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The Dartmouth Speculative Fiction Project paired eight faculty-members at Dartmouth College with eight veteran speculative fiction authors. Through design activities, panels, symposia and a mountain lodge retreat, they collaboratively imagined worlds that interrogate the future humanity is heading towards. These stories can be found in the anthology, Android in the Archives: Research, Creative Collaboration and our Speculative Futures (lightspeedmagazine.com/android), soon to be published by MIT Press in 2027.

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Part 1: Bubble Metropolis

Night falls around you. The city redshifts into coral-snake shades as monuments and modernist architecture of government buildings fracture the horizon. Low-orbit satellites command it so, and Washington, DC Nocturnal awakens. Across the capital, lights and data connections ripple with staccato rhythms, a hangover from last night’s unseasonal double blackouts.

Silent e-cars splish past you through salted, brown slush on Van Street SE; high beams scatter off the carapaces of cicada-humming drones navigating retail airspace twenty feet above you.

The air temperature spikes and dives. You hiss with pain. This new fifth season, when Global South summers smash into European winters, is a razor blade gently pressed against your throat. But like the rest of the world, you’ve learned . . . you’re learning . . . to swallow around it. That’s not the problem.

Your earpiece chimes and the display on your right lens corner gives you the caller ID. It’s Iwu. Reluctantly, you take the call.

“There is an art to mourning the dead,” says Iwu. The pitch and tenor of her voice is electronically camouflaged. “In Korea, some make beads of their loved ones’ remains. Hindus wrap them in fabric and feed them to pyres along the Ganges. I’m partial to Tibetan sky funerals: The deceased are left out for birds of prey. The raptors eat, take to wing, and return to the hunt. Diverse, but with one necessity in common: possession of the body.”

Sometimes you forget how much Iwu loves the sound of her own voice. “What do you want?”

“You stopped walking. Why?”

Because you’re not ready to see Samuel’s body, which is across the street in the third-floor penthouse, the one with the broken window and flickering lights. You’re not ready even though Samuel’s the reason you’re still alive. Even though planting your grandfather’s kukri knife into the heart of Samuel’s killer is what drove you from the relative asylum of your apartment. You will never be ready to see Samuel dead. But right now, you’re caught up in that sudden pain and what it means. “I’m being watched.”

Due to the intersectional disaster of Florida’s lax environmental protections and toxic dumping near your alma mater DeSantis Penitentiary, you suffer from degenerative nerve damage. The parts of your brain responsible for processing pain got hot-wired to those for empathy. Now, they overclock whenever somebody so much as looks at you. It’s a real fucking monkey’s paw of a spider sense. The mystery observer’s intense hate brands the back of your head. You exhale through clenched teeth.

Is it a shooter? Samuel’s killer? They on a rooftop? There was a time when you’d wished for death. You hold that thought long enough for it to tug you directly under the streetlamp, painting your leather duster fluorine yellow. Seconds pass, and your brains don’t aerosol from your forehead. No lead burrows into your lungs. The pain fades. Shooter’s attention has turned elsewhere.

“Walk away,” says Iwu. “This is the Ekwensu’s job, not yours. Not anymore.” You don’t reply. “Fine, be a fucking child,” she snaps. “But finish this. Now. Water’s getting warmer.” Meaning, time is running out and there’s money on the table. Big money. “We deep?”

Samuel’s been murdered, and Iwu’s talking about money. A finger tap to your earpiece ends the conversation. Then you activate the v-filter on your glasses, dial the haptic pressure way up to drown out the angry replies, and cross the street.

Drones above flare into interactive graphics: Soda-Smash Cola’s plastic-free goals: Stare here to see our carbon footprint #togetherwelive . . . Sustainable timber furniture from IDEA: Reforest the future. It’s a race to monetize the Global Climate Recovery.

Virtual billboards ping with geotagged media feeds. Neo-energy companies market their solar and algae energy initiatives.

Petrol King rallies on the Nasdaq after the government-demanded restructuring. Reports of fighting for . . .

Soledad Martin announces new green initiative named after her deceased husband and . . .

You step up onto the other sidewalk, turn into an alley, and immediately snag on yellow police tape. You’ve walked into a crime scene.

The crime scene.

Samuel’s body isn’t in his apartment. It’s ten feet away, in the muck, in an alley crawling with cops and technicians. Their attention is a sudden acid rain. You slap the med-patch on your tricep, and it kicks in before your knees can buckle. Iwu calls the experimental drugs a black-card extravagance. The chemical cocktail numbs you, reducing the pain from a boil to a simmer. But the cure may be worse than the disease because it also eats at your neocortex like a ravenous moth. You were already dying. Doctors gave you a year or two. But too much of this shit will body you in months.

“Hey, convict! Get the fuck back!”

You blink slowly as a cop rolls up on you hard, like a silverback gorilla inbred to fit into shirts and pants. He’s square-shaped and jowly, reaching for the gun at his hip like a baby for a pacifier. Or, at least, reaching for where the gun used to be.

Over a decade ago, President Johanna Kelly’s New Civil Contract became law. Three years of smoke-filled skies over DC, beachfront land loss on the Gulf and east coasts, and competition with China spurred nationwide military-funded decarbonization and climate initiatives. At the eleventh hour, progressives in Congress tacked on radical police reform language, promising a thirty percent pay increase to departments that left their guns in their vehicles under stricter rules of engagement.

The national police union approved it and thousands of agencies across the country took the deal that year. DC police, being an arm of the federal government, had little choice. Most of the old-school cops retired rather than change. But doling out state sanctified violence was addictive. Not everyone could quit the habit.

The cop gets in your face. “Not gonna say it again.”

Samuel had been an artist. He’s the one who taught you how to notice the small details that define a thing: Gorilla’s red face, a limp from swelling knees, his whisky breath turning to vapor. No way he’s lead on this case. You briefly entertain putting this fossil back in the fucking ground, creating additional extravagance for Iwu.

Then another cop strides into the alley. She’s young, plainclothes in a blue bomber jacket. Her shield swings from a lanyard around her neck. White girl walking with military timing, probably from tours in foreign kilns: the Philippines or Virgin Island evacuations, maybe the American-Chinese joint taskforce policing the lithium trade. So, she did her time long enough to sharpen without breaking, then decided DCPD would be a good fit? You swallow your laughter.

“Detective Shaw,” she says. The combination of her curious scrutiny and the gorilla’s excited fear are a misery bouquet.

Shaw touches the precinct issued smartband around her wrist, pinging you with an ID request. She’s being polite, so you allow it, knowing she’ll find a blank slate. You’re a slippery, nonexistence in the data cloud protected with aggressive privacy malware. Not exactly illegal, but it sends a clear signal. You work for a higher power. Or lower. It all depends on your geography.

“Well?” Shaw says, but what she really means is, Who sent you?

You raise your right arm and make the mudra for the Kings of Drexciya. Gorilla’s anxiety grows thorns. Thankfully, Shaw’s attention goes to the feed on her v-glasses, skimming whatever summary profile DCPD has on the Kings of Drexciya. From the sudden rigidness in her stance, you can tell it doesn’t make her happy.

The Kings of Drexciya: a known entity in the Street and on the Hill, controlling syndicate on the southeast side of the Anacostia River. Their business—your business—was the kind you didn’t fuck with without special dispensation or a death wish.

Shaw’s face muscles twitch as she realizes she’s stumbled into somebody’s power play and her place in the food chain is near rock bottom.

Shaw eyes you wearily. “That explains the utter lack of media drones,” she says, finally, her voice flat. “Iwu sent you.” No, Iwu absolutely did not. But she couldn’t stop you without killing you, either. Samuel’s dead. You’re the only family she has left. So, a cryptic smile is all Shaw gets.

“Officer Gibson.” Shaw turns to Temu.com-Goren. “I’ll handle this.”

The gorilla’s done the same math, but comes to different conclusions. Their attention turns from you to each other. There’s a brief power struggle. She wins. Muscles in his jaw tremble as he limps off, touching his earpiece to answer an incoming call that has been flashing for the last twenty seconds. “Ma’am?”

You nod at the rest of the police. “Them too. I don’t do audiences.”

Shaw taps her smartband and the rest of the uniforms follow Gibson out. She leads you to the epicenter of the crime scene. “Don’t touch anything. And what do I call you?”

You ignore her question and kneel, finally allowing yourself to view the body, almost thankful to the cops for triggering your med-patch.

“Let me introduce our victim,” says Shaw. “Sam Thompson, wunderkind employee of the company soon to be formerly known as Petrol King. Bet you already knew that.”

Samuel, never Sam to the ones who understood him. Between him, you, and Iwu, he was the Dreamer. He was the one who saved you from prison. You tell yourself this isn’t him. This expired chrysalis couldn’t contain him. Samuel didn’t believe in death. He believed in transformation. Now you’re trying real hard to be his apostle.

Something’s off. Samuel’s grandmother on his father’s side was Irish and German. He often passed as white. His body . . . his shell wasn’t nearly as dark as yours. It could be a side effect of the chemicals flooding your brain, but the bruises, the blood on his teeth, and the bulge where his . . . its neck bent against the pavement nearly glow neon blue in the moonlight. One hand still holds shattered v-glasses. But the contusions on his body and face, the burns, the broken ribs . . . those weren’t caused by the fall. You stare up at the broken window.

“You see it too,” says Shaw, impressed. “Somebody put in that work before they tossed him.”

A sudden brownout shrouds Samuel’s body. “I’ll find you in the Deep,” you whisper to him, then stand quickly and turn away. “Let’s go upstairs.”

Part 2: Deadman’s Reef

Samuel’s apartment building is renovated: DC Colonial meets Singapore. Plant-integrated façades with horizontal gray-water flow alternate with high-end, high-efficiency solar panels and multicolored smartglass windows. In the lobby, stairwells, and hallways, ecologically woke bona fides display like birds-of-paradise. The proximity of your v-glasses triggers the backstory on every fixture, tagged by the designers with optional video tours of their sustainability index, the end products of logistics chains that circled the globe to eat their own tails.

Shaw opens the door. Over her shoulder, she says, “If you were wondering, yes, we’re checking all the camera footage in the area. So far, nothing. Whoever did this were professionals.” You follow Shaw inside. Upon entering, Alice Coltrane’s “Shiva-Loka” stutters and skips from a vintage Cola-Cola jukebox thrown on its back, the rainbow glass of its face caved in.

Shaw turns in a circle. “It’s like the inside of a shark’s stomach in here.”

The violence done to the inside of Samuel’s apartment induces vertigo: scattered smartglass, mangled furniture, crushed ceramics, bits of electronics mashed into the plush rug along with Samuel’s blood like grisly confetti.

Lopsided on the wall, there’s a very large, fractured pre-Hurricane Ophelia time-lapse photo under glass. It’s Coney Island, the Boardwalk. Nighttime on the left fades into daytime on the right, crowded all the way to the beach. “The luxury’s a masquerade,” says Shaw. “This apartment was practically unlived in, like he was playing at being rich. All the action was over there,” she says, and walks over to the office space at the other end of the penthouse.

The air is tart with old sweat. The garbage can overflows with instant-ramen cups. Rings from coffee stains permanently pattern a large desk’s dark veneer. “Looks like Sam ate, slept, and breathed data. Then again . . .” Shaw points to the gaming console on the floor. “Techs lost their shit at that. Looks like an original Sega Genesis console, right? But inside the casing is a complete custom-built . . .”—she shrugs—“something with data transfer specs that are practically alien. But you know what they found when they turned it on?”

“. . . video games?”

“Singular. A porn game. Pleasure Principle Premium, one of those second worlds where you can walk around your genre-themed town and fuck anything with a hole or a peg. It was frozen on the home screen.” She shrugged. “No judgment. But it looks like this guy’s self-care time was interrupted. That’s just rude.” When you don’t laugh, she coughs and continues. “Getting past the software and legal firewalls is going to take a century.”

You change the subject. “Any ideas who did this?”

“And I’m supposed to tell you?” Shaw snaps. She knows her job is to maintain order, not find justice. Doesn’t mean she likes it. Her annoyance spikes into frustration, resistance.

Shaw’s not an enemy yet, so you calibrate your response to release the pressure. You shrug. “I don’t get political.”

After a long moment, she chuckles, venom spent. “It’s DC,” she says. “You don’t have a choice. Give me another thirty minutes for the lab to get back to me. Somebody here fucked up. That blood by the chair isn’t the victim’s. If it’s an ex-con, we’ll get their GPS and those of known associates.”

To secure their endorsement of Kelly’s New Civil Contract Law, the police union had negotiated universal GPS tracking for any persons convicted of organized crime. That way, they reasoned, officers would know if there were other known associated criminals in an area so they could assess the risk of engagement. Not wanting to derail the train as it was pulling into the station, Kelly strong-armed progressives into accepting the changes.

Almost immediately, they regretted it. Prison reform tacked hard right. Before the feds lost the suit in the Supreme Court, the Midwest and Southern states had duplicated the law. An entire generation of prisoners were forever tagged and circulated through Jim Crow 4.0: a network of pop-up, for-profit prisons. The only reason you survived it is crumpled on the pavement in the alley. The irony of relying on the thing that nearly killed you to catch Samuel’s killer is not lost on you.

“What’s your deal?” asks Shaw. “What brings somebody like you out here asking questions?”

“I’m not the thing you gotta solve, detective,” you say, as the room tilts sideways. The meds are fading from your bloodstream fast.

“At least give me a handle. Who am I talking to?”

The room is a pressure cooker. Disoriented, you back up past the broken window. Shooter’s attention touches you. Pop. You’re elsewhere.

A prison hospital. Strapped down to stop you from clawing your brain out of your skull. The tortured feelings of the men around you replace the blood in your veins with needles.

In all of this, you focus on an incongruity. The only beautiful thing. Through the barred window you spy a small, gnarled tree, rooted like a tick to the base of the prison wall and rubbed smooth by the canal that’s poisoned you all. It bears fruit, pulsing bright as exploding gems.

You hold the tree to your mind’s eye, cupping the softness of its swaying petals close. You insist on its reality. Make real its scent, submerge in it like a baptism. The world darkens as you sink. A blue angel with fins instead of wings looks down on you through the water. It has Samuel’s smile. It speaks and you whisper, “Tangerine.”

That was the name you chose when you surfaced. Samuel had understood it immediately. So had Iwu, though she hated it, rarely used it. She didn’t do well with things she could not control.

Shaw’s eyes rake your side with their concern. “You okay?”

You slow your heartbeat. Come back to yourself. Focus on details. Remember each of Samuel’s fingers. Calloused and strong, born to tease code from a keyboard. They weren’t broken. There’s no reason not to break them unless they were needed for something, something his torturers hadn’t gotten.

Samuel had never been good with pain. He’d known his limits. He would know he’d break under torture. He would . . .

There’s an overturned chair in a straight line from the window. Would seven strides do it? Give him enough momentum to break the glass and metal? It would if it had to be. The trajectory of Samuel’s landing clinches it. He wasn’t a fighter, but he wasn’t soft.

You look around. There. You pull the torn curtains over the window. Don’t want Shooter to see what you’ve found.

“The blood on Samuel’s mouth and hands isn’t his. And he wasn’t thrown. He jumped.” Behind the overturned chair is the only book in the room. You pick it up. It’s made of stone paper. Waterproof.

Shaw hurries over. “What’d I say about fucking my crime scene?”

You hand her the book. You’ve already skimmed it. No strange markings. Nothing highlighted. Nothing folded. You’d know. You’re the one who gave it to Samuel.

“We’re being watched,” you say pointing to the window. When she turns, you pocket the photo you’d found hidden in the pages.

“How do you know?” asks Shaw, but you don’t answer. Shaw reads the title of the book. “The Lathe of Heaven. What’s it about?”

“A man who could transform the world through his dreams, and the man who tried to control the world through him.”

“Science fiction?” Her demeanor changes immediately from angry to curious again. “How’s it end?”

“Badly.” You walk out the door without looking back. That was a lie, but you’re done talking.

Part 3: Bang Bang

You send Shaw the contact for your burner phone. She heads out the front, you out the back. There’s a matte black Cadillac SUV waiting. Tinted windows. Engine running. The driver-side window rolls down and you hear Iwu’s voice from the speakers. “Get in.” The engine revs, the lights flash twice, and the doors unlock. You hesitate, then get in the front passenger seat. The car is empty, SmartDriver engaged.

“Seatbelts,” says Iwu. All the doors lock and the v-display in the smartglass powers on, illuminating leather interior. You cruise onto the street heading southeast.

There’s a peculiar smell that reminds you of a well-seasoned cast iron pot, hot from the oven. Then you notice how loud the engine is. The car’s not electric.

Iwu hears you sniffing. “It’s biodiesel.” You raise an eyebrow. Their shrug is practically audible. “Manufacturing a battery big enough to move a personal vehicle this heavy defeats the purpose of electrification. Might as well have a bumper sticker saying, ‘Little Dick Energy.’”

You’re not ready to laugh at anything, angry that Iwu can.

The v-display of the industrial-fusion-luxurious Navy Yard matches its crowdsourced demographics data. Above chic restaurants and beer gardens, fifteen-second animations play from DC Blue-Green: “Look what we’re building now.” Families playing in Copenhagen-inspired floodable green spaces and cloudburst boulevards.

A CGI Soledad Martin does voice-overs for UNICEF, pleading for donations to drought-stricken Chile in her dead child’s name. Illegal migrant warnings from ICE. All sponsored by one neo-energy company or another, competing for hearts and minds.

But as you cross between the underlit wavelike arches of Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge, the algorithm scratches like a record skip. The car windows wash out dark green as if you’re submerging in the Anacostia River. Whale clicks mixed with cymbals fade in like pulsing blood. A woman’s voice says, “This is DJ X-205 coming to you from WPGC 95.5 FM, DNA of the DMV. Welcome to New Drexciya. Deep.” The techno beat drops.

One of the first things Samuel did when the three of you took over the Eighth Ward was hack open DC’s v-grid like a fire hydrant in the summer. Real and unreal overlay each other like satisfied lovers. Barry Farms, Choppa City, and Lincoln Heights become coral-reef moon gardens. Black bodies become Mardi Gras masquerades, abstractions of biodiversity made of color and sound and history.

The people congregate around stoops, street corners, and cul-de-sacs, playing dice, dancing, and keeping communion, eyes and smiling grills reflecting like a shark’s in the headlights. As you pass the Living Water Church at the intersection of T and Sixteenth Streets, the finned angel stands head and shoulders above the crowds, turning its head to watch you. The feeling that beams from its attention is—

“What’d you learn,” asks Iwu.

You blink and the angel is gone. Must be the consequences of your chemically soaked neurons. You tell Iwu everything you observed, then take out the photo. It’s a recent one of Samuel. Looks like a drone-selfie, possibly from last summer before he saved you from prison. His glasses are off and he’s shirtless in red swim trunks. They’re loose on his skinny frame. He’s on the boardwalk at Coney Island, Brooklyn, with his back to the water, so the Bloomberg Seawall, still under construction, commands the horizon. Your thumb rubs the glossy paper as if the memory might stain your hands with enough pressure. Something about it is odd. It tugs at your intuition, but it’s no match for the headliner.

Samuel’s not alone. His arm’s around the waist of a woman. In a word, she’s fine. Dark brown, Cardi B-thick, a good six inches taller than him, and wearing a green and gold, two-piece swimsuit. She’s smiling bright as phosphorus.

You raise the picture. “Know who this is?”

The cameras focus on it. “No,” replies Iwu. “Not his type.” If Iwu had her way, he wouldn’t have a type. “She a lead?”

“Maybe.” In your bones you know that she is and that Samuel left the photo for you to find. But you’re still noncommittal because—

“You don’t trust me,” says Iwu. She sucks her teeth. “You still think I left you to die in prison.”

“Don’t think. Know.”

She laughs. “And I know you can be a little bitch.”

“Which one of us just watched them scrape Samuel off the pavement?” The line’s quiet as the SUV turns down U Street again. Iwu will take a bullet to the head rather than apologize. You haven’t looked her in the eye since before you got out a year ago. You’ve tried not to take it personal. It’s only at this moment you realize how badly you failed.

“Tell me, what do you know about glaciology?” And she puts up another wall.

“For real? Glaciology? Iwu, you ain’t slick, trying to change the subject. The fuck I look like to you?”

Iwu says, “One of three people in all of DC who reads instruction manuals for fun. Don’t play dumb. But clearly I need to remind you why we do any of this shit, so I’m giving you context by way of metaphor. And change is the word of the day.”

You hit the touch screen harder than you need to bring up the map and suffer in silence. Now that Samuel’s dead, Iwu has nobody else to talk to.

“Easy on my ride,” she says. “Planum Boreum and Chasma Australe. The ice caps of Mars.”

“I know that!”

“And we know more about them than the bedrock beneath Antarctica’s ice, even as our oceans rise. But that’s thetopography dictating ice flow.

“Now, too much heat on the wrong topography, on a retrograde slope, causes all kinds of problems. Glacier edges calve and fall. Ice flows off faster and faster in a catastrophic positive feedback loop. That’s losing.

“But say there’s a prograde slope, like the sides of a bowl. Now gravity’s working for you, and change, though inevitable, can be managed, giving the ice time to freeze. That’s ice moving like honey. That’s ice moving like money, back to us, back to New Drexciya, and that has always been the plan.

“When you got caught, you went from constant to variable and put the plan in jeopardy. I didn’t leave you to rot. I told Samuel to get you out, but to do so on our terms.

“You are—excuse me, were—a function of a larger equation. Be mad all you want, T, but I am necessary. I am the prograde slope. I am the motherfucking wall.”

There have always been two Washingtons. It used to be the Hill versus Murder Capital of the United States. That’s what they called DC in the 1980s and ’90s during the government funded crack epidemic. But right when DC started to recover, developers came in to bind together broken shards of the neighborhoods with gold; all they had to do was get rid of the people: Push them across the river. Push them into Maryland. Push them into the sea.

Then you, Samuel, and Iwu came down from Brooklyn, the Kings of Drexciya, and changed the fucking topography.

“Not you. We,” you tell her. “You must have forgotten that part.”

“With or without the tide, we rise,” says Iwu, quoting Samuel, one of his earlier poems from when you were children huddling inches from the rising water.

Unbidden, the next line spills from your mouth. “But that don’t mean we sleep deprived. Straight up hallucinating, got that good dream, Lazarus kush, so we don’t die.”

“Middle finger to the moon,” says Iwu.

“Drunk on salt water like wine,” you answer.

“We be the kings of Drexciya.”

You finish the canticle. “Because with or without the sun, we rise. Deep.”

“Deep,” says Iwu. “I haven’t forgotten anything.”

That’s when you notice you’re on U Street again, but all the people have disappeared. “Iwu, why are we going—”

Beeping from the monitor interrupts your thoughts. It’s the biodata and GPS from Shaw. Three dots appear in your path. You look up as the autopilot stops Iwu’s car. Three men stand in the road. As they raise their hands, guns loaded, their gaze curls your fingers and your brain cooks. They’re feeling fury. Regret? Shame?

You don’t have time to duck. Bullets spray the front of the car. Dandelion patterns bloom across the windshield. The hitters reload and shoot again with the same result. The bullets don’t hit you, but something else does. The aggravating conversation was meant to distract from the slow pace, wrong turns, going in circles.

“You used me as bait!”

“We needed to draw them out, see who came to clean up,” says Iwu. “Don’t worry. They can’t touch you in my car.”

A new red dot appears on the screen four blocks away and covers the distance in seconds. A truck squeals around the corner, blinding you with its headlights. The seatbelt straps squeeze your chest as the Cadillac kicks into reverse.

Too late.

“Tangerine!”

The truck slams into the right-side hood. Your world is rending metal. Cracking plastic. Smashing glass. Erupting airbags. Spinning. The car’s momentum stops hard, jarring you sideways. Everything settles except the ringing in your ears. Time jumps and you’re dragging yourself through a hole where the door used to be. Immediately, Shooter’s gaze strafes your back.

Car doors open. Footsteps crunch. A man’s shadow hangs over you like a black hood. Your mind translates the stink of leaking biofuel and torn rubber into tart citrus. You hope for a quiet corner of Hell.

Blood splatters your shirt. Your hearing returns in time for you to make out panicked shouting. Bodies drop. Silence. Somebody rolls you over with their foot.

“You dead, T?”

Max Graves stands over you, gun in hand. He was a Baltimore kid who’d survived the horrors of Hurricane Nero. In the aftermath, many people refused to leave; most couldn’t afford to. Took to living in stilt and houseboat towns like their ancestors in the villages of Benin did to escape slave hunters. But some, like Max, coped with life by becoming something else. When you went into DeSantis, Iwu gave Max your title: Ekwensu. Igbo for Devil of Bad Deaths.

“T,” repeats Max, “I said, is you dead?” Always polite, he’s looking a little to the side instead of directly at you.

You cough and lay back, check your body for injury. Small cuts. Bruises, to be sure. But no broken bones. “That’s a deeply philosophical question, brotha. You finish reading the AbdouMaliq Simone I lent you?” Max shrugs. “How’d you get here so fast?”

“Been tailing you for a minute,” says Max as a black cargo van pulls up.

Fucking Iwu.

When he stoops to help you up, Shooter’s attention burns your chest. They must be watching to make sure the job is finished and you’re dead.

“Wait,” you say to Max. “Throw me in the back of the van with the other bodies.”

Max does as he’s told without hesitation. Another thing I’m sure Iwu likes about him. He raises his hand and gestures. His team appears from between the surrounding buildings, clothed in gray and wearing masks. Quick as fire ants, they clean up the wreckage. As soon as Max places you alongside the stack of dead men in the back of the van, he gets in the passenger seat next to a masked driver and slams the door shut.

“Let’s go.” The van takes off.

Iwu comes on the speaker. “That was smart, playing dead.”

“You little shit. Don’t ever fucking do that again.” The van screeches to a stop. Everyone but Max spears you with their gaze. The silence is deafening. Shock. Anger. Murderous intent. You’re suddenly aware of a lilac scent permeating this small space filled with bodies. It’s one thing to snap at each other in private, but you just disrespected Iwu in front of the soldiers. No. Not “the.” Her soldiers. In Igbo, Iwu means “the law.”

“Told you the water’s getting warmer,” Iwu says. “That didn’t change ’cause you caught feelings. So, you’re either working for me, or an obstacle. Choose.”

Iwu, Samuel, and your granddad’s knife were the only things you salvaged from the floodwaters. You remember the naked panic in her voice right before the truck hit you and wonder if she could do it, order your death. She actually said your name. But just now, you’d crossed a line. As Max’s anxiety slides across your neck, you remember if she gave the word, he’s the one who’d have to pull the trigger.

You grind your teeth and sit back. Max breathes a sigh of relief. “Go,” he says. The driver nods and the van moves. After about five blocks, you point at the bodies. “They were forced to do this. Somebody tried to make a hit look like some Black-on-Black bullshit.”

“Ain’t local,” says Max. He hands you a new pair of v-lenses and you put them on. You skim through the biodata from Shaw that’s pulled up. You look down and match the criminal profiles with the dead men on the floor of the van. “They from B-b-b-more.” He stutters when he’s angry. Another reason he doesn’t speak much.

A growl escapes your throat. Fucking ex-cops did this shit on the regular. Putting down the badge just meant the leash was off the dog, free to serve whatever master paid them best. Free to extort former convicts and use them as chain-gang assassins. The arresting officer’s name was redacted.

“Your cop’s dirty,” says Iwu. She’s hungry, not angry. Another pawn for her to move.

But Shaw’s not Shooter. And you doubt she was in on the hit. Doesn’t hurt to confirm. “Maybe.”

“How’d they know about Samuel’s connection to us?” asks Iwu.

“Maybe they didn’t,” you answer. “They could’ve just followed us here.”

“Whoever it is has money and power to throw around,” says Iwu. “The kind of people who can make reporters bury a murder story.”

“That wasn’t you?”

“No. It wasn’t.” Iwu’s voice is magma. “These the same kinds of people used to living free of consequences.”

You look out the window. Anacostia has a gorgeous view of Capitol Hill. “We ’bout to teach ’m.”

“Deep,” says Iwu.

“Deep,” replies Max.

“Deep.”

Part 4: Sea Snake

You call Shaw and she picks up on the second ring. “Who’s this?” The background is crowded with voices.

You told Iwu you don’t think Shaw was involved, but you’re going to treat the detective as guilty until proven useful. “Who am I? Your problem because I’m still alive.”

“What?” she pauses. Recognizes your voice. You hear a door close, and it’s quiet. “Skip the dick swinging, asshole. If somebody tried to kill you, it wasn’t me. That would be fucking sloppy.”

You like that she picks up quickly. Less to explain. “Guess that complicates things.”

Shaw says, “There’s a killer. I’m going to find them. The rest of this shit has nothing to do with me.”

You snort. “Ever heard the story of Drexciya, Shaw? It’s a nation born from pregnant Black mothers thrown into the sea on their way to the New World. Their children learned to breathe water. Love the dark. Live in peace. Keep it cool. But if they should ever have cause to rise up . . . it will very much have to fucking do with you.”

“Fine. I’ll look into it,” she snaps.

“Like you said, Shaw, it’s DC. You don’t have a choice. And Iwu is watching.” You end the call.

An hour later, you’re wearing an expensive black suit and sitting at Aesop’s Tail, a bar on Fourteenth Place, the border between Capitol Hill and Kingman Park, where the government class comes to rest their heads against the real world.

After a thirteen-year-old bulldozed the education czar’s passcode with a homemade AI, everyone on the Hill became born-again luddites. Last year, Aesop’s was retrofitted with a Faraday cage, but the ritual remained. Nobody entered with any kind of smartwear. Nightly, the coatroom filled with junior, but trusted, staffers clutching their bosses’ devices in aluminum cases, on the lookout for drones and reporters, like a mouse watches for the hawk’s shadow.

Aesop’s presented as a dive bar. Because of their clientele, they could afford the fancy cloth napkins, but opted for paper. Busboys waited until the tables got sticky before wiping them down. It’s a realistic fiction, and so are you. Early on, you realized the right suit, attitude, and falsified cloud data could get you anywhere, silent and unnoticed until you wanted to be. Then it was all about your knife.

The adrenaline has worn off. Every drink you take is medicinal, numbing you to the repercussions of getting hit by a fucking truck. Facing the mirrored backsplash behind the bar, you watch the pool game in the middle of the room.

“Senator, it’s your shot,” says a trans man in a fashionable but overworked suit and red tie, leaning on the corner of the table. He hands the cue to another man, who pushes it away gently and checks his expensive watch, platinum as his hair. This one’s a tall Javanese American in a hand-stitched white shirt with the top button undone. His tie, same color as his aide’s, is loosened. He’s got a long scar down his left cheek and wears his wealth like a circle of salt to fend off poverty.

Rahardian Winston. This is the asshole you’re here to see. Iwu has a bespoke collection of government officials on the hook. This is the one you hate, and the only one outside of New Drexciya with an inkling of Samuel’s true pedigree.

A narrow boned Latinx woman with cornrows and a “Picante picante!” tattoo disappearing down the neckline of her gray pantsuit stands back from the table to judge the angle of the six-ball to the closest side pocket.

“Sorry to leave you hanging, Congresswoman Penalo,” says Rah. “I’m publicly humiliating your EPA chief at nine in the morning. It’s only March, and already at least a hundred million in government spending has fallen off the back of the truck.” He stands straight and oratorical for a moment, gesturing with a fist as if he were holding a pen. “We’re bleeding money and good Americans deserve answers.”

“Come on, Rah!” she says.

“Game’s over, Anita,” says Rah, relaxing his shoulders. “I already have you beat and you’re about to scratch.”

“No, I was talking about your hearing,” she replies. “You might score a couple light jabs on Secretary Bove for the elderly watching C-SPAN on TikTok, but he’ll lay you out in the tenth.” She swings a slow hook at an invisible chin and clucks her tongue. “Got my word on that; trained Bove myself.”

Under Kelly’s Civil Contract, the director of the EPA was the civilian chair on the Homeland Climate Mitigation Board, the spigot of money out of the Pentagon. Retrofitting the grid. Modular home construction. Battery manufacturing. Urban carbon-capture projects. Hurricane cleanup. Chemical recycling of plastics. So many projects needed their approval, it was physically impossible to watch it all go out the door. Their appearance before Congress to answer for unbalanced books was practically ritual.

Rah makes like he’s conceding the point. “Maybe. But tell you what, congresswoman, have your guy go down in the third and I’ll let four—no, five—of your appellate judges out of committee.”

Anita raises an eyebrow. “You wanna go on the record with that?”

Rah looks around the room. “Where’s the mic?”

Anita rolls her eyes and laughs. It was particularly funny since Rah was one of the holes in the cheese. Through Rah, Iwu made sure a portion of that “missing” cash was funneled to African American unions in DC. In exchange, the unions helped the Kings of Drexciya wash your black-market income. But from the look of his watch, the Kings of Drexciya were not Rah’s only clients.

“Coño, estas pasa’o?” says Anita with a sweet smile that showed off her gold teeth. “Love how y’all got religion on green everything since the Office of Management and Budget’s discount rates made environmentalism profitable.”

Rah opens his mouth to respond when a waitress passes him a folded napkin. He reads it, looks up, and gets sucked into the amber eyes of the Black woman on your right. She’s sitting, long legs crossed, with her back to the bar. Her name is Kola. She’s one of Max’s crew, your backup, and Iwu’s eyes and ears to make sure you follow orders. She was the one driving the van. You didn’t recognize her under the mask, but from the smell of lilac about her. Kola’s blonde cornrows set off the fire in her smile. The gold and blue dress fits to worship curves that break every mold. Her head is slightly tilted towards the empty seat to her left.

Rah coughs. “Bobby, grab my case for me. Then call it a night. I’ll make my own way home.” He winks, then turns to Anita. “Congresswoman, a long time ago, I was once from Kalibata City, a housing complex in Jakarta. Anything said of one from Kalibata City—depending on the time of day, season, or century—could conceivably be true, even if it was a lie. Uncertainty saturated the air and thus did opportunity. ‘Biasa aja,’ my mother called it. To become something, to survive, you must be no one thing. Those who prospered did so because they were ready to be anything. We had to make an art of forgetting, so as to manipulate the many futures at the bazaar. That is the heart of being human. That is why I am a capitalist.”

“Is that what happened to Petrol King?” says Anita as she leans back over the pool table for her shot. “They failed to move at the speed of the bazaar?”

“There are winners and losers.” Rah shrugs. “Now the shareholders have to restructure around new climate change mitigation policies that will pass government regulations. The people”—you can almost see the italics he dips those words in—“will take their pound of flesh. Petrol King will adapt or die. I don’t have a horse in that particular race.”

“Really? How’s your brother-in-law? He’s on the Petrol King board, right?” Anita shakes her head, takes her shot, and scratches immediately. “Profitability was a carrot we put in front of the jackass because it wasn’t moving fast enough. Glaciers are moving beneath our feet and we’re in a race with the planet on a completely different time scale.” She retrieves the cue ball. “Siga jodiendo para que vea. Only one of us is right. I don’t want to find out which.” But she’s speaking to the senator’s back.

“Biasa aja,” Rah mutters. He’s officially done listening.

His nostrils flare as he sits next to Kola, close enough for thighs to touch. Kola whispers something that is definitely not an apology into his ear. There must be a god of dramatic timing because, at the exact moment she leaves, there’s a brownout. The entire city slow blinks. You slide into her seat, but to Rah, you’ve appeared like an apparition. The look on his face is nearly worth the suffering of his attention.

His fear burns, but you swallow it down like Nearest Green whiskey. “Ekwensu,” he gasps. Not anymore, but Rah doesn’t need to know that.

“You’re right, Rah. Places and people must be many things at once. Roles on top of roles, cities atop cities. Aesop’s, for example. You can come to watch the soccer game. Quietly do some business. Or find discreet companionship. A safe harbor from danger. But safety can be washed away with an act of God. Lot more of those going around these days.”

“You’re not supposed to be here,” says Rah. “Iwu said I’d never see you again.”

“Samuel’s dead, Rah.”

Instincts tell him to run, but the knife you have pressed to his abdomen below the overhang of the bar sends a different message.

“Focus on your drink, senator,” you say, and press an old fashioned into his hands.

“I had nothing to do with . . . whatever happened to Sam,” says Rah.

You down another shot. “The list of people who knew about the connection between us and Samuel was short. And you are the only one on that list we don’t trust. So, help me understand. Make this a safe space again.”

Rah’s eyes stop hunting for exits. “You mean, Iwu didn’t tell you?” You don’t answer. He sputters on. “I got Samuel in the door at Petrol King as a stock analyst. He’s the reason they went down, a trojan horse. He would send me details to expose their dirty books, and I’d make sure they went where he told me.”

“So, somebody at Petrol King found out what he was doing and killed him?”

“I don’t know,” says Rah, “But Sam must have had other plans, because he didn’t leave even after the feds forced the restructuring of the company.” He pauses and frowns.

“What is it?”

“There’s a meeting in six days, here at their DC headquarters on K Street to decide the fate and the new direction of what was once Petrol King.”

Your mind is reeling. There are no coincidences. You pull out the photo. “Who is this with Samuel?”

“Don’t know her name, but I’ve seen her before, some sort of scientist at Petrol King. What’s she got to do with this?”

You ignore his question. “Who would have profited most? Who was Samuel’s competition?”

“I, I’m not sure. There are many VPs. The competition is going to be fierce.”

A clip of the nightly news streaming on the large monitor over the bar catches your eye. It’s on mute, but a blonde woman smiling through tears is being interviewed. You squint at the screen. She’s familiar.

“Soledad?” Rah shakes his head. “Can’t be her. She’s still on the west coast.” You can feel Rah squirming. This motherfucker’s hedging his bets, even now? It takes everything not to stab him right there. You’ve already cut him once.

“You need to get me into Petrol King tomorrow morning.”

Rah balks. “How? I got Samuel an interview scheduled over a month in advance. He wowed them on his own. What exactly is your applicable skill set? These aren’t the types of people who take violent threats lightly. Their personal security is made up of ex-cops and mercena—”

Before Rah can finish that sentence, your hands move faster than eyes can follow, turning his tie into a noose. When he reaches up to loosen it, the tip of your knife digs into his skin, drawing enough blood to stain his shirt.

Bobby shows up with the senator’s case and sees Rah’s red face and tears. “You okay, sir?”

“I just told him something funny,” you say. “Wait out front and he’ll come tell you the punchline himself in about five minutes.”

Bobby freezes until Rah gives a shaky nod. Bobby reads the room, puts down the case, and walks away, back stiff.

“Smart kid.” You count under your breath while Rah’s fingers tremble flat on the counter. At ten, you disappear the knife and undo the knot for him.

He gasps long and hard. “I’ve got an idea,” he says, voice rough.

“Thought you might.”

“You . . . pretend to be my security detail.”

The very thought of the crowds of people and journalists makes you want to peel your own skin like an onion. “No. Too many eyes on you. I’ll use your aide. Bobby. They’ll recognize him and let us into the building.”

Rah shakes his head. “Won’t work. Senators having personal security is a minor stretch, we don’t get secret service, but a lone aide would never get protection. And I don’t want him to get hurt.”

“We’re well past want, senator,” you snarl. But he’s right. “Fine.” You’ll just have to get in and out fast.

You sit there, quietly fuming, until Rah breaks in. “I didn’t know what they were doing to you. In prison, I mean. I’m sorry. But it wasn’t me. You know I didn’t have anything to do with that, right? I even helped Sam blow the whistle that got you out.”

You can’t help thinking about detective Shaw and her insistence that none of this had anything to do with her. You turn away from the senator. “Sure, Rah. You didn’t poison the water. You didn’t throw my sentence into limbo. You didn’t cut into my brain. You didn’t kill me. You only profited from it. I know who was supporting your campaign for reelection. And I’m sure your change of heart had nothing to do with whatever Iwu has on you.” Getting you out of prison had involved blackmailing Rah.

He closes his eyes. “Yes, but . . . that wasn’t the only reason,” he says desperately. “After I watched the tapes . . . If I’d known—”

You cut him off. “Like you said, Senator, you’ve made an art form out of forgetting.” You stand up from the bar. “When I call, pick up on the first ring.” You gesture at the scar on his face. “And it’s best if you remember that nobody controls me.”

You turn to leave through the kitchen.

“What’d they send you to prison for anyway?” asks Rah. “They never told me.”

Your fist squeezes the doorknob for a moment. “Does it fuckin matter?”

Then you’re gone, but you hear his answer. “No,” he says, “I suppose not.”

Part 5: You Don’t Know

[11:54 p.m.] We need to talk Iwu.

[12:15 a.m.] Iwu: U should be sleeping. Big day coming up.

[12:16 a.m.] What aren’t you telling me about Samuel?

[12:17 a.m.] Shooter’s watching me right now.

[12:30 a.m.] Iwu: Who?

[12:35 a.m.] Whoever was @ Samuel’s. The 1 who took ur bait.

[12:46 a.m.] Iwu: Should have named u Orpheus. How u keep looking over ur shoulder & still let yourself get followed. Sloppy.

[12:50 a.m.] Nobody followed me. Was waiting for me when I got to my spot.

[1:24 a.m.] Iwu: You think they’ll come at you direct?

[1:30 a.m.] In the buildings across the street. Been a minute though. They’re waiting.

[1:56 a.m.] Iwu: I’m calling M to clear the building.

[1:56 a.m.] No! Don’t want any more Black bodies dropping.

[2:35 a.m.] Still haven’t answered my question. Why didn’t u tell me what Samuel was doing?

[2:39 a.m.] Iwu: Bcs u were supposed to be done. Didn’t involve u.

[2:39 a.m.] Iwu: And he was a black box. Trust in. Trust out. Communication at absolute minimum. He gave me 5 hrs notice before Petrol King went under.

[2:44 a.m.] So u made serious $.

[3:01 a.m.] Iwu: There’s a common misconception that first nations were tricked into selling their land for some shells. Many of them got seriously paid. But lost control of capital. They didn’t know how to slow roll it, make it flow back to them. Fuck $. I want control.

[3:02 a.m.] Iwu: Samuel was working on something bigger than capital. The word he used was revolution. New Drexciya risen.

[3:16 a.m.] We already got New Drexciya.

[3:25 a.m.] Iwu: No. We have a neighborhood. I want an empire. Us with control of an energy corporation. That’s what got him killed. THAT’S why if ur gonna insist on doing this, u need to do what I’m telling u. We need whatever it was he was working on. No matter the cost. This will be ur legacy.

[3:30 a.m.] Ok.

[3:31 a.m.] Iwu: And I want Rah alive.

[3:46 a.m.] . . .

[3:46 a.m.] Iwu: Said I want Rah alive.

[3:47 a.m.] He knows who killed Samuel.

[3:47 a.m.] Iwu: I went to a lot of trouble to get my own senator. Drexciya is upon us. Do NOT fucking go off MY script.

[4:46 a.m.] U changed Samuel’s words.

[4:46 a.m.] Iwu: ???

[4:46 a.m.] Before you said “We be the KINGS of Drexciya.” But I remember Samuel said SAINTS.

[4:50 a.m.] Iwu: U know the difference btw the 2? All saints are dead. Go sleep.

Part 6: Vampire Island

You don’t even realize it when sleep takes you. One moment you’re sitting behind the door, knife ready. The next, water is rising up between the floorboards that are now spongy with mold. You’re in the apartment you grew up in. The south side of the building collapsed into the Atlantic a week ago, along with your parents and baby sister. The water won’t recede below the first floor for days, and the mangled edges of the Wonder Wheel at Coney Island look like exposed ribs of a whale carcass poking above the waves.

Samuel’s wearing broken headphones. Nodding to music only he can hear, he squeezes your hand. You don’t tell him to let go, even when it hurts. But not Iwu. Even back then, she hated being touched. Asleep, she would shout, “Let me see your hands!” Awake, she stares down a future only she can see, wiry arms wrapped tight around her chest.

Drexciyan women, opal-black skin fused with living coral, rise with the tide. They smell like sunbaked brine and wet plaster. Samuel tugs at your arm and speaks. His words jump you like a moray eel, double jaws wide and whispering something distorted, as if he’s underwater.

That wakes you up. Takes a second to remember what’s going on. It’s just past ten in the morning. You and Max are waiting for Rah in front of his mistress’s condo. A good choice. It should remind Rah that you know all his pressure points. But when he gets into the car, he’s stressed for a completely different reason.

“We’re too late!” he says, before he’s even closed the door. “Soledad’s already—” then he sees Max and freezes. Max’s massive frame and octopus stare tend to have that effect on people.

“Who’s this?” Rah whispers.

You have a pounding headache and Rah’s sudden movements don’t help. “You know how they say naming a thing gives you power over your fear of it?”

“Yes,” he replies.

“Trust me. This isn’t one of those times. Who’s Soledad?” Both Max and Rah do a double take. “What? I don’t watch the news.”

“A VP of marketing for Petrol King? You asked me about her yesterday,” says Rah. “Lost her husband and teenage son to a rocket accident. Space capsule blew up on the launch pad.” You look at Max and he nods. “She’s been all over the feeds for two weeks hocking her nonprofits in their name, pushing her positives up.”

“You said she was on the West Coast.”

“She must have gotten back this morning.” Rah shakes his head. “All the competing proposals disappeared overnight, and she pushed her presentation to earlier this morning. The future has been decided.” He hands you his tablet and your glasses sync with the presentation.

Fading in from white, Soledad’s voice is accompanied by birdsong on a perfect blue sky. I dream of a renewable future that is green and clean. You fly over an AI-created digital mashup of shining towers and trees not found in nature. I dream of a future that is red, white, and blue. Fireworks flare in the sky as your perspective flits about a grassy knoll populated with stocky, poorly designed multiethnic families, barbecuing in a large square park. But this future is in peril. A shadow falls and the score turns ominous.

Decarbonizing will require significant increases in mineral consumption. The people turn and point. Huge charts appear over the buildings, trains, and cars listing their steadily increasing mineral content: Cobalt. Nickel. Gold. Copper. Manganese. Quartz. Graphite. Lithium alone will increase in price by five hundred percent as the global energy system shifts. Do we want to build our future on the whims of Chile and China? Do we risk a third world war? Military drones appear over the horizon. As they dive towards you on their attack run, the scene freezes.

But what if I told you there was a third way? One without the worries of mine pollution, without native peoples losing their lands. What if I told you there was a new frontier that Petrol King is perfectly placed to exploit? What if I told you that we could save the world with one shot?

You fly over oceans, then glaciers. Antarctica. A land nearly untouched by man. No nation has laid claim to it. Our geologists tell us its mineral content is identical to Australia, South America, and South Africa; with vast, incalculable riches. Resources we don’t need to negotiate for.

Our miners have the know-how, rugged individualism, and core competency that makes this country great. And they will do it with our Woskov Engine, a drone-controlled, high-powered, well-tested graviton laser. A giant boxy-looking cylindrical device is separated and labeled in a diagram, then quickly put back together and rotated business end down, towards the ground. It vaporizes ice, metal, and rock using the only drilling technology capable of functioning in the unforgiving Antarctic environment.

America’s never asked for permission to make history, champion freedom, or save the world. After all, if you lead from behind, you get left behind. And that’s why we’ll be out front, building this not-so-secret weapon. Petrol King will become America’s Silver Bullet Industries.

And who knows where the heroes of today will lead us tomorrow? Miners’ uniforms morph into futuristic spacesuits as the device takes off across the moon at warp speed.

The reactions in the feed flare with gold coins and standing ovation icons.

You close the application. “Who’s seen this?”

“All the shareholders,” replies Rah. “This was over an hour ago. Voting has already started, but it’s a foregone conclusion. My brother-in-law told me there’s no competition. Everyone else has either joined her team or been encouraged not to oppose her. There’s no point in going to the offices. Soledad’s already won.”

You sit back in your seat. “So then why the rush job? You said at the bar that the meeting was in six days.”

“Rush?” says Rah, throwing his hands up. “The presentation had something for the left, something for the right . . . they even sugarcoated it with science fiction.”

You point at Max. “Rah, meet the new Ekwensu. His name means death. Look Death in the eye and tell him the truth. Was that production any better than an AI-prompted, last second, high school report?” Rah swallows hard, then shakes his head. “This whole fucking thing’s been a shit show from beginning to end. Tried to strong-arm Samuel. Failed. Came after us. Failed. Now this bullshit presentation. Ekwensu, what’s this smell like to you?”

Max answers. “Panic.”

“My man. Whatever Soledad was looking for at Samuel’s, they still don’t have it, and it could hurt her. Stick to the plan.”

Rah slumps. As Max drives up the street, dark clouds swirl, and freezing rain comes at you sideways. Another bomb cyclone’s about to hit DC.

• • • •

K Street. Downtown. Attempts to rebuild away from its mythologized reputation as a center of political corruption have failed. There’s nothing like proximity to power. Everyone knows it. That’s why the glass towers housing the Petrol King offices are surrounded by protesters.

“Looks like we weren’t the only ones to hear about their rebrand.”

The police have established a barricade, but black-hooded mobs of people surround the building and block traffic. If the car windows weren’t tinted, exposing yourself to this much attention would feel like getting fed into a woodchipper.

“Fruit flies,” says Rah with disdain. “They don’t understand what it means to lead. All they can do is criticize. All they can do is break things.”

Maybe Rah has a point. Or maybe they know what it’s like to be powerless. Maybe they’re done with that.

Max stops the car a hundred yards from the garage attached to the main building. The streets are packed and there’s no way to drive closer. You curse and slap the patch on your arm. Going to have to walk through the crowd, and you barely slept last night. The world elongates like playdough and comes back together lumpy. Not a good sign.

You call Iwu. “I’m here.”

“Contact me if you get something useful,” she says. “Ekwensu will have an exit ready.” You nod. “Don’t forget about the other thing,” she continues.

Iwu is reminding you not to kill Rah. You curl up your lip at the sweating senator. “I remember.”

“One more thing. I found her—the scientist. Took a second because she’s been extra careful with her social media. Nichelle Jemisin. PhDs in physics and geology. Did a stint at CERN. Works in R&D at Petrol King for both Sam and Soledad. There’s your traitor. This bitch shows up, she belongs to me.”

You frown. “Deep.”

You get out first, then open the door for Rah. “Let’s go.” The two of you weave through the crowd. Thankfully, the mob’s attention glances off you on its way to the senator who’s only too happy to bask in the rage of his haters. That is, until a tatted-up white boy with red dreads catches Rah by the back of his suit. The kid reaches into his bag and pulls out zip ties, like he’s going to make a citizen’s arrest.

A quick kidney punch has him on his knees before anybody realizes what’s happened. You drag a shaken Rah into the building’s lobby as the kid’s friends attend to him.

Once through the metal detectors, you pause. Samuel’s office would have been searched already, probably his killer’s first stop. “Take me to Soledad’s office.”

Rah’s eyes get big. “What’s your plan? Kill her? Here? What will that accomplish?”

All you see is Samuel’s body. “Eyes forward. Move.”

On the elevator and in the halls, Rah tries to keep his head down, but every other person stops him to talk, ask about family, this bill or that, his opinion on Silver Bullet Industries, a fucking selfie. He turns on the mask as easy as flipping channels. What was it he said at the bar? Biasa aja.

Tenth floor. Soledad’s office is empty. “See? There’s nothing for you here,” says Rah.

A young man—an intern—is leaning on the wall playing a game on his phone. You motion with your chin. “Ask him.”

Rah hurries over and the kid sharpens up when he sees the senator, suddenly eager to please. “Excuse me, which way did Soledad go? We were supposed to have a meeting.”

The intern says, “Oh, you just missed her! She’s on her way to the garage. Want me to call down, ask her to wait?”

“That’s quite all—” A look from you, and Rah changes gears. “Yes. I’d appreciate that.”

As you retrace your steps, staying upright and keeping a grip on Rah is becoming a full-time job. Too many excited people in a contained space. They can’t help but look at you. A thousand matches drag against your skin.

Rah’s mouth is moving. “Have you been listening to a single thing I’ve said? What happens to me after all this? What did Iwu say?”

Your grip on his arm tightens and he gasps in pain. “You want a future, focus on the fucking present.”

He’s not looking at you, so you mistake his shiver of resolve for fear. Rah shoves you forward. He’s not a weak man, and he’s taken you by surprise. As he dashes into the elevator, shouting at you and pointing, the world goes into bullet time. Your lungs forget their function. No choice. You reach over with a shaking hand and squeeze the med patch. Instantly, you can hear your brain popping like eggs in bacon fat.

Guards run at you, batons out. The first one’s already swinging. You grab his hand, snapping his finger bones. Lever him over your shoulder, and he flips into the wall as you stand up. The sound coming out his mouth is a trumpet scream. You gasp as your lungs punch the back of your ribs with new air.

By the time you turn to the other guards, one of them is on the floor twitching, taser wires protruding from his back. Everyone else has scattered or frozen in shock. The third guard makes the sign for the Kings of Drexciya. One of Max’s people. He helps you into the elevator and presses the button. By the time you touch down at garage level, the corrosive narcotics in your veins have done their job. The walls are bleeding blue, but you’re standing.

The doors open, and the first thing you see is Kola in a light brown custodian’s uniform. Rah is cowering before her. You smile. Kola puts a finger to her lips. Shouts echo from the middle row of cars.

“Nichelle—”

“No, no, no! You call me down here to talk and I catch you stealing my research? You white bitch.”

“I’m Columbian. And there’s no need for all that, Nichelle.” That’s Soledad’s voice.

Iwu pings. You drag Rah to his feet and push him down the hall while you answer the call. “Can’t talk.”

“Then listen,” says Iwu. “I got—”

“Stop saying my name like you own it,” shouts Nichelle, so loud you can’t hear Iwu. “You even stole my words. ‘Core competency.’ Really?”

“Why would I reinvent the wheel?” says Soledad. Her tone is placating. “I didn’t call you here to fight, and I certainly wasn’t going to leave without you. We’re just moving your research. Now that I’m in charge, I’m in a position to—”

“Destroy the planet?”

Soledad pauses. “You can’t listen to Sam.” Her voice is black ice. “His models—”

“What models? And I don’t need Samuel to—”

And that’s when Rah’s mobile goes off. Loudly. “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”

“Shit. It’s Bobby,” he says. You almost stab him for his stupidity.

“Who’s there? Step out slowly.” You recognize that gravelly voice, but can’t place it immediately.

At the same time, Iwu texts you. “Your cop came through. Gibson is her rat. Moonlighting for Soledad. He was the arresting officer of the men from the ambush.”

“Fuck.” You turn to Max’s crew, but they’re already fanning out, no doubt taking orders from Max. You step out from between the cars with Rah. “Stall.”

Everything about the situation is bad. There’s a large self-driving cargo van, side doors open. It’s filled with gray plastic bins and equipment. Soledad is still in the same sterile white dress and jacket she wore in the presentation. Her hair’s pulled back into a severe bun. Her face is strained. She doesn’t look like the heir apparent to one of the largest multinational energy conglomerates in the United States.

She’s had about as much sleep as you have. Towering over her is Dr. Jemisin, you presume. She’s wearing a hand-me-down winter parka, her long braided hair pulled back into a ponytail. Now that you see her, Samuel’s photo seems even more off, but you don’t have the time or bandwidth to figure out how.

There are five men in black suits. Private security. Not a single one of them is under fifty years old. All are looking directly at you. Hostility, laced with barely contained, excited fear. All of them ex-cops except for one. Gibson’s right up front. Their hands are reaching into jackets for pistols. Your fingers twitch for your knife.

The guards relax when they see the senator. All except Gibson. He narrows his eyes as if trying to place you in a line-up. His gaze is drilling through the shield of your meds. He’s under the lights, but you’re not. You have seconds before he recognizes you.

“Rah?” says Soledad. She waves at the guards. “Gibson, my goodness, you can stand down.” Reluctantly, Gibson takes his hands off his gun. “I thought you had a hearing this morning.”

“Oh,” says Rah, “I had some personal matters to attend to. Couldn’t wait. But I . . . I finished up and came to congratulate you in person!”

“Thank you,” she says. Her expression brightens. “You backed the right horse from the beginning.”

He cringes and his anxiety stings your back. “Well, yes, about that. I’ve a business proposition you absolutely must hear, if we could go back inside, talk in private.” His voice cracks.

Soledad tilts her head. “Rah, are you okay?”

“No. I mean yes,” he says, “I’m . . . but if you could just follow me . . .”

Suddenly everyone’s notifications ping and buzz. Gibson cringes. “Ma’am, we gotta go.”

“Okay,” says Nichelle, “I’m confused. What’s going on?”

“Nothing that can’t wait,” says Soledad. Her voice is high-pitched. “I’m sorry, Senator, another time. Nichelle . . .”

Rah is paralyzed. Useless.

“Samuel’s dead, Dr. Jemisin.” You grit your teeth as everyone turns on you, slicing you with shock and rage. Gibson’s eyes widen in recognition. He looks between you and Rah, confused.

“What?” Dr. Jemisin says. “Who are you?”

“Doesn’t matter who I am. If you get in that van, you die.” You point at Soledad. “They killed Samuel.”

You get a ping on your v-glasses. In the time it takes to you notice it, ten more pop up. You’d set your newsfeed alerts for any new mentions of Samuel and now they’re piling up. But you are not the only one. Soledad, Gibson, and Dr. Jemisin seem to be reading their own feeds.

“Iwu, what’s going on?” you ask.

“About thirty seconds ago, I doubled whatever Soledad was paying to hold the report of Samuel’s death, told them to release it.” Iwu sounds very satisfied. That makes you smile, until you see the hurt on Nichelle’s face.

“Oh, Dr. Jemisin, I wish you’d just gotten in the truck.” says Soledad. “Mr. Gibson . . .”

The dog is off his leash. “He’s got a gun!” Gibson shouts.

Everything happens fast. Your condition is a curse with benefits. Gibson’s intentions flare. You’re ducking before he’s even got the gun out of the holster. Max’s crew fires from flanked positions. Two of Gibson’s men go down. You’re pulling your knife and throwing it, not at the gorilla, but at the one moving towards Nichelle. It catches him in the throat. Nichelle dives behind the cars, while the fourth ex-cop shields Soledad and returns fire as she ducks into the truck.

You’ve got your back to a blue sedan. “Rah, follow me!” But the senator isn’t following anyone. He’s on his back and bleeding out from his chest. He must have tried to duck behind you, taking the security guard ruse a little too seriously. The look of shock on his face as his mouth moves—prayers? pleas? apologies? You don’t have time to figure out how you feel about this or watch for that last gasp because you hear Gibson reloading.

You dash across open space between the aisles of parked cars. Windshields shatter. Tires burst. Bullets ping and dent metal. Pain shoves its way into your side and expands. You fall to your knees next to Nichelle. Blood quickly soaks your shirt.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck . . .” she whispers, eyes wide.

“Hey, convict,” Gibson calls. “You really shouldn’t have shot the senator.”

You feel Nichelle’s shock and fear harden into resolve. Suddenly, the lights go out. Seconds later, orange back-up lamps reanimate the garage as hundreds of protesters storm the building. Not fruit flies anymore. Angry fucking bees.

Part 7: The Unknown Aquazone

You were losing blood fast so can be forgiven for telling Nichelle to “Wait for Ekwensu.”

She can be forgiven for understanding the Igbo, but not the context. “The fuck you say? No, I ain’t waiting for death!” She drags you through the garage. Stops to rip off your glasses and earpiece—“They can track us”—and drops them to get stomped by the scrum of guards, activists, anarchists, protesting mommas, and riot police.

Even now, you could make her let go, but that wouldn’t get you the answers you need. Outside, the sudden drop in temperature sucks at your bones as the sleet covers you in stinging ice. The gaze of about a dozen protesters rakes your body feverish. Another set of hands pulls you into the back of a vehicle that smells like high school. Something’s squeezing your abdomen. Nichelle’s in an argument and winning, but the voices are lost in the fury of the storm. Then, sirens. Nichelle’s at the wheel, swerving around vehicles and bodies in the whiteout. She fishtails around a corner, then slows down, obeys traffic signals, and drives like she didn’t just escape a gunfight.

Your brain settles down enough to notice the swish-swish of windshield wipers and your own wheezing breaths. You’re lying in the trunk space of a large hatchback sedan with the backseats removed. “Where you taking me?”

“A hospital,” she says.

“Bad idea. You’ll have to explain a gunshot wound.”

“Nah, just gonna roll you out the car and keep on going. But by then, you’ll have answered my questions.”

“Smart.”

“Two goddamn PhDs.”

Your bullet wounds have been treated halfway decently. The gauze and bandages are seeping red, but the pain has mostly receded. “When’d you do this?”

“I didn’t. That was Lucas.”

“Who?”

“White dude with red dreads. He’s corny, but down for the cause, has skills, and let me borrow his car. What’s that look for?”

“Nothing.”

You were lucky. Low-caliber bullet after a ricochet. Slow but spinning. Probably damage to your liver, but not your intestines. Missed an artery, otherwise you’d already be dead. Should be okay for a while if you don’t move. You laugh and pull yourself to a sitting position. “You want answers. But I don’t work for free.”

Nichelle rolls her eyes. “Boy, I just saved your life!”

“Saved yours first. I’ve got questions, too. We trade. Answer for answer. Then you drop me off across the river at Saint Elizabeth’s. Then I’m not your problem anymore. What you think?”

“No games?” she asks.

You suffer her glare without flinching. “I look like I play?”

“Fine,” says Nichelle. “I go first. What’s your name?”

“Tangerine.”

She snorts, then sees you’re not kidding and stifles her laugh. “Okay, whatever. What were you doing at Petrol King?”

“That’s two questions.”

“No, I get to know who the fuck I’m talking to.”

“Fair.” You tell her a partial truth. “Hunting Samuel’s killers. And I found them.”

Nichelle stares at you quietly, briefly, in the rearview mirror as she squeezes the wheel. You remember how surprised she was when she learned Samuel was dead. Still, she could have sold him out without wanting to kill him.

She says, “You by yourself? Why?”

“Samuel and I were close. Survived Hurricane Ophelia together when it hit Coney Island.”

Her expression softens. “I’m sorry. He . . . he didn’t tell me about that.”

You shrug. “We were kids.” What you don’t say is how the flood waters changed you. Or didn’t. Made you more of what was in your heart. You got meaner. Deedee got hungrier. Funny, you’d almost forgotten her real name. She’d been Iwu for so long.

Samuel became even more lost in the clouds. He listened to Drexciya on his dead daddy’s tablet over and over again. When the battery finally died, he kept the music alive in you.

Samuel’s the one who put you on to the story of a million pregnant African mothers thrown from slave ships, the ones who gave birth in the water. Their children learned to live without air, the first Drexciyans. Remixed it with the story of Igbo Landing; how the Igbo men mutinied, beached the ship, and walked into the sea rather than be enslaved. But in Samuel’s version, they became one with the Drexciyans and came back to wage war on the land. It was Dee’s idea to take up the mantle, make the mythology real.

“That was three questions. My turn. Were you and Samuel close?”

“In a way. Only two Black people at that level in the company. We spent a lot of time together. Just chopping it up. Science. Philosophy. Music. Art. We were both fans of Daveed Diggs and Clipping. But now that I think on it, he did more listening than speaking.” She paused. “I wanted to like him.”

“But?”

“Couldn’t trust him. Most people didn’t catch it, the way he stayed locked into his white-people voice even when he didn’t have to.”

“So you never . . .”

When she understands what you’re asking, she gets mad. “My daddy was a roughneck. Worked the rigs in the Gulf of Mexico for just about every one of the oil and gas companies. When I was a kid, I called him a sellout, a sharecropper, only he was destroying the planet, so, worse. I was out protesting against everything I thought he stood for. But then he died. Left me a ton of money and told me to save the world. So I went to school, mastered this shit. I don’t have time for drama.”

You pull the photo of the two of them from your pocket. “Then explain this.”

She frowns and turns her head. “That’s not me. It’s a deepfake. Gross, Samuel. My turn. What are you going to do with Soledad?”

“Kill her. What were you doing working with Samuel and Soledad? Might have been in the same company, but they weren’t on the same side.”

“Whoa. I wasn’t the competition. My specialty’s enhanced geothermal energy,” says Nichelle. “Every neo-energy company’s got somebody like me. Fed mandate. Soledad and Samuel were making use of my research.”

She points at the ground. “There is a star beneath our feet. One percent of it could generate all the energy we need for the next two million years. No peaks. No limits. Done right, more stable and a smaller footprint than solar or wind.

“But there were three problems. One: government permitting. Then Kelly’s Civil Contract streamlined everything. He allowed oil companies to use their current permits if it went towards clean energy.

“Two: We needed technology that could scale up fast. Then we figured out that oil companies and rig workers’ core competencies are a perfect match for geothermal—you just change what you’re drilling for. And retrofitting them to go over the oil rig and coal mines was exponentially easier and more cost effective. Then I helped develop a graviton beam—”

You cut in. “You mean the Woskov Engine?”

“I never called it that,” she says bitterly. “Soledad was the marketing head, said everything had to have a name. But, yes. It goes deeper than any conventional drill ever could to get to that good, superfluid heat. Ten times cheaper, and, at max depth, ten times more energy dense than current methods could produce.

“The final problem was pinpointing where to drill. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack the size of the planet. And a lot of the places people are looking for geothermal are inherently unstable, volcanic. Nobody, not even the major energy companies, has a complete map. They’re drilling blind.”

“We know more about the topography of Mars’s ice caps,” you mutter.

Nichelle tilts her head, impressed. “Right. Samuel asked me what I needed to make an accurate heat-flow map. I told him ten years, a supercomputer able to manage a billion-billion calculations per second, and a place to store the data. He said, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’”

“And?”

“And what? I laughed in his face. Look, I’ve never seen anybody do what Samuel did with AI. It wasn’t science. It was magic. He was like Solomon commanding the djinn to build him temples. I still told him it couldn’t be done. The necessary computing power alone would be enough to . . .” She catches her breath.

You finish her thought. “. . . Power a city the size of DC.”

“The blackouts.” She’s a live wire. Her excitement’s real. That smile. Can see why Samuel fell for her. Iwu’s wrong. Nichelle wasn’t the traitor. So how did Soledad find him? “That was Samuel. He hacked the grid and fucking did it. But twice? There were two blackouts.”

You shake your head. The motion makes you dizzy. You shrug. “So he does this thing. Where is it? It wasn’t at his apartment.”

“It wouldn’t be. Way too much data,” says Nichelle. “Too sensitive. It’d need to be on servers with incredible storage capacity and privacy protection.”

You laugh out loud, and it sends you into convulsions.

Nichelle hits the brakes and jumps into the back of the van. “What’s wrong with you?”

When you can finally talk, you whisper, “Sega Genesis.”

Part 8: Hi Tide

As you explain what the cops found at Samuel’s place, Nichelle pulls the minivan into one of the parking lots on the grounds of Saint Elizabeth’s on the other side of the Anacostia River. The space is under development with new construction everywhere, one of Iwu’s latest projects. Rec center and church aboveground, fortified safe house for black-market goods belowground.

“Police said there was a virtual porn game frozen on Samuel’s computer.”

“His bot must not have finished compiling,” replies Nichelle. “It had to be an incredible amount of data. Bet it’s done now, though.”

Nichelle turns off the engine and helps you into the closest building. The walls are covered in plastic tarps. There’s still-exposed steel and empty wall sockets. Large gaps in the walls for solar panels. Most of the windows are in, though. You can move your legs, but can’t feel them.

“This is a hospital?” she asks.

“It was . . . of a sort.” You cough, and blood colors your teeth.

Nichelle stares at you for a long time. “You sure about this?” she asks.

“I was dead before I got shot.” Your voice is weak. It’s getting harder to stay awake. “Let’s go.”

Nichelle frowns, then reaches into her backpack and pulls out a pair of heavy-duty v-glasses, complete with Sensory-Def noise cancellation.

“Those look like Samuel’s.”

She says, “They are. We often had to work remotely. He gave me his extra. It should still have his settings.” She puts them on, then hands you a smaller pair, similar to the ones she dropped in the Petrol King parking garage. “Okay, follow my lead. You’re a tourist here.”

She presses a button. There’s a chime. Cool blue lights in the corner of the left lenses flash, then hold steady, confirming your v-glasses have synced. The world goes white, skips a beat, then you’re standing in the middle of a suburban cul-de-sac. Comic-convention-orgy avatars with gibberish names float-glide with surreal fluidity, turning at right angles to go in and out of identical pastel, green houses. Nichelle is wearing the body from the photo, swimsuit and all. You must be wearing . . . Samuel. Neither of you say anything, and your digital faces don’t betray any emotion except the default smiles plastered there.

In Biome Light font, Pleasure Principle Premium throbs in front of you, wherever you turn your head. “Username and password, please,” says a deep, genderless voice.

Nichelle confidently says “Splendor_&[email protected]” for the username and a twelve-digit string of numbers and symbols for the password. It does not work.

“I don’t understand,” she says. “His password’s been reset.”

“Try ‘Tangerine.’”

Before Nichelle can reply, the disembodied voice answers. “Access granted. Welcome, Saint of Drexciya.”

Your setting becomes a beach. The Coney Island boardwalk from the picture. You stare. Before you stands the angel from your dreams. Eight feet tall. Draped in gleaming plastic-wrap blue robes. Oil-black ink paints its face like a Melpomene mask. Lights dance and spark beneath its skin. Its robes are fish fins folded close to the body, wet with lines of code that stream down their legs before joining the ocean covering its clawed feet.

“Nichelle,” you whisper, “what am I looking at?” She doesn’t answer. “Niche—”

“Samuel’s bot. I told you he was an artist. It’s waiting for instructions.” Her voice is clipped and angry. You’re in too much pain to focus on why. “Show me saved files.”

The fins unravel and flare open, exposing the angel’s pregnant stomach, expanding and contracting rhythmically. The left hand holds a golden sphere. There’s a white sphere in the right.

When Nichelle takes the golden one, the angel opens its mouth to speak. “Saved Message.” Alice Coltrane’s Journey in Satchidananda plays, clear and unbroken.

“Tan, I’ve done it. Drexciya Risen. Nichelle Jemisin gave me the idea. Well, actually, it was her idea; I just completed the last piece of the puzzle, trained my bots to hack every satellite and space telescope, every pertinent database. Shit, I even retasked the ones orbiting Mars. Then pulled the information together to create the most comprehensive heat-flow map of the planet. And it’s beautiful, Tan. Clean power from practically anywhere on the planet. You don’t even need her laser for most of them.”

Hearing Samuel’s voice hurts and heals at the same time. The angel—Samuel—takes a deep, steadying breath. “Which is why Iwu can’t have it. I know what I told her I’d do. I never forgot the mission. But this is too big. I’ll explain it to her when I have the words to make her understand, but we can’t save ourselves if the only ones with power are kings. Might be better coming from you.

“Oh, and I stole a piece of my data set from Soledad Martin’s and I saw what she was planning. Tan, Iwu is wrong, but Soledad is . . . broken. It’s some lowkey, longtermist bullshit straight out of a Bond movie. So, I’m cheating, generating a simulation that will fuck her shit up with the shareholders and the feds. I’ll send that next, but—”

You hear him get up, then curse as wood splinters. There’s shouting. Gibson’s voice. Other men’s voices. You hear Soledad, too, but it’s coppery and thin, coming from a microphone.

“What did you do, Sam? You think I wouldn’t figure out it was you? Nobody else would even dare. What did you do?” Then the angel speaks the sounds of Samuel’s torture.

“Stop playback,” says Nichelle.

So that was it. Samuel had cornered a wounded animal. Neither of you says anything. Finally, you pick up the white sphere, and the beach becomes ice, bright, reflecting the sun like a lens. Mountains blink into existence on the horizon.

“This is Antarctica,” says Nichelle, her voice cold. “The Eastern Ice Sheet. Play simulation.”

The Angel scatters into a million gold and green flecks before reshaping itself as drones assembling a machine on the ice. You recognize it from Soledad’s simulation: The Woskov Engine. It powers up, then shoots a beam of energy straight down. The beam hits the ice and keeps on going.

“She didn’t . . .” whispers Nichelle.

The ground shakes and doesn’t stop. There’s a sound so loud it breaks off into static. The ice that you’re standing on crumbles beneath your feet. You float there as everything around you is swallowed by the earth, and again by the ocean.

The scene changes. Now you’re looking down on a coastline. The topography is unrecognizable. Then the waves settle, revealing a cluster of oddly stationary buoys. Then the angel speaks— “Manhattan, gone”—and you understand what they really are. The tips of skyscrapers. The scene shifts again. “Venice, gone.” Change. “Bangladesh, gone.” Change. “London, gone.” Change. “Washington, DC, gone.”

“This can’t be real,” you say. “This can’t happen.”

“The graviton beam cuts through ice by melting it,” says Nichelle. “Once it hits the bedrock, the additional heat greatly accelerates basal sliding. Eventually, you hit a point of no return, a catastrophic positive feedback loop. The entire ice sheet can crack off and slide into the ocean.”

“It’s just a simulation,” you say.

Nichelle says, “During the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, the CDC was criticized for painting an overly apocalyptic simulation of what could happen without an incredible vaccination effort. But that’s because they were designed specifically to prevent that outcome. It was one hundred percent in keeping with the numbers.

“Samuel’s using my data derived from ice-ocean-air interface processes responsible for sub-shelf melt. There’s nothing I hate more than a wrong fact, so I make damn sure they’re right. Yes, Tangerine, this could absolutely happen.”

You cough and feel your insides seize with pain.

“Would you like to export the simulation?” asks the angel.

Part 9: Beyond the Abyss

You send the simulation files to Shaw and every media company you can think of, then pull off the v-glasses. Nichelle’s gone. You find her number in contacts and call it.

“Nichelle?”

“You had me take you to Anacostia. The bot called you a Saint of Drexciya. You show up at Petrol King with a gang and a senator. I’d have to be an idiot not to figure out what you really are, Tangerine.” There’s nothing you can say that will make this better, so you stay quiet. “And Samuel was one too, wasn’t he? Fuck! I knew he was off. And what were you going to do? Take over the company?”

And more. But you try to get through to her regardless. “That was the plan. But you heard Samuel.”

“So what? This Iwu feel the same way? I’m not getting shot over Samuel’s bullshit. Not by you or Soledad.”

“Nichelle . . .” You barely have the energy to move your lips. “The map’s yours. Samuel made it for you. No strings attached.”

Nichelle is quiet. Then: “Fuck what Samuel wanted. My daddy said save the world. I’ma let this loose for everyone to see.” The line goes dead.

Can’t tell which direction she’s headed. But that’s just as well, because Soledad’s van takes the turn into the parking lot at high speed, nearly flipping the top-heavy vehicle. It sits idling for a long time. You can imagine the argument going on: Soledad making demands and Gibson trying to talk her out of the inevitable. But she knows as well as you do that sometimes you’re just on that downward slope. Sometimes your world crashes into the ocean. But she’s not the type to go down without a fight.

The doors open. Soledad steps out onto the crushed ice in high heels and doesn’t wobble an inch as she fights the wind to get into the building. She stalks towards you. Gibson and the other cop rush to catch up, heads swiveling to cover too many angles.

Gibson takes one look at your blood-soaked shirt. “Shit. He’s already dead. Johnson,” he says to the other ex-cop, “cover the windows. Ma’am, we shouldn’t have come here. You’re too exposed.”

“I pay you to protect me, so do it. But I need him”—she prods you with her heel—“to tell me what Sam’s done.” She’s a small woman; not strong at all, physically. And yet, you can’t help seeing Iwu in her. That all-consuming anger at a world that’s taken everything from her except her illusion of control.

“Oh, I’ll tell you.” You laugh and cough blood. “He has, and I’ma quote him, ‘fucked up your shit.’ Made a simulation of your data. About ten seconds ago, I set it loose everywhere. You’re worse than done. Hell, he even got a recording of you torturing him.”

Her face turns an ugly shade of red, but it looks like she’d run dry of tears a long time ago. “You’ve killed this world and the worlds to come. Generations will die because of you. I was the only one who could save them.”

You can feel her fear at point-blank range, but it doesn’t hurt anymore. Nothing hurts. That’s probably a bad sign.

“What do you want to do with him?” Gibson says. They turn to each other to confer while Johnson trains his pistol on your chest. That’s when you feel the gaze of another through the window. Familiar. Your Shooter. But Gibson’s not paying attention to you, so it’s not him. Never was. From this close, you can tell the difference. Beneath the ever-present anger, there’s something you’ve missed since the last time you saw Deedee. Her attention burns a love-shaped hole. It’s so intense you could mistake it for hate.

“See, that’s your problem,” you say to Soledad. “Thinking like you a king. But a king’s gotta know their borders, where their power ends. You’re in Drexciya now.”

A red dot appears on Soledad’s back. Johnson pushes her out of the way and turns to shoot. Bullets pummel his chest, knocking him back against the wall. He’s wearing armor, but before he can recover, there’s a loud CLICK-CLICK of a high-powered rifle. The plaster behind Johnson explodes. A second and third round turns his back into meat, and he drops dead.

Max steps through the debris. Gibson whirls to face him. A bullet passes through Gibson’s left knee. Blood sprays. He screams, but somehow keeps his feet long enough to watch another red dot trace its way down his right leg and end at his other knee. “No, no, no!” The next bullet puts him on his back. It’s over so fast, Soledad’s left blinking in shock, hands over her ears.

Iwu walks through the door wearing a tactical vest over a black suit appropriate for a funeral. A sniper’s rifle rests comfortably under an arm. She’s shaved her head since the three of you came to DC. It makes her large brown eyes seem even larger.

“You used yourself as bait this time,” she says to you. “Can’t put that on me.”

You’d smile if you weren’t so tired. Iwu stands in front of Gibson and shoots him again, shattering his elbow. He howls. Then she kneels and takes the gun from Gibson’s useless fingers. “Go ahead and start without me.”

Max grabs Gibson by the back of his shirt. “You owe me f-f-four lives,” He pauses and looks at you. Your grandfather’s knife is in his other hand. You nod. “M-make that five.” His face is wet. He drags the ex-cop down a flight of steps to the basement. You hear Gibson’s screams through the doors.

Iwu steps behind Soledad, embraces her, and slips Gibson’s gun into her numb hands. Their arms lift together towards a window. The glass shatters, and Soledad startles from the noise.

“Be careful with that,” Iwu whispers into Soledad’s ear. “It killed a senator.”

Soledad’s eyes widen. She spins around, points the gun at Iwu, and pulls the trigger. It clicks empty.

“You can run . . .” says Iwu, and Soledad dashes out the door. “But you ain’t getting far.” Then she turns towards you. She’s been crying, too.

You mouth, “It was you this whole time, watching me.”

“Knew you couldn’t let this go. Had to protect my . . . investment.”

Clouds let up and the sun paints the room in ripples of gold. “Today is almost a perfect day,” she says. “A new cop on lock, an old one under my knife, a desperate CEO to hunt. And I haven’t even gotten to the real prize. Where’s the scientist?”

You shake your head.

“That’s okay.” She wipes her face with her arm. “We have what matters. We did it. You, me, and Samuel.”

To say that you were the body, Samuel was the heart, and Iwu was the head would be an oversimplification. Your relationship was more complicated than that. Iwu was unrelenting, calculating, destructive, inevitable as lava flow. But that kind of heat under an ocean of pressure was also life-giving. She willed existence into places where life was supposed to be impossible. Her force of will is what kept you going and reshaped the topography. And you hated seeing her hurt.

“Sorry, Deedee.”

She stares, not understanding. Then her mouth opens wide as her eyes. She’s shouting. But she’s stuck on land. She’s got to breathe air, dry as sandpaper. You can’t hear her over the water that has covered your head.

You sink. Breathe it in. It’s thick, but pleasant. Cool. Cold. Sweet. Flows through you, ice like honey.

Welcome home, Saint of Drexciya.

Liner Notes

This is a work of solarpunk noir (rob-cameron.com/rob-blog/solarpunk-nights). The music is real (bit.ly/4cZDbaZ). The problems are real (bit.ly/46FD8NW). The politics and solutions are real (volts.wtf). Drexciya is as real as any future we choose to create (bit.ly/4hbzwbF).

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Based on research by Professor Hélène Seroussi,
Department of Engineering, Dartmouth College
engineering.dartmouth.edu/community/faculty/helene-seroussi