The Riverside National Security Complex wasn’t in disarray as much as Cora had expected, but that was less because the situation had calmed down so much as martial law had been declared. There was military everywhere, dozens, hundreds of dudes in camo patrolling the place like they were an invading force, their semiautomatic rifles locked and loaded. No one told her if it was official that the DOD had taken over anything, but it didn’t really matter; in practice, that was what was happening. Cora had expected to be overwhelmed with questions and paperwork, but aside from Dr. Sev and her normal colleagues, she went mostly ignored.

Brigadier General Porter had demanded that she be available for a meeting at 5:00 P.M. and had already blown her off twice. It was now almost 9:00 P.M., and she had not been allowed to go home, instead shunted into a lounge, watching CNN on mute, waiting to be beckoned. Todd Julian was giving an interview out near Temecula, which Cora found odd. Wasn’t he the senator from Illinois?

“Weird day, huh?”

Cora turned to see Luciana entering the lounge, evening cup of stale reheated office coffee in hand. Numbed by a day of “hurry up and wait,” she was almost glad to see Luciana, and her first instinct was the desire to share with her what had happened in the last day.

“Yeah,” said Cora, pushing away that instinct and turning back to the TV. “Why is he here? He’s not our senator.”

“He’s not here as a senator. He’s here as a candidate.”

The man was waving his arms passionately, the closed-captioning a few seconds behind. Earthquakes, loud noises, lights in the sky, what aren’t they telling us? What are they hiding?

“We really need to do something,” said Cora.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, there’s no real opposition to people like Julian. They have all the rhetorical chips—they’re mad because secrets are being held from them. The only people willing to advocate against people like Julian and Miranda are moon children who think Xethorp is here to bring about the spiritual enlightenment.”

“Oh my God, Cora,” said Luciana just above a whisper. “Do you want to go to jail for the rest of your life?”

“Can you imagine what bad optics that would be for them if they put me in jail?”

“They do not care! They lock up whistleblowers on trumped-up charges all the time.”

“Then maybe there’s a way I can do it by the book. Isn’t that why Stevie quit, so she could talk to the press? I mean . . .” Cora looked at the image of Julian, his trim tailored suit, his salt-and-pepper hair with dignified white streaks at his temples. “Someone has to be a counterweight to . . . this.”

“They’d wrap you in red tape. They’d make it so bureaucratically miserable for you, you’d give up out of sheer frustration.”