Low clouds, heavy with the threat of freezing rain turned the wasteland between Temple and Killeen darker than one of the lowest, most benighted levels of Hades. But that suited Sofia Pieraro’s purposes just fine. She was used to moving through the night quietly, unseen. The unpleasant conditions would also keep Blackstone’s troopers inside their guard houses, nursing cups of cocoa, possibly fortified with a shot or two of something stronger. Or they would gather around oil drums and small bonfires, stamping their feet against the cold, their night vision wrecked by the flames. More than once, on the long trek from Texas to KC, they had encountered bandits who made the same mistakes again and again. Some of them had died for it. Some of them at Sofia’s own hand. For now, however, she glided on.

All of the local radio stations, which she had monitored so diligently, trumpeted the recent lifting of roadblocks between the state and federal settlements as a reassuring sign of improved relations between the Kipper and Blackstone administrations. Sofia hoped not. She would hate to think that what little faith her father had invested in the President had been completely misplaced. But for her, right now, the loosening of security was a godsend. The road ahead of her began to climb up a gentle hill, and she stood on the pedals of the salvaged mountain bike to bring more of her strength to bear. The shoooosh of the bicycle’s tyres, and her own steady breathing were the only sounds she could hear beyond the call of an occasional night bird.

She strained in the dark to pick up anything that might warn her of danger nearby. Voices. Vehicle noises. The clink of bottles or cutlery. Anything that might indicate the presence nearby of TDF troopers, or indeed of anybody who might attempt to interfere with her plans.

But there was nothing. Not this far out from Killeen and Fort Hood. She calculated that she was well within the territory of the state government now. The fields on either side of the road were sown with winter crops, tended by indentured workers from the south. They would be locked up in their barracks now, and the attention of the guards focused in on them, not out towards the night.