Even Annabelle grew so accustomed to his absence that when people asked if she had any siblings, she said no, she was an only child. She continued to listen to her daddy by enrolling at Baylor, his alma mater, and later on at Texas A&M, where she pursued graduate work in international studies. Her family’s stance was firmly nationalist. Business and politics were two sides of the same coin, her father said, and God and the American military were two sides of the same bullet. Globalism was Commie talk, a pansy denial and dilution of America’s power. When Daddy died of a coronary, she inherited his construction firm and decided the best way to carry forward his legacy was to focus on border security. The Department of Homeland Security invested hundreds of millions in the construction of the Texas portion of the border wall—until the comet changed everything. People suddenly wanted to be protected from what was in the sky, not what was in the south, so she pivoted her focus to a new division within the DOD devoted to extraterrestrial resistance.

Whenever people whined about conservatism or nationalism or whatever ism they were shamefully machine-gunning on social media or MSNBC, she wanted to point out a very simple fact: Strength wins. America is the strongest institution in the history of the world. Keep it that way. Period. The comet had upended their geopolitical certainty, making it the greatest threat to American dominance since the nuclear standoff of the Cold War. And that’s because Americans didn’t know what weapons and resources were out there. It was an arms race. And the threats were now without as well as within their borders.

She learned about Adam’s involvement with the Roofless Church through her office. The sect—or cult, as most called them—was being investigated as a possible terror group. Adam was flagged as a member of a compound in northern Minnesota. “I thought you were an only child,” one of her colleagues said, and she knew then how her father had felt. The pride and the embarrassment that came with blood.

She flew up and they met at a lumberjack-themed diner for lunch. He arrived fifteen minutes late. A car with three other men waited for him in the parking lot. She rose from the booth to greet him. He wore all black. His hair had fallen out, and his eyes gave off a starry glow. He gave her a close-lipped smile that felt pitying. She wasn’t sure whether to offer a handshake or a hug, but in the end instinct took over and she wrapped her arms around him. He felt as cold and sharp and fragile as an icicle. They took their seats opposite each other and she said, “We’ve got to get something in you”—pushing a menu over to him—“before you waste away to nothing.”

He said he was getting all the sustenance he needed.