Read Chapter 21: The Suburban Contact

The Peugeot’s engine coughed as Léa guided it around a burned-out bus that had been dragged across the avenue like a carcass. Morning light was thin and gray, filtering through the shattered windshields of abandoned cars that lined the périphérique like a metal graveyard.

Camille sat in the back, the radio wrapped in her jacket on her lap. The broadcast had looped eight times since they’d left the building—same voice, same deliberate cadence. *Controlled shutdown. Stand by for restoration.* She’d stopped listening to the words. She was listening to the lie underneath them.

“Roadblock,” Julien said from the passenger seat.

Léa slowed. Fifty meters ahead, three cars had been arranged nose-to-nose across the ramp, their doors open. No figures moved between them.

“Empty,” Léa said. “But maybe not for long.”

She killed the engine. They sat in silence for a long moment, listening to the wind scrape debris across the asphalt.

“We go on foot,” Julien said. “Past it. Find another vehicle on the other side.”

“That’s a kilometer of open ground,” Léa said.

“You have a better idea?”

Léa looked at the roadblock, then at the fuel gauge. Quarter tank. She opened her door without answering.

They moved low along the concrete barrier, the highway curving away from the city toward the flat, desolate sprawl of suburban France. The buildings here had been hollowed out days ago—shops with their windows smashed, apartment blocks dark and silent, satellite dishes tilted uselessly at a sky that offered no signal.

Camille stepped over a shredded tire and caught Julien’s eye. He was scanning the rooflines, his jaw set. She thought about the firefighter’s body at the substation, the zip tie still cutting into his wrists. They hadn’t gone to inspect it last night. There hadn’t been time. And she was glad.

“There,” Léa said, pointing.

A small service station sat at the edge of a shopping plaza, its canopy stripped to bare metal. Underneath it, a delivery van with its side door open. Two bodies lay near the fuel pumps, arranged too neatly, hands folded across their chests.

“Someone’s been here,” Julien said.

“Someone’s *here*,” Camille corrected.

A voice came from the direction of the van. “You’re right about that.”

The man stepped out from behind the fuel pumps, a rifle held loosely across his chest, pointed at the ground. He was older—sixties, maybe—with a closely cropped beard gone mostly white and the posture of someone who had once worn a uniform. He wore a brown jacket with patches on the shoulders where rank insignia had been removed.

“Three of you,” he said. “Two women, one man. No weapons visible. You’re either very confident or very desperate.”

“Both,” Julien said.

The man smiled thinly. “Honest. I like that.” He gestured with the rifle toward the bodies. “Those two were looters. They came at night, tried to take the van. I gave them until dawn to leave. They didn’t.”

“You killed them?” Camille asked.

“I told them what would happen if they stayed.” He shrugged. “They tested the statement’s validity.”

Léa’s hand drifted toward her hip, where she kept a knife sheathed.

The man noticed. “Easy. If I wanted you dead, you wouldn’t have seen me before I fired.” He slung the rifle over his shoulder. “Name’s Brauer. Richard Brauer. Though I suspect you already knew that.”

Léa stiffened. “How do you know my name?”

“I don’t know your name,” Brauer said. “But Marc’s message said a woman would come looking for me, arriving from the city at dawn, probably with companions. You fit the description closely enough. And no one else has come down this road in three days.” He looked past them, toward the highway. “You’re lucky I found you. The roadblocks closer to the city aren’t as empty as the one you just passed. The men manning them are not as polite as I am.”

“You’re retired military,” Camille said.

“Twenty-eight years in the engineering corps. Signal division.” He said it without pride, as if reading from a file. “Left in ’09. Did consulting work after. Mostly for governments that didn’t want to advertise they needed help.” His eyes narrowed. “You have something to show me. The radio you’re carrying under your jacket.”

Camille tightened her grip. “How did you—?”

“Marc said you might have intercepted a broadcast. He was very specific about frequencies and timestamps. Said if I heard from anyone claiming to know him, they’d have a recording with them.” He extended his hand. “Let me see it.”

Camille looked at Julien. He gave a small nod.

She pulled the radio from her jacket and handed it over. Brauer took it, turned it over in his hands with the familiarity of a man who had dismantled a thousand like it, then pressed the power button. The broadcast filled the air, tinny and distant.

*“This is a controlled shutdown. The grid will be restored in stages. Citizens are advised to remain—”*

Brauer switched it off. Held the radio for a moment, staring at the space where the sound had been. When he spoke, his voice was quieter.

“That’s not a control message. That’s a cover story.” He looked up at Camille. “You want the truth. I’ll give it to you. But it will cost you.”

“We didn’t bring anything to trade,” Léa said, her voice hard.

“Your building has space.” Brauer said it flatly, a statement, not a question. “I saw the schematic Marc left. Twelve units. Currently occupied by maybe twenty people, if the radio chatter is accurate. There’s room for one more.”

“You want to live with us?” Camille asked.

“I want to not die alone in the suburbs,” Brauer said. “You’re going back to the city. I’m not staying out here. The people coming from the west have already swept through three towns. They’ll be here by nightfall. If I’m still on this side of the périphérique when they arrive, I don’t survive the week.”

Julien looked at Brauer, then at Camille. “What do you know about them? The convoy.”

Brauer reached into his jacket and pulled out a small plastic case, no bigger than a deck of cards. Inside, a chip no larger than his thumbnail glinted dimly in the gray light.

“Everything I pulled from a dead operative’s phone south of Rouen. The blackout isn’t a terrorist plot, not in the way you think. It’s a coordinated attack on the European grid. Every country hit in sequence—France, Germany, the low countries, the UK. The timing is staggered to prevent a united response.”

“Who?” Camille asked. “Who’s doing this?”

“They call themselves the Gridbreakers,” Brauer said. “Ten years of planning. They took down the infrastructure as a demonstration. The money transfers, the data centers, the industrial controls—those were the real target. The lights were just the distraction.”

He extended the case to Camille. She hesitated, then took it.

“This chip has their communication logs, their financial trails, their known cells across six countries. If someone on your side can get it to a functioning network, it could end this in weeks instead of years.”

Camille looked at the chip in her palm. It felt impossibly light for the weight of what it contained.

“You give me a place in your building,” Brauer said. “I give you the keys to the war.”

The wind carried a distant sound—engine noise, low and rhythmic, moving along the highway east of them. Léa turned toward it, her face going hard.

“That’s not citizens,” she said. “That’s military convoy.”

Brauer followed her gaze. “They’re ahead of schedule.”

Camille closed her fist around the chip.