The morning was nothing but frustration. Marcus and Olena spent it moving through the growing crowd of refugees locked out of the Cosmodrome. He rode high on his coils, his torso well above eye level, fists clenched at his side in threats that didn’t need translation. People cleared the way for them. That worked to get him through the fugitive camp, but they were searching for a way inside the barricades. On that they were striking out. Each time he approached the buffer zone, Russian machine guns honed in on him, warning him off. Once, he’d swallowed down his fear and kept going, thinking he’d just leap the barbed wire and the fence and make his case from inside. A quick barrage of machine-gun fire drew him up. The ground in front of him came alive with little explosions of dust. A ricocheting bullet flew past his ear, singing as it went. So much for that. He retreated, much to Olena’s relief.

“These fuckers meant business!” she scolded. “You see the bodies strewn about sections of the buffer zone? Don’t become one of them.”

Truth is, he was lucky they didn’t gun him down on sight and he knew it. There was more than the usual amount of anti-joker sentiment in the air. It was as thick as ripples in the evil miasma back in Talas.

He did flare with hope when he came upon a contingent of blue-helmeted UN soldiers. They were guarding a side gate away from the main refugee camp. Behind the entrance, big warehouses stretched into the distance. A bustling confusion of military and nonmilitary people came and went. Marcus approached the gate slowly, with his arms raised and as little menace in his posture as he could muster. Olena stayed at his side. The soldiers’ guns came up just like the Russians.

“Hey, are any of you American?” he asked. “Help a fellow American out?”

“Keep back,” one of them said. Not an American accent, but at least he spoke English. “This entrance is for Committee use only. No nonessential personnel. No civilians.” Though, saying that, his eyes did linger on Olena as if he might reconsider this in her case.

“And no jokers,” another guard said. Different accent on this one, but still not American. He stepped closer, looking jumpy, too ready to use a weapon.

A wasp buzzed around Marcus’s head. He swiped at it, just faintly, with his upraised hands. “Committee? There are aces here? I need to talk to them. I know things about what’s happening in Talas. Bad things are coming here, man. You gotta let me—”

The jumpy soldier cut him off. “Move away!”

Marcus froze, trying to ignore the wasp as it danced in front of his face. He whispered at it, “Fuck off!” To the soldiers, he said, “Look, my hands are raised. I’m not trying to hurt anybody. I have information—”

The joker-hating soldier raised his gun higher, sighted right at Marcus. “Permission to use force?” he asked out of the side of his mouth.