Maggie looked around the car, a crease forming between her brows as she considered the expressions around her. Then she reached for the remote and turned the volume on the radio up. Somehow, that seemed like exactly the right thing to do, and we drove the rest of the way home without saying a word, blasting the happily nihilistic pop music of a dead generation behind us as we went.

Mahir opened his eyes when we reached Maggie’s driveway, watching with interest as we passed the first and second gates. As we approached the third gate, he asked, “Does it know how many people are in the vehicle?” I hit the switch to roll down the van windows as I glanced to Maggie for her answer. Metal posts telescoped up from the bushes around the driveway, unfolding to reveal small blood test units with reflective metal panels fastened to their sides. The tiny apertures where the needles would emerge glittered in the sunlight.

“The security grid runs on biometric heat-detection, equipped with low-grade sonar,” Maggie said, with the sort of rote precision that implied she knew because she’d read the manual, not because she really understood what the security system was doing. At least she read the manual. Some people trust their safety to machines without even doing that much. “It always knows how many people need to be tested. We ran a bus up here once, when we did the group trip to Disneyland, and the gate wouldn’t open until all thirty-eight of us had tested clean.”

“It made you run all thirty-eight?” I asked, punctuating the question with a low whistle. “That’s impressive.” Also terrifying, since I was willing to bet the designers hadn’t considered all the possible loopholes in that model. Maggie’s security system made us each lean out the window long enough for a blood test, but it didn’t actually make us get out of the car and walk through an air lock while everyone else was tested. It would be entirely possible for someone to test clean to tgo into amplification while the rest of the group was still being checked out. The ocular scan at the next gate would catch them—probably—but it would increase the number of potential infected from one to everyone in the group.

Maggie smiled blithely, missing the subtext of my comment. That was probably for the best. “It’s the best on the private market.” She stuck her hand out the window as she spoke, pressing it down against the passenger-side testing panel.

“It’s not on the private market,” said Kelly. I twisted to look at her as I slapped my hand down on my own testing panel. She shrugged, sticking her hand out the window, and said, “This technology isn’t supposed to be available outside of government agencies for another two years.”