War created opportunities. That was true.

But war seldom meant new freedoms. War would see Americans rally around whoever was in the White House. War would see men and women give up their freedoms for false security, for a while at least. For another decade.

And in the worst case it could be even worse than that, of course. War between fully capable nuclear powers?

No. She didn’t want that. No one should.

Kate reopened her terminal, tunneled through every layer of anonymity she could, found the message she’d received from the self-professed government insider, and fired off a response.

URGENT: China didn’t kill Barnes…

120
Down the Rabbit Hole

Monday 2041.01.20

What was that sound? Sam closed her eyes, tried to tune into it.

“We go to her,” she heard Kade say. “We go down the rabbit hole.”

A grinding.

“CLEAR!” Sam yelled. She flew at Kade, hampered by the heavy gear bag on her back, slammed into him just as his face came around in surprise, flattened him to the ground, heard him explosively exhale with the force of it.

Just as the elevator doors began to open.

Feng and Bai and the other Fist, named Liwei, were already reacting, vaulting back out of the line of fire, guns up.

Muzzle flash filled the space. Bullets ripped out from their assault rifles. Liwei hurled a grenade into the massive vault of the elevator as the door opened wider.

“COVER!”

Sam pressed herself down over Kade. A deafening boom sounded in the small space.

Echoes filled the silence.

Nothing returned fire.

She rolled onto her back, kept close to Kade, brought her assault rifle up.

The massive doors were still opening wider, as wide as the side of a house.

Revealing nothing. A giant, empty, concrete-and-titanium box.

ISOLATION IN PROGRESS

She looked over at Feng, saw him glance back in consternation.

WHOOOOOOOMP.

A gale-force wind grabbed her, sucked her towards the open elevator doors where the elevator had been, tumbled her. She caught air above the floor of the computing center, caught a terrifying glimpse of the open maw of the elevator shaft, utterly devoid of an elevator, a giant sucking hole, the house-sized elevator car plunging down it at breakneck speed, creating a temporary vacuum, sucking papers and pencils and bits of detritus ahead of her into that kilometer long fall.

The fall she was going to take if she went through those doors.

Then her own tumble brought her back towards the floor of the computing center and she slammed her left palm down, flat onto the tiles, completely open, praying the Indian gear had the same safety reflex built in that the US gear did.

“Aaaaah!”

Her left shoulder wrenched hard in pain, as the glove on her left palm shot micro-adhesion hooks into the tile floor, stuck her to it like a gecko, broke her tumble.