Then she and Quinn were back on the road, through the last remains of daylight, quiet except for the buzz of pop radio. Quinn took an exit, traveling down a state two-lane until they reached a dark turnoff for some meager Carolina town. She pulled into an alley, and it felt as though she barely stopped the car. The locks unbolted, the rear passenger door popped open, and Jansi darted inside, tossing a pack onto the seat and slamming the door closed in one swift motion. Then Quinn was driving again.
“Howdy,” said Jansi, jamming her overlong body into the front to hug Shane. Long, bony, and horse-faced, Jansi wore a green fatigue cap tucked low over her brow. She had overlapping teeth and dry black hair, split at the ends. Big brutish moles protruded all over a ghost-white neck. “Oh my god, girl, I can’t believe we’re here!” Jansi squealed to Shane, as if this were a vacation. Like they were on their way to a bachelorette party. They hadn’t seen each other since the Second Cell went operational in ’28.
“You opened a line of contact with Quinn,” Shane groused. “Outside of Second.” But her voice only sounded childish and petulant to her own ears. Guys, that’s not how we’re supposed to play the game! You’re not doing it right!
“Special circumstances,” said Jansi too brightly. “And not to be a bitch about it, but it’s not my cell that’s the reason we’re in this mess.”
Shane bit her tongue and went back to looking out the window. Jansi then proceeded to talk for the next hour, almost without taking a breath, as if she really were catching up with long-lost friends—friends who badly wanted a disquisition on the state of contemporary American politics. Had Jansi always been this platitudinous? She sounded every bit the armchair revolutionary Shane had spent her whole adulthood abhorring, the reason she found Kai Ismael and Allen Ford in the first place. When Shane tried to shoot eyes at Quinn, she was surprised to see Quinn listening intently.
JANSI Was so excited to be with her comrades, to finally get off her chest what she thought of Vic Love and his new administration: “As if we didn’t all see this coming! It’s pathetic how fast the liberals swamped to a true fascist. The Dems finally take the Senate back, and they’re ready to rubber-stamp anything! As long as he gives a speech from a corporate diversity training handbook. He’s executing a textbook authoritarian takeover, and he’s already got practice. His company’s been privatizing the police force of every city in the country for the last decade. And now he’s putting in Xuritas cronies at DOJ. Then the CIA and FBI will both be replaced by loyalists. And we’re the ones who saw all this coming, right? And laid infrastructure for resistance, you know? And Vic Love knows it!”
Jansi droned on as Quinn took the final exit, and they wound their way into the back roads near Clemson, out past a town called Tamassee. They pulled to the top of a long driveway that led into a copse of trees, but just beyond those woods she could see the lights of a house, the edges of a farm stretching into the blue-black light. Quinn produced an old-fashioned burner cell from the glove compartment. She dialed, waited.
“Hi,” Quinn said robotically. “It’s your former student Erica. I’m here with a couple friends, and we were wondering if you could come out tonight. Have a beer and catch up.”
The three of them sat in the silence of the car. Waited.
Quinn nodded. “That’s right. Outside. At the top of your driveway. We wanted to talk. About your plans for the future.” And they waited, just the hum of their hats, the faintest internal whine from the EV’s drivetrain, and a tinny sound from the speaker of the old phone pressed hard to Quinn’s ear. She said, “I understand, but this is an emergency. We received extremely distressing news, and we need to discuss it.” Another pause. “Okay, that works. Okay. Okay, perfect.” She hung up, turned to Jansi and Shane. “He’s home alone. We can talk in the house.” They stared back at her. “He said his dog is sick and he doesn’t want to leave him alone.”
“No way,” said Shane. “Who knows what he’s got in there that’s internet-connected? TV, VR, glasses, oven—hell, his whole house could see us walking in—”
“It’s fine,” Jansi cut her off. The clipped way she said this, as if biting off the tip of her own tongue, caught Shane off-guard. Her face cloaked by shadows and the brim of her hat, Jansi put a hand on Quinn’s shoulder and then pointed forward, urging her on.
HOW THIS WOULD GO Jansi did not like the tension filling the car. She did not like the way Shane and Quinn felt to be on a different page from her. In war, one had to be decisive or risk losing everything. They were arguing about every little point. Action, action, action. Keep moving. Be decisive!
They drove down through the acre of woods to the farmhouse, a pleasant two-story with bright track lighting spilling through the windows, a rusted basketball hoop over the garage, a dingy box truck parked perpendicular to the house with Ford Custom Furnishing stenciled on the side, and a John Deere tractor beside that. Quinn asked for her backpack and pulled from it a large brick with an antenna—a battery-powered jammer, she explained. It would send multiple frequencies to nearby cell towers and ensure their conversation was private and uninterrupted. The three of them exited the car into a wind shivering the branches overhead. Quinn thumped her boot along in a half-limp. She rang the doorbell.
“Hello, hello!” The woman who answered the door had such merry eyes, a smile so big, and a southern drawl so thick, Shane forgot where she was or why she was there. Like she’d blinked herself onto a sitcom. Allen Ford’s wife reached for her first and wrapped her in a hug. “I’m Emmy! It’s so good to meet y’all!” She hugged Quinn next, who managed to look not the least befuddled. “So y’all just showed up at the door hoping Allen would feed you? Not surprising.” She hugged Jansi, and now Shane saw Allen behind his wife in the entranceway, hands in pockets, looking like an old sheepish mouse. He wore a beat-up ballcap that read KIAWAH ISLAND, loose pink scalp tucked inside.
OPSEC Quinn felt her hand shaking as she switched on the jammer. Shane was right; they didn’t know what they were walking into. New speech recognition tech could place a voice to a name with startling accuracy. Stingrays could trick your phone into transmitting data without you knowing. Don’t even whisper near a coffeepot was the best advice. She felt nauseous. She felt exhilarated. She’d waited until the others had left the car to draw one last item from her pack.
“This is my fault,” he aw-shucksed. “You said you might stop through tonight on your way up from Florida, and I just totally blanked on telling the one person I was supposed to inform.”
“What they don’t tell you about getting old,” said Emmy, ushering them in, “is that it all goes—everything! Your memory, your back, and most of all, telling your wife a bunch of pretty former students are dropping by for dinner. Lucky we got plenty to eat, and I’m no jealous type! Honey, what’d you do to the leg?”
Quinn thumped into the living room where the television was turned up to an unfathomable volume. “Speaking of getting old. I fell getting out of the shower. Stupid. Probably osteoporosis catching me early.”
“Shut it,” said Emmy. “You’re too young for that nonsense.”
“So,” said Allen, gesturing toward Quinn. “This is Erica. And I may have told you about this young lady, Abigail.” He looked at Shane, his gaze fond, and Shane smiled weakly. She tugged at the dirty hoodie she’d thrown on before leaving her house and felt gross and underdressed even though that didn’t matter. “One of my favorite students in all my years of teaching.”
“So nice to finally meet you,” Shane said to Emmy, trying to remember Abigail, Abigail, Abigail. “Allen talked about you all the time.”