State Highway 37 cut a dashed line of bare asphalt across the snow-blasted prairie. A tall man stumbled along the shoulder, his body wrapped in a canvas truck tarp, black ponytail whipping in the wind. Shielding his brown face, he squinted through the blowing snow at a pair of yellow headlights dancing like will-o'-the-wisps: a pickup truck swerving from shoulder to shoulder, approaching fast.

Its blond-haired driver leaned out the window and lobbed an empty beer bottle into the air, his shrill voice rising up and stretching out as the truck blew by. "Fucking Indiaaaaan"—smack! The bottle struck the lone walker just above his left eye, and he crumpled to the ground under his tarp.

A quarter hour passed before another vehicle came along, a station wagon sagging under the weight of an entire family and its rooftop luggage. The vehicle slowed, brake lights flaring as it slid to a stop. There it sat in the blowing snow, muffler ruminating. Then it drove away.

The next vehicle to pass was a rickety sedan traveling in the opposite direction. It rolled to a crunching stop on the shoulder, engine running. Out stepped a chubby, middle-aged man wearing a Minnesota Vikings knit cap and heavy wool coat over his white smock, the name "Lewis" embroidered over the pocket.

Pulling the cap low over his brow to keep it from blowing away, Lewis hurried to the tarp and knelt beside it. Hesitantly he peeled back a corner to reveal a head of long raven hair and a brown face sleeping on a pillow of red slush. "Hey!" he yelled, shaking the man's shoulder through the tarp. "You're gonna die out here!"

The raven-haired man moaned, clutched the tarp to his chest, and rolled onto his back.

Lewis shook him again. "Hey, man, you gotta get up! You can't stay out here!"

Together they crawled back to the car. Once inside, Lewis turned up the heat as high as it would go. Then he had a good look at the man shivering under his canvas blanket. He was youngish, early twenties. If he was Indian, he was not local. Too big. Maybe a Flathead from Montana. His swollen feet were bare. His eyes were gray, like a newborn baby's. And beneath his tarp, he wore some sort of blue uniform, a costume maybe.

The gash across his eyebrow was still oozing blood, so Lewis tossed him an old T-shirt. "You got a bleeder, but nothing a dozen stitches and a shot in the butt can't fix."

The passenger held the T-shirt to his bleeding brow and let his free eye rove about the car's interior.

As Lewis eased them back onto the highway, his passenger stared at the radio console with its analog dial and push tabs.

"Go ahead. You can listen to whatever you want," said Lewis

With a shivering finger, the passenger pressed a tab, but nothing happened.

"You're gonna have to turn it on first." Lewis reached over to turn the volume knob, and the tinny twang of country music filled the car's interior.

"No?" said Lewis, his finger hovering over a tab. He pushed it in, and the country music was supplanted by the clear, high-pitched sound of men singing in unison to the beat of a single drum. "That's the tribal station in Four Bears."

His passenger smiled weakly, his teeth straight and white. Definitely not local. The drumming and singing on the radio faded out, and an elderly man began speaking in a rich, guttural language that Lewis could not understand.

But his passenger listened intently, bloody T-shirt still pressed to his forehead, his free eye settling on Lewis. "Kanin ye nika?" he said in a deep, rusty voice. He was no longer shivering.

Lewis nodded toward the radio. "Don't tell me you actually understand that. I can count the number of Mandan speakers I've met on one hand." He held up his left hand to show off its amputated pinkie finger.

"Kanin ye nika? Itkin?"

"Whoa, that's deep rez, man. But you're gonna have to speak English to me."

The passenger's gray eye narrowed. "Dónde estoy?"

"Oh hey, you're Mexican. That explains things. Sorry, but no hab-le espanyo-le."

The passenger set his big hand on the dashboard. "De combustión?"

"Do you have a concussion?" asked Lewis. "I'd say for sure. But don't worry. I've seen a lot worse. They'll fix you up at the clinic."

The highway dipped beneath the weather, and they could see ahead the silhouettes of low buildings and houses, the leafless trees. Rolling past the abandoned cars and piles of drift snow, they stopped at the town's only traffic light. A man stumbled across the street in front of them, a big bag of Cheetos under his arm and a mangy dog at his heels. The light turned green, and Lewis drove on. "Welcome to the rez, man."

***

Sophea jogged to work as she did every morning. She wore her favorite purple tank top, light-as-air Nike trainers, and the skimpy running shorts her father accused of being underwear. Against her brown skin, the October air felt unseasonably warm, thick, and grimy. People were calling it an Indian summer, whatever that meant.

Waving to the security guard in his booth at the main gate, Sophea jogged down Numex Boulevard, the four-lane thoroughfare running straight through the heart of Numex Industries' North American campus. The way the road had been built up on a dike with the forest pressing in on either side always reminded her of an ancient causeway leading to a temple, Angkor Wat or Chichen Itza. Except instead of a temple, there was a tower, three hundred feet high, black and wedged shape, like a great obsidian blade jutting up from the bowels of the earth.

The sight of it brought Sophea to a stumbling halt, and she doubled over, hands on her knees. It was just lack of sleep, she told herself. A phone call had woken her in the middle of night.

Catching her breath, she scrambled down the edge of the dike to a trail leading through the surrounding forest. Beneath the canopy of yellowing maple and alder, the air was cool and earthy, invigorating. She picked up her pace, stealing occasional glances through the trees at the endless concrete wall of Production Unit 3, wishing that she worked there, mindlessly churning out biopharmaceuticals, nose to the grindstone, head down. That was how her grandparents had survived the Killing Fields of Cambodia.

The midnight call had come from Jonathan Avery, a coworker recently fired for drinking on the job. He had a crush on Sophea, so she assumed it was the inevitable drunk dial, the blithering confession of love. It would not have been the first time. Better to nip it in the bud, she knew from experience. So she answered the call. And Jonathan was drunk, wasted in fact, booze practically dripping from the phone. But there was absolutely no love in his voice, just hate, and fear: hate for the company that fired him, fear for his life.

Arriving at her facility, Sophea showered, changed into work clothes, and hurried to the main plaza where the press conference was about to start. In the long shadow of Numex Tower, caterers heaped linen-draped tables with pastries, fruit, and polished containers of steaming coffee. Two dozen reporters sat patiently in folding chairs arranged before a vacant lectern. Sophea nervously scanned their unfamiliar faces. Where was Jonathan? Had he kept drinking and passed out? Or had he simply chickened out? Maybe he had been caught by security when he tried to cut through the perimeter fence. Whatever the reason for his absence, it was a massive relief.

Still, she was curious. In his drunken tirade, Jonathan had vowed to blow the whistle on Numex Industries, and he had chosen this particular press conference to do it. So who was going to step up to that lectern? The answer to her question soon emerged from a side door at the base of the tower: a giant of a man in a charcoal suit. A murmur ran through the little crowd of employees that had joined her. Sophea could hardly believe it herself.

He towered over the lectern, pinning it down with his powerful hands. Sophea had seen pictures of him before, but only now did it occur to her: Jason Numec, founder and owner of Numex Industries, arguably the richest biotech company on the planet, was not a white man. He was brown. And for man reportedly in his late sixties or early seventies, he was remarkably fit, ripped even. The muscles of his arms and shoulders strained against the fabric of his tailored suit. He bowed his closely cropped head of salt-and-pepper hair to reach the microphone.

His voice was deep and gravelly, his accent Hispanic, Mexican maybe. "Good morning and welcome to Numex Headquarters," he said.

Jason Numec got right down to business. There had been rumors for weeks, but now it was official. Numex Industries' latest weapon in the battle against breast and ovarian cancer, NMX-247, was about to be approved by the FDA. Trade named Shereva, it was typical of Numex products, sublimely innovative, miraculously effective, and shamelessly profitable—in the case of Shereva, a nanoparticle smart bomb that homed to cancer cells and delivered a tiny payload of a toxin called ricin. Leave it to Numex engineers to turn one of the deadliest bioterrorism agents known to man into a life-saving cancer treatment. Holiday bonuses were going to be fat, and not just for management. Even those worker bees in Production Unit 3 were getting Xboxes for Christmas.

Numec called on a tall Black woman in the front row. She stood and identified herself. "Uche Okafor, The Oregonian," she said. "Numex posted twelve billion in revenues last quarter, so how much of that are you giving back to the communities that support your operations?"

Numec offered a thin smile. "Actually, we're on pace to double our charitable outreach this year, from two hundred and thirty million to over half a billion. A press release has just been emailed to each of you."

While the other reporters frantically checked their phones, she snuck in another question. "Just who's benefiting from all this money? Certainly not the local community."

He nodded to himself as if expecting the question. "Numex Industries remains dedicated to its traditional causes. Roughly thirty percent is earmarked for programs fostering science, health, and engineering education in American Indian, Native Mexican, and First Nations communities. Another fifty percent will support programs developing alternative energy and energy independence among these same communities."

Numec gave the nod to a white man near the back.

He stood. "Ari Weinstein, Associated Press. You've been widely criticized for being too restrictive in your charitable operations. In light of the statement you just made, how do you respond to that criticism?"

"The same way I've always responded. I'm an Indigenous person, and I support Indigenous causes. If I were Jewish, I imagine I'd support Jewish causes. Surely, you can appreciate that. And Numex does support other causes. The remaining twenty percent, roughly a hundred million dollars, is going to the Red Cross, the Red Crescent, and other international disaster-relief organizations."

"That's bullshit!"

Everyone turned. Sophea clapped her hand to her mouth. It was Jonathan, drunk Jonathan, pale and sweaty, swaying in the aisle between the chairs. With one hand, he steadied himself on the shoulder of a reporter, and with the other, he shot a finger at Numec. "Bullshit!" he repeated, spit flying from his lips. He squinted down the length of his arm as if it were a rifle.

"Please sit down before you fall down," said Numec.

Nervous laughter rippled through the reporters.

Sophea tried to look away, but she could scarcely blink.

Jonathan stood straight and sucked in his big gut, his words suddenly sober. "My name is Jonathan Avery. And I used to work for your company."

"I'll ask you once more to sit down."

"Tell them! Tell them what you're buying from the Red Cross. Tell them!"

Numec reached into his breast pocket and appeared to be working some hidden device. "Can someone please help this man take a seat?"

Jonathan swatted away their hands. "Blood!" he said, strangely sober now. "You're buying blood! Millions of specimens every week, from all over the world." He turned to the reporters. "I know, because I processed them every day for two years!"

Out of nowhere, two plainclothes security guards seized Jonathan from behind and began dragging him toward a nearby hedge. At last, Sophea managed to close her eyes, but she could still hear his muffled screams. She could still hear his drunk and desperate words from that midnight call. He was right. They were going to kill him, just like they killed all the rest.

____________