But we have pushed Omega back.

For now.

The sky is dark. Mud and rocks slide down the sides of some of the hills, piling across the freeway like manmade blockades.

Still no sign of Chris.

I turn on my heel and head back toward a restaurant set away from the freeway — the Taco House was its former name. Right now we’re just calling it Headquarters. I enter the front door.

The National Guard’s Colonel Rivera is inside, along with his officers. Many of our own militiamen are here, too. Candles inside of lamps illuminate the building. Rain pelts the windows. Rivera, a burly man with powerful, defined features barely glances at me as I step into the room. Angela Wright, a fellow militia commander, straightens up, alert. Her white hair is pulled in a tight bun. Her daughter, Vera, is standing nearby, her platinum blonde locks in a ponytail. We make brief eye contact before she looks away, staring at the maps on the counter.

“Have you sent out another search party?” I ask.

“It’s on its way back,” Angela replies, casting a sideways glance at Rivera. One that he doesn’t return. “We’ll know for certain when they get here.”

I swallow a massive lump in my throat.

It’s taking everything in me to hold myself together.

Everything.

I assess the crowd gathered here.

Derek, Sophia and Vera are accounted for. Angela survived. Rivera is alive. Max and Uriah haven’t returned yet. Jeff is dead.

I’m alive. Barely.

I stare at the smoking cigar Colonel Rivera is nervously chewing on.

“How many of our men defected?” I say.

The word defected makes everyone flinch. Maybe a better word would be betrayal. Because that’s what happened. Our own men turned against us during the battle last night. Turncoats. Spies.

Murderers.

“We don’t have an exact number yet,” Colonel Rivera states, briefly looking at me. “It’s not as bleak as you think.”

“Yes, it is,” I snap, startled at the venom in my voice. “How did this happen? How did that many of our own men turn on us? How long have they been infiltrating our ranks?”

“A long time,” Angela replies, unconsciously tensing. “A very long time.”

“Not that long,” Rivera says.

I glare, animosity simmering in my blood. My affection for Colonel Rivera is at zero. This man once denied the militia backup while we were under heavy fire. It’s safe to say that I’m not his number one fan.

And neither was Chris.

But Chris sucked it up, took charge and worked with him anyway, my conscious says. You should do the same, or you’re going to explode. You’ve got to maintain control, Cassidy.

Right. Control. Me.

I can do this.

“Can I contact the search team via radio?” I ask, moving toward the table.

“We’re radio silent,” Colonel Rivera growls, snapping his gaze up. “No contact.”

“But I need to—”

“—We all need to know.” Angela places a hand on my forearm. A dangerous move, considering the mood I’m in. “But we need to wait. They’ll be here.”

I slowly withdraw my arm and close my fists around the corner of the counter.

Waiting is driving me insane. I can’t wait.

I won’t.

“Good news, folks.” Manny bursts through the front door. His gray hair is hanging in wet strands to his neck, flight goggles and cap tight against his forehead. His coat is dripping, his face is covered in ash and soot. “They’re back,” he says. And this time, he looks right at me.

“They saw them.”

Last year, an EMP destroyed the technological infrastructure of the United States of America. Technology — everything from vehicles to microwave ovens — died in an instant. Long story short, it screwed everything up.

Everything.

The country collapsed, anarchy ensued, people panicked and Omega — a shadow army arisen from the chaos — rolled in and invaded. I was living in Culver City, California at the time of the EMP — also known as an electromagnetic pulse. I barely escaped with my life from Los Angeles. I got separated from my father, and in the process teamed up with a former Navy SEAL named Chris Young. In the last year I’ve been imprisoned in an Omega slave labor camp, joined a militia called the Freedom Fighters, found my father, teamed up with the National Guard to fight Omega and barely survived a devastating betrayal by our own militiamen.

On the bright side, the militia forces and the remnants of the National Guard combined have pushed Omega back towards Los Angeles. On the negative side, we’ve lost a lot of good men and women — including our militia commander and the love of my life, Chris Young.

Not everything is rosy.

We’re stuck in a constant state of war. Despite our best efforts to fight against the threat of Omega — and drive back a five million-man army coming from China — we still have a long way to go. Our communication with the rest of the country is limited, and besides rumors, what’s going down on the east coast is anyone’s guess. Nothing is completely clear, and that adds to our frustration. The enemy we fight is mostly a mystery. Where did they come from? How did they invade so quickly?

We may never have all the answers.

As for me, I watched one of my dearest friends die last night.

Jeff Young, Chris’s younger brother, was shot in the neck. Derek and Sophia survived, but there’s still no sign of Max or Uriah. Alexander Ramos — a gruff Lieutenant and a friend of Chris’s — went MIA before the battle even really began.

So many people have died.

So many bad things have happened.

But we continue to fight, to survive, because none of us are willing to give into Omega. They’ve killed so many innocent people. Wiped out the cities with chemical weapons, nuked the urban epicenters on the east coast, slaughtered the innocent civilians on the west coast in concentration and slave labor camps. They have had no mercy on us, so we cannot afford to have any on them.

It’s fight or die these days.

My father, the Commander of the Mountain Rangers in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, remains with his men to defend the rural and mountain population. Those of us who chose to combine our forces with the National Guard to fight Omega were stationed for some time in Fresno, California, before deploying to the Chokepoint — where we are right now, at the base of the Tehachapi Mountains in southern California.

I am a Lieutenant in the militia, in charge of a platoon of snipers. My Commander is Chris, and my fellow officers are my friends. We are here purely on a volunteer basis, and although Colonel Rivera can give us orders, our loyalty ultimately lies with Chris.

Chris, who may be dead, and without whom I would not be alive.

The man that I will find, whatever the cost.

“What did they see?” I ask.

I am the first one to reach Manny. I clutch his forearm, desperate for good news. He gently squeezes my shoulder, a moment of kindness. Of comfort.

“I’ll let them report,” Manny replies. The door is still open. A wet and bedraggled man walks in, and I recognize him instantly. Uriah. He’s alive! My first instinct is happiness — yet another one of my comrades survived the fight. And then I’m angry. Because the last time I saw Uriah, he was abandoning Max on the battlefield in order to save his own skin.

Uriah is beaten. His uniform is in tatters, he is covered in mud and his eyes are red. His gaze meets mine. A relieved smile touches his lips.

I don’t return the gesture.

“Lieutenant True,” Colonel Rivera says. “Your report?”

He nods, nearly collapsing on the floor. Someone helps him into a chair. He is clearly exhausted and needs medical help. But we need this information now.

“I saw… them,” he pants, chest heaving. “They were… loading trucks… with prisoners of war.”