Freedom TM

gathered everything she saw, and it forgot nothing. That had been her claim to fame in the NSA’s Crypto division, but it was increasingly a cross she had to bear as well. This day and the days leading up to it ran like an IMAX film in her head each night as she tried in vain to sleep.
    Nearby, Merritt’s widow held her daughters close. The eldest child hid her face in her mother’s coat, but the youngest, only four, was looking around at the other adults, trying to figure out what was happening. When their gazes met, even from behind tinted, wraparound medical glasses, Philips felt her own eyes well with tears.
    Philips had failed everyone.
    She couldn’t withstand the little girl’s eyes. Instead she turned away and moved back through the headstones and the mourners, tears coming freely now. Philips wept as she moved among the living and the dead, wondering if her mind was capable of forgetting.
    An honor guard fired three salvoes, startling Philips and provoking recollections of the desperate gunfire at Building Twenty-Nine. She felt panic rising and kept moving through the crowd. People made way for her. Kansas State Troopers in dress uniform, military men and women, local townspeople, children—people whose lives Merritt had touched. Some had traveled thousands of miles to be here. At the memorial service the night before, a hundred people stood up to tell heartwarming stories of Roy’s courage, compassion, and humor.
    She recognized some of these people now as she walked past. A reformed felon. A Pashtun translator from Balochistan who was now on his way to becoming an American citizen. Merritt’s captain from his state police days. A Mexico City banker whose daughter Roy had rescued from kidnappers in a daring raid—and on and on.
    As an agent in the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team, Merritt had traveled the world and always into danger. But he brought the values he’d gained in this small town with him wherever he went. It had taken his death to finally bring him home.
    Philips kept moving through the mourners. A young priest. City officials. A well-dressed woman in sports glasses.
    Philips halted.
Sports glasses.
Her mind never missed details. She recalled the moments just before the attack. Merritt had come to her lab to bring captured Daemon equipment from Sao Paulo, Brazil. He’d brought her sports glasses—glasses that were actually a sophisticated heads-up display (or HUD) able to see into a virtual dimension. An
augmented reality
the Daemon had overlaid on the GPS grid. Sports glasses were the user interface to the Daemon.
    She turned to look back at the woman, who was moving slowly but deliberately through the crowd as though searching for something. Philips turned to follow her but passed another mourner, a middle-aged man in a black suit, wearing similar glasses. The thick posts and unusual design of these glasses could easily be ignored as an annoying new fashion, but they could not be a coincidence. The man glanced at her and kept walking, also seemingly searching for something. Hot fear surged through her.
    Daemon operatives are here.
    Could they really be brazen enough to attend Merritt’s funeral? Her tears stopped. She palmed her L3 SME secure cell phone and marched purposefully through the crowd, putting distance between herself and the operatives. Before she walked ten feet she saw another man wearing HUD glasses. Philips stepped behind a tall headstone and looked for a sheltered place to phone for help. At the edge of the crowd she saw a weatherworn burial vault and headed toward it.
    As she walked, she kept spotting Daemon operatives, moving through the mourners in a skirmish line, still scanning forsomething. There seemed to be no standard profile. They were equally male or female, young to middle-aged. There were dozens of them.
    As Philips stepped behind the granite burial vault, she flipped open her phone—but then realized that she didn’t know who to call. Roy Merritt would have been her first choice. In fact, just about everyone she could think of calling was now dead or missing. There were hundreds of police officers and FBI agents all around her attending the funeral, but they wouldn’t have any idea how dangerous these people were. And what about the innocent people in the crowd? Did she really want to provoke a confrontation? But the operatives were here for a purpose. She had to do something.
    It was then that Philips noticed she had no cell signal. There was