2

Since dawn is so near, the convoy starts to break up a half hour outside of the camp. You find a location taped to your sun visor. Five more minutes of driving—you're just starting to feel nervous as the eastern sky lightens—and you turn onto a dirt road and arrive at an abandoned wildlife conservation facility, boarded up but so far from any major highways that graffiti has barely touched it.

You check inside. The windows are covered, and no light can get inside. This will do.

You head into the abandoned building to rest.

Next

You get back on the road the moment the sun sets.

You keep off the major highways. The radio is full of wildly incorrect chatter about an "invasion" of Mexicans and the federal agencies trying to round them up. You reach Tucson before midnight.

Next

You listen to a few more radio and television reports. First, you learn that a storage facility off Exit 306 was raided around dawn. Interesting. And from the confused radio reports, it also sounds like hundreds of prisoners managed to escape in the chaos of the evacuation. They won't all make it, you know, but now they have a chance. They're not prisoners of the government, food for the Camarilla, or potential infected for the Information Awareness Office to exterminate en masse. A few lives are slightly better tonight because of you.

You take the information that was loaded into your Mitsubishi and destroy everything to make sure those people stay free.

Next, you head to the Viper.

Olivecrona is already there, discussing everything that happened at Camp Scheffler with the Eagle Prince. They're both dressed in formal wear as if heading to a symphony. She seems to be taking the loss of her little oasis well. As Kindred age, they learn to plan for the long term, and any Inquisition attack one survives is an Inquisition attack one can rebuild from.

"Ah, Krarr," Lettow says when he sees you, "it's good to see you in one piece after the SI got through with Camp Scheffler. My man Alexander has prepared a room where you can type up what happened."

Lettow's ghoul, Alexander, leads you to a room with an old-fashioned typewriter. When the old ghoul scans your work, he says, "I doubt Prince Lettow will be entirely satisfied, since the Camarilla won't be able to rebuild. On the other hand, you were only tasked with delivering a message. Let us hope that we can find a way to make up for the loss of blood traffic."

Alexander hands you a double payment, since you also got that parcel on the airplane.

You head back to your Mitsubishi and make sure the money adds up.

You return to your parking garage and park the Mitsubishi.

Next

That day you dream of sand. Smoke rises from the twin wrecks that stain the dunes. Your Albatros was merely a functional machine, adequate if unloved, but the prototype staggering SPAD your rival flew was a thing of beauty.

You have seen many wars but never one so unlovely as this one. Your shattered legs are still healing. Better than burning, you tell yourself.

Then sand slides down another dune. The other pilot! His goggles and cap are gone so his shaggy blond hair gleams in the moonlight. He sees you, draws a pistol, then puts it away.

"You should be dead," you say. You try Arabic, then French.

"I fell from horses when I was alive," he answers, "and now I fall from planes. They both hurt about as much. The nearest village is thirty miles to the north. Shall we walk together?"

You look at the pale sliver of light on the eastern horizon and calculate your chances. But—again—you know that this is a memory. How did you plan to outpace the sun?