"Dosia?" Bishop glanced at his plaque. Still connected. "Dosia. You cut out. What did you say?" Pause. "Can you hear me?"

Nothing.

He checked again. The call window still showed "connected" for another second, then switched to "connecting...". He waited, but nothing happened. Her car wasn't moving, so it's not like she could have entered a dead zone. Sakhr was so obviously behind this, Bishop didn't bother considering alternatives.

He opened an application on his plaque. It allowed him to track the location of all exemplars and their current status. He searched for Dosia.

Her plaque was unresponsive. A message warned that if a signal was not received in another four minutes, her plaque, wherever it was, would destroy its internal glyphs.

Except it wouldn't, would it? Because it was already destroyed—by a jet, a missile, or maybe some orbital weapon Bishop was unaware of. If Sakhr had simply remotely wiped her device, this application wouldn't be trying to ping her plaque as though it should still be reachable. Dosia was dead; he was certain.

Sakhr wasn't bothering to arrest them. He wouldn't take a chance like that. Bishop became hyper aware that he was in an office next to a Madrid Barajas airport lounge. Just outside the door were dozens of people crowding around televisions to see what was happening to their world. Outside that were hundreds, if not thousands of people stranded from home. Would Sakhr bomb an airport just to kill one man? Perhaps instead they were watching the GPS coordinates of his plaque, waiting for him to step outside like Dosia had done.

Bishop looked up the others on his plaque. High Exemplar Stone was also unresponsive, even though his plaque had been functioning when Bishop called him twenty minutes ago. That left only Liat. He called her.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

She answered. "Yes?"

"He's killing us."

"He's what?"

"He's not bothering to arrest us. Where are you right now?"

"I'm on a highway north of Syracuse. What's happening?"

"I was just on the phone with Dosia when we got cut off. Her plaque is unresponsive. So is Stone's."

"But how do—hold on."

"What?" Bishop said.

"Ahh. Just hold on a second. My car is stopping."

"Liat. Get out and run."

"What?"

"Get out! Dosia's car stopped too. There is something headed for you right now. Leave your plaque."

"Bishop. I—"

"Now."

A rustling came over the phone that Bishop hoped was her tossing the plaque aside. A distant beeping indicated that a car door was open when the engine was still engaged. It wasn't fading. Good. That meant Liat left her plaque behind. Carrying those things was so second nature to exemplars that she might have taken it without thinking—

And then the call clicked. He looked. After a second, the call window switched to "connecting...". He checked the exemplar application. Her plaque was listed as unresponsive: four minutes, fifty-two seconds until self termination.

He could only hope that she got far enough away. Now he needed to worry about himself. Should he run? Leave his plaque behind? A lot of people might die if he did that. Tragic, but an acceptable loss in the grand scheme of the empire.

His eyes fell on a microwave oven. In a moment of inspiration, he lunged to it, put his plaque inside, and closed the door.

Would that help? Who knew? Not him. He knew hardly anything about physics, just that microwaves were supposedly Faraday cages that should block radio signals.

At five meters away, a sensor on the plaque should lose connection with a microchip embedded under his collar bone. It would emit a loud beep after ten seconds. If a minute passed without the exemplar coming back into range, it would self-wipe.

No beep came, which mean that signal wasn't cut. The next indicator would come at thirty seconds if the plaque had lost its GPS signal. That would be a good thing, assuming a missile wasn't already locked in.

He really should just get away, except he had one last call he needed to make...