Max Maros ordered himself a cheese omelet at the Southway Inn’s Courtyard Restaurant. He ate and idly paged through the same battered, paperback thriller he’d carried in the bottom of his luggage for the past five years. Max had lost his taste in fiction. After all he’d been forced to see, the real world was too strange to humor the make-believe.

But the book and the brunch were both for show, something to get him out of his room. He’d heard the voices from his room’s open window, locals and travelers alike, sharing news and rumor from the battle on the Mother Road. By the time he’d visited the restaurant, purchased food, and found a place within earshot of the dozens-strong gathering, the assembly had already begun to relate recent updates.

“I heard from my grandkids in Ranford.” An old man sat in the center of the courtyard, a rabbit-eared radio held between his hands. “They could see the smoke and the aircraft fighting in the sky.”

“Littlefield fought back then?” The second speaker was dressed for colder weather, in a hooded parka, not the unseasonable warmth of that region’s springtime. “I’ve been staying with my aunt and uncle, and they have so much to say about that place.”

“Fought back?” The old man adjusted something on the radio. “You listen to this. Minnie, darling, can you tell the Southway crowd what you just told me?”

“Hi, Pappy!” A light, distorted voice came from the radio. Max strained his ears to hear. He didn’t want the attention he’d get if he moved closer. The wheelchair always caught someone’s notice, if for no other reason than people trying to stay out of his way.

“I can’t hear!” A man called from the crowd. “Turn it up, Willard!” The first old man waved at him and dialed up the volume.

“I was just about to call you,” Minnie continued, through the radio. “Something else is happening. The Liberty Corps must’ve given up. There must be a hundred Liberty Corps guys running along Sixty-Six. Half of them stripped out of their armor.”

“You and your brother are safe?” the old man, Willard, interrupted.

“Yes, Pappy,” Minnie said. “That’s why I wanted to call you. We went inside when the shooting started. Every time any of those Liberty Corps guys try to break off from the crowd, they don’t get too far.”

“Not so tough now, are they?” A woman yelled from across the courtyard. Max glanced away from his book for the first time, trying to glimpse the mood. What did the locals think of the Liberty Corps? He found more glad expressions than he expected, but many were unreadable. The locals seemed too nervous to share opinions fully until they saw how the situation played out.

“Sloan will have all of us for this,” someone else added. “If he wanted to destroy Littlefield just for them taking in those wayfarers, what’ll the Governor do to the rest of us now. He’ll have us under curfew. He’ll have…”

“Sloan is dead,” Minnie said. “That Aesir blew him up. It flew right down and blasted him.” Multiple spectators cheered, without reserve, almost daring someone to question them.

“I hope somebody got video of that.” A woman laughed in the crowd. “I’ll watch that one on repeat.”

“You better look out saying that too loud,” a naysayer added. “With Sloan gone, it’ll only get worse here. This’ll come to a bad end. We’d have all been better to give them our spare shit. Now it’ll be a certified occupation.”

Before anyone could argue, a roar came from the radio, a sound too intense for the device to process. The sound came through indistinct. It could have been anything.

“Are you kids okay?” Willard spoke after the roar subsided. His words were calm, but his voice was not. He spoke hastily and with a quaver that revealed his fear and his helplessness.

“We’re just fine,” Minnie said. “Group of Liberty Corps tried to peel off northbound and got blasted for their trouble. Sounded like somebody out here has some kinda grenade launcher.”

“Sounded like dynamite!” A courtyard spectator yelled.

“It did!” Minnie said. “It might be the Liberty Corps cracks down after this. That’s true, but it’s also true that none of the War Force is going home today.”

When a second explosion sounded over the radio, Max decided he’d heard enough news. He finished his omelet and returned to his room.

* * *

“Dammit, Orson!” The blurred head and shoulders of Pops Darlow came into view on the datapad screen, but Orson wasn’t looking at him. He sat on the Aesir’s couch, heating pad pressed to his face. “Why didn’t you plan your ambush with me? I could’ve had reinforcements over there in a couple of hours.”

“What would you have done?” Orson groaned and adjusted the heating pad across his eyes. The pain had subsided somewhat when he’d powered down the HUD. He’d shut down his system and peeled himself out of his sweat-soaked gear as soon as he was back in the Aesir. “You’re already stretched too thin. How many people could you really send, like a couple dozen, maybe? What difference would that do against a thousand troops, or however many came here?”

“If nothing else, I could have sent extra solar cells,” Pops said. “Now you’re stuck there with every energy source you have almost drained. You won, but what happens if that was just the first wave?”

“Pacific Alliance will be here overnight. They sped up their timetable.” Orson leaned back on the couch. He didn’t lie down. He’d broken out the muscle relaxers, and he knew from past experience that he could fall asleep mid-conversation if he had the safety to relax. “Either the PA can protect this town, or it’s in real trouble. My cells will be charged in a week or so. I need that long to rest, so does Enoa.”

“It’s good you’ve got a next generation learning the ropes,” Pops said. “The more up-and-comers learn to deal with folks like that Nine-flails, the better we’ll be. This is a really shit time to be short-staffed.”

“They’re a little young for that.” Orson had hoped this was just a check-in, but he’d had enough ‘glad you’re alive’ calls with Pops to know that this was something else. This was genuine concern and a hope to dissect details. “Give them time to get acclimated and let the fun wear off.”

“The Hierarchia wasn’t wrong to try to keep the anomalies in check,” Pops said. “To say nothing about the War Force or the military and political stuff, just the Shaping needs to be kept in check by something. Without the League of Nations, there’s no Enigma Guard, in case of a real emergency. The Aces are as hard to reach as ever. The friendly cloisters of weirdos are mostly unreachable too, even the folks at Evergreen. All of the individual anomaly specialists – for want of a better name – they’re out of the game too, except yours truly.”

“I know,” Orson said. “I know. It really sucks.”

“With the world getting wilder and weirder, and knowledge of high technology and extrasensory powers in the open, we’re gonna have to do something if we want any kind of normalcy in our lifetimes.” He gave a laugh with no warmth. “Or at least in mine.”

“Pops, do you really want my take on this, now?” Orson asked. “I feel like someone split my skull open. Until that passes, I’m not going to be very reassuring to your existential dread or whatever you have going on.”

“Alright, I’ll get to the point, so you can have your nap time.” Pops laughed, now with real humor. “I have it on good authority that the Pacific Alliance is sending two agents to speak to you – to you, in particular – and I think you should throw them a bone, if they’re any good.”

“Throw them a bone?” Orson pulled the heating pad from his face. The pulsing throb in his face had begun again. “My last official sit-down with a governmental authority didn’t go very well, if you remember.”

Orson angled the datapad back toward him and looked at Pops. He found the older man standing in his hidden armory room, but he knew this because he recognized the plain walls. Nothing of any real interest was in view, nothing that could get the attention of anyone trying to watch the transmission of their conversation.

“I remember,” Pops said. “But I hoped you were getting to a pragmatic age where you’d let some grudges behind you. We’re rascals Orson, but we’ve got to accept that there’s eventually going to be a real authority in the world. We’d better help make sure it’s a good one.”

“What exactly do you want me to tell them? Do you want me to share my experiences with the Liberty Corps, or are you thinking of the Dreamside Road?”

“I’m thinking you should read the room. Hear them out. Get them in writing and show that writing to me and mine.”

“I’ll hear them out.” Orson nodded. “But I’m not playing along with some intelligence suit or Hierarchia-wannabe crap. No way.”

“You really are in a mood, aren’t you?” Pops sighed. “I’m sorry. I really am. I should just congratulate you and let you rest. How are the Corwins? How’s the rest of your crew?”

“They’re okay. They’re all okay. Enoa is getting some IV fluids to help her with that exhaustion she gets. Jaleel and Wesley, their little pet aeropine, are with her.”

“Aeropine?” Pops asked. “What’s that?”

“It’s a flying porcupine, one of Kappa’s creations. Now there are a couple domesticated, modified animals around in this town. That could get troubling depending on how interested in the old IHSA research the PA reps will be.” Orson hadn’t considered this before. He hadn’t considered all the ways things could go poorly once the Pacific Alliance set up shop, all the complicated nuances of keeping a civilization.

“That’s right,” Pops said. “Eloise has a strange dog, doesn’t she?”

“Dino, yeah.”

“I bet their spirits weren’t too high after the second fight for the future of their town, in only a little more than a decade.”

“They’re fine. Mr. Corwin’s fine. It’s going to be an interesting few weeks, until the road gets cleaned up and until things get situated with the Alliance, but it’s probably the best way this could go. I just think I need to move my Dreamside Road search out of here as soon as possible. Once we rest and get in touch with our contact, I might move my base of operations to another local safe house. Maybe I’ll pay Teddy a visit. I need to take advantage of this lag while the Liberty Corps is too scattered to hunt after us or the trove.”

“There’s no lag.” Pops shook his head. “That’s the other thing I need to tell you about, but I was really hoping to get you into a better frame of mind before I did.”

“What are you talking about?” Orson asked.

“Western Baron Helmont put out a message on old Cold War number stations. He didn’t even try to make this covert. Helmont…”

“I’ve heard that name before,” Orson said. “It was in that telegram we got, the one that Enoa said Man Bun sent us.”

“I’m getting to the telegram.” Pops nodded. “Helmont put all commands on high alert. They’re making some kind of move to gather the eight Dreamside Road keys – keys plural, Orson, so let that sink in for you.”

“I know there are multiple keys. I have one. Enoa has one. I’m not too surprised they had several people who could access the Dreamside Road.”

“I’ll see if I can get you a transcription of the message, but that’s not it. Helmont seems to think you need all eight to unlock the trove. You and Enoa are holding on to a quarter of them. And if you’re right that those detectors that Tucker made can track them…”

Orson stood from the couch and walked to the other side of the cabin. He suppressed the impulse to rage. Eight keys? Eight – so whatever was on the island, even if it was the Dreamside Road trove, they couldn’t actually unlock it there. Instead of mopping up an old IHSA loose end, he was caught in a possibly international treasure hunt.

“Don’t pace yet,” Pops said. “Don’t. It gets better. Helmont is a Shaper, of some kind, and he’s not like these young ones. He’s been at it for decades. He’s old Hierarchia, with eleven other knights, like that Adrian you fought, working for him. All of them are after these keys now.”

“We’ll have to learn a lot more about these keys.” Orson drew his own key and held it at the top of the Thousand-Point Compass, waiting until the uppermost needle spun toward the medallion. “We’ll need to hide and regroup, and be educated about where these keys are. I mean, there weren’t that many Dreamthought Project members. We can find them before the Liberty Corps.”

“One more thing,” Pops said. “Before you get off to the races.”

“What else?” Orson returned to his seat beside the datapad. “I wish now I’d taken those sleeping pills Eloise offered me. I won’t sleep for a week with all this shit.”

“Enoa wasn’t delirious.” Pops spoke over him. “It looks like Captain Kolben Maros really did send the telegram, or at least Helmont thinks so. He’s put out a call for his arrest with a charge of treason. He’s also looking for a Maxwell Maros – I’m guessing that’s a relative – and a Duncan Racz.”

“The astronaut,” Orson said.

“What?”

“This is all real.” Orson couldn’t imagine what had happened to turn Maros away from the Liberty Corps. Was murder the line for him? If it was, why had he accepted Tucker’s murders and attempted murders. “We have to try to find those guys. If they really helped us, we have to look for them.”

“We probably don’t have a lot of time. Every Liberty Corps operative working will have their picture by the end of the day, and Helmont sent half of his knights to bring them in.”