It had been raining since sundown, and one man fought another for the right to have his child sleep under the eaves of a building. Finally someone yelled out that the men should just let the children sleep together. They agreed, for now-the rain was only light.

There were gunshots two blocks or so over, small-caliber, not the army. Moving among the refugees and showing his pictures, Kyle wondered briefly what might have caused it. A rumor spread like lightning-the government was dropping food over the line down near the lake. There was a rush. People gathering up what they could and then taking off east toward the lakeshore.

Maybe there'd be food there, maybe it was rumor. They couldn't take the chance. Kyle let the tide of people flow around him. If Beth and Natalie were there he'd never find them now. His best hope was that the group she'd hooked up with had staked a claim to some space nearby, though with the line so close to her actual apartment it would have made more sense for Natalie to stay home. Kyle and Seeks-the-Moon had found enough food in the house, even with what had been stolen, to last about a week if rationed. Beth and Natalie could have hidden there until he came for them. But they hadn't. Instead they'd gone looking for safety somewhere else.

Just then there was a commotion behind him. A little group of men and women were gathered in the debris that was all that remained of a store on the south side of the street, opposite the barricades. They were tense, agitated, and kept glancing toward the line of troops. Kyle looked too, and saw the troopers' attention on the flow of people eastward. They were distracted, and in that moment the small group of men and women rushed the barricade.

Kyle almost screamed out in warning and had to choke back the power that rose inside him, but the concussion grenades were already detonating. A water hose started up on one of the towers and it tore into the group just as they reached the barricade. Several were stopped cold or went limping away after the grenade blasts. The rest stormed the barricade.

They were not unprepared. A pair of smoke grenades lighted, filling the area quickly with green haze. There were gunshots from this side of the barricade as well; snipers from the southside debris. They were light, but accurate- Kyle saw one group of guards pinned down by the shots. A portion of the barricade began to move as the people tore at it, ignoring the growing fusillade of stun rounds being fired blindly into the smoke.

Then, the helicopter was overhead. A jet black Hughes Stallion with its huge rotor downwash and powerful searchlight. The smoke dissipated as fast as it came, and suddenly the people began to fall, clutching at their knees and thighs. Somewhere on the line a government sniper was systematically disabling them. Within moments, under obvious fire from the watchtowers and the sniper, they began to haltingly withdraw, dragging most of their fallen behind them. Kyle saw blood on the street. Not all the rounds were gel.

He watched the little group gather together again, cursing and moaning. Two went off trying to round up others for another try. They were confident the barricade could be breached. But then what? Kyle wondered. Did they think that past the line there was nothing? No army camp, no armored personnel carriers, no light tanks? Only freedom?

Suddenly, there were screams from behind him, a block, maybe two away. He spun, and saw bugs. A swarm of them, roaches and ants, had erupted from a sewer and flashed into existence among the crowd pushing toward the rumored food. Kyle pushed to get closer, but the surge of the crowd was against him. He wanted a clear view of the insect spirits, but there were people in front of him, hands in his face, screams in his ears.

A woman with a young boy still clinging to her was dragged forcibly into the sewer. Five or six wasps appeared. Buzzing angrily, they dived into the crowd, swooping to pick people up with their front legs, then lifting them skyward in a shower of blood and out of sight over the houses to the south. The army opened fire. Bugs were hit; the spirits didn't care. People were hit; they began to die.

Two elementals appeared, and were immediately consumed by a swarm of insect spirits. The bugs climbed across the people on their sharp, jointed legs, reaching down into their midst to pull some free and then skitter off with them. There were more gunfire and explosions.

Kyle saw an opening, prepared a spell, and was knocked to the ground. The fleeing tide rushed over him, stepping, smashing. Desperate, he cast a quick spell and a gray-green bubble appeared around him, pushing the people aside. The ones nearby, those still thinking clearly enough to grasp what was happening, screamed and rushed away. Some panicked and ran straight toward the bug spirits.

Kyle stood and let the spell fall. There were fewer insects, fewer people. One wasp, caught in the air by a hail of gunfire that would have reduced a tank to scrap, was slowly whittled away until it could absorb no more and fled into astral space.

The crowd fell back from the line as two helicopters arrived overhead, blanketing the area in wind and light. But there was nothing for them to do. The marauding spirits were gone, and with them maybe a score of people, probably more. Off in the side streets, between the homes and inside them, the wailing began.

Kyle watched as he leaned back against a tree half uprooted by the press of a bulldozer. How could this be happening? How could this be-

Vathoss.

Sergeant Keith Vathoss, cyber-soldier for Knight Errant Security, was standing a half-dozen meters away. Next to him was another man, similarly garbed in a bulky long coat. Both had military buzz-cuts, and both seemed tense as they eyed the demarcation line with the gaze of skilled professionals gauging another journeyman's work. Satisfied, they stood in the shadows and talked quietly. Kyle slipped around the tree to watch them, fairly certain they hadn't seen him.

After a moment, and some more discussion, they headed west, past him, parallel to Irving Park Road. Kyle thought about simply calling out to them, but didn't. There was something about their manner, the way their gazes searched the crowd ahead for threats, that put him off. He realized he didn't trust them. Only if they were with Anne Ravenheart would he make contact.

Kyle followed them carefully as they continued on. Keeping to the shadows, he deactivated the rest of his power foci. There were two spells he wanted to cast on himself, but he'd need all of his masking ability to conceal those auras. No way could he could handle the spell auras and the auras of power coming off the foci at the same time. He thought about trying to contact Seeks-the-Moon, but didn't know where the spirit had ended up after the insect attack. They'd arranged to meet later at Beth's house, but Kyle had no other way of contacting him.

He paused, and quickly cast me spell, running through the four levels of formula in his head. His view of the world shifted slightly, becoming fuzzier and slightly bluer, almost like pure moonlight. He was invisible to anyone who stepped within the area of the spell, but the spell didn't bend light around him and so wouldn't work against the heat-sensors Vathoss probably had in his eyes. What the spell did was insist to any onlookers in range that Kyle simply was not there. And, if he was lucky, they'd believe it.

Then, before the two Knight Errant troopers could get too far ahead, he cast the second spell, which blanketed him in near silence. The outside world sounded to him like he was underwater, but Kyle's own noises would be inaudible. He sprinted forward to catch up to them, making the internal adjustments necessary to mask the aura of the two spells. Again, if he was lucky, he'd be all but undetectable.