Cyril Dyantyi finished reading the morning’s report and smiled. He took a few extra seconds to double-check the basic details in case Rai asked for specifics: multiple confirmed spontaneous awakenings, twelve Phoenix acolytes massacred by some rogue element, police reports of what had to be a Sensitive initiating a hostage situation, confirmed Demigod presence in the continental US.

  All of these details painted a clear picture of the early moments preceding some real conflict. The field was clearly being set not for a quick scuffle, but for a prolonged, protracted war. This was exactly what his employer wanted, and precisely what Dyantyi had been craving.

  He turned off his tablet just as his car arrived at the tarmac. Ms. Rai was waiting with Lennox, the other half of her “security” detail, at the stairway to the private jet they were about to board. She nodded her acknowledgement as he approached, her attention buried in some business on her phone. Dyantyi stepped to her side and leaned over to whisper.

  “Everything’s kicking off ahead of schedule,” Dyantyi said. “We should be free to take the training wheels off, if that’s still what you want.”

  Rai nodded curtly, eyes still glued to her phone. “Fantastic. I was worried I’d spend the whole flight bored to tears.”

  Lennox grunted, which was usually about as articulate as the huge man got, and they ushered their employer onto the jet. They took their places at the door to the plush main cabin, empty but for a few other guards and their own charges, Rai’s co-passengers for the evening. Seated at an ornate in-flight table already set with two courses of dinner was a pair of some of the most powerful men in the Western world.

  On the far end, looking impassively out the window, a forkful of lobster forgotten in his hand, sat John Darrow. He was the scion of one of the country’s most insidious Pentagon dynasties, the acting head of several obscure-yet-dominant 3-letter agencies, and operated at the highest possible clearance in the country’s weapons R&D apparatus.

  On the other side of the table, smirking over his shoulder at Rai as she entered, was Aldo Hatch: SatCom billionaire, tech oligarch to the stars, huge piece of shit. Anyone who knew enough about the man to recognize him would be able to name at least three major controversies surrounding him off of the top of their heads, and Diyanti himself was privy to several that he suspected even Hatch wasn’t aware anyone else knew about.

  Dyantyi felt another surge of excitement. If Rai really was eager to escalate, he was confident he’d get to see Hatch’s smirk wiped off his face, maybe permanently, before the night was over. He made a mental note to remember to make a copy of the video, if his lapel security camera happened to catch the moment on tape.

  “ETA?” Rai whispered as she paused in the entryway, frowning at the table’s one empty seat.

  “We’re all refueled, and I convinced the pilot to step on it. Two hours max before we’re in Minnesotan airspace.”

  “There she is!” Hatch crowed. He popped a shrimp into his mouth. “Making us wait for her on the runway. Really, Rai, I expected more subtlety from you, that move’s so MBA.”

  Rai grumbled. “I’ll try not to fling myself out the emergency exit until then.” Dyantyi chuckled sympathetically and stepped aside, closing the door to the private cabin after Rai stepped through.

  He and Lennox stationed themselves just outside the cabin door and settled in. Dyantyi listened in on the meeting through the near-invisible pocket mic Rai was feeding him audio with. Lennox was listening too, without a bug, somehow. Some sort of Field trick, doubtless.

  Dyantyi wasn’t a Sensitive, but he was firmly a member of the exclusive club of people who knew most of how they worked. He wasn’t quite as knowledgeable as Maldonado, that walking security risk Rai was letting skulk around for some God-forsaken reason, but he knew more than enough to do his job. He’d fought them before, he could step in if it somehow came to it, but that wasn’t his purview anymore.

  Dyantyi was dressed like private security, a look he took to readily, with his combat athlete’s frame and scar-pocked face. Really, though, Rai didn’t need that kind of protection. There were a small handful of people on the planet capable of hurting her, and Dyantyi knew that if any of them were to show their ugly faces unannounced, he’d probably be killed before he even had the chance to panic. Lennox fought for her, sometimes, but mostly as a convenience. From what he’d seen, Lennox was among the nastiest Sensitives on the planet right now, and Rai could flatten him with a thought.

  No, Dyantyi’s real role was R&D. He had a knack for fighting dirty, for toppling titans with cheap tricks and underhanded tactics. He’d cut his teeth in guerrilla warfare, by 35 he’d had a hand in enough coups, high-profile assassinations, and sabotage campaigns to make himself something of an expert in the field of putting sand in a giant’s eye. When he managed to successfully off his first Sensitive (a bitch of a contract; fighting those things without any intel is a crapshoot, and he only pulled it off because he’d been immensely lucky), he tripped into Rai’s radar and got poached.

  Rai loathed to give up a secret, but she’d given him a mostly-uncensored rundown of what was unfolding in Minnesota now, and what her plans for it were. She’d already sent an advance force of Murderers and Mops ahead of them, and by all accounts they’d wasted no time sniffing out other Sensitives to eat up and hide away. It promised to be a bloodbath, one that he’d get a front-row seat for, and he intended to make the most of it. Data on Sensitives in combat situations was frustratingly sparse, even for someone with Rai’s network, and he was hungry to collect more.

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  The meeting droned on, just as dully as Rai had predicted. Hatch filled most of the dead air himself, dancing around any attempt to do the business Rai had loaned her jet out for in favor of gushing about his new Dubai properties, about his football club, about the election he insisted he was helping to buy. He went on a minutes-long tangent about some sort of sex tourism jaunt he’d had in New Delhi years back, obviously in an attempt to get some sort of rise out of Rai. She didn’t take the bait, both because she knew better, and because she’d read the same files Dyantyi had and was aware that Hatch was completely impotent following a botched experimental surgery.

  Darrow, to his credit, kept mostly quiet. He tried to nudge the conversation over to business a few times, trying to secure the Air Force some satellite contract from Hatch’s telecom company, but kept politely quiet every time Hatch swerved onto a tangent or tossed out some vulgar non-sequitur. Dyantyi didn’t know if he felt more respect for this man’s restraint or suspicion at his silence. In his experience, the quieter oligarchs were usually the ones with actual power, the ones with private death squads and the requisite sociopathy to make use of them.

  He reminded himself to relax. It was Rai he was working for, here. The guy could have half of Mossad tucked away in his Loro Piana and he’d pose about as much of a threat as the flight attendant refreshing their mango dip.

  Ninety minutes in, Lennox stiffened.

  “You hear something?” Dyantyi asked.

  Lennox shook his head, brows furrowed, looking more puzzled than worried. “No. Air’s weird.”

  “Air’s weird?” Dynati sniffed. “What, like a gas leak?”

  “Not gas. It’s a Field thing.”

  Dyantyi shrugged. ‘It’s a Field thing’ was Lennox for ‘shut up, normie’ He tuned back into the meeting, cracked the door a fraction to peek in. Rai had straightened, too. She had her eyes closed, her face upturned, like she was basking in a sunbeam. She had a thin, almost imperceptible smile on her face, despite Hatch’s continued rambling about his Q2.

  “We’ve quite nearly arrived,” Rai interjected. “We should get to business.”

  “Yeah?” Hatch said, around a mouthful of wine. “What, you didn’t suggest the rideshare because of my sparkling personality? We’re not carpooling to save the planet?”

  “I want to buy satellite time.”

  “Always about the satellites,” Hatch groaned. “Nobody ever wants to talk about the AR Raybans or the chatbot or the delivery drones.”

  “I need at-will high-res aerial tracking. 24 hour access, overlapping orbits so my eyes aren’t stuck over Kazakhstan when I need to see something going on in the US.”

  “Sounds pretty sinister, lady. Usually when a twisted plutocrat begs me for satellite time they at least try and sling some bullshit about funding a Maps competitor or something. What, tracking an ex? Stalking your celebrity crush from orbit?”

  “M’s expanding operations, and we have key security risks we need keeping a leash on.”

  “Mmm. At least when the feds say that,” Hatch jabbed a thumb toward Darrow, who was back to politely looking out the window, “you can pretend they’re using it to stop 9/11 2.0 or whatever. You know, if I still had a conscience, I’d feel a little queasy about handing some Blackwater wannabe this kinda power.”

  “Well good for you, you’re not handing it over, you’re selling it.”

  Hatch grinned. “Fuckin’ right. Ok, let’s skip the haggling. We’ll pretend you said 300 milly, I act offended, talk you up to 350, you chase me back down to 325, we shake on it, I get back to my shrimp.”

  “I’m prepared to offer 75.”

  Even Darrow had turned to watch now, one eyebrow cocked. Hatch’s grin widened, shocked and amused. “Right. Well, okay, that’s another way to speed things up. Now I can just hit you with a ‘fuck no.’”

  “I’d advise against that.”

  “Well, yeah, in the same way my wife advised against the hookers. It’s not up to you, babe. 75 million is what you pay for your third house, not 24/7 spy satellite priority.”

  “It’s better than nothing.”

  “Sure…” Hatch’s eyes darted across Rai’s placid face, like he was trying to work out the punchline to a joke he wasn’t in on. “But you’re not getting shit for less than 300. Not from me, not from Musk, not from whatever Shenzhen nepo baby you’ve got in your pocket. You have to know that.”

  Rai shrugged, swirled her untouched glass of wine, watched the ripples. “Normally I’d agree. Circumstances are changing in my favor, though. I’ll offer you the 75 million one more time.”

  “Or what?” Hatch leaned across the table, plucked the glass from her hand, snapped his fingers in her face. “Hey, Bollywood. Eyes up here. Or what? What the fuck do you have to threaten me with?”

  “Aldo, hey,” Darrow said. He looked the slightest bit perturbed, as if he could sense what was coming, and was trying to prevent it. Dyantyi felt another blip of admiration for the man: if anything, he had good instincts. “Don’t let her get such a rise out of you-”

  “It is a threat,” Rai said, matter-of-factly. “I’m threatening you.”

  “With what?” Hatch barked a laugh. “Oh, what, blackmail? You got your script kiddies to pull my dick pics from the cloud? Listen, the media already hates my ass, a printout of my search history isn’t changing shit.”

  “No, you’re right, that wouldn’t accomplish much,” Rai began. Dyantyi heard something as she said this, an audible thunk and a whine from somewhere out by the wings. The metal of the plane’s chassis started to rattle and groan. He glanced over to Lennox, who was glancing around almost frantically, beady eyes wide with shock.

  Something was happening to the plane.