"You're demoting me," I said. I was standing in Moira's new headquarters in the old Chicago courthouse. She took the mayor's office, technically, but it looked distinctly presidential.

Moira sat at her desk, going over papers, hardly looking up. "Technically, you were never promoted. You're still on the Construction Squad. You're just not going to be playing space-cadet any more. You have skills that I want you to use. I don't care if you're a minor celebrity because you look like Neil Armstrong in that suit. You're an engineer, so act like it. I'm putting you on the greenhouse project with Lee. I figured you'd like that," she said. She sounded smug.

"But what about Kaito? What about "We're not alone?" shouldn't we be focusing on -"

"I know we're not alone, Peter. We're not alone because Russia is here. And China. And thirty thousand starving Londoners that would have overrun us if I didn't disarm them. I'm focusing on the enemies I can see, not the ones some insane Japanese pilot tells me are out there."

"They're not enemies - the Londoners. Maybe not even the Russians. They're trying to survive, just like us."

"Exactly. And until we know how to do that, I'd prefer if we were the ones to survive. That's what I'm focusing on," she said.

"But what about Hiroshima? Kaito proves that there is a way to survive in the Void - for fifty thousand people to survive. If we get to Hiroshima, we can learn -"

"Believe me, Peter, I know. I'm on it. You're just not on it. You're working on the greenhouse project with Lee. I gave the Hiroshima Project to Brigg."

"What? Why?" I said.

"Because he's a mechanical engineer, and you're a civil engineer. Be civil. Go engineer. And leave me alone."

I left Moira's office in a sour mood. I had my orders, and I was happy to be working with Lee again, but I had hoped to be doing something more high-profile. Suddenly I was bitterly jealous of Brigg and the expedition to Hiroshima. It seemed to me that Moira wasn't taking Kaito's implication - whatever it was that he was trying to imply - seriously enough.

I weaved through Moira's staff, several of them freshly recruited from London, and out of the center of the United Cities government. Asterly had elected to stay in London, ruling as a kind of figurehead monarch and public figure, but General Eastfield was here. He, too, had been demoted. Moira was keeping the weapons strictly in American hands. Almost all of the former Chicagoan scavengers and manual laborers were promoted to soldiers or guards, and their jobs were taken over by immigrants from London. Likewise, she kept all available food and water under twenty-four-hour armed surveillance. She had a chokehold on London so long as she kept control of Chicago's resources.

I took a bicycle through the city's core and towards the location of Lee's project - long gone were the days of military escorts. I was sweating before I even left the main stack of skyscrapers, and Lee's project was on the very edge of Chicago's bedrock.

I noticed the changes in the city since I'd left for London. Chicago had regained a little vitality with the influx of Londoners. Likewise, the Londoners had gained a little vitality with the influx of food. Moira had quickly recruited the healthiest and most useful Londoners to Chicago, keeping the immigration checkpoint tight at the entrance to the Tube. She promised free and open borders and a fully integrated two-city system once she had ensured stability. Anyone with a brain knew that "stability" only referred to the stability of her control over London. She kept the initial 3,000 women and children under armed surveillance, "for their protection." But so far London had been too distracted by the food to notice - or care - that Moira was seizing power.

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Lee's project site was a hive of busily working people, Londoners and Chicagoans alike. It loomed over a space that used to be Lincoln Park. It was the beginning of a gargantuan greenhouse, propped up by scaffolding, almost the size of a football stadium. It was only a start, but the scale of the project - with the limited fuel and technology we had - seemed baffling. She was trying to turn all of Lincoln Park into one giant greenhouse, and use it to produce the City's food.

"Peter!" Lee called. She ran towards me, throwing her arms around my neck. "You made it! I thought Moira was going to grill you for hours about what happened in London."

I shrugged. "I'm sure the spies she sent over have already filled her in. What did I miss?"

Lee smiled, then grabbed my hand and led me through the construction site.

"So as you probably guessed, we're working on food production. That's Moira's next big concern. We're operating here, Millenium Park, Garfield Park, and also in Soldier Field. Eventually, we're going to turn the whole stadium into an enormous greenhouse farm, and all of the bleachers will be terraced gardens. We're harvesting the glass from skyscrapers and retrofitting them into metal and wood frameworks. There's not a whole lot we can do quickly right now because our access to fuel is pretty tight - but Moira says fuel won't matter if we starve."

"Well, at least she's right about that. But do we know this will work? Have we figured out sunlight? And water retention?"

Lee frowned. "No. We're working on it. But obviously there's some light. Like, we can see each other right now. There isn't a lot of it, and there's no day or night here, but there's something giving us light - a star, I don't know - and I'd bet we can get agriculture up and running. The Japanese must have done it, right?"

Lee led me to a fully finished greenhouse structure that I already recognized - it was the Lincoln Park Conservatory, a forest encased in glass. I'd completely forgotten about it.

"No way - is everything in there still alive?" I asked.

Lee led me through the front doors. Other staff, botanists or biologists or avid gardeners, filed in and out of the huge atrium. I was shocked at how warm and humid it was inside; I'd already gotten acclimated to the cold, dry air of the Void.

Plants surged around me, more than I'd seen in weeks. Some were still clinging to life, while others were brown and dead, much like the plants outside. But in the undergrowth, certain plants were thriving. Hardier ferns and mushrooms and tubers.

"This is ground zero. Life can grow anywhere. Hell, there are plants in Antarctica. It's just a matter of choosing the right ones. Our scavengers are bringing everything that might have a seed to us, and we're working on growing anything we can. Potatoes and mushrooms are doing the best so far, as well as some micro-greens like alfalfa. Those will keep us alive, but the real win is if we somehow scale up to include livestock. We have horses, for example, and some animals left at the zoo -"

"Wait, wait," I said, "Zoo animals? We're going to eat zoo animals? How did they even survive the last few weeks?"

Lee smiled. "That's what I said. I thought we were going to have to clean up a bunch of dead exotic animals from their cages. As it turns out, one of the Zookeepers, Mina, refused to leave the animals to die when she got the bomb warning. She's old, so she said she was ready to go. She's a bit... passionate, about the animals, so there's no way we're going to use them for food - yet. But she's running out of animal feed - she was eating it too, to survive-" Lee made a face - "so she's doing everything she can to help us. Think of it, Peter, if we get these greenhouses up and running, and we keep these animals alive long enough to create a few breeding populations... we could make our own ecosystem here. We could last here indefinitely. I know it sounds crazy, but for the first time in weeks I'm thinking past what we're going to eat tomorrow and thinking about what it would mean to survive - no, live, - here long term. Have kids. I don't know. Get back to something like normalcy."

I stared at her, and before I knew what I was doing I put my hand on her shoulder. "If anyone can do it, it's you, Lee." She smiled. In the amplified light of the greenhouse, she looked beautiful, almost free from the constant gray of the Void. And then that light dimmed, darkened, and almost vanished.

Screams sounded from outside. Lee's face dropped, and we both looked up. Through the glass of the greenhouse, we could see what was casting its shadow over Chicago: a huge mass of bedrock.

Another city had appeared. Right on top of us.