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'Randall is here.'
In a previous life, Mac was pretty sure that she'd been a hamster. When it came to something like this, she didn't have fight or flight instincts. Just flight. She snatched the pendant, thumbing it off, and yanked her jury rigged lap-top out of its moorings. It went into her battered old computer bag and she went out the window, scrambling down the drainpipe with a facility that would have amazed her old PE teacher.
A skinny old woman with a thin, hard face was sitting in the sun, weaving on a ramshackle loom. She gave Mac a hard, unfriendly look. Mac flashed a grin and jerked her thumb up at the window. 'Help yourself, I won't be back.'
She walked away, tugging a crumpled sheet of tinfoil out of her pocket and wrapping it around the pendant. The finished ball was roughly the size of a softball, until she squeezed it down to half the size. It wasn't exactly a faraday cage, but it was the best she could do with what she had.
Hopefully if Randall was looking for her, it would at least slow him down. The thought itched along her nerves like Red Bull.
Mac pulled pink and brown hair back from her face (nature bleached the streaks these days, she just coloured them in) and twisted it into a knot. She should never have listened to Ben Matheson, she thought sourly, working with the government had always been a mistake. Only she'd had a massive geek-crush on him (with her history, that should totally have been her first warning) and somehow he'd managed to make it all sound like a good idea.
Of course, he'd never mentioned plunging the world into a do-over of the Dark Ages. That would have definitely been a sticking point for at least three of them.
It took Mac half an hour and three double-back detours – actually being physically followed was a much bigger worry than it used to be – to reach the River Styx. 15 years ago it had been a down on its luck Irish pub in a bad part of town. These days it was the heart and soul of the California Commonwealth, despite efforts by the more traditionally minded to move to City Hall.
As Mac let herself in Back Up - the fifth of the name - raised her pink-scarred head from her paws. Her cropped ears perked when she saw Mac and she lumbered to her feet.
Five stone of muscle and, Mac braced herself as Back Up attained ramming speed and crashed into her legs with a happy grunt, pure soppiness. The dog flopped down on her feet, belly up and paws wriggling.
It was hard to imagine that before she'd become Back Up she'd been part of a dog-fighting ring. At least the people who'd mistreated her regretted it - or seemed to as they were dumped at Death Valley. President Mars of the Commonwealth had 'opinions' on taking good care of your pets.
'The Press Secretary welcomes you,' Logan drawled, looking up from his maps. 15 years had made a little bit bonier, a little grey and a lot more snarky. 'And will be accepting bribes in the form of liver snaps.'
'I didn't get any,' Mac said, crouching down to thump Backup thoroughly. 'Is Veronica in?'
'Our terrible leader is currently on patrol,' Logan said. He finally took a good look at Mac and frowned. 'What's wrong?'
Mac took a deep breath. 'Randall got Grace,' she said. Logan looked blank for a second and she held up the ball of tinfoil. Her fingers ached from clutching it. 'Shiny, science people of doom.'
Technically, of course, she hadn't been meant to tell anyone – what with the non-disclosure agreements and Ben's last, panicked message that they had to go into hiding. After the lights went out, though, she'd had to tell Veronica. It was one of those 'friends help you move bodies, real friends don't kill you when you are partially responsible (even if only a tiny bit because you designed the coding infrastructure for the pendants, not the world ending electricity eating demons) for ending the world' situations.
Then after the Commonwealth became a thing - and Veronica and Logan reignited THEIR thing – Veronica told him about it. After all the yelling died down, he dealt with it pretty well.
'Why?' That was Logan's first question, but Mac just shrugged helpless. She'd no idea why Randall would make his move now. So he moved on to the second. 'Where.'
'The Monroe Republic,' Mac said with a wince, scratching the nape of her neck.
The Commonwealth didn't have good relations with the Republic, mostly because the last lot of soldiers sent here on 'diplomacy' had committed suicide by raping girls in Neptune. Reports had it that Monroe had been quite pissed to receive a crate of salted heads back.
He should have counted himself lucky – that hadn't been Veronica's first choice body-part.
'Is Randall working with Monroe?' Logan asked.
Mac shook her head. 'He might be working Monroe, but if anyone flicked the switch to do this? My money's on him. Whatever his game is it is bigger than one tinpot dictator.'
Logan pursed his lips. 'Good,' he said. 'The last thing we need is Sebastian Monroe getting his hands on one of those pendants.'