs of pursuit, he whistled softly, and after a few minutes, Alcor appeared from a tree line leading two firstlings. The dog slid silently to his side, panting softly. Surt reached own and rubbed his head. They crossed an open area to the next tree line and rested in the darkness enclosed inside the boughs of an enormous Fraser fir, the firstlings huddled together against the mountain cold, watching Surt for guidance and comfort.

One of them stood and walked into the open, head tipped up, staring at the night sky blazing with stars.

“Astyanax, come. Rest here for a moment,” Surt said.

The little one complied and they shared the rest of the rabbit Surt caught earlier, the firstlings picking at their portions tentatively. Surt smiled at the memory of his first wild food, a rabbit like this one, caught on an exercise with Caesar so long ago. Caesar, who died before seeing his people free.

Surt stood up to clear the memory, signed to the firstlings to stay put, and walked out to the small clearing, scanning the sky for signs of the hunters. He took his bearing from the constellations, then turned and gestured to the little ones to set out. They continued up the hill, moving along the mountain chain to the north and west, to reunite with the rest of the survivors in the direction they planned, into the wilds of the north.

Once the little ones were back with the group, Surt would set off on his own quest, to find the sea. He would learn the land, how to better evade the alloioi, survive in their new world. Then he would return, to help his brothers and sisters, teach them what he learned. But only after he completed his quest. He owed that to the others.

THE END

Coming soon: Book 2 – Synderesis