he monitors snap with static electricity. The screens not yet black. A fading gray, sixteen dying eyes. Nothing’s being watched. Nothing’s being taped. Control is all Strickland has wanted since boot camp, Korea, the Amazon—control over his family, control over his own fate, and now it’s severed, machete into jungle root. He stands. His knee strikes his desk so hard he hears wood crack. He hobbles, tips against the monitor bank, steadies himself with dead fingers. That hurts, too, and he pushes away. It’s black lunar terrain. His foot upsets a trash can. His shoulder rams a wall. He has to fight his way through the doorway, as if it’s a tiny one built for a dog.

Footsteps, urgent but faltering, rise from the hall like a drip of rain. A beam of light scribbles across the black air.

“Strickland?” It’s Fleming, civilian putz, never any help.

“What the fuck”—sudden pain, everything hurts—“is this?”

“I don’t know. Fuses?”

“Well, call someone.”

“The lines are down. I can’t.”

Strickland’s instincts are always finest when it comes to contact. His fist shoots out as if by slingshot. Grabs Fleming by the collar. Their only instance of touching besides the first-day handshake. But it always loomed, didn’t it? The threat a man of blood and soot poses over a pencil pusher, clipboard waver? Fine stitching in Fleming’s collar rips as Strickland curls his biceps.

“Find someone. Now. We’re being invaded.”