Time to move on to jobs and taxes, John Stockton thought.

Then a storm hit. A hurricane blasted him in the face, full of stinging rain. There was a roaring in his ears, a high pitched whistle somewhere above it. The air went cloudy, roiled by incredible turbulence. He’d closed his eyes reflexively, without even knowing it, flinching back from whatever was happening. Those eyes were burning now. There was a taste of metal in his mouth. More burning in his lungs.

Alarms were going off. Fire alarms.

“MR PRESIDENT!” Someone had his arm. Secret Service. “THIS WAY!”

“My family!” he yelled.

“WE’VE GOT THEM!”

“Dad!” It was Julie’s voice. He tried to open his eyes but he couldn’t see. He reached out and found his daughter, grabbed her hand. He heard crying. Liam’s cries.

“WE’VE GOT TO RUN!” the Secret Service man said.

Stockton held on to his daughter and ran.

“Incident at the Capitol! Fire detected!”

“Christ,” the Secretary of Defense said.

Pryce looked over at the screen, her heart pounding. She couldn’t see anything, just distortion, just clouds of moving air.

“That’s the fire suppression gas,” an analyst said from one of the scores of consoles, tension in her voice. “It should clear shortly.”

“Massive network event in China!” NSA yelled. “We have something off-the-scales going on. Origin Shanghai. Network requests saturating all the pipes in and out. Exabyte bombardment of our systems. NAES firewall is crumbling.”

“That’s it,” Secretary Stevens said. “This is a Chinese attack. Set DEFCON 2. Prepare to take out those missile launchers.”

“Wait!” Pryce said. “We don’t know that! That could have been PLF!” She held her phone up towards them.

“Gas is clearing, sirs,” a voice said.

Pryce looked at the screen, prepared to see fire, dead men and women, horror like that day in DC…

She saw a mob, alive, on their feet, pressing for the too few exits.

No fire.

No bodies.

What the hell?

She turned her phone back to her, and typed a message out frantically.

[What the hell was that?]

124
Ultimate Recourse

Monday 2041.01.20

Zhi Li screamed as the explosion hurled her through the air. Then she was down. Then she looked over and saw Yuguo.

She screamed again, louder.

“Lu Song!” she yelled. She reached out for his mind. “Lu Song!”

“Zhi!” he yelled.

Yuguo was screaming now, screaming with his lungs, with his mind.

“Help me, Lu Song!” Zhi yelled. “We have to get him inside!”

She pushed up to her feet, grabbed one arm. Lu Song was there, and he grabbed the other, and they started dragging, dragging Yuguo towards the Computer Science Building.

What was left of him.

Yuguo’s legs were gone below the knees.