The savory aroma of khao man gai filled the van. The Thai chicken and rice dish had a cult following among the locals.

"Delicious," Ba Kuang pronounced.

Weizza's didn't respond; she was once again staring off into space. These reveries had been happening progressively more as they made their way to Portland. Alice tried asking her about them, but the only answer she got was: 'business.'

Weizza wasn't the only one in her own world. Robert brooded over his computer in the back of the van, his untouched food cooling next to him.

"It doesn't add up." He was talking to his screen, but Alice decided to play along.

"What doesn't add up Robert?"

"I've been reviewing Dimitri's last couple days of online activity."

"How'd you manage that?" Alice asked.

"He was tunneling all his communications through his own VPN server. He missed a security patch though. I let myself in and downloaded the logs. I can see all the sites he accessed, but not what he did on them."

"Nice. So what'd you learn?"

"Most of it's pretty banal stuff. Email, IRC, banks. But the last few days he kept checking a strange website. The domain is just a string of nonsense characters." Robert turned his computer so Alice could see. "The site was only registered two days ago."

"You think this site has something to do with him trying to hijack the plane?"

"Maybe? It's all I have to go on. As far as I can tell he wasn't using any encrypted messaging services, so if someone got to him he was either talking in the clear, or doing it through this site."

"Okay. So what's there?"

"Nothing. Watch, I just requested the same page he was looking at and it's an empty response. No data."

"Maybe they took it down when he died," Alice speculated.

"It's possible, but how would they know? I doubt anyone has ID'd the remains from the plane crash, it's only been a day and there's a lot else going on in the world right now."

"Hmm. Well, Dimitri is dead now. Does it matter who he was talking to?"

"No, probably not. I just like to keep tabs on the shadowy figures lurking behind the curtains."

Alice sat in silence, thinking about her own mysteries. Marcos still hadn't written back. It probably didn't mean anything - he never was a great communicator. But would it kill him to send an email?

Her train of thought was interrupted by the sound of chanting in the distance. It sounded like a crowd, and a big one. It was headed their way.

"Weizza, somethings happening out there. We should get moving," Alice urged.

If Weizza heard she showed no signs of it. Alice stood and leaned over her seat, reaching out an arm to shake Weizza. An iron grip caught her arm mid-motion. Ba Kuang.

"Please do not disturb her." The words were polite, but the steely edge in his voice connoted danger.

"Don't you hear that?" Alice asked. "There's a mob headed this way, we need to get moving before it's on top of us."

"She must not be interrupted," Ba Kuang answered with finality.

The marchers had gotten close enough that Alice could make out the words. They were alternating between "NEGOTIATION NOT ANNIHILATION" and "VOTE LYNCH FOR PEACE."

Some of the protestors had to be corporate shills, but judging by the volume of noise there must have been thousands marching.

The noise grew to a crescendo and the crowd enveloped the van, the air electric with the buzzing energy of a mob. Alice heard shouts, then the sound of glass breaking as someone threw a rock through a storefront.

"We're in it now." Alice muttered.

Emboldened by property destruction, the crowd grew rowdier. The van began to rock as many hands pushed it back and forth.

"Do something!" Robert shouted. Who he was shouting to was unclear.

Ba Kuang looked nervously to Weizza, still in her trance. He pulled his pistol from its holster, and turned to the door.

"Stop," Alice was shaking her head. "If you open that door into an angry mob they'll tear us apart."

"What about the case?" Robert asked, pointing to the sole remaining white trunk. "Don't you have more magic robot tricks?"

Ba Kuang shook his head. "Too dangerous."

The door handle rattled as someone tugged on the opposite side. Alice leapt for it, realizing too late that it wasn't locked. The door slid open to a scruffy looking man in a floral print shirt.

"Hey, you're–" his words were cut short as Alice slammed her palm into his throat. He stumbled backward and she rammed the door closed, locking it this time.

"What is going on?" Weizza had finally woken up from her trance.

"Some kind of protest. Or riot," Alice answered. "And someone saw me."

"Unfortunate," Weizza replied. She made her way up to the driver's seat, grabbing Ba Kuang's pistol along the way. The crowd was all around the van, though it was a little thinner in front of them.

Weizza laid on the horn, prompting a protestor standing in front of the van to turn and give her the finger. She pointed the gun at his face, and he moved hastily out of the way. The van inched forward.

They made slow progress through the crowd. More petty vandals were smashing windows and knocking over store displays, but Weizza brandished her pistol and no one risked challenging them.

Once they were clear of the crowd Weizza drove them to an industrial district where they could blend in with the other commercial vehicles. She turned into a large parking lot, then slowed as they rolled down the aisles of cars.

"There," she pointed out a junker with four flat tires. "Swap the plates."

Ba Kuang hopped out and made the hasty exchange. With luck they'd be long gone by the time anyone noticed the deception.

They parked under a bridge to wait out the rest of the day. Their part wouldn't be ready until dawn, but Weizza didn't want to risk a motel.

Alice caught Weizza's eye. "What are you doing that's so damned important you can't be interrupted?" She asked. "That could have gone much worse for us."

Weizza frowned. "I am fighting a war, Alice. SumatoTek is attempting to coerce me into giving them the Petbe control unit. They have been attacking my facilities. A costly error on their part, but still a distraction for me."

"So what, you're commanding troops or something?" Alice asked.

"Not human ones; my defenses are robotic. They do still benefit from human guidance, which I provide. Today SumatoTek assaulted my factory's in Malaysia. Damage was minimal. For me. Their losses were complete."

Weizza looked down and smiled. "Ah, here comes another one." She slipped back into a trance and the conversation was over.

***

Ba Kuang drove the van out toward the meetup location. Weizza was once again in her trance state; the assaults from SumatoTek had intensified overnight and she was now battling on multiple fronts. As far as Alice could tell she hadn't slept all night.

Streetlights illuminated the rows of low-rise offices lining the road. Faded signage and flaking paint spoke to years of disuse. No one needed cheap office space when jobs were all automated.

Alice tapped her foot with nervous energy as they neared the destination. Robert's contact couldn't have known it was them; everything had gone through Ba Kuang via a fictitious identity. Still, something seemed wrong.

Robert felt it too. He distracted himself with his laptop, still poking at the mystery site Dimitri had been frequenting before his betrayal.

"Got it!" He exclaimed.

"What? What'd you learn?" Alice asked.

"I proxied my request through Dimitri's VPN - looks like the page is hard-coded to only respond to connections from his IP address."

"Smart, so you pretended you were him and they let you in. What's there?"

"It's a rudimentary chat system. Not sure who set it up, but the history goes back to just before we met up with Dimitri and Wik. Someone got to him first." Robert was skimming the messages from oldest to newest. "Looks like they offered Dimitri money. Lots of it."

Ba Kuang pulled into the lot where the handoff was to take place. It looked no different from any others, except for the presence of another white van. A man in a hoodie waited by its back door. He waved as their headlights flicked across him.

"It's a trap!" Robert shouted. "Turn around Ba Kuang. Dimitri told them our plan."

Ba Kuang accelerated past the stranger, who jumped back in surprise. The man recovered swiftly, reached into his pocket and pulled out some kind of remote. He pushed a button on it.

Alice watched in confusion as the other van split down the center, unfolding like a blossoming flower. Inside was an array of flat black dishes that rotated to track their van.

"What the hell–" A deafening wave of sound blasted through the air, obliterating Alice's thought.

Ba Kuang instinctively clapped his hands to his ears to try to block out the noise. The van crashed over the parking barriers and into the wall of the building, where it came to a sudden stop.

Pulsing waves of sound threatened to liquify Alice's brain. In desperation she threw open the door and stumbled to the ground, trying to get clear of the killer broadcast. From the corner of her eye she saw the sonic weapon rolling slowly toward them. The mystery man walked alongside, out of the path of the sound cannon. The remote was gone and in its place was a pistol, trained on Alice.

The assault paused, replaced by a booming command: "LIE FACEDOWN ON THE GROUND WITH YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEAD. I WILL NOT WARN YOU AGAIN."

Then the wave of noise resumed. Alice feared her skull would pop. She dropped to the ground, disoriented and beaten.