Chapter 27

November 20 ^th, 2020 (afternoon)

"What do you mean, no response?" Linda barked into her cellphone as Phil looked on, Violet driving their lead car with the other cars behind them on their way to Andy's house to watch the President's speech and the 60 Minutes story that Phil was dreading would reveal his name, face and presence to the world at large. "Well, do a full sweep of the perimeter before you do anything else. The last thing I want you doing is storming the house of one of our residents and busting down walls just because they happened to not be home. That said, the second to last thing I want you doing is being caught breaking into a private citizen's home because of a damned 'hunch,' okay? Great. Get me more info and report back," she said before ending the call.

"Vikovic's house?" Phil asked.

"Yeah, it's lights out, no answer, no motion, not even guards at the front gate," Linda sighed. "That's certainly a distinct possibility, what with the President's speech coming up, and lots of people going to other people's houses to watch it, but I don't like it. I'm just not sure I don't like it enough to go send a squad breaking onto the guy's property, you know?"

"That's what the sweep's for, I take it?"

"They're going to do a perimeter search, and if that turns up negative, they're going use thermal cameras, see if maybe they can spot anyone inside. If that turns up blank, then fuck it, we're sending someone in to scout the place and see what's going on, if anything," she grumbled. "I'll ask forgiveness instead of waiting for permission on this one. Something about the whole thing feels... off."

"I thought all of New Eden was technically considered an extension of the base, meaning you have the right to go in anywhere any time if there's a concern that we're in danger," Phil said.

"It's not something I want to go around abusing, babe, otherwise I'm no better than a fascist. Once we have verified the concerns, then I'm ready to go hammer down all the way, but we're not there yet, okay?"

"I trust you, Linda. If you're not ready, you're not ready."

"Thank you."

The cars pulled up to the house, moving to park off to one side before exiting the cars, walking up to the front to meet Andy, Phil laughing as Andy was gesturing for people not to go into the house yet. They talked for a minute or two about how Andy's meeting with Eve McCallister had gone while everyone was getting lined up on Andy's stairs for a group photo. It was something Phil hadn't thought about, but actually made a lot of sense, and so he was grateful Andy (or, more likely, someone in Andy's family, because it didn't seem like something Andy would've thought of on his own) had organized the group photos, especially since everyone had shown up dressed well.

Once they got inside, it was nice to mingle and mix, letting the gathered Teams talk with one another, like colliding family gatherings, and people could have conversations with one another and get to know each other, since this was going to be the extended community they were all a part of moving forward, so the more comfortable they were as a group, the better.

It was most of their usual poker night, and all the members of their Teams, with the exception of Lesser Phil. The report had been that he'd had difficult coming and going from Valhalla Shores since moving over there. It was something Phil had meant to look into, but there had been quite a bit on his plate lately, and only so many hours in a day.

One of the things Phil was glad to see was that the people who had existing links were reconnecting. A few weeks back, Andy's Team had gone through a 'recommendation process' where they had presented him with a bunch of their friends, people who they would feel more comfortable with being around. A couple of the people who had been suggested, Andy had known they wouldn't be good fits for him, but might be good fits for his friends.

"Taylor!" Natalie screamed in a giggling fit, rushing over to hug her friend, one of the younger of Andy's partners. The two blondes made a fascinating contrast, Natalie tall and lanky, Taylor shorter and bustier. While Taylor had recommended she'd be a good fit for Andy, Andy had recognized that while Natalie was very much a member of the geek tribe, she was of a different stripe than Andy's, with a deep love of both Tolkien and manga. She was also a stripper, paying her way through med school. None of that was anything Andy held against her, but there were only so many slots, and Andy had recognized Natalie's love of Japanese culture would make her a better fit over on Team Marcos. She'd dragged their partner Yuko along with her, as Yuko had become Natalie's first real friend inside of the Team. "It's so good to finally see you! I was going to come over yesterday, but I wanted to take the day and get situated and learn the house layout and get comfortable with everybody first before I ran over to someone else's house, and Phil told me we were coming over here anyway, so I figured I could wait, but oh my fucking god, I'm so happy you're here with me, so I know this shit is real and I'm not just dreaming it all up!"

"Girl! Same!" Taylor giggled, spinning her friend around with her, the two clinging to each other with an uncontrollable energy. "OhmyfuckingGod, I've totally got to introduce you to my partners!"

"OhmyGod, totally! I wanna meet Emily Stevens so fucking bad, I'm gonna pee my panties!"

"She's here! You'll love her! She's over there! Let's go!"

As much as Phil didn't want to babysit, he had found that intermingling in the crowd let him sort of disappear into the background a little bit, something he hadn't really been able to indulge in for some time, so he just drifted along after them, seeing Yuko being pulled along by the gravitational force that was two twenty-something blondes on a mission.

"Em! Em! My friend Natalie's been dying to meet you! She's such a big fan of the Daggerfall Academy movies and books!" Taylor said as they moved to crowd into a conversation that Emily, Sarah, Violet and Audrey were engaged in.

Phil could see Emily smiling, although there was a bit of tightness behind her eyes, as if this was a conversation she'd had many times and wasn't sure she was in the mood to walk through now, but the look disappeared as quickly as it appeared as Emily turned pro and put on her dealing with the public face.

"Oh my god, Miss Stevens," Natalie said. "You were so fucking good in those movies. You went from, like, this sort of bookworm into a total badass! You were always the smart and clever one, and that made you my fucking hero."

"Well thank you," Em said. "I did enjoy working on them and I'm glad I set a positive example for you to follow growing up. They were a great deal of fun to do, even if it did take me away from my studies while I still coming of age."

"How come you and Rupert Talbot didn't hook up after the movies? You two seemed so in love during those movies."

"That was what the part called for," Em said, starting to bristle a little.

"But, like, you're here with some random guy instead of Rupert Talbot?" Natalie said, belaboring the point that clearly Em didn't want to engage with. "Like, once the pandemic set in, I'm sure you could've had anyone you wanted anywhere in the fucking world! And you and Rupert looked so in love in not only the last Daggerfall movie, but all the behind-the-scenes footage we saw, you two were laughing and hugging all over the place. Why wouldn't you want that guy?"

"Because Rupert and I never dated, my dear," Em said. It was clear the young woman was trying her patience, as even Phil could see Em was clinging tightly to Sarah's hand almost to the point of crushing it. "Any rumors you heard of on-set romance were simply that - rumors. Rupert and Adrian were both lovely boys and dear friends, but I never felt any attraction to either of them."

"But you seemed so in love in the movie!" Natalie said. "And no offense to your partner, but Taylor tells me he's a lot older, and certainly not as hot as Rupert was!"

"Natalie!" Taylor gasped, hitting her friend in the shoulder.

"I didn't think it was a big fucking secret that some random writer dude wouldn't be as gorgeous as a movie star worth, like, eleventy billion dollars!" Natalie said.

"Excuse me," Emily said, pulling herself from the group and heading over towards one of the bathrooms, Sarah in tow.

As much as Phil wanted to dress down Natalie, it looked like Taylor was doing it for him, so he headed over to see Andy. His friend was just finishing recounting the story of the poker game to a small number of people he was holding court to. Linda, who'd heard about it before, had gotten herself all wound up again about it, focusing her ire on Covington's partner Rachel, whose manipulation had enabled the game in the first place.

"I swear, if it were up to me, I'd cuntpunt that bitch into Easter Sunday," Linda grumbled as Phil slipped his arm around her waist, trying to calm her down a little bit. "I've tried complaining up the food chain about it, but I've been told again and again that until some of the women file a complaint about it, there's not much I can do about it."

"I'll happily file whatever you want me to," Piper said. If anyone had a right to be angry about it, it was Piper. By far, she'd been through the worst of it, and when Andy had detailed it all to Phil, he'd nearly gone on a shooting spree with Linda's gun. It had been everything the actual opposite of what Phil had wanted, everything that he'd struggled to prevent. It was cruel, abusive and sadistic. "It worked out in the end, but it very easily could've all gone horribly wrong, and I don't think anybody should ever be sent to that prick again."

"There's also a chance that Katie Couric's going to be talking about it in the special airing in, oh, two hours," Phil said, trying to instill some hope into the matter, although he was a bit beyond that himself. He'd informed the President himself, and they were 'investigating the matter' but nothing had happened, and the longer it went without anything happening, the more it felt like they were all going to get away with it, which only angered Phil even further. Still, he wanted to set everyone's expectations fairly, so nobody was rioting but no one was thinking it was settled either. "I know she told Andy she would just go to the President about it, but you have no idea how rough the people coordinating all of this can get. They're going to play hardball to get what they want, even if none of us know exactly what the fuck that is."

"Yeah, I don't think she's going to break my confidence, Phil," Andy told him, something Phil agreed with fully. Still, Phil knew he had to keep up the appearance that he didn't know the President had said she was already going after these people. "Rachel seemed like she was trying to throw you and/or me under the bus, and I wasn't going to let that happen. I think Rachel expected me not to go full disclosure, which bought me a lot of goodwill from Katie Couric. I wasn't pleased with all the things I did, but I admitted to them, and explained my reasoning for them. Katie kept going back to things Rachel had told her, but I think she found my story completely plausible, and the fact that I was so open about it gave her loads of reasons to believe me."

"Well, I hope you're right, Andy," Linda said. "I just fucking wish that we could've gotten an advance copy of the 60 Minutes show, so we'd know what we're going into."

"Fuckin' A," Niko agreed.

Phil saw Emily returning from the bathroom, although she looked no less frustrated and worked up than she had when Phil had seen her storm off a few minutes ago, not that he blamed her one bit. He looked around the room and saw neither Natalie nor Taylor, and he suspected the latter was tearing the former a rightfully earned new asshole, especially since it was currently suspected that Rupert Talbot was dead, although the UK government hadn't confirmed it. Apparently the young man had been on holiday in Thailand when the lockdowns started and he'd been forced to remain there the entire time. Emily said she hadn't heard from him in about three weeks' time, although the reports of his death were still unconfirmed at this point. Not that that information was out in the public sphere yet, naturally. Most of the celebrity deaths had been kept relatively quiet as part of the press blackouts, but if the UK government knew one way or another about Talbot's condition, it would likely come out within the next few days, once the President's speech had set everything into motion.

"Pardon me, but I need to borrow my soon-to-be husband for but a few minutes," she said, her British lilt smoothing the words over. "Andrew? If you would?"

"Sure, Em," he said, leaning down to kiss her forehead. Phil could see her eye makeup was a little disrupted around the edge, and Emily kept shifting her weight back and forth between the balls of her feet nervously. "I'll be back in just a little bit. Pretty soon we need to start moving people downstairs so we can watch the President's speech."

"We'll be back in time, Andrew, I promise," Emily said, pulling him away, with Niko trailing along behind Andy, remaining his security detail as instructed.

"Any idea what that's about?" Xander asked him.

"Unfortunately yes," Phil sighed. "One of my newest partners stuck her foot in her mouth and just kept swallowing instead of taking the hint to back off. She went a bit rabid fangirl on her and asked Emily why she didn't hook up with her partner from the movie series she's famous for."

Xander looked at him as if he didn't quite understand, and Phil nodded, as if confirm, it really was that dumb a thing to say. "Doesn't your partner understand it's a movie?"

"We were dumb and, in our twenties, once, weren't we, Xander?" Phil said, putting a hand up in the air in mock surrender. "I think Nat just got caught up in talking to this person she'd seen in the movies for so long that she forgot to think of Emily as a real person, you know? They grow attached to these characters they grew up watching, writing their own versions of stories instead of the ones they watched, to make them go the way they wanted. And what was the number one complaint about that last Daggerfall movie?"

"That they killed off Will Crimson," Violet said. "I mean, he wasn't the main protagonist, but still, killing off one of your three core viewpoint characters is a tough break for kids who'd grown attached to him, especially after he and Dahlia had just started dating. That's rough on any kids, but it's basically the 'killing Bambi's mom' of my generation, you know? Or Mufasa's dad being thrown off the cliff. It was kinda traumatizing, you know? Even if you know it's just a book or a movie. So I get her just wanting to have a happy ending, but Rupert Talbot is no Will Crimson, and Em is certainly no Dahlia Hairtrigger. Em's far too badass to let anyone push her around like she was getting treated in the early films. But I get it. Dahlia and Will seemed like the perfect couple on screen, and having something on screen in real life would make some of this horror go away. But while it's okay for her to think that, to say that shit to Em? That ain't cool. But I think Taylor's been ripping her head off for the last five minutes about it, so I think it'll probably work itself out in the end."

"You think I need to--" Phil started before Violet waved her hand.

"Taylor's doing a surprisingly good job about explaining the situation to her, so I think you're okay, boss," Violet said. "Besides, Natalie called Andy 'old' and 'not hot,' and I think that alone nearly got Taylor to beat the shit out of her. Natalie's new to the whole Teams thing, and I don't think she's got a great handle on the etiquette yet."

"Oh, don't make excuses for her, V," Linda grumbled. "Natalie's just gotta learn to stop shooting her mouth off, and it's best that one of her oldest friends is calling her on it. I mean, Taylor vouched for Natalie, so imagine how that's got to make her feel, Nat calling her partner old. I don't blame Taylor for being mad one bit. If she'd have said that kind of shit about Phil beforehand, I wouldn't have let her pair up with him."

"Everybody knows Asians don't age as quickly as you white folk do," Phil teased with a grin. "Seriously, she thought I was like 30 until we told her otherwise. I just hope it didn't get to Emily too much. I know the Daggerfall fandom's a mixed bag and all..."

"Well, and then there's the writer and all her problematic shit," Violet said, shaking her head. "I couldn't believe it. Like, I guess she's got enough money that she just doesn't give a shit anymore, but what does she get out of calling immigrants 'leeches on the neck of society' and shit like that? I've seen so many of the fans turning on her, calling her full of shit. Like, they've stopped cosplaying as the characters, streams of the movies are down, the books aren't selling like they used to... it was like, she opened her mouth and the hate that started spewing killed any love anyone had for her or her stuff."

"Ah yes," Xander laughed. "The fucking Morrissey effect in full force. At some point, some artists just can't help but espouse opinions that make you sick to your stomach and you have to decide if you're willing to put up with who they've become to keep enjoying their new stuff, or if you just stick to the old stuff of theirs you already have, or if the opinions are so reprehensible that you can't even look at stuff that you used to have affection about. That's how I feel about The Smiths. Morrissey turned into such a twat that I can't even enjoy their old records anymore, so I packed them all away and pulled all the Smiths stuff from all my playlists. Just hearing that cranky old fucker's voice makes me go into fits of rage, so now I just don't listen to him in any way."

"Seriously," Piper agreed. "Didn't anyone see 'Hamilton'? 'Immigrants! We get the job done!'"

Sarah sighed. "Some people are just too entrenched in their old ways that they can't see the forest for the trees." She glanced around the room, not finding Emily in her sightlines. "I hope Em's alright. She looked pretty rattled by that conversation."

"She's with Andy," Phil said to her. "That'll put most people at ease. Andy's used to having to talk people down off of weird ledges for strange reasons."

"He ever have to do that with you?"

"Once," Phil admitted. "Twelve or thirteen years ago. I'd just broken up with a girl who, well, she was redefining 'clingy' and it had gotten pretty unhealthy, so when I called it off, I was worried about her just showing up on my doorstep so Andy came by and took me out to eat and kept me out of the house for like a full day, so that when she came by my house looking for me, I wouldn't be home. Genius plan, but I was so gummed up I didn't see it coming. That's Andy for you, though. Always one or two steps ahead of where everyone else is looking. That's Andy's great undisclosed superpower. He's always ahead of the curve."

"Okay everyone," Andy's maid Nicolette said as she started trying to usher people out of the ballroom and towards the downstairs lounge where the large television was on and tuned, waiting for the President's speech to begin. There were a couple of talking heads on the screen speculating that the speech was going to be about COVID-19, or the reported increasing number of deaths that the government had been working to shield from public knowledge.

Phil had to admit, the group working to keep the mass casualties from becoming primetime news had been especially impressive and effective. As it turned out, social media algorithms were insanely easy to manipulate, and companies behind all the major platforms had agreed to avoid mass panic or waves of hysteria, which had been as simple as shadow posting anything about someone dying, so it didn't show up in feeds, but would show up only if you went directly to someone's profile page. It was such an elegant and easy fix, Phil had been astonished how nobody had noticed it, even though it had been going for months and months. (Or, he had to admit, it was possible that they'd done the same thing with anyone talking about the issue - controlling the narrative was a much easier thing than he was personally comfortable with.)

Andy, Emily and Niko entered in from off to the side, and Phil noticed that Andy's shirt had changed, and that Emily was wearing slightly different makeup that she was before, with no lipstick, but her eyes and cheeks clearly redone, probably from crying, which meant Phil was going to likely have to pile on to Natalie a little later, so they'd made it absolutely clear that what she'd said to Emily was very uncool.

They made their way over to Fiona, who gave Emily a hug and kissed her cheek, before they moved to rejoin the crowd. It was at that moment that Phil saw that President Pelosi was sitting behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, with sharp lighting. Maybe the approach was meant to convey strength or force or something, but to Phil's eyes, it just made the woman look tired and old, as if the strain and the stress of the job was catching up with her. Not that he could blame her. She'd become the first Speaker of the House to assume the Presidency by process of succession, and in those six months, she'd probably lived and endured thirty times that.

"Good evening, America."

Phil could hear the exhaustion in her voice as she started speaking, but very quickly it picked up, as if she was realizing at that moment that she needed to exude as much gravitas as she could while walking through the near mass extinction level event that they'd (mostly) unknowingly survived. Everyone in the room with him knew about the Kill Zone, about pairing system, about Oracle... but he couldn't help but wonder how it was all playing with people who were just now getting their first exposure to this news, which according to estimates, was about 50% of the surviving population of America, which was about 75 million people. The corporations were, at this very moment, turning off the algorithms that had done the dirty work, and while there wasn't going to be a sudden flood of notifications to anyone, the feeds on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram would look very different for the next month or so, as people were getting caught up on what they'd missed.

Over the course of the thirty minutes or so that the President spoke, Phil mostly chose to watch the reactions of the people in the room, trying to get a read on how everyone was going to react to all the individual details. People in the room had picked up a lot of bits and pieces, but there hadn't been a whole comprehensive laying out of everything like the President's speech had done before now.

And when it was all laid out in black and white...

...it was a lot.

There was a ton to process and a bunch of information overlapping and flooding the zone, so even those deep into the experience were still doing their best to keep everything clear in their heads. Andy, like most people, was recording not only the President's speech, but the 60 Minutes special afterwards, and Phil absolutely understood why. Digital copies were being emailed to him of both things.

The scariest thing about the whole speech, though, was that it wasn't even half of the information he knew about the virus or the serum presented for the public. Not that most of it the general population needed to know about those particular details, or, in fact, would've been happy to learn about them.

Mostly what Phil was thinking about, though, was how much he hoped that what Eve McCallister promised them was real. Being able to reassign people who weren't dead would be the silver bullet that would solve so many of their problems. Even if it was just a one-time usage thing, as she'd told Andy it was, it would still be an incredibly useful tool in the toolbox. It could also be used to save women who hadn't been able to be reassigned because the Dead Man's Switch wasn't an option, due to catastrophic death of their partners. They wouldn't deploy it on anyone right away, not until they'd gotten some testing in, but it would be an emergency option, as Phil had seen the reports of women who'd had to be euthanized because their partner had died in some kind of accident where the testicles were unrecoverable. Someone had even tried to go the medical coma route, hoping it would buy them time for a cure to be found, but it hadn't worked, as the nanobots were still working, even when the brain was in total shutdown.

"God bless you, and God bless America."

The space between all of them hung empty, nobody daring to break the silence for at least a minute before Sarah threw her hat into the ring. "Okay Phil, you're deep in the know about all of this. Which is more likely to become a US state, Canada or Mexico?" she asked, trying to lighten the mood a little.

"Let's just say I don't feel comfortable calling either of those as 'likely' or 'unlikely,' Sarah," Phil said, not willing to tip his hand. They weren't likely going to get either, at least not in full. The current estimation was that Baja, the extra bit Mexico dangling off the edge, would become a US state, but the country of Mexico on the whole would remain as it was. "The next few months are make-or-break for us as a species. I think America's going to come through it in one fashion or another. Same for most of the former G8, although Russia and Canada are both in a lot more trouble than the rest of us. China was a goddamn mess at the start, but I think they've gotten deadly serious with their quarantines now, so maybe they'll do alright in the long run. We don't really know - they've gone into some kind of communications blackout, last I'd heard. We'd sent them messages about the Quaranteam serum, but nobody had called us back about it."

"That sounds rather disturbing," Aisling said.

"Agreed," Linda responded. His partner knew almost as much as he did, but they tended to downplay that knowledge as much as they could when they were around civilians, even people they trusted, like Team Rook. "But there's only so much we can do about it right now. We're already strained to the breaking point worrying about the state of our own country. We'll reach out to them again soon."

"You were joking about your reply regarding Mexico and Canada, yes, Phil?" Emily asked. "Or is it truly so dire?"

"We might end up taking some of their land," Phil said, willing to give a little bit of truth to these folks he called friends. "But completely absorbing another country? I don't think that's likely, buuuuut... at this point, I don't think we can rule anything out. When the President said all options are on the table, she meant it."

"Thank god Conner's as young as he is," Andy said. "That means he's underage for exposure to DuoHalo, and he'll have built up antibodies by the time he's in the danger zone. After Matty's death, Conner and his mom are being paired up with someone local, but she's going to do her best to keep me in the kid's life. It's gonna be rough for him, though, always going to school for the rest of his life without a class above him."

"God, I hadn't even thought about that," Fiona said to her man. "Can you imagine how strange college would've been with no classes above us?"

"Colleges are going to be empty for a while," Hannah said. "Our class is going to be the last class for a while. That's gonna be hella weird, Stanford's not going to have a class coming in after ours for several years. Wonder what they're all gonna do."

"They've got several years to think about it, what with all the people your age," Phil replied. "I think they're even talking about college being paid for by the government for everyone who's eighteen to twenty-four. Maybe even pay for secondary education for older people who want to go back to school, just to keep the colleges from collapsing during the gap. Turns out college professors are, by nature, extremely paranoid and almost all of them quarantined like their lives depended on it, which they didn't know it really did."

His phone buzzed and he looked down to see the text message. -Operation: NannyCam a go. Deploying now.- He nodded, mostly to himself, as the large ticking stopwatch of 60 Minutes appeared on the screen, the special just beginning to get started. Andy pushed the button and turned the television off mute, just as Phil was tapping his shoulder.

"What's up?"

"Don't worry about her. We've got like ten minutes before it's going to get to anything we give a shit about. The first ten minutes are just her talking to experts about what sorts of changes the serum causes, shit we all know way better than they do," Phil said quietly, the two men just standing slightly off to the side. "I need to talk you for a minute, but I need everyone to basically think we're around, so nobody notices this going on and thinks anything weird's happening."

"Phil, what the fuck are you talking about?"

"You were right before, about Gregor. Easy now. Don't look upset; no reason to panic. There is something strange going on at his house, and we've got a team heading onto the grounds right now. And it's not alone in happening there. We're going to try and figure what's going on while everyone's basically at home watching the presidential address and the 60 Minutes special. That's being handled by some people from the base. An actual infil unit. I just got a text saying they're starting to move onto the Vikovic estate, so try and keep an eye on me for the next hour in case I give you a signal to come back here, okay?"

"Any idea what's--"

"I have literally told you everything I know right now, Andy, and that's probably more than I should've but, in for a penny, in for a pound."

"Are you two boys done gossiping?" Sarah said as she grabbed Andy's wrist. "They're just about to start showing off the base!"

"Yeah yeah. Just boys and boy shit. Nothing all that interesting."

"You know when you say shit like that, Phil, it makes me totally not fucking believe you," Sarah laughed, as Andy shrugged and they headed back towards one of the couches down front.

The presentation continued and after they spent a few minutes focusing on Niko, and her journey, they cut to Phil in his office, as everyone in the room cheered and he flipped the bird with both hands to everyone, mostly glad to distract them from seeing what an actual pigsty his office was, with stacks of papers and folders all over the place, loose printouts in piles that were slowly turning into snowdrifts and avalanches of the A4 variety. "Oh, shut the fuck up! Maybe you'll learn something, you filthy savages!" he laughed at them.

A few minutes later, his pocket buzzed again and he pulled out his phone to look at it, only to scowl, not liking the message he saw waiting for him there on the tiny screen.

-Location empty. Repeat, target not on site. Cars missing. Clothes missing. Have not left New Eden, however. Checked with front gate. No Vikovic departure, but again, repeat, nest is empty.-

"Well, shit."