Elouise was a dear family friend. Kama and Brendon would have been at that meeting—they probably would have organized it. Or Mama Vivian would have, once, guiding everyone to look for collective solutions. And Dune was just here in the house, or driving around chasing sick people, only thinking of her remaining tiny family, her questions, doing her research all alone.

Mama Vivian gave her no respite, no attention at all. Her old eyes were closed, but flicking open every few minutes as if she was nervous to surrender to sleep. Dune leaned forward and kissed Mama Vivian on the forehead then, feeling judged and a bit resentful. She left the room to go lay in her mother’s bed.

“This is an outrage!”

A flurry of motherland cloth moved around the midnight black force called Elouise Knight, six feet tall, broad as an oak. She was battling from the front of the ballroom of the St. Regis, “You don’t know what it is making us sick! You don’t know how to make us better. But you are going to mandate that we stay here? That’s genocide!”

Dune just barely stepped into the room and slipped left, hanging against the back wall. It felt like the AC was still blowing in the room, even though it was cold outside.

The meeting was packed full of leftover Detroiters, strangers mostly, but a few familiar faces. People were looking for some clarity, some answers. Human bundles in late fall layers were spread around the shabby room on stackable golden chairs with soft brown pleather seats. There was no order to the arrangement of bodies, no real front or focal point—no one wanted to be here.

After what the city now acknowledged was months of a growing crisis, the National Guard had shown up two days earlier with no warning or explanation. This response meeting had been called with radio and flyers, to discuss the presence of the National Guard and the future. Dune was amazed at how full the room was. There are people who listen to the radio, who respond to flyers; Dune had grown up going to meetings full of passionate, suspicious luddites. But that, too, was changing as the conspiracies manifested. This was a cross section of organizers, artists, journalists and entrepreneurs. Equalized by H-8.

There were no allies, no advocates. Each civilian there was on the front line, had witnessed the sickness, been untrained hospice and sometimes gravedigger for their loved ones. They wanted answers. They needed to hear a compelling future.

Standing out like a hand made of thumbs, a row of National Guard soldiers sat together near the front of the room. They’d lined up their chairs straight amidst the chaos, except for one ­soldier, Black and stocky, leaning back in his chair, arms crossed.

The room was not united.