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His right hand is lying on the ground, smeared with blood, palm up. His index finger is pointed away from him, toward a dark roiling cloud. Toward a darkness. He wants her to go somewhere. There. Of course she will. She will go anywhere he indicates. She will do this one last thing for him.
Rising, Riley moves in the direction of the finger, toward the dark cloud. Tiny flashes, like lightning, glimmer in the cloud. The cloud roils, restless. Foreboding grips her guts. With each step, it is as if she is walking closer and closer to her doom. Her steps falter, feet heavy. It is as if this were a planet with heavier gravity, every step an effort. She can barely pick her feet up. She shuffles. It is so hard to walk.
It is so hard to breathe. The air gets heavier, hotter. And yet, it is snowing. Snowing? She holds out her hand. Something small and gray and greasy falls into her palm. Then two, then three. They crumble when she touches them. Filthy snowflakes? No. Ashes, floating in the gray, sodden sky.
At first a few flakes, then more and more, a cloud of them. The ground is muddy and uneven underfoot. Her feet stick to the ground. It is hard to keep her balance, and she is terrified of falling. There are cracks in the ground, long and deep. She’s terrified of falling into one of the cracks. They yawn open, dark and bottomless.
She is alone. There is no one else. It feels like there is no one else alive in the world besides her. They are all dead. How can anyone even breathe with all this ash in the air? She coughs.
A wind lifts, hot and noxious. The ash swirls, at times masking the landscape, at times unveiling it. When the ash clears for a moment, she sees that there is nothing there—a flat, dun- colored, featureless plain that stretches on forever.
But—there! In the distance. A puff of dust that grows, climbs higher, becomes a monstrous mushroom cloud. A horrific boom that shakes the earth. Blinding light. The wind lifts, growing.
The wind will grow and will sweep her away. She is about to die.
The ashes form a face in the translucent sky. Gaunt, cruel. Huge dead eyes, a mouth that opens. “Riley,” it whispers in a deep bass voice. “Everyone will die and it’s all your fault.” The dead eyes sweep the landscape and the wind picks up, blowing so hard she has to dig her feet into the soft, damp earth. There is nothing to cling to. The wind will soon annihilate her.
She is crying because it’s true. Humanity is gone. And it’s all her fault.
“Riley!” Another voice booms and a hand reaches out from nowhere to touch her.
She screams, but no sound comes out of her throat. She thrashes, desperately trying to get away from the hand that wants to drag her down, down.
“Riley, wake up!”
She screams again, in vain.
Riley pulls her arms over her face, to protect herself against the monster, scrabbling with her legs to get away. She makes horrific sounds, desperate to get away, to escape her imminent death.
Strong arms surround her, a type of strength she cannot fight. She is strong but not strong like this.
It is the end.
“Honey, stop!” The arms tighten around her. But they aren’t hurting her. Just holding her in an unbreakable grip. “Don’t fight me, Riley. You’re having a nightmare.”
The words don’t make any sense, nothing makes sense except this exceptional strength holding her.
She can’t fight her way free; she needs one moment of freedom before dying. A scream dies in her throat, throttling her.
Help! She screams but it comes out a whisper. Help!
“I’m here,” the voice answers. “Riley, I’m here. Open your eyes.”
She opens her eyes and sees … safety. Shelter. Protection.
Pierce.
8
Pierce was used to sleeping lightly on missions. Even in sleep, he was always ready for action. But it wasn’t necessary now, because there were Black Inc. men standing guard and there were none better. They would be alert, on guard all night. He knew that. Knew he could relax. He needed to get his sleep, and the men were there so he and Riley could rest, knowing they were safe.
But there was something about this situation that just riled him. Made him angry. He wasn’t in any way unaware of the situation. It was fucked. Things had already deteriorated so much that he felt like the country was racing toward war. He knew exactly the kind of people in power who were not unhappy about the pretext for war. Who wouldn’t care that the video was a deepfake. They thought they could keep it on this side of a hot war. Test out some new missiles, new drone technology, test their cybersecurity. Write their names in the textbooks that would be used at military academies in the future. Make their names. Make some money. It was all good.
They were crushingly wrong, of course, and the world could be left a nuclear wasteland if it got out of hand.
War getting out of hand was practically a given. Almost in the playbook.
And those same fuckers were exactly the ones after Riley, whose only guilt was to be too smart, too good at her job. So they stretched those greedy mouths of theirs wide to gobble her right up with sharply pointed teeth. Chew her up and spit out the bones like some monstrous dragon of old.
