Medlar had created some chips for them. Anvil had undertaken transportation logistics. Fantail had agreed to censor mention of them for certain regimes around the world. Looked at in a certain light, inert submunition dispensers were almost good news. And if you were under attack by inert submunition dispensers in the dark, it would feel like this. Nothing to see. Only a sound and a plane taking itself to pieces.

  There was a second explosion. Where there had been a solid metal hull, there was a line drawn by cheese wire over and around the seats. They were breached. The breach began to open.

  The sound was a shriek of metal on metal. There was spin and counterspin within the plane, the hull rotating, turning the world upside down and right side up, upside down and right side up. The sound of rending as the aircraft pulled apart. It turned from a gliding vessel to two connected metal tubes, each weighing nearly five hundred thousand pounds, placed thirty-five thousand feet above the earth’s surface. Like a broken jelly roll, floating in midair. Doing what a broken jelly roll was likely to do in these circumstances.

  “Now,” said the CrashJackets, “undo your seat belt, run toward the emergency door. Throw yourself out with all your strength. The chute will automatically inflate when you are far enough from the plane.”

  Ellen was already climbing up the spinning plane, finding footholds on the seats and luggage storage, controlled in her movements like a woman who’d spent summers bouldering in Yosemite. She’d panicked when she had to pack up, but in the final analysis she never hesitated to act decisively. She was the first off the plane.

  Zimri was slower, moving crabwise, clinging on. He quickly figured out a new method of movement—holding the seat belt tight in his clenched jaw to give himself an extra point of contact. He grabbed a second CrashJacket from under an empty seat, just to be on the safe side.

  Lenk was the last out, still looking around as if he could figure out what had happened here. His final thought as he hauled himself by the seats toward the emergency door was: We gave false information to air traffic control. If anyone’s left alive to look for us, they’ll be looking in the wrong place.

  * * *

  “So,” said Zhen, “some random nation fired a tech bomb at you and you ended up here. What were you saying about an army?”

  “Doesn’t it strike you as suspicious,” said Lenk, “that we should have been shot down precisely here? Over an uninhabited island capable of sustaining us indefinitely?”

  “Yeah,” said Zhen, “I guess so. But also maybe… just lucky?”

  “I’ve been thinking about this for the past three weeks. If it was an inert submunition dispenser… only a limited number of nations have access to them. Papua New Guinea, the nearest nation to Admiral Huntsy Island, definitely doesn’t have any.”

  “So…”

  “I wouldn’t be thinking this way if we hadn’t been taken down by an advanced technology. It was too early for anyone to be really panicking, do you understand? No one knew about the plague yet—that was the whole point. Only we knew there was anything to be afraid of. No ordinary army would have taken down our plane. It would be the kind of army you have if you don’t have to rely on human beings.”

  Lenk stood up and pulled his shorts back on.

  “Listen,” he said, “you slept with Martha and I guess that makes us as close to family as either of us has on this island. If Martha trusts you, if she gave you AUGR even for a few days, you’re probably the most trustworthy person here for me. Which is not saying much. So. Medlar has inert submunition dispensers, drone-mounted for use in civil breakdown situations. So does Anvil. So do we, Fantail. It was all agreed with… a lot of different governments after the last plague. That we ought to be able to help if there was civil unrest.”

  He stepped backward into his suit, the shins and torso neatly sealing around him.

  Zhen understood what Lenk was doing. He was bringing her into his tight circle of information, but he was also letting her know what her position was. She was on this island with three people who each had access to weapons and resources she had never even heard of. After the end of the world, what possible reason was there for any of them to want her alive?

  “I know Fantail didn’t bring down the plane. So I think it was one of them. Knowing we had the CrashJackets and the suits, knowing we’d survive. Knowing we’d end up here. Knowing that—terrible as it is—a plague like this brings unparalleled opportunities for whoever walks into that new future alive. I think one of them wants to be king of the fucking world, which is easier if I’m dead. So I don’t trust them, OK?”

  The visor slid across Lenk’s face, leaving Zhen looking straight into the eyes of her own reflection.

  8. that night, they went to sleep as normal

  Lai Zhen woke in the flat illumination of the predawn hours, everything shaded blue and dark blue and gray. The dim heads-up display in her visor said it was just past 4 a.m. Someone was moving at the edge of the camp. A suit, going from box to box with care, hauling a makeshift sledge with a StowtBox lashed to it, putting items from communal storage into the sledge.

  “Who’s that?” said Ellen Bywater’s voice very close inside Zhen’s ear through the inter-suit communication.

  The figure at the boxes paused. Hurriedly replaced the lid of the StowtBox and went, limping, to leave the camp. Zimri.

  “Suit, turn on some fucking lights,” said Ellen.

  From the tree where Ellen’s suit had clamped to the underside of a branch, several spotlights turned on, illuminating the camp in an eerie pink-gold glow.

  Zimri said: “I’m not staying here. I haven’t taken more than my share.”

  Though, Zhen thought, this had rarely if ever been true of Zimri Nommik.

  Lenk dropped to the ground from a tree. He landed easily, the bent knees of the suit taking the strain.

  “I saw you talking to her, Lenk. The new girl. We all know what we’re thinking. If there are ally relationships going on here now, I have to go.”

  Zhen said: “I just got here. I’m not ‘allying’ with anyone.”

  “Aha, well, that’s what you would say. I don’t blame you. If you ally with Lenk, you’re stronger together. For now. So I’m going.”

  Lenk said: “Where are you going, Zimri?”

  Zimri was bullish. The guy in the cowl-necked sweater who told all his rivals to go fuck themselves because he could actually buy up their shitty company, chew it up, and spit it out and their shareholders would say, “Thank you, sir.”

  “I don’t need to tell you that.”

  Ellen’s laugh was a bark.

  “Oh, you do need to tell us that, Zimri. You need to show us what you’ve taken and tell us where you’re going. Because your leg is fucked and there’s no way you’re safer without us unless you know something we don’t.”

  Zimri looked defiantly between Ellen and Lenk.

  “I’ll walk to the shore. Construct a raft. Try to sail east. I can’t stay here with you.”

  His eyes were glassy, his complexion flushed as he backed away. He was not well, that was obvious. Even in the mechanical suit he was favoring his injured leg.

  Zhen said: “He wants to go because he’s sick. He needs a doctor. This suit… this won’t do it.” Again something tickled at the back of her mind about these suits. Something she’d known once but forgotten.

  “That’s right,” said Zimri with evident relief. “She understands.”

  “Well, why are you sneaking out at night, then?” said Ellen. “If you want to go, why are you hiding it? Why don’t we all make a plan to leave together?”

  Because he’s afraid of the same thing you’re afraid of, Zhen thought. Zimri would rather be alone on a raft in open water than accompanied by Ellen Bywater or Lenk Sketlish.

  “I knew you’d try to stop me,” said Zimri.

  “Only because I think you’re going to abandon us here.”

  “And you’re going to leave me to fucking die if I don’t get away from you.”

  Zimri Nommik was readying himself, Zhen could tell. She’d been through this in holding cells, in visa lines. When violence breaks out, everyone goes down.

  Zhen said: “Everyone, can we try to calm down, OK? We all need each other to survive, right?”

  This was Survival 101. No fighting in the camp. Mediate, find appropriate punishments if need be. Don’t break the group.

  Zhen said: “And, Ellen, Zimri’s not pretending to be sick.”

  Ellen looked at Zhen, rolled her eyes.

  “Epsilon Industrial 2023. LandBridge 2031. AnvilLux 2036. The China Trials last fucking year? This is exactly what he does. Buys a whole company so we don’t know he’s interested in just one employee. Places an obvious listening device in the smart-jacket so no one goes looking for the secret one? This is how he works.”

  “Oh, fuck off,” said Zimri. “I am leaving. Just don’t try to stop me.”

  Zimri turned away, dragging his sledge through the jungle. The dawn was beginning, the sky blue-black, life greeting the morning with golden liquid chattering. Zhen’s visor focused on Zimri’s receding figure, and later on she could not say whether it was the darkness that she saw first or the humming or whether the first thing she knew was that the birdsong had stopped. There was an encroaching darkness around him—it might have been the dense trees. A dull whine—it might have been machinery.

  Zimri turned right and left. He could hear something in the darkness. The buzzing hum of biting insects. He looked toward the canopy. He let out a strangled scream. Zhen’s visor lens was having trouble focusing. There was a shadow moving, an artifact on the screen, something pixelated and strange.

  Zimri said: “No, fuck no. Stop, stop it. Just stop. Not me.”

  He started to run, dragging his leg. In the canopy the buzzing grew sticky among the trees, a swarm of points moving as one. These were the things that had come for her and Marius. The bright beetles. Zhen remembered them in her body, with fear. They were linking into a sort of chain, a mesh that began to look like a creature.

  Lenk was already opening a StowtBox with guns inside—how had there been guns, why had no one mentioned guns to Zhen? He aimed and fired into the treetops, some kind of small exploding thing. It set the leaves on fire but did nothing to halt the dark buzzing creature pursuing Zimri. It was reaching out sticky fingers toward him. Fire was right, but there was not enough.

  Ellen said, quite softly, “Oh no.” Then she shouted, loud, through her suit’s speakers, “Stop! Stop now!”

  As if she could command something here, Zhen thought.

  Zhen wouldn’t have known until this moment that her instinct would be to run toward a man fighting for his life against an unknown enemy. She would have hoped it would be—there had been people who helped on the streets that day in Hong Kong—but she knew she could not be certain. Especially not for a man who had been on the other side that day.

  And yet here she was. Zimri thrashed his arms above his head, his buzz saws out, trying to ward off the drones. Zhen ran toward him.

  “Hey!” she shouted. “Hey, over here! Come here! Zimri, this way!”

  Ellen tugged ineffectually at Zhen’s hand as she passed.

  Ellen said, “No, you can’t.”

  Zhen said, “Do you know how it works?”

  Ellen shook her head, and Zhen thought she was the worst liar she’d ever seen.

  “Tell me,” she said, “if you know anything that can save him. Tell me now.”

  Ellen said, “If it was sent for him, it won’t be interested in us. Unless you make it interested in you.”

  The swarm was closing in on Zimri now, and even though Zhen was nearer to him and should have been able to see him more clearly, his body was blurred and writhing. He was stumbling forward looking for shelter; he was clinging to a tree, his belly pressed hard to the trunk.

  Lenk shouted: “Zhen, look up!”

  He fired his weapon again, launching small shells that burst against the trunks of the trees in explosions of flame. She saw it above him. The bright beetles had formed a shape like a mouth, very large, an open, engulfing mouth. Zimri screamed. Zhen was too far away from him still. The thing was a hunter. She knew it as if her whole body had been waiting to be taught the difference between hunter and prey.

  Zimri tried to scream and tried to run. The swarm was around him, biting, confusing, agitating in infrasound. He stumbled but his steps were slower and slower. It was like the dream you have had many times, trying to run from a pursuer but your feet stick to the ground; the earth becomes viscous.

  The birds made no sound. The only noise was Zimri crying and yelping and shouting and begging. The horror in his cries was absolute. More of the buzzing, dark, sticky stuff latched on to his hands, his elbows, his shoulders, the front of his visor. Zimri was frantic, screaming and jerking. He got one arm out of his suit! The arm waved triumphantly above the dark, ever-moving throng. He clutched at a tree branch to haul himself free. For a moment it seemed that he would manage it, that he might leave the suit behind and escape. But the invisible jaws chattered and bit. The bugs were inside the suit now. The suit expanded and contracted on the jungle floor, trying to expel the intruders. Zimri’s body was at war with itself inside the metal exoskeleton. Limbs appeared to bend backward, then right themselves, the torso distended. The whole thing went rigid, sat up—a grotesquerie of a man—and fell back.

  Zimri was making no sound. The gentle whimper that Zhen thought was coming from him was her own pleading breath. The broken mannequin of the suit rose high into the tree canopy, carried by the swarm, into the treetops, into the distance, far out of sight.

  9. things have a tendency to escalate

  The morning the hunter took Zimri Nommik, the sun rose like a scalpel to the retina.

  They had been four and now they were three, this much was certain. They huddled around the campfire, unwilling to leave the warmth and light even for a moment. They were all in their suits.

  “Jesus, Ellen,” said Lenk. “You made it? You actually did it?”

  “No,” said Ellen. “No one’s home, make an appointment with my secretary.”

  “Fuck’s sake, Ellen,” said Lenk, “you’re not allowed to go mad.”

  “I know what it is,” said Zhen, “and I think you know what it is too. You knew last night. I’ve seen something like it in Zimri’s bunker. It’s a weapon.”

  “No,” said Ellen. “No, it was discontinued, it was never made, we never heard about it, it wasn’t me.”

  “For fuck’s sake,” said Lenk.

  Ellen said, slow and wheedling, “We all made them. You know, Lenk. Tell her. We all saw the scenario papers. We all made them. You can’t pretend to your new friend that you had nothing to do with this. They could as well have been yours as anyone’s.”

  This would be dangerous. If Ellen thought she’d allied with Lenk, that was a reason for Ellen to kill her. It was simple and clear-cut.

  “Look,” said Zhen, “I’m not anyone’s special friend here, OK? There are three of us here. That is not enough people for a war. We have to be each other’s allies. Lenk’s already told me you guys all made weapons. Right?”

  For a moment, Lenk Sketlish teetered on the edge of temper; Zhen saw the mood flash across his face. She held her nerve. She did not apologize.

  “The thing was,” said Lenk, “we all knew the others would do it if we didn’t. So what was the point of not trying? Ellen, there’s no reason to keep this secret from her. There was a rationale to it at the time.”

  “I’m not breaking international treaties and conventions,” said Ellen. “I’m not getting involved in that, no sir, am I?”

  She seemed to be talking to someone else.

  “OK,” said Lenk, “Ellen’s not playing. I am going to tell you the most secret thing you’ve ever heard.”

  That made Zhen smile. “I’ve heard a lot of secret shit.”

  “Not like this.”

  * * *

  There is, when it comes right down to it and as Martha had mentioned to Lenk many times, a trajectory to human affairs. It appears to be ruled by logic but the rhythm of it is the rhythm of fear. If you might do something to me, then it is only right for me to have the capacity to do the same to you. This is the pattern of the rule of salt. Imagining bad futures creates fear and fear creates bad futures. The pulse beats faster, the pressure rises, the voice of instinct drives out reason and education. At a certain point, things become inevitable.

  To start with, the major technology firms had drone squadrons. Everyone did. They’d been the natural extension to any delivery system. Drones don’t need to wash their hands, drones can’t get sick, drones can be stored in bulk until needed. Mostly, the squadrons were declared to the relevant governments for use in an emergency.

  But then there were also weapons and quasi-weapons. It was possible to stealthily weaponize a large flying swarm if they were equipped with, for example, lifting capability or sonic attack or the smallest possible multipurpose tool set with a micro-screwdriver whose blade was very sharp.

  “Don’t make this sound like it was an accident,” said Zhen. “I don’t think it was an accident.”

  “It wasn’t an accident,” said Lenk, “it was a business opportunity.”

  The feeling was that in a future pandemic or other catastrophe, governments around the world might pay to have a drone army patrol the streets and deal with rioting or looting. Private hospitals might need protection. Certain Senate subcommittees had been persuaded to leave certain loopholes open. No private company could have fifty thousand Predator hunter-killer missile drones, obviously. But sonic technology, something intended just to encourage people back into their homes? There was a case for that.

  There is a trajectory to human affairs. Tools ask to be used. They whisper of new fears and new threats. If we have this, they have it too. So there was a new logic.