In the living room of a comfortable cliffside bungalow overlooking Tres Rios from across the bay, a moderately expensive LED screen abruptly cut to white noise without so much as a test pattern. Shirley Harrison frowned and wondered where her soap opera had gone; the writing was just awful and her Spanish couldn’t quite keep pace with the dialogue anyway, but she loved how the actors just got so into it. “Mick?” she called. “The TV went out again!”

“Dammit,” Mick Harrison grumbled as he plodded into the room. These days, Vanguard’s one-time heaviest hitter considered himself semi-retired, living comfortably with his lovely wife on a consultant’s salary when he wasn’t selling his paintings. Mick’s art fused traditional Caribbean landscapes and seascapes with bizarre, manic glimpses of the crazy worlds inside his head and beyond dimensional barriers. “Did you call the LIME office in Del Mar?”

“We get it from Tres Rios, sweetie,” Shirley reminded him as she got up off the couch.

“Balls,” Mick grumbled as he searched the room for his phone. “I’ll just drive down there and hit the pier and the market on my way downtown.” He had donned his least-ripped pair of jeans and a stain-free Zeppelin T-shirt – this was as dressed up as Mick typically got – with the intent of heading to Puerta Mibela to watch the IMPET signing later in the afternoon. Now it looked like he would have to make a detour through, alternately, some of the most sparsely-developed and some of the most densely-developed real estate on the island. “Want me to pick anything up while I'm out?”

“Tomatoes,” Shirley called from the kitchen. “Gonna make some salsa to go over the snapper steaks.”

“How much lime didja squeeze on?” Mick fished the Range Rover keys out of the pocket of his other jeans.

“Enough,” Vanguard's former executive assistant reassured him. “Or would you prefer fish sticks?”

“Point taken.” Mick stopped in front of the mirror. He thought a moment, and a curious, cow-print top hat poofed into existence on his head. He smiled, amused with himself. Fortunately, he knew better than to let himself get more carried away than this nowadays.

- - -


Puerta Mibela, La Perdita
Las Esquinas, 12:27 PM


Hector Veracruz knew better than to think his family had arrived, but to have moved from the shanty-towns of the old barrio into even the two-bedroom government-assistance apartments near the Aeropuerto had been a sign of better days ahead. Now, after three years of grueling sixty-hour work weeks ferrying travelers’ baggage to and from waiting airplanes, Hector had finally moved himself, his newly-expectant wife, and his ailing mother into the three-bedroom apartments along Calle Colibrí near the northern edge of The Corners, about as comfortable and well-kept as rental housing came for native Perditanos. Hector retrieved two utility bills from his mailbox, a seemingly routine activity for most in our world but still an exciting new experience in his. He had known this complex was the place for him as soon as the Identity Foundation broke ground. Fundación Identidad was a nonprofit dedicated to guiding the newly upwardly-mobile Perditanos through their change in fortunes – free vocational training for adults, educational assistance for children, affordable yet appealing housing complexes like this one, even nutritional assistance to fight anemia in children of low-income parents. Essentially, it had helped people like Hector shape promising new identities for themselves – and it was largely the creation of a man who’d spent most of his life with no identity of his own.

Hector set the small pile of mail down on the kitchen table, grabbed a scrap of paper towel, and carefully cleaned a previously unnoticed spatter of tropical bird droppings from the sleeve of his faded but beloved fútbol jersey. It had been given to him one Christmas when he was fourteen and had probably been the one thing that saved him from becoming petty muscle for a local gang, and he still wore it on off days sometimes because it reminded him of the person who’d both given him the jersey and indirectly given him this new home. He occasionally visited the unassuming four-story office building that served as Vanguard’s newest and thus far longest-standing headquarters, and twice he and his wife had been invited to the old mansion on Dawson Island. He didn’t think of Vanguard’s current leader as a hero or a savior, just an ordinary man – well, relatively ordinary – who’d made a few more good choices than bad ones and decided to use what he had to help make others’ lives better. And today that man was helping to sign a treaty that would help make the lives of millions of alterados around the world better. With his wife at work and having just returned from the hospital where his mother was under observation again, Hector would probably catch the Red Line to Mercado Viejo as soon as he caught up on the scores from around the liga…

Nothing. The TV was on and displayed the little status and channel overlay, but there was no picture. Puzzled, Hector looked out the living-room window and saw the grey LLP van down the block. Sure enough, there was a technician harnessed to the utility pole carrying the cable lines and service box – but the man was heading down the pole, and the cover of the box still stood open. The other technician stood at the back door of the van, and his head swiveled this way and that as he appeared to scan the street to see if anyone was watching.

His curiosity piqued, Hector moved slightly closer to the window, careful to stay partly concealed behind the curtains that wafted gently in the light sea breeze. An old man made his way down the street with halting steps, and the technician on the ground acknowledged him politely with a smile and slight wave. The moment the abuelo disappeared around the corner, the technician on the pole dropped the rest of the way to the ground and circled around to open the van’s side door as the second blue-shirted man opened the rear cargo doors. Four men in unmarked dark-brown clothing and flak vests quickly and quietly exited the vehicle, each with a pistola holstered high on his left side and a folding-stock metralleta slung over his right shoulder.

Clearly not policías. As Hector ducked away further out of sight, the two technicians retrieved weapons of their own from the van before the six men disappeared from view between the tightly-packed apartment buildings.

Hector rushed to his bedroom. As he fumbled with the strong box under the bed, he knew Anabéla would kill him for this later. But if there was any chance those matones were planning on using those weapons, he knew the polis would be outgunned. He carefully extracted the nasty-looking black SPP – a civilian-issue semiauto Steyr TMP – and three full magazines of 9mm Parabellum. He’d worked hard to save up enough to score this weapon on what was left of La Perdita’s black market, and even if El Arcángel had hung up his guns, Hector was sure the man would understand why he had to do this.

- - -


The Smith house, 12:32 PM


Nick DiVecchio tucked the bundle of mail under his arm, punched his passcode into the old manor’s new security system with his free hand, and waited for the door to click open. He’d worn a lot of hats since showing up in New Orleans eight years ago, but perhaps the strangest gig for the money launderer-turned low-level mob enforcer-turned personal assistant to a psionic vigilante was his current role on La Perdita as a media liaison for the Identity Foundation. Nick’s MBA from LSU had taught him the value of good public relations to any organization, and even one of the most universally-praised humanitarian nonprofits in the Caribbean needed a media-savvy face. After all, like any reasonably powerful psionic, his boss tended to make many reporters rather uncomfortable.

DiVecchio hadn’t come by to bring in the mail, but it was the least he could do given how busy both Smiths were these days. He was actually looking for a binder containing his notes for a press briefing scheduled for tomorrow; he’d left it here yesterday when talking it over with Phil. After IMPET was signed into law, Identity planned to unveil one of its most ambitious projects yet – a synthesis of vocational training and emigration assistance specifically intended to help repatriate any willing metahumans back to the native countries from which they’d fled to La Perdita. After the island nation had provided a home in exile for outcast metas for so many years, Proyecto Volviendo sought to restore the refugees to the lands of their birth, to their families, to their true homes. It was a massive undertaking – and depending on how many chose to leave, it might end up putting quite a dent in La Perdita’s economy – but it was the natural conclusion to the work Phil Smith and others had begun with the creation of IMPET itself.

Speaking of IMPET… The still-fresh-faced former button man scooped up his binder from where he’d left it on the antique coffee table, replaced it with the handful of mail, then picked up the nearby remote and turned on the TV hanging on the north wall of the living room. They were probably still in session, since Phil still hadn’t called him back about…

Nothing but white noise. No test pattern, no network overlay announcing technical difficulties. Weird… Nick tried flipping up and down a few channels but got the same result. Puzzled, he hit the GUIDE button, but all that did was push the static to a preview in the top-right corner of the screen above a blank menu, over which the message “No data available – currently out of service” scrolled repeatedly from left to right.

DiVecchio wasn’t sure what had transpired, but given the fact this floor of the house alone contained half a million dollars’ worth of art and antiques, it was highly unlikely his boss had forgotten to pay his cable bill. Curiously, just as Nick began pulling his phone from his pocket, he saw a grey telecom van pulling up the driveway and circling around to park in front of the little marble-and-bronze fountain in the front courtyard. The fountain itself partially blocked the van from view. Nick took a few steps toward the front door to let the cable technicians in, but froze as soon as he saw two guys in body armor and brown fatigues hop out of the side door.

Nick ducked behind the overstuffed tan suede loveseat and peered around the end, still able to catch a glimpse of the men. They were both carrying what looked like surplus Argentinian FMK-3s – neither the most common nor the most affordable submachine guns out there by a long shot – and definitely weren’t here to ask if he wanted to upgrade to the new super-premium HD package. Though he had to question their judgment, only sending two guys if they were expecting even one of the Smiths to be home…

As though they’d read his thoughts, two more men entered Nick’s field of view. These two passed by outside the windows on the east wall, and looked to be heading for the back door. The two at the front began peering into any windows they could access from the front porch. One reached for the doorknob before the other slapped his hand away – apparently they weren’t interested in a forced entry just yet. Nick sank to the floor as one of the two men on the east wall passed by the window closest to him, knowing the height of the window above ground level on that side would make it difficult for anyone outside to see him without climbing onto the windowsill.

Nick’s pulse pounded and his heart raced. Who the hell were these guys, and why were they here? He was relieved neither Phil nor Leslie were home, but at the same time he knew if any of these guys decided to try and come inside, that left him all alone to try and keep them out, without the assistance of any meta powers or… There! His fingers found the well-concealed seam in the leather at the base of the loveseat and lifted the flap to reveal the keypad beneath. He punched in the same code he’d used to open the front door and heaved an audible sigh of relief when a four-foot by eight-inch bottom-hinged panel fell open with a click to reveal a pair of impeccably well-kept MP5K-PDWs, eight loaded magazines, a spare box of 9mm Parabellum, two nylon cross-draw holsters, and two virgin-condition Qual-a-Tec suppressors. As quickly and quietly as he could, the PR specialist lined up the threads and twisted a suppressor onto the end of one MP5’s barrel before stuffing three spare magazines in his pockets. He had a little trouble donning the holster from a prone position, but in less than half a minute he was fully armed, and the concealed locker was secured and hidden from view.

Nick was almost disappointed when the four gunmen’s perimeter search convinced them no one was home. The empty driveway had probably helped. Thank God I took a cab… One of the men at the front door whistled quietly. “¡Vamonos!” he called, and the two around back trotted up the east wall and rejoined their cohorts as they filed back into the telecom van.

The engine cranked to life, and the van rolled the rest of the way around the circle and back up the driveway. As it departed, Nick rushed to the front door – still careful to avoid framing himself in one of the picture windows – and tried to memorize the license plate. He darted into the kitchen and fumbled through the key organizer until he found the key fob for Mrs. Smith’s BMW – which of course hung on an embarrassingly pink and frilly lanyard embroidered with the words HOT MAMA. DiVecchio cringed as he grabbed the keys, then reversed course and headed for the garage.

- - -


Nuevo Parlamento, 12:41 PM


This time it was the camera crews. They’d apparently lost their uplinks, but after a thorough check of the telecom equipment on site yielded nothing out of the ordinary, there was a near-unanimous decision to go ahead and adjourn until after the early-afternoon siesta while the media personnel sorted out whatever the hell was the matter this time. The various delegations mingled in the atrium as everyone poorly multitasked between making lunch plans and catching up on things with their counterparts. Diplomat Standard Time was a very real and very pronounced phenomenon. At the moment, the biggest cluster of humanity in the voluminous space was the knot of native English-speakers that noisily congregated between the elegantly minimalist black-marble staircases leading up to the Cámara. One particularly unlikely conversational huddle had formed near the center.

“I have to admit,” Phil Smith began, “I'm still not sure how they pushed this through the Senate.”

Secretary Rutherford shrugged. “You'd be surprised how quickly people change their tune in an election year. Although it probably didn't hurt that Fisher managed to get the attention of the right people on both sides of the aisle.”

The former G-man smirked. “Money talks,” he replied simply. “But like I said, Phil, it hasn't been the work of just one person.” He turned and made eye contact with Phil. <He knows about the 109s. They’re the main reason he replaced the previous Secretary…>

Rutherford nodded. “You, and Mister Smith... and you, Doctor Walker... some very visible people have been advocating this for some time now.”

“Not a bad list of names to find myself on,” Phil mused absently as he glanced over at Fisher. <But is he on the same page as his boss? You made it sound like the President didn’t want any part of them.>

A photographer spotted the men and hurried over to take what would probably be a pretty valuable picture. At her prompting, Fisher, Smith, Rutherford, and Walker turned and stood in a reasonably photogenic line.

“I see you've been burning up the campaign trail, Mister Secretary,” Walker observed as the photographer departed, speaking up for the first time. “How many important primaries are left?”

“About half a dozen,” Rutherford answered. “I have to say I feel quite a bit safer after getting my boss's personal endorsement, though.”

“Made you out to be his spiritual successor,” Fisher joked. “But your numbers right now tell me it's paying off.” <He plays the game really fucking well, and unless the shit hits the fan I’d put money on him in November. No idea how much he knows about the Xyryth or if he’s ever spoken to them himself.>

“I should hope so,” Walker chimed in in an almost unheard-of display of humor, “I've made some sizable donations.”

Phil decided against mentioning he’d made a small donation of his own to a different candidate. He already had the feeling that if Rutherford did win out, Phil’s streak of Presidents inviting him to the White House would most likely be coming to an end. <I could tell he didn’t like me without having to read him,> he informed Fisher. <IMPET or no IMPET, I don’t think he likes or trusts metas one bit, and yet everyone’s so eager to rubber-stamp this thing. What’s his play, do you think?>

“As sizable as the contribution you made to All Humans, Doctor?” Steve asked. <I have no fucking clue,> he admitted to Smith. <This whole damn thing is moving too fast, and he’s gonna be in office long before we figure him out.>

“Oh, that’s right,” Rutherford broke in, as though eager to demonstrate he knew more than enough to keep up with the others. “I must confess, I was impressed by the gesture.”

“It was more than a mere gesture, Mister Secretary,” the scientist answered. “While we may have had our… misunderstandings from time to time-” he glanced over at Phil for a moment “-I know this cause of ours is far more important than any petty differences from our past, and I’m honored to work with men of such integrity as Mister Smith and Mister Fisher – and yourself, of course.” Rutherford smiled faintly and nodded – no one who’d risen as high as he had was immune to flattery.

“Where’s Turner?” Phil asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.

“Mister Turner,” Walker explained to the telepath, “is making the rounds inspecting the security assets here, but he’ll be joining me for lunch shortly.” He turned to Rutherford and Fisher. “Which reminds me – I believe Mister Turner and I will be paying our old friend Signore Cicciotto a visit. His restaurant is, I hear, absolutely delightful. Would you gentlemen care to join us?”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Fisher accepted politely as he glanced at Phil. <Starting to wonder about him, too…>

“I’d like to see if Grissom will be able to join us before I know for sure,” Phil deflected delicately, “if that’s okay with you, Doctor.” <I’ve never stopped wondering,> he replied, <but this could never have happened without him, and I kind of feel like I oughta give him the benefit of the doubt this time, you know?>

“Please, Mister Smith,” Walker insisted, “Charles will be perfectly fine.”

“And I,” Rutherford interjected, “need to check in with my security expert.” He glanced over and saw the veteran talking to Montag over in the corner. “Though now that I think about it, my detail should be enough.” He gestured to the two nearest Secret Service agents, and as they converged on him, two more seemingly materialized out of the crowd and followed as SecState made his way toward the sunbathed glass doorway of the Parlamento behind Walker and Fisher.

“Saw Sandcrawler’s third-quarter numbers,” Dirk Bell mentioned casually a few yards away. “Decent.”

Grissom grinned. “I’d ‘ave to agree, mate,” he replied. “Why the sudden interest?”

Anyone else would’ve at least smirked a little, or at least made eye contact. “I might’ve scooped up a few hundred shares last spring.”

Grissom raised an eyebrow. “Wot else is in yer portfolio these days?”

The gunslinger shrugged. “Odds and ends. My guys go through ammo like sonsabitches. Shit ain’t cheap.”

There was a long silence. Nearby, Phil was attempting to call Leslie on his cell phone but having no luck getting through.

“D’ye still think about ‘er?” Montag ventured. “Y’know…”

A slight nasal exhalation, a slight downward tilt of the head. Still no eye contact.

“Sorry, mate.” Grissom shook his head. “I know it’s only been ‘alf a year.”

“You tried,” Dirk allowed quietly. “We all did.”

Grissom rarely heard from his former teammate these days, but he was feeling particularly daring at the moment. “You think if ‘e’d come with us, it wouldn’t’ve ‘appened.”

“He’s been trying to apologize in my fucking head since you two saw me with Rutherford outside.”

Grissom was taken aback by this. “You don’t think ‘e means it?”

“No,” Bell corrected, his tone elevating very slightly, “I don’t think it was his fucking fault. Shit happens. He has a family of his own to worry about – or will have pretty soon. Either way, it was a while ago, and last I checked none of us have time machines, so who gives a fuck?”

“Right.” Grissom had become well acquainted with the point at which he was better off dropping it. Another long silence. Phil suddenly looked away from his phone as though listening for something.

For the first time in the conversation, Dirk turned and looked at Grissom. “At least he doesn’t look so damn miserable for a change.”

Montag nodded. “‘e’s good people, y’know.”

For once, Bell didn’t appear to dispute the notion. “Let’s get a beer after this shit’s done with,” he suggested.

“Fuck! At my house?”

The two men turned. Across the atrium, Phil Smith appeared to be speaking to the air.

Grissom hurried over as Bell listened in from a distance. “Wot’s the problem, mate?”

Phil did his best to relate what Nick had seen. “Gunmen. Riding around in LIME vans – DiVecchio thinks they’re the ones who’ve been shutting off the cable and phones.”

Montag looked at his empty hand an instant before his cell phone materialized there. Sure enough, even with Sandcrawler’s proprietary band-agile intelligent signal booster, the LCD flashed a NO SERVICE indication over the phone’s wallpaper – a family photo of the three Montags taken on Brian’s third birthday. “Wot the ‘ell?”

“If they’re taking down the TV circuits and cell towers and sat links,” Phil began…

“They’re isolating the island,” Dirk concluded as he silently and almost instantly appeared between the two men.

“Cutting it off from the outside world,” the telepath agreed.

“Dunno why,” Grissom mused, “but I can’t imagine they’re up to anything good.”

- - -


Avenida de la Playa, 12:44 PM


“I’m fucking starving,” Leslie moaned for about the fourth time as she and Brianna passed the concourse leading to the shopping center’s food court.

“Fine,” the Irish flyer replied, her patience clearly being tested. “Let’s get some feckin’ food already, yeah?”

The two women – armloads of shopping bags in tow – made their way past high-end shops toward the beckoning odors of heavily processed and delightfully unhealthy mall food.

"Three more weeks," Leslie puffed. "I can do this."

"Ye're almost there," Brianna encouraged, reading the subtext behind her words. She knew her best friend better than almost anyone, and for all Leslie's apparently routine impatience for the whole ordeal to be over already, Bri knew there was more than a little anxiety there too. This was technically Leslie's second pregnancy, but only the first to make it into the third trimester...

“Something’s wrong,” Leslie observed.

Brianna froze in her tracks, already in any day now mode. “The baby?” She looked around. “D’ye think ye’ll need an ambulance?”

Leslie snorted. “Something’s wrong with the TVs.” She pointed to a few LCD screens hanging over the concourse – they were all displaying the same snowy static.

Brianna had grabbed her phone, prepared to summon an ambulance. Now she peered at her screen and the NO SERVICE message curiously, her wings twitching. “Isn’t that peculiar?” she wondered aloud.

Leslie looked over her shoulder. The expectant empath dropped her bags and fished her own phone out of her handbag, only to see the same message. “What the hell?”

<Leslie!> The intensity of the telepathic transmission was such that both women heard it as an audible shout.

Leslie jumped and shrieked, dropping her nonfunctioning phone on top of her shopping bags. “Phil!” she fumed aloud. “What the fuck?”

<Trouble!> In a split-second, Phil dumped all the impressions he’d gotten from Nick and his conversation with Dirk and Grissom into both women’s heads. Brianna and Leslie staggered, momentarily disoriented.

Despite near-perpetual nausea exacerbated by telepathically-induced vertigo, Leslie recovered first. “Shit.”

No sooner had she uttered the word than two men in brown appeared at each end of the concourse, each wearing ballistic armor and carrying those – not Uzis, the Argentinian nine-millimeter… what was it?

“¡SIENTENSE!” one of the armed men boomed as he brandished his weapon. The crowds of shoppers froze and fell silent. “¡EN EL SUELO! ¡AHORA!”