Tim Shoemaker is a haunted man in a fallen world. A trailblazing engineer renowned for his lifesaving medical devices, he is tormented by a tragedy that engulfed his soul three years before. Meanwhile, he battles to stay afloat in a ravaged America trapped within the grip of the Triantarchy, a cabal of ruthless feudal lords consolidating their power. One day, Tim’s world is jolted by a mysterious call for help from an old friend and colleague – followed in short order by a bequest of bizarre family artifacts from his ailing, bitterly estranged uncle. As Tim wrestles with the twin conundrums, he becomes ensnared by a web of mystifying dream visions, some drawing him into an eerie and otherworldly realm, others into a canvas of memory he has long shunned. Desperate for answers, he digs deeper, only to discover a shadowy family history long consigned to the mists of oblivion, alongside nightmarish omens of an inscrutable force. What does it all mean? And can Tim discover what links the unsettling riddles… before they overwhelm him and everyone in his midst?

A Glimpse of the Nightmare to Come

The Dark Devours

Wenn wir so ‘nen Albtraum träumen, der uns mit dem Schreck erfüllt,
Wach’ wir auf, zitternd und schwitzig, wartend bis Tag’slicht enthüllt.
Gäb’ es doch ‘was beobachtend, sich versteckend in der Nacht?
Wohin gehen, wo zu fliehen, wenn das Finsternis erwacht?

Monday, June 2, 2025, 6:14 a.m.

Red Line L Train, Entering Willow Street Portal

Chicago Transit Authority, State of Illinois, USA

The train vanished into the subway tunnel. Its lights flickered as the half-stifled wail of its horn pierced the enveloping darkness – like the solemn call of an Underworld lighthouse, beckoning the travelers on Charon’s mythical ferry to the realm of fallen souls.

“‘The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,’” said a man by the wobbly door of the cabin, “‘and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.’”

“‘The best lack all conviction,’” added a woman beside him, “‘while the worst are filled with passionate intensity.’”

“Never knew you took to Yeats’s poetry with such a… morbid fervor, Alma.”

“I never did before. But there’s no escaping the morbid irony in your quoting him.”

“Yes – 100 years, isn’t it? 100 years since Yeats penned those words, and now we’re living in the world he was warning about.”

“More like drowning in it. That’s why you’re here, Victor. It’s why you first put on the uniform that you wore so proudly in the pictures we used to take together – to save the drowning. You must have rescued dozens. And –”

“I never kept count.”

Freckled and petite, with soothing hazel-tinged eyes and long, thinly braided maroon-colored locks, by appearances Alma might have been a simple country girl. She studied the towering military man as his sinewy frame swayed with the motion of the train.

“Your sort never does,” she said. “Now, only you can save the rest of us from drowning in this abyss. All 300 million of us.”

“I’ll be lucky if I can save myself.”

Victor discreetly grasped a rusting security bar as he ducked below the cabin’s peeling roof. He winced at the slow grind of the train as it crawled along the decrepit rails, his glassy eyes and ever-tensing jaw betraying the turmoil of a once robust soul enfeebled for too long by indecision and self-doubt.

“Are we in the clear yet?” he asked Alma.

She did not move from the nondescript corner where she stood, yet her words rang with a decisive urgency that had long deserted the man beside her. With a deft glance, she noted the faded signal of an electronic device concealed beneath what appeared to be no more than a studded bracelet.

“We’re good to go,” said Alma, tuning out a brief interruption from the conductor over the intercom. “We’ll be outside detection for a good spell even after the train resurfaces. Still, I’d advise against tarrying for long on our… topic of mutual interest, once we emerge from the tunnel.”

By now the two of them had lowered their voices and huddled in closer together, giving the impression of a couple muttering sweet nothings into each other’s ears.

“I trust you’re familiar with the backstory by now,” Victor began.

“The hope and soul of a nation, besieged by its own wayward children. So the sickening suspicions have been true all along: Fisher’s Reckoning was no accident, nor merely a tragedy of the commons writ large.”

“This Depression has been squeezing the life from the country for six years,” said Victor, briefly averting his gaze in grim recollection, “and its blueprint was sketched out in nauseating detail on that damned ship in the spring of 2017. As I mentioned in our first communiqué since I learned you’d gone Underground, I was Secret Service, assigned on short notice for diplomat-defender duty en route to Ireland. We were in neutral waters, near an ice floe in the North Atlantic for much of the trip. That’s when I stumbled into their powwow.”

“The Triantarchs were all there?”

“I loathe that term – too classical and dignified for those thugs masquerading as feudal lords – but yes, the progenitors from most of the Ruling Clans were gathered in the cargo hold. They spoke in code as a further precaution, but some scaled-up grade school logic was more than sufficient to decipher what had brought them together.”

“Grasping the reins of power, crashing financial and social systems –”

“They’d already gained enough sway over core national institutions to ward off the customary checks. Even so, they wanted to be outside of territorial bounds in case the plot came up snake-eyes, with everyone denying any relevant knowledge or activity on US soil. At least, so read the script they spouted in each other’s presence. Sounded ritualistic to me.”

“They taped one another, didn’t they?” said Alma. “Who made the recordings?”

“A leading member of what became Clan Severus.”

“This is the Red Line train, Clark and Division Station.” The conductor’s scratchy voice over the intercom grated on the ears, yet it was a welcome interruption all the same. “A reminder to all passengers that due to the recent water main break, we will not be stopping at the Chicago, Grand, and Lake Stations. Our next stop will be Monroe Station. Once again: Our next stop will be Monroe.”

“Severus was the ringleader?” asked Alma, softening her voice still further.

“Along with Clan Vedius,” Victor nodded. “Neither was much enthused about the other’s ringleading. Their current chiefs have managed enough of a truce to unite their ventures, but at the time, they were constantly looking over their shoulders for a knife in the back. In any event, I was running a midnight weapons search in the cargo hold when they poured in through an entrance that was usually sealed off. I ducked down behind a storage container; no one saw me. From there I overheard the entire plan – the market crash, the Great Default, the seizure of US security forces as a pretext to quell the social unrest. I’ll tell you… At first I didn’t know what to make of it. Was it merely idle talk, some game?”

“Game?”

“It sounds naïve now, but at the time, it came off as so outrageous – I thought maybe it was some twisted version of charades. A bunch of self-proclaimed VIPs with too much time and vodka on their hands.”

“Oh, I see.”

“That and – well, denial is a powerful temptress. I didn’t want to believe what I was hearing.”

Victor stared out a window into the blackness enveloping the slow-moving train.

“I don’t blame you, Victor; I imagine I’d have reacted the same way,” Alma said. Victor seemed not to have heard her.

“A few minutes of listening dispelled that fantasy. I began taking notes,” he continued, turning to face her again. “In the meantime, I noticed the outline of a tiny recording device in the breast pocket of a wool coat slung over the back of one of the chairs. It would have been imperceptible to virtually anyone without an intel background, but the Service had been using the same device for years.”

“How did you track it down?”

“I had emergency access to the ship’s living quarters as a precaution. I was able to wangle my way into the private rooms on a pretext of investigating a bomb threat.”

“Must have sounded plausible enough,” said Alma, “given the paranoia in the air. All of the Clans plotting against the nation, and each of them plotting against the other.”

“Indeed,” Victor said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that tape helped to unsheathe their swords later on. In any case, I found the recording device from their meeting on a dresser, of all places. The cocky bastards in Clan Severus didn’t even bother to hide their traces, before setting off to toast the occasion at the raw bar.”

“That gave you enough time to duplicate its contents? That sounds very tight to me,” Alma said. “Too tight.”

“It was. Believe me, I tried to copy it, but the encryption protocols prevented an intact data transfer. I had to take the original. I switched it out with an identical-appearing peripheral that housed an encrypted dummy file. The Triantarchs had the wherewithal and mutual distrust to break it and eventually discover the swap… but I figured they wouldn’t bother with such concerns while still on-ship. And if and when that happened, no doubt Clan Severus would blame its rivals among the Ruling Families; they’d never suspect an infiltration from the outside. At least, so I told myself at the time.”

Victor cast a probing glance about the cabin, drinking in the wan faces of the other passengers. His jaw tensed, then relaxed as he returned his attention to Alma. A trace of a grin flashed like a shadow on his grizzled visage. He unzipped the satchel slung over his left shoulder, and from it discreetly removed a sealed case about the size of a dinner plate.

Alma’s eyes widened despite herself.

“So that’s it,” she murmured. “The copy of the Triantarchs’ master plan from the freighter.”

“Happy Birthday, Alma.” Again Victor almost smiled. “The commemorative plate isn’t so bad, either.”

“Thank you, Victor,” she said, slipping the box between the shoulder straps of her own traveling bag.

“You’ll find the recordings within a pouch inside the gift box, along with the ancillary materials you’ll need to make your broadcast with the other resistance groups.”

“Thank you again,” Alma said and pressed his hand. Victor looked away.

“That should be all you’ll need.”

“Almost all, Victor.”

He sighed.

“Alma, I meant what I said before. I can’t follow you Underground, much less add my own voice to that broadcast. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t have anywhere near the courage for the job. Hell, I don’t have the courage you could marshal on an ordinary afternoon.”

“I find that hard to believe, coming from a decorated ex-Navy diver. And –”

“Oh, it’s easy to believe if you try, Alma.”

“And it’s a well-played deflection,” Alma added with a wry smile. Her expression turned grave. “You’re the only remaining observer from the Zero Hour, the witness to Fisher’s Reckoning before it had even begun to unfold. We can’t break the grip of the Ruling Families unless you affirm everything you saw, live on the secure transmission, when we acquire the panoramic-access channel next week.”

“You don’t bargain with kid gloves, do you?”

“I promise you, we’ll conceal all your voice and subvocal traces; we’ll use the Jacquard Protocol for facial encryption. Our line of communications is unbreakable. The best hackers in our group have probed every pore and fissure of the system; it’s airtight. You will not be detected.”

“I wish I shared your confidence,” said Victor, “but this whole operation is giving me a bad feeling.”

“A bad feeling how? Vibes, Victor?” Alma laughed – too loudly. She immediately comported herself.

Victor did not react to the break in Alma’s demeanor. He continued in the same low tone he had taken since their descent into the tunnel.

“I can’t put my finger on it but… my alarm bells began sounding the moment I stepped onto this train. Malevolent eyes are lurking in the shadows, Alma. Your hackers may be as skilled as you say, but don’t underestimate the other side.”

“You think the Triantarchs are tracking you?”

“I’ve never had a solid grasp on what exactly is filling their dossier on me, but of one detail I’m certain: It’s deadly to have had any association with that freighter. Minor officials, passengers, even many of the Clans’ own lackeys from the ship have wound up in dungeons on a private island, in guarded exile, or victims of ‘unfortunate incidents’ with most peculiar timing. That includes my partner from the Service, the one who was originally assigned to the diplomatic protection corps aboard the ship. He was never even aboard, he was merely supposed to be there – yet that was enough of a connection to make him suspect.”

To a stranger’s eyes, Alma’s expression would have appeared unchanged, but Victor saw the flicker of dread at the reference he’d made. He was glad to see it – glad to see that she still could be reminded of the danger. Agents who could not be reminded of danger were themselves dangerous; often, they were the greatest danger of all.

“You’re referring to Jeff Avildsen,” she said. “You introduced us, back when you and I were… God, I remember the news reports during that state visit to Cambodia. But that was in the line of duty, a –”

“The target wasn’t the President. The Oval Office had been stripped of all but the pretense of independent authority by the spring of 2020; the executive branch posed no threat to the Ruling Families. Jeff was the target. Forget what the media reported – you know better than to take anything they say seriously. These days half of it’s bought-and-paid-for misdirection, the other half’s anybody’s guess. Ignorance, incompetence…”

“The Reckoning was in full swing by then. There was so much being reported; it was a glut of misery. The riots, cities in flames –”

“And a heroic Secret Service Agent takes a fatal bullet for the Commander-in-Chief,” said Victor, rolling his eyes. “A charming tragedy, don’t you think? A bittersweet, patriotic story to break up the nightmares unfolding on TV.”

“But how do you know? Just because the President couldn’t threaten the Ruling Families, he had determined enemies all the same, enemies who’d stop at nothing. And in Cambodia –”

“There were rumblings about what happened,” Victor said through gritted teeth. “People out there with information. They knew, and Jeff supposedly knew too much from his service on the freighter. His name had been logged on a confidential manifest of agents attached to the ship in the North Atlantic, but he was re-assigned at the last minute to a counterfeit operations surveillance team that needed his expertise. The Ruling Clans must have gained access to the manifest, and they systematically sandbagged, bought off, or otherwise eliminated the names on the list.”

“But you were never on the manifest, were you?”

“I was a last-ditch replacement. Amidst the administrative chaos that followed, the personnel department never replaced Jeff’s name with mine. The Clans never realized he’d had a stand-in; it’s the only reason I’m not face-down in a ditch right now.”

Alma extended a hand and stroked the tensing muscles in Victor’s jaw.

“You did all that anyone ever could, and far more. You were never in a position to save Jeff, Victor. How could you have known then?”

“If only I could awake one day with the blissful ignorance to believe that,” Victor said. “I could have stopped them. I could have prevented all of this. All the lives lost since the Reckoning, all the lost souls on this damned train and the ground above it – all because I didn’t measure up. Because I failed to do my duty at the moment it was needed most.”

“Victor, please. You hold yourself to an impossible standard.”

Victor shook his head.

“We had the tools within the Service. Between us and the cryptanalysts at the Digital Forensics Institute, we could have cracked the encryption; all I had to do was file a formal report. But every time I thought back to the occupants of that cargo hold – supposed guardians of the public trust among them – I myself didn’t know who to trust. I was too afraid to tap the official channels, and it took me six years to break the encryption, even then only with the help of my own contact within the Ruling Clans. Six years, hundreds of millions of lives, and nations in ruins from one pole to the other.”

“No fair person would second-guess the call you made.”

“A call that I was supposed to make for my country, not myself. I began every morning in the Service knowing I might not live to see the evening. Same for every rescue dive I made in the Navy. It was always about the people I was protecting, not about myself. Why didn’t I take that risk in 2019?”

“Because it wasn’t about you then, either.”

For the first time since they’d been talking, Victor startled.

“How old is Katie now, Victor?”

Victor hesitated, then removed a billfold from his back pocket. He took a battered picture from its inner sleeve.

“She just celebrated her tenth birthday,” he said, the tenderness in his voice marred by an undercurrent of embitterment and rage. “Of course, she still has it in her to celebrate. She’s still full of optimism and wonder for the wretched world she’s inheriting. This picture was taken right before my posting on that ship. It wasn’t my own martyrdom that I dreaded then. I kept seeing Katie’s face every time the Triantarchs discussed their contingency plans in the event of, as they termed it, ‘outside interference.’ And nothing’s changed since, Alma.”

“I’d never ask this of you if we could pull it off on our own. But if you want to leave a better world for Katie, we’ll need your testimony on the broadcast. We don’t have much time; if the Vedius-led faction snuffs out what’s left of their opposition within the Triantarchy, then there’s little we can do on the outside. What hope remains for our country will be snuffed out right along with it.”

“You’re referring to the Augustans, aren’t you? The enemies of the Vedius Faction? My own inside contact is also within their fold, though he won’t allow me even a peek behind the marbled walls; too afraid his own intrigues will be discovered. If the coup de grâce will be struck from the inside, though – then why is the Underground so anxious to enter the crossfire?”

“The Augustus Faction is a vanishing minority within the Ruling Families.”

“Vanishing?” Victor spoke the word as if it were poison. “I could think up a number of adjectives to describe the sorry state of our allies, but ‘vanishing’ wouldn’t be one of them. At least, not without a damn good reason.”

“Sad to say,” said Alma, “there is one. By now, the Augustus-led bloc consists of little more than the core of Clans Drusus, Tacitus, Trajan, and Antoninus, alongside maybe a handful of persuadable fence-sitters and Clan Augustus itself. Even these scattered remnants are being ground down by the Vedian onslaught and defections from within.”

“Which means that we’re outnumbered, oh, maybe 10:1. If we’re lucky.”

“That’s why we have to act now. The Augustans are too weak to strike on their own. The remaining members can take action only if they’re assured of a united front among the populace outside. And the people will unite only when the truth blazes before their eyes and ears, when the Triantarchs can no longer set them against each other.”

“Are you certain the message will reach the people, Alma? This operation has precious little margin for error. Ever since hearing that the Jacques Neckers had recruited you into their upper ranks, I’ve been warily learning about the other Underground groups. I can’t say I’ve been reassured by their organization or cohesion.”

“We’ve been tackling that exact problem for over a year now. We’ve coordinated our efforts to ensure that everyone’s on the same page for this, and that your revelations will be heard and read across the land. The Ruling Clans and their armies of kleptocrats won’t be able to stop us. In fact, we’ve tapped into their own lines of communication to help get the word out.”

“Poetic justice with a dash of irony – well-done. Still, what’s the endgame in all this?”

“The Augustus Faction will have a brief window to convene a new Constitutional Convention and invoke tribunals. They’ll be staffed by the few magistrates who’ve managed to fend off both the juicy carrots and bloody sticks of the Triantarchs and their flunkies. Several of the top Augustans are uniformed officers, and they’ll see to it that the armed forces stay neutral while upholding the mandates of the civilian reforms.”

Just then a muffled announcement came over the train’s PA system:

“This is the Red Line train, Monroe Station. Next stop: Jackson, transfer station.”

Victor stole another glance at his daughter’s photograph before tucking it back into his wallet.

“Just one more condition,” he said, attempting a sly smile. “I’ve never told anyone about the history that we – about the two of us, outside of all this. So if the scribes of our little Dark Age ever run a story on this conversation years from now, how about we leave that wrinkle out of the official version?”

Alma embraced him.

“Thank you, Victor,” she whispered. “I can’t begin to express how much this means to us.”

“I only hope it’s enough,” he said into her hair with an anxious glance about the train car. “Even if this succeeds, I wonder what other nightmare might be out there waiting for us.”

Alma pushed off of him, holding him by the shoulders so as to look him in the eye.

Victor hesitated.

“My contact among the Augustans that I mentioned,” Victor said, “he’s been more agitated than usual in our last couple of exchanges.”

Alma sighed.

“Heroism like that requires a measure of paranoia, Victor. I wouldn’t read too much into it.”

Victor shook his head.

“Maybe. But the last time we spoke, he was going on about… I’m not sure, something about the ‘cleansing fires of retribution to which this world would succumb.’ He kept repeating that phrase, or some similar apocalypto-babble.”

“Might just be he’s hit his limit. I can imagine myself cracking under that kind of strain.”

Again Victor shook his head.

“His latest ravings have been rooted in a different patch of ground, outside the reinforced compounds of the Triantarchy itself. It didn’t strike me as ordinary nerves. He was making all manner of references to a project gone awry. And to some engineering professor out of North Carolina, no idea what his connection is or how –”

The train screeched to a sudden halt, throwing them against the cabin wall. Alma grabbed onto Victor’s sleeve to keep from stumbling. Annoyed murmurs rose to anxious chatter that spread down the rows of the cabin as the minutes passed and the train stood motionless.

“All passengers, please stand by,” the conductor’s voice echoed over the scratchy intercom. “We are experiencing an unexpected delay; we’ll be up and running again as soon as possible.”

Victor cursed through clenched teeth.

“Must be all the excavations in the old Chinatown. Probably had to close a tunnel on short notice,” he said, straining to see out the window into the duskily-lit tunnel.

“At least, that’ll be the official excuse,” Alma replied bitterly. “And given the track record of our enlightened rulers, I wouldn’t expect much more than excuses. We’ll be stuck here awhile.”

Victor was still trying to see out the dirty window. Alma touched his elbow. He turned back to her.

The two stood impatiently in the cramped train car for several minutes more. Alma fixed her gaze far ahead as if simply bored with the wait; still, Victor saw the pulse in her neck quicken and her eyes widen for a nervous instant.

“Alma,” Victor asked, “what is it?”

“I… I can’t tell. I could have sworn the lights went out in one of the cars well ahead of us.”

Victor turned to the transparent door at the front of the train car, straining along with Alma to gauge the lights in the forward compartments. As they watched, the fourth cabin ahead of them went dark, provoking a contagious panic in the cars immediately behind, where passengers had a better view.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your conductor speaking,” the train driver’s voice rippled over the intercom, this time notably anxious despite his attempt to reassure. “The lights appear to be going down for the cars from the front of the train backward. The PA system is on a separate power feed, so I won’t be going anywhere. All passengers, please remain calm and stay seated or standing where you are. We have no indication of a terrorist attack or other danger, so I repeat, please remain calm.”

“My God – is this because of us?” Alma said. The other passengers stirred nervously about them. “Have they found us here, Victor?”

“No,” he answered firmly, staring dead ahead with ferocious concentration as he weighed the question. “This isn’t their M.O.”

They and other passengers watched as the third car and then the second car ahead of them went dark. When the blackout struck the car immediately preceding theirs, panic erupted all about them. Passengers scrambled for the emergency door, desperate to exit the train into the tunnel.

Victor clasped Alma’s hand as the cabin lights began to buzz.

“Alma, hold on,” he said. Their eyes locked as the lights flickered.

“All passengers, please remain inside the train,” exhorted the conductor over the intercom. The man had given up his façade of calm. “Do not, I repeat, do not attempt to exit the train. Please remain calm. We have a team of –”

As the lights sputtered and gave out, the conductor’s voice faded to silence despite his prior reassurance. The PA system had gone dead. The barest glow came from the two cars behind them, whose lights had not yet extinguished. Alma and Victor held one another tightly. The terror of the other passengers was palpable as they waited in compliance with the conductor’s final orders; they sat and stood helplessly as the last remaining light in the tunnel flickered and died in the cars behind them. They were in total darkness. A woman and a man began screaming for help, but fell silent when another man spoke up.

“For the love of God, either help is coming or it isn’t,” he said, a disembodied, trembling voice in the pitch-darkness. “Please don’t make this worse.” For a moment it seemed as if the man were going to say more; there was a palpable feeling throughout the car that more would have been welcome. But he said nothing, and the expectant silence gave way to a wordless muttering hum as the passengers resigned themselves to whatever fate had in store for them.

Alma pulled Victor’s lapels and pressed her lips to his heart. He felt her tears before he heard them in her voice.

“Victor,” Alma said, “what’s going to happen to us?”

As if in answer to her question, at that moment the eerie tranquility of the pitch-black train car was broken. Despite the total darkness, both Victor and Alma turned, and there was a shuffling of feet as the other passengers turned with them just as the first faint screams echoed from the foremost cars down the tunnel. As with the dying lights, the screams grew louder as they spread from car to car, until they were in the cabin directly ahead of them. A strange, purplish flash popped in the distance, rendering visible in snatches the mayhem in the next car: men and women climbing over one another, screaming, scratching, and pounding at the windows.

There was a double-flash, then a series of three more, the last of which revealed what appeared to be a now-empty train car just ahead of them in the tunnel. Victor pulled himself up using two commuter straps and saw that the passengers in the neighboring car had fallen to the floor – their still bodies were being scanned by a dull, pulsating, violet-colored ring. The mysterious band of light undulated above its targets, illuminating their skeletons one by one as it marched inexorably onward.

“Alma,” Victor said, “close your eyes and do not look ahead! When I tell you to, take a deep breath and hold it as long as you can.”

“What?”

“Just follow my lead! Hold on to me, close your eyes, now kneel down with me, slowly… now! Deep breath and hold!”

The screams of the other passengers rose to a roar as the riot seen in the preceding cars was repeated in their own: People clawed, punched, elbowed the windows, screaming as their bones cracked upon thick, tempered glass and the unyielding steel emergency exit door.

And then it was over. A sweetish odor spread throughout the cabin, and within seconds the frantic crowd dropped to the floor and lay motionless. The mysterious phosphorescent light then swept through the car, peering into the still bodies scattered helter-skelter about the cabin, lighting up their skeletons one by one in a steady progression before moving on to the car behind them.

Two weeks earlier, engineering professor Tim Shoemaker was the host on a red-letter day…

 

Chapter 1

The Beckoning

Mit dem Einmarsch der Gesellschaft steigt die Macht ja immer größer,
So die Macht der Mächtigsten, ihre Wirkung stark und böser.
Doch was lohnt sich große Macht, wenn davon nur Trümm’ auftauchen?
Sei die größte Macht vielleicht, große Macht nie zu missbrauchen?

Thursday, May 15, 2025, 5:45 p.m.

Department of Biomedical Engineering
Dalton University, Durham, North Carolina, USA

 

“I know you’ll cringe to hear this, Zach, but it can wait no longer. There comes a time in a young engineer’s career when he’s gotta take it straight – the unvarnished truth.”

Holding up a heavily-marked up folder, the professor summoned Zach to his table. The table, wooden with sharp borders, was cluttered from edge to edge with papers, journals, and technological bric-a-brac. Beads of sweat stood out on Zach’s forehead as he approached the stern-faced older man. He took too deep a breath and ran a hand through his thick black hair. Dark rings stood out under his bloodshot eyes.

Yet the professor of engineering pretended not to notice his student’s anxiety. “As your willing advisor and mentor for what I know has been an arduous five years, and as one obligated by my station to level with you as to the good, the bad, and the ugly… Well, Zach, I suppose you knew this was coming.”

Zach struggled to meet his teacher’s inscrutable stare. The older man was legendary for his poker face, and for the barbs with which he laced his humor. They were no doubt sharp, those verbal barbs of his, but not malicious; he deployed them to seize and focus the drifting attention of those around him, and here they were serving their purpose.

The professor’s voice dipped as he set down the folder. “Zach, allow me to say this to you unequivocally: You really must learn how to drain your glass in one take. I simply cannot bestow a PhD upon a young man so wanting in the art of gentlemanly drinking.”

Zach looked up. His mentor grinned and held out a shot glass with the image of a downhill skier stenciled on the side, along with a salt shaker and a wedge of lime. Yet another of the renowned professor’s peculiarities: everyone just had to love tequila, and show it. Zach licked the webbing between his left forefinger and thumb and salted his hand liberally.

“Cheers!” the professor said.

“Cheers!” “Way to go, Zach!” “Congrats, Dr. Zach!” The small crowd of faculty and students seconded the professor’s toast, their voices echoing throughout the small amphitheater.

Zach sucked down the liquor and bit into the wedge of lime. He grinned despite the vile taste. He preferred beer. “Please! My esteemed colleagues, please no ‘Dr. Zach’!” The burn in his throat gave his voice a temporary rasp. The crowd gathering around him laughed. “Nor, God forbid, ‘Dr. Choi’ – abominations, both! Especially coming from my not-always-distinguished colleague, the budding Dr. Matt Hansen himself. That is, not unless one of you here has granted my request, and secured for me an afternoon talk show slot to translate our obscure endeavors to the masses – in which case I’ll be calling in rich to work in short order.”

The professor and the others threw back their own glasses and bit their limes.

“If anyone could pull it off…” the professor growled, affecting disapproval. “You’re the only soul from here to Appalachia who could get away with defending a thesis in a spray-painted T-shirt under your suit and tie.”

“Well,” Zach said, “coming from a man infamous for leading conferences in tattered ski gear, I’m not sure what to make of such commentary. And speaking of ties, what were you thinking? A Peter Pan theme? Really?”

“Cut the old prankster a break, will you? That tie is an indispensable accoutrement for working one’s own silliness into official business.”

Well over six feet tall, with close-cropped reddish-brown hair and eyebrows more reddish than brown bushing over his gray-blue eyes, Tim Shoemaker spoke and carried himself in general with the hard-nosed resolve of a military veteran. The past ten years had been a pageant of setbacks and sorrows for him, the toll of which showed on his scarred face.

Yet it was not his nature to hang his head; despite the onslaught of disappointments, Tim took care to maintain an aura of unflappable professionalism. His studied cool served him well. Though in his late forties, more often than not he exhibited a boyish enthusiasm and mischievous humor that endeared him to his colleagues. It was with genuine affection that his young charges had dubbed Tim’s laboratory ‘The Doghouse’.

“Aha!” Zach said, waving a finger. “Now I remember where I saw that tie before. I seem to recall the local bigshots called on you, o’ esteemed keeper of The Doghouse, to give a few pep talks on math and science at the public schools, no? To boost spirits amidst the budget cuts – maybe sucker in a few bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed youngsters to follow in our misbegotten footsteps.”

Zach’s comment was answered with more laughter. The new PhD beamed with pride. And yet, his own laughter was tainted by clashing sentiments. Lately he’d been plagued by unwelcome bouts of introspection, following which his chosen profession indeed seemed misbegotten.

For the better part of five years, he had toiled away on a doctoral thesis to gain entry to this exclusive club of elite biomedical engineers. The result was a dissertation on the arcane arts of implantable, color-responsive mimics of the retina in the human eye – a small but vital step in enabling the blind to see. And his efforts had been rewarded – he had been successful in defending his work.

Yet, he could not shake the corrosive suspicion that his achievements would soon be greeted with indifference. At long last, he was embarking on his career, but he could not celebrate his success in a vacuum. The world had undergone a grotesque metamorphosis since he’d begun his studies.

Still, he was here with his colleagues… and she was still with him. If for no one else, he must put aside his troubling thoughts for her sake.

Zach called to a young woman in the back of the room.

“Renee! I’ve been waiting a near eternity to gaze into those pretty brown eyes again.”

“Well, not quite an eternity, Zach,” the young woman answered as she approached him. “But if we ever endure another four months like that, you’ll be waiting more than an eternity to gaze into these eyes again!”

“Your eyes are my solace, Renee,” Zach said. “I’ve told you that before, but I’ll say it again, and again – a million times. Can you feel that in me?” Zach asked and lifted her from the floor, kissing her as he returned her to her feet. His solace, her eyes… Though sometimes it was her hair. He shifted back and forth between the two.

“There were times when you made me wonder if I’d ever see this day,” she said.

“Just thought I’d make things interesting, love.” He hugged her close and shut his eyes.

For a moment, they might have been alone; but an authoritative voice behind him cut his thoughts away from Renee. “A bravura performance, Zach. I know I was a late addition to your thesis committee, but I’m honored to have played even a small part in your professional blossoming here. So what’s on the horizon for you now?”

Zach pulled away from Renee and turned around, a forced smile on his face.

“Still working on that part, Dr. Malcolm.”

Dr. Malcolm snaked an arm around Zach’s shoulder and with his other hand slipped a dog-eared business card into Zach’s shirt pocket. His grizzled, unshaven face was almost touching Zach’s.

“So I’ve heard. Listen… My brother-in-law’s biotech firm… They’ve wrangled a contract for device development in the neuro-optical arena. They’re one of the few such enterprises still afloat, and I’m sure my brother-in-law would be delighted for you to crash one of their brainstorming sessions. Soon.”

Zach nodded, on autopilot. Unsatisfied by this reaction, Dr. Malcolm drew him in closer about the shoulders, the professor dialing down his voice another notch.

“Of course, I can’t guarantee anything, Zach. It’s a gauntlet for all of us out there. But if you talk to him, I’ll sing your praises until there’s a dotted line awaiting your signature.”

“Thanks, Dr. Malcolm. I’ll definitely follow up on this.”

“Glad to hear it.” The professor let him go and, giving Zach a knowing pat on the shoulder, left him to join one of the conversations taking place among the others in the amphitheater. He was sincere in his offer, and equally aware that it would likely amount to nothing, as was Zach himself.

“Excuse me, hon,” Zach said feebly to Renee. Before she could say anything, he strode across the room to a work table where lab assistants were setting out trays of hors d’oeuvres. Renee had not followed, but he could feel her eyes on him as he approached the food, could almost hear her thoughts.

Zach sidled up next to Tim, seething – his supposed mentor, and the man was blithely uncorking a bottle of champagne as if he’d done nothing of consequence.

“You just couldn’t help yourself, could you?” Zach said under his breath, pretending to inspect a cavernous dish of antipastos and crudités. At just that moment Tim popped the cork. A tuft of foam bubbled up from the bottle of champagne, dribbling wine onto Tim’s shoes. A couple of lab assistants holding plastic tumblers of bourbon applauded.

“Help myself?” Tim was pouring out the bottle into a line of disposable champagne glasses. “What’s the matter, Zach?”

The younger man leaned over the table and laid the business card against the stem of Tim’s glass.

Tim sighed and squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for an unwelcome exchange. He slipped the card under a folded napkin and handed it back to Zach. “Benny Malcolm may lack the gift of good timing, sure – but his heart’s in the right place.”

“It’s not Professor Malcolm who blew the timing, Tim. It’s the guy who tipped him off in the first place.”

Tim grimaced.

“It was just one of those unforeseen fords in the stream, Zach. We were simply briefing Benny on all the mandatories and usuals at the thesis committee meeting last week and… what can I say, the conversation wandered onto a promising sidetrack.”

“That’s an excuse, not an explanation.”

“Zach, please, listen to me. The committee members got to talking about real hiring prospects we hadn’t even conceived of before. Phil Stern made an offhand reference to a five-year-old firm in Maryland, quietly recruiting fresh PhDs with your sort of knowhow. Benny and Sue Markov started enthusing about the local biotech start-ups, how they’d embarked on a rare talent-hunt throughout the Research Triangle, blah blah blah. Word is some new sources of venture capital are trickling right up your alley of expertise. New and unexpected.”

“You know as well as I do, that won’t make a scintilla of difference in this whole fetid swamp that I’ve been stuck in.”

Tim shook his head.

“Not this time,” he said. “They had local contacts, names that not even they themselves suspected were held in common. The kinds of people who won’t be swayed by prying eyes from above.”

“Then why didn’t you duly arrange for us all to convene after the defense, Tim? Slap on some semi-official label about, I don’t know, career advising or group mentoring?”

“Because you have to strike when the iron’s hot. They were bouncing hard prospects off each other. We’re talking the real deal, local names, newly created positions for young up-and-comers. That happens to be you, Zach. It was a critical moment. I had to tell them the whole truth, if for no other reason than to get them pulling strings on your behalf. Give ‘em a sense of urgency. We both know the deck’s been stacked against you. I’m thinking of ways to overcome that. You should do the same.”

“You still don’t get it.” Zach looked hard at Tim, his voice controlled but barely. “I told you why we had to keep this strictly in confidence. My exact words: ‘No matter what –’”

“It was for your benefit, dammit. Why can’t you see that?”

“You knew Renee would be here. You know how she senses things. She could tell something was off, even before Benny Malcolm did his little song and dance. You knew this would happen if you broke the news to the committee, yet you did it anyway.”

A champagne bottle popped behind them.

“Whoa, boy!” someone said amidst laughter.

Tim leaned in closer to Zach.

“Yes, I did it anyway. I’m your mentor. It’s my job to see the big picture – the picture you can’t conceive of at this stage of your career. Especially in the wake of the Reckoning.”

“No, Tim,” Zach said. “That isn’t your job; it’s a manifestation of your obsession. You did it for yourself as much as for me.”

“Lower your voice. This is supposed to be a party.”

Zach glanced over his shoulder. If anyone were eavesdropping on their conversation, their faces didn’t show it. Another professor in a tweed suit, holding court at a cluttered table, met Zach’s eye and, smiling, raised his shot-glass. Zach smiled back and gave the professor a little wave before turning back to Tim.

“You know what I’m talking about,” Zach said.

“Really? Why don’t you enlighten me, because I guess I’m a little slow on the uptake today.”

“So now I have to ram this through your wall of denial, too? Is that it?”

“You want to make me feel guilty, Zach? Go ahead. Tell me: I’m nuts, right? I have a pathological need to play the rescuer since I couldn’t save –”

“No.” Zach cut Tim off. “Stop, please.”

“Why? Isn’t this what you wanted? Was it not you who started this conversation?”

Zach glanced at the table behind them. The champagne glasses Tim had poured were all gone, and a good dent had been made in the trays of hors d’oeuvres.

“I’m sorry, Tim,” he said. “Please, I didn’t mean to –”

He watched as Tim, with shaking hands, poured himself another glass of champagne and tossed it back in one shot. Tim turned away from Zach and, pushing past the two lab assistants who had earlier applauded his opening of the champagne bottle, sank heavily into a chair at a table covered with file boxes. He’d taken the champagne with him.

Now the tweed-suited professor and a few of the others were looking at them – at Tim and at Zach. Again the professor met Zach’s eye, not with a smile but a look of concern.

Without thinking about what he was going to do, Zach turned away from the professor and his mentor, left the amphitheater and strode down the hall toward a steel door under a red EXIT sign.

“Zach! What happened? Is everything okay?”

His hand was on the horizontal bar; a quick shove and he’d be outside. But he couldn’t pretend he hadn’t heard her – he could lie to her if he had to, but he couldn’t walk out on her as though she wasn’t there.

He turned around to face Renee.

“It’s –” he began, then hesitated; lying wasn’t so easy, after all. He sighed. “I wish I could say everything’s okay, but it isn’t. There’s a lot that isn’t. Some things that are going horribly wrong in fact –” He ground his teeth together to choke off that last sentiment; it was honest, but he hadn’t meant for it to slip out. Not yet at least.

For the millionth time, he waited for Renee – this bright, sweet, beautiful woman who for some reason had chosen him – to roll her eyes, to say something along the lines of “It never ends!” and walk out on him. Maybe tonight would be the night when it finally happened, he thought, as she came down the hall to meet him where he stood.

“Honey,” he said as she approached him, “the reservations I made for us at the Gondolier, they’re good for 24 hours and… I think we should go tomorrow. I don’t feel up to it this evening.”

“But we’ve been planning this for weeks! This was supposed to be our night. You’re not the only one who’s been suffering through this ordeal.”

“I know that. And that hasn’t changed. We’ve endured this for months; we’ll just have to push it back one more day. That’s all, I promise.”

“Are you simply going home to sulk? Today?”

“No, not home. Matt and the rest of the Doghouse are planning to do a little bar-hopping in Old Chapel Hill. I’m not much for carousing tonight, but… How to put this… There are some dirty linens that need a good airing, the kinds of things that only your fellow grunts in the trenches can understand. I’ve been putting it off for too long.”

“It’s always something, isn’t it, Zach?” She was fighting back tears.

Gently, he slipped his right hand beneath her left ear, cradling her neck and drawing her to him. Her hair felt like silk on his fingers.

“I know it seems that way,” he said. “But this time really is different from all those other times, and I can’t simply set it aside. It’s only this night, Renee. I promise you that.”

He backed away from her slowly, until he felt the door’s exit bar press against his body. He tried to focus on her, to not vanish into his thoughts, as he knew how his eyes looked when that happened – hard and cold – but his thoughts took over. He barely saw her as he turned and shoved the exit bar, disappearing behind the door as it swung shut.

 

5:59 p.m.

 

A familiar melody jerked Tim from his unwelcome reverie – his cell phone was ringing. He looked with puzzlement at the digits on the display: The call was from an unfamiliar area code, apparently in Tennessee. He swallowed the stew of emotions still bubbling in his throat, and assumed his typical mien of cool normalcy.

“Hello, this is Tim Shoemaker,” he said.

“Tim! Hi – I’m so sorry, I heard about the thesis defense today. Are you free to talk?”

It took a second, but the voice on the other end conjured up a familiar face from a fog of memories.

“Ra– Rachel Bloom? Is that you?”

“Oh, I’m sorry again, Tim. I got ahead of myself.”

“Not a problem,” he said, hastily burying his astonishment and adopting a congenial tone. He left the table where he’d been sitting for a quiet corner of the lab. He took the champagne bottle with him. “I prefer a bit of awkwardness in reunions; makes them more authentic. Besides, two years isn’t exactly an eternity.”

“It might as well have been for me.”

The edge and angst in her voice rattled Tim. Rachel was not one to sound like this, ever, he thought. She was the crème-de-la-crème in all the glossy announcements about the brightest young prospects in the field – and one who had yet to bolt for less troubled shores overseas.

Tim had assisted her for years in a grand endeavor: tracing the physiology of human sight to designated nerve bundles in the brain’s vision processing center. In short order, she won a national fellowship for a breakthrough that he would never savor alongside her. By then his life had become engulfed by a nightmare, outside of which he could see nothing, not even Rachel Bloom.

“From your number,” he said, “I take it you’re not in Research Triangle Park anymore.”

“I wound up at Oak Ridge – the new National Labs out there, Prosthetics and Bioengineering Division.”

“Out in the sticks, huh? Good ‘ol Tennessee.”

Rachel laughed, but her reaction didn’t sound at all genuine to Tim.

“Even after winning the Steinmetz Fellowship, it was hell securing grant support for my work.”

Rachel’s tone was earnest, yet laced with a soldier’s black humor. There was a subtext to what she was saying and Tim was not keen to it, so for the moment, he kept his assumptions confined to the tried and true.

“Yet another gift of the Reckoning,” he said gruffly. “If it’s any comfort, you weren’t alone.”

“That’s part of what brought me out here to the National Labs. The funding stream is guaranteed through military research – manna from heaven. Or so I thought.”

She sighed audibly. The sound reverberated amid scattered crackles of background static.

“Tim, look, I should cut to the chase. I’m calling you for a major favor. We’ll have ample opportunity for small talk if you can make the trip.”

“Trip? You mean to Tennessee? When? And what favor?”

“Something’s overwhelmed my team recently. It’s the vision restoration trials we’re conducting – perhaps you’ve gotten wind of them?”

“Clinical trials?” asked Tim, fretting over a reference that should have been familiar.

“For the veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as a few from the recent police action in South Midawan. All of our patients sustained combat wounds that left them blind; most haven’t seen for a decade or more. Our efforts showed so much promise at first, but then the horrors took hold.”

“The horrors?”

“We don’t know what hit us; not the slightest inkling. And lately it’s gone from bad to horrendous.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Tim. He shut his eyes and pressed on his forehead with bent knuckles. One protégé’s travails were sufficiently dispiriting for an evening; he dreaded to hear the woes of another.

“And I’m sorry to come to you begging for help. But we’ve exhausted every other recourse – I have no one else to turn to. I know your sabbatical is on the horizon. All the same, if you could pay us a visit, even for just a weekend… you’d be a ray of hope for us, and it’s been months since we’ve glimpsed one of those.”

Tim rubbed his eyes, snared between an impulse to help and a resigned sense of futility. He decided to split the difference.

“I’m always willing to lend a hand, Rachel; I promised you that before. But I don’t see how I can be of any use to you now – I know next to nothing about the vision restoration trials. At best I’d be an educated observer, if not a fifth wheel.”

“Quite the contrary; you were present at their inception.”

“I was?”

Again Rachel sighed, the sound of her breath mixing with static on the line.

“That clinical trial review panel at Cold Spring Harbor, Tim. Around three years ago… remember? It was right before you left for South America.”

“Yeah, I remember,” he said. “For the retinal implant… Sure. I had to cut that commitment short, for obvious reasons.”

He bit his lip. More nasty memories unearthed.

“Anyhow,” he said, “I recommended that the trial be deferred. The AP-278 implant showed potential, but it was far too premature for testing in patient cohorts. Its designers made sweeping claims about their growth factor cocktail – supposedly capable of sprouting new axonal bundles straight to the optic nerve itself. But their prior data had too many snags. Nothing to be ashamed of; many of us in the field have been seeking the grail with similar results.”

“The panel took your advice, Tim. They voted to postpone the trial.”

“Glad to hear it – they voted responsibly. But I’m not following here. If the trial was stopped, why bring it up?”

“Because it didn’t stop. The AP-278 became the nucleus of the retinal prosthesis that we eventually used in our efforts here.”

“But it wasn’t ready for implantation – you just said the panel agreed with me. Even if it had managed a successful link-up with the optic nerve, it wasn’t ready.”

“Not the version you saw in Cold Spring Harbor,” Rachel said, “but outside forces made sure it got an upgrade.”

“Come again?”

For a moment Rachel was silent.

“Rachel?”

“Ever since the Ruling Families commandeered half the agencies in the DoD and Department of Energy, the purse strings have been largely controlled by Metacelsus.”

“Who?”

“We don’t know much about him, other than that he’s well-connected in the Triantarchy’s upper echelons, apparently within Clan Argentus.”

“Argentus,” Tim said. The name tasted like battery acid. For the first time since picking up the phone, he took a swig from the bottle of champagne.

“For once, our dear leaders’ nepotism has led to a more salutary outcome than the usual corruption of everything they touch. Metacelsus is as drunk on power as the rest of the Triantarchs, but he styles himself a visionary – hence the pretentious sobriquet, apparently some faux-Latin riff on Paracelsus, the Renaissance doctor and scientist. Paracelsus ushered in a revolution in medical thought and practice, and Metacelsus claims he’s destined to do the same. In his case, he’s preoccupied with neural prosthetics.”

“Along with all its lucrative by-products, no doubt.”

“That goes without saying – still, he’s lavishly funded our research.”

“With his cut of the stolen loot. How generous. He sounds more like a fool than a visionary,” Tim said. “He had no business Guinea-pigging those devices in human subjects!”

Tim glanced over his shoulder at the party still underway, and reminded himself to keep his voice down.

“We all shared those doubts, believe me. But he did have the implants modified before the testing, supposedly by the tech team of a local contractor.”

Tim shook his head.

“I’m sorry, but that story doesn’t pass the smell test. Even before the Reckoning, domestic firms with that kind of expertise were shipping all their projects overseas; you could count the holdouts here on one hand.”

Rachel said nothing.

“Did you ever get a name?” Tim asked.

“No. Not sure on that count, either,” she said. “No one who actually does the work is privy to that kind of information; only those in the privileged castes are kept in the loop. Could be a foreign outfit with a shell office in the States, for all we know. The winning firm was awarded a no-bid contract to alter the implant, so they must have had VIP access, whoever they are.”

“No surprise there, eh? Last I heard, bidding on merit’s been dead for years now.”

“Then we must have had the luck of the angels on our side, because that team wrought a miracle.”

Tim sat up, his slack posture gone instantly rigid. He gripped the phone.

“Those soldiers can see again?” he whispered.

“For more than three months now.”

Tim shook his head, incredulous, now gnarling his forehead with his knuckles. Still, his excitement lasted only a moment before the question came to mind.

“What about the re-training for the visual cortex? Even the most finely-tuned implant would merely restore the conduit for sight information to the brain. The patients would still need months of hand-holding to interpret all the shapes and colors streaming back in.”

“We’ve seen to that.”

“Through what means?”

Tim noticed that Rachel’s breathing had become irregular as she fielded his questions; she hesitated, as if fearing his response to the answers she gave. So unlike the Rachel he had known, to be so unsure of her footing from moment to moment.

“Rachel?”

“It’s… why we need you, Tim.”

Tim pinched the bridge of his nose. Her evasiveness told him the answer.

“The Simitalis?” he asked, incapable of quashing the feebleness in his tone. It was infuriating, what helplessness did to a man; even if he knew he should push back, it took him over, subjugated him like a force of nature. “Is that how you did it?”

“I’ve spent nearly a week wondering how to tell you.” Rachel’s voice cracked. Tim closed his eyes and could see her, lovely, brilliant, helpless herself, unable to hold back the tears.

“Tim, please believe me when I tell you, I had nothing to do with the expropriation of your system. I’d heard about the burglary in your lab two years ago, but I never dreamt that –”

Rachel began to cry.

“It’s OK, Rachel. I believe you,” Tim said, though he wasn’t sure he did – not entirely. “Just tell me what happened.”

Rachel cleared her throat.

“Excuse me. Nine months before the operations took place, when our surgeons were still ironing out how to place the implants into the patients’ eyes, we got a briefing from the higher-ups regarding a confidential technology already in place for the next step. They said it was a specialized computing device, run by a microprocessor capable of learning and adapting so as to guide the patients in regaining their sight. It was a neural network with a wireless link to the eye implants, featuring a recursive learning algorithm to fine-tune the image processing in the occipital cortex.”

“Go on,” Tim urged her gently after a mutually uncomfortable pause.

“The description was disconcertingly familiar, but I told myself that it couldn’t be – they wouldn’t have robbed you so brazenly. I was… naïve. I realized how naïve once the implants were in and it came time to flip the switch to activate the visual re-learning process.”

Tim grunted. His mind was racing. His sense of helplessness was beginning to be eclipsed by anger. This was good, he thought; was not anger a necessary precursor to action? Yes, it was… or to more anger and still more anger. Then exhaustion… He’d trod this path before.

“They hit you with a gag order, didn’t they?” he asked.

“It’s one of the reasons they lured me out here in the first place,” she said.

If she had betrayed him, he thought, could she feign despair so convincingly? Maybe. Rachel was brilliant – who’s to say she could not be a brilliant actress if need be? Tim shook the ugly thoughts away and forced himself to focus on what Rachel was telling him.

“After all, I’d gained first-hand experience with the prototypes that became the Simitalis years later,” she added, “under the tutelage of its creator. Metacelsus must have known that, because his minions all but incarcerated us in the facility before showing us the system. Then we had to sign strict non-disclosure agreements, or we’d be… there would have been consequences.”

“Bastards!” Tim exploded, incandescent with rage, his fear of being overheard gone. “The burglars made off with everything – they took the damn hardware wholesale. But the police barely lifted a finger; they wouldn’t touch the case. The whole thing stunk. At first it seemed inexplicable, such complete disinterest. Then we realized, this wasn’t a theft of computer equipment, but of what was on it – not just the specs but the entire design process. It became obvious, this had to stretch all the way to the Ruling Clans themselves. We eventually hired a private investigator and she concluded Argentus was behind it, but we never found out where –”

Tim got up from the table, leaving the champagne bottle. He walked to the door his protégé had left by mere minutes earlier and gazed down the empty corridor. Above the door the EXIT sign glowed red under the pale fluorescent lights. He shook his head and chuckled.

“So they steal my life’s work,” he said, “and now they come groveling to me for help when things don’t work out as planned. They wanted you out there because of your relationship to me, now they put you up to the task of recruiting me because they don’t know what they’re doing.”

Again Tim chuckled in amused contempt.

“So that’s the story, huh?” he added.

“They figured that maybe I could get through to you. They felt they’d get nowhere if they contacted you directly.”

“Indeed. They’re as craven as they are corrupt,” he said. “And if you failed, well, at least they’d know they managed to turn two more of their victims against each other.”

“There’s been plenty of that around here, too.”

Tim sighed. He checked the date on his watch.

“Monday… Monday’s a holiday from my remaining duties pre-sabbatical.”

“So you’ll come?”

Tim shrugged.

“There’s a family visit I’ve been putting off,” he said, thinking aloud. “If I go to Tennessee for work, I won’t have to guilt-trip myself into a separate outing later on down the line.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. He felt a headache coming on from the champagne. Or maybe it was from the vague feeling that bad winds were stirring, and he was taking the most foolhardy tack imaginable, sailing out instead of staying safe at home in port.

“I’ll do it, Rachel, for you – you and any other hapless foot-soldiers embroiled in this mess. And who knows? They’re calling me because they need me. If I help them, maybe I can name some conditions of my own – not least among which that they spring you loose from that bottomless pit.”

“I wouldn’t get my hopes up on that count. They all but have us on lockdown here until the crisis is resolved; I’m surprised they haven’t issued us orange jumpsuits yet.”

Tim pondered that image.

“I have to say, Rachel, it’s not like the Triantarchs to ever own up to anything, no matter how royally they screw up. They just blame someone else and move on. Yet here they are, desperate to fix the mess they made – they actually want to fix something, so bad that they’re pleading on hands and knees to the very guy they ripped off in the first place. Must be one serious mess out there in the sticks.”

“If only it were just a mess,” she said. “My old childhood nightmares seem like pictures of tranquility, compared to the damnation I wake up to every morning.”

“That’s quite a statement.”

Rachel seemed to hesitate for a moment.

“How soon can you get out here, Tim?”

From personal to professional in the blink of an eye, he thought.

“How soon do you need me there, Rachel? A-S-A-P, I take it?”

“More or less, yes. One of my assistants can brief you on the details first thing tomorrow. Don’t worry about security clearances. We’ll make all the arrangements, and get you quartered in whatever passes for a five-star hotel since the Reckoning. I’ll be in before dawn on Saturday, if you can manage it on such short notice.”

“What a hideous way to kick off the weekend,” Tim said with a chuckle, though he didn’t even feel ironic amusement anymore at the situation. Nevertheless, he followed up his hollow joke with another. “I think that qualifies as damnation in itself.”

“Well, that’s how it’s been lately,” she said. “At least it’ll be relatively low-key. I can give you the guided tour without much fanfare. You know, I don’t mean to come off so heavy. The circumstances… Really, I can’t thank you enough, Tim. You’re literally saving our lives here.”

“Let’s wait until I arrive before declaring any miracles.”

“Considering what they took from you, it’s already a miracle that you’re coming.”

“The Triantarchs have taken far too much from all of us, and that goes doubly for you, Rachel. I won’t let your promise melt away on account of their greed and recklessness. I won’t let you drown in that quicksand.”

“If you can help us chart a path out of this web of strange riddles we’ve gotten trapped in – that alone will be enough to fulfill my wish list for the next three years. As for getting out of this place or recovering any peace of mind… I’d need my naïveté back to believe in such pretty fantasies. Whatever happens, I’ll never regain what I’ve lost.”

Even if she’d felt like elaborating, Tim would have told her to hold off till he saw her in Tennessee. He’d barely slept the night before, and the champagne and the day’s events had already left him exhausted. Though dusk had yet to set in, he looked forward to shutting his eyes on the world and drifting off into dreamless sleep.

Tim busied himself with clean-up and office trivialities as the alcohol dissipated into his bloodstream, then set off for home. He was in bed minutes after arriving, barely even mustering the initiative to switch off the bedside table lamp. Yet, as he lay there in the dark, thoughts and images kept his brain stubbornly, sluggishly awake – sleep just wouldn’t come.

Like a dog straining to scratch off a stubborn tick, he tried to drive away the thoughts, counting down from three-hundred by threes, then from six-hundred, then from nine-hundred. Without meaning to, he began thinking of Rachel’s crying over his stolen work, and he found himself grinding his teeth in impotent rage at what had been done to him. At the same time, he scolded himself for not fully trusting her, for feeling anger toward her for being a participant in events she’d had no control over.

As he thought about it, he realized the true source of the anger he felt toward this rare, talented, and wonderful woman, whom he had come to cherish so much amid the rottenness into which his world had descended. What we despise in others, he thought, almost always mirrors what we hate – or fear – about ourselves. No, it was not her imagined role in the theft that rankled him. It was the morbid helplessness in her voice; she sounded nothing like the Rachel Bloom he had known. It was the terrible defeatism, coming from someone who had been so strong-willed and unflappable before. It was her choice of words…

“I’ll never regain what I’ve lost.”

 

Thursday, May 15, 8:47 p.m.

Cantina de los Corazones Rotos
City of Old Chapel Hill, North Carolina

 

Zach looked to his left with a blank expression, out the arched window of the cramped but cozy bar. The plastic coatings of its variegated panes were peeling in places, leaving islands of smudged glass that offered views of the bustling promenade outside. Revelers in varying states of intoxication milled before the window like a lurching pageant, their faces betraying a dissonant mixture of merriment and misery.

Street vendors and performers plied their trades before an audience of tourists, students, and young children who had nowhere else to be. Lonely coffeeshops shared the broken-down block with impromptu nightclubs, squatting amidst a nest of generators in abandoned lots long forgotten by municipal authorities. Lights from the occasional posh restaurant or swanky hotel glittered in the distance, anachronisms in a bleak landscape that had been stripped of such luxuries long enough ago so that people described them in words suggestive of mythology, not history.

“So they say there’s a new tent city springing up to the north,” called out a familiar voice. The speaker took the unoccupied barstool immediately to Zach’s right. “On the grounds of the old Astor Park.”

“How charming.” Zach tipped back his beer mug and guzzled half of its contents, then made a quarter turn on his stool, halting well short of a face-to-face with his junior colleague Matt Hansen. “So it’s only one street down from the Imperial Plaza, the newest little gated city on the hill.”

“Oh, no reason to sweat the issue. I’m sure the goon squads from the local lords and manors will raze the place soon enough.”

“Pity that. The park’s location is unbeatable. Now I’ll have to find somewhere else to pitch my tent.”

“There you go again, Zach. You pass your thesis defense with a flair and a flourish, and still you couldn’t wait a single evening to toss the wet blanket onto your own party.”

“A whole evening?” Zach took another swig from his mug before angling to address his friend more pointedly. “Please, Matt – you give me far too much credit. I was on it barely an hour after the defense.”

“Yes, I noticed. You and Tim did a bang-up job muzzling that little tempest you kicked up, but it was obvious that you weren’t critiquing the dip. After all he’s done for you, Zach… What’s gotten into you? You weren’t like this two years ago. Sometimes I wonder if the same guy is inhabiting that body you traipse around in.”

“Two years ago,” Zach said with a nod and an indignant grin. “You just answered your own question.”

Matt sighed and put his back against the hard counter, taking a moment to craft his reply.

“What happened to you was terrible,” he said. “But you’re not the only one who suffered because of the break-in.”

“Never said I was, Matt – nor am I pleading for a pity party.”

“Then why can’t you do like the rest of us, simply count your blessings and move on?”

“Because I lost much more than the fruits of my labor. I can’t move on because they’re determined to hem me in.”

“They?”

Zach looked through his colleague, swirling the dregs of his beer.

“We’ve been in this foxhole for three years now,” Matt said. “You, me, Shelley, everyone in the Doghouse; we’ve been dodging these bullets together. Or not dodging them, as it may be. Whatever’s eating you, we of all people can relate.”

“Tim never wanted the gaudy horror of it all to hit the big screen. I guess I followed his lead.” Zach swiveled his stool to face his colleague, then, as if thinking better of it, began to turn away. Matt grabbed the backrest of the stool, however. Zack looked at Matt’s hand and Matt let go of the backrest. Still, Zach didn’t turn away from the younger man.

Matt broke the silence.

“I always thought there was more to this story.”

“You’ve barely browsed its cover page. It was ostensibly a routine break-in, yet the police and the university bigwigs wouldn’t go near it – an odd coupling of events, with that sweetly putrescent aroma of an official cover-up.”

“A cover-up? By whom? Why would the university –”

“Tim hired a private eye – used his own money. She was good. She spent three months digging up all the musty skeletons in the case. Did great work. If you ever need a crack P.I. –”

“Stop. You just said she did great work. And?”

“And? And she didn’t dare take a step further. Smart lady.”

Matt’s ruddy cheeks blanched. “It was one of the Ruling Families, wasn’t it?”

Zach studied the bottom of his mug.

“The patriarch of Clan Argentus is one of the worst; even the other Triantarchs fear him. A coldblooded, greedy old bastard. One of his close associates – never learned his name to curse and spit on – set his sights on our work. And not only on the Simitalis.” Zach looked up from his mug. “You remember, what became my thesis project was originally a humble side gig, not the pièce de résistance. That was supposed to have been, you may remember –”

“Damn right I remember. We all used to whisper that you had your own pet cyborg stashed away in the locker room, the insane hours you were putting in.”

“For all we knew, Old Man Argentus may have had that in mind; there was a rash of intellectual property theft around the same time as our break-in, and it’s not even clear that we were the main target. The bottom line is that after the Clan members had drawn first blood, they knew I was too dangerous to be left standing; I knew too much. So they had to pummel me while I was down, to guarantee that no one in the field would ever exhume the truth from the shallow grave where those dreamsnatchers had buried it alive…”

He was about to bring his fist down on the countertop, but he stopped himself. What good was anger if he couldn’t channel it to yield results?

“So the Blacklist is real.”

“Real?” Zach chuckled.

“I didn’t mean anything by –”

“Don’t worry about it, Matt. It’s just… sort of morbidly amusing to hear someone surprised to learn that what ruined my life actually exists.”

Zach signaled the bartender for another beer.

“I never met anyone who was put on it,” Matt said. “I figured it was propaganda, to help the Triantarchs keep the masses in their place.”

“No one gives you an official notice – though actually, that would be nice. Hell, a phone call would’ve been nice. They just leave it for you to figure out. One by one, in the months after the burglary, all my prospective work offers were rescinded. I couldn’t get a summer internship – couldn’t even get work as an office gopher.”

“You can’t work anywhere? Still?” Matt asked.

Zach shook his head.

“Can’t work, can’t escape. Imagine if you had to tell Melissa before your wedding day –”

Zach knotted his tongue and locked his lips shut, silently berating himself for turning onto a strictly forbidden avenue of conversation.

“You know,” he continued, subtly changing the subject, “the Clans even added a touch of Dantean theatricality to the name – the Blacklist, I mean, is not just ‘The Blacklist.’ Its official title supposedly is, ‘The Blacklist of the Damned Souls.’ The names of the Damned are radioactive; everyone up to your old grade-school buddies from the backyard treehouse will balk at bringing you on staff.”

“But you never lifted a finger against the Triantarchs – you were just doing your work!”

The bartender set down a froth-topped mug in front of Zach and took the empty one away. Zach took a sip of foam.

“You know, I actually like beer-foam. The good professor thinks you’re nuts if you don’t like tequila, but that stuff tastes terrible. The head on a beer, on the other hand… it’s like a little preview of the goodness to come. Why does the foam get such a bad rap, Matt?”

“You were just doing your work,” Matt said.

“Yes, I was. But they didn’t like it. Or rather, they liked it so much they stole it, but they didn’t want me doing any more of it for anyone else. Anywhere.” Zach took a long drink of beer. “Doesn’t matter what I did, Matt. Doesn’t matter if it’s right or fair or… or what have you. My career has been stubbed out like a cigarette, and that’s that. There’s no power left in this shell of a continent that can stop them.”

“Powerful as they may be, not even they can ruin you on a whim or a whisper. Take Tim – he’s managed to keep standing.”

“Tim, bless his heart, has enough stature to fend them off for a while. The bloodthirsty knights in our Camelot of Crooks reserve their worst predations for the weak and wounded, and unfortunately for me, I happened to catch the Triantarchs’ collective eye before I’d gained such stature for myself. You only get that with a career, which, as we’ve covered, is already off the table for me.”

“But Zach, that doesn’t mean that –”

“Which is useful to them in another way – I’m too busy surviving each wretched new day to even contemplate fighting back. And that is a concern – survival, I mean. The Ruling Clans often like to attach a fig leaf of legitimacy to Blacklisting, usually some trumped-up accusations of debt or financial profligacy.”

“You?” Matt laughed. “In that mass of rust and scrap you call a car? You’re about as far from profligate as can be imagined.”

Zach leaned in close to Matt.

“The Triantarchs can always find a liability to your name or fabricate one out of whole cloth, so all of us born into the cattle classes are candidates for the Blacklist – or worse. As for those misguided souls who dare to engage someone on the Blacklist… They’re next to wind up in the crosshairs. Go home and stay safe, Matt. You don’t need to know about this nightmare. Thank your lucky stars you don’t.”

“I’m no stranger to the Clans’ machinations, Zach. Nor is Melissa…” Matt abruptly stayed his tongue. He moved on quickly. “In any event, it still shouldn’t be like this. How can they undo so many centuries of hard-won gains –”

“Is that a serious question? They play up every festering rankle or grievance that’s rent this country since 1776. They keep us at each other’s throats. Thirty families with a chokehold on 300 million people – the numbers may be bigger than ever, but the strategy that got them there is as old as the Bible – older, even.”

Matt took a prolonged gulp from his own beer. He set down the mug on its edge and it wobbled on the counter

“I still don’t see where the puzzle pieces fit,” he said, shaking his head. “Why you, a lowly young gearhead minding his own business?”

“‘Lowly’ young gearhead? Now there’s a spirit-perker for you.”

“Zach, come on. You know what I meant.”

“Even if I did, am I really supposed to care?”

“I think you should. It’d do you a lot more good than slinking away into this little temple of dark and dismal thoughts you’ve set up for yourself.”

“Which, I take it, is Matt-speak for, ‘Zach, stop acting like a first-class jerk about all this.’”

“Actually, Zach, you are acting like a first-class jerk right now, and the thing is, it doesn’t bother me a bit, because I know why you’re doing it. It’s your armor, your antidote to the whispers in your own head, the ones that occasionally gain a voice to sing and chirp about hope. You’ve been burned bad, I get that. And now you’re afraid of the fleeting rays of light that might dare to seep in past your defenses, so damn afraid to hope for any hint of a solution that might crumble into yet another disappointment.”

“Hope? That would imply there’s something to hope for.”

“At the very least, you could get to the bottom of what really happened to you. It wasn’t merely about shutting you up. Think about it – why would the Clans even care if you did speak up about the burglary? You could shout the truth from the rooftops, and what difference would it make? So the Ruling Families are criminal monsters bleeding our country dry – that’s common knowledge, especially to anyone naïve enough to have ever engaged in productive pursuits before having all their efforts stolen away. Why would the Clans care what you said?”

“You really think I have an answer for that?” asked Zach with a disdainful sidelong glance.

“No, but I do think you should be asking more questions. It’s been six years since the Triantarchs seized the honeypot of power in this country, and they’re more entrenched than ever. So why would they go to such lengths to destroy you?”

“Why do you even presume there is a rational explanation for what happened to me, at least that any of us outside their inner circle could comprehend? It must get awfully humdrum within the Triantarchy from time to time; maybe ruining the lives of helpless plebs qualifies as rousing entertainment for bored kleptocrats.”

“Zach, dammit, this cynicism of yours will get you nowhere. All I’m saying is that there’s far more to the story than some ham-fisted attempt to muzzle you about the burglary. There has to be a deeper reason.”

“Oh, Jesus, Matt! A deeper reason?”

Zach’s outburst drew tentative gazes from elsewhere in the bar. He lowered his voice.

“The bigwigs in Clan Longinus,” he continued, “flattened two towns and butchered 15,000 people back in 2021, all to seal off the region and build a den of debauchery for the murderous hedonists within their orbit. It was three years before the Underground groups could dig up the truth, before all those official lies about a revolt and seizure of the local armory were at last dispelled. That was the ‘deeper reason’ that 15,000 innocents breathed their last that day – a Goddamned pleasure complex!”

“The Mayfly Massacre – I wish you hadn’t reminded me. I’m not sure what’s more dispiriting, the mass slaughter itself or the apathy that greeted the eventual truth.”

“No, Matt, it wasn’t mere indifference that greeted the revelations – it was fear, and not only of the Triantarchs themselves. Fifteen-thousand perished in the Mayfly Massacre, but 15,000,000 died on account of the civil war in Tokhariana the year before, including many of our own troops sent in for God knows what reason.”

“To say nothing of the other wars in all those countries-for-a-week that sprouted up after the Reckoning.”

“Then you know where this is leading. Up to now, most of the Triantarchs have preferred to keep their brutality a bit less overt than the horrors of Mayfly, but not because they have to. They’ve wiped out virtually anything that would qualify as organized opposition, so whatever hell the Ruling Clans have visited upon this land, what’s left of America is too afraid of what would follow in the wake of their ouster. The Clans know this, and it’s why they don’t need reasons for what they’ve done to me or any of their other victims, only their own unchallengeable whims.”

“Maybe so, but I’d be willing to wager that some sort of inter-Clan insider jockeying is at the bottom of all this, a power struggle with you somehow caught in the middle. You’re probably not the real target, and you may have more room to maneuver than you think. Heck, maybe we’ll all get lucky if they start bumping each other off again. Used to be, what, 150 Clans? Then 90? 80? Maybe they’ll solve your problem for you.”

“I wouldn’t count on such a grim salvation, Matt.”

“I think you’re being too pessimistic.”

“And I wish I could soak up a drop of your dogged optimism, but what you or I think, let alone hope, doesn’t matter one iota. For me to survive this, I have to lie low and tend my own garden, and that means fending off any unguarded thoughts about how I came into this plight. I’ve boiled my own blood too many times while stewing in that pot of speculation and… no, it’s not in the blood. It’s in the pit of my stomach, that’s where I feel it.”

“Where you feel what?”

“That vampire despair, the kind that lifers in a Supermax lockdown or the debtors’ prisons must wake up to every morning. It drains your spirit pale every day with the knowledge you have nowhere to go, that everywhere you turn there’s another wall waiting to close in and crush the life clean out of you. This sick feeling… I can overcome it only because I’ve learned not to feed it with unanswerable questions whenever my mind strays too close.”

“All right, Zach, I can see why you’re not pressing this, but that doesn’t mean you’re limited to helplessly waiting and moping. Why can’t you just pick up stakes, like so many of the other promising young talents who don’t even have a sword dangling over their heads?”

“The Blacklist upends the exit visa process, too, and regardless, where would I go? My family couldn’t come within 100 miles of Korea without setting off all those old vendettas again. We’re pariahs anywhere near the old family home.”

“Have you thought about crossing the other ocean? At least a few places are somewhat less screwed-up across the Atlantic. You’re a trained professional, spent a year in Switzerland, you speak French, Spanish, and German at least passably enough to –”

“Matt, even if I could scheme my way past customs, everybody and his tenth-cousin-once-removed is conniving to get one of those exit visas, and they don’t come cheap. I don’t have the remotest connection to Europe other than that stint goofing around as a ski instructor.”

“Then elsewhere in Asia? What about Renee?”

“What about her?” Zach asked reluctantly, awkwardly averting his gaze.

“Her family’s from Taiwan, right? Used to work in Hong Kong? And in Xiamen on the Chinese Mainland? Plenty of options. I was at the same table with all of you at that Engineering Awards Banquet last year. Her father was gushing about all his new investments in the family tool-and-die shop in south Taiwan.”

“I speak enough Mandarin to sweet-talk Renee now and then, Matt. Can’t draw much of a paycheck from that.”

“Then call it a first step and give it a chance. The Triantarchs can’t reach you there.”

“I told you it’s a non-starter.”

“What do you have to lose, for Chrissakes? Renee’s parents would corral earth and moon to help you. I’ll never forget her father’s words when he learned I was your best friend; he made me deaf burbling on about how much he looked forward to introducing Dr. Zach Choi as his son-in-law –”

Zach had seized an unfortunate salad fork in a death grip, gouging its tines into the already pocked and scarred wood of the bar counter. He then arched forward with a pale, blank stare before tilting his forehead meekly downward, overwhelmed by a corrosive mixture of shame and self-devouring rage.

His friend looked on in sympathy and a measure of alarm, the icy waters of realization washing over him.

“That’s why you and Tim were locking horns,” Matt concluded soberly. “That’s what’s behind all of this. You still haven’t told Renee, have you?”

Zach dug a crumpled wad of dollar bills from his back pocket and dumped them on the counter.

“I think I’ll call it a night,” he said brusquely, rising from the stool and lumbering toward the exit.

“Zach, wait! I only wanted to –”

Zach paused momentarily at the door, making a half-turn back around; but his shoulder was soon pressing through the threshold. Whatever he dared not disclose in words, he feared his eyes would betray just the same.