“Up ahead!”

The sheriff brought them across the street to the arched granite-and-brick entryway of the Eisenhower Middle School. Mercifully, the steps led down to a cellar door lined with sandbags and away from prowling choppers.

Ross stopped in the entryway and let the others go in. He stood next to farmers with assault rifles as they watched the skies.

One of the other volunteers, a thirtyish, heavyset operative named Farmster in a Halperin Seed hat, pointed to Ross and grabbed a scoped AR-15 rifle from a table just inside the doorway. “You know how to use this?”

“I’m better with an AK.”

“An AK?”

Ross shrugged. “Russian army.”

That brought out gales of laughter amid the distant gunfire.

“Well, I’ll be damned. I never thought I’d be handing a gun to a Ruskie to shoot up the town with.”

The guy fished through the pile of weapons and came up with a scuffed AK-47. He also grabbed a satchel into which he stuffed several thirty-round clips. “We can’t let them reach this school.”

Ross looked up at the choppers crisscrossing the sky in the distance and realized that this was just the beginning.

In the darkness Sebeck and Price peered at an abandoned, crumbling farmhouse from the shelter of a creek bank. The new Thread led directly toward a weathered barn behind it. The entire place was choked with weeds and bushes.

The sound of frogs and crickets filled the night, but miles behind them they heard loud explosions and the zipping sound of helicopter miniguns.

Price gazed back over his shoulder as the horizon flashed and flickered. “They’re really getting pounded back there, Sergeant. Whatever we’re supposed to find better be worth it.”

Sebeck nodded. He’d been surprised they made it past the blockade, but then, whatever powered the Thread might have been able to create a path . . . somehow. He’d seen the Daemon do stranger things.

“Stay here.”

“No problem.”

Sebeck climbed up from the creek, and started moving through the tall grass, electronic pistol at the ready. He kept scanning the darkness for trouble but made it the couple hundred feet to the barn door without incident.

The glowing Thread proceeded right through the twin doors. Sebeck looked down and noticed fairly fresh tire tracks in the mud. He nodded to himself. Whatever the next segment was leading him to was apparently inside, and recently arrived.

Sebeck pulled open the right barn door partway. Stealth was not an option because it sagged on its hinges. He peeked in and noticed a dark late-model panel van with dealer plates. The Thread continued straight through the closed back doors of the van itself.

Sebeck scanned the interior of the barn and saw nothing except old stalls, a workbench, and piles of rusting equipment on either side of the van. Above he could see stars through the gaping holes in the barn roof.

He moved inside and came up to the shiny van doors. No sounds came from inside. He held the pistol in one hand, stepped aside, and tried the handle. It clicked open. He slowly pulled it open, peering in with the pistol aimed and ready.

“It’s you.”

“Me?” Sebeck stared at an oddly dressed man sitting on a folding chair in the cargo bay of the van. Mirrored sunglasses and a balaclava obscured the man’s face, and he wore a camouflage outfit with knee pads and body armor. Before him he held what looked to be a transparent video panel or glass screen through which he was viewing Sebeck. It gave the effect of carrying a huge set of spectacles in front of him. The Thread led right to the tip of a wand he was clutching in his gloved right hand. A nearby call-out identified him as PangSoi, a first-level Weaver with a two-point-five rep score on a base of three.

Sebeck was puzzled. “What the hell are you supposed to be?”

“I’m PangSoi.”

“I can see that.” Sebeck clicked his pistol into its holster and opened his visor. “But why the hell did the Thread lead me to you? And cause me to leave all those people to get attacked?”

“It’s hard to say.”

“You’re not a high-level, high-rep operative—you’re a weaver-trainee for chrissake. And what’s with the panel?”

PangSoi gazed at him, following Sebeck as he shifted on his feet.

“Why are you doing that?” Sebeck noticed wires running down from the panel to a large box draped in black fabric. It sat next to PangSoi’s chair like an end table and gurgled from some tiny motor.

“We must hurry.”

“What the hell . . . ?” Sebeck flipped up the fabric covering the box and came face-to-face with the severed head of a young Asian woman wearing HUD glasses—bolted into a metal frame. Her dead eyes looked forward, the lids pinned back. Tubes ran into her neck and wires into her HUD glasses. A tiny pump was burbling on a frame. “Oh my god. . . .”

Suddenly what felt like an entire football team tackled him from behind. He felt rough gloved hands prying at his face, but the van he was pressed against kept him from falling down. “You son of a bitch!” He pushed his open helmet visor against the van door to close it, and the weight of several people pulled him backward, where he fell onto the muddy floor. Several strong bodies piled onto him shouting, “Get him! Hold him!”

Sebeck spoke the keywords to electrify the surface of his armor. The tangle of men fell off him yelping, as he rolled free and stood.

Now he could see that he faced half a dozen commandos in full tactical gear. Some of them carried beanbag guns and Tasers. Clearly, they hadn’t expected Sebeck’s Armor of the Warrior—the gift of a faction supporting Sebeck’s quest.

He eyed them through his mirrored faceplate. “I could say I don’t want to hurt you guys, but I’d be lying. . . .”

He turned and jumped up into the back of the van, past the severed head of the young woman in the box. The soldiers pursued him. Sebeck grabbed the ghoulish PangSoi and drew his electronic pistol. “She was practically a child, you sick . . .” He fired a short burst into the man’s chest and watched him fall.

Price.

Sebeck suddenly saw Price being dragged in through the barn doorway—a gun held to his head.

“Detective Sebeck! We’ll kill him if you don’t put the gun down and come out peacefully!” The man had a vaguely Asian accent, but like the others his face was covered.

Sebeck kicked both of the panel van doors open to get a clear view of the situation.

Price looked very muddy and very irritated.

“Laney, they’re hired guns here to capture us. They’re not gonna kill us. We’re both too important to them.”

“Oh for chrissake, Sergeant . . .”

“They somehow figured out a way to hack into my quest Thread. No, there’s something big going down.” Sebeck noticed a row of several plastic ten-gallon jugs of gasoline in the cargo bay. “I guess with gasoline so expensive and hard to find, you guys planned ahead. Smart.”

The man with the gun pressed it into Price’s temple. “Don’t do anything you can’t undo, Sergeant!”

Sebeck grabbed a magnesium flare from his suit belt. “You gonna tell your commander you killed an irreplaceable prisoner because I fucked with your van?” He sparked the flare. “I don’t think so.”

He dropped the flare onto the gasoline jugs and jumped from the van as everyone ran for their lives.

Sebeck was clear of the barn doors by the time the gasoline flared up and filled the entire barn with a rolling fireball that lit up the night, destroying the van and all the hellish things in it.

The moment he came out of the barn he was faced by several dozen commandos charging at him from several directions simultaneously, trying to knock him down. He emptied his pistol at them, wounding several, but he got struck from the side and slammed into the mud. Someone stepped on his weapon hand, pinning it to the ground, and then two men aimed fire-extinguisher-like devices at him, spraying thick white foam all over his legs and arms.