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the hottest guy in the army?”
    “What if there was a lambda,” she said, “whose power was irresistible charm?”
    “There is. You’re looking at him. It’s a lesser-known side effect of super hearing.”
    Her brow furrowed, but the smile didn’t leave her face. “I didn’t realize my eyes were getting that bad.”
    “Well,” he said, “I’m here to tell you: it’s me. You can trust me on that, because I have super sight and I look in the mirror at least once a day and—my goodness—what a fine specimen I am.”
    “I see super humility isn’t a trait you’ve developed.”
    “When you’ve got it, flaunt it.”
    Aubrey laughed and took a bite of her stew-soaked bread. It was crusty and hard, even after dipping it.
    “I don’t see you around very much,” she said.
    “Secret mission.”
    “It had better be a secret mission that I get to come on.” There was no joking in her voice now.
    “It’s a secret mission that’s been canceled,” Jack said. “We got the official word today.”
    Aubrey felt like a weight had been lifted off her chest. “Will you graduate with us tomorrow?”
    He shook his head. “I don’t think so.” His voice was serious and he wouldn’t look her in the eyes. “We’re nine days short of the training you guys have had. We haven’t done field ops. We haven’t spent time on the gun range. There’re a lot of things we haven’t done.”
    “That’s stupid,” Aubrey said. “They know that you and I work together well. We’re a perfect fit.”
    “Yeah,” he said. “They’re talking about keeping Rich and Krezi together.”
    “I don’t know Rich,” she said.
    “Little guy. Fifteen. Black. You’d recognize him.”
    “What does he do?”
    “He understands machines.”
    “I think I’ve heard of him.”
    Jack took a bite of stew and made a face.
    “Army food is the worst,” Aubrey said.
    “All food is the worst. Do you know how much weight I’ve lost since I manifested? And I didn’t have much weight to lose.”
    “You look good to me,” she said, though she could see his face looked thinner, his cheeks sunken slightly and his skin a little gray. Still, she did think he was handsome—especially in his uniform. Besides, everyone in training camp had lost weight. She knew she’d slimmed down, losing some of her baby fat and gaining muscle tone.
    “You look good to me, too,” Jack replied.
    She blushed. “So tell me the truth. Do you know where we’re going after graduation tomorrow?”
    He shook his head. “All I know is that virtually everyone here is headed north.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “The Russians have a three-pronged attack—they’re hitting Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver.”
    Aubrey scrunched up her nose. “What do they want with the Northwest?”
    “Ports,” Jack said. “And they’ve taken Alaska; they’re driving everyone out of there—like, all the citizens, everybody. Probably so there will be no one to fight back against them—no insurgents.”
    “But why do they want ports?” She reached across the table to take his hand. “What will they be transporting?”
    He looked a little uncomfortable at the contact. Socializing like that was against the rules, and this was a very public place. But Aubrey didn’t care. She didn’t know if they’d get shipped to the same place. She didn’t know when the next time would be that she could hold his hand.
    “One of the generals thinks that they want the ports for oil—that they’re going to push all the way into Alberta and take the oil deposits there.”
    “There’s oil in Alberta?”
    “The second-biggest reserve in the world,” Jack said. “At least that’s what the general said. There’s another guy—a colonel—who thinks this is just another way to cripple us. He thinks they’ll take these port cities, head down the coast to take San Francisco, then move all the way south to San Diego. Cut us off from the Pacific entirely.”
    She squeezed his