I reel from the knowledge that the same person who killed Wendy Richards on the steps of the U.S. Capitol tonight killed my girlfriend, Morgan, in a sewer under Georgetown University eight years ago. Whoever it is wants me to know they're still out there, wants me to know they know I'm here now, years after I had left D.C. for good.

They know how to use the Grid to their advantage. They know weapons, including supposedly military-only ammunition. They might even have access to or know how to reprogram military police drones. They were able to manipulate teen gang-bangers almost a decade ago.

And they know me.

It all adds up. It's just that the equation doesn't make any sense.

For the second time tonight, I realize someone is looking at me like I've turned into some kind of simpleton.

"Woolgathering, Jack?" asks Jill. "That was never one of your strong suits."

"Sorry. Listen, let me bounce something off you two, okay?"

They nod their heads and I explain what I've figured out so far. I also tell them about Eowyn310, and what David Wu's busy doing to find her. As I finish, Charlie's eyes get wide, a sure sign she's getting excited about the case and the chance to break it. Jill, on the other hand, looks much more pensive, even angry.

"Damn," she mutters. "And all these years, I just thought it was some random thing; wrong place at the wrong time, and all that. You're telling me this is personal?"

I shake my head. "Maybe, maybe not. It could be that I'm the one that's been in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don't think so, though. I think it is personal. But I don't know that."

"Well, they couldn't have stamped their signature any better for you than by shooting Wendy Richards with an SXT bullet made the day Jill died," says Charlie. "Even if the two of you were in the wrong place back then, the suspect's deliberately chosen you now."

Charlie's right, which is why Jill's next question sends a chill down my spine.

"How could whoever it is have known you'd be the one to investigate the killing?"

"Because OmniEye is set up exactly to investigate things like this," I tell her, "and who better to send out here than someone who's from D.C. and worked on the DCP?"

I shiver again.

"They killed Wendy Richards deliberately. To bring me here. It wasn't about her; it was about getting me back to D.C."

"But why?" asks Charlie. "What's the point now, eight years later? What's happening now that would make this person want you back here? And kill somebody to do it?"

"I think I can answer that."

Victor Long is standing in the doorway, his normally bright teeth hidden behind tight, ebony lips. He steps into the room, finds one of Jill's other stools and sits down. Flipping his arm, he taps a couple of times on wrist pad. He talks as he scans whatever file he's brought up.

"David contacted me about the MPD thing. I was already doing some checking because of the SXT angle. It took awhile, but while he's been chasing that Eowyn chick, I've been roaming the Grid and the streets. Something's changing, and not necessarily for the better."

I'd picked Victor off the 'Frisco streets four years ago. He hadn't been a criminal, not exactly, but he sure knew the criminal element. Maybe that's because his father had been one of the biggest information brokers in the city. Had been. Daddy Long got himself killed the year before, having crossed the wrong person. But having been his father's shadow for so long, Victor knew more about San Francisco crime—and crime in connected cities from New York to Hong Kong—than most people had forgotten. And he was only 28. I knew to trust his instincts.

"What's going on?" I prompt him.

"Military's gaining even more control. Since the Act, they've been in charge of policing the District, but it's been pretty benevolent, even with the MPDs at the Capitol," says Victor. "It looks like they're going to step things up, and I'm not just talking patrols. Word on the street is that they want to mop everything up, make the entire District into giant no-man's land. As if it already weren't."

Looking at the city from the air as we came in tonight, D.C. had looked like Beirut in the 1980s, but even after the '05 bombs, there'd been a sizeable population in D.C., several hundred thousand easily. That had dwindled a bit, to be sure, and a chunk of what was left was probably homeless, but that still left a lot of families that had—to the political machine's way of thinking—benefited from the military's presence here.

"Are you saying D.C.'s going to be turned into one, big, government-military installation? No civilians?" I ask him with a hard stare.

"You're close," answers Victor, his voice hardening. "Just military. In the stuff I've been able to get into, and the way people are muttering out there, the politicos don't factor in."

He turns to Jill.

"Neither do the local police."

"Wait a minute!" Jill's mouth has screwed into the same crooked line Morgan's used to when she was pissed. "Where would we go? Where would the President go?"

I finally get it, and now I'm even more chilled. Leave it to Morgan's kid sister to come up with the answer.

"Let me guess, Vic. The government, the President—they don't know about this, do they?"

Long flashes one of his maddening "I'm the man" smiles. "If they do, they're keeping it even more hush-hush than the Army guys."

The four of us all look at each other, almost afraid to say what we know must be the truth.

Finally, my voice just above a whisper, I announce, "They're staging a coup."

"And they're going to wipe out D.C. to do it," Victor adds just as softly, his voice almost menacing, if I didn't know him better.

As he says it, a beep emits from my wrist. It's David.

"Boss," his voice wanly filling the space between those of us in the room. "I lost her again. Sorry. But I got something else."

"Go ahead."

"I'm lobbing it to you now. It's a file I managed to grab just as Eowyn310 slipped away. It's a list, boss. A list of anyone who's had anything to do with upgrades to the MPDs. There's several thousand names, but I've goosed the ones I think you'll be interested in. Oh, and I cracked the 2020.02 upgrade."

"Yeah?"

"It's more than reprogramming code; it was a physical upgrade as well," Davis says. "Their CPUs have had biosynthetic matter added to them."

"What the hell?" cries Jill.

"Who's that?"

"I'm at the DCP-CSI, David. That's Jill Kelly, their forensic lead."

"Oh, okay. She might be interested in this, then. The additional biomatter essentially adds human-type processing into the mix."

"Human?" asks Jill. "I don't think so. Except for some residual spasms, brains go inert after death; they'd be useless. They must be using lab animals or something."

"I don't think so, ma'am. The DNA profiles and descriptions of the algorithmic processing upgrade seem to indicate actual living human brain tissue."

"Oh, my God," Jill spits. "That means…"

"The Army's already been culling people around D.C.," I finish for her. "Victor, you were right and wrong. They aren't looking to move people out of the city, they want to use them as living brain donors."

"Boss, if you're right, you'll really want to look at that list. Should be there now," says David.

Jill motions for me to plug into a monitor nearby so we can all see it. A moment later, we sort the list to have David's notated entries float to the top. Not surprisingly, a bunch of military brass—some I've heard of, some I haven't—are there, as are some of the top scientists in the country.

The list includes one name in particular that I'm definitely not surprised to see, but am surprised I hadn't thought to connect to this: Theodore Benjamin Franklin, General, U.S. Army.

"Looks like I'm going to have to get that invitation to the White House after all."