“Oh, her.” Daniel made a wry face. “Darcy. Probably dropped her off uptown. No way H would start a new life with that hanging around, not without you and me along to water her down. She’s a rich girl. She’ll manage. As well as anyone will.”

“If rich is all it takes, Hannah’d still be alive.”

Daniel shook his head. “I mean, rich enough to buy in, not out. And willing to be what others want her to be. She’ll find some militia boss to take care of her.”

Maybe, maybe not. Such deals only hold within a working social structure, and Uptown was sliding toward full-out war. Street rules would be history.

“Rubio called it so right,” I mused. “He’d have said it’s three storms really. The one inside us, the one outside the walls, and the one tearing civilization apart. He used to go on about how the old structures are collapsing, and we need to build new ones, so there’ll be a future of any kind. For the longest time, I assumed he was talking about architecture.”

Daniel smiled wanly. “Smart guy, your friend.”

A concussion of air jarred the room, a sharp crack followed by a vast, rolling rumbling. The window quaked beneath my palms, and out over the storm-shrouded lake, light exploded and died, exploded and died.

“Jeez! Stand back!” Daniel sprang up to haul me away from the glass. We fled to a back corner of the room, huddling against cold cinderblock while the crack and roar went on and on, shaking me till my teeth chattered. The window wall turned white.

“Thundersnow!” I breathed. “There’s warm air coming from somewhere!”

Assaulted by the gale, the pounding seas, and this new offensive of sound and light, the entire stadium writhed like a creature in agony. Its beams and trusses groaned. Its acres of tempered glass trembled and rang. We were inside a giant drum while the storm gods beat out the call to a final battle. Whose front line was right where we stood.

We were about to learn what Category 6 looked like.

Like a long day in Hell. How long did we cower, desperate for the scant warmth of each other’s arms? Minutes? Hours? There was nothing to be done. We could barely talk, or even think. We could only wait out every basso concrete moan, every rending wail of rivet and bolt, could only pray that the next attack would not bring down the roof, flatten the walls, let the vengeful tempest and the furious sea invade, destroying all our efforts, all our hopes. Everything.