At precisely 7:14 in the morning, twenty-five hours after I had boarded the train in Orlando, I stepped out onto the concrete platform of Union Station’s upper level. Unlike in Central Florida, the morning air here was crisp with an autumn chill, forcing me to root through my old gym bag for a sweatshirt. Andria hated the relic, threatening to burn it along with my old college boxer shorts with the exposed elastic in back, but I’m a creature of habit, and besides, I prefer a carry-on that I can sling over my shoulder or, if need be, use as a pillow. With the city’s escalators no longer running, my way proved more pragmatic than Andria’s fancy suitcase on wheels.

Adjusting the sack of clothing over my left shoulder, I followed the other two dozen passengers into the historic terminal.

A vaulted ceiling heavy in Roman architecture greeted me as I made my way through the dimly lit 121-year-old structure. The GDO hadn’t been kind. The food court was gone and the storefronts were all empty, looted a decade earlier. A recent restoration project had cleaned up the vacant shops and their rodent population, but the terminal remained a generation away from returning to its stature as a tourist Mecca.

For now, Union Station served as the primary energy junction between Richmond, Virginia and Philadelphia, its nine hundred solar panels, lined up in rows atop its roof and the open upper deck of its closed parking garage, providing 150 kilowatts of power to the bullet train and the surrounding neighborhoods within the sparsely populated District of Columbia.

I followed the signs leading downstairs and headed for the exit at Columbus Circle. My h-phone growled in my pants pocket before I could step outside.

CALLER IDENTIFIED. DAVID SCHALL. LOCATION: UNIDENTIFIED.

“Accept call, audio only. Uncle David, where are you?”

“Still at the Pentagon. I sent a car for you. Stay where you are, it’s homing in on your signal.”

As I glanced out the station exit a black sedan suddenly raced east across the deserted curved tarmacs intersecting Columbus Circle. The vehicle’s wailing siren scattered pedestrians as it stopped ten feet from the Mall entrance.

“You prefer shotgun or backseat?”

“Shotgun.”

The front passenger door popped open.

Shouldering my way past nosy civilians, I climbed in the front seat and the door automatically closed behind me. The dashboard harbored a six-inch-diameter steering wheel, air vents, and an entertainment station set that now displayed its GPS map.

There was no driver, the vehicle empty but for me.

“Geez, Uncle David, could you at least activate a hologram?”

A young Hispanic woman materialized in the driver’s seat, a voluptuous long-haired brunette dressed in a black chauffeur’s uniform. The upper portion of her jacket was unbuttoned low enough to reveal a tantalizing view of her well-proportioned brown left breast.