And then his face blanched. “What?” he shouted. He listened for a moment longer, then stared at the Major. “Burton is in Serenity’s Central Monitoring Center, Major. They’ve just had five wrist computers severed there. All of them are people from Eric’s village.”

By 6:30 that evening, Central Control looked like a castle under siege. Orange-uniformed men and women rushed here and there, their faces drawn, stopping to share the latest shock of news in hurried whispers. The call from Serenity had come in at 3:22 P.M. At 3:29, Travis’s first group commander called to report that the Kooska Lumber Mill and surrounding areas were deserted. At 3:31, his second commander reported that the house on Page Lane was likewise empty except for some bloodstained sheets and four wrist computers and implantation chips on the floor. Neighbors reported that a brown van had driven off swiftly a few minutes before the Guardians arrived.

At 3:44, Captain Burton called again from Serenity to report six additional removals, all family members of the previous five.

At 4:17, Shalev General Hospital sent in a fire alarm. A small blaze had started in the basement laundry. It was quickly contained, but ten minutes later a shamefaced corporal rushed into Central Control to report that while he and his men were downstairs fighting the blaze, two men in orderlies’ uniforms entered Cliff Cameron’s room, stunned two Guardians into unconsciousness, and disappeared with Dr. Cameron.

At 5:11, the monitoring board clanged again. WARNING! WARNING! WRIST COMPUTER G2632, JOSEPH PAUL JENSEN, HAS BEEN SEVERED. TERMINATION VOLTAGE SEQUENCE NOW INITIATED. JOSEPH PAUL JENSEN IS NO LONGER READABLE VIA WRIST COMPUTER. TERMINATED SUBJECT WAS A MEMBER OF THE GUARDIAN STAFF. Shirley Ferguson went white. Joe was a corporal on the city patrol, and he and Shirley had been dating steadily long enough that the office had been buzzing about a potential marriage. With a long face but soaring heart, Nicole called that bombshell to the Major, who had gone to his office with Travis to try to get ahead of the escalating crisis.

At 5:15, even as Nicole was still trying to find out where Joe Jensen’s duty station had been, a call, almost incoherent, came from the sergeant in charge of a road checkpoint leading north out of Shalev. A large truck covered with a tarp had pulled up to the checkpoint. Just as the sergeant and one of his men yanked back the tarp to reveal a mass of people huddled in a hollowed-out pile of lumber, a man with a stun gun had sprung from the thick underbrush on the side of the road. That was surprise enough for the sergeant, but worse still, one of his own men had joined the stranger in attacking the other Guardians. When the sergeant came to, his tires were flattened, his radio shattered, two of his men were still unconscious, and the third had fled with the truck and the people. The traitorous Guardian? Corporal Joseph P. Jensen.