Frederika stroked her throbbing temples and wished for a moment, just one goddamned moment, of peace. One of the cell phones chirped on her desk and, in the second that she tried to determine which of the three devices was ringing, she thought she might just go mad.

"It's the green one," Major Stine said in irritation. By the time she picked it up the caller had already hung up. Probably Lukowski, finally remembering the meeting an hour late.

"Forget it, just forget it," Frederika said about nothing and to no one in particular. "Who was saying what now?"

From the phone with the blue cover, Marshall Johnson's voice crackled. "I was saying that I didn't perceive any sustained threat coming from Concord or any other revolt on its way. Look, I can accept that the number of immigrants arriving in Rivertown is on the rise, perhaps ahead of winter, but I've seen no reports of organization or mobilization. The scum seem just as much at each others throats as ever."

"And the recent attacks on the Special Forces?" Stine asked.

"Ellen's heading up an operation that should answer that question shortly," Johnson said. Frederika sniffed. She felt this meeting should have waited until after the raid on the scavenger swap because then at least they'd be dealing with facts. As for now, it was all speculation, a series of what if questions that couldn't be answered unless they agreed to a course of action.

"Isn't this the problem though?" Carlo Reyes's voice came from phone number three. "Reichmans and Johnsons executing their super triple-covert operations without ever cluing the rest of us in? We shouldn't be keeping secrets from each other. A lot of us up in Whitefish aren't happy about this kind of thing."

"For security purposes we can't share our every move, you know that Carlo," Johnson said. He sounded more tired than annoyed.

"This is all beside the point," Stine said. Frederika glared at the lowest-ranking member of the discussion, but he charged ahead. "We have maybe six months food stores left to feed the inhabitants at Summerland. That's with austere winter allocations."

"Good God, what are you people doing down there? We have twice that in storage up here," Reyes scoffed.

Stine gritted his teeth. "And a quarter of the population! We provide for both Summerland and the Rock. If we dip into the last of the nonperishables without having a plan for the future, we'll have riots in our own settlements! Do you want to be the one ordering guards to fire on their parents and siblings, Colonel Reyes?"

Probably, Frederika thought with disgust. How she despised the man.

"I told you this before," Reyes answered. "We need an open enrollment to see if we have skilled workers in the city. Your trigger-happy guards are too keen on gunning down anyone who—"

Stine's face flushed. "That's easy for you to say from the comforts of your northern retreat! The city is teeming with drug-addled lowlifes who are more than willing to shoot first. Is it as simple as opening the floodgates to anyone who claims to have some useful skill? Take their word and let them belly up to the trough of depleted food banks?"

"Know your place, Major," Frederika snapped. She wouldn't tolerate insubordination even though she agreed with a word he'd said. Everything seemed simpler from the island of Whitefish, where Reyes commissioned his own police force to guard the walled community three miles up the lakeshore. Though the settlement was geographically closer to Frederika's home than even Summerland, in philosophy it was worlds apart. She felt more than a tinge of jealousy.

Johnson spoke next. "Easy, Freddy. That goes for you too Harry, and Carlo. Everyone settle down. It won't come to rioting. We'll fall back on Plan B before that happens."

Frederika's frown deepened. Plan B meant sending an SOS message to the feds. For the last two years, anytime they connected to their satellite Internet, their browser would be automatically redirected to a government blog. It stated that special teams were reestablishing the country's infrastructure, beginning at the coasts and moving inland. The site requested that visitors complete field reports to give them an idea of their local conditions. The Four Families had voted unanimously to maintain radio silence with Auggie being the most vocal, stating with conviction that any outside government agency would be quick strip them of everything they had worked so hard to secure, leaving them with scraps as the doled our their possessions to the masses.

"And what about getting the power back?" Frederika asked sullenly. "We've just decided that's impossible? Without even trying?"

"Freddy." Johnson sighed.

Stine cleared his throat. "Commander Reichman, with due respect, we've been over this. The power plant is more than twenty miles south of here. No one knows the first thing about how such a station runs, how many staff it requires to run, whether it's still operational or even safe after such a period of disuse."

Frederika sulked in the ensuing silence. They threw their special ops into suicidal missions in the Reaches hoping to dig scientists out of their holes, yet they refused to send a team south to scout out the power plant? True, they had sent one years ago and the crew went missing, but she felt it was high time they try again. It was childish, but Frederika imagined them finding a giant ON/OFF switch that they could simply flip and poof the lights would be back on and things would be back to normal, the way they were before everything came tumbling down.

Instead they ruled over a slum populated semiliterates with no useful skills. They had no land that would sustain farming, no means of producing goods, no ability to communicate, no means to travel, to seek and establish trade. They'd spent a decade hoarding relics from bygone years in the delusional belief that their supplies would either last forever or that the old world would be magically restored. Yet it seemed that she was on the edge of another radical life change, and frankly she didn't think she had the strength to see it through. In that moment, her life had never seemed more pointless.

"Colonel Reichman?" Stine asked hesitantly, disturbing her ruminations. "I beg your pardon ma'am, but Colonel Reyes is waiting for you to answer his question."