The defender on the left said, “You—go back inside.” Kai stared straight ahead and kept walking, not sure if the defender was speaking to him, and not wanting to find out.
“You,” the defender barked. Reluctantly, Kai looked up, saw the defender staring down at him. “Go back inside.”
“I’m fine,” Kai stammered. “I can work.”
“With one hand?”
“I can—” Kai tried to think. What could he do with one hand? What would the defenders value?
His pulse slowed as it came to him. He looked the defender square in the eye and said, “I’m a nuclear physicist. I worked at the North Anna Power Station, in Virginia.”
The defender studied him for a long moment, then motioned him to step to one side. “Wait there.”
Kai waited, remaining on his feet through sheer force of will. He’d never even been inside a nuclear power plant. Hopefully the people he was assigned to work with would cover his ass until he figured it out.
63
Dominique Wiewall
July 15, 2045. Colorado Springs, Colorado.
It had taken Dominique less than twenty minutes to stuff her belongings into a rucksack, but when she reached the hangar, the transport plane was already on the tarmac, its engines revving. Trying to tamp down rising panic (and the irrational, childlike voice in her head saying they were leaving her behind on purpose, as punishment), she swung the bag over her back, put her head down, and ran. Surely they wouldn’t leave people behind. Of course, they were leaving everyone behind; all of the soldiers defending the facility, all of the noncrucial facility personnel they couldn’t fit in the transport plane. They were leaving them here to die. The defenders had their underground command complex surrounded. Anyone still inside was going to die.
“Come on, let’s go.” Forrest was standing at the bottom of the stairs, waving her up. She hustled inside, took a seat along the wall. The president, his wife, his brother Anthony the ex-president, and a dozen others were already strapped in, but there were still plenty of empty seats. She wasn’t late; it was a relief to know she hadn’t been holding up the flight.
Soon others were rushing across the tarmac: Smythe, the secretary of defense; President Wood’s adult daughter, Solyn. Meryem Cevik, chief of the Secret Service, was the last. They were in the air by the time she was in her seat.
They climbed at a steep angle; there were no windows nearby, so Dominique couldn’t see what was going on. That was probably a good thing; if they were going to be shot down, Dominique didn’t want to know in advance.
As the plane leveled off, so did Dominique’s pulse. The president and his inner circle left their seats almost immediately, retreating toward the cockpit.
They weren’t ever going back to the United States. No one had said that out loud, but Dominique knew that if the president was fleeing to the Arctic, things weren’t going to turn around. How could they, at this point? The defenders had dispatched troops from Turkey to the south, Iran to the west, and Syria to the east, and were closing in on the UN command complex in Baghdad. They controlled the seas, the air. They controlled 90 percent of the world’s power sources.
She’d engineered the defenders to be vicious warriors, brilliant tacticians, so they could defeat the Luyten and save the world. She’d designed them too well. And too poorly.
“Dr. Wiewall?” Forrest set a hand on her shoulder. “The president would like to see you.” With the buzz of the engine vibrating underfoot, Dominique made her way to the front of the plane.
The president and his advisors were standing around a technician operating a shortwave radio that was now their sole means of communicating with Central Command in Baghdad. He looked up as Dominique entered the war room. “Dr. Wiewall, the premier has asked for your assistance in drafting a peace proposal to present to the defenders.”
Dominique nodded. She was not surprised by this news. She’d learned a few things standing around war rooms for the past few months, and one of those things was that once you can’t resupply your center of gravity and your troops, it is time to surrender.
PART III
OCCUPATION
64
Kai Zhou
October 8, 2047. Washington, D.C.
The defender watched the dealer turn the card. Kai watched the defender, who sat up straighter in his chair and licked his lips. Now Kai knew both of the defender’s hole cards. They were so absurdly easy to read, so clownishly bad at masking their reactions.
“Bet twenty-five thousand.” The defender, whose name was Sidney, slid oversized chips into the pot with his clawed fingers. The motion aired out Sidney’s armpit, causing his stress-stink to waft in Kai’s direction. When defenders were nervous they sweated profusely, and the stink was incredible.
Kai called the bet. This was a good hand to lose. It wouldn’t be obvious, given that Kai had a smaller two pair. He saw the bet and raised forty thousand, not worried about scaring Sidney into folding, because defenders didn’t know what the word meant. If they had a bad hand, most of the time they tried to bluff. They hated losing. Everyone hated losing, but defenders had turned sore losing into an art form. Kai had seen it once firsthand, when a defender named Francois had crushed Pete Sheehy’s head after Sheehy wiped him out with a bluff. What a horrible thing that had been—as bad as anything Kai had seen in the war.
Kai flipped his cards, feigned disappointment as Sidney revealed his paired king-ten, and watched as the defender gleefully raked in the pot.
“You’re a Poker World Series champion,” Sidney said.
“Yes, I am.”
“I’m an outstanding player, if I can beat you.”
“That would follow, yes.” The other human players at the table might have picked up the slightest hint of sarcasm in Kai’s tone, but they wouldn’t dare smirk. Kai’s own face generated nothing but earnestness as he looked up at Sidney.
If Kai had known from the outset how much defenders revered poker, he could have saved himself the stress of spending two months working at a nuclear power plant with no idea what he was doing. He really owed the people at that plant; they’d risked their lives covering for him.
Kai shifted to the left, then the right, trying to find a position that made his hip and side ache less. Sometimes it was hard for him to believe he was not yet thirty years old. He felt eighty.
Sidney raised old Paul Heller’s bet fifty thousand, proclaiming the raise with such ham-handed bravado that even a hamster would know he was bluffing. Kai folded.
He had probably been safer as a fraud in a nuclear power plant than he was playing poker with defenders. Once in a while you had to beat them, or they’d suspect you were patronizing them and they’d kill you. But you’d better be sure they were in a good mood when you beat them, or else they’d kill you then, too.
“Poker is war, disguised as a game,” Sidney proclaimed, apropos of nothing, as he raked in the pot after Paul folded.
Head down, Kai restacked his dwindling pile of chips. He still found it difficult, stacking chips and handling cards with only his left hand. Maybe he always would.
Poker wasn’t war; war was war. And if you lost a war, you’d better let the victors beat you at poker.
Kai’s phone vibrated. He checked it, saw it was a message from Lila.
Erik and I are going to dinner tonight. Can you pick up Errol?