In the After

barrier and tie you to a tree. Then I’ll set off a car alarm just out of your reach.”
    She considered, trying to decide if I was bluffing or not. The thought of making anyone Florae bait was abhorrent, but I could make an exception for Amber.
    “Okay,” she finally said.

    “The first attack was meant to cause panic, make the people here doubt the system.” I explained what Amber had told me as precisely as I could. She’d already been apprehended and taken by the Guardians to a secure location.
    “Terrorists,” Marcus muttered. The meeting room was occupied by several Guardians as well as Rice, my mother, and Dr. Reynolds. There were also a bunch of people I didn’t know. The ones in lab coats were probably researchers who worked with my mother and helped make decisions. The remaining handful were more imposing, and even silent they maintained a commanding presence. Ex-military personnel, I guessed.
    “Amber said that they estimated only a few people would die, not hundreds. When they found out how much damage they did, they realized how unprepared we are for an attack of any kind. They’re planning another sonic emitter outage tonight. They want to push the Floraes toward us, then show up and save the day. Thanks to Amber, they know who the key players are here. They plan to take you all out, leaving New Hope without any leadership or direction. Since they will have saved New Hope and have a lot of firepower, they assume that they can fill the power void.”
    “They want to destroy everything we’ve worked for,” Dr. Reynolds said, his doughy face grim.
    “How many are there?” Gareth asked.
    “Amber said forty-two men, eighteen women, and two Class Four children.” The categorization slipped automatically from my mouth. “And they have a lot of firepower. Guns when they want to make noise and bows when they don’t.”
    “Which emitters are they going to hit?” Kay asked.
    “All of them.” I paused. “Just like last time,” I stressed, letting them come to the realization that I knew the true details of the earlier attack. I knew that the story about only two emitters failing was a lie.
    “They will enter to our south and split up, working their way around us to disable the emitters. A main force will stay put, just south of the farm. That’s where I found Amber today. They plan to push the Floraes in from there. Unfortunately I don’t know if they’ll change their attack strategy now that Amber didn’t leave New Hope to meet up with them. I heard her express her unease with their plan to her brother. If he tells the rest of his gang, they may assume she’s turned on them.”
    “Thank you, Amy,” Dr. Reynolds said, his voice crisp.
    “If you remember anything else, let us know immediately. You can leave now.”
    I swallowed hard. “No.”
    Dr. Reynolds’s eyes narrowed, and next to him my mother’s mouth dropped open. Kay smiled. My mother recovered first. “Excuse me?” she asked as though she hadn’t heard me properly. “What did you just say to Dr. Reynolds?”
    “I’m staying to hear the plan.”
    “Amy, your presence is no longer required.”
    “This is what you have,” I told them. “Twenty Guardians against sixty-two armed thugs. You have synth-suits and technology, but they’re desperate killers who are herding the Floraes back toward us. They let hundreds die without blinking an eye. How are you going to patrol the entire perimeter of New Hope with twenty people?” I asked.
    “Cameras,” Rice said. “Can we set up cameras in time?”
    “We can try,” Gareth offered. “It will take too long to make a run to an electronics store; first we’d have to find one that hasn’t been ransacked. Maybe we can take the cameras from the research buildings and move them to the outer perimeter.”
    “That will alert them to what we know,” I warned.
    Kay stood up. “We need to deal with this now. If we spook them and they run away, we don’t know when they’ll attack again, or who they’ll tell about us. Next time, there could be a hundred armed thugs. We should take most of our people and wait at the place Amber indicated. We’ll catch them before they start to disable the emitters. We can have volunteers, trusted people, at certain strategic locations around the perimeter. They can radio us if anything looks out of place.”
    “I volunteer,” I said immediately.
    “Kay, what’s your opinion on us accepting my underage daughter’s assistance?” my