“What is it, baby?” Candace prods, but her gaze is sharp.

“Last month, this cat in one of the anti-VerenTech organizing forums started acting real weird. A dude out in Detroit. He was saying that—that people was disappearing, and the neighborhood was gentrifying fast. He kept trying to show us all this evidence, these articles, but they just seemed like regular news, right? We all thought he was maybe going through some things. He left the group, but he sent me an invitation for a new one that he’d made. I had joined just to keep an eye out for him, but hadn’t checked in in a while . . .”

“Show them,” Ashley says gently.

He pulls out his phone and as it passes from person to person, their expressions drop.

When it gets to me, I hold it between me and Theo as we read.

It’s a thread on a private forum, with dozens of responses. The top post is a longer version of the story Jamel told, with links; the way the page is set up we can only see the first few lines of each response in the thread, but that’s enough.

Belquise Ramos (Queens, NYC): In my neighborhood, they just straight up rolled through with a tank. Arrested a man who had been going to community meetings and asking why the houses of deported citizens were getting flipped and sold for ridiculously high prices.

Sandy Smith (Jasper, AL): Oh thank god I found all of you, I was starting to go crazy. I’m white, but my town is poor. A distribution plant opened up that was supposed to bring us jobs and improve things, but I swear, everyone is disappearing, and more and more land goes to the factories.

Andrew Chen (Los Angeles, CA): Health inspectors showed up at my parents’ restaurant and shut it down so they had to sell, and now it’s a Panera. They’d been refusing a lot of buyout offers right before that. Lots of my childhood friends who grew up around Chinatown say the same thing—it’s like someone is picking us off and just taking what they want.

Gloria Pierce (New Jersey): It was slower here and less scary and maybe it’s not part of . . . this, but maybe it is. Things changed, people moved, but they suddenly upped the taxes. Overnight, all the original inhabitants of my neighborhood went from living the American dream of owning property that had appreciated in value to having to sell because only millionaires can afford these kind of taxes. Where are we supposed to go?

The thread goes on and on, but almost every entry is more or less the same thing: marginalized people disappearing.

I hand the phone back to Jamel. My head starts to spin, imagining how many places across the country might have had nights like we had last night or were taken out by more subtle forces. How many didn’t make it through.

“What happens now?” I ask.

“Now? We sit here and eat our food,” Paulette says. “Always fighting to be done. Rushing won’t help anything. Being strong will.”

Theo grips my hand under the table, and outside a siren wails in the distance.

I don’t jump.

I pat my waistband and make sure Mommy’s revolver, which Fitzroy found for me, is still there.

Then I pick up my fork and eat.