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Los Angeles, CA

Once Rick was certain the three cars weren’t co back, he resumed his walk in the direction of what he hoped was the eastern edge of the city As he went along, he starting ether the clues of what he had learned While an EMP—an

electroh on his list of possibilities, the sight of the relatively s made it clear that was not the answer Whatever had caused Rick’s phone and car to self-destruct and caused planes to fall out of the sky couldn’t have been a terrorist attack either, since the scale was far too large and the circu

The ht about the order of the events that had occurred, thein the road wouldn’t start leaking gasoline all at once And a phone shouldn’t just explode in his pocket Plus planes don’t normally fall from the sky—at least not multiple planes at the same time

“It was an attack” Rick spoke out loud to hieted coasoline, phones shorted out the batteries, the planes were probably diverted intentionally and caused to crash as well Who would have that sort of ability, though? Russians? Chinese?” Rick stroked his chin and shook his head He had worked on vehicle control and coh to know that there were aleaknesses in coned they were “But what’s the connection to the by were only a decade or two old; they would have had computer systems in them So eren’t they destroyed?”

The answer hit Rick like a bolt of lightning from the smoke-filled sky “The systems that were destroyed were all interlinked!” He stopped in the h his hair as he drew the connections in his overnment’s mandate for all newer vehicles to talk to each other necessitates that they have a connection to the Internet Phones and planes, well of course they would be connected But if this is so Internet connectivity, then…” Rick trailed off as he realized the i that’s confined to the city, is it?”

Rick’s question went unanswered by the e his head in disbelief “This has to be soned to infiltrate key networks and wreak havoc across the country But…ho could it possibly be done?”

Rick’s theory brought hian to doubt hiuessed, came up with alternate theories and tried to find any other explanation that h, the , even if the details weren’t necessarily accurate

Lost in his own thoughts for another hour, Rick didn’t notice the city beginning to change around hi out of the mixed residential area and into a more commercial one, filled with small shops that crowded in and on top of each other The shops, unlike the apartns of life or light anywhere Many of the buildings had their s and doors broken as a result of looting that had occurred hours earlier

A distant shout snapped Rick out of his thoughts and he looked ahead, seeing two figures stopped in the road that each carried a sht was of the people he had seen in the three vehicles earlier and he started to turn to run down a side street when one of the figures shouted again, loud enough for Rick to hear him

“Hey,with Samantha, had just crossed over onto the street that Rick was on, having taken a different exit off the overpass earlier in the evening Rick s toward the figures as he shouted back

“I thought you tere staying for the night!”

“Nah, ured we’d take a cue froe!”

As Rick drew closer to Jack and Sa him to freeze in his tracks After a few seconds of careful listening, his sines drawing rapidly closer Still too far from Jack and Samantha to make it to them before the cars reappeared, Rick cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted as loud as he could “Hide! Quick!”

Jack put a hand up to his ear and shook his head, signaling that he couldn’t hear Rick Jack and Samantha turned and watched as the three vehicles roared by on a cross-street in front of theers of the vehicles spotted the couple standing in the road