Freedom TM

Laura, and their son, Chris. Of his colleagues and friends who were dead or to whom he was now dead. He recalled all the people he had met who were building new lives on the Daemon’s darknet, and all the people who had perished in its birth—and in its defense. A procession of faces came to him. What was society, after all, but a group of people making up rules. At least on the darknet, it was a large group of people making up the rules instead of a small one.
    Sobol had waited patiently, but when Sebeck met his gaze again, the avatar repeated the question. “Should I destroy the Daemon, Sergeant?”
    Sebeck took a deep breath. Then shook his head. “No.”
    “Let me confirm your answer. Should I destroy the Daemon? Yes or no?”
    “No.”
    There was a flicker in the image, and Sobol looked grimly relieved. He gazed directly at Sebeck again. “You don’t know howmuch I dream for this to be the ending. There are so many ways for it to end. If you’re really there, Sergeant, good luck to you. Good luck to you all. And don’t be afraid of change. It’s the only thing that can save us.”
    Sobol stood, nodded farewell, and walked toward the nearby gardens. In a few moments he vanished into thin air.
    Sebeck sat in the garden for an unknowable time by himself, contemplating what had just occurred. Until finally he received an alert in his HUD display. It was from a network handle he was too afraid to recognize. He read it over and over: Chris_Sebeck
    After bracing himself, he opened the message and read it slowly …
    Dad, I sent you this message triggered to open when you’re ready for it. I know the truth, and can’t wait to see you. Your son, Chris.
    Sebeck felt the tears come forth from him—coming from some place he thought hadn’t existed in his heart. He had a family. He was a father.
    He was going home….

Chapter 40: // Exit Strategy
    It had taken over a century for Sky Ranch to evolve from the ancestral home of a wealthy family into the heavily fortified executive retreat and End-Times bunker complex it ultimately became. However, The Major knew these things didn’t happen overnight. They accrued in layers over decades—and so they had secrets.
    It was
knowing
those secrets that set The Major apart from his colleagues. He planned for the worst, and was seldom disappointed. His brand of “black sky thinking” had kept him alive on more than one occasion when all around him had perished. Even now as he looked through a 1960s-era periscope at the cleaned-out storage rooms beyond his secret hiding place, he realized that, once again, paranoia had prevailed.
    It had been ten days since Sobol’s Daemon had bankrupted the merchant princes of the world. Ten days since thousands of dark-net operatives had scoured the five-star luxury survivalist lodge that was Sky Ranch. They’d cleaned out the warehouses and storerooms, dismantled the weapon systems, and raided the vaults. They’d gone through the floor plans and databases to find everything there was to find.
    But they didn’t see The Major’s Cold War hiding spot on the blueprints. Rumor had it that the room was a tryst location for a philandering banker—built to Cold War bomb shelter standards to mask its true purpose in the books and to muffle loud music. The entrance was concealed to keep out the uninvited.
    True story or not, the place looked a lot like the swinging pad of a midcentury banker—long sofas, bar, pool table, and card tables. It was also musty, covered in dust, and unaccountably cold. But it had kept him alive. Living on canned goods gleaned from the storage room outside before he closed himself in, The Major once more checked the periscope. All was quiet.
    He’d grown a slight beard over the past few days and wore a hooded sweatshirt and jeans pilfered from the nearby laundry. He opened the heavy door and listened. He heard nothing.
    He turned up the hood and poked his head out, looking both ways. There was daylight coming through an open fire-exit door at the corner of the room, wagging in the wind. Trash skittered around the floor with each breeze.
    Disarray. A good sign.
    He shouldered his scoped Masada rifle, then grabbed his day-pack of canned provisions and water in liquor bottles, and took one more precautionary glance before exiting the bomb shelter. He got to the open fire door and peeked through the gap between the hinge and the door.
    It was a cloudy day, but he cursed under his breath as he saw what obviously