Andromeda’s Choice by William C. Dietz

was too late to do anything about the problem as the spotlight hit the surface of the shallow lake and slid across the bottom.
    Fortunately, the shaft of light missed McKee—and the cold water was sufficient to conceal her heat signature. The drone was gone moments later. That allowed her to surface and gulp air.
No dry clothes left,
McKee thought to herself.
Gotta move to stay warm.
    Mud sucked one of McKee’s sandals off as she stepped up onto the bank. She was tempted to leave it behind but knew that when it came to her feet, something was better than nothing. So she paused, felt for the missing slip-on, and pulled it up out of the muck. Then, with sandals on both feet, McKee resumed her journey. As luck would have it, she left the golf course right next to the Ridley Mansion. And it was only a block from the Carletto compound.
    The streets were lit, but McKee knew how to use cover and slipped from shadow to shadow. Her teeth were chattering again, but there was nothing she could do about it. A dog sensed her presence—but it was locked inside a garage. So all it could do was bark impotently as she cut across the yard outside. A ground car passed at one point, but she heard it coming and had time to duck behind a hedge.
    Then McKee was home—or where her home had once been. Now there was nothing to mark the Carletto residence but a chain-link fence that stretched off into the darkness. Signs were posted every twelve feet or so—and McKee paused to read one of them. The light was iffy, but the words were clear. GOVERNMENT PROPERTY. KEEP OUT .
    Government property? So Ophelia had not only taken her parents’ lives but their property as well. And not just figuratively, but literally, because as McKee stared through the fence, she could see that every stick and stone of what had been her family residence had been trucked way, leaving nothing more than bare foundations. She’d been happy as a child, but too stupid to know it, and now she felt a great emptiness inside. A hole nothing could fill.
    Metal rattled as she climbed up and over. The sandals made the process more difficult than it should have been. But Andromeda McKee had developed a lot of upper-body strength during her time in the Legion, and that made the difference.
    Once McKee was on the other side of the fence, she was free to walk what had been the grounds. It was impossible to tell what had occurred there—but it was safe to assume that the neighbors knew. If she could ask, would they tell? No, of course not. Not unless they wanted the same thing to happen to them.
    McKee followed what had been a path to the only thing that the government couldn’t haul away, and that was the family’s swimming pool. At that point she saw a firefly-like glow coming her way, knew it was a drone, and ran down a short flight of stairs into the rectangular basin. Half a foot of rainwater had accumulated in the bottom of the pool, and McKee planned to go facedown in it.
    But as she waded toward the deep end, she had an even better idea. There had been an artificial waterfall at one end of the pool, with a cave directly behind it. A bit of whimsy on her grandfather’s part—and a treasured hideout for generations of children. McKee had to jump up and push with her feet to enter. The chamber was dark, protected from above, and completely secure so long as the drone didn’t peer inside. A shaft of light stabbed the pool, slid to the other side, and disappeared.
    McKee allowed herself to breathe again. She hugged her knees to her chest in an attempt to retain as much body heat as possible. She knew that escaping from the gated community would be as difficult as entering it had been. So she was preparing herself to make the effort when she remembered the loose stone. It wasn’t
supposed
to be loose, but it was, which made for a nook where children could hide trinkets or leave messages for each other.
    McKee felt for the penlight and