Dean scrolled through his phone while at the same time shoveling cereal into his mouth and trying to finish his math homework. The homework was easy, just basic calculus, but when he’d been up all night working on something for his dad, how could anyone expect him to have time for it?

He scanned the news threads as he scribbled down derivatives. Nothing was new or interesting, so he could read without paying much attention. Inflation up another 25 percent. Day 159 of Senate stalemate. China refuses to aid US debt relief. Newest iPhone out next month.

His phone’s screen froze halfway down the page, and he banged it on the table in frustration. When it unfroze immediately, he smiled wryly to himself. Even after decades of high-tech advances, hitting something was often still the best way to fix it. But before he could go back to skimming the headlines, a banner popped up at the top of his screen.

Breaking News. DC target of nuclear attack.

Dean clicked on the story, actually vaguely curious. He was expecting to read about a terrorist plot uncovered by the CIA. Instead, he found himself staring open-mouthed at the article’s headline.

Nearly one million dead in Washington, DC.


Dean let his spoon splash back into his cereal. He cradled the phone in both hands and moved it closer to his face, as though bringing it closer would make what it was telling him more believable. It didn’t.

“Mom!” he shouted. “Mom, where’s Dad?”

She didn’t answer, and he shoved the phone into his pocket and raced out of the room. He found his mom staring dazedly at the TV in her room, her bathrobe thrown on haphazardly and steam escaping from the shower she’d just started.

“Mom?” Dean asked quietly. “Where’s Dad?”

Her reply sounded strangled. “In DC.”

For a few seconds, Dean couldn’t react. He knew what he should do – go to his mom, hug her, comfort her, be comforted. But as she deflated in her place on the bed, he couldn’t make his feet move. They seemed to have melted into the floor.

Then the TV showed footage of the attack.

A missile streamed toward the city, somehow sneaking past the most advanced detection systems in the world. And it looked… familiar? Those dimensions, that material – he’d recognize the missile’s design anywhere.

His design.

True, Dean was only seventeen, but he had one of the greatest scientific minds in the nation. He’d been breathing math since he could talk, living on physics since he could read. His father, head of the United States Department of Nuclear Research, often came to him when there was a problem that no one else could solve. So when he’d asked Dean to help him design the casing for the ultimate stealth missile, it hadn’t been anything out of the ordinary. When he’d let Dean refine the chemical formulas used in its making, it had been completely normal. It was for defense, his dad had said. China’s making them. We have to, too.

Except, what Dean saw on the TV screen wasn’t ‘defense.’

“Preliminary reports suggest that China or one of its allies may have made good on its threats,” the reporter was saying over footage of the destruction. Mangled buildings. Mangled cars. Mangled people. And somewhere, in all of that, was Dean’s dad.

But maybe he’d escaped? Maybe he’d left before the attack? His dad’s schedule was unpredictable. Maybe he was already back in New York, on his way to the house. Maybe–

“Just voicemail,” his mom said, startling him. He’d forgotten he wasn’t alone. His mom was staring blankly at her phone where it was lying limply in her hands.

“Maybe he—“

“Has he ever turned his phone off?”

Dean didn’t answer, but he felt a hole open that threatened to swallow him from the inside out. It took all his willpower to pull himself away from it.

It can’t be true. So just don’t think about it. Think about… the missile. That can’t be our missile. There’s no way.

Why would his dad create a weapon to use against his own country? Why would he travel to the city it was intended to destroy? Dean expanded his phone screen and pulled up a model of the missile he’d designed, waiting for the news report to show footage of the attack missile again.

“President Borden was not in the capital when the attack occurred. He is safe aboard Air Force One with his wife and son. However, both houses of Congress were in session…”

Dean cursed the reporter silently as she continued to talk about things he cared nothing about. When the missile did show, it was only a few seconds before the picture flashed away, but it was long enough for Dean to catch details. Too many details. Too much that matched up perfectly.

Had his dad…? No. He wouldn’t have. He couldn’t have. Someone must’ve hijacked the missile or stolen the plans. Dean dropped his phone and raced out of the room, leaving his mother sobbing on the bed. He tore down the hall and stumbled to a stop in front of his father’s desk. Surely he’d be able to find proof that his dad didn’t have anything to do with this.

His dad’s computer was heavily encrypted, but Dean had found a way past that years ago. In seconds he was in, and in seconds more he had his dad’s e-mail open. He hovered over the first message (subject: Operation New Future) until he finally worked up the courage to open it. The words that showed up on the screen were so completely opposite from what he’d expected, his mind refused to process them.

Missiles… ready for deployment? Moved into… what?

He read the e-mail again, and again, and was almost through it a fourth time when his brother stumbled in, bleary-eyed and rumpled, and interrupted his attempt to make sense of it.

“What are you doing?” Carson asked suspiciously.

Dean’s eyes stayed fixed on the screen, reading the words my son’s calculations over and over and not finding meaning in them. “Shut up, Carson.”

“Dad says—“

“Dad’s dead.”

A brief pause. Then, “That’s not funny.”

Carson’s attitude made something in Dean snap, and the words came spilling out. “Dad’s dead, and the government killed him! Just to cover up the truth of it… The evidence is all here, all in these e-mails. Dad headed the project to design the missile, and I helped, and I had no idea! That missile just killed over a million people! I just helped kill over a million people! And Dad’s one of them!”

“What? Dean, chill.”

“I can’t! Dad’s dead!”

“Give it up already! It’s not funny!”

“I’m not kidding! They used the missile, and… and…”

Hearing his stuck-up, know-it-all brother at a loss for words made Carson pause. He took in Dean’s pale face and trembling hands, and his own face drained of color. “What…? Why…?”

Dean’s confusion deteriorated into anger. “Maybe you’d know if you weren’t so lazy! Maybe if you got up on time—“ But Carson’s eyes had gone blank with shock. The desolate, zombie-like look dragged Dean back to reality. He forced his voice to soften and said, “Go comfort mom. She’s in her room.”

Carson nodded and, after a few seconds, left, uncharacteristically compliant. Dean was left alone with his chaotic thoughts.

What do I do, what do I do, what do I do?

Then he caught his reflection in the glass-topped desk. With the crazed look in his eyes, he almost didn’t recognize himself. What was wrong with him?

I am Dean Jazcek, child genius. Scientist. I am logical, not emotional. As his mind cleared and his heart calmed, he realized what should have been obvious immediately. I have to get the truth out.

Dean shut and locked the door to the office, sealing himself in. He laughed dryly as he sat back and pulled up the web browser. He’d returned to solid, familiar ground – the virtual world was his place. He worked quickly to put the information up anywhere he could, sending and hacking and posting on websites that ranged from a few hundred to a few hundred million visitors a day.

He knew that he was leaving himself wide open, knew that anybody with a computer could trace him, but he didn’t have time for subtlety. The e-mail had mentioned multiple missiles, which meant multiple attacks. Dean couldn’t miss the opportunity to make sure that the second didn’t go as planned. If somebody thought they could use his design to destroy his family, and he’d just take it lying down, they had another thing coming.

Still, they found him faster than he’d expected. The first website he posted on had just mysteriously deleted his post when he heard the front door slam open. He didn’t look up from the screen, even when heavy feet trudged up the stairs. Every second would count.

“Get out of my house!” his mom yelled shrilly.

“Who do you—“ His brother’s voice cut off suddenly, and Dean pushed down a twinge of guilt and fear. He heard people searching through rooms, and it was only a matter of time until—

Boom! Someone broke down the locked door. “Freeze! Step away from the computer!”

Dean said nothing. He continued to work without a glance in the man’s direction.

“I don’t want to shoot you.”

Dean didn’t stop typing, but he couldn’t help himself. He smirked and said, “What, you can kill a million people with a missile, but you can't shoot one teenager?”

“Not smart, kid. Get up.”

The first man was joined by his friends, and soon the room was flooded with SWAT officers. There were more yelled threats, but Dean closed his ears to them. He’d just pressed the final button, had just uploaded a record of the e-mail to the government’s home page, when a bullet hole appeared in the center of his screen. Dean jumped up and glanced at the men for the first time.

“Watch it!” he yelled, mostly to cover the quaver in his voice.

Movement in the hallway attracted his attention. More SWAT men marched past, leading his mom and brother at gunpoint.

“Dean, what have you done?” his mom demanded, anguished. “Please, he just lost his father. He’s not in his right mind!”

Then she was forced down the stairs and out of sight. Dean let a ghost of a smile cross his face. Most mothers would think that the SWAT team must have made a mistake, but not his. His mother knew that he was fully capable of taking on the government, even if he’d never tried it before.

“Is that true?” one of the men asked Dean. “About your father?”

Dean decided that acting nonplussed was his best option. He was already caught red-handed; he wasn’t going to go down like a coward. He focused on the men’s faces, not their guns, as he replied, “I would have done the same thing, whether I’d lost my father or not.”

“You’re not helping yourself.”

“I’m not trying to. I stood up for the people of this country, and I’ll accept the consequences.”

The man who’d been addressing him, obviously the leader, motioned impatiently for Dean to step out from behind the desk, and Dean took his time walking forward. When he stopped, the men encircled him. The leader looked Dean up and down curiously and said, almost to convince himself, “You’ve broken multiple laws, and you’re a threat to national security.”

Dean took a deep breath. “In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., breaking an unjust law is actually ‘expressing the very highest respect for law.’”

“That’s what they teach you in school these days?”

“They teach us what it means to be an American. What happened to the values the United States was built on? What happened to ‘We the people’? The people don’t even know the truth of what’s happened. Kept in the dark by their own government. Killed by their own government. Led like lambs to—“

The leader forced Dean against the wall before he could finish his speech, yanking the zip ties tightly around his wrists.

“That was just getting good,” Dean complained, working hard to keep his voice level.

The man sighed. “It’s not cute anymore. Shut up. You’re not a hero, you’re a criminal.”

“That’s what racists thought about Martin Luther King."

“As a threat to national security, your rights have been revoked,” the man continued over him. “You do not have the right to remain silent, but you will remain silent unless asked a question. You do not have the right to an attorney. Anything you say will be used against you.”

Dean raised his chin defiantly and did his best to look vindicated. “All I’ve done is tell the truth.”

The man ignored Dean, which put a damper on his triumphant glare, and ordered two members of the team, “Take him downstairs.”

A woman grabbed Dean and pushed him toward the door. The other officer, a young man, looked a little pale under his helmet, but he followed behind and poked Dean in the back with his gun. As they went down the stairs, the young man whispered worriedly to his comrade, “Are you really okay with all this? Killing millions, silencing opposition?”

The woman looked him over critically. “Were you ‘okay’ with the old government? The deadlocked Senate? The dying economy?”

The young man was silent.

“Borden has a vision for this country, Jordan,” the woman told him. “I believe in him, more than I ever believed in Congress. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made.”

Dean’s heart reached his throat, and he fought to keep his mind on track. The president himself was behind the coup? It was worse than he’d imagined. He’d never trusted Borden, but he’d never expected him to commit mass murder in order to fulfill his delusions of grandeur.

Dean was so distracted by his thoughts, he stumbled down the last few steps. The three SWAT men standing at the bottom of the stairs had their guns on him in an instant. They forced Dean down on the couch next to his mom and brother, and Dean said a silent goodbye to his freedom as his hands were zip-tied to the leg of the grand piano next to him. While he waited for something else to happen, he stared straight ahead. He couldn’t bring himself to face the pained look of his mother, or the accusing glare of his brother.

I did what I had to. I’d do it again. Borden needs to know that he’s accountable to the people. He needs to know that he can't just use people, can’t just use me. Somebody saw those posts, and the truth will get out. Borden will be sorry.

He wished he could communicate that to his family, but the guns pointed at his mom kept him from speaking. Within a few minutes, more members of the SWAT team thundered down the stairs. They hauled his mom and Carson off the couch and marched them over to the staircase, where they were bound to the railing slats.

“Borden has initiated Stage 2,” the leader announced grimly. “We’re pulling out of New York.”

Jordan looked at Dean uncertainly. “What about the kid?”

“Leave him. It doesn’t matter.”

Dean glanced at the leader in surprise. “What?”

“There’s nothing you could’ve done, kid.”

Dean’s stomach clenched nervously. “What do you mean?”

The man had hoisted a large bag onto his back and was propping the door open for his team. He paused to answer, and a dark smile, almost a grimace, ghosted his face. “I mean, New York is next.”