“Cassidy?” Chris whispers.

I turn to look at him. His handsome face is troubled. He slowly takes my hand, studies each finger, then finally brings it to his lips in a soft kiss.

“Are we going to make it?” I ask.

Chris is the most positive, uplifting figure in the fight against Omega. But every once in a while, I see the vulnerability seep through. And I’m pretty sure I am the only one who is close enough to him to detect it. It worries me.

“We’ll make it,” he promises. “But it won’t be without sacrifice.”

“Maybe the United States military will step in,” I suggest. “Maybe we won’t have to do all of the fighting ourselves.”

Chris smiles. It’s a weary smile. He pulls me closer.

“We can’t count on anyone but ourselves,” he says.

“Is it really that bad?”

“Being on our own isn’t a bad thing. Look at these people — they’re inspired. They’re fighting for something that they believe in.” Chris hooks his arm around my waist. “It’s made us stronger.”

It always amazes me that Chris can pull something positive out of even the bleakest situation. I press an affectionate kiss against his lips. He grins — the first time he has seemed relaxed in days.

“I would do anything for you,” I hear myself saying.

Does that sound desperate? I don’t care. I mean it.

I still mean it.

After spending the night at the Underground base in Toluca Lake, I am well rested and ready to go. The militia stayed upstairs. Huge rooms have been stocked with mattresses, blankets and pillows. I stayed in a bedroom by myself at the end of a hall — the former master bedroom, I’m guessing.

When I wake up I find myself lost in a pile of expensive sheets and blankets. It’s not even close to what I’m used to sleeping on: the dirt.

I roll out of bed. The room is dark. I light a lantern on the dresser in the corner; the room is huge, decorated with modern art. I sit on the floor and lace up my combat boots.

Come on, I think. Wake up, Cassidy. It’s time to go to work.

I stand up. I pull my hair into a ponytail to keep it out of my face. I cinch up my belt, throw on my jacket and look myself over. Do I look like a battle-hardened commander? Or am I just a stupid kid from Culver City trying to play the part of a soldier?

Privately, I feel like a combination of both.

I grab my gear and open the door to the hallway. The militia is getting up, gathering their belongings. It’s probably five-thirty. I find the stairs and enter the living room. Alexander is waiting, a grim expression on his face.

“Get a good night’s sleep, Ramos?” I ask.

He grunts.

Yes. That’s the Alexander I remember.

Uriah is standing silently in the shadow of the front door, tracing his finger down the length of a photo frame. His mood radiates depression. Under normal circumstances I would offer to cheer him up, but today I avoid him.

“All present and accounted for,” Vera reports, descending the staircase. “Can we just get this over with?”

“Getting antsy, Vera?” I ask.

“I don’t like sitting around here, doing nothing.”

I don’t disagree.

Manny suddenly barges in through the back door, tracking mud into the house. He looks wild and windblown — almost like he’s been flying.

“What are you doing out there?” I ask.

“Checking on the horses,” he replies. “They’re settled in fine. Katana’s comfortable.” He jerks his thumb behind his shoulder. “The stable’s just about as fancy as the inside of this mansion. Bloody horses are going to be spoiled rotten by the time we get back.”

“They deserve a little pampering,” I say.

“So do I,” Manny answers.

I chuckle, stationing myself by the front door. The militiamen and women begin trickling downstairs, geared up and ready to go. Derek and Andrew are standing near each other, exchanging words in muffled voices.

“Well,” I say, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice. “This is it. We’ve made it this far. We can make it the rest of the way.”

There’s a murmur of agreement.

“You have your orders,” I continue. “We don’t stop moving. If we play our cards right, we’ll reach the prison today, and we can carry out our plan. Does anybody have any questions?”

Silence. There are a thousand questions to be asked, but in the end, only one thing matters: will we survive? I hope so. For Chris’s sake. For the militia’s sake. A lot is riding on this rescue mission.

To say nothing of the fact that if we do survive, we have to return to Fresno and face the wrath of Colonel Rivera.

“Let’s go,” I say quietly.

Solemnly.

Alexander opens the front door and we step outside together, into the pre-dawn. It’s a dark October morning. Zero-dark-thirty, as Chris would say. It’s cold, and it looks like the past week of fair, sunny weather is no more. The sky is cloudy. I smell rain.

“Commander?” Andrew says, falling into step with me.

We stand and wait as the gate rolls open. I stare at the empty street in front of us. Two expensive, abandoned cars are sitting on the side of the road. Leaves are piled in the gutters. The silence is like a physical weight on my chest. I feel overwhelmed with the forlorn atmosphere of this neighborhood — of this entire city.

“Commander,” Andrew says again.

“Yes?”

“Are you okay?”

I raise an eyebrow. Then I lift one shoulder in a halfhearted shrug.

We move, locking and loading, rolling out in patrol formation, moving from cover to cover in the dull lighting of the early morning hours. Because of the caution we must proceed with, every city block seems to take hours to travel through. In reality, it only takes a few minutes. I’m acutely aware that every building could be hiding an enemy. We all are. Our rescue unit moves through the neighborhood with the silence and prowess of cats. Our presence here should go completely unnoticed — if all goes well.

By the time we reach the urban epicenter of Los Angeles, the classy, abandoned neighborhoods are no more. What remains is the part of Los Angeles that I was more familiar with as a child. The apartment complexes, the liquor stores crammed side by side with beauty parlors and pawnshops. Before the apocalypse, this was a bad area. It’s almost improved with anarchy. There’s not a soul in sight.

There is graffiti on the walls. Shapes and symbols in bright colors. Semper Fi is painted in yellow letters across a billboard for men’s cologne. Weeds are growing through the cracks in the pavement, twisting around rusty cars and dead streetlights.

“Red light,” Uriah mutters, standing at an intersection. The stoplights are bent, hanging at odd angles. A pile of rubble sits in the middle of the street. The back half of a strip of stores has been blown open. By the looks of it, it happened quite a while ago, too.

Wait a second.

I take a few steps closer to the back of the buildings. A deep crater is there. Black, charred, ashy soot is smeared along the remains of the structures. And in the center of the crater is a passenger jet. Or what’s left of it. It’s huge. The cabin alone spans the length of five shops. It looks like something exploded inside, causing the ceiling to rupture. The plane is sitting in two halves — as if it split right down the middle.

“This is one of the planes that went down the night the EMP hit,” I breathe. “I heard them go down. I saw the first one.”

“Nobody walked away from this,” Vera remarks. “They died on impact.”

“How many planes went down that night, do you think?” Uriah asks.

“However many got the brunt of the EMP’s attack,” I answer. “Some planes are protected from that kind of thing, and a lot of them were probably fine. But not all of them. Not enough.”