Helen woke in a half-dome thick wire cage covered in mesh, sitting in the back of a motorboat. Her tongue felt dry, her body heavy. The noise of the engine drowned out her attempts to get the attention of the pilot. She recognized him from her view in the drone. The man from the submarine was of medium height, light-skinned, with thinning straight hair brushed back to cover most of his neck. He wore a yellow jumpsuit.

Remembering her implants, she tried to reach out to Tash for help but came up blank. She tried to reach Nandy, the pilot of the Lovely Charlotte and found she couldn't connect. She tried to access her location, make a query about motorboats on the Sound, find anything at all from the Interconnected, but got nothing. Her implants felt dead, dull. It was like a sudden deafness. The lack of data felt like a dull ache in her mind. One of her new senses had been shut off. Her mind reflexively made queries, pings, sent thexts that went nowhere, even though she knew she was out of range, or blocked. For the first time since she had left home, she felt deeply alone. It was terrifying.

The pilot slowed the motor and turned around. His face was boyish, even though he seemed to be in his 40s. "Hello, little bird. Up and awake? Polly wanna cracka?" He laughed to himself.

"What..." Helen had a hard time finding her voice. "What are you doing? Why... why did you... where are you taking me?"

"Tweet tweet tweet. Sweet Polly." He reached into the pocket of his jumpsuit. Helen scrambled to the back of the cage. He pulled out a black comb and ran it through his hair. He laughed again. "Polly wanna cracka." He went on chuckling to himself and turned back to the controls of the boat.

They were approaching a series of islands. The man slowed the boat further and steered carefully between them. Looking ahead in the water, Helen could make out the tops of old houses, large ones, and small ones, just below the surface. She thought they might be at the eastern end of Long Island. She had looked at maps back home in the library of her old house, drawn before the water had risen. If she had not been unconscious too long, they should be near Montauk. If they were indeed headed to the Hampton Isles, it might explain her capture. The name Beamish sprang to mind; The Beamishes of Quogue. She allowed herself to feel a mild relief. She knew now the man was not going to hurt her. She was going to be held for ransom. Not the best news she'd had all day but it could have been much worse.

When she was young, her Aunt had told her the Beamishes were a rogue Neo-Feudal family who lived out on the Hampton Isles, controlling territory which included miles of rich farmland. They traded in corn, vegetables, and wine with the inland families. They had loose ties to the Yonivers, but for the most part, were fiercely independent. They refused to join the Confederation of Humans as most of the landholding families did. They had no allegiance to the Powers That Were in Virginia. They mostly kept to themselves and were never to be trusted. Helen used to make up stories about them, alone at the end of the Island, bordered by xombies to the west, and water to the north, south, and east, running a petty kingdom like the isle of Sardinia in the last great Feudal age. She pictured handsome men on horses, archery tournaments, and jousting matches under a rebel flag. She was young then but dreamt about meeting a strong handsome Beamish knight, who would fight for her honor. These were a young girl's fantasies.

If the man in the boat was one of the Beamishes, he was a great disappointment. A jumpsuit for armor, stringy black hair for a helmet, the face of a boy, and a terrible sense of humor. The upside was that she was back in her element again. Perhaps it was inevitable.

The man steered the boat through the calm waters of the old bay and, gradually, Helen could see the dock. It was long, extending out past the cluttered shallows into the original depths of the Peconic. The structures behind it were all on stilts; half on land, and half above the water. A small group of men was gathered near the end of the long dock they were approaching. A horse and cart awaited.

At the dock, the man in the jumpsuit shouted orders to the others and Helen was lifted out of the boat, still inside the cage. "Don't drop it, you slobs!" yelled the man. "One puncture in the mesh and we will be neck deep in xombies within the hour!" Six of the men carried her over to the cart, and she was slid carefully into the back of it. The horse snorted. Without acknowledging them further, the man in the jumpsuit climbed in the front and shook the reigns.

Helen had confirmation the cage had cut her off from the tribes. She didn't know how the tribes maintained their network, or if it extended out this far, but she knew if she could get out of the cage, or find a break in the mesh, she could try sending out a call for help. She had an idea.

"I'm thirsty!" Helen cried to one of the men. "Please! I've been out in the sun all day. I need water." The men looked at their boss. The man in the jumpsuit turned around. "Tweet tweet tweet little bird. Flowers in her hair. Don't want them to be all wilty, do we?" He gestured to one of the men, who handed him a canteen. He was about to pour some of the contents over Helen's head when he stopped. "Water?" he asked his underling. The underling nodded. Then he poured.

Helen raised her mouth to the dribble of water. It was warm and tasted like metal, but she drank away. A window opened for a moment in her mind. She felt as if she could hear again. Her perceptions broadened briefly. Then the water stopped and the window closed. She swallowed and smiled.

"Happy little bird." The man in the jumpsuit turned "Hup!" he snapped the reigns and they started down the dock.

They traveled for a few miles on a wide crumbling road. Gaps in places had been filled in by dirt and gravel. Another section was washed out, and a small wooden boardwalk on stilts had been constructed to connect the two. They finally turned off onto a side path, and into a shambles of a town.

The residents turned their heads away when they saw the man in the jumpsuit. Most of them were working, carrying bundles, bartering with each other, or standing outside the low lying houses looking at their feet. At the top of a small hill was a recently constructed sprawling wooden home with a circular driveway and hedges surrounding the grounds. The horse and cart came to a rest on the circle in front of the main doors.

The windows of the large house were small and had wooden shutters on either side of them. This 'palace,' if it could be so called, had been built to weather the ocean storms that hit the vicinity. Helen noted it was new because all the older mansions of the area had long since sunk below the waves. The man in the jumpsuit whistled and shortly five young men and one young woman arrived to lift Helen's cage and carry it around to a low barn with a wide door to the left of the main entrance. The inside smelled of diesel oil and they put her down next to a large truck. The man went inside by way of an inner door in a side wall of the low barn.

Helen didn't have to urinate, but she wanted to. She knew now she could defeat the effects of the cage with water. Something about the conductivity of her body breaching the metal mesh. She tried spitting at it but nothing happened. A woman entered.

"Estelle Reynolds," she said using Helen's given name. "I know your mother Gladys, your step-father, your aunt, your whole nasty family." She grimaced. "They owe me. Now they will pay their debt. Do you understand?"

Helen nodded.

"You will stay here until they come. That means we will have to feed you and keep you well enough until they arrive. But, we know you have been with those deplorable xombies, god knows why, and now I bet you have that goo in your head. This will make things hard for us. This is why you are in the cage."

"I promise I won't use my implants if you promise you won't hurt me," Helen responded, sounding frail. "I'm ready to go home now. I was captured..."

"Save it. We know more about you than you think. We know you left home on your own and joined up with those inhuman creatures of your own accord."

"How did you know that? How did you know where to find me?"

"Does it surprise you to know we have spies?" The woman said. "You were not hard to find once we knew who to ask. It cost us, but not nearly as much as your family has stiffed us for over the years. No. You will volunteer to be put under again when you get hungry enough. Then we will open the cage and leave you something to eat when we know you can't communicate with your net-wit friends. Hopefully, your family will come, with sufficient gold, and take you away. What they do with you then isn't our problem."

"Am I at the home of the Beamishes?"

The woman raised her chin when she heard the name. "I am Shelley Beamish. My father and grandfather built all this. The man who brought you here is Thomas, my son. We have guards all over the grounds here, and the people of the town are loyal to us. Don't try to escape. Play your cards right and you will be home in a few weeks."

Weeks. So much for her mission trying to find the hapless Marto. It was a relief, not to have to chase him down anymore, but she didn't want to return to her old life of dull boredom. Who knows what punishment awaited her there? She also really didn't like the idea of spending several days in a cage.

"Look, I promise I will behave if you just let me out of here. Where will I go? I was implanted with the 'goo' as you call it, but honestly, I never figured out how to use it. If you let me out, I promise I will behave. I couldn't call them even if I wanted to. I just want to go home."

Shelley Beamish looked down her long nose at her. She seemed to be considering the idea. Helen became hopeful. "Nothing doing," she said. "You may think you know those monsters, those xombies. Believe me, you don't. The horrors I've seen. If you knew what they were capable of, you would never want to go back to them. You are a foolish spoiled Reynolds brat out slumming around, oblivious to reality. You will stay in your cage in our garage until they come to pick you up." With that, she left and shut the door.

A long silence followed. The garage door was shut. Helen sat on the bottom of the cage in the dark wishing someone would open a door just to talk. Minutes passed, maybe an hour.

Helen decided to pass the time by rooting around in her own mind. Although she didn't have access to the Interconnected community, she found her visualizer still worked with information already stored in her implants. She poured over the maps of Cos and her past thexting conversations with Dizzy and Mem and Reyleena and unexpectedly found a game! A message was attached: ["For when you get time off from your wandering. Just use your imagination and guide it where you want to go."] The message was from Tash.

Helen took up a comfortable position, lying on the floor of the cage with her legs up. She experimented until she found her way into the game and suddenly was in thick woods, the sun shining overhead. Through the trees, she could hear the lapping of waves and she walked in that direction. She reached out and brushed her hands against the leaves. They felt cool to the touch. The wind was blowing, and the sounds were calming. Birds flew from branch to branch. Yellow fruit hung from one of the trees. She picked one and bit through the thick skin. Juice flowed down her chin and over her chest. It was sweet and sticky; so real, and yet so unreal. It was like a dream, but not a dream.

She walked to the water, sat and finished the fruit on a sandy beach looking out at a brilliant lonely cove, huge rocks guarding the way to the ocean. She had never seen a beach like this in her life, and yet, here it was. Suddenly a ship appeared from behind one of the rocks, with three masts and seven sails. A wooden ship from long ago. It turned and glided through the entryway to the cove. She felt fear. She stood and ran back into the woods to watch. ["No ship"] she thought, and the ship vanished. This was not like a dream at all. She had complete control. ["The ship"] she thought, and the ship reappeared where it had been, slowing to weigh anchor in the middle of the cove. She grabbed another piece of fruit and waited to see what would happen next.