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  "Now, that's a mean-looking machine," Jebbie said.

  "The extender accelerates the plasma, for shooting at a distance or penetrating armor."

  "Armor? What is this, the Dark Ages?"

  "Essentially."

  "You won't say who sent the dang thing, but who all has drones like that?" Jebbie asked. "It must be the military, right? Or the government?"

  "Other people might have them, too."

  "What other people?"

  "Private security," Raven rubbed her head, struggling to remember. "The expensive kind."

  "I guess. I don't know." He took his gun back from her. "Listen, are we gonna have more trouble up the road? Cause dying ain't high on my to-do list right now. You can't tell me who they are or why they're after you..."

  "I understand. I'm putting you in danger. You can drop me at the next exit."

  "You know where you're going yet?"

  "North."

  "North, huh? Well, listen, I'm only going so far as Toledo, then I got to drop my load and turn south again. So, you're welcome to stay that long, if, I mean, I noticed you got a whole lotta money there...so maybe some of them hundreds for the trouble, and my lost shaving kit and all..."

  "That's fair." Raven opened her pack, peeled off six bills, and handed them over. "Is that good for now?"

  "Yeah, yeah, oh, yeah..." He stuffed the money into his shirt pocket. "Yeah, that's good. And maybe a little for gas."

  Raven sighed and paid him another hundred.

  "What are you hauling back there?" she asked. She squinted through the rear window at the semi trailer decorated with fluffy pink cartoon sheep. "It's not volatile, is it?"

  "Naw, but the people who buy 'em might be." He chuckled to himself.

  "What is it?"

  "Puflex."

  "Is that a...pharmaceutical?" Raven asked.

  "I kinda figured you'd know." He flushed as though embarrassed and scratched his neck, looking out his window. "Puflex. Uh, the lady's product? For your monthly, uh, visits? Got twenty tons of 'em back there. Enough for all the women in Toledo, I guess."

  "Oh!" Raven said. "So...yeah. Got it. Tampons." She looked out at the road.

  He drove well past the speed limit to put the trouble behind them. The dashboard clock read 1:15 a.m.

  After only a couple of miles, Jebbie veered toward another exit ramp.

  "Where are we going?" Raven asked.

  "Got to pull off. Running on empty. I was gonna gas up at the Big Porcupine in the morning, but it ain't morning yet, and here we are driving. We need fuel, and I need me a coffee and something sugary. Didn't get much sleep with that UFO drone and all." He pulled alongside a pump at another, smaller truck stop.

  "We have to keep moving," she said.

  "You want to keep going, that means fuel, me and the truck both." He climbed down to the gas pump.

  "I'll get the coffee. Wait out here with the engine running," she said.

  "Well, yes, ma'am. But don't forget something good to eat, like a bear claw, and four or five Moon Pies." He stuck his credit card into the pump. "Biggest coffee they got, black, but with sugar and some creamer. "

  The convenience store sold groceries, t-shirts, and, for some reason, a wide selection of novelty items like whoopee cushions and joy buzzers. She filled two extra-large paper cups from an urn labeled "Ultra Dark Roast," one of several choices at the coffee bar by the rotating wiener rack.

  "How ya doing, honey?" asked the large woman at the cash register, who was working a crossword puzzle and didn't look up from it while she spoke. "Need a little coffee, huh? Tell me about it."

  "Are you talking to me?" Raven asked.

  "You see anybody else in here, honey?" She cast Raven a bewildered look, as though Raven were crazy.

  Two motorbikes parked slantwise in front of the convenience store, blocking the front door. Each bike had three tires, two in front and one in back, giving them a crossbow shape, and their engines made no sound at all. The riders wore full armor, including helmets with black faceplates. They set off red alerts all over her brain.

  Raven ducked into the closest aisle, hiding among cans of Spam and Chef Boyardee. Keeping her head low, she crept toward the front of the aisle. She watched between boxes of Frosted Flakes and Lucky Charms as the two bikers entered, jingling a little bell on a string over the door.

  Their helmets were ridged and plated like medieval battle gear. Tinted shields hid their faces. Their black, armor-ribbed suits were scaled and leathery like Raven's jacket, but they each had a golden logo on the shoulders, an eye inside a triangle. The sight of it made Raven's skin crawl.

  "We-hell, looks like the aliens have landed at last!" the lady behind the counter joked. "Can I help you boys?"

  The riders' helmets broke apart like jigsaw puzzles and collapsed into rings around their shoulders, leaving them wearing goggles with pitch-black lenses. They were young men with close-cropped hair and flat expressions on their faces.

  "We're looking for a girl. Have you seen her?" One rider held up his gloved hand and projected a full-size, three-dimensional image of Raven, a video loop of her running somewhere dim. It repeated itself every few seconds. The image wore the same clothes that Raven wore now, down to the boots. Her hair was even pulled into the same ponytail.

  The clerk gawked at the hologram, then glanced over to the coffee bar where she'd last seen Raven.

  "There!" The other rider pointed at a curved mirror high in a corner. In the reflection, his dark goggles looked right at Raven.

  Raven dropped her two cups full of coffee and ran the only way she could, toward the back of the store. They opened fire on her, and white plasma consumed the shelf beside her, melting the cans of ravioli and beans. A box of Pop Secret packets exploded, hurling smoking black corn across the aisle.

  Another ball of glowing plasma melted the glass doors of the beverage cooler at the back of the store. Hundreds of bottles and cans exploded, ejecting a superheated steam cloud of Fanta and Budweiser. The steam scalded her face and hands but provided some cover as Raven ran through a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY.

  She found herself in a storage room piled with cardboard boxes. A dusty Slush Puppy machine occupied one corner, with a plastic cartoon dog presiding over a row of empty cylinders and nozzles.

  She wedged the Slush Puppy machine between the doorknob and the wall, pinning the EMPLOYEES ONLY door shut. She ran out the back door under the glowing EXIT sign, emerging onto the small concrete pad of the convenience store's loading dock. She'd finally made it outside.

  She raced across the parking lot, where Jebbie, to his credit, was idling near the exit, ready for a quick escape. She glanced through the glass wall of the store.

  Inside, the clerk raised a double-barreled shotgun and fired it at the first of the riders. He staggered back, grimacing and brushing at his chest. The other rider shot back with a plasma rifle, incinerating the clerk and the entire counter. A nearby rack of fried fruit pies boiled and burst through their cellophane wrappers.

  Raven fired a round of plasma at the two armored bikes parked outside the store. The plasma spread out to engulf them, but she didn't have time to check whether she'd done any real damage.

  She climbed up into the truck and slammed the door. "Let's go!"

  "I don't see no coffee. I said 'large coffee,' not 'no coffee.'" Jebbie scratched his stubbly face. His eyes were sagging, with heavy dark spots underneath. "Don't see my Moon Pies, neither."

  "The attackers are here. We don't have time!"

  "Them fellers on them freaky bikes?" Jebbie asked. He checked his side mirror as he accelerated out of the parking lot. "Helen's damnation, they done set the Flying J afire!"

  The truck barreled down the on-ramp, and he wasted no time crossing to the far left lane. The interstate was nearly deserted under the late-night sky.

  "You remember who they are yet?" he asked. "Could be handy to know who's trying to kill you, it seems like."

  "Providence.
They're called Providence Security."

  "Providence, huh?"

  In her side mirror, Raven saw the first bike rocketing towards her. It was already alongside Jebbie's trailer, just beneath the cottony pink sheep of the Puflex logo. Puflex, it said, For When It's One of Those Days.

  "Step on the gas," she said.

  "I already got the hammer all the way down the hole, darling."

  Raven raised her plasma rifle and leaned out the window, facing backwards. She didn't have a moment to aim before the armored rider fired a round from the small cannon mounted above his two front tires.

  She ducked inside as the round screeched past, punching a rippling wormhole in the air. The deafening shockwave smashed her side mirrors, the front and rear windshield, and every window in the truck cab. The truck swerved to the left and the tires dropped from the pavement to the grassy median. Mud sprayed up over the hood and windshield.

  The round continued onward and upward, finally smashing into a billboard advertising a Guns-and-Ammo-Stravaganza at the Civic Center! Bring your kids! with an image of a happy blond boy gripping an M-16. The billboard crumpled like a tissue, with a screaming, screeching-metal sound, then snapped free of its support post and tumbled forty feet to the ground.

  "What in the name of James Earl--?" Jebbie began. All over his face, tiny cuts wept droplets of blood.

  "Get back on the road!" Raven shouted. She looked out her window again.

  The armored man rode directly beside her now, his cannon turned sideways. His next shot would plow through her and demolish the cab. She knew what his weapon was now--a rail gun, an artillery weapon that fired small metal rings at ultrafast speed, doing catastrophic damage while leaving little evidence behind.

  She aimed for the rider's heart and pulled the trigger, and she held it down until all the hydrogen in her cartridge was spent.

  The concentrated, accelerated plasma fired from her rifle as a dense, white-hot beam. It punctured through the rider's black breastplate and emerged from his back as a glowing white cloud. He slumped over his handlebars, engulfed in white fire that rapidly cooled to purple and blue. The bike slowed to a crawl.

  "I got another one on my side! He's a-coming!" Jebbie announced.

  "I'll take care of it. Don't make any sudden turns." Raven stood on her seat and leaned out the window.

  "Hot pickled potatoes, what kinda crazy girl are you?" Jebbie asked as she climbed up onto the roof of the cab, her rifle in her hand.

  She squinted against the high wind, moving in a low crouch across the truck roof as they hurtled along the interstate. The second rider was in the grass median, drawing close to the truck cab and lining up a shot with his bike's rail gun.

  Jebbie shot at him, but Jebbie was firing backwards with an antique gun while steering the truck. One bullet actually hit the rider, but shattered uselessly on his armored sleeve.

  Raven fired, but the truck hit a bump in the road, jostling her. The rider fired a round from his rail gun just as her glowing beam of plasma passed through his bike's right front tire, sending the bike into a burning tailspin. The rider let go and dropped to the ground inside the median.

  His shot cratered the side of the cab, crushing it inward like a wrecking ball. The entire rig was swept away beneath her boots, leaving her hanging in midair. The truck slid sideways across the road, tires shredding and burning, broken axles kicking off showers of sparks as metal shredded against asphalt, filling the night with a horrible, ear-splitting screech. The truck finally scraped to a halt in the emergency lane on the right side of the road. The fuel from the ruptured gas tank ignited, raising a wall of fire.

  Raven slammed into the asphalt, and the impact knocked the wind out of her. Her plasma rifle skittered away. She'd already emptied the hydrogen cartridge inside it, and the rest of her ammunition was in her pack inside the burning truck.

  She forced herself up to her knees, her head swimming. The second rider was several feet away in the grass, also pushing himself up, slowed just a bit by the mass of his armor. Raven had no weapon left, but her attacker had a plasma rifle mounted in the holster clamps on his back, and probably a number of other weapons built into his armor.

  The truck cab was still engulfed in flames, but she saw another weapon available--the high-powered rail gun on the wrecked bike. She ran toward it, letting her jacket shield her torso and hip from the burning tire. She turned the handlebars toward the rider as he slid the plasma rifle from his back.

  "Any chance we can talk this out?" she asked.

  He leveled the plasma rifle at her chest.

  To fire the rail gun, she pressed thumb buttons on both handlebars at the same time. The round boomed through the air, leaving a rippling shockwave in its wake, and slammed into the front of his armor, crumpling it into his chest. The round caught him at an upward angle and lifted him off the ground.

  He rocketed high and away, back over the median, above the four lanes on the other side of the interstate, and he skimmed the tops of the trees beyond, flying much farther into the night than Raven could see. She heard a distant thud when he finally landed. There was no way he could have survived, she thought.

  Police sirens wailed in the distance. She had to hurry.

  She dashed to the crumpled cab, where the gasoline fire had flowed out across the asphalt and was beginning to die down as the fuel burned away. She circled the truck and climbed up the passenger side to retrieve her backpack through the shattered window.

  Jebbie's body was crushed and burned inside the mangled truck, but she checked his pulse anyway. He was gone.

  "I'm sorry," she whispered. His death was entirely her fault. As her adrenaline faded, guilt replaced it. "I'm so sorry. You didn't deserve this."

  She dropped from the wreckage and stood for a moment in the heat and firelight, checking for more attackers. Then she broke down her rifle, stashed the extender inside her backpack, and reloaded the pistol.

  Raven walked back up the road to where the first rider lay burning on the handlebars of his bike. She kicked his body until he toppled to the pavement. The bike itself had suffered some damage, but still seemed operable.

  She climbed onto it and opened up the throttle, flying north on the interstate, the bike's fuel-cell engine as quiet as a sleeping kitten. Taking enemy equipment was dangerous, because it could have a hidden tracking device, but she had to take the risk. She wouldn't get very far on foot before the local authorities arrived to investigate the carnage.

  Her dark hair blew back from her face as she rode away at a hundred and sixty miles per hour, her solid black sunglasses facing the night ahead.

  Chapter Four

  She rolled into Cincinnati at an hour past midnight, and the sight of the city amazed her--no tin and scrapwood slums stretching to the horizon, no tent cities pitched inside industrial ruins. The tree-lined suburbs appeared peaceful, and the towers and bridges at the city core stood intact, their lights glowing under the night sky.

  She ditched the bike in the concrete shell of a condemned old factory. If it had a tracking device, her pursuers might lose her trail here, provided she was out of town long before they found the bike.

  She jogged away down a street of brick storefronts that were empty or closed for the night. She slowed as she passed a few cars in a parking lot. For some reason, all of them seemed to be antique models. Stealing a car was tempting, but it could lead to police reports and a data trail the security agents could follow. She needed to vanish without a trace.

  "Transportation, transportation," she whispered to herself.

  Inside her sunglasses, tiny text flashed at the upper right corner of the lenses:

  LOCATING WIRELESS LINK...

  INTERFACING WITH LEGACY SYSTEMS...

  SEARCHING...

  Four icons popped up on the inside of the lenses, showing simple cartoon images of an airplane, a train labeled AMTRAK, a bus, and a car with a dollar sign and the words BUY/RENT. The text TRANSPORTATION IN CINCINNATI flickered
below them.

  "Hey, thanks," Raven said to her glasses.

  She quickly determined the bus was the most low-key way to move between cities, requiring no identification or credit card. She could take buses all the way to New Haven without leaving any kind of data trail.

  When she reached the Greyhound terminal, she thought the buses didn't look very secure--no armored plating, no cages on the large windows. She didn't know how they expected to travel from city to city without getting robbed.

  She bought a ticket to Columbus, Ohio. It would have been cheaper to buy a single ticket all the way to New Haven, but she wasn't sure she would go the entire way by bus. In any case, buying separate tickets from city to city would better cover her trail.

  She waited on a bench, her nerves jittery, expecting another drone or more armed agents at any moment. She felt sorry for Jebbie. The poor man had given her a lift and ended up dying for it.

  She purchased a national newspaper, hoping it would jog her memory, but it read like gibberish. She didn't recognize the politicians and celebrities, and all the news stories were strange, as though they didn't describe the world she knew at all.

  There were only a few other passengers on the bus. She sat in an empty row, expecting the bus to be boarded by police or attacked at any moment.

  She relaxed just a little when the driver finally started the bus, and a little more when they reached the highway. It was two in the morning, the interstate was wide open, and they left the city without incident.

  It was a two-hour ride to Columbus, where she would have to wait half an hour for the bus to Pittsburgh. She was again struck by how flawless this city looked--pristine, grassy suburbs surrounding a city with no barricades, no secure perimeter, and no visible artillery or bomb damage.

  She hadn't had a chance to look at her data cube since the attack on her motel room, so she stepped outside the terminal in Columbus, looking for a place to project holograms and play audio without anyone spying on her. It was four in the morning, and the sidewalks were deserted.