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slowly being devoured by the angry clouds.
    She was not used to feeling this way, so . . . unfocused. Always the independent one, she knew she was more than capable of looking after herself, but now, in this moment, with Mac well on his way to Svalbard, she was feeling—what? Diluted, diminished? Yes, that was the best way to describe how she felt. It was as though a part of her, and a major part of her at that, had been lost, and she was less because of it. She was so used to having Mac chime in on her conversation, or share his opinion on one of the many problems she encountered on a daily basis. It was just too damn quiet without him around. And the worry—holy shit! The constant gnaw in her stomach made her want to vomit . . . all the time. It was worse than when she was pregnant.
    “At least I still have you two boys to look out for me.” She sat down on the sandy slope of a dune. Adam gurgled happily at her from between the folds of his bright-blue blanket. She placed her free arm around Thor’s neck. The malamute turned his head and licked her cheek, then dropped to all fours and placed his head across her feet. He gave a soft huff of expelled air and closed his eyes.
    The next couple of months were going to be hard, she knew that. She would just have to busy herself with as much work as possible to keep her mind off Mac and the rest of the Vengeance crew. But she had decided that she was going to allow herself one night of moping about like a lovesick teenager.
    That’s right, love, you just get it out of your system, she heard Mac’s voice say in her head.
    She smiled . . . and then came the tears.
    “Alright, that’s enough of that now,” she said after a few minutes, sniffling back the tears and wiping her nose with the back of her hand. She canted her head back as far as she could and drew in a deep breath of the evening air. It held the promising smell of rain, but the clouds were still far enough out to sea that she did not have to worry about the three of them getting caught in a squall.
    I hope it pours .
    Although the submarine’s desalination units met the survivors’ drinking water needs, the Point Loma locals all liked to gather as much rainwater as they could. It was sweet and pure now, free of any pollutants. Might just as well have come straight from a spring.
    Emily allowed her eyes to drift across the concavity of the sky above her.
    There! She spotted the unmistakable arc of the glittering line she and Mac had seen only a couple of nights earlier. Except . . . now it was bigger, thicker. In fact, it looked as though it had tripled in width, maybe even quadrupled, and it seemed to be even brighter than she remembered. Before, it had been just an indistinct thread, now it was a solid slash of twinkling light stretching across the night sky, unmissable in the growing darkness.
    Emily got to her feet and followed the line of light across the sky with her eyes. She was sure it was in exactly the same location she and Mac had first seen it, which meant her husband had been correct in his observation that, whatever this new phenomenon was, it was fixed in place many kilometers above the ground. It was only the equivalent of a couple of human hairs in breadth at this distance, and while Emily had never been into astronomy, she was certain it had not been there before Earth fell to the aliens. It seemed logical to assume it could only be the handiwork of the Caretakers.
    “What the hell are you?” she wondered to the heavens.
    In the rush and chaos to get Mac on his way, neither had brought up the strange new addition to the night sky. She wondered if anyone else had seen it yet. Doubtful, she decided, because at night few people— and wisely so, she thought—ventured outside the fences that surrounded the camp. The perimeter security lights that kicked on just before dusk each night outshone anything in the sky, so no one was going to be able to see it from inside the compound