Dr. Scranton nodded slowly. Her face, no longer poker-still, was nevertheless serious. “They’ve got nukes, Rita. They’re at least late-1960s in technology terms. They’ve got computers and tanks and the proven ability to detect and shoot down stealthed drones. In some ways they’re ahead of us: they’ve got containerized multimodal transport, and they’ve also got electrified freight and high-speed trains. If you were in the White House, what would you be thinking?”
“I’d be thinking—” Oh God, we’re fucked. If they have world-walkers, we are so fucked. “It’s a good thing they don’t have world-walkers, isn’t it?”
Scranton nodded. Then she reached into her handbag and pulled out a tablet. “Watch this,” she said, toneless as an executioner as she handed the device to Rita.
“Watch—”
Grainy CCTV video showed a sidewalk on a quiet city street. A middle-aged woman, her black hair scraped back, walked into a questionable-looking establishment, half diner, half bodega.
Cut to: red brick buildings, shuttered windows, locked doors.
A man dressed in last year’s hipster uncool, with heavy-rimmed spectacles and urban sidewalk-warrior hybrid bicycle accessory, stepped out of a door.
“Brooklyn, back in late March this year,” said Scranton. “Five months ago.”
Under-eave cameras chased the cycle-hipster up an alleyway, along a street, up another alley, and into a wider avenue. Eventually he chained up his bike, shouldered his messenger bag, and approached the same diner as the woman.
“Everyone knows about face recognition algorithms,” remarked Scranton. “They think wearing hoodies will conceal them. Somewhat fewer people know about ear recognition, but it’s a big deal: ears are nearly as unique as fingerprints. And then there’s gait recognition—you can’t easily change the length of the bones in your legs, so we’ve got software that can identify people by the way they walk. You’ll know it’s gone viral when you start seeing news footage of bank robbers in veils and hoopskirts. And of course everyone knows their fatphone camera can recognize cats.”
“What most people don’t know yet is that we’ve got arbitrary package recognition,” said the Colonel. He sounded amused. “Bag recognition software. Mulberry, Ted Baker, Hot Tuna. Or in this case, Crumpler. Twenty-liter capacity. The bag goes in thin, it comes out fat.”
“Look at the woman, Rita,” said Dr. Scranton. Something in her tone made Rita tense up, like fingernails on glass. “Look at her.”
Rita froze the CCTV stream, backed up, and pinch-zoomed on the woman as she entered the diner, blowing her up until the image pixelated.
“That woman,” said Dr. Scranton, “Is a former coworker of your birth mother, Miriam Beckstein. Her messenger bag, when she entered, was bulging: when she leaves, it’s clearly lighter. The man”—a bony finger stabbed at the screen—“we don’t know who he is. The Transit Police lost him in Brooklyn. We dumpster-dived the trash after they both left. He’s not on the National DNA Database, but we sequenced DNA traces off his meal tray, and they tested positive for the modified glutamate receptor required for JAUNT BLUE. Then we did a full workup. He’s your third cousin twice removed, Ms. Douglas.”
Rita froze, chewing her lower lip. She felt oddly unaffected. “So he’s a world-walker. From the Clan. And she’s a, a covert asset.” She paused. “Why haven’t you lifted them?”
“Because reasons.” Dr. Scranton stood, clutching her coffee mug, and began to pace jerkily, her power heels digging notches in the deep pile carpet. “Like I said, we nearly lifted him on the New York subway. The more pressing question is Ms. Milan—that woman. The FBI investigated her shortly after 7/16; they concluded she was harmless: a first-degree contact, not an associate. It now appears that they were wrong and she was a sleeper. Now she’s awake and she’s supplying one of their couriers with … you don’t need to know.
“Anyway, he hasn’t shown up since that meeting. We’re now monitoring her activities, and next time the Clan make contact we’ll snatch them both. But the core takeaway we want you to be aware of is that enemy world-walkers are currently active in the United States—keeping a very low profile but conducting industrial espionage. And BLACK RAIN is one jaunt away from the Clan’s old stomping ground. Now do you understand why we’re briefing you on this?”
“You’re afraid the BLACK RAIN people have world-walkers. And tanks, and computers, and nuclear weapons—”
“Yes, and we know practically fuck-all about them. Except that what we do know is enough to have the President climbing the walls—well, she’s not, but only because she’s got liquid helium for blood. She is pushing for results, Rita, so we need to move to Phase Two and Phase Three fast, to get safe houses established so we can install ARMBAND transporters and send regular clandestine specialists through to establish a presence. But the real problem is that we urgently need to confirm whether or not BLACK RAIN have world-walkers. World-walkers would make BLACK RAIN a deadly strategic threat to us. And especially if they’re Clan revenants. Or, worst of all, if they’re in contact with the forerunners. Meanwhile, we’ve got to proceed on the assumption that the Clan are still preying on us, that they’ve penetrated our security perimeter, and that if this operation leaks they’ll be in a position to make us pay. Which is why I’m imposing the lockdown. I have a Presidential Letter authorizing me to set up an inner cell within the Unit, within the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Special Programs. And I am authorized to lie to everyone outside the cell, up to and including the National Security Council. Congress and the Supremes, if necessary.
“This is a matter of national survival, Rita. And that’s why, sooner or later, on one of your missions into BLACK RAIN—not this one, but once you’ve got the lie of the land and established a safe location for clandestine ops with ARMBAND units to transfer, and once we have some idea of the political situation—we are going to ‘lose’ you.
“Because we need to open a back-channel for negotiations.”
PHILADELPHIA, TIME LINE TWO, AUGUST 2020
After clocking off until the next day, Rita set her alarm for a three-hour afternoon nap. She woke, showered, and checked her Facebook Friends page. As promised, Angie had changed her relationship status from “single” to “in a relationship.”
She swallowed, heart pounding. With a tremulous feeling she couldn’t identify—somewhere between exultation and doom—she tapped on her profile. Watched the page flicker as it reloaded. With a sense of reckless abandon, she changed her status and tagged Angie as her partner. It gave her a shivery sensation in the pit of her stomach. She hadn’t gotten around to doing this with Kate: she’d sheltered in the ambiguity of her own emotional shadows, unsure about her own identity. And the uncertainty had eaten away at Kate’s trust until, in the end, it proved insufficient unto the day …
To Rita’s generation, tagging a partner on FB was as public a display of commitment as wearing an engagement ring had been to her parents’. (Minus the size of the stone, of course. Checkboxes came in a single size, enforcing a social uniformity that left no room for carat-denominated ego preening.) So she was tiredly unsurprised when her wall exploded with distant tinny congratulations. And then, ten minutes later, her phone rang.