The explosion set Erik Torreon's limbs into motion.

He had been transfixed by Delia's impassioned speech to the crowd even though he hadn't understood half of it. The next few minutes were a blur: shouting junkies waving guns and demanding drugs, MPD guards bursting in, and a hostage showdown between an officer and a strung out scavenger. Erik's body froze while his mind tried to keep up during the chain of events and only dared breathe once the addict threw his pistol to the ground.

That's when something flew in through a broken window and the world exploded.

People dropped around him in screams of terror and pain. He felt a searing pain the length of his forearm and a wild animal panic flooded over him. Muzzle flashes lit the night from inside and outside the building and he slapped away the hands that latched onto his coat. In the one moment of clarity he recognized Delia's form huddled over Bob's prostate body and, without knowing quite what he was doing, Erik lunged for her and half-picked up, half-carried the woman toward an exit.

Scavengers collided as the MPD clubbed anyone within reach and shouted for everyone to stay put, but no one listened. One guard stood in the window spraying bullets at the hillside from where they were being attacked, oblivious to the chaos around him. They duck pasted a second guard and spilled outside into the night. The brief victory was blasted away by a blinding flash of light and deafening clap of thunder. Erik felt himself falling when a hand latched onto his collar and dragged him choking and spluttering to his feet. With his ears still painfully wringing, the hands gripped beneath his arms and forced him forward, prompting his feet to keep running.

A tangle of blonde hair in his face and he realized the rescuer forcing him on had been Delia.

They said nothing as they fled into the night, though Erik cried out as his arm began to throb and he realized his sleeve was soaked in blood. After they had put six blocks between them and the swap Erik dragged Delia to a stop so he could catch his breath. "Where are we going?"

She shook her head. In the moonlight her face looked impassive.

He cradled his wounded arm and got his bearings. He thought they were just south of the bend in the Juneau and nearly wept in relief. He kept a small camp nearby in a thin copse of trees at the top of the riverbank. "Follow me," he said.

Once there, he uncovered a plastic bag containing a dry change of clothes and a two energy bars he had buried beneath some brush. With a scrap of a fuel stick, he built a small fire to warm them. His sweat cooled on his clothes and he had started to shiver. He changed shirts and Delia wordlessly helped him wrap his bleeding arm. Miraculously, she had escaped unharmed.

They said nothing for awhile, watching the tiny flames consume the twigs carefully piled on. Delia looked at the climbing flames and said in a neutral voice, "Bob's dead."

Erik had forgotten about Bob, Devlin, Otto, and the other girl until that moment. He had forgotten everything except that wild urge to escape. Then, with a sickening sense of despair, he patted himself down. He moaned and smothered his face in his arms. "My bag," he whimpered. "I left it." The jack. His reader. Gone.

"What was in it?" she asked.

My future, he thought but only shook his head. They sat in silence. What would he do now? He had lost everything. Would he limp back to Aztalan, admit to his father that he wasn't as grown up as he thought? That Rivertown had chewed him up but stopped just short of swallowing him whole? He remembered his father's disparaging looks. He couldn't imagine what he would say if he returned home without his reader. His priceless reader. Then an idea struck him.

"I might leave Rivertown now," he said cautiously. "I'd go back where I grew up. It's a small farming community, a few days' walk from here."

She said nothing.

"It's safe. Well-protected. Plenty to eat."

Delia didn't respond.

Erik swallowed. "Would you come with me?"

Delia turned to look at him and offered the most beautiful smile Erik had ever seen. For the second time that night, he felt himself falling.

"No," she said, a curious look in her eyes though she kept that glorious smile. "We have work to do here."

We? As if he had opened a door into her soul, she told him how she had come from a sub-lab to the northwest to restore social order to Rivertown. She wanted to inspire community and collaboration among the scavengers there and, in time, perhaps stoke the coals of revolution. She spoke at length and with eloquence about the power of democracy and the inalienable rights of citizens, the difference between power and authority, and the abuses of the ruling class. She had been lost and then found. She had been told to find Bob so she could continue this work.

For Erik, time seemed to stop as she talked. His arm ceased to ache. Then he felt a sudden urgent need to urinate. He held it as long as he could, then reluctantly asked Delia to pause. "Excuse me a minute," he said. "I just need to head down to the river. Remember what you were saying. I'll be right back."

He felt his way down to the riverside, his eyes slowly adjusting to the dark. The moon was brilliant in the sky, clear and cold. He thought again about his future. What if, instead of heading back to Aztalan, he stayed in Rivertown? She had said "we." Had she meant him? Was he being called to action?

The romance of that thought, and the icy stillness of the night, was interrupted by a single gunshot.