ONE: ENEMIES AT THE GATE

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

ONE WEEK TO ELECTION DAY

In five minutes, the vice president’s motorcade would speed through Semper’s fortified front entrance, zip up the hill to the main administration atrium, and Dante Edmunds could finally go home and go to bed. After two consecutive all-nighters, punctuated with a couple of fleeting office-couch naps, Dante was running on primordial instinct. He could have been back in the Security Hive, all warm and cozy, watching the camera feeds and activating the gate remotely while sipping fresh, hot coffee from the soup-bowl-sized mug Rita had gotten him as a souvenir from her recent trip to Toronto. But it was cold, polar vortex cold, the kind of cold that you’d bundle up in North Face and goggles to pick up groceries; cold enough, in fact, that the facility maintenance team warned him that the chains on the entrance gate might freeze shut. 

And yet, on the other side of the heavy metal panels of the perimeter security fence surrounding the campus, a few hundred Americans gathered in protest. Half were remnants of the vice president’s supporters, those who hadn’t lined up early enough to snag a ticket to the campaign rally up the hill in the warm atrium with free hot chocolate and cookies. They lingered in the freezing morning weather to stick it to the veep’s protestors on the other side of the gate. Despite the conditions, more than a hundred hardcore activists gathered to make the point that they hated Vice President Celeste Strang more than shivering half to death. Some of them weren’t even voting for the other guy, either; they really didn’t like her. 

The conflicting factions were separated by rows of police in riot gear and concrete barricades hoisted into place by forklifts the night before. So far, it was easier to stay in a huddled mass and shout the odd insult across the way than cause any trouble, especially when getting handcuffed might mean having to take off gloves. 

A voice crackled in his earpiece. “Motorcade is five minutes out.” It was Jamieson Groff, Dante’s supervisor.

Dante checked his watch. The glass screen was blank. He prodded it with his gloved hand and wiggled his wrist. Either the cold killed the battery or, in the frenetic sprint to organize the day’s campaign event, he hadn’t thought to charge it. On the other wrist, the indicator lights softly glowed yellow on his Linkband, the company-issued, stainless-steel bracelet that tracked employee movements and granted access to various rooms and buildings across the campus. It was still working, but the color indicated it would need a charge soon.

Dante listened for the approaching wail of sirens to herald the motorcade’s arrival but heard only the buzz of conversation on the other side of the wall. He did mental math in his head: if everything went to plan, the blackout bedroom curtains would be drawn and he’d be asleep before his head fully nestled into the cushy memory foam pillow—another gift from Rita, passed along from one of her sponsors—in twenty minutes. But first he had to be sure that gate opened for the motorcade and, as misfortune would have it, get rid of the small, recreational drone that buzzed up into view over the gate. 

Over the radio, Dante asked, “Someone managed to get their drone through security, you seeing this?” He imagined Groff back at his cluttered workstation, watching a bank of monitors. Far above, four of Semper’s much larger and louder drones whirred over the crowd, sending live video to Groff’s screens. Dante held out his Linkband to badge through the access door next to the gate.

“No red here, at least of the faces we can see,” Groff said. Dante imagined him looking at the display screen back at the Security Hive, where facial recognition technology cast a red overlay onto people whose faces matched those making particularly dangerous threats online. But the multi-billion-dollar identification technology was still easily foiled by a knit balaclava bought from a grocery store discount bin. While most of Strang’s detractors wore the masks to keep warm, they had the added benefit of foiling the drone hovering above and beaming back a camera feed to the Hive; likewise, her supporters purposefully kept their faces exposed to the elements to prove they had nothing to hide, principles over frostbite.

The intruding drone could belong to anyone operating it through an app, or even smart glasses lately. “I’m not going to find this guy before the cars roll up,” he said. 

“We’ll intercept,” Groff said. 

Dante looked back up, waiting for one of the company’s drones to descend and physically ram the intruding contraption back to the ground. Nothing happened. Police and an advance secret service team started pointing at the infiltrator. He continued walking past the perimeter line, up on his tiptoes looking for any clue to who was piloting the small unit. “You taking this thing down, or what?” Dante said with increasing frustration. 

“Stand by, we’re locked out all of a sudden,” Groff said.

“Locked out?” 

“I said stand by!”

Then Dante saw in the empty park across the street someone in a black hooded cloak and full-face respirator, looking between a small controller in his hands and up into the sky. “I think I got eyes on him,” Dante said. First he had to get past the line of police and their parked cars and barricades. He jogged to the first officer near him and pointed at the mysterious person. “I think he’s flying that drone, we’ve got to grab him.”

The officer shrugged and pointed to the Semper drones above, still stationary. “Protocol says those are gonna knock it down, we’ll figure out whoever’s flying it later.”

“The motorcade is just a minute away, we can’t have it —” 

The intruding drone suddenly buzzed up higher and deployed a long, vertical banner, with white letters on a black background: “THORUS LIVES.” The bottom of the fabric was just out of reach of someone who might jump to grab it, right in the middle of the street. 

The crowd turned their collective attention to the machine, recording and livestreaming. While the police were distracted, Dante lunged over the barrier and took off sprinting across the park. The figure in the cloak dropped the controller and bolted, but Dante gained ground on the culprit and added distance from the officers pursuing him for hopping the perimeter. 

“Back in,” Groff said in Dante’s ear. Dante couldn’t yet break his concentration but he heard gasps from the crowd as Groff piloted a Semper drone into the intruding one and knocked it to the ground, then a roar of collective victory. 

The mystery man had nowhere to go so close to the secured perimeter. He shoved his way through a group of protestors and hopped the barrier into the middle of the street, all phones trained on him. 

Dante heard the whistle of a police officer, shouts to stay back, and a crescendoing murmur of confusion. 

An instant surge of adrenaline cleared Dante’s fatigued mind. A violent altercation between police and a demonstrator would make for bad PR for the company; not Dante’s department, but not the kind of error Dante’s image-minded girlfriend would appreciate, either. Such a scuffle would create an unhelpful crisis for Strang’s campaign, too. 

Groff chirped in Dante’s ear. “Motorcade arrival imminent, comms aren’t back online, what are we doing here?” he asked. 

The troublemaker stood in the empty street, arms extended outward at his sides, shouting from behind the gasmask. “Behold the power of Thorus!” he proclaimed.

“Dante, we gotta make a call, now,” Groff said.

Police began shouting and drew guns. “Down, on your knees, on your knees now!” they demanded. 

The masked man continued his approach. “We are one with THORUS!”

“Open the gate,” Dante said. “Open it.” He walked swiftly, but confidently, past the police line. “No one shoot!” He held approached the man in the street, who stopped advancing once he saw Dante.

Officers kept their guns raised as Dante proceeded carefully forward. They knew as well as he did the stakes of the moment, the history-shattering effects of a poorly-timed pulled trigger, the excuse any of these activists would make to start rioting. Neither side needed a martyr. “You gotta get on your knees man or they’re gonna take you down,” Dante said. He was suddenly self-conscious that a hundred cameras were recording the moment. 

The first cars of the motorcade turned the corner a few hundred yards up the street as the gate behind Dante started to clunk open. He looked over his shoulder to see guns still raised, officers nervously looking to eachother and back to Dante and the man ahead. 

The masked man appeared to be scanning the line of officers ahead of him, and a twitch of diffidence, hesitantly shuffled his feet an inch backward. 

Dante struck. In three powerful strides he lunged at the man and bearhugged him to the ground, rolling to the side and out of the way of the approaching motorcade, just in time for the gate to stall half way open.

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