Sam was behind the wheel, slumped against the driver’s door, sunken eyes forever staring blearily at the world in that perpetual early-morning haze. “Morning.”

Ed rubbed his burning eyes and twisted around. They were parked in the small lot of a 7-Eleven. His hangover was awful. He tried to remember the night and had the oddest feeling he’d just stepped sideways at the right moment, dodging some speeding eighteen-wheeler.

Ed took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Bits and pieces were coming back to him, especially the icy cloud of dread that settled around his chest, as if a corpse’s hand had fallen on the back of his neck and squeezed.

He hadn’t felt anything like it in a long time. 1968. He’d been sixteen, edging in close to the back of the crowd amassed at the corner of Balbo and Michigan, anxious to see the unrest, curious to see the anger at the government for himself. The closest he’d gotten was State Street, and when the cops arrived on Michigan and uncertainty seeped through the crowd, he’d bolted. The politics of the time weren’t that important to him; the protests took a backseat to trying to get laid.

Later, having no luck with the ladies, he’d taken another hike up into the South Loop.

The streets were so empty it felt like a dream. He could smell the bitterness of something, maybe tear gas, in the air. He and his buddies heard the diesel roar of a bus, and hid behind cars along the curb, laying down in the gutters as it passed. The bus ran without lights, not even headlights. The streetlights gleamed dully off the scratched windows; the inside of the bus was darker than the sewers. It rolled through a red light, and in the wash of the stoplight, Ed could see the silhouettes of twenty or thirty riot cops.

Ed felt his insides clench, and for the first time in his life he’d faced the very real possibility of getting stomped and beaten to death by a squad of licensed white men. The bus kept rolling down Wabash and turned left, toward the lake. As soon as it was out of sight, Ed and the rest of his boys had sprinted west down Roosevelt.

The soldiers last night had given Ed the same feeling.

Last night scared him.

The soldiers last night hadn’t done anything threatening, exactly. But they hadn’t exactly been your typical weekend warriors either. They’d been older, for one thing. They wore a hell of a lot of extra gear for guys who supposedly did this soldiering thing once a month. They seemed awfully prepared for a bunch of gas-station attendants and insurance salesmen.

And why the hell were they at the hospital?

Ed dug his phone out of his sport coat. Checked the number. Carolina. He exhaled slow, knowing this wasn’t going to be good. “Hey, baby.”

Tommy clawed his way into the light. He tried to grab a breath, but something was in the way. He coughed and gagged. Something was blocking his airways; something had been shoved up his nose and down his throat. He went to grab for whatever it was, to rip it away, but he couldn’t move his hands. It felt like he was drowning. Agony ricocheted through his body, and his lungs screamed silently for air.

“Calm down and open your mouth,” a voice commanded.

Tommy’s mouth opened and snapped shut, gasping for air. Whatever was in his nose slid away, leaving a burning path down the back of his throat. Air, sweet air, rushed in, filling his lungs and his blood bubbled with oxygen.

His panic slowly subsided, and the overwhelming light in his eyes swam into focus as a row of buzzing fluorescent bulbs. He blinked, and he jerked his head around, trying to see more, trying to figure out where he was, trying to figure out what had happened. He remembered little beyond riding the elevator with Lee . . . and beyond that, nothing, just a dream of being underwater.

He saw that he was in some kind of hospital room, but he couldn’t move from his position, lying flat on his back on some sort of unyielding bed. He felt straps binding him tightly across his chest, his waist, and his knees. His wrists were also secured. He whipped his head to the side. Some kind of thick plastic covered the walls and maybe the floor, but he couldn’t see from his bed.

“I told you to calm down,” the voice said again.

Tommy whipped his head to the other side.

A gaunt face, covered in a blue surgical mask and small round glasses, loomed over him. “My name is Dr. Reischtal.”

A visibly nervous nurse stood next to him, looking as though she wanted to bolt for the door. She wore a surgical mask as well and rubber gloves over her uniform. Tommy couldn’t tell if she was more afraid of him or the doctor.

Dr. Reischtal unhooked one half of his surgical mask and let it hang from one ear. He said, “We have removed your feeding tube and oxygen. You are perfectly fine and able to speak. So just relax.”

Dr. Reischtal’s tone was anything but relaxing. Still, Tommy tried. He forced himself to slow his breathing, to stop fighting the straps. It took a while.

Dr. Reischtal was impatient. “Do you need a sedative?”

“No. No thanks. Untie me, and I might feel better.”

Dr. Reischtal actually smiled, as if he’d just found small joy in watching an enemy stumble and fall and impale himself on a wrought iron fence. “I have a few small, but important, questions for you, Mr. Krazinsky.”

“Okay. Sure.”

“To begin with, Mr. Krazinsky, you need to understand that you are the possible vector for an infectious disease the likes of which humankind has never seen.”

“Don’t you ‘hey, baby’ me,” Carolina’s voice was loud enough for Sam to hear, loud and clear. “All night, and not a word? I thought we were past all this bullshit.”

Sam gave Ed a nod and stiffly climbed out into the early morning light, giving his partner some space. The sun was hitting the tops of the buildings, lightening the shadows, bringing out the details of the gray and vacant streets. He wondered if his sport coat and shirt smelled and couldn’t remember when he’d last changed his clothes.

Inside the 7-Eleven, Sam nodded at the clerk as he went into the restroom. He locked the door behind him and pulled off his vest. Using the underside of his fist to hit the hot water handle, he held a few towels under the ten-second dribble. He wiped off his face and the back of his neck and tried not look at himself in the mirror.

He thought about the soldiers from last night to distract himself.

Goddamn. Once he’d seen the guns, he’d known damn well they weren’t National Guard. Shit, they weren’t even regular Army. Or Marines, for that matter. They wore National Guard uniforms, but several key items were missing. All rank insignia had been stripped. And no name tags. Instead, they had a series of numbers on their backs, up high, on top of their shoulders, so someone could keep track of them from a helicopter. Or a satellite.

It looked like the uniforms were supposed to simply maintain the illusion of U.S. soldiers, at least from a distance.

The National Guard didn’t carry weapons like this. Sam read all the gun magazines that were left around the police station. Some of the assault rifles the soldiers carried he’d recognized. Others had been modified beyond measure and he could only guess at the caliber, let alone the makes and models of the guns themselves.

These guys were well-financed, well-organized, and professional to the bone. Whoever was now in charge of the hospital had some serious muscle behind them.

And when the closest soldier had said, “Sir, my superiors would like to apologize for their behavior last night,” the hairs on the back of Sam’s neck prickled. Something was seriously wrong. “If you would follow me, I can escort you to my boss, who would like to apologize in person.” The soldier stepped aside, clearing a path to the restricted elevator.