Vans and campers, sizeable mobile cabins and some that were barely more than tents. Each one a home, a storefront, and a statement of identity, from the colorful translucent windows and domes that harvested sunlight to the stickers and graffiti that attested to places travelled.
“Don’t ask me how, but I found out this big account on queer Threads is some kind of super Watcher.” Charlii spins her laptop around so the others can see. “They call them Keepers, and they watch the people that the state’s apparatus has tagged as terrorists. Not just the ones the FBI created. The big fish. And people like us, I guess.”
Nadjea always knew her last night in the Clave would get wild: they’re the only sector of the city where drink and drug and dance are unrestricted, and since one of the main Clavist tenets is the pursuit of corporeal joy in all its forms, they’ve more or less refined partying to an art.
After a few deft movements, she tossed the cube back to James, perfectly solved. “We’re going to break into the Seattle Police Department’s database. And you’re going to help me do it.”
Across the train tracks from BWI station, a portal shimmered in the shade of a patch of tall trees. From her seat on a northbound train taking on passengers, Dottie watched a woman slip a note out of her pocket, place it under a rock, strip off her work uniform, then walk naked, smiling, into the portal.
For nine straight miles, the hot-rolled steel rails cut a path through the woods, a metal chain thrown into soft mud. Discarded, rotting railroad ties littered the tracksides, the stench of creosote saturating the forest air until birds no longer frequented the trees.
