“Why?” Caleb asked.

  The tension returned to the woman’s posture, but she answered in the same politely commanding tone she’d had so far. “Like I said before,” she explained, “you’re currently in an Apex managed territory, and on a restricted access road. We’ve had problems with local militias in the area. So we’ve been forced to tighten security protocols. Is there anything you don’t want me to see? We’re not interested in taking your supplies, sir.”

  Lana watched her father’s face for any sign that this was going to take a violent turn. Mentally, she scrambled for any kind of tactical advantage they might reach for if they had to, but there was nothing, really. They were in the open, with at least a dozen or more Apex guards just in sight, and who knew how many posted further up the bridge or even behind them. If this did turn violent, she was pretty sure they wouldn’t survive.

  “We do have weapons,” Caleb admitted. “Rifles, a handgun, some knives. It’s been dangerous out there.”

  “Understandable.” Victoria gave a signal, and the two people behind her moved forward and began opening doors and searching through the SUV.

  While they did, the field marshal turned her attention to Lana and Elizabeth. “You can all put your hands down. But keep them in view, please. Now, the two of you aren’t registered, is that correct? I don’t have you on file.”

  A chill coursed down Lana’s spine. Her eyes moved again to the woman’s visor. She was definitely getting an information feed there, but hadn’t apparently been typing anything, which meant that whatever system fed her information was either some tech officer they didn’t see listening in and sending her files, or some kind of AI system, maybe, listening to their conversation and putting relevant information up on her visor.

  Lana was certain it was one of the two, but recalled that Trusk had made a bunch of noise about some new augmented reality glasses a few years before the meteor. It had tanked spectacularly. Or maybe he’d just decided it had a better use in his private army?

  “We’re not,” Elizabeth agreed. “But, ah... well, my husband said he was registered by some kind of field team? Is that what you do? We haven’t seen anyone from Apex since we all got together, that’s all.”

  “Restricted access road,” Lana said, suddenly realizing what it must mean as she looked out along the darkened bridge. “Does that mean there’s an Apex town across the bridge?”

  Victoria gave a nod of confirmation, but nothing else before she answered Elizabeth’s question. “We have a registration unit. It’ll only take a few minutes to get you set up. Once you’re all cleared, you’ll be able to pick up your DIDs further north. If you could all come with me, we’ll get you sorted out.”

  Lana did not want to go with the woman, but there didn’t seem to be much of a choice. Another pair of imposing Apex agents, similarly armed, but without the glowing visor on their helmets, fell to either side of the group as they walked, herding them to a small walkway that led off the bridge and below it.

  Lana realized why they hadn’t seen anyone from the rooftop they’d scouted from when they reached the little base set up beneath the bridge and several yards back from the river’s edge. It was tucked so tightly beneath the bridge that it would have been impossible to see unless they’d come down underneath.

  Had she and her father been spotted when they’d scouted out the city? The Apex Security people clearly had their own power supply, and some degree of advanced tech. They could have cameras all over the city.

  Maybe that was just paranoia, but even so, Lana replayed everything she and her father had talked about, trying to determine if they’d already tripped themselves up. She didn’t think so, but the feeling still nestled in her gut and wound around her stomach.

  It got worse when they reached the staging area and Victoria gave orders to have them all taken to different areas. “Registration for these two,” she said, gesturing at Lana and her mother, “and let's just run a check on the other two, make sure we’ve got accurate information on both of them.”

  “Wait,” Elizabeth said as she was ushered away, “you don’t need to separate us.”

  “It’s just procedure, ma’am,” Victoria assured her.

  Except, it wasn’t. Derek and Caleb hadn’t been separated. They’d been standing together at the back of the black SUV where they were registered. Lana’s panic sharpened. “Why do we need to be separated?” she demanded, shrugging off the hand of the agent who’d tried to steer her toward a different end of the camp. “We’re just getting registered, right? You can’t just split us up, who are you people?”

  At that, she heard a quiet click behind her, and the slight shuffle of fabric and body armor that told her she now had a gun pointed at her. And even if she hadn’t heard anything, she’d have guessed by the way her mother went stiff and wide-eyed, and her father’s eyes lit with barely contained fury. Derek shifted one foot, his hands turning to fists. Lana raised her hands slowly.

  “It’s alright, Jones,” Victoria said, waving for the agent to stand down.

  Lana risked a look over her shoulder to see the agent lowering his rifle, but not letting go of it.

  “Our procedures aren’t negotiable,” the field marshal told them. “It won’t take long, and you’ll be reunited again in short order. If you please, go with your respective agents. Answer our questions honestly and everything will go smoothly and quickly, you have my word.”

  The implication, of course, being that if they didn’t answer honestly, things would be far less smooth. Lana found her mother looking at her with desperately worried eyes. If Lana wanted to fight for it, Elizabeth would as well. And then they’d all be dead, or detained or whatever Apex did with troublemakers. She shook her head. “I’m fine, Mom,” she lied.

  Caleb wasn’t and wasn’t apparently in the mood to cover his anger. He glared at Victoria, and then at the agent that stepped in front of him but let himself be separated and marched away. Derek did the same as Lana was ushered forward again, and in a moment, she lost sight of the three of them.

  She was taken to a cordoned off makeshift ‘room’ with two painfully bright lanterns. A heavy-duty laptop sat open on a large metal case, with two folding stools set up beside it. Peripherals were plugged into the laptop. Something that looked like a biometric device, maybe for fingerprinting or something, and a camera on a short stand that had two distinct lenses catching light from the electric lantern.

  “Have a seat.” the agent who’d raised the rifle at her waved at the stool to the side of the set up. Lana sat without argument and expected that he would sit as well and start this process. But he didn’t.

  “Sit tight.” He turned on his heel and left her alone.

  Lana took the opportunity to lean and try to get a look at the screen of the laptop, but there was nothing useful there—just a login screen for some software. Around the room there were other tools, though. A small box of needles like the kind used for checking blood sugar, along with some packages that looked like they could be sealed up. Were they taking blood samples?

  She tried to fit all the pieces she’d heard and seen together to form some picture of what all of this meant, but nothing jumped out at her beyond what she’d already been worried about. Whatever else Apex was, it reeked of surveillance state. Whether they had the full cooperation of the US government or not wasn’t entirely clear. It was hard to say whether it would be better or worse if they did.

  Whoever they were, it sounded like they were moving quickly. If Lebanon was a hub, and there was another further north, and there were even more out west that her father had been told about, that had to mean Apex started operations soon after the impact happened.

  All of this had to have been carefully planned, and all these apex agents had to have been on payroll—or whatever the equivalent was now, given that money seemed a little pointless lately—before it all went down. There was something telling, and particularly disturbing, about that but Lana couldn’t quite pin it down. Just that it gave her a very, very bad feeling.

  She was surprised when, after what seemed like several minutes, Victoria Steen tugged aside the heavy canvas ‘door’ to the little cubicle and took her helmet off. “Sorry for the wait.” Her tone was almost pleasant but still crisp with the kind of edge that came from being in charge and expecting everyone to know it. “Can I get you anything? Water?”

  The field marshal was a woman of hard angles and muscle, her triangular face just barely showing the fine lines of age. She might have been in her forties; it was hard to tell for sure. Her brown eyes were cold but interested, and her hair was just a little longer than military short.

  From the way she moved, Lana guessed that her position in some paramilitary outfit wasn’t just for show. She was in good shape and moved with a confident and economical grace that Lana had seen in her father and Derek before. The woman could fight. Jumping her could be a bad idea if it came to that. Unless Lana got the drop on her somehow.

  “I’m fine.” Lana folded her arms as she watched the woman move to the other stool and sit. “I really just want to get this over with so we can get moving.”

  Victoria flashed her a thin, stiff smile. “I imagine you do. You’re headed north? Mind telling me what for?”

  They hadn’t gone over that in the SUV. But her father had told them to just be honest about everything they didn’t have a unified front for, so that’s what Lana did. “We were just trying to get over the river. Get away from the fire, and hopefully the damage. We’ve had to scavenge a lot since this all started, and figured we’d have better luck if everything was less... well, on fire.”

  The woman nodded absently as she logged into the computer. “Good instinct. Everything up there is in much better shape. Though scavenging could prove difficult at this point. Most everything is cleared out and centralized.”

  “You’ve been busy,” Lana remarked.

  Victoria met her eyes and gave another of those flat smiles. “Yes, we have. Getting the world up and running again is the sort of thing that requires swift action and consistent effort. The sort of thing we all have to pitch in for.”

  The woman meant something by that, but Lana wasn’t tracking it yet. She kept her mouth shut and waited as Victoria pecked at keys and touched her screen a few times. “Your full name is Lana Elizabeth Machert?”

  The hair on the back of Lana’s neck shivered. “It... is. Do you have a file on me or something? DMV records?”

  “Something like that,” Victoria confirmed. “We collected associated data on your father when he was registered. I see here you were enrolled at UNC Greensboro before the Event. Second year, excellent grades, three point nine seven GPA. Something of an unfocused curriculum, but you’ve got high grades in math?”

  Lana’s jaw dropped slightly. “I... yes, I was, but... You have school records?”

  There was that mirthless smile again, but this time there was something almost smug about it. Victoria waved her fingers lazily at the computer screen. “We have a great deal of data, yes.”

  A piece of the puzzle clicked into place. Lana gave a dark chuckle and rubbed her forehead. “Right.” Her hand fell to her lap. “Apex is an Alan Trusk operation, isn’t it? You got your data from social media. And Trusk made his first billion off server farms and data mining. He must have kept copies of everything.”

  Victoria’s eyes narrowed slightly, but the quirk to her lips became somewhat more genuine. “You’re very bright. And it looks to me as though you had a remarkable future ahead of you before all this.”

  “I suppose you’d know,” Lana murmured. “Any gaps I can fill in to get this registration finished? I want to get back to my parents.”

  “And the young man. He looked very protective of you. You’re in a relationship?”

  Lana flinched at the invasive question. And, maybe, because she didn’t have an easy answer. “We—I mean, he’s—well—”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” Victoria turned to her screen and tapped on it three times. Lana tried to see what she was inputting but couldn’t get a clear look. “There’s very little I need from you, actually. Most of it is all here, and it puts you in a very fortunate position, Miss Machert.”

  That seemed highly unlikely; or at the very least, that their definitions of ‘fortunate’ differed considerably. “Fortunate how?” Lana asked cautiously.

  Victoria tilted her head slightly to the side. “Escort, please,” she said to the air, “Class S3.”

  “What is Class S3?” Lana demanded, glancing at the door to the cubicle as it parted for an agent. “What escort? What’s happening, exactly?”

  “You’re being transferred to Central,” Victoria informed her with a smile. “Based on our criteria, you’ll be an excellent asset for Apex. Your days of scavenging are over.”

  “Wait,” Lana said as the agent at the door approached her. She stood from the stool, kicking it over in the process, and backed away toward the far corner of the room, crouching instinctively to fight. “What about my family? I’m not going anywhere. Dad? Dad! Derek!”

  The agent advanced on her. Lana readied herself to spring. Victoria moved, pulling her attention. She had something in her hand. A gun? Lana lunged automatically to the side to avoid being shot and snapped a leg out to kick the woman’s arm away. Before she could recover, the agent was on her, one arm twining around her neck. She threw an elbow back, trying to get his ribs, but only hit body armor.

  “Everything will be fine,” Victoria assured her, nonplussed by Lana’s outburst as she wrenched one of Lana’s arms out and jabbed it with the device in her hand—not a gun. It had a thick needle on the end.

  Lana gave a wheezing cry of surprised pain as it jabbed her and jerked her arm back. It was too late, though. The device had already given a puff and a click, and she felt something like a bruise in the muscle of her shoulder. Whatever it was, though, it wasn’t a drug—she didn’t get sleepy or numb.

  She continued to struggle against the agent, but the bright lights in the room started to go dark. She reached up, tried to claw at the man’s face, and when that failed, she tried to sink her weight down and tip him forward, but he seemed ready for her and just sank with her until they were both on the ground. She was losing consciousness.

  Before she did, though, there was a crack of thunder. A boom that briefly lit up the darkness outside the tent. It was muffled and distant to Lana’s ears, which were starting to fill with the sound of her own heart. But when it happened, the agent on her back startled, his arm momentarily loosening.

  “What the hell was that?” Victoria demanded, shouting out to the rest of the staging area. “Are we under attack?”

  Lana used the brief window of distraction. She managed to get her chin tucked down into the agent’s elbow, relieving the pressure on her neck, and kick one foot backwards into his leg. She struck something solid, probably a shin, and his leg went out, dropping him to a knee as he put his weight on her back. That was what she’d needed.

  She rocked forward, pushing off with her other leg to drive her hips into his, and pitched him over her. Though he scrambled to grab her on the way, it happened too fast for him to grip anything, and he struck the ground head first before the rest of him toppled over. For good measure, Lana kicked him in the side of his helmeted head. It snapped sideways. Victoria was already moving—but she wasn’t heading for Lana.

  Instead, the field marshal rushed out of the tent. Lana bared her teeth and ducked to pull free the tactical knife at the fallen agent’s thigh. As she stood, she saw the laptop screen. There was something there about a ‘Central Hub’. There was a string of numbers—coordinates of some kind, she had to assume.

  But there was no time to evaluate or take notes. Instead, she slammed the top of the laptop closed and jerked the cables out of the ports. It had a strap on it, so she slung that over her back, then bounded out of the tent to catch up with Victoria. She didn’t have to go far—the field marshal was just a few steps beyond the tent’s entrance flap.

  Lana was on her in a second, the knife’s edge pressed against the woman’s throat as Lana grabbed a fistful of her hair to pull her head back. “Don’t move,” she told the woman, and then twisted them around to face the other agents who now filled the staging area. “Bring my parents and Derek out here right now or...”

  She trailed off as she realized no one was looking at her or Victoria. They were all staring into visors or at a laptop one of them was holding for the others to see. Lana just barely heard a buzz of sound coming from Victoria’s earpiece. “What’s happening?” she demanded. “What the hell’s going on?”

  Victoria’s voice evidenced only a little strain as she answered her. “It seems,” she said slowly, “that St. Louis was just nuked. It’s gone.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ELIZABETH

  Jefferson City, MO

  Thursday, July 19th, 7:00 pm CST

  “College?” Elizabeth asked when the agent interviewing her questioned her about her education. “Why... does that matter? Isn’t this for an ID?”

  “It’s for our records,” the agent said. “Did you complete a college degree, and if so at what institution?”

  She swallowed and nodded. “Yes, in early childhood education.”

  “Occupation?”

  “Elementary school teacher.” Visions of her children on the day the news reports of the asteroid first hit filled her mind. Molly, confused and scared as she headed to carpool. Daniel, with his pinched face and worried eyes as his mother drove away.

  “Blood type?” the man asked.

  She had to think about it a moment, pulling her attention back to things that mattered. Like, apparently, her blood type. “O positive. Is this going to take much longer?”