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“A lynch mob that’s marching children in front of it,” Cooper said. “These aren’t game pieces. They’re kids, and you’re killing them.”

“Not all,” Vogler said. “This is a completely defensive system. I’m a pacifist, sir.”

“Tell that to their parents,” Shannon said.

Erik flinched. “We don’t have a choice.”

“You do. You’re making it, right now.”

“This is a civilian city,” Jakob said. “Just regular people, including thousands of children. This system is all that’s protecting them. The men coming for us are ex–special forces, paramilitary survivalists, and armed killers. None of us are twirling our mustache here. If we drop our defenses, those kids might live. But how many people here will die? How many children?”

“You. Vogler.” Cooper gestured at the animation. “There are three rings up there, and the militia is almost to the second. What does that mean?”

“The system is a directed-energy weapon, generating electromagnetic radiation in the 2.45 gigahertz range, but the effects are modulated by particulate disturbance, humidity, air currents. The first ring represents guaranteed safe distance. The second is the corollary to that, the line at which, no matter the range of conditions—presuming relative norms, of course—the effects will be felt.”

“What are the effects?” Shannon’s voice had a girlish lilt that caught Cooper’s attention. When he glanced over, she didn’t wink, but he could see that she thought about winking, with the tiny resulting muscular motion that entailed. God love her, she was playing them.

“The ring agitates electric dipoles like water and fat, and their motion generates heat.”

“Sort of like a microwave oven?”

“Yes, exactly.” Vogler beamed at her.

“So . . .” She paused theatrically. “It will burn them alive?”

“Well, the advantage of the system is that there is plenty of warning. It’s not like one moment targets are fine and the next they drop dead. The only way it would be fatal is if—”

Cooper said, “Somebody marched you into it with a rifle at your back.”

“In the absence of ideal options,” Erik said, “the only rational choice is the best of the worst.”

“Then why aren’t you watching?”

“What?”

“It’s easy to talk about the greater good,” Cooper said, “when you’re looking at a colored blob crossing a dotted line. But that’s not what’s happening.”

“I . . . I like people. You know I do, that children—”

“Stop playing the saint, Cooper.” Jakob’s tone was sharp. “How many people have you killed? How many have you killed today?”

“Today? Two. And I looked them both in the eyes.” His hands clenched and unclenched. “I’m not a saint, Jakob. Far from. But if you’re going to decide who lives and dies, have the stones to watch.”

Erik took a deep breath. “Computer. Quads one to fifteen, activate, drone and security footage, multiple perspectives, militia approaching Vogler Ring.”

The air shimmered to life. What had been empty space was suddenly filled with people, a mob of them, a horde of humanity. Cooper had heard the number over and over, the headcount of the New Sons of Liberty, but it was one thing to hear the figure and another to see the mass, a crowd that could fill a midsize stadium. At that scale, individual features were lost in a shifting whole, and the dust-coated clothing, coupled with the beards and the dirt and the rifles, compounded the impression that it was a single creature, some thousand-legged insect out of a nightmare.

“Better?” Jakob’s voice was cold. “You see what’s coming for us?”

“The children, Erik.”

Jakob said, “Don’t—” as his brother said, “Computer, group quads, refocus, front ranks.”

The hologram shifted vertiginously, the multiple angles replaced by a single stream of video.

According to the news, there were about six hundred children. A small number when compared to the militia twenty yards behind them, but seen altogether, it was about the same size as the school Todd attended. The youngest were four or five, the oldest in their late teens, the majority somewhere in the middle. They were dressed too lightly for the weather, and fear shone bright from their faces.

“Erik,” Jakob said softly. “No one wants this. We don’t have a choice. It’s a horrible decision, one we’ll have to bear for the rest of our lives, but it’s the right one.”

“The right one?” Cooper couldn’t take his eyes off the screen. Six hundred children. His mind kept wanting to zoom out, to see them as a mass; to counter that, he made himself focus on one. A teenage girl walking a bit forward of the others, her head bowed, hair falling across her face. She was one of the academy kids, he could tell instantly; where others risked defiant glances and might resist when the pain got bad enough, she just walked. Bore up under horror not because she was brave or strong, but because horror was what the world had shown her so far. “It might be the decision that lets you win. But it’s not the right one.”

Shannon said, “They’re crossing the second line.”