The Commune

University at Grainge security guard Lewis Brodell picked up another leaflet and scowled. He was finding a lot of these around the university campus tonight.

Lewis made his way from one brightly illuminated spot to another. It was a little after 1:00 a.m., and the February night was so bitter cold that even the students were tucked up in their beds, keeping warm and dreaming of something less dismal than this night, this dead-end patch of earth, this endless Oregon winter.

Another scattering of leaflets caught his eye. They were strewn carelessly around a small island of benches and tables. Sighing, Lewis bend down and snatched them up one after the next with quick fingers.

Then he spotted a human figure beneath another source of light, against the brick of a building. Next to a bike rack, Lewis noted. Was he trying to steal a bicycle? No - he had more leaflets in his hand. He was clumsily trying to fold and secure leaflets to the handle bars of the bicycles.

Lewis strode over angrily. The man paused, looking up and regarding Lewis with an irritated expression. So this was the guy: Stocky, bare-headed and bald, facial features that were large, crudely formed, and rubbery. He would have been ugly except for his eyes, which shone a preternatural blue and gave him a striking appearance.

Not that Lewis was going to be taken in by those big blue eyes. He was far too aggravated.

"You better have some ID that shows you're a student here, or else I'm arresting you for trespass," he said. "And if you do have ID, I'm still writing up a report. I've read your leaflets. And I am pretty sure they violate the school's policies."

"Just exercising my religious rights and free speech, officer," the bald man retorted.

"ID," Lewis said.

"Or else what?" the bald man asked.

Lewis whipped his left wrist up to chin level. His walkie activated automatically. "Got an unauthorized person right next to the pottery studio," Lewis said to his sleeve.

"Be right there," a voice responded. It sounded like Leish. Good - Leish was burly and fast. The bald guy looked like he might be pretty powerful, but Leish could handle him easily enough if it came to that. And Lewis was a runner; he and Leish could chase the guy down if he took to his heels.

Not that the intruder looked skittish. He was watching Lewis as though amused, without the slightest hint of anxiety. "Calling in backup?" he scoffed. "For little old me?"

"I asked you for some ID," Lewis said. "You can show me, or you can show the city cops. They'll be out here before too long."

"Hey, Lewis," Leish said, running up. "What ya got?"

Lewis started to point, but before he could say anything the bald guy charged. Lewis twisted reflexively so that his gun holster was away from the bald man as he crashed into Lewis. Judging from the way he was reaching for Lewis' belt, the gun was exactly what he intended to go after.

Lewis got hold of the bald man's coat, gathering up swatches of material in his hands. The bald man shouldered him, trying to fling him off.

"Leish," Lewis barked.

"Right there!" Leish shouted. Both Lewis and the bald man paused for a moment and shot a look at him. Leish had pulled his gun and was aiming it at the bald man.

Lewis shoved the bald man away and stepped back. "For all the good grabbing my gun would do, you moron," he said. The university police were all equipped with user-enabled weapons. No one other than the authorized user could fire them.

"I don't need to shoot you, muddie," the bald man said. "I was just trying to be sure you didn't shoot my Northern European ass." Then, without telegraphing his intent, the bald man was charging Leish. He was shockingly fast on his feet, but Leish was paying attention and he didn't hesitate. He fired three times, and the bald man went down.

The two campus police officers looked at each other in shock, then looked back at the bald man. He lay face down on the yellow grass and patchy ice and snow. He didn't move - he didn't even seem to be breathing.

"Jesus Christ," Lewis said, kneeling beside the bald man. "I think you killed him." Lewis reached to turn the man over but hesitated. The bald man looked different somehow - for one thing, he suddenly had hair. Lewis turned his hand torch onto the formerly bald man as Leish held his pose, gun at the ready. Thick brown hair shone in the torch's beam. It had a glossy look - like the hair of a young person.

Lewis grabbed the man and rolled him over. His face, too, was different; the bald man's obviously middle-aged, rubbery features had transformed into a well-defined, youthful visage.

"What the actual hell?" Lewis heard Leish say.

Lewis pried the man's eye open, fumbling with his hand torch. He shined the light into the man's face, and took note of the fact that the eye was no longer a brilliant blue. Now it was hazel. The pupil did not dilate under the torch's light.

"He's dead, all right," Lewis said.

"Yeah? But - who is he?" Leish asked. "That is not the guy I shot."

Lewis, staring down at the body, had no answers. He shook his head slowly, stunned.

From beneath a small copse of trees a trio of figures watched the two university policemen. Then they glanced at one another with silent accord. They moved as one, walking away from their fallen comrade without hesitation or a backward look. Their faces were as identical as their actions: They were three bald men with pale skin, outsized features on weather-worn faces, and unearthly blue eyes that seemed to glow even in the shadows to which they clung.

***

"What am I looking for?" FBI Special Agent Henry Darrow asked, his eyes flitting from paragraph to paragraph. He saw the pieces of a puzzle, but not the pattern. Looking up from the Q-Slate he fixed his gaze on that of his former partner, Jillian DeGuerve.

Jillian was with HomeSec now. Since working together on a serial killer case in San Francisco the year before, they had collaborated a few times - nothing as exciting as tracking down a perp that was either a homicidal arsonist or a supernatural entity with a flair for fire-related vengeance, depending on whose report you read, but the cases had bolstered a sense of inter-agency camaraderie and, on a personal level, allowed the two former partners to reconnect.

Jillian was perched on Darrow's desk, somehow looking relaxed and comfortable in a dark-grey pencil skirt that didn't seem like it could possible allow her that much freedom of movement. A file folder lay splayed open in front of her, pages and photos in a loose, sloppy stack. "You see that the MO is the same in each case?"

"Yes," Darrow said. "Five victims. All of them living in Kamisach, Idaho."

"A hotbed of right-wing survivalist evangelism," Jillian said. "And some cases just across the border in Oregon and Washington that seem like they might be related."

"Lesson one when working on bizarre cases like these," Darrow said. "And I've learned this the hard way: We should be careful about confirmation bias. So they're white nationalists, but that in itself isn't enough. What if they were anti-vaxxers? Or home schoolers? Would we assume that a similar rash of killers originating from one of those other settings smacked of some sort of organized conspiracy?"

"No, we wouldn't, but we'd remain open to the possibility. And I didn't say anything about a conspiracy in my pre-investigative report," Jillian retorted. "I said the perpetrators in each of these cases demonstrated organizational similarities indistinguishable from identical means and methods."

Darrow rolled his eyes.

"Look," Jillian said, leaning forward, peering at the text on his Q-Slate - upside-down, from her perspective - and tapping a varnished nail on the screen. "Here. This line."

Darrow read aloud: " 'The execution-style murders and exactly corresponding genital mutilation observed in each case argues strongly for a single perpetrator.' But," he added, looking up, "the report also says that three perps were identified - "

"Three suspects," Jillian interrupted.

" - and two of them died in shootouts with law enforcement," Darrow concluded, not letting himself be sidetracked. "So either two of the three men in question - or all three, more likely - were fall guys who took the blame while the real killer went free, or else they were all given extremely scrupulous training in the fine art of filleting one's political and social adversaries."

"Speaking of whom," Jillian said, leaning over the Q-Slate once again and swiping to a new page - a dossier on the first victim, a man named Darryl Borsch.

Darrow obligingly read out Borsch's details. He had been 41, a registered Democrat, a software engineer who worked remotely from what amounted to a log cabin in the woods. "Off the grid, solar power, had his own well," Darrow said, looking up again. "Politics aside, Borsch lived pretty much like his less tolerant neighbors."

"Except for the fact that he was African-American," Jillian interjected.

"You think that was a motive for his murder?" Darrow asked. "There's nothing in the report about that. From what I've read so far, it seems like the only thing the victims had in common were social media critiques of - what the hell was the name of that hate group -- "

"TriX," Jillian said.

Darrow's glance registered increasing skepticism.

"Or Tri-Ex, or Thrix, or X-to-3," Jillian added. "They picked up various nicknames from both supporters and detractors, and their response was to claim all those nicknames and take pride in them. Officially, their name is the Xounter Xuck Xlan, spelled with Xs instead of Cs."

"Or Ks," Darrow responded.

"Yes, well, they may claim to be fellow travelers of the KKK, but that illustrious group has been trying to go more mainstream in recent years and the rumors surrounding the TriX - cyber-crime, identity theft, intimidation tactics - don't exactly play well," Jillian said.

"Or maybe they just wanted to signal their interest in graphic video games and adult movies," Darrow said. "Did you know online porn sales to rural areas exceed those to urban areas by a factor of three?"

Jillian refused to get sidetracked. "Look," she said. "The first perp, Henry Clayton. He was 21, right handed, had a sixth-grade education and some involvement, we think, with a meth lab. No military training, no medical expertise - though it seems he was something of a hunter. And yet, if he was acting alone, he did a stellar job on a number of fronts: Hacking Borsch's computer, then hacking into the state police mainframe to plant a fake warrant against Borsch. Then doing a similar hack into county and bank records to create a nonexistent lien against Borsch's property. And Borsch, remember, was software engineer. The kid had to have some skills, but nothing in his resume here suggests that he ever actually acquired those skills."

"True," Darrow agreed. "Let alone the proficiency in other areas he must have possessed. He did a sophisticated job of bypassing Borsch's home security system, and then coming back two weeks later to track and murder him in the forest when Borsch turned out not to be home on the night his killing was originally supposed to take place."

"He was staying over with his lover in Boise for a few nights that week," Jillian said.

"So you think this kid killed him for being gay and black?"

"That was the first thought the investigating officers had," Jillian said. "Especially given the genital mutilation. Tire tracks at Borsch's property matched Clayton's vehicle, and Clayton had no alibi for the night of the killing. Plus, three witnesses say they spotted him at a gas station wearing bloodied clothing at about 11:00 that night - after the killing took place at about 9."

"Yeah, I read all that," Darrow said.

"My point is, it takes time and surgical skill to do the sort of cutting he did on Borsch," Jillian said. "And the amount of blood on his clothing suggests he performed the mutilation while the victim was still alive, which adds a while new layer of expertise onto the crime. This was not the work of some poorly educated hothead pissed off because of things Borsch wrote about TriX on his FacePalm page."

"And the other four victims suffered similar meticulously done mutilation, so you figure the kid must have had an accomplice who rode along with the other two perps as they did their crimes. Maybe he even orchestrated the targeting and executions of all the victims," Darrow said.

"No," Jillian said. "See, that's what you're thinking. Why wouldn't you? It makes the most sense. But it doesn't track. We don't know for sure who killed the second and third victims, Danielle Shepperton and Alix Gomez - her for being a lesbian, we suspect, and him for being Latinx. But we have a suspect. We're pretty sure it was the second perp they identified, Leon Martell, age 26. Leon was in the Army, but he didn't have any medical training. Left-handed. Discharged when an IED took off two fingers from his left hand and peppered is legs with shrapnel. But that didn't seem to slow him down when it came to carrying out the same sort of highly skilled cutting on his victim's tender parts. He was a hunter, yes, but hunters don't usually have the kind of detailed anatomical knowledge Leon seemed to possess - though he did seem to have to go about it slowly. He was caught cutting up 16-year-old Dwayne Richards, a student at the local high school. Martel was still sawing away at Richards when a group of hunters happened onto the scene. And Richards was still alive."

"And the hunters actually helped... the victim, I mean?" Darrow said.

Jillian frowned at him. "Now who's falling prey to confirmation bias and prejudicial thinking? Though," she added, "the fact that the victim was a teenaged boy was probably a big factor in their intervention. The hunters told law enforcement they thought Martel was some kind of pedophile, and they might have shot him even if he hadn't jumped up and charged them with his knife."

"I'm just wondering if they would have responded differently if they knew that Dwayne Richards was a self-described social justice warrior and had a habit of wearing black trench coats with his fingernails painted to match," Darrow said, his eyes flickering over the victim's details.

His comment was wry but her response was serious: "In fact, one of them did say something to the effect that if they'd known who the victim was, they would probably have just kept walking. As it was, their help was so medically inept the kid died of shock during the two hours it took them to get him to a hospital. But there's something else: Both hunters said that after they killed him, Martel's appearance changed."

"Changed how?" Darrow asked.

Jillian held up one of the photos of Martel from the coroner's report. Martel had short black hair. He was corpse white in the photo, but then Jillian held up a photo of the living Martel. He had ruddy cheeks and dark eyes.

"He looks like an all American kid to me," Darrow mused.

"But when the hunters happened upon him cutting away on Richards, the man they described seeing was middle aged. And bald." Jillian raised her eyebrows as if that proved something.

"So they saw him in bad light," Darrow said. "Or they remembered things differently after a burst of adrenaline hit their systems."

"I thought that, too, until I read a police report from Grainge, Oregon. From the University at Grainge, actually. Two university cops took out a guy who was leafleting on the campus late at night. They described a stocky bald man, middle aged, with bright blue eyes."

"Well, we all hate a litterbug."

Jillian just looked at Darrow, refusing to reward him with a smile. He sat back with an unhappy sigh. Jillian knew him well enough to see that his barrage of jokes was his way of dealing with the grotesque nature of the crimes. She hesitated, then pressed on. "It's the third perp that really clinches it - for me, at least," she said. "Nineteen-year-old Avery Duse. Until about eight months ago he was thought to be autistic, his responses to the outside world ranging from violent outbursts of panic and rage to passivity bordering on near-catatonia. And yet, somehow, he tracked the fourth victim, Angelo Jourian, as Mr. Journian was on a twenty-mile hike one fine Sunday. At some point, Mr. Duse launched his attack against Mr. Jourian, bringing him down, disabling him, and mutilating him with the same surgical finesse as the rest of the victims, and then finishing him off with three shots to the head, in the same manner as the execution of the first few victims. Only, that's where his ability to navigate the wider world suddenly deserted him. Once the crime was done, Mr. Duse seems to have reverted to his usual state. They only found the victim because Search and Rescue had been called to find Mr. Duse, and he was still sitting next to the body of Mr. Jourian when rescuers located him."

" 'Reverted?' You think he was another sighting of the bald man?"

"He reverted psychologically, if not physically. There's no way he could have tracked Jourian, brought him down, and then perpetrated a crime of this nature."

"It makes more sense that someone took him from the hospital, then herded him into the woods and staged the killing," Darrow protested.

"Why? To frame Duse? Someone who clearly could not have performed the kind of cutting that was done?"

"Clearly, someone else is involved," Darrow said. "Someone who could have orchestrated all of the killings. Maybe this vanishing bald man. Maybe people are seeing him and then getting him confused with his accomplices."

"Things like that do happen. Witnesses conflate details, forget major parts of their experiences, and even exhibit false recollections of things they seem to have invented without realizing they've done it," Jillian said. "But the stories are consistent between these two incidents. A bald man is seen doing something illegal; he's approached; he initiates an attack; he's killed. And only then does this other person turn up, and he turns up as the corpse. Meantime, the bald man disappears."

"Do you have any individual suspects?" Darrow asked her. "Or do you mean to interrogate the entire membership of TriX, assuming we can identify them?"

Jillian sighed, "That is a problem, I admit." She took the Q-Slate from Darrow, tapped at it, and then handed the tablet device back to him. Dozens of thumbnail photos filled the screen. Then dozens more, as the document autoscrolled to the bottom.

"Pick a racist, any racist," Jillian invited.

There were a few stocky bald guys in the mix. "Any of these seem likely, based on the descriptions we've gotten or other factors - medical training, military survival skills?"

"No one especially compelling," Jillian said.

"I don't know what to think," Darrow told her with a shrug.

"You're thinking it's some sort of telepathic puppet master," Jillian said. "Someone using the power of his mind to guide the actions of others, to repeat actions exactly from one victim to the next. Someone who wouldn't actually be there - physically present - but whose mentality nonetheless somehow possesses the people he inhabits. And when others see him, they see who he really is - until they kill the body he's taken over, and then they see the possessed person as they actually are."

"What? Why would I be thinking that?" Darrow asked.

"Because we're usually on the same wavelength, and that's what I'm thinking," Jillian said. Then she added, "What's your wavelength telling you now?"

"That you've arranged transportation for both of us to Kamisach, Idaho,"

Jillian beamed at him. "See how well we work together?"

***

Their work in Kamisach was slow, hampered by the fact that most of the locals didn't want to talk to the two government agents. Another roadblock in their investigation was the fact that the locals they most wanted to interview - the members of TriX - lived on a compound located at the end of a long, rough set of ruts that ran for miles beyond a large NO TRESPASSING sign. More signs cropped up along the slow, bumpy ride. One of them read FEDS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT. Another showed a human silhouette framed by riflescope markings. THIS IS HOW I SEE YOU NOW, the text above the figure read. Below, the text added: YOU WON'T SEE ME AT ALL.

Darrow looked over at Jillian nervously.

"Don't worry, I have a warrant," she said.

"And I'm armed," he replied. "But you're the one I'm worried for."

"Save it," she told him. "Sexist pig."

A final sign greeted them about then. TURN BACK NOW, it read.

They didn't turn back. Instead, they rounded a curve and then rolled to a stop in front of a bulky looking gate.

Behind the gate were about a dozen men, all of them aiming firearms of various descriptions at the two federal agents.

Jillian shot Darrow a bemused look, then opened the door. "I'm getting out of the vehicle," she called, sliding from behind the wheel and stepping onto the ground.

"You better stay in the vehicle and then get the goddamn vehicle off the goddamn property," an older man shouted at her. He looked to be in his sixties, his face creased with lines that cut deep hatchmarks into his cheeks. An equally thin white scar ran past one eye and down the side of his jaw. His neck was leathery but well defined - no wattle there, despite his age, which Jillian pegged at about 60. His forehead was high, and more lines cut across it under his receding silver hair. Most striking were the furrows of the lines that creased angrily between his eyes - blue eyes, Jillian noticed. But the man wasn't exactly stocky, and though his white hair was sparse, sticking up like pale straw from the crown of his head, he'd never be mistaken for bald.

Jillian edged around the car's open door and held her arms up in a gesture of surrender. "We only want to ask you a few questions," she said. Darrow, his arms also raised, stood on the other side of the vehicle. He hoped they made for a show of unflinching solidarity, Even if they did, he doubted the armed group would be impressed.

"The one answer you're gonna get is that one I already give ya," the older man stormed. There was a hot, hateful gleam in his eyes. Darrow wondered if he ever spoke in anything less than a full-on shout. His eyes flicked toward Darrow, who felt a chill from the intense anger they radiated.

"You tell her, Deke!" a young man sporting a cowboy hat encouraged the cantankerous older fellow. The gun-toting crowd laughed.

"Several people have been killed who posted derogatory comments about your group on social media," Jillian said calmly. "Doesn't that concern you?"

"You mean them liberals?" the older man asked - not shouting, but still with loud forcefulness. "That black guy? Them other intruders?"

"In all cases, threatening messages were posted in reply to their social media pages," Jillian continued.

That, Darrow knew, was true.

"Forensic analysis shows that the threatening messages came from an IP address registered to... well, to you," Jillian continued. "To TriX."

This, Darrow know, was not true. Or if it was, it was a detail she'd not shared earlier. He wondered whether the Bureau, struggling with cutbacks that seemed aimed right at its operational capacities, could have performed the kind of forensic analysis she was referring to. Given the computer capabilities of whoever they were looking for, such analysis would have been time consuming, or expensive, or both.

But Jillian was with HomeSec now, and common wisdom had it that HomeSec had virtually unlimited resources. Of course, it was also under the direct authority of the President - while the Bureau had managed, presidents like Nixon, Trump, and Kirsch notwithstanding, to maintain its autonomy from the executive branch.

The older man, though, seemed to doubt Jillian's claim. "An IP address, eh?" he asked, with a short, barking laugh. Then he was all business again - and all shouts: "I won't tell you one more goddamn time: Get the hell off the property!"

"Sir, we have a warrant," Jillian said.

"So you got a piece 'a' paper?" the young man with the cowboy hat piped up. He held a shotgun - probably for show. Most of the others were aiming military-style weapons at them: AR-15s. Old fashioned, but reliable. The young man proved the theatrical value of his shotgun by cocking it loudly and doing so with a flourish.

Jillian and Darrow traded a glance.

"Whether it's us or someone else, you'll getting more visitors," Jillian said. "And they might be just as heavily armed as you are, if not more so. Is it really worth the trouble?"

The older man didn't even shout. Surrounded by the others, he simply grinned - a slight, malicious grin that underscored the hatred in his eyes. His gaze seemed to glow. He clearly relished the sight of two federal agents backing off.

Without another word, Jillian and Darrow slid into the car. Jillian put the vehicle in reverse and then, slowly, backed away. She retraced the car's path around the curve until she reached a good spot to reposition the car. Heading forward once more, the two agents bounced their way slowly back to the highway in silence.

***

The sheriff flat out refused to help. "Three perpetrators have been identified," he said. "Two of them are dead, and the third is back in the bughouse where he belongs."

"I'd like to know just how the TriX fits into all this," Jillian told him.

"Well, the first two guys were active members," the sheriff said.

"And what about the guy who wasn't a member? Mr. Duse?"

"Who knows? Saw one of their leaflets maybe," the sheriff said.

"Mr. Duse is institutionalized," Jillian pointed out levelly. "And in any case, he's illiterate."

"I don't know you have to insult his parentage," the sheriff said, sounding offended.

Jillian sighed - the first time on this case Darrow had seen her show any impatience.

"We've heard about leaflets distributed in communities just over the state line," Darrow said. "Leaflets from Tri-X."

"Could be," the sheriff shrugged. "They do have leaflets. I've seen 'em."

"What do they actually say?" Darrow asked. "Could they be construed as hate speech? Incitement?"

"The leaflets don't say hurt no one," the sheriff told him. "They just outline a religious perspective, I guess you could call it, and that's their right. I couldn't do anything to stop them if I wanted to."

"But of course you don't want to," Darrow said, his voice cold with disdain.

The sheriff turned an icy look right back on him. "No, I ain't want to. This is still America. A man's got a right to say what's on his mind."

That had been the day's most meaningful exchange. Hours later, the two government agents sat at a coffee shop just down the block from the sheriff's office. Jillian needed a caffeine boost; Darrow thought maybe he could spot one of the TriX leaflets somewhere around town, and the coffee shop seemed as good a place as any to look for one.

"Nope," Darrow said, returning to the table after taking a circuitous route to the men's room and back, looking for a community bulletin board along the way or anything resembling leaflets among the magazines and newspapers stacked on low coffee tables positioned here and there among the chairs, tables, and couches. The coffee shop was a funky sort of place; it looked more like it belonged in Boulder than in a town full of apocalypse watchers.

Jillian had her laptop on the table and seemed engrossed.

"What is that you have there?" Darrow asked.

"This is a TED talk from a couple years ago," Jillian said.

"A TED talk?" Darrow asked, leaning in to see the screen.

"This is Dr. Amelia Emerald," Jillian said. "She's talking about a phenomenon she calls 'extreme agreement.' When ordinary people do things they would never normally do - when a mob mentality takes over, for example, and a group will riot, kill, defy government troops at rallies."

"That's nothing new," Darrow said. "Elias Canetti wrote a book or two about it more than a hundred years ago. Ever heard of 'Crowds and Power?' "

"Except, Dr. Emerald believes there's something more than a hardwired default in the brain that causes individuals to go along with a group, especially when widespread actions are undertaken spontaneously and more or less simultaneously in widely separated locales - cities that could be thousands of miles apart. Like the demonstrations against President Kirsch last year."

"This robo-mind you were talking about?" Darrow asked.

"Remote mentality," Jillian said. "Not 'robo-mind.' Whatever the hell that is."

"Whatever the hell 'remote mentality' might be," Darrow countered.

"And no, I don't know that a directly controlling mental projection is really needed to explain most cases of spontaneous civil unrest. Most such unrest isn't really spontaneous at all. A group that knows how to manipulate people en masse could spend years, or even decades, planting seeds and shaping the Zeitgeist. Let me show you something else..."

Jillian tapped again at the laptop's touch-sensitive interface. The bottom screen switched from keyboard configuration to a half-dozen small windows, each one presenting a different video. Jillian chose one video and it migrated to the upper screen, while the lower screen reverted to the keyboard setting.

A woman with long dark hair appeared. She leaned toward the camera and started talking about protestors and political rallies. Darrow didn't really listen to her words, distracted by the parade of images that replaced her face: Burning cars, fighting in the streets, military men beating young people wearing masks and sweatshirts. But he got the sense of what she was saying.

"What is this?" he asked. "That protest against Kirsch you mentioned?"

"No," Jillian said. "A precedent for it, though - civil unrest following the 2016 elections."

"What happened in 2016?" Darrow asked.

Jillian cocked an eyebrow at him. "Donald Trump?"

"I'm not really a student of political history," Darrow said defensively.

"If I said 1939, you wouldn't know why that year was significant either?"

"Um..." Darrow looked at her blankly.

"Never mind," Jillian said. "The point is, I'm talking about how radical ideology spreads through a group or a community as though infectious." She turned back to her laptop, where the video had come to an end. "This was an ad that was run on television and online by an advocacy group for gun rights."

"So?"

"So, did you notice they don't even mention guns?" Jillian asked. "They show a series of violent images and make insinuations about who's responsible for the violence, and what it means. Then they conclude with a vague and frankly threatening slogan." She jumped the video back to a few seconds from the end. The dark-haired woman's voice intoned, "The hammer of truth will secure our future."

"You don't have to be a dog to hear that whistle," Jillian said.

"I still don't get it," Darrow said.

"Less than three years later, America very nearly plunged into a civil war. People on the extreme political right had been stockpiling weapons and ammunitions for decades, which gave the manufacturers of those weapons an incentive to liberalize gun laws. You do recall that the first twenty years of the century were marked by escalating gun violence?"

"Yes, but all that stopped when - "

"When an extremely right-wing administration imposed gun regulations and started rounding up so-called 'destabilizing elements' and locking them up in internment camps like the ones outside of Decatur and Fresno," Jillian broke in. "2036. In short, America's dip into out-and-out fascism."

"What has this got to do with this case?" Darrow asked.

"My point is, groups like the one that represented the weapons manufacturers spread all manner of rhetoric, some of it utterly false. They played on people's fears and resentments - and also their basic desires. Primal desires to be dominant, to be strong, to be taken seriously. They parlayed those seeds into a conflagration in which people on the political left eventually felt forced to start stockpiling guns in turn, which essentially doubled the market and drove gun-makers' profits to record highs. What do you think happens when tensions are deliberately stoked and angry people buy that many weapons?"

"But we avoided a second civil war," Darrow pointed out.

"Barely. And only because all of a sudden, another kind of widespread communal behavior emerged: The people on the political left began laying down their weapons and refusing to fire on the other side. They were mowed down by the thousands, and then arrested by the millions and sent to those camps I mentioned, but still they refused to fight. That didn't dampen the other side's viciousness - they didn't show anything like that sort of mercy or commitment to the religious ideals that the pacifists said they were placing their trust in."

"They sound like a bunch of idiots," Darrow said.

"Maybe in ordinary times they would have said something similar, themselves. But this was one of those times of extreme agreement," Jillian said.

"That's all fascinating, except for one thing: None of those people, on either side, seemed to morph into stocky bald men," Darrow said.

"I'm not saying this was exactly the same thing, but it could be related. I mean, group mind or puppet master or social engineering designed to create chaos and break down community bonds - they could all be aspects of the same thing. And let me tell you this," Jillian hastened to add as Darrow started to speak. "HomeSec thinks whatever's going on here could be related to a larger effort to divide this country all over again."

"In which case the perps arrived with their knife after the stabbing already took place," Darrow said, with a grim smile.

"The country is polarized, that's true. But ask yourself why. How could it be the case that just two or three generations later, it's happening all over again? How did we not learn from our mistakes from fifty, sixty years ago?"

Darrow watched her and waited, knowing she had an answer to her own query.

"My superiors are concerned the Kamisah extremists are attempting to destabilize American society the way it was artificially riven just prior to the near-second civil war and the horrors of the camps," Jillian said. "And it's working, even though America's fascist years ended catastrophically, with massive destruction of cities and the economy is ruins. Why? Because nations fail to learn the lessons of truly traumatic mistakes. The guilty and innocent alike take steps to bury the past - by destroying evidence, sanitizing history, killing witnesses, and observing a code of silence."

Darrow's expression was turning form skepticism to anger.

Jillian pressed on. "Did you ever wonder why there are so few meaningful records of the years between 2019 and 2042?' she asked him. 'Don't you wonder what happened during those years?'

"They made some classic comedies," Darrow replied.

Jillian shut her laptop, snapping he clamshell halves together with more force than needed. "You know the American Firearms Collective?" she asked.

"Sure, I belong," Darrow said, patting the left hand lapel of his jacket. Jillian knew his holstered gun nestled beneath.

"They recently made an ad with striking similarities to the one I just showed you from fifty-four years ago," Jillian said. "Basically encouraging violence in the streets."

"Yeah, but come on," Darrow said. "I only joined the AFC for the discounts on ammo and hotel rooms. No one takes their politics seriously."

A young man sitting at a nearby table chose that moment to clear his throat. The agents looked over at him. He offered a shy wave. "Yes?" asked Darrow. "Can we help you?"

The young man stood up. Hesitantly, he approached their table.

"Excuse me, you're the two feds people have been talking about?"

Darrow and Jillian glanced at each other.

"It's a small town," the man said with an apologetic smile.

"Would you like to join us?" Jillian asked pleasantly.

The young man smiled more broadly at her invitation. He returned to his table, fetched his cup, and then made his way back. Taking a seat, he looked from one agent to the other, and then took a gulp from his mug.

"What you drinking?" Darrow asked.

"Chai," the young man said.

"I think I'll get one of those," Darrow said. "You want a refill?" he asked Jillian.

"I'm good, thanks," she said, hoisting her folded laptop and stowing it in her courier bag.

"So, your partner, he doesn't want to talk to me?" the young man asked, as Darrow made his way to the counter and Jillian set the courier bag under her chair.

"He's not trying to be rude," Jillian said. "He just doesn't think there's much for us to do here. And he might be right."

"You're here because of those murders?" the young man asked.

"Yes," Jillian said. "But before we talk shop, let me introduce myself. Jillian DeGuerve."

"Tyler," the young man said, shaking her hand. He stared for a moment at her wrist, which was bigger and bonier than a woman's wrist usually was. "Um, I don't know how to ask this... is it okay to ask this?"

Jillian smiled and drew her hand back again. "Yes, it's okay."

"Did you used to... um, I mean, were you... did you used to be a man?"

Jillian laughed at his discomfort. "I was born into the wrong kind of body," she said. "Yes. And eventually I figured it out and then... after a while... I found the courage to make the kind of change I needed to make."

"And you're happier now?"

"Oh, my, yes," Jillian said.

Tyler's smile returned, as if the news made him happy for her.

Jillian decided she liked him. "And this," she added, as Darrow returned, a mug in his hand, "is Special Agent Henry Darrow of the FBI."

"Tyler," the kid said, reaching for Darrow's hand.

Darrow set the mug on the table, and they shook.

"You're not both with the feds?" the kid asked.

"I'm with Homeland Security," Jillian said. "But I used to be with the FBI. We used to be partners."

"She dragged me into this, evidently thinking I'd have some expert advice," Darrow told Tyler.

"And so far you've been no help at all," Jillian chided him.

"Do you really think Mr. Segler had something to do with those killings?" Tyler asked.

Jillian and Darrow both perked up. "Who's Mr. Segler?" Jillian asked.

"Erasmus Seglar? The guy in charge?"

Darrow often wondered why MidCents - as the media and, evidently, sociologists were now calling Americans born between five and twenty-five years ago - made so many of their sentences sound like questions. He put that aside. He had questions of his own.

"In charge? Of the TriX?" Darrow asked.

Tyler laughed at that. "Really? TriX? They get called all sorts of stuff. That's all just - I dunno. Fake news? Stuff outsiders call them."

"What do they call themselves?" Jillian asked.

"Mr. Segler's always called himself and his followers warrior monks," Tyler said. "Though I don't think they really have a name? I mean, for themselves? But that was what he called his dojo and meditation center when he was my sensei."

"Excuse me?" Jillian asked.

"He was my sensei? He ran a school - you know, a self-defense school, but part of the training was learning how to do mediation? How to link into the higher mind, all of that kind of thing? It kept me away from drugs and all kinds of trouble." Tyler smiled at Jillian and then at Darrow. "Look, I don't know if you suspect him, and I know he's pretty gruff. But Mr. Segler really took an interest. And he really helped me and lots of others."

"Meditation?" Darrow was looking at Tyler with something like real interest now. "Higher mind?" Darrow turned his interest toward Jillian "Or... robo-mind?"

She sighed at him. "Remote mentality."

"Yeah, kinda like that?" Tyler said. "He talks about stuff like that sometimes?"

Darrow turned to Tyler. "We heard Mr. Segler passes out leaflets sometimes."

"Sure, a lot," the kid said. "All his people do. He'd like to grow his commune?"

"His commune?" Jillian was becoming more perplexed by the minute. "You mean his compound? His white nationalist stronghold?"

"He's not like that," Tyler said. Then: "Well, I guess he is like that, kind of. I mean, he's kind of a racist? Yeah. That's why I don't - I mean, when he closed his school he didn't ask me to join his new compound. He asked some others though. When I went to him about it he said he didn't think I'd enjoy living that far out in the country. Then he told me the truth - he didn't want me joining because I'm gay."

"Fits the killer's profile," Darrow said to Jillian.

"So what's do these leaflets say?"

"Seek peace? Achieve safety by accessing your strength and wisdom within? Tap into the power of the universe? That sort of thing?" Tyler said.

"Are you asking us?" Darrow snapped, sounding irritated.

"Huh?" Tyler looked perplexed.

"Can you summarize Mr. Seglar's message for us?" Jillian asked.

"The unity of the race?"

"The unity?" Darrow asked, his eyes now twinkling.

"Yeah, you know. Unity of the race? The... this sounds horrible. The white race? And, uh... well, I think he knows about my new boyfriend." Tyler held up his PCD. He tapped and swiped and then turned its glowing face so the agents could see it. The lumentic screen showed his FacePalm page in with super-def liquid clarity. "And I'm not sure, but I think he maybe wrote this on my page...?"

ONE PUNISHMENT FOR RACE TRAITORS a comment read beneath a photo of a smiling Tyler with an equally happy-looking young man of East Asian heritage.

"I'm not sure if I should be worrying for me or for Amresh?" Tyler said.

Darrow nodded. He turned to Jillian. "This case just transformed like that bald man. I think I can be of help now."

***

"You think what?" Jillian said, a few hours later. She and Darrow had left Tyler at the coffee shop with Tyler having promised to meet them back there later on in the evening. The kid was going to bring them some of Segler's leaflets to peruse. Darrow had returned to his hotel room, where he'd used his Q-Slate to make a video call and confer with Jason someone or other, a man he said was an expert in the sort of thing he was now thinking the case had to do with.

The agents had met for dinner, and Darrow had been telling Jillian all about transcendental meditation, yogic philosophies, and something called The Overmind. Then he'd suggested that the white nationalists in Segler's commune might have plugged into this "overmind" thing somehow. The two of them had left the restaurant and brought their conversation with them into the dark, damp March evening.

"It's not that different from your idea about the psychic puppetmaster," Darrow said.

"I was thinking about someone with a sort of telepathic ability - a capacity to project their thoughts out of their own brain, and receive input from another person's nervous system, and drive their body by psychic remote control."

"Oh, that's so much more credible," Darrow said.

"But this other thing you're talking about? I literally don't even know what you're describing," Jillian told him, ignoring his jibe.

"Well, I mean, I don't really understand it either," Darrow told her. "But Jason described something like this to me. He talked about people who defeat the ego, who can plug into a greater conscious force."

"Enlightened Nazis?" Jillian asked sarcastically.

"Sort of." Darrow gathered his thoughts as they walked up the street.

Jillian didn't wait for him. "You'd be suggesting that frail, puny mortal man could completely co-opt God," she said, sounding offended. "What else would you call this Overmind?"

Darrow was about to respond when he caught himself and shrugged. "Good point. It sounded so much better when Jason was talking about it."

"Agents?" they heard from up the block. "Hey!"

They looked up and saw Tyler up the way. He was a block away and on the other side of the street. He was clutching a sheaf of pages - the leaflets, Darrow supposed.

Tyler waved at them with a smile and headed their way at a rapid clip. "I found what you were asking for," he called, as he stepped into the street.

That was when the pickup jolted out of its parking spot and accelerated toward him. It was a vintage model, at least fifty years old - steel body, old-fashioned headlamps that weren't automatic and had not switched on. The pickup made rapid progress toward Tyler, who was now in the middle of the street and didn't see it coming.

Darrow, shocked, couldn't get the words out in time. Even if he had, Tyler would never have gotten out of the way. His body flew at least six meters as the pickup slammed directly into him. The leaflets scattered into the air. Darrow looked at the pickup's cab to try and get a glimpse of the driver, and spotted a bald man who stared back out at him, his mouth twisted in a hateful smile. His eyes were blue, strikingly blue - so blue they almost seemed to glow.

Glow? Hadn't the campus police said something about that in their report? Darrow hadn't thought they meant it literally.

Darrow pulled his service weapon out of its shoulder holster. The grip registered his biometrics in a split second and instantly unlocked the gun. Darrow fired four rounds at the receding pickup. Two slugs smashed through the rear window; one of those bullets also went through the driver's head. The pickup slowed, drifted off to the right, and crashed into a few parked cars at the side of the road.

Darrow took off running, intent on getting to the pickup. He noticed Jillian had reached Tyler's body, but he knew with a glance that the kid was dead. There were too many jagged ends of bones sticking out of too many places, too many limbs bent the wrong way. The left side of his chest was completely caved in, leaving his torso misshapen, and his head...

Darrow trained his eyes on the pickup truck, to which he drew closer with each sprinting footfall. If that bullet hadn't killed the driver, he thought, he'd gladly finish the job for what the assassin had done to that poor kid.

But the driver was dead; and, as Darrow yanked the door open and pulled the body upright in the seat, it wasn't the corpse of a middle-aged bald man after all. It was the slight, even frail, form of a white-haired, elderly man dressed in coveralls. His snowy hair was darkened with blood and clots of grey matter; his beard was white in places, but mostly iron grey.

His hair. His beard. The driver Darrow had seen hadn't had either. He'd been smooth-headed and clean shaven. And he'd had -

Darrow tugged the dead farmer's eye open. It stared back at him, glazed and lifeless. It was brown. A brown eye that moments ago had been bright, vivid blue.

"The eyes," Darrow muttered. The face had been different, but he knew those eyes, and knew the hatred that glittered in them. They were the eyes of that old man, the spokesperson out at the Nazi stronghold, or commune - whatever the hell it was.

Cult, Darrow thought. That place is a cult, and their leader... Segler... he must be doing just as Jillian suggested. He must be projecting himself into his followers. No wonder the perps didn't fear death. Segler could just pull back to his own body when things got hot, and then send out another human drone when he was ready. But how? Telepathy? Could a telepath really do that? Overwrite them with the stamp of his own malicious personality? To the point - and here Darrow nearly shuddered - to the point of changing his human vessel's appearance?

Darrow walked back to Jillian, who was on her PCD with emergency services. He listened as she gave clipped instructions over the phone. Making eye contact, Jillian shook her head - no, the kid had not survived.

Darrow stared at the tarmac and thought, glumly, that she was right about them being on the same wavelength.

Then his eye fell on a few of the scattered leaflets Tyler had been bringing them when he'd been struck and killed. Darrow walked over, bend down, and started plucking them up with rapid fingertips. Leaflets in hand, he walked back to Jillian, who had finished her phone call.

She climbed to her feet, looking around as it hoping to spot a sheet or a blanket. Then she looked at Tyler's broken body once again, her expression one of sorrow and anger.

"Did you get him?" she asked tightly.

"Yes. Did you see him?"

"The bald bastard. Was he - did he - was he still bald?"

Darrow knew the question she was trying to formulate. "No," he said. "The body in the truck is that of an elderly man, maybe sixty kilos soaking wet. Not a strapping middle-aged guy. Not our suspect."

"And yet..." Jillian made a frustrated motion. "Our suspect."

"Only for the moment when he... possessed him, or whatever." Darrow stared down at the leaflet. It was total gibberish - lots of meaningless phrases about unity and power, potency and impact, and personal meaningfulness, whatever that was intended to convey. Then he looked loser. His fingertip traced a line at the bottom of the page.

"Hey Jillian, look at this."

Jillian leaned in close to inspect the page. "What bullshit," she said, after scanning a few lines.

"Yeah, but this - look at this."

Darrow pointed to a web address.

www.no-id.rel

"Looks like he was trying to get his commune recognized as a church," Jillian said.

"I'm sure he was - there are tax advantages to that," Darrow said. "But this is what I was talking about earlier."

"The 'no-id' part? What's that? Do they offer psychiatric erasure or something?"

"Not 'id,' Jillian. I.D. Identity. I think it's referring to 'No Identity.' Not the paperwork that certifies you as who you say you are, but the state of being in which you aren't who your paperwork says you are."

"What?"

"These people aren't just enlightened Nazis, they're spiritual warriors," Darrow said. "A Buddhist master, or a Zen master, or whoever - I'm not going to assign a philosophical tradition to it - anyway, they find a way to escape their own identity and ego. They tap into the 'No Identity' state, a state of higher being. For most people, even highly accomplished masters, that's where it stops. But say that someone who was an adept, someone with both the mastery of the mental discipline but also a strong sense of his ideology and his mission - say he was to guide others to that state of 'No Identity' and then use that higher state as a bridge."

"A bridge to what?" asked Jillian.

"To other people's minds. Brains. Bodies."

"Like I told you from the start," she said, annoyed. "A psychic puppet master."

"Yeah," Darrow said. "Just not psychic. Instead... plugged in. To - something. Something transcendental. Something that can control how whole communities think and act, what values they cling to. Impose a way of seeing the world. Like your 'extreme agreement' scenarios, but with the potential of literally turning unwitting victims into psychic clones of the controlling personality."

"Talk about your ditto-heads," Jillian sighed, sounding weary.

A siren wailed in the distance and up the street a car swerved into view, blue and red lights flashing.

"Here comes our pal the sheriff," Darrow muttered.

***

Darrow told his story as he understood it: He'd seen someone who looked like Segler - around the eyes, at least - in the pickup that had hit the young man and then raced off. Darrow had fired four shots at the departing vehicle, since the driver had nearly run him and Agent DeGuerve down right along with Tyler. When he got to the pickup, the dead farmer was the truck's only occupant.

He let the sheriff do the rest.

"Son of a bitch must have carjacked Herb," the sheriff growled. "Then he jumped out and ran off. No decency," he said. "No decency at all." It didn't occur to the sheriff to ask how Darrow knew the suspect in the pickup "looked like" Segler. That was good; Darrow's gut told him it was true, but his brain had no image for the man aside from the bald guy's face. He could very well be wrong. Darrow shrugged that thought aside - it didn't matter. Segler was in charge of that compound, and it was from there that this bizarre crime wave emanated.

The sheriff had no qualms about participating in the raid that Jillian ordered on Segler's stronghold. The raid took place less than 42 hours later, with Jillian encouraging Darrow to hang back and Darrow, sidearm in hand and bulletproof body armor strapped in place, at the front line.

Segler's people didn't even give them a chance to order them to lay their weapons down and surrender. They simply opened up on the authorities, almost as if they were of one mind and one accord. Darrow suspected they were.

In the midst of the smoke and muzzle flashes, Darrow caught sight of him: The bald man, with his brilliant blue eyes, watching him, hatred as intense as a licron light source brightening his gaze. He was wearing a red flannel shirt that marked him out even through the light, damp mist that filled the air. The idiot: Was he trying to make a target of himself? Did he assume he was invulnerable? Darrow aimed at him, but then the bald man did something surprising: He put his own gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

Darrow thought for a moment that all the people at Segler's commune would stop fighting then, but they didn't; a bullet punched against Darrow's body armor and knocked him on his ass. Evidently it wasn't like a vampire movie, where the followers all reverted to their old selves when the fiend was slain. Of course not; these people weren't mindless. They'd had their minds warped over time - there was a difference. They still operated from deeply ingrained beliefs, as twisted as those beliefs might be. They still clung to putrid loyalties and navigated by means of a demented value system. Who knew if they would ever again reason like sane people?

Cursing himself for a fool, Darrow jumped back up and drew a bead on a figure that seemed to be pointing a rifle barrel in his direction. AR-15s stuttered and roared. An officer from the local police force yelped and went down next to Darrow. He lay still, his eyes open, blood trickling from his neck: His cervical spine had been severed.

Darrow had never been in a war zone before. Now he knew what it felt like. When the fighting ended, it was sudden. The abrupt silence was punctuated by a few more scattered shots and then that was it. The battle was over. Five law enforcement personnel were down. Darrow made his way forward, through the fence - which had been rammed at some point by an armored vehicle and ripped from the ground - and stumbled awkwardly across a killing ground strewn with the bodies of commune members. Cult members, really, Darrow reminded himself, thinking with bitterness about the .rel suffix to Segler's website.

He found the bald man - or the guy who should have been the bald man. the body was clad in the same red flannel shirt, but he was not bald any longer. He had the same thin neck and white hair that the commune's old spokesman had had. Darrow looked closer, and saw the thin white scar on the side of his face. His blue eyes were open in death like the police officer who'd been killed next to Darrow, but now they weren't glowing. They were dull and lifeless, though the expression around them was still frozen in the same aspect of malice.

The sheriff clomped up to Darrow.

"Who is this man?" Darrow asked, pointing at the body.

"Well, that's him," the sheriff said. "Segler. What, you knew him in the pickup but you don't recognize him now?"

Shit, thought Darrow.

He kept an impassive face but thought quickly. "What I mean is, did he have multiple names and aliases? I heard someone call him Deke the other day."

"Yeah," the sheriff said. "That was his nickname. People in town called him Deke for years. I guess he preferred it to Erasmus." The sheriff coughed into a fist. "I don't blame him."

A deputy called, and the sheriff clomped away again.

So, Segler. But not Segler. Darrow looked down at the lifeless puppet and shook his head. Who had Segler really been? Who was the bald man who had taken him over? Why had Segler - or the bald man, for that matter - seethed with hatred the way he had? What was the end result he'd been trying to achieve?

Jillian stood next to him. "Henry?"

He looked up at her, his face a mask of anger and loathing. "I don't even understand who or what we're dealing with, This is Segler."

Jillian stared down. "That guy they called Deke?"

"The sheriff just ID'd him for me."

Jillian frowned, her eyes intent on some mental calculation. "Hm," she said.

"Our bad guy was someone else all along. He just used Segler like he used all his other proxies. Who the fuck are we chasing?"

"I don't know, Henry."

"Still think he wants to create another civil war?"

"More than ever," Jillian said. "Listen, my grandfather was at Decatur. He told me the worst mistake he ever made was laying down his arms along with all the other university professors the day the militia men came for them. They were lucky - that particular militia didn't shoot them down there and then. But he ended up in Decatur for six years, and how he survived it I'll never know."

"How do any of us survive the things we do? Why do we do the things we do? Nature? Nurture? Possession?" Darrow shook his head and, looking dejected, he drifted off in the direction of the vehicles - cop cars, military vans, their rental.

As Darrow walked away, the smoke from the protracted gun battle obscuring him, Jillian looked down at the dead neo-Nazi.

How had things come to this? How had such carnage crystallized from ideology?

Her grandfather's words played in her memory. "We were fools to refrain from fighting back, pushing back as hard as we were pushed," he'd told Jillian when she was 15. "We were fools to believe our words, our demonstration of our convictions, would stop their bullets..."

Those words had stuck with her all her life. But what he said next haunted her.

"Better a war than a slaughter."

Jillian stared down at the old man's body. Who was he, Darrow had asked. Who had he been? He'd ended up nothing but a tool, the plaything of someone who killed for purposes of his own.

A war had costs and consequences. But perpetrators simply walked away from slaughter. Jillian didn't like the thought of this mystery man -- this "sensei" -- using people, discarding them, and getting away with it.

Jillian turned and followed Darrow through the mud and mist.