Navarro would have tried to stop me from activating the dish.
But I also know that operating the dish would be risky. Best-case scenario, my old “friend” Terminus, who now works for The Opposition, would be monitoring network traffic and watching internet searches. Looking for patterns. Looking for us.
And the worst-case scenario? That was my mother.
“I don’t want to stay here,” Toby comments. “We can’t stay here forever.”
Jay doesn’t say anything. Some days, I think he and Navarro would like nothing better than to stay here. To wait. To hide. To see if the coming war is a storm that will pass.
But he should know better than anyone.
Rule one: Always be prepared.
My father would never have left us without a plan.
MacKenna’s ponytail bounces as she gives me a small nod of encouragement.
This is our plan after all. We’re in uncharted territory. No more master plans from my father. No more chapters in Dad’s book. MacKenna and I are calling the shots, and maybe we don’t know what we’re doing.
I suck in a deep breath. “We have a satellite dish.”
For the first time in weeks, Toby sits up straight and his shoulders aren’t slumped down. “Does it work? Do we have internet access?”
An expression of horrified betrayal settles onto Navarro’s face. “How long have you known this?”
Jay gestures toward the corner where the computers and monitors are clustered together on a steel desk. “Jinx, what does that mean? We can contact people? Or they can find us?”
They. The Opposition. The government. The National Police.
I hold Navarro’s tense gaze.
He chews on his lower lip. “Susan. Tell me you didn’t bring a satellite online and connect a computer to it. Tell me you wouldn’t do that without at least discussing it with me.”
Jay shifts his weight in his chair and clears his throat. One of our ongoing problems is that Navarro keeps forgetting who ought to be in charge.
Behind us, from the corner of the bunker, the old NeXT workstation beeps, and the black radiation-shielded monitor flickers on.
“Susan...” Navarro says. “What did you do?”
But I’m not going to play by the old rules anymore.
The plan is in motion.
“What did you do?”
My teacher said journalists have to be fair, to be open-minded and to support the civil exchange of ideas. But what’s happening isn’t at all civil, and I can’t tell this story in a way that goes down smooth with your oatmeal.
—MacKENNA NOVAK,
Letters from the Second Civil War
MacKENNA
The inverted pyramid.
That’s how we write stories.
I’ve got a draft going of my first field report.
Okay, MacKenna. Let’s go. Let’s do this thing.
FIELD REPORT #1; QUINTANA ROO, MEXICO
Dr. Charles Maxwell Marshall II, more popularly known by his hacker alias, Dr. Doomsday, was killed last month at the beachfront home of a deceased operative for The Spark in Puerto Peñasco, Mexico. Dr. Marshall, author of the bestselling survivalist book, Dr. Doomsday’s Guide to Ultimate Survival, was shot once in the abdomen by his ex-wife, Stephanie Maxwell Novak. Sources believe that Ms. Novak is a high-ranking undercover agent for The Opposition’s secret paramilitary force who had been covertly assigned to frame her second husband, Jay Novak, for detonating a series of explosions at First Federal Banks. The attacks, which targeted locations responsible for storage of the banks’ paper records, backfired and triggered widespread financial and political instability. Mr. Novak had been serving as security director at the First Federal Bank in Rancho Mesa, Arizona, one of five buildings destroyed.
Okay. Okay.
Those were the major points.
The widest part of the pyramid.
LEAD: Dr. Doomsday killed by wife. Jay Novak framed for domestic terrorism.
But if Mr. Johnson were here, he’d already have kicked this back to me.
Fact check: Jay Novak hasn’t been cleared of charges.
Bias check: Where’s your evidence that Jay Novak was framed?
Fact check: Who are your sources?
Bias check: You can’t use yourself as an anonymous source.
But Johnson wasn’t here and, anyway, no more teachers, no more books.
One of the few fringe benefits of being on the run with your dad, your brother, your stepsister and some total weirdo you picked up along the way is that you never have to go back to high school. No more dress codes. No more book reports. No more grades.
No more rules.
But also, no more school dances.
No graduation day.
My life is basically over.
Like, how does this even happen? One day I’m at my desk imagining myself at the White House Press Dinner, and now...
What would all my friends at school think if they saw me looking like this? These days, I choose the pants I wear based on how many pockets they have. Some family of moths is dying of starvation now that I’ve pulled this horrible cardigan out of the closet.
I scowl at the flap of Comanche Moon.
Dr. Doomsday built this bunker, and he thought of everything. Except office supplies. So...no e-tablets. No old-fashioned writing paper either. There are precisely two pens, one chewed-up pencil and a stack of dusty paperback books.
So... I’m stuck writing my reports in the margins of a dead man’s books.
Dr. Marshall’s death occurred during a confrontation between Ms. Novak and Marcus Tork, a consultant for the National Police, ostensibly assigned to track and capture Mr. Novak.
Fact check: What was Tork’s actual job title?
Like, who the hell knows? How would I ever find out?
Does it even matter?
However, sources now believe that Ms. Novak and Mr. Tork were working together to...
Fact check: To what? Did I even really know?
Okay. Keep it together, MacKenna.
...to recover digital bank data encrypted by Dr. Marshall. As an accomplished systems engineer, Dr. Marshall successfully implemented a zero-day exploit designed to corrupt financial records stored on First Federal’s mainframe computers. The hack was timed to coincide with Ammon Carver’s presidential inauguration, which took place in January prior to the explosions.
Fact check: First Federal Bank hasn’t identified the hacker.