“Her name’s Sasha,” said Roland. “She used to be with the Kingdom. Now she’s not.” He paused a second, considered his words and added, “She beat one of them to death with a helmet.”

“Oh my. Oh dear…” Nana Yazzie tsked and shook her head. “I’m so sorry, Sasha. That must have been a terrible experience for you.”

“She enjoyed it!” Jim said with a harsh bark of a laugh. “I’m sure Roland smells it too. Isn’t that right, hon? You loved killing ­whoever-­the-­fuck you killed, and you feel shitty about that. Well, let me s–”

“You’ll stop right now or you’ll leave this room.”

Nana Yazzie’s voice was firm, but devoid of any anger or heat. To Manny’s shock, Jim stopped. The post-human nodded and said, “I apologize, Sasha. That was a real dick move.” And then he lowered his eyes, just a little, in contrition.

Nana Yazzie offered Sasha a seat and then busied herself in the corner making Sasha a cup of tea. Once that was done, and they were all settled in, Nana sat back down and looked to Manny.

“What happened?” is all she asked.

Manny started talking. He told her, and by extension the whole table, everything that had happened since he and Roland left Rolling Fuck. He told them about their trouble with the checkpoints on the way into town. He walked them through the intake process, his and Roland’s few days as Martyrs-in-training and what he’d seen in the few sections of Plano he’d been allowed to haunt during his time there. The woman with the chromehawk was particularly interested in what he and Roland had to say about the Kingdom’s preferred assault tactics.

“They’re not gonna be kicking in doors and fighting house-to-house,” Roland explained. “They’ll just start shelling at the first sign of resistance. They don’t care about civilian casualties.”

When Manny explained what the Kingdom had been doing at the old Tesla factory, almost everyone looked horrified. Donald Farris spat at the ground. Most of the others cursed, or at least shook their heads. Nana Yazzie teared up. Jim, though, seemed almost enthusiastic about the revelation.

“Fascinating,” he muttered just loud enough for Manny to hear.

Once everyone was caught up, the table fired off a few questions at him and more toward Roland. They seemed mostly curious as to what they’d been able to glean about the number of recruits in the Heavenly Kingdom. Manny didn’t have much useful there. So he shut up, leaned back and let Roland give the answers. An awkward silence descended on the table after a few minutes.

“Well,” Donald Farris said, finally, “I suppose we were fools to hope for much more than what you got. As it stands we’re left grappling to try and account for the sheer number of men the Kingdom has deployed to assault Austin.”