Part 1

31. The Baseball Bat

2022, March 23th
Collapse – 27 years

Josephine swerved through traffic. Horns blared. Drivers yelled. Pedestrians dived for cover.

When she arrived, Sakhr’s sedan was already in front of Katherine’s house. The front door was open.

She drove onto the lawn and sprinted to the house. Josephine saw Katherine the moment she reached the front door.

Blood. So much blood. It was pooled beneath Katherine’s crumpled form. It had saturated into nearly every square inch of her clothes. And it was splattered all along the walls. Josephine had never seen so much before. Nor had she seen limbs twisted in that grotesque way.

She gasped for air. It was humid in the house, warm and sticky. Flies buzzed. The stench was already of rot.

Josephine turned, curled, and vomited. As she leaned against the door frame recovering, Katherine’s father emerged from the kitchen wiping his hands with a dishcloth. He looked at Katherine’s mangled body curiously, as though it were a novelty. His shirt was speckled with blood. He turned to Josephine and grinned.

“Too late, Jose.”

It was Alex.

She charged, lashing out. He caught her arms. After a struggle, he threw her down.

“She was just a child!” she yelled.

“She killed Anton.” Alex pointed behind her. “Do you even care about that?”

Anton’s body was propped against the entryway wall. His hands were folded in his lap. Despite blood oozing from a hole in his forehead, he looked peaceful. Alex had shown his body respect.

“You’re a monster…”

Alex ignored her. Josephine started climbing to her feet when she noticed a baseball bat laying near Katherine’s feet. Hair and gristle were caked on the end, but it was the handle that horrified her. It was smeared with blood up and down its length.

Nausea overtook her again. She wretched. More came out, and then more. Every way she looked was blood. She saw Alex, and there was no thought. She tore at him again. This time, he didn’t shake her off as easily. In the distance, wailing sirens approached.

“Enough!”

Sakhr came down the stairs holding Katherine’s notebook and her backpack. “Josephine. I ordered you to stay at the hotel.”

“You did this!” she screeched. “You did this to her!” She stormed toward him.

“It is regretful that you disobeyed me and came here to see this. The girl posed a threat to all of us. If she had gained our powers, she could have destroyed us.”

“You murdered her! You murdered an innocent girl.”

“I regret that it came to this, Josephine. But it had to be done, for our sakes. For yours. A witch of her power cannot be allowed to exist.”

“You… you… look at what you did to her. Look.”

Sakhr did not. “I know. I told Alexander to be quick. I came back to find him… overreacting. We will—”

“Overreacting?” Josephine screeched the word. “He defiled her. He tortured her.”

“I stopped him when I saw what he was doing, but what’s done is done.”

“You’re sick,” she screamed. “You’re both sick.”

“Hey!” called Alex. “She killed Anton before we laid a finger on her. Then she nearly killed me.” He pointed to his old body.

“I wish she’d killed you both!”

Sakhr snatched her chin and pulled her to face him. “You will calm down now. Do you hear those sirens? The police will be here soon. We can talk about this later.”

She yanked away from him. “No! Leave me alone. I never want to see you again.”

“Josephine.” Sakhr stepped toward her. “Now is not the time. You will come with us, or you will never get the benefit of another body again.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I’m done. I’m leaving all of you.”

“Josephine…”

She pulled. She pulled harder than she ever pulled before. Just like that, every memory, every moment, every idea Sakhr and Alexander ever had of her was torn away. She turned to run from the house when she glanced the notebooks in Sakhr’s hand. She snatched them. He had no right to those. Some little bit of Katherine should be allowed to live. Sakhr did not resist. He had already forgotten he was holding them at all.

Then Josephine ran.

At some point in the night, she found herself back at the hotel. Christof and Sibyl never awoke as their memories flittered away. She packed and left, and that was it. The only hint that a sixth member had ever been in the coven would be the hotel record of six people checking in, but even the concierge forgot that as she passed through the lobby. The record would be a minor clerical error, nothing more.

Josephine Molyneux had never existed.

30. Revolver

2022, March 23th
Collapse – 27 years

Katherine watched from her front door as Josephine drove off.

She should’ve felt ecstatic. Today, she’d discovered her own magical power, a powerful one at that. Tomorrow, she would leave with a coven of like-minded people. Why could she not shake the feeling that something was wrong?

Maybe it was her inner pessimist—the part of her that was certain that good things just didn’t happen to her—but she couldn’t stop replaying the million little glimpses she’d seen inside Alex’s mind.

The coven was not the cheerful family they pretended to be. They had arguments, feuds, and cliques, just like high schoolers. But for her, they put on a show, because they wanted her. She was an acquisition, but the smiles had come down today. The moment Alexander realized she was reading his mind, she’d gone from being an annoyance to him to a mortal threat. He wasn’t the only mind reader now. Josephine thought that he might behave better from now on, but Josephine had never seen inside his head.

And there was Sakhr. He’d been careful not to look at her, but she’d seen enough about him in Alex’s mind. His power defined him. He was the bodyswapper, the one who kept them all alive. If someone could ever replace him in that role, it would provoke something in him far different than better behavior.

She went inside. Her father was in the other room watching the Badgers game. When he saw her, he muted it and meandered to the kitchen.

“How was Jesse’s?” He leaned casually on the counter while Katherine pried her boots off.

“It was okay. We finished the homework and just watched some television.”

Her father nodded, his mild curiosity sated, but then Katherine met his gaze. Her mind filled with thoughts that told a different story.

He had tried to look ‘Jesse’ up in the school directory. There was one: a boy, not a girl, and he was two grades below Katherine. Her father had called the boy’s mother and confirmed that Katherine had never been there in her life. He knew Katherine was lying to him, but this week, he had seen more life in Katherine than he had since her mother died. She was happy, and it had something to do with where she was going each night. He didn’t think she was getting involved with a bad crowd. She wasn’t cutting classes, and her grades were fine; he’d called the school and checked. His hope was Katherine was seeing a boy. Oh God, did he hope that. At least he’d understand the secrecy. He hated that she would keep it secret from him, but he’d understand.

All of this was hidden behind his look of boredom. He was confused, and hurt, and desperate to know what was going on with her.

And tomorrow she would be running away.

“Thanks for letting me stay out so late,” she said.

He shrugged. “Have you eaten?”

“Yeah. I’m probably going to disappear in my room for the night. I have a little bit of work left.”

“Okay.”

She met his gaze again.

Fear.

Fear that she was slipping away from him.

It had been so long since they’d spent time together. Was she outgrowing him? Was she going to disappear one day. He wanted so much to do something with her. Anything. He’d play dolls with her again if she wanted, but she hadn’t done that since she was a child.

That memory was strong inside his head. She had been eight, and they’d been playing house. Or doctor. Katherine kept jumping from topic to topic, and he wasn’t sure. He was responsible for steering Clifford the Big Red Dog to a car accident to drop off paramedic dolls who were riding him, but Katherine kept telling him he was doing it wrong. He took the dolls off Clifford too soon, or he moved them to the site instead of walking them. With everything he did, she got fussy. He’d lost his temper and snapped at her. It only happened once, but Katherine was done. She never played with dolls again. Logically, he knew she simply outgrew them, but he still blamed himself for ruining it for her. Bit by bit, she became this girl who’s interests strayed farther away from him. No more chess. No more games. Even when he went along with things she wanted to do, such as shopping, it felt perfunctory for both of them.

He’d give anything to know what to do.

Katherine did something she hadn’t done in ages. She hugged him, and kissed his cheek.

“Goodnight, daddy. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Immediately, she headed off. She couldn’t hold herself together if she stayed any longer.

“Goodnight,” he called after her.

In her room, she tossed her backpack against the bed and read her notebooks on witch powers. Now that she knew she could learn them for herself, she studied her notes in a different light. After every section, she’d clear her mind and concentrate on the questions.

What was it like? What’s the most you could do? How did you visualize it? She’d hold the answers in her head and see if she could get that same little click that she felt with Alexander’s power, but nothing came. Maybe she needed someone to test the powers on. With Alexander, she’d looked him right in the eyes, and it happened. Or did it happen, and that’s why she looked him in the eyes? She’d seen her own power through Christof’s memories. All week, her power had been shifting and curling about itself as though something were growing inside, but Christof had only seen her when she was around the others.

Maybe that was the secret. Learning a power was both understanding it and being close to the witch. That still left so many unanswered questions. In theory, she could figure it all out tomorrow when when they traveled together, but she knew what was in Alex’s head. She saw how skittish they all became after realizing what she was, how quickly they sent her home, how reluctant Josephine was to come inside.

They weren’t coming tomorrow morning, she realized. Or if they did come…

That thought nagged at her.

Setting aside her notebook, she crept from her room and down the upstairs hall to her father’s bedroom. In his closet on the top shelf was a shoebox. Careful not to topple the other boxes on top of it, she sidled it off the ledge. Inside was a magnum revolver in a nest of tissue paper.

That was when she got scared. By taking this action, she’d changed a silly worry into something real—an acknowledgement that she might actually be in mortal danger. And even if tomorrow came, and they arrived to pick her up for the airport, she can never take back that she kept a gun with her this night because she thought they might decide to kill her. It would always be between her and them.

She took the gun, collected the bullets, and slid the shoebox back where it belonged. Her father didn’t realize that she’d always known it was there. Tomorrow she could put it back, and he’d never realize it had gone missing. Hopefully.

In her room, she familiarized herself with the gun. Years ago, her father had taken her to a shooting range. It had been one of his father-daughter bonding attempts. At the time, it was pointlessly dull. Now, it was endearing. She’d go again with him had there been more time.

She tucked the gun under her pillow and returned to her notes, particularly on Josephine’s power. Of all the powers, that one was most likely to protect her if… something happened tonight. She read the section front to back and concentrated. It made no difference. With no one to practice upon, she couldn’t tell if she was making progress.

And then the doorbell rang.

Her hands quivered madly as she took out the gun and the ammo box from under her pillow. She could hardly fit the rounds into the chamber.

“Katherine?” It was her father. “Can you come down here a minute?”

Tucking the gun under her sweater, she walked out to the top of the stairs. Anton waited just inside the threshold with her father.

“Your guidance councilor needs to speak with you,” her father said.

She saw in her father’s mind many questions. Why was a school guidance councilor making a housecall? What could Katherine be getting into that warranted this? Her father wasn’t questioning whether Anton was who he said he was. Her father took that for granted. Anton’s Authority echoed in her father’s head.

“I would like to speak with her privately,” Anton said. More Authority.

“Of course.” No question about it. Her father headed toward the kitchen.

“What’s going on?” Katherine asked.

Sakhr stepped around from behind the door. He’d been waiting out of view of her father. “Something’s come up. We need to leave tonight.”

“Why?”

“I’ll explain on the way. Are you packed?”

“No.”

“That’s okay. Just come now. We’ll replace anything you need.”

“But why? What’s so urgent that we have to leave tonight? Where are the others? Where’s Josephine?”

“Josephine is waiting in the car. Come. We haven’t time to discuss this now.”

“If you’d look me in the eye, you could tell me everything that way. It would be quick.”

Neither did. They exchanged glances with each other. Anton stepped into the house.

Sakhr stayed at the door. “As the coven’s newest telepath, you’re going to need to follow the same rule as Alexander. No mind reading unless absolutely necessary. Respect our privacy.”

Anton was at the foot of the stairs now.

“I think I’ve decided I want to stay,” Katherine said, “I’m not sure I’m ready to leave my father alone. Maybe after I graduate you could come back. If you wanted to.”

Anton started climbing the steps.

“Or if you don’t, that’s okay too. I get it if you don’t want me in the group anymore. And that’s okay. I’ll just… I’ll just be here. I won’t learn any more powers.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. She hardly noticed.

“We don’t have time for this,” Anton said, taking one step at a time. “Come with us.”

The sound of his voice made her body tremble. Without thought, her legs moved toward him. She was down two steps before she clutched the banister. She didn’t have to obey him. He’s here to hurt her.

“Please,” she said. “Please, leave me alone. I won’t tell anyone. Please.”

A rusty squeak came from the back of the house. Someone just passed through the kitchen screen door to the yard. Her father was talking.

Anton was half way up the stairs. “Do not disobey me, Katherine.”

Again, her body moved reflexively. She clung to the banister as though her legs were dragging her down. Anton was almost in reach. Frantically, she pulled the gun from her waistband and aimed it.

He froze, eyes wide. Sakhr practically dove outside the door. All traces of his ancient air of paternalism were gone. He was a man ducking a threat.

Anton held his ground. “Put down the gun, Katherine.” She didn’t. Each time her body reacted less and less to his Authority. Her gun leveled at him.

“I said put it down!” he roared.

She hardly even realized it when she fired. The bang was deafening for sure, but it was the gun’s reaction that she noticed. The kickback was as though she’d just pushed a shopping cart into a wall—hardly anything at all. Anton’s head snapped back. As though in slow motion, he fell backward down the stairs. He was airborne for an eternity. Blood streamed from a hole above his left eye. When his body hit the steps, he tumbled the rest of the way, his limbs limp and aimless. At the bottom, he came to a rest. The frozen look of surprise was still on his face.

Something crashed in the kitchen. Her father yelled. He struggled with someone. Then came the sound of a solid crack.

Moments later, Alexander emerged holding her father as a shield. Her dad’s feet dragged, and his arm flailed about for support. Alexander was holding a kitchen knife to his throat.

He’d been grinning when he entered, but upon seeing Anton, his expression turned black.

“What the fuck did you do?”

Katherine’s legs nearly buckled. She clutched the gun with cold, white knuckles.

“You cunt. Do you have any idea what I’m going to do to you now? Do you have any idea?”

“Kat?” Her father sounded groggy. “Run. Just run.”

“Oh shut up.” Alex cracked him on the head with the butt of his knife. Allen would have crumbled if Alex hadn’t been holding him up. “And you,” Alex looked at her. “Put that fucking gun down before I start filleting your old man.”

“Dad…” Katherine’s voice came out as a whimper.

“Nnn… No,” said Allen.

“Look into my eyes, bitch. I will do it. If you put that down and come down here, your daddy gets to live. Up to you.”

In his eyes, Katherine saw that he would hurt her father, but he wasn’t sold yet on letting her father live. That would depend on how he was feeling, or how much she pissed him off.

Either way, she was going to die tonight. That had been decided long before she shot Anton, but now that she had… Oh, my. The things Alexander wanted to do to her. This little bitch had just ended a friendship spanning centuries. They were a duo who understood each other like no other people could. And when they put their powers together, they were unstoppable. Alex could see clean through anyone, and his insight made Anton’s Authority work better—better for picking up women, for gambling, for doing all the things the duo loved to do. That’s because Alex saw how Authority worked. He could see in the minds of others while the Authority worked primordial parts of their brains. It would tickle the fight-or-flight response—lock down the super ego. In time, he’d learned just what memories and feeling worked best, and how best for Anton to work his magic.

He understood Anton’s power in a way Anton never did.

And now Katherine saw it too.

She took a breath and calmed herself.

“Let my father go.” Her voice wavered, but Authority was there.

Startled, Alex reared back. As though of its own mind, his hand released the knife. His grip relaxed, and her father slid to the floor.

She fired. This time however, she over anticipated the kick back. The shot merely nicked Alex’s arm. Alex moved, but Katherine fired again, and again. She didn’t stop. Bullets flew high and wide as Alex stumbled backward out of view. Plaster and dust exploded around him.

The final shot punched his chest. The gun clicked empty. Alex slumped against the wall and slid to a seat beside Allen. He glared at Katherine. Despite wheezing for dying breaths and blood bubbling from his lip, he could think only of his hate for her.

Katherine rushed down the stairs to her father. As she rounded the bottom, Sakhr lunged from the front door and grabbed her waist. He threw her at the stair banister. Her head collided with wood. Pain seared through her. She crumpled. Something warm and slick poured down her face.

Sakhr reached around the front door and reemerged with a baseball bat. He approached.

“Put… put the bat—” She never finished.

Sakhr brought it down in an overhead swing, right onto her leg.

In that moment, pain was all she knew. The scream that tore from her lungs was long and piercing. It petered into a hoarse croak. Her shin bone jutted from a massive gash. Blood poured.

Sakhr raised the bat again.

Katherine pulled herself away, but there would be no escaping it. Before Sakhr could swing, Allen collided with him from behind. They fell, into a grapple. Allen rolled on top of Sakhr and press his forearm into his neck. Sakhr struggled, but Allen’s chokehold was solid.

“Kat, get the phone,” her father yelled.

Then, they stopped fighting. Allen stood. Sakhr, in turn, screamed. He looked over his own body as though it were covered in insects. Sakhr had swapped places.

Now in her father’s body, Sakhr grabbed Allen, who was too bewildered to react. He dragged him toward Alex.

In dread, Katherine saw what was about to happen.

“No,” she yelled. “Stop!”

Her Authority caused Sakhr to pause, but the voice of a broken, bleeding girl was not enough to keep him.

“No!” she yelled again. She tried dragging herself toward them.

By now, Allen had gained control of his senses. He pieced together enough to realize the enemy was in his own body. He kicked and thrashed. Sakhr had to wrestle him the rest of the way. He grabbed Alex’s hand and placed it on the shin of Allen’s current body.

It was as though they each hiccuped within a fraction of a second of one another. And it was done. Sakhr was in his own body. Alexander was in Allen’s.

Alex straightened. He looked at his old body, and then at his new one. “Fuck!”

He felt his new gut. “Fucking fuck. Shit.”

He ran a hand through his thinning hair. Hissing, he jerked it away when his fingers touched a welt—the one Alex had inflicted on Allen when he first broke in. “God fucking damn it!” He slammed a hand against the wall.

Katherine’s father, now inside Alex’s old body, stared in wide-eyed disbelief at the man now impersonating him. His eyes turned to Katherine, and she saw his thoughts. He felt pain and confusion, but at seeing his hurt little girl, he understood one thing for sure: he’d failed. He was going to die. She would follow, and there was nothing he could do about that.

His thoughts stopped making sense. They were flashes of unrelated ideas and memories—just a random chaos of firing neurons as his brain shut down. In the end, there was no final wish for Katherine to escape, and no sentiments of love, just a muddled mess of panic and despair.

And then nothing.

He was dead at the hands of people Katherine had brought into their lives. She knew it wasn’t her fault, but that didn’t change anything. He never got to understand why.

Alex snapped around to look at her. “She’s still alive,” he said. A humorless grin crept over his face. It was not a smile her father had never made. “Shall I do the honors?”

Sakhr brushed himself off and looked down at Katherine. “Fine.” He stepped over her body and headed up the stairs. “I need to find her notes. We don’t have much time. So be quick about it, will you? Don’t look her in the eye. And for the love of all that is holy, don’t touch her.”

“Sure, sure.” Alex fetched the dropped bat and stood over Katherine. Once Sakhr disappeared upstairs, he looked Katherine directly in the eyes. “Do you think I’m going to be quick about it? Look into my eyes, bitch. Take a look and see what I’m about to do to you.”

She looked.

And she saw.

29. Standard Procedure

2055, November 12th
Collapse + 6 years

The room was white; so were the chair, the table, even the door. They’d left Naema waiting long enough that she’d had time to contemplate that. Why white? Earlier, they’d kept her in a holding cell with other prisoners, and their dusty skin and faded clothes had seemed out of place compared to the white and chrome interior of the citadel—or what she assumed was the citadel. The shuttle hadn’t had windows, and the holding cells they’d crammed her into along with hundreds of detainees might as well have been underground, but it had still been white.

It was as if the Lakirans came from a different world—one far in the future—to help barbaric tribes suffering in the wake of a catastrophe. Did they color their army white to convince the natives that they were the good guys? Or were the Lakiran cities just as bright? The few photos Naema had seen of them were glittery enough, but surely those had been handpicked photos.

A repulser wall divided this room down the middle. It intersected a central table such that two people could sit at it without either being able to reach the other. The side wall was a large mirror—an interrogation room classic. Behind it, detectives would scrutinize her.

Naema had taken to pacing by the time someone came. An exemplar entered from the door on the other side of the barrier. His white coat seemed like camouflage here. He sat, favored her with a smile, then arranged his possessions on the table: a folder of papers, a small chrome device that could be a phone or transponder, and his plaque. If Naema didn’t know, she’d have guessed it was an older model tablet computer. Along its top were old-fashioned LED indicator bulbs as though it were made of garage parts. One light glowed green.

He tapped a button on the phone-like device, then gestured for her to sit. “Do you speak English adequately for the purpose of this interview?”

Naema nodded.

“You must speak for the record.”

“Okay. Yea, I speak English.”

“Very good. I’m going to ask you some questions. Answer as honestly and accurately as possible. As we talk, look me in the eyes, and follow any directions I give you. Understand?”

“Can I go home after?”

“Do you understand?” he asked again.

“Yes.”

“Then look me in the eyes.”

She did so.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“Naema Madaki.”

“Are you a registered Lakiran citizen or expatriate?”

“No.”

“Have you ever registered with the Lakiran Foreign Aid or a Humanitarian Labor Project?”

“No.”

Frowning, he glanced at his plaque’s screen. Naema thought about the exemplars from earlier that day, bopping their broken plaques.

“I did go to the hospital in Port Harcourt. Does that count?”

Nodding, he tapped through his plaque’s menus. “Three days ago?”

“Yes.”

“Is this information all correct?” He pressed the plaque against the repulse barrier. It bobbed as though he were trying to push two repulsive magnets together.

“Yea. It is.”

Again, this puzzled him. He turned his plaque over and glanced at the glowing green LED. More puzzlement. He navigated its menus, tapping and reading and swiping. No more satisfied, he glanced up. “Look me in the eye again.”

She did.

After a moment of sustained eye contact, he gave up. “Pardon me.” He gathered his things and left.

Naema was convinced now. She’d broken his plaque. Once or twice with Josephine could be explained away, but not this. Would it help her get out of here? Or would it only bring her more attention?

The waiting now was all the more intolerable with those questions hanging in the air. It felt like twice as long passed.

When someone else came in, they were dressed in a dark blue military uniform, not exemplar white. He was an officer; she could tell that much from the pips on his chest, but she hadn’t seen soldiers like him on the ground.

“Ah, good evening.” He took a seat. He laid out the same items the exemplar had, though his tablet was a transparent clipboard instead of a plaque, thinner and more sleek. “I’ll be conducting your interview. Do you speak english?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” and he proceeded to ask her the same questions the exemplar had, though his questions lacked formality, nor did he demand eye contact. Once the basic information was covered, he got onto the main topic.

“So as you know, you were at the scene of a rebel attack earlier today. We’ve brought you here as a safety procedure. This shouldn’t take long. Do you have any questions before we begin?”

She considered asking about the exemplar, but thought better. “No.”

“Okay then. Briefly explain what were you doing at the construction site today.”

“I was shopping at the market with my friends.”

“Did you know anything about the attack?”

“No. Not until it started. I do not know what it was about.”

“Did you participate in the fighting in any way?”

“No. I ran away. I just didn’t want to get hurt.” She wasn’t sure whether this man knew that the soldiers caught her trying to hide, or whether they even cared.

“Do you have any friends or family in the area?”

“Yes. My mama, Zauna Madaki. And my brother, Oni.”

“They live at this address? Okogbar Road?”

“Yea. We live on the street though. Not one of the houses.”

“That’s fine. Have you and your family been living in the region for a long time?”

“All my life. Mostly. Before the Collapse we lived in Abakaliki, but we had to move here to get closer to food.”

He nodded. Most Nigerians had similar stories.

The questions he followed up with were more conversational than she expected. He asked about her family, what they did, how she broke her hand, what she did on a day to day basis, and so on. His questions seemed off the cuff, even if they sometimes pierced into specific details. The only questions that worried her were the direct ones at the end.

“Are you involved with any other known rebel, terrorist, or outlaw groups,” he asked.

“No.” She tried not to wonder whether Josephine and Tan counted.

“Have you, or are you planning to undermine the Lakiran empire in any way?”

“No.”

“Do you harbor ill will toward Lakira?”

Kind of, yes. They might pretend to help Nigeria; they might even believe that, but she didn’t. In the last two weeks alone, the Lakirans had dragged people she knew away in the night, reasons unknown. It was harder to believe now after watching those soldiers fire into the crowd regardless of who was hostile.

“No. No ill will”

This satisfied him. “All right. I’m going to send you down to processing. As soon as they’re done with you, a shuttle will take you to the refugee camp in Old Aba. You’re free to return home from there, provided you can make it in time for curfew. You are not cleared yet though. On Monday, you need to return to Old Aba before noon for questioning?”

“Again?”

“‘Fraid so. Only an exemplar can clear you, and there are none available today. Shouldn’t take you long. The guard will give you a form which you’ll need to bring with you. Any questions?”

“No.”

“Then proceed through the door behind you, and have a good day.”

The wait for processing wasn’t as bad as waiting for questioning. Naema was anxious to leave as soon as possible, but at least she would leave. On top of that, the wait was in a more pleasant room with cushioned seats and no bars. When they finally called her in, a woman took her picture and fingerprints. She asked Naema several rote questions such as her name and address, things she’d already told her interrogator. Apparently, “under a tarp next to the Quik Mart on Okogbar Road” was not a valid address. So Naema was officially deemed homeless.

Eventually they led her to a shuttle bay. Down the launch tubes, she got an aperture view of evening sky and part of Port Harcourt far below. So she was in the citadel after all.

They herded her onto a shuttle packed with other civilians. Like before, the shuttle had no windows, and she’d have to stand with no room to even stick out her elbows. Soldiers guarded the hatch while it slowly closed. To the Lakiran’s, they were cattle, but Naema didn’t care.

In twenty minutes, she’d be back on the ground. She didn’t care if it was past curfew. She was getting home tonight. Mama was probably frantic with worry, maybe more so for Josephine. Naema hadn’t spared a thought toward her, but now she wondered if Josephine and Tan had gotten away.

Probably. They had powers to do so, while Naema just irritated exemplars. Hopefully Josephine would come by her home, but maybe not. Maybe Naema would have to go to her. Then they’d figure out something to do about this interview scheduled for Monday, something Naema obviously couldn’t attend. She’d just break the exemplar’s power again. It seemed this whole incident had forced Naema’s hand into going with Josephine. Naema would think more about that tomorrow. Right now, she just wanted to go home.

And then the shuttle doors yawned open.

They were still in the bay.

The guards were standing right where they were before, only there were others now too. They had weapons drawn.

One of them spoke. “Naema Madaki?”

With that one call, it was over. She didn’t answer the call, but it didn’t matter.

“Naema Madaki. Step out of the shuttle.”

One more minute. That’s all she’d needed. One more minute and the shuttle would have left. She’d be gone. At the refugee camp, she could have ran home. The Lakirans would never see her again. Or maybe they would have had a security force waiting for her down there. Or maybe they could have turned the shuttle around. Maybe she had never been close to escaping at all.

“Naema Madaki. We know you’re in this shuttle. If you do not step forward, we will unload this shuttle to find you. Do not make this any harder than it has to be.”

Her body felt numb. She placed one foot before the other as she shouldered through the crowd. As calm as she moved, her heart hammered in her ears.

On the entry ramp, soldiers cuffed her marched her out of the bay. Behind her, the shuttle door closed again. Everyone else got to go home.

They led her past the detainment ward. The cells were emptier now; most detainees were processed. The next ward was different. The cells were smaller, and these ones had facilities. The prisoners here didn’t pace or yell for answers. They huddled in corners or sat on cots if they were lucky enough to have them. These people weren’t detainees. They were prisoners.

“Naema?”

She looked toward the voice. Mama and Oni were sitting at the back of a cell. They were dirty and ruffled. Their arrests hadn’t been gentle.

“Mama?”

Mama fought to the front of the cage and pressed against the bars. “Naema?”

“Mama, what are you doing here?”

“I don’t know. They are not talking to us. What happened, girl? Have they hurt you?” She reached through the bars for Naema. The guards escorting her veered around it.

“Where you go take her?” Mama yelled.

The last glimpse Naema had of them was of her mother yelling and Oni’s silent expression of fear. Naema didn’t know why the Lakirans had targeted them, but now they would suffer. They’d disappear like all the other malcontents dragged away in the night, and it would all be her fault.

This entire time she’d felt a lump in her throat threatening to break free, but this thought was too much. As the soldiers escorted her by her arms, she cried. She couldn’t even wipe her eyes with her arms restrained behind her back, but she was beyond caring. She’d lost.

They put her back in an interrogation room. Within a minute, someone entered the other partition—a military officer in blue, higher in rank and age than the man who’d questioned her before, and not at all as amicable. At the table, he dug through a pack and produced several food boxes and wrappers. Two stood out: a wrapper for sausage, and a box which used to contain red candies—the gifts she’d given her neighbor in return for silence.

The officer leaned close to the repulse divider and looked her in the eye.

“You want to tell us where the fuck you got these?”

28. Security Features

2055, November 12th
Collapse + 6 years

“Wait,” said Naema. “So you stole an exemplar’s powers?”

“That’s right,” said Josephine. “Remember when I told you about how the queen turns powers into strange drawings? Those are inside those big tablets of theirs. They call them plaques, and all you have to do is hold one.”

“Then why don’t you still have it?”

“Because the Lakiran queen is paranoid.”

Naema, Josephine, and Tan were walking back from their exemplar outing. Tan lingered behind like a teenager embarrassed to be seen with his parents. They were passing through Port Harcourt. The markets swelled with afternoon business. Music played from speakers perched in windows. People danced in the streets. It was almost like the Nigeria Naema remembered as a girl; almost. 

Josephine talked as they walked along. “Victoria puts an unbelievable amount of failsafes in her exemplar’s plaques. If those things go more than ten feet away from the exemplar they’re assigned to, they give a warning beep. If they’re not back within range in one minute, tiny explosives inside the plaque destroy those drawings. So if Tan and I want to use those plaques, I have to stay within ten feet of the exemplar.”

“Why don’t you open it and remove the drawings.”

“They’ve thought of that. Trust me. They’ve thought of everything. If it opens, pop. If it loses GPS for too long, pop. If the exemplar goes somewhere he’s not supposed to, pop. The tablets even have a detachable battery that the exemplars are supposed to yank out if they think they’re about to be taken hostage. It kills the powers immediately. And I think the empire can remotely destroy them too if they suspect anything fishy.”

“Why so much?”

“Those tablets were the biggest advantage the Lakirans have over the Chinese and the EDA. Exemplars could pick out spies, sense hidden troops, interrogate prisoners of war. No one else can do that, and the Lakiran’s will hold onto that advantage at any cost. Do you remember how the empire launched this huge assault into Britain?”

“No.”

“Oh. This was about four years ago. No one understood why the empire came to Europe so early. It really overstretched them. I heard it’s because the European Alliance had managed to get their hands on one of those plaques. The entire early invasion was started just to get it back. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but the empire definitely came to Europe before they had a good handle on North America.”

“Maybe the queen is just greedy.”

“Maybe. Anyway, Tan and I were able to get an exemplar’s plaque from him, but not for very long. It really helped us work on each other’s powers, but we can’t do that for you if you’ll just break anything we bring near you.”

“Okay.”

Josephine glanced at her. “You don’t seem very bothered by that.”

Naema shrugged. “I guess I would be if I had mind reading or something. What do I do? Nothing. I break other people around me. Or so you say. I’m still not sure it isn’t all just a big joke you’re pulling.”

“You saw the exemplar.”

“Yeah… I guess so.” Naema saw the exemplar thump his tablet, then Josephine pulled her away. Disregard Tan and Josephine’s word, and there wasn’t any other evidence of her power.

They walked through the market until coming upon dividers blocking the road. Beyond, a Lakiran construction project was underway. An aerial crane floated over a deep pit. It had three prominent bulges along its bottom in a triangular shape which no doubt contained high capacity repulsers. They stayed aloft using the same invisible tripod technique the citadels used.

Cables dangled from the crane. Construction workers guided prebuilt pieces into place upon a structure in the pit. Soldiers stood guard around the site, and spaced around the crane were aerial watchtowers suspended in the same fashion as the crane. In each, a soldier behind a railgun was ready to rain hell upon troublemakers.

“They’re building a grid node,” Josephine said. “Told you. They’re moving in.”

Naema didn’t disagree. Lakirans already had nodes installed throughout Nigeria, but those were the temporary kind, above ground. They’d float the nodes into position, then bolt them down. It allowed the Lakirans to drop in their orbital drop response teams, but not much else. This, though, was higher capacity, a permanent installation placed underground. They couldn’t pack this one up and leave if the Nigerian occupation didn’t pan out. Naema had seen pictures of cities with shuttles cluttering the skyline. This was the first step. Pretty soon, Lakirans responding to trouble would be coming from local stations, not ships coasting the upper atmosphere. That meant faster response times.

“But look on the bright side,” Josephine pointed at one of the watchtowers. An exemplar was gazing over the crowd. “Looks like Tan wins two to zero, and we get to test again.”

“Won’t the Lakirans wonder why two exemplars had trouble today?”

“They might, but it’s too late. Look.” The exemplar was already frowning at his plaque. “It’s definitely broken. Do you want to watch this time? I don’t think we need to be careful. The soldier’s aren’t turning away spectators here.” They watched while the exemplar fiddled his plaque, turning it over as though looking for the on switch.

Tan came up beside them. “We go.”

“Patience,” Josephine said. “This is a better test. Nobody is going to notice us here. Naema, are you convinced yet, or do you still think I’m making your gift up?”

“We go. Now.” Tan sounded more insistent.

“It’s not that late. Just a minute.”

“I have bad feeling.”

The change in Josephine’s demeanor was stark. Glancing around, she took Naema’s arm. “Okay, let’s go.” They worked backward through the crowd. Josephine and Tan kept glancing back as though expecting someone to call them out. Naema glanced, but nothing seemed wrong. Tan’s bad feelings seemed to carry particular weight with Josephine.

Somebody yelled. It was distant and in French. Then came a scream.

Then a gunshot.

Suddenly, everything happened at once. The crowd surged. Everyone yelled and screamed. There was a bout of gunfire. Naema glimpsed someone in a second story window firing a rifle toward the construction project. The Lakiran guards responded with a spray of flechettes from their silent rifles.

Naema lost sight of them as the crowd jostled her. Everyone was trying to run now. Someone crashed into her. Another fell between her and Josephine, causing their linked hands to separate. Josephine’s head snap around to look just as Naema fell. She landed on her broken hand. The pain stole her attention momentarily. When she looked up, Josephine was struggling against the crowd to get to her. Naema rose to one knee.

Suddenly, an explosion.

She was on the ground again. Heat washed over her back. Over the ringing in her ears, gunfire continued. There was blood on her. Panicked, she checked herself over. No injury. It was someone else’s blood. She climbed once again to her knees.

“Naema!”

She looked up. Josephine was across the street, laying flat on her belly. The crowd had cleared, and now Naema saw why. There were dead between her and Josephine.

Josephine motioned for her to get down. Naema scrambled for cover behind an overturned cart. All around, the fighting continued. Men with rifles were firing from around corners and behind door frames. More shot at the Lakirans from windows. They were rebels, but whether they were remnants of the European Alliance or some African group, she didn’t know. They were dressed in street clothes which hid them in the crowd.

Three more explosions sounded back to back, and the husk of an aerial watchtower dropped from the sky. From a window, a rocket launched at one of the remaining ones. It’s path was instantaneous, but from the smoke streak, it came within five feet of the tower before the tower’s repulse field arced it away. It crashed into a building. Stone and brick showered the street.

The guard in the tower spun his rail gun toward the window. No projectile shot out, but the building tore apart as though someone had scraped their finger through wet newspaper. Part of the wall fell away. Bloody carnage was inside the exposed room, Body parts tumbled out. Naema knew vaguely what had happened. People called those railguns shears. They generated repulse fields as thin as pencil lead but strong enough to apply thousands of pounds of force.

Another tower turned its railgun toward rebels taking cover behind a brick wall. The bricks chipped, but did not crumble as the plaster wall had. The men behind the wall cleaved apart, like bags of soup spilling open. The field passed through the wall. Naema realized it would do the same for the cart she was hiding behind. She couldn’t stay here.

Josephine was still taking cover across the street. Naema wanted to sprint across to them, but her mind kept envisioning flechettes biting into her guts as soon as she was in view. Her legs wouldn’t move.

Everything changed again. An orbital deployment team arrived. Pods crashed onto the streets, one right before Naema, separating her from Josephine. The sound was like metal thunder. Their hatches blew open, and armored soldiers came out firing. If the rebels had any chance of winning this fight, it was gone. Several dropped immediately. Their cover did not protect them from the assailants suddenly appearing from unexpected directions. They ran. The Lakirans kept firing, shooting rebels and civilians alike. Not even Naema could tell who was who.

The orbital soldier right before her need only glance to his right to see her. She was unarmed, but he might not care. The rebels had been hiding in the crowds, and the Lakirans weren’t taking chances.

He marched down the street in pursuit of someone. No Lakirans were in sight, but neither were Tan and Josephine. Bullets and yelling still sounded, but not near her. Bystanders crawled away from the fighting toward alleys and alcoves. Some got up and sprinted. No one shot them down.

Josephine was gone, but this was Naema’s chance. She crawled toward an alley. As soon as she was out of view, she got up and sprinted. Three steps. She stumbled, tore her knees, and landed poorly on her hands. Pain exploded from her broken thumb, but she got up and kept going.

She raced down the alley and around a turn. Something knocked her down. It was as though she’d run into a dense wall of air which blew her back. She got up and tried again. Again, something pushed her onto her rear. Ahead of her, floating about ten feet in the air, was a small drone—a wall bot. It was generating a repulse field between itself and Naema, sealing the alley. It must have flown in along with the deployment pods to lock the situation down. There would be others too, shutting down the entire area. Naema knew how this worked. Everyone was a suspect. All got dragged away.

She ran back to check the fighting. Gunfire had stopped. Other wall bots were floating into position where the fray had been. Many were already locked in place. Civilians batted uselessly against invisible walls. The fight was over. The Lakirans would start arresting people, her included if they found her.

She looked for an alley the orbs might have missed. One nearby had overflowing dumpsters. Bystanders were hiding for their lives behind them. She paid them no heed and ran to the end, took a turn, and skidded to a stop. A wall bot was already in place at the mouth.

Somewhere distant, there was a burst of rifle fire, followed by an explosion. Nothing followed. Some rebel hadn’t realized the Lakirans had already won. A ship blotted out the sky between the buildings for a moment. It was landing nearby. More soldiers would soon crowd the streets. They’d carry her away unless she escaped, which grew increasingly unlikely.

Would her supposed power protect her? Maybe, but maybe not. She didn’t want to take the chance.

She scanned around. The streets were locked down, but fire escapes might not be. If she got into a building and hid, then maybe the exemplars wouldn’t find her. That’s only if her power would protect her against an exemplar she’d never laid eyes upon.

The bottom of the fire escapes were nine feet above, nothing she could jump, but there were leftover crates from the market. She piled two and carefully climbed on top. The people cowering by the dumpsters paid her no attention. They watched the alley mouth for signs of combat. Teetering on top of the crates, Naema leaped for the fire escape and caught it with her good hand and the fingers of her casted hand. A buried part of her was aware of the crippling pain it caused.

She pulled herself up and hooked her foot over the railing. She’d was nearly on the fire escape when white-clad soldiers appeared at the mouth of the alley.

“Hey,” one yelled. “Freeze.”

She looked to see two peace officers aiming weapons at her. Naema didn’t know what their weapons fired, but she had no doubt they would fire them. She held up one free hand in a gesture of surrender.

“Get down from there,” they yelled.

She unhooked her foot. Once her legs stopped swinging, she dropped onto her hands and knees. Before she could rise, the soldiers shoved her onto her stomach and secured her hands behind her.

They dragged her toward the street. The fighting was over. The area was swarmed with soldiers, some dressed in white for peace, others wore deployment gray. All had weapons. The fetid smell of death and smoke filled the air.

More and more wall bots fell from the sky. When they reached building level, they’d hover into place and generate partitioning fields to further lock down the streets at a greater radius. Others were dedicated to caging herds of frightened civilians.

Naema couldn’t spot Josephine among the crowd. Even if she was, what could she do? No amount of memory wiping would let her pass those repulse barriers.

They set Naema down by others, and a soldier with a control tablet directed wall bots to fence her in. The next ship to arrive was a large hulking craft. Soldiers cleared a place for it to land. It was a transport ship, here for the prisoners. That was going to be her ride to the citadel.

27. Tequila Worm

2055, November 7th
Collapse + 6 years

“Ready?”

Winnie nodded.

“Okay then,” said Helena. “On three. One. Two. Three.”

Helena and Winnie threw back a shot of tequila. It seared Winnie’s mouth despite her attempt to taste as little as possible. She knew to swallow the shot in one go, but it took her three swallows nonetheless. The last one malfunctioned as her throat rebelled, and tequila went down her trachea.

Helena slammed her shot glass onto the floor, threw her hands above her head, and whooped. She laughed when Winnie coughed. “You’re such a lightweight. I can’t believe you’ve never had liquor before.”

Inhaling alcohol had nothing to do with being a lightweight, but Winnie didn’t correct Helena. Instead, she shrugged apologetically as she coughed.

Helena sat against her bed and picked up the tequila bottle they’d stolen from a corporate bar on the fifteenth floor. Breaking in had been simple enough since no one was in there on the weekends. Helena had skulked about like a cat burglar in a museum while ordering Winnie to scout ahead with her power. She’d even dressed in dark clothes and had demanded Winnie do the same.

The clandestine mission had been thrilling, until the bar door had opened quite simply with a swipe of Helena’s pass card. Either that was a gross security oversight, or the adults figured stealing liquor was a harmless rebellion for a princess. 

Helena had clearly selected this tequila because it looked expensive. The bottle was hand-crafted glass. The cap had a wax-cover, and floating around inside was what looked like a bloated caterpillar. She’d asked Helena about this. Helena merely made fun of her naivety.

The two had snuck the bottle back to Helena’s suite to lounge at the base of her gargantuan, frilled bed. This was her idea of a midnight break after an evening spent preparing for the charity in two days.

“You ready for another?” Helena shook the bottle playfully.

“I think I need a few minutes.”

“Oh come on, this is smooth. Might be one of the better vintages I’ve had.” She swirled the bottle, studying the bloated corpse within. “Danny Torres had a party at his dad’s house a couple months ago. He was so proud of his Black Label liquor. It was so gross.” She poured another shot into each glass. “Come on. We’re never going to get drunk at this rate. Ready?”

Winnie wasn’t, but she held up the glass anyway. Helena counted away, licked salt from her wrist, then swallowed the shot in one go. Winnie tried swallowing hers slowly, thinking it might be easier that way. She was wrong. Fortunately, Helena was too busy biting a lime slice to notice Winnie gagging.

Helena whooped again. She laughed at Winnie’s scrunched expression. Although Winnie noticed, with a bit of satisfaction, that Helena’s eyes were watering.

“You’re such a light weight,” Helena said again—the phrase of the night apparently. “You’re already red.”

Winnie felt her cheeks. She hadn’t noticed how warm her face felt. Her head seemed improperly weighted too, not too light or too heavy, but something off.

“I’ve never drank before,” Winnie said. “I’m not sure I should have any more.”

“Seriously? You’re already done? One more.”

“What if we watch some more and do another shot later?”

Projected on Helena’s wall was a paused image of an old pre-Collapse show about high school students. It had a weird name that Winnie couldn’t recall right now. For days, Helena had been catching Winnie up, showing her the pilot and several “good” episodes while narrating her own thoughts along the way. Winnie tried to be interested. She’d certainly watch right now if it saved her from another shot.

“We’re not even drunk yet, and you just want to watch television?” Helena studied the tequila bottle. After a pause, she pushed it aside. “Fine. If you want to.” She tapped a button on her tablet, and the show resumed.

As Winnie watched, nausea set in. She was constantly swallowing caustic burps. Her head was heavier every time she thought about it. Beside her, Helena sat placidly, watching the show, not narrating as she usually did. Getting drunk struck Winnie as an unnecessary addition to the night. Though it was nice to finally know what getting drunk felt like, even if it felt wretched.

“This is dumb,” Helena said. “We’re just sitting around. Let’s do something else.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Anything.”

“We could invite more people over.”

“Have you forgotten? No one can come onto the campus this late.”

“We could go to them?”

“Don’t be stupid. I can’t leave. Even if my mom let me, I’d have to bring my bodyguards, who are the biggest buzzkills in the world. Nobody else wants to drink when my guards are standing there eyeballing everyone. Seriously. I’m a prisoner. It’s like the only fun I have these days is the basketball outings, and I’m only playing basketball because my mom makes me. It sucks being the princess.”

“Yeah, but what about when you’re queen? Think about what kind of parties you’ll have then. You could order your guards to look the other way.”

“I guess so. Sometimes I think that’s never going to happen. I’m going to spend my whole life as the heir to the throne and never actually get it.” Helena studied her shot glass. Normally talking about her future lifted her mood.

“What about when you turn eighteen?” Winnie asked. “You’ll have more freedom then, right?”

“Why would I? I’ll still be here. Do you know my mom has already decided where I’m going to college? Guess where? The Lakiran Institute. Just a couple of blocks away. I’ll still be living here.”

“Wow. Your mom is really protective.”

Helena scoffed. “She doesn’t give a shit. She hasn’t talked to me in over two weeks now. You see her more than I do. I’m just another of her endangered pets. Lock me up and don’t touch.” Helena poured herself and Winnie another shot. “Even when I try to spend time with her, she just brushes me off. One time, I talked Madeline into letting me come along with my mom for some summit meeting in China or whatever. My mom threw a fit. She bitched out Madeline about going behind her back. And this was during a school break. I wouldn’t miss school or anything. I had a hotel room booked and everything. But my mom made Madeline cancel it all.”

Helena held up her shot glass and looked at Winnie to do the same. Winnie didn’t argue it. After the shot, Helena did not bother whooping.

“She cares more about her fucking animals than she does me. At least she visits them once in a while.”

“Willow and Marzipan?”

“All of them. Haven’t you seen the thirty first floor?”

“No.” Winnie recalled Madeline mentioning that floor when she first visited—four floors dedicated to environmental restoration. She never did take Madeline up on the tour. “Does your mom go there a lot?”

“At least once a week. It’s supposed to be a restricted area. The trainers are trying to make the animals ready to go in the wild. Whenever I go there, they tell me I’m acclimating them to humans and kick me out. But then my mom goes there and plays with them like they’re a bunch of toy poodles.”

“Weird.”

“Fucking stupid is what it is.”

Helena flopped back against her bed, nearly knocking over the bottle. They watched the show in silence.

“Hey,” Helena sat up and grinned. “You want to go check it out?”

“I thought you said you weren’t allowed in there.”

“I’m not, but who cares? Come on. Bring the tequila.”

Helena was already headed toward the door, so Winnie collected the drinks, waited for the room to stop spinning, and followed. Helena was boarding the elevator when Winnie caught up. Inside, Helena swiped her security card and pressed the button for floor 31. The button panel replied with an angry beep.

“What the fuck? Come on.” Helena banged the panel. It took the beating stubbornly.

Winnie decided to let this play out before suggesting they head back, but then Helena pressed the button for floor 38. The elevator closed.

“Where are we going?” Winnie asked.

“We need to steal one of the caretaker’s cards. Make sure they’re all asleep.”

Winnie mentally dove down to the thirty-eighth floor. It was a residential floor, complete with a common area and a kitchenette. The cleaning staff clearly didn’t visit there. Crumbs covered the sofas and a television set had a mess of gaming consoles nested beneath it. The coffee table between the two had scattered papers and bowls of finished cereal that no one had bothered moving to the sink. The dorms connecting to the common area had personalized doors, either with posters or clippings. One had a small whiteboard on it with a marker attached by velcro so visitors could leave notes. Winnie didn’t look in any of the rooms. She was already breaking one of Victoria’s cardinal rules: no looking in the tower.

“I think they are,” she said.

“Look around. See if any of them have left for the weekend.”

Reluctantly, Winnie did so. Of the twelve rooms, nine were occupied. Of those nine, eight were sleeping. Another was sitting on his bed in his underwear playing a game on a computer.

She wished Helena wouldn’t make her do this.

The remaining three rooms had messy beds and laundry scattered about. Two had passcards that she saw: one attached to a retractable belt wire resting on a desk, the other on a lanyard hanging on the backside of the door. She checked the locks of each door, looking at the pins to see if they were unlocked. One was.

Violating privacy with her power was far too easy. She only hoped Victoria wouldn’t care too much.

The elevator opened on that floor. Helena crept down the hall to the caretaker’s common room. “Did you see any?”

“Are you sure you want to do this? We’re going to get in trouble.”

“So?”

“I mean, even if we get away with it. Your mom will see it in my head.”

“What’s she going to do about it? Ground me? I’m already stuck here. And you’re a flair. You could murder someone and she’d forgive you.So don’t be lame. You see one, don’t you?”

Reluctantly, she nodded.

“Then go get it.”

Solemnly, Winnie opened the door to the common room, walked to to the unlocked door, and opened it just long enough to snake her hand around and grab the lanyard. That was that, the point of no return. She was going to get in trouble sooner or later.

They snuck out. Helena bumped into her and giggled. Despite herself, Winnie giggled too.

Back at the elevator, Helena swiped the stolen card and punched the floor for the garden. This time, the elevator obliged.

When the door opened, it was as though the elevator transported them outside. A blast of warm, damp air struck them. It smelled of musk and manure. Ahead was a cobbled path leading through grass into shadowed woods. There were no walls, only a deep darkness from which glowing eyes might look out. A canopy of foliage took the place of a ceiling, and in some places, stars peeked through. Only through her flair could Winnie see rafters and skylights far overhead. The place was larger than a stadium, and it had trees—full grown trees that had no right being indoors.

“Follow me.” Helena skipped along a path into the woods. Winnie followed. Behind her, the elevator closed, cutting away the small haven of light Winnie had been relying on. She was left in pitch black, with no sound but the chirring of crickets. Fortunately, her flair didn’t need light anymore. She could pretend there were lights, and that was good enough. Victoria’s would disapprove of this crutch. According to her, Winnie shouldn’t need any light at all, real or imaginary.

Helena was ahead, drunkenly feeling her way along the path. Winnie caught up and took the lead while Helena held her shoulder.

“How are you not bumping into everything?” Helena asked.

“My flair.”

“Oh. Right.”

They arrived at an enclosure of sleeping pig-like creatures. The plaque before the enclosing wall said “Tapirs”, whatever those were. Winnie scanned further. There were enclosures for everything from jaguars to crocodiles. One enclosed section even contained birds.

Helena looked into the enclosure. The tapirs were sleeping behind a fake rock wall.

“Well, this was a waste of time,” she said. “You can’t see any of them.”

“I can.”

Helena snorted. “It’s not really the same though, is it.”

“It’s better, kind of. I think if I were blind, I’d be okay.”

“Well, look at you. I guess I’ll just sit here and drink while you imagine the animals.”

“You could see the reptiles.”

“Oh yeeaah. Take me to the reptiles. Let’s see those little purses.” Helena draped her arms over Winnie’s shoulders, and they stumbled their way through the dark like a haphazard conga line.

The reptile section had paths meandering between islands of exhibits. A nitrate, reptile smell filled the air.

Winnie took Helena to the first enclosure. It had a sleeping tortoise, a slightly larger breed than Marzipan upstairs—nearly football sized. Its shell was spiked. Winnie checked the other enclosures.

“Your mom has a lot of tortoises,” Winnie said.

“Because they’re morons. Animals come here when they’re too sick or dumb to make it on their own. These guys just want to go extinct, but my mom won’t let them. I don’t know why anyone cares.” Helena straddled an enclosure barrier and took the tequila from Winnie. She talked as she poured another pair of shots. “She should be saving more tigers or something. At least they’re on the LakiraLabs logo. But nope, she saves the suitcase lizards.”

Winnie sat across from her. The tortoise inside the enclosure awoke and peeked out at them. Helena ignored it as she handed Winnie her shot. “To my mother’s little preciouses.” She threw back her shot.

Winnie set hers behind her. “This place is amazing,” She said, looking around. Between the poor lighting, the crickets, and the warm air, it was just like a climate that existed only before the Collapse.

“Yeah. Fucking fantastic. Isn’t it? She spends way too much time down here.”

“Maybe it’s like a hobby to her,” suggested Winnie, “like stamps.”

“No. It’s an obsession. You’ve seen those animals in her office, right? The ones that make the place smell like a pet store? They’re like her other children. She’ll go on trips all over the world. I’ll ask to go along, and she’ll say no. But she’ll take them with her all the fucking time.”

“Weird.”

“Yeah. Conference in England? Why not bring a bird? And she even cleans their cages herself. One time she left the tortoise behind and its feeder broke. Since the caretakers aren’t allowed up there, they asked me to feed the tortoise. I called my mom up about how to unlock the stupid cage and she yelled at me about respecting her personal boundaries.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Whatever. I don’t I care. My mom rules the world, and I’ll go to college and do whatever. When she dies, I’ll take over and I won’t have to deal with her shit anymore.” She poured another shot. “Cheers.” Holding it up, she nearly took the shot when she noticed the nearby tortoise watching her. “Cheers to you too. First thing I’ll do when I’m in charge is throw you back in the jungle. She poured some tequila over the shell of the tortoise. It’s eyes tightened, and it retreated.

As the reptile plodded to its miniature pond, Winnie considered telling Helena that the alcohol might make them sick, but she could guess Helena’s response to that.

While Winnie was watching the tortoise, Helena took her shot. When she threw her head back, she nearly toppled from her perch. Winnie lunged to catch Helena, and nearly toppled right along with her. In regaining their balance, they knocked the tequila bottle over. It shattered against the pathway. Tequila stench overpowered the zoo smell.

 Leaning against each other, Helena and Winnie burst out giggling. Straddling the enclosure wall, gripping one another like two exhausted boxers, they laughed until their sides hurt.

Settling down, Helena smiled at Winnie. Something about the smile was lopsided, but Winnie couldn’t decide what. Helena leaned forward. Winnie’s heart clenched in panic at what she thought was about to happen, but Helena merely grabbed the shot glass behind Winnie.

“You never finished your shot.” Helena held it up.

Winnie took the shot glass. She held it beneath her lips and steeled herself. She really didn’t need any more. But she wasn’t taking this shot for herself.

Finished, she set down the glass. Helena still had her lopsided smile. Winnie’s stomach churned.

A flash of light passed over them. Glancing behind Winnie, Helena sneered and straightened. Winnie visualized behind herself.

Tower security. A man with a flashlight, a blue cap, and a belt of devices approached. His flashlight beam bounced between Winnie to Helena, to the broken tequila bottle. “You know you’re not supposed to be here, Your Highness. How did you get in?”

Helena held her arms out in a pose. “Skills.”

“Your mother’s not going to be happy when she hears about this.”

“My mother can go fuck herself.”

The guard flashed his light in Winnie’s face. “And you. You’re security pass expired at midnight. It’s time for you to go back to your dorm.”

“Would you leave us alone already,” Helena said. “Nobody wants you here. Go away.”

The guard turned his light back on her. “Your mother doesn’t want you here either. So, let’s get moving, ladies. Time to go.”

“Are you giving me an order?”

“I’m carrying out your mother’s orders. So you can leave now, or I can call more guards up here and we can make a scene.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

In answer, the guard pinched a communicator pinned to his uniform. He spoke into it in Portuguese, but Winnie got the gist.

Helena stormed to her feet. “You know what? Whatever. Let’s fucking go. I don’t even care anymore.”

The guard belayed his last order over the comm.

Helena stumbled. She grabbed Winnie for support, though Winnie wasn’t much of a pillar herself. They staggered to the elevator while the guard followed.

A part of her wished she could go back to Helena’s room and sleep over. Helena had opened up to her tonight, and it seem wrong to leave her alone now. On the other hand, she couldn’t wait to get back to her bed. At some point tonight, she was going to vomit.

26. Huddle

2022, March 23th
Collapse – 27 years

Josephine’s mind wondered as she drove back to the hotel. Katherine was having second thoughts. Up until tonight, she thought she’d be running away from a life of bullying. Now Alex had shown her that bullying might follow. And there was her father. No goodbyes. No contact. As far as he’ll know, Katherine will head for school tomorrow and never arrive—a parent’s worst nightmare. If there was ever a night for that to sink in for Katherine, it would be tonight.

Even if she did go, how long until she realized what a sorry lot the coven was? Katherine was smart, gifted, and inquisitive. The coven was nothing compared to her. Even Josephine loathed the person she herself had become. They were vampires who leeched lives and bodies. Despite their talents, the world would be better off without them.

Josephine’s mind drifted to more pleasant topics, particularly what Katherine had said about replacing Alex. Now there was a good idea. The coven might be half decent without that cancer.

Sakhr would never allow it, but this would give him leverage to keep Alexander in check. And Anton too.

Josephine returned to the hotel. When she reached the presidential suite, everyone was gathered in the main room, including Alexander. It seemed she’d stepped into the middle of a serious conversation. She expected that, but she’d also expected Alexander to be in a yelling match with Sakhr. He looked more concerned than angry.

And everyone quieted when she entered, as though this were her intervention.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“Did you drop the girl off at her home?” Sakhr replied.

“Yes. What’s going on?”

“We’re having a discussion about what to do.”

“Do about what?”

“About Katherine. We need to discuss her power and what that means for us.”

“What’s there to discuss? She figured out how to read Alex’s mind. You’re not honestly telling me you think she’s a threat, do you?”

“That’s what we’re discussing. Christof, tell Josephine what you told us.”

Christof was off to the side of the huddle, as though he’d mostly been listening. He unfolded his arms and spoke. “When Alexander was saying those personal things to her, her power stirred. It’s like tumors are growing beneath the surface. I didn’t know what these tumors were, but when Alex talked down to her, one of the growths took the form of his power. It came to life.”

“Yes? So? It makes sense.”

“She has five other growths forming. I didn’t make the connection then, but she’s developing each of our powers. The better she understands them, the closer she gets to bridging the connection. Soon she’ll have all of our powers.”

“Yes. She and I already figured that out.”

Sakhr looked squarely at her. “Did she try to learn your power?”

“No.”

Sakhr nodded. He seemed relieved.

“What are you so afraid of?” she asked. “She’s just a girl. She wants to come with us.”

“She poses a threat, whether she means to or not.”

“You talk as though she’ll discard us the moment she learns our powers. She’s a little girl with no friends except for us.”

“I understand that, but people change,” Sakhr said. “You haven’t been around as long as I have. Even saints can turn vicious once they have power.”

“Oh, I see what this is about. This is about your control over us. If she learns how to swap bodies, then we might not need you anymore.”

“I told you she’d be like this,” Alexander said.

“Shut up,” Josephine snapped.

“On your ride home with her,” Sakhr said, “did she read your mind?”

“What?”

“Did you let her read your mind?”

Before Josephine could answer, Alex spoke, “No, she didn’t. Don’t worry.”

“What the hell is this about?” asked Josephine. “We’re not going to abandon her.”

“If that’d even be enough,” Alex said. “She figured out my power without reading my mind. Maybe all she needs are her notes. Isn’t that when you saw her power stir the most, Christof?”

Christof replied hesitantly. “Yes.”

“And you think she can put the pieces together later? On her own?” asked Sakhr.

“Think about how much she knows,” Alex said. “Those little notebooks of hers are filled with information about us. She may already have enough. She just has to put them together, and we’ve all seen how she is. If she can, she will.”

“Why are you listening to this?” Josephine demanded of Sakhr. “Alex is just saying these things because of his own vendetta against her. She’s just a child. If you’re worried about her, then take her in. Make sure she’s on our side. Don’t condemn her over crimes she hasn’t even thought of. She’s never done anything remotely threatening.”

“Except for today at dinner,” Sakhr said.

“You mean what she did to Alex? He deserved every thing he got after the stunt he pulled. Are you holding that against her?”

“Follow this to its logical conclusion,” Sakhr said. “She lives with us for decades, centuries even. In this time she masters our powers. Then something happens. It doesn’t matter what, but tension forms between her and us. Suppose she decides she doesn’t need us anymore.”

“She leaves, like any normal person would.”

“And what if she decides she’s safer if we’re dead?”

“She wouldn’t. She’s not a sociopath like you.”

Sakhr’s nostrils flared. “Watch what you say, Josephine.”

“Or what? I’m sorry. I’m not going to stand by while you force the rest of us to turn against a little girl just because she might possibly pose a threat to the precious leverage you hold over us.”

“She is a threat!”

“She’s a girl.”

Alex chimed in. “I’ve seen her thoughts. She’s more ambitious than she looks. She dreams of power.”

“Fuck off, Alex.”

“Look at it this way,” said Anton. “What we have now works. We all look after each other, even if we don’t always get along, because we need one another. Sakhr is in charge, but he needs us just as we need him.”

That surprised Josephine. Not the argument—that was just as vacuous as Sakhr’s reasoning—but that Anton agreed with with Sakhr at all. He was a pig, but he was a rational pig.

“I can’t believe this,” she said. “Are all of you agreeing with him?”

She looked around. Anton and Alex both met her gaze as though they were only trying to make her see reason. Sibyl looked as though she’d rather be anywhere but here. Christof was the same, but at least he met Josephine’s eyes.

He saw her pleading and reluctantly spoke up. “I think we should be careful not to overreact.”

It wasn’t much, but Josephine gestured as though that argument should have ended this nonsense. He was her only ally in this fight.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” said Alex. “If she comes with us tomorrow, she’s going to see this conversation in our heads sooner or later. We don’t trust her, and she won’t trust us when she sees that. We can’t take her with us.” He looked at her gravely again, as if only poor Josephine could see reason.

“You don’t trust her. Maybe we should put it to a vote.”

“This isn’t a democracy, Josephine,” Sakhr said. “We’re leaving tomorrow. We’re not taking her with us.”

“Fine. She stays. I’ll stay with her.”

“No,” Sakhr said, suddenly fierce. “Do not play games with me. I will not tolerate disobedience. You will do as I say or you will never get another body.” His settled down. “Do you see? Do you see what that girl is doing to us already? Go. Go back to your room. We leave tomorrow. You are forbidden from seeing that girl again.”

He pointed toward her bedroom.

Josephine nodded curtly and left. There was no point in arguing further. Rational discussion was gone. Sakhr was afraid of that girl because she might upset his power.

And he was right. It had. Josephine just decided she was staying. Five people would get on that plane tomorrow. The only question now was whether they would remember there was a sixth.

She always figured it would come to this, she just thought it would be Sibyl she’d escape with, but she’d had enough of that spineless woman. If it had come to a vote, Sibyl would have sided with Sakhr out of shear timidness.

Katherine might be disappointed tomorrow, but she was a smart girl. She’d see in Josephine’s head that she was better off without Sakhr and the others.

Josephine smiled as she lay on her bed.

Who’s to say Katherine wouldn’t get their powers anyway? Once Katherine learned Josephine’s power, they could come and go from the coven as they pleased. Every time they’d meet Sakhr, it would be “for the first time”. Once Katherine learned what she needed, they could fade away.

They’d be a friendly little coven of two.

Somewhere in the hotel suite, a door slammed. Footsteps passed by in the hall. Some just left. Who? And where?

Only one place came to mind.

Josephine ran out the door. In the hall, the elevator dinged. Sprinting, Josephine reached it just as the door closed. Sakhr, Anton, and Alexander had been inside. Alex had seen her. He’d flashed that smile of his just as the door sealed.

They were going to kill Katherine.

She could already follow Sakhr’s demented logic. The longer the waited, the more powerful Katherine might get. Kill her now, while she’s still weak and innocent.

“Go back to your room. Josephine,” Sakhr barked through the door. “Do not interfere.”

The elevator descended.

Josephine jammed the call button. Waited. Jammed it again. Waited more. The other elevators took their time. She considered the stairs, but that would take longer. They were on the top floor.

The next elevator finally dinged. The door opened. She stabbed the lobby button. It closed leisurely and descended. At the third floor, it stopped for a large woman to get in. Growling in frustration, Josephine bolted for the stairs.

Two flights. The lobby. The parking lot.

One of their rented sedans was gone.

A knife was jammed into the tire of the other. The rest of the tires were already flat. This would be Alexander’s doing. She could imagine him whistling as he did it.

She scanned the parking lot. A nearby Prius beeped. A woman in a business skirt was walking away from it. Without pause, Josephine knocked her over. The woman screamed. Her car keys scattered from her hand. Josephine snatched them and got in the Prius.

As Josephine drove off, the woman got up, dusted herself off, and continued to the hotel.

25. Spotters

2055, November 12th
Collapse + 6 years

Naema was waiting outside her shack when Josephine showed up. Today, however, Tan was with her. If Naema had thought Josephine stood out on the streets, that’s because she hadn’t seen Tan outside the house. Besides being the first Asian she’d seen in years, he wore shorts and sandals, and a wrinkled button down shirt over a wife beater. He was one umbrellaed coconut drink short of being a misplaced Hawaiian tourist.

“We’re going on a field trip today,” Josephine said.

“To where?”

“To right here.” She showed Naema a map on her phone. It was zoomed in on an intersection south west of Port Harcourt. It seemed to be a random location, but as they walked, Josephine explained.

“Tan and I have a game we play,” she said. “Actually, we have several, but this game plays like this: we open a map of the region, then he and I each take a turn rolling dice. We’ve made rules so we can use those dice rolls to point out a specific place on the map. I got a location, and so did Tan. You score if you go to where the dice pointed you and you find what you’re looking for either there or on the way.”

“So we’re going… here,” Naema pointed on the map, “because you picked it at random?”

“Exactly!”

“And there’s magically going to be something there?”

“It’s not magic. I mean, I guess it might be. Tan’s power is sending us out there so he gets a point, and therefore wins the game.”

“What are we supposed to find?”

“Exemplars.”

“Why?”

“I want to see what affect your power has on them.”

“Isn’t this dangerous?”

Josephine flapped her hand. “We’ll be fine.”

“If you say so.”

“Don’t worry. As long as you’re with me, no one will remember us.”

“Oh yeah,” Naema said. “Katherine, right?”

“Right.” Katherine had been the one who said Josephine should be able to extend her perception of self to include other people. She’d been right. With a practiced mental shift, Josephine could convince herself that the three of them acted as one. They were going to find an exemplar. Not her and the others.

The walk took forty minutes. Their destination was in a coastal area across the bay from one of the Niger delta’s old industrial districts, where pre-Collapse oil factories still loomed. They walked along a dirt road near a beach carpeted with glass and plastic. The buildings here were rowhouses, each mashed together with varying colors and dilapidation—like rows of old LEGOs amid laundry lines and bamboo scaffolds.

This wasn’t a place Naema would go alone. The people who tolerated living in these unmaintained buildings were only here to avoid the Lakirans. That meant crime and contraband. Not even the Lakirans bothered patrolling these places, not yet anyhow.

“Are you sure we’ll find an exemplar here?” Naema asked.

“Nope,” replied Josephine.

“Nope?”

“I mean nope. The dice have us going here. It doesn’t mean there’ll be anything there.”

“But what about Tan’s power?”

“We rolled dice on a small map. If there aren’t any exemplars around to find, then tough luck. The dice still have to show something. It’s like if Tan plays solitaire with missing cards. No amount of luck will fix that. And even if there was an exemplar to find, Tan might not have rolled the dice well enough. His power works in his subconscious micromovements, so if Tan picks a die up and drops it without shaking it, his power might not have enough chance to set things in motion.”

“I rolled good,” Tan said.

“Yes. He rolled well. I watched him. And look! I bet you this is it here.”

They came around a nest of buildings. A commotion was up ahead. A Lakiran prowler platform was suspended over the dirt road, a floor above the tallest building. On the road, peace officers were loading handcuffed Nigerians into large steel pods on the road. They were the same pods that would come down like meteors if a fight broke out near the food tents. Naema had never seen it happen, but she’d heard their distant thunderous claps, and she’d heard from others. The pods would crash down from the sky, their hatches would burst open, and a soldier would jump out with his gun already firing.

It seemed the pods could also ship people off. Once the officers secured their perpetrators into the pods and sealed the door, it would lift and arc toward the floating citadel over the bay.

Naema ducked behind a wall. Tan was already there. Josephine stared at the commotion.

“Looks like a bust,” Josephine said. “I don’t see an exemplar, do you?”

“This isn’t the place you pointed out,” Naema replied.

“But it’s where we’re meant to be. Tan gets a point if we see an exemplar along the way, and there should be one here. Lakirans don’t make busts without at least one exemplar present. Look around, see if you can spot him.”

“Me? No. You do it.”

“But we’re here to find out what happens when you see them.”

“They’ll drag me away.”

“No they won’t. I’m here. Besides, look.” Josephine pointed at the windows of several houses. People were leaned out to stare. “Everyone is watching.”

Hesitantly, Naema looked around the corner. Most of the action had already taken place. The soldiers were just escorting out those they arrested. A ring of small drones bordered the scene. Each was spaced equidistantly from each other and fixed as solidly in the air as the prowler up above. They were wall bots— devices that linked together to create invisible repulse barriers. No one could come or go from the scene, so there was no point in running.

The soldiers knew this, so with their job done, they waited about looking bored. In the prowler, a guard manned a large rail weapon attached to the craft. Even he wasn’t paying attention.

Soldiers came out of the building carrying crates and armloads of cans. It was a food bust. Just days ago, this would have spelled trouble for Naema’s family. Even if they didn’t get food from here, it meant more people would be lining up outside the food tents.

More soldiers emerged dragging detainees. Then behind them came a clean-cut man dressed in a white double-breasted coat. He carried a bulky tablet in his hands like a prophet carrying commandments.

Naema knew that was him immediately, but that didn’t stop Josephine from repeatedly poking her shoulder.

“That’s him. That’s him.”

“I know. Stop.”

“Are you looking at him?”

“Yea. Stop.”

The exemplar watched as more pods landed on site. These ones slowed before hitting the ground, making a gentle thump. Soldiers secured detainees inside and sent them off.

A higher ranking soldier approached the exemplar and chatted. He gestured toward the building. The exemplar glanced, and for the first time, looked down at his steel tablet. He frowned, tilted his head, then turned on the screen to navigate its menu.

“I think it’s working.” Josephine said.

The exemplar batted the tablet as though it were a malfunctioning flashlight. Josephine shook Naema as though Naema were not psyched enough for her liking.

“Okay, stop. Can we go?”

“Not yet. Look away. I want to know if it comes back.”

Naema waited around the corner where Tan was smoking. Only Josephine watched. “He’s still fiddling with it,” she said excitedly. “I think it’s broken. Yes. It’s definitely broken. Look! No, don’t look. Just you, Tan.”

Tan didn’t come over. Josephine didn’t notice. “He’s trying to read minds now. It looks like he can’t do it, but I’m not sure. I’m going to go talk to him.”

“What?” said Naema.

“No,” said Tan.

“Just for a moment. I’ll erase their minds afterward. I just want to confirm if she broke it or just disabled it.”

“No,” Tan said again. “Mobcams. They see us. Exemplar Bishop come.”

“Mobcams?” asked Naema.

“Mobile security cameras,” Josephine replied. “They’re hard as hell to see.”

“Oh, you mean spy bots?” Those were hard to spot, but occasionally Naema would catch one out of the corner of her eye when she was in line at the food tents. They looked like metal baseballs covered in camouflaged grays and brown. Like everything else the Lakirans used, they moved around using repulsers, which meant when they weren’t moving, they were as still as the rusty buildings they hid among. Their movement was their best chance of seeing them, and they moved rarely. After a shootout at the food tents, a few had been camped around the building roofs nearby, constantly providing live feed to soldiers in offices miles away. They hung there motionless for days.

It made sense that the Lakirans would bring some on a bust. “What’s so bad about them?” she asked.

“Because I can’t erase a computer’s mind,” Josephine said. “If someone is watching through the Mobcam and they see me, they might report me. Might. That’s if I do anything suspicious. Or if they recognize me, which they won’t.”

Tan spoke. “You are the only white woman here. I am the only asian. Test is done. We leave now.”

Josephine glanced around the corner again. “There might not even be any Modcams.”

“We check. We find one, we go.”

“Fine, but quickly. Let’s set the exemplar at twelve o’clock.”

Tan pulled out dice. He and Josephine hunched down as though playing a game of jacks. Tan handed the dice to Josephine, who started to roll, but Tan stopped her and looked at Naema expectantly.

Naema understood. She turned her back on them and closed her eyes. “Will you at least tell me what you’re doing?”

“It’s another game,” Josephine explained. The dice rolled. “You can turn around.”

Naema did so. They’d tossed three dice.

“I call it Spotters. Look at this. The twelve-sided die shows five, so I look at my five o’clock.” She counted clockwise from the exemplar. “And this die indicates angle, and this one distance. So… the point I need to look at is about twenty meters underground. Okay then.”

Josephine stared purposely at the dirt for a few seconds.

“I don’t see anything.” She said it with absolute seriousness. “Score is zero-zero. Your turn.”

Tan took the dice. Naema turned around for him to roll. He read his results expertly and stuck his head around the corner. He nodded. “Modcam. Pink building.”

“Where?” Josephine looked. “I don’t see it.”

“There. Pink. By antenna.”

“You’re making it up. I don’t see… oh.”

“We go now.”

“Fine.” She cast one last glance back at the exemplar. “I’m pretty sure it’s broken though.”

As they walked back, Naema came up beside Josephine. “So you make games out of real life problems a lot?”

“When we can. Katherine was the one who taught me to ask questions about our powers. So we asked ourselves how we could use Tan’s power to help us survive. There are a whole lot of ways actually.”

“Like what? Does Tan roll dice when you travel?”

“He does, but I don’t know if it helps. Whenever Tan and I have to move, he rolls dice over a map of Europe or wherever. The object of the game is that we find someplace where we’re safe, but it’s… unreliable. We follow it anyway, but sometimes we run into trouble within days of moving somewhere. Once, his dice roll would have put us in the heart of Lakiran-occupied territory.”

“Why doesn’t it work?”

“I don’t know. Could be a lot of reasons. Maybe his power doesn’t look that far in the future. Maybe there just aren’t that many safe places to go anymore. We can play the game, but if there’s no way to win, then there’s no way to win. The dice still have to show something, just like how we might not have actually found an exemplar. If there were no exemplar we could find today, then the dice would have been actually random.

Josephine leveled her gaze on Tan. “The other reason our game might not work for traveling is because the winning conditions might not be what we agreed upon. We say we’re going to somewhere safe, but it’s fascinating how many times we end up in places with casinos.”

Tan kept walking and smoking as though he couldn’t hear her.

“Point is,” she said. “If there’s anything I learned from Katherine, it’s never stop asking questions. If you think you should be able to do something with your power, you probably can. You’ve just got to try.”

24. Designer General

2055, October 16th
Collapse + 6 years

Helena examined herself before her three way dress mirrors. She twirled once, twice, then peered over her shoulder in a come-hither look so perfect that Winnie wondered whether she’d practiced it. The red folds of her dress swayed with momentum. The body-hugging gray slip beneath shimmered with each turn. Helena struck an authoritarian pose and traced her fingers along her thigh and body.

“It looks good,” said Helena, “but it’s not what I want.”

“What don’t you like about it?”

“It’s too… asymmetric. The asymmetry is good, but it’s too much of it. I like the colors though. Except not quite. Maybe invert them? Shimmering red under silk gray. What do you think?”

“I think the darker color beneath works better. If you switched them, you’d look like molten lava.”

“Hmm.” Helena folded the cloth layers around her thigh so the red was beneath the gray. Looking in the mirror, she sneered. “No. It doesn’t work, but these colors, I want them more…” She waggled her hands, “…you know?”

“I think I do. How about something like this?” Winnie tapped through her tablet to a design she had queued up. Helena skipped over and plopped onto her bed beside Winnie to watch.

Winnie understood now why no designer in the city could help Helena. Helena was a girl who would accept nothing short of exactly what she wanted. The problem was she had no idea what that was.

They were in Helena’s personal suite at the top of the Capital Tower. For hours, Winnie had designed dress after dress, with fashions ranging from northern winter to southern tropic, conservative to sultry, festive to mourning. Helena’s personal assembler was queued up with dresses, as were all assemblers in the staff quarters. Even the most patient designer should be in a screaming rage by now, which is why it surprised Winnie that she was having so much fun.

She brought up a dress similar to the one Helena was wearing, only dark blue with a sandstone color beneath. “Obviously this wouldn’t work for the charity,” said Winnie, “but do you see the pattern on the slip? Something like that might add texture.”

“Yeah. Texture. That’s what it needs. Show me what that would look like on this.” Helena gestured to herself.

Winnie tabbed back to the red and gray dress. With a few deft strokes of her stylus, she applied the pattern to the slip, took away its asymmetry, and reduced the lopsidedness of the outer dress. “How about that?” She tilted the tablet toward Helena.

Helena nodded. “Queue it up.”

Winnie sent the design to an assembler.

“Anything else ready yet?” asked Helena.

Winnie imagined all the assemblers at once—a recent trick Victoria had helped her acquire.

“No. They’re all busy, but we’ve still got these ones you haven’t tried.” Winnie motioned toward a few outfits on the bed.

“Sure.” Helena yanked off her dress as though it were a gym shirt and reached for the next. “You are so much better than the other designers. All those old people are stuck on fashion from before the Collapse. The world has changed.”

She pulled on the dress and stood before the mirror. “When I become queen, I’m going to make you my chief designer. You’ll be like the designer general for the world. I won’t wear the same dress twice.”

The idea gave Winnie pause. Six hours of trying to meet Helena’s constantly shifting expectations was one thing, but doing it for life? It would be grueling challenge which would constantly push her to new ideas, but it would make her a big name in fashion, which had always been her dream. Though she wasn’t sure how she felt about Helena dictating her future like that. Hopefully it was a whim that Helena would soon forget.

“So long as I could have a team to do all the work for me,” Winnie said.

“You will have servants from around the world, from every imaginable culture.” Helena posed in the mirror. “I like this one. I want it. Not for the charity, but I want it.” She peeled it off and tossed it toward the reclamator. It missed and crumbled beside it.

“I thought you wanted that one,” said Winnie.

“I do, but not that one. That one was assembled.”

“So?”

“I’m not going to wear assembled clothes. That’s what everyone else wears. I’ll wear natural, custom-tailored fabrics.”

Winnie should have just accepted it, but she couldn’t. “But assembled clothes are better than natural fabrics.”

“How can they be? By their very definition, assembled clothes are worthless.”

“If you have that dress handmade, the fabric will be a weave instead of a micromesh, which will make it tear and wear out faster.”

“So? I’ll only wear it once.”

“But it will also have seams, which will interrupt the flow of the dress, and it’ll be dyed instead of having the pigment infused into the mesh, so the color won’t be as good. I think there are only four dyes in the entire world that assemblers can’t make a better version of, and that dress doesn’t use any of them.”

Helena turned to her. “Are you saying natural fabrics are dumb?”

Winnie took care. In the walk-in closet paces away were rows upon rows of natural fabrics. “No. There’s definitely a place for them in high fashion, but I think a lot of people overuse them just to be different. It’s like driving a muscle car when everyone else is flying around in hoppers. Sure, it’s cool, but everyone else is getting around faster than you are. It’s really just for showing off money.”

Helena narrowed her eyes. Winnie pressed on. “Fashion still thinks woven textiles are better because they’re more expensive, but that’s the only thing they have going for them. It’s like… an old idea. Designers use the old world textiles because they haven’t realized yet the new world textiles are better in every way. They’re stuck in the past.”

Helena turned back to the mirror. “But if I wore assembled clothes, then anybody could copy me.”

“What’s it matter if you’re going to wear something new every day? They couldn’t keep up.”

Helena considered it. “That’s a good point. Did you know my mother’s entire cabinet wear handmade clothes? Even the exemplars.”

“Yeah, and their clothes don’t fit as well as a commoner’s clothes do. Plus it’s a huge waste of land to grow textile crops, so it would send a better message.”

Helena slipped on another dress and examined it in the mirror. “It would, wouldn’t it? When I become queen, maybe I’ll outlaw natural textiles.”

“I’m not sure I’d go that far.”

“Why not? I’ll be able to do what I want. People shouldn’t wear them if they’re such a waste. Obviously, I’ll still wear them, but only for things they make sense for, like you said.”

“I feel like people might resent that.”

“So? Who cares?”

“Because…” Winnie chose her words carefully, “when you outlaw something, everybody wants it more. You know? Grass is greener and all that. But if you made it unfashionable to wear natural fabrics, then nobody would. You can set trends with your own wardrobe. You’d be the queen who also leads in fashion. People would want to dress like you.”

The princess dwelled on this. She smiled. “I like it. This is the reason why you’re going to be my fashion advisor.” She tried some gold accessories with her dress. “You know, you’re the first person to disagree with me in a long time. Everyone else is just pathetic. They’re so afraid of my mom. During tryouts, this girl Amy tried out for the team, she was good, but I wanted this other girl, Emma, so she could hang out with us when we’re at away games. I told the coach, and he kicked Amy off, saying some crap about her grades, even after he’d promised her a spot. Then he took on Emma, and she sucked. She quit after a month, but coach still won’t put Amy on the team. It’s always like that. Last year, the dean caught me drinking with some guys on school grounds. He suspended the guys, but he didn’t even write me up. Just gave me some shit about my future. And Isabella and Bridgette? God, don’t get me started. I could tell them they’d look good in kilt-skirts and they’d wear them. I don’t know why I waste my time with those two. I should be hanging out with you.”

Winnie kept her eyes fixed on her tablet.

Helena continued, “They’re just nobodies with rich parents. You’re a flair. There’s nobody else in the world like you. You’re the kind of friend I should have.”

“At least Isabella and Bridget are good at basketball.”

Helena snorted. “Hardly. Besides, it’s not like I care. I only do basketball because my mom makes me. It’s kind of sad that I’m way better than all the other players. It’s probably my genetics. My mom was captain of her varsity rugby team. She got a scholarship to Princeton even though she didn’t need it. Plus whatever my dad did.”

Her father? Winnie felt she should know who that was by now. “What did your dad do?”

“Who knows?”

“What do you mean? Couldn’t you ask him?”

Helena gave Winnie a funny look.

“Or your mom?” Winnie asked, but she’d already revealed her ignorance.

“You don’t know?” Helena asked.

“Know what?”

“Oh right. You’re from nowhere. My mom never married. She had a lot of men tested on all sorts of levels to find the best genetic candidate. Then she had me artificially conceived. Only my mom knows who she finally picked. Not even my father knows.”

“Sounds romantic.”

“I know, right? It makes sense though. You can’t leave something like the heir of the world up to a romantic whim. I’ll probably do the same when the time comes.”

“Do you think your mom will ever marry for love?”

Helena nearly laughed. “My mom? No. I’m not sure she’s capable of love. She doesn’t even like people touching her. And no one could ever live up to her standards.”

“What about you?”

“I don’t think anyone will live up to my standards either. I might have a harem of toys though, but who knows? My mom once told me it’s impossible to fall in love after you’ve read everyone’s thoughts. I can believe that. So many people are such perverts.”

A knock came.

“Yes?”

Madeline entered. “Dinner will be the main hall in ten minutes, Your Highness.”

“Very well. Inform my mother that Winnie will be joining us.”

Winnie startled. That was news to her.

“I’m afraid your mother is at the African Ministerial Summit today and will not be joining you, ma’am.”

Helena paused. “Fine. Then inform the chef.”

“Very good, ma’am.” Madeline bowed and left.

“Pity,” Helena said. “I was looking forward to showing off my new dress.”

She currently wore a cream-colored, gauzy dress with many folded layers of different patterns. Winnie had thrown it together while brainstorming by substituting the textile of an existing dress with a modern transparent nylon mesh so light that the hem and sleeves drifted like tissue paper. Winnie was going to throw it out, until it caught Helena’s eye. Now that Helena was wearing it, it was more scandalous than if Helena wore nothing at all.

“Your mom would be okay with that?”

“Hell, no. She’d make me change immediately. She’s such a prude. One time, Isabella and I went to get tattoos together. I was going to get one right here.” Helena pointed to her pubic mound. “My mom found out and called in an orbital response team to storm the tattoo parlor. She went ballistic.”

“Seriously?”

“She’s such a freak. Everything about my life is controlled by her. Basketball, the charity, even where I’m going to college. I’m the heir to the world, but I don’t even get to decide my own life.

“Wow. That sucks.”

Helena shrugged. She changed out of the sheer dress.

“Honestly,” Winnie said. “I’m kind of relieved not to have dinner with your mom. I’m pretty sure she’d use it as an excuse to grill me about my progress. I think the only reason I don’t have lessons every single day is because she knows I’d run away after a week.”

“I know. She can be such a bitch when she wants to be.”

“I wish she’d slow down. I’m perfectly happy to develop my flair, but she just pushes so much. Hours of exercises every day.”

“Yeah.”

“Does she make you do sessions like that?”

Helena frowned. “No. Why would she?”

“You don’t… for your flair?”

Winnie regretted asking it even before she’d finished. Helena spun around. Her stare pierced Winnie.

“No. Why would I be a flair?”

“I’m sorry. I just thought with the genetics thing and your mom being one—”

“Flairs aren’t inherited, idiot. Everyone knows that. Don’t you think my mom would be breeding flairs if it was?”

“I’m sorry. No. I didn’t know. I didn’t even know flairs existed a month ago. In Washington, most of us still think exemplars are some kind of witch.”

Helena studied Winnie. “You people in North America are so backwards.” She donned a more conservative dress. “I don’t need a flair because I’ll have yours as soon as I’m queen. I’ll have everyone’s. My mom is going to leave me her necklace of glyphs. Then she’s going to give me her master glyph too.”

“Her master glyph?”

“That’s the glyph of her own power. When I have that, I’ll be able to do everything she can do. I’ll be stronger actually, because I’ll still be collecting flairs after she’s gone. That’s why you’re training your power so much. You’re making it better for us. When I rule the world, I’m going to decide who gets powers. You’ll be working for me because I’ll always be more powerful than you, and I will make you train hard just like my mother does so you can make me more powerful. That is why I don’t need a flair.”

“Okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I’m not upset. I’m just making sure you understand.” She eyed Winnie. When Winnie kept her eyes on her tablet, Helena’s expression softened. She sat on the bed and slung her arm over Winnie’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. I won’t actually be that hard on you. I’m not my mom. Maybe I’ll even give you some powers too. Together we’ll be lords over everyone else. Let’s go to dinner.”

“Let me just call Ms. Montes.”

“Who?”

“The woman at my dorm. I need to let her know I won’t be at dinner.”

“She’ll figure it out. Come on.”

Again, Winnie tread carefully. “I guess I don’t have to tell her, but she would be grateful if I did. It would make it easier to get her to do what I want later.”

“I guess so,” said Helena. “I’ll have Madeline call her then. It’s reasons like this that you’re going to be my advisor.”

On the way to the dining room, Winnie thought back on her conversation with the queen. Could Victoria really think her daughter was fit to rule? She must see that Helena was living in her own spoiled world. What was going to happen when Helena inherited her mother’s glyphs and saw what everyone really thought about her? What Winnie really thought about her?

But maybe Helena could change. She wasn’t fit to rule right now, but like Victoria said, she might be some day. Winnie would be beside her if Helena wanted it. She’d be Helena’s fashion advisor, but maybe she could guide Helena on more than just fashion.

23. Insecurities

2022, March 23th
Collapse – 27 years

“What if you’re focusing past them, but your eyes just happen to line up with theirs?” Katherine asked.

“I don’t know,” said Alexander. “Whenever I’m reading minds, I’m focused on my target. I wouldn’t look past them.”

“Can we try it?”

“Sure. Why not?” Alex smiled broadly. It was a good smile.

For Katherine’s final night, Sakhr had taken everyone to the highest class restaurant this small town had to offer—a repurposed townhouse with tables set up throughout small rooms. Sakhr had reserved a room for the coven. It had mild art along the walls and plastic logs in a fireplace which flickered with orange electric light. Whenever the waiter left, they had the room to themselves.

Katherine tried staring through Alex, her eyes wide.

“Can you read my mind?” she asked.

“Nope.”

“And you’re sure your eyes are lined up with mine?”

“Yep.” Alexander made of show of covering one eye as he checked.

“What if you focus on my eyes and I look past you.”

“Okay.”

“Are you getting anything?”

“Nope.”

“Really? How about now?”

“Nothing.”

“Hmm.” Katherine took notes of the results. Alexander’s smile switched off while she wasn’t looking.

Apart from a few side conversations, Katherine’s questions were the center of attention. She had a prominent seat between Josephine and Sakhr, giving her a line of sight to every other witch.

“So I guess it probably doesn’t work if they’re unconscious then,” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Alexander said. His smile was back at full force “We could always knock out one of the busboys if you’d like to try it.”

“That’s okay.” Kat missed the sarcasm as she took notes. Alexander’s eyes met Sakhr’s. Tension passed between them.

Josephine stepped in. “Maybe you’d like to ask me more questions instead?”

“Oh, well. I guess so. I mostly asked you everything I could think of on Saturday, but now that I know powers can improve, there was something I was wondering.”

“Yes?”

“How come when we both talked to people on Saturday, you could make people forget the entire conversation, but you can’t make them forget if only I did any talking?”

“Because then I wasn’t involved in the conversation. I can only block memories I’m a part of.”

“But you were. You were standing right there, even if you didn’t say anything.”

“I guess it just wasn’t enough.”

“So you can make people forget things I say, but only if you’ve said something during the conversation. Does that make sense to you? I feel like it shouldn’t matter. You were there. You were part of it.”

“I just can’t. The switches in my head don’t do that.”

“But you should be able to. I think you should be able extend your power out to anything you’re even slightly associated with, any shared memory. I think you could make people forget about the entire coven as long as you’re a part of it.”

“My power works for me, not others.”

“That’s only because you believe that. Think about this, you can make people forget about you when they see you drive down the road, right?”

“Right.”

“And it’s not like they just forget about you and only remember the car. You can make them forget the car was there, right?”

“Okay?”

“What if Sakhr was in the car too. Would that mean they’d forget about you and the car, but they’d somehow remember seeing Sakhr? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“That’s a good point,” said Sakhr. “And you have done this before. Remember Berlin?”

“I don’t know…” said Josephine.

“It makes perfect sense psychologically,” continued Katherine. “If a person gets into a car accident, they say, ‘someone hit me,’ not, ‘someone’s car hit my car.’ That’s because when people drive, their cars become an extension of them. You do the same. When you drive, you see the car as part of yourself. That’s why you can drive a car into somebody’s house and leave them wondering where the hole came from. When we were in the park, you could use a stick to knock over somebody’s drink and they’ll forget both you and the stick, because you see the stick as part of yourself. It’s you knocking over their drink, but if you throw a ball, they remember the ball because you stop seeing the ball as part of yourself. The ball knocked over their drink, not you. But if you could trick yourself into expanding what you consider part of you, then I think you could expand your power too. So if you imagined the entire coven as an extension of you, then you could blank us all from people’s memory.”

“Very clever,” Sakhr nodded. “That would be useful.”

“Hold up,” Josephine said. “I’ve thought about this before. I’ve been trying for decades to grow my power like that. I never got anywhere.”

“Maybe you just need a coach. I think you just have to visualize it properly. Next time we go to the park, we’ll try it. Alexander, could you come too? I might need help making sure she’s visualizing correctly.”

“Sure.” Alexander’s smile snapped back on, “that is, if Josephine is okay with letting me read her mind.”

“Would you be okay with that?” Katherine asked. “I wish I could read your mind instead. That would help me more, but I think even a third party could work.”

“Certainly,” Josephine said. “I’m looking forward to it.” She could always make Alex forget what he read.

“Okay, great. And you’re sure you’re okay with this, Alex? It might take a long time.”

“Anything I can do to help,” he said.

“Thanks! And by the way, thank you for answering all my questions. I was worried I was boring you the other day.”

“Of course not.”

“Cool. Because actually I have a few more questions if that’s okay.”

“Absolutely.”

Katherine missed the irritation behind his grin. “Thanks. I’d like to know more about how you visualize your mind reading. Do you have a mental exercise you do? Like, do you imagine looking through a window into their minds?”

“No. It just happens.”

“Did you ever confuse their thoughts for yours?”

“Nope.”

“Never? Sakhr said you used to do that.”

“Oh right. Then I guess I did.

“How do you tell them apart? Are their thoughts in a different part of your head?”

“Sure.”

Her brow furrowed at the ambivalent answer. “Well, what was it like the first time you read a mind? How could you tell it wasn’t just in your head?”

“Because their thoughts weren’t mine. They didn’t have the same voice. So for instance, when I look in your eyes, A voice in my head is excited about what to ask next, so I know it can’t be coming from me.”

“You never mix them up?”

“Nope.”

“How often do you catch people’s private thoughts?”

“All the time.”

“Do you ever feel bad about it?”

“What does that have to do with my power?”

“I was just wondering.”

“No. I don’t have a moral problem with seeing people’s private thoughts. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re not exactly the most moral bunch. Your private thoughts are tame compared to most. Take your desire to steal Britney’s body and taunt her while she’s stuck in your old one. I know you weren’t planning on telling us about that because you didn’t want us to think you were ‘psycho’. Except that we steal people’s bodies all the time, and then we kill them. Then we take all of their money and cut ties with their families. That’s much worse than your daydreams. Besides, I know that your desire isn’t wrath. It’s envy. You want to have her body, because your own body disgusts you so much that you don’t even include yourself in your own sexual fantasies.”

Katherine’s face went white.

“Alexander.” Sakhr’s voice cut through the dining room like a slammed fist.

“I’m sorry. Were we not telling her about the body stealing yet? I figured she’d already put that together given how many questions she’s asked about it.”

“Alexander, you will cease this immediately.”

“Shouldn’t she know what kind of people we are before signing on with us? Wasn’t that the point of waiting around? It’s not like it matters. She’ll still come with us. Everyone in this town sees her as an undesirable little runt. Even our waiters are wondering what we’re doing with her. By the way, is our check coming? We’ve been sitting here a long time.”

Katherine had slowly withdrawn into herself. She clutched her notebook to her chest as though it were a source of warmth. This was the same timid child Josephine had seen sitting on the school steps where the girls had tormented her.

Josephine wrapped her arms about Katherine and pulled her close. “Shut up, Alex. What the hell are you thinking?”

“I’m sorry. Was I rude?”

Sakhr rose. “Alexander, leave this restaurant now. I will speak with you back at the hotel.”

“Sure, fine.” Alex tossed his napkin on the table and rose.

“Wait.” It was Christof. Everyone looked at him, and then to whom he was staring: Katherine.

Still wrapped in Josephine’s arms, she looked up and met Alex’s gaze head on.

The silence hung in the air.

“What?” Alex uttered, his expression perplexed.

Katherine spoke. “You want a pretty girl’s body too.”

For the first time that Josephine had ever seen, Alex broke eye contact first.

Katherine continued. “You’ve always thought about asking Sakhr to give you a woman’s body instead of another man’s, but you’re worried everyone would think you’re gay. You’re not. You know you’re not. You just think to yourself sometimes that if you’d had a choice at birth, you would have picked female. Then you tell yourself you’re okay with being a man, but sometimes at when you’re laying in bed, you rub your hands across your legs and pretend—”

“Shut the fuck up you little bitch!”

He hurled his beer glass at her. She squeaked and recoiled. Josephine deflected the glass, but beer splattered both of them. Alex’s eyes were wild, but his gaze did not look near Katherine. After several seething breaths, he stormed from room.

Everyone was quiet at first, until Sibyl quietly asked, “Did you just read his mind?”

“Yeah.” Katherine paused, then, “Yeah! I don’t know how. It’s like I just figured out how he did it, and then I did it, like I finished a puzzle.” She looked at Sibyl. Her eyes lit. “I can still do it!”

“Christof?” Sakhr said. “What are you seeing?”

“I… I’m not sure.”

“Is she a mimic?”

Bewildered, he shrugged. “I just don’t know.”

“I see it!” Katherine was looking into Christof’s eyes. “I see what you see in me.”

Startled, Christof averted his gaze.

Katherine hardly noticed. “Oh my God. This is so awesome. I just get how it’s done now. I always felt like if I could just figure it out enough, I’d know how to do it myself.” She spun to Josephine. “I can read minds now! I can probably help you so much faster now too.”

Sakhr stood. “Yes. Indeed. However, we’re making a scene. Perhaps it’s best if we call it a night.”

Katherine spun to him. “Right now?”

“Yes. Between Alexander and the time, I think we’ve had enough excitement for one day.” He pulled out a wallet and left several large bills on the table. While everyone else stood, Katherine remained seated.

“But I just found out what my power is. Why do I have to go home now?”

Sakhr smiled warmly… at the table. “Tonight is the last night you’ll ever have to go home. Make sure you’re packed and ready. We have a long trip tomorrow. Then you’ll have all the time in the world to explore your power.”

“Okay…”

“Josephine. If you’ll take her back.”

Sibyl moved to.

Sakhr stopped her. “No. Just Josephine. Sibyl, I might need your help with Alex.”

The order struck Josephine as strange. Sibyl wouldn’t be any help with Alex. If anything, it was usually her that needed help from Sakhr when Alex was hard on her.

Outside, Sakhr addressed everyone. “All right. Let’s find wherever Alex sulked off to. Once we’re back, he and I are going to have a long, long talk.” He looked in Katherine’s general direction. “I must apologize for Alexander. He forgets his place.”

“It’s okay,” she said.

“Go home. Sleep well. Remember. You mustn’t tell your father anything, even to say goodbye.”

“I know.”

Sakhr handed car keys to Josephine. “Take her. We’ll meet you at the hotel.”

The ride to Katherine’s house was muted—not what Josephine would have expected from an inquisitive girl who’d just discovered her secret ability. Josephine tried to break the silence.

“I’m glad somebody finally threw mind reading in Alex’s face.”

“Yeah.” Katherine was gazing out the window.

“For years he’s been using everyone’s personal lives against them. But you taught him a lesson. I don’t know if he’ll forgive you, but I don’t think he’ll ever bully you again.”

“I guess,” Katherine wasn’t convinced. Alexander’s behavior had tainted Katherine’s opinion of the coven. Josephine’s optimism couldn’t change that.

She kept trying anyway. “Who knows? Maybe Alex’s power was just the first. Maybe you can learn all our powers.”

“Maybe.” Katherine hesitated. “Why does Sakhr keep him around?”

Josephine knew who she was referring to. “He’s a jerk, but he’s one of us. We’re a family. Sometimes you don’t like your siblings, but you put up with them anyway.”

“Sakhr doesn’t see him as family. He hates Alex. Everybody does except for Anton. Sakhr only keeps him around because he’s useful, and Alex knows that. He just doesn’t care.”

“You saw a lot in his mind, didn’t you?”

Katherine shrugged halfheartedly.

“Maybe now that you can read minds too,” Josephine said. “Alexander will have to behave himself.”

“Maybe…”

“Is something wrong, kiddo?”

Katherine turned to look at Josephine. Josephine had her eyes on the road. She pulled onto Katherine’s street and parked before her house.

“No. Nothing’s wrong.”

“You’re morose for somebody who just learned how to read minds.”

“I guess.” A pause. “Do you think you could stay for a while?”

“I have to get back.”

“Please? Now that I can read minds, I can help you improve your power too. I was serious before. I really do think you’re not using it to its full potential. You could be erasing so much more than just yourself from people’s minds.”

“And we’ll have plenty of time to work on it tomorrow on the plane. I promise.”

“Please?”

Josephine shook her head. “Sakhr wants me back. Besides, this is your last night. You should spend it with your father. We’ll have lifetimes to spend together.”

Katherine was silent a while. When she spoke, the words came out flat. “Okay.” She opened the car door. “Tomorrow then.”

“Flight’s at ten!” Josephine called after her. “I’ll pick you up here at seven fifty.”

“Yeah, sure.” Katherine smiled. It seemed forced.

Josephine watched as Katherine walked up to her house. She thought of getting out and joining Katherine, just for a while. After the way Alexander had treated her, she could probably use some assurance. She’d just spend a few minutes with her, that’s all.

She didn’t though.

22. A Bleached Flag

2055, October 5th
Collapse + 6 years

“Keep your eyes open,” said Victoria.

Winnie hadn’t realized she’d been clenching them shut. She met Victoria’s gaze again. In her mind, she was holding the image of Javier Santos in her head. He was an imperial guard who had appeared at Winnie’s bedroom door that morning and introduced himself. Now, he was somewhere in Porto Maná. Winnie didn’t know where.

Carefully, she expanded her awareness to Javier’s surroundings. A shuttle terminal? That wasn’t right.

“No,” said the queen. “You’re not doing as I instructed.”

“I’m trying.”

“Stop trying. It’s not about trying. It’s about realizing. You’re still trying to find him like you were when we started. You still think you need to know his location in order to know where he is.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Winnie, I can see your thoughts. I know what you’re doing. You may think you’re visualizing him without his location, but you’re still treating him differently than you would anything else.”

“But I’m not.”

“Fine. Let me show you. Clear your mind. Now visualize your dorm room.”

Winnie did so. After four weeks, her dorm had a sense of being lived in. Her own decorations were up, and her possessions littered surfaces.

“Now visualize the Egyptian pyramids.”

They sprang to mind. At first she saw them from overhead. On one side were dusty, ramshackle buildings that stretched on for miles. On the other: desert. Then Winnie saw inside. The halls were in worse shape than an alley in a bad neighborhood. Spray paint marred the walls. Litter covered the floor. After the Collapse, the authorities that had protected against such profane vandalism fell apart. She’d found that most constructions of human triumph had suffered, as though vandals targeted them maliciously, to desecrate the marvels of the old world they’d never get to enjoy again.

“Good. Now clear your mind again.”

Winnie did.

“Now point to your dorm.”

“What?”

“Point. With your finger.”

Winnie glanced around. She oriented herself with her mind by figuring out how this office room was arranged compared to the rest of the campus, then she pointed downward at the wall.

“Okay. That’s close. Now point to the pyramids, but this time, don’t cheat and use your power.”

“Like, through the earth?”

“Yes. Through the earth. Stop hesitating. You clearly must know where it is if you could pull it to mind like that. You must know its exact direction and distance relative to you. So do it.”

“You know I can’t.”

“Then how come you could visualize it?”

“Because I’ve already been there… in my head. I’ve already seen the place.”

“You saw Javier this morning.”

“The pyramids don’t move.”

“Of course it moves. It moves around the sun, through the galaxy.”

“It doesn’t move compared to me.”

“Nonsense. Take your dorm. It was much closer to you this morning.”

Winnie nearly rolled her eyes. “Yeah, but then I walked away from it. It didn’t hide somewhere in the city like Javier.”

“That distinction is entirely inside your head. You, Javier, and your dorm all split up this morning. It happened because two of the three of you were waggling a pair of legs. Now you’re in different places, and for whatever reason you think you can only find one of those two… because of what? Because you can kind of point to it?”

“Yeah.”

“Winnie, if I knocked you out and sent you somewhere else in the country so that you had absolutely no idea where you were, and you couldn’t point to your dorm, would you be able to visualize it?”

“Are you going to do that?”

“If it would help you make a breakthrough, I can’t promise I won’t. Answer the question.”

“Yeah. I probably could, but it’s still not the same. You want me to find Javier so I can tell what’s around him. I already know about the world around my dorm. It’s easier.”

“Easier, perhaps. But it is not the difference between possible and impossible. If, while I’m absconding you to some other part of the country, I have some men burn down your dorm and tear up the surrounding land so nothing looks the same, you would still see the dorm, wouldn’t you?”

“You’re not going to do that, are you?”

“No promises. But you already know you’d still see your dorm. You don’t need details to see something. Your flair gives you details.”

“But if your people actually picked up the dormitory and put it somewhere else, then I wouldn’t. I’d see empty air where the dorm used to be.”

“Utter nonsense. Your power is not GPS dependent. Suppose we were riding a train. You’re sitting in one car, and I’m in another car further up. You’re telling me that if you tried to visualize me in my car, that you’d actually see empty air above the track somewhere behind us?”

“No… I’d probably see you.” Winnie’s mind viewed the clock by her bed in her dorm. Four hours now. That’s how long she’d been in this office arguing logic with the queen. It wouldn’t be so bad if Victoria hadn’t fixated on this one particular exercise all session.

“I think you’d see me too,” Victoria said, “no matter how far the train traveled.”

“Because I’d have a good idea where you were: twenty feet ahead of me.”

“But if we put a blindfold on you and spun you around until you lost all sense of direction?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Probably.”

“What if you were walking toward the back of the train such that you were not moving relative to the earth?”

“I think so.”

“And what if you were outside the train, but walking alongside it? Could you see my car then?”

Winnie could hardly muster the will to consider it. “Probably.”

“And if you stopped walking?”

Winnie sighed. “I guess. Probably. Until your car was so far ahead that I didn’t have a good idea where it was.”

“So why does it matter if it’s far away, but it doesn’t matter if I spin you in circles until you don’t know your left from right?”

“I don’t know. It just does.”

“You just think it does. You can’t find people with your power because you don’t believe you can.”

“I don’t believe I can because I can’t.”

“An inconvenient circular dependency,” Victoria said. “Break it by letting go of your preconceptions.”

“And what if you’re wrong? What if I actually can’t find someone without having an idea where they are?”

“I’m not wrong.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Clear your mind.”

“Can we take a break?”

“One more projection first, and we’re done with locator practice for the day. Now clear your mind.”

Winnie did so.

“Now, do you remember where Neil Armstrong planted the flag?”

At the mention of those words, Winnie saw it again: the endless sea of crystal dust, the scattering of immortal footprints, and that flag, bleached white now from decades of ultraviolet exposure. It was the moon landing. Last session, Victoria had helped Winnie find it using a lunar map. It took her forty minutes to locate the spot, but it had still been a pleasant break from an otherwise grueling lesson, even if Winnie didn’t understand Victoria’s motive at the time.

Now she did. Winnie saw the moon landing instantly. It was in the same place on the moon, but the moon certainly wasn’t in the same place as last week—not in reference to the earth. It had moved much farther than Javier had.

“Understand now?” Victoria said. “You can see the moon landing because you believe you should be able to, because it seems like a static location to you. You can’t see Javier because you think you shouldn’t since you don’t know where he is, but you don’t where the moon is either. I’ll bet that if I’d asked you to visualize the moon instead of that specific spot on the moon, you couldn’t have done it, because you would have realized first that you don’t know where the moon is. Take Mars. Where is Mars right now?”

Winnie looked for it. She saw the solar system from millions of miles away. There was the bright dot that was the sun. Somewhere far off would be small motes of dusts. One of them would be Mars. She didn’t bother looking. The point of the lesson was clear. If she’d looked for something specific on Mars, she would have seen that immediately. She visualized a particular Martian mountain she’d seen once during her mental exploration. It didn’t come to mind.

“There, you see?” said Victoria. “You saw the moon landing, but you can’t do the same with a mountain you’ve already explored. Do you understand now? You’ve convinced yourself you can’t since you don’t know where Mars is. It’s all in your head.”

“Yeah. I get it.” Winnie couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for this revelation. It was great and all, but endless homework exercises would now follow. “Can we take a break now?”

“For a moment, I suppose.” Victoria jotted down notes while Winnie laid back and covered her eyes. Her headache was right on schedule.

“Next session,” Victoria spoke more to herself, “we’ll have a field trip. I think the moving train idea would make an excellent intermediate step for you. I’ll have Madeline reserve a stretch of track.”

Winnie didn’t react to the idea of the queen shutting down a railway. She’d been in Porto Maná for four weeks. It didn’t take long to realize everyone else took Victoria’s extravagant whims for granted. If she wanted to shut down freight shipping, and cause a hiccup in the empire’s market, just for her own experiments, everyone would go along. She was the empire’s most famous eccentric.

Victoria kept pondering. “We’ll need two train cars. No. Probably more. I want to be able to put distance between us when riding. I suppose we’ll be stopping and starting a lot too. I’ll want a track that’s in the grid. Hmm. I’m sure there are still some freight tracks in gridded territory…” More notes.

“Can we do something else?”

“I think the train lesson will be good for you.”

“No. I mean, now. We’ve been working on finding people all day. Don’t you want to see how my other exercises are going? I’m getting really good at reading books without opening them, and I think I can see ultraviolet now. I’m not sure. And what about my self control? I thought that was supposed to be my number one goal. You haven’t even checked it.”

“I know how your other lessons are going. I saw it in your mind.”

“But don’t you want to spend any time on them? I’m getting a headache.”

“Very well, we’ll stop with locater exercises for today, but we’re picking them up next session.”

“What’s so important about them?”

“They’re useful. Far more useful than seeing ultraviolet.”

“But what for? Spying? Is that all my power is going to be used for?”

“Is this about what my daughter said?”

Winnie’s first thought was the Helena must have told Victoria about her talk with Winnie weeks ago, but the answer was simpler. Mind-reading.

“Is it true?” Winnie said. “Is my contribution to this world going to be making it so big brother can see everything?”

“You’re flair will be used for much more, but only in time. As useful as your power is, it can too easily be used to spy on me and the empire. That’s why I’m not distributing your flair to others. Not even to my exemplars.”

“So no one will use it?”

“I will, for select military and security needs. If I find a more secure way to regulate how others use it, then perhaps others may too.”

“What about your daughter?”

“What about her?”

“Do you think she’ll be as careful with my power?”

“You’ve had my daughter on your mind for days. Is there a concern you’d like to get off your chest?”

Logically, Victoria already knew what was bothering her, just as she knew how uncomfortable Winnie was discussing it. This was dangerous ground. “I’m worried your daughter will not be as good a ruler as you are.”

Victoria grinned. “I see you’re picking up a knack for diplomacy.”

Winnie didn’t find it as humorous.

“Don’t worry about my daughter,” Victoria said. “When the time comes, I will ensure she’s fit to rule.”

“But… okay.”

“But what?”

“What if something happens to you before she learns… to be good for the people.”

“You mean, what happens if she gains the throne before she learns that the world doesn’t revolve around her?”

“…Yeah.”

“First of all, I was exactly like her when I was her age. I could tell you a story about a tantrum I threw over a Lamborghini my father gave me. And secondly, I never grew out of it. Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but you’re having this lesson with me at the top of my magnificent tower. The first words of our national anthem praise me as being the greatest woman on earth, and I’m a queen. Not a president, not a prime minister, a queen, by my own choosing. I am just as selfish and arrogant as Helena. I’ve simply grown into it gracefully.”

“That’s not true. I mean… sure, maybe. But you’re more than that, or you’d be just like any other dictator in history. You’re—” She caught herself. She’d nearly said that Victoria was making everyone’s lives better. That would have been a lie. “You’re trying to help people. That makes you selfless.”

“I’m selfless? I took over the world so I can build a utopia in my image. I can’t think of anything more selfish. The difference between me and other dictators is not selflessness. It’s that I’m good at ruling. If other dictators knew how to completely secure their authority and have their people be happy, they would. Their problem is they don’t know how. Other dictators faced the same problems I face every day. It’s impossible to please everyone. When they’re faced with opposition, they react with violence, and fear, and prejudice. It works, to an extent, but true power comes from devotion. Happy citizens are productive citizens.”

Victoria leaned in. “And as you so politely refrained from mentioning, my regime is far from perfect. I’ve done things to gain my power—things that you would never in a thousand years call anything but selfish. Maybe I am trying to make this world a better place, but for that to happen, I maintain my power by whatever means it takes. That is why arrogance and selfishness are necessary. That is why I have more faith in my daughter than you do.”

“You make it sound like you’re the bad guy.”

“I don’t confuse matters by labeling them as good or evil. I do as I please. If my will benefits those who follow me, then so be it. I will not insult your intelligence by telling you stories of my altruism. No one has ever held power because of their selflessness or humility. Not for long anyway.”

“But Princess Helena—”

“Will be ready to rule when the time comes. Now, break time is over. Back to work.”

“I thought you said we were done for the day.”

“No, I said we’re done with location exercises for the day. You yourself pointed out there are many other exercises we haven’t reviewed yet. That’s not to mention any of the new experiments I have for you. Did you make any plans for dinner?”

Winnie withered. There was only one reason Victoria would ask that.

“That’s right,” Victoria said, looking in her eyes. “You’ll be dining with me today. We’re going into overtime.”