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“Are you kidding me?” she said, staring at the site that had appeared. “I knew about .onion. We monitor it. But I was told that’s as deep as the dark web goes.”

She hesitated just a moment before taking the final irrevocable leap into the darkness. Into .family. Then she typed in the code. And there it was.

What she read was not some rusty old battle plan using bullets and bombs and young men sent to slaughter. And abandoned in 1939. Here was a long-range, detailed blueprint for the takeover of one country by another. Years in the making, fine-tuning, adjusting as technology and society changed. As the narrative changed over the decades. As the needs and threats changed.

It talked of AI and journalistic “dark arts,” used to both manufacture consent and undermine any protest. It was a slow drip, drip, drip until that final drop that started the flood.

It was never meant to be acted upon. It was, as Bert Whitehead said, a contingency. An exercise even. Taken as seriously as the alien-invasion exercise.

But then someone had found it and seen the potential, the opportunity buried in the looming climate crisis. In the catastrophic and inevitable loss of fresh water.

Someone saw the possibilities. And War Plan Red was secretly updated and quietly put into action.

It was all mapped out in the document the young biologist Charles Langlois had found. Though it was possible, even probable, he never really believed it. .family, after all, was littered with lunatics.

His hesitation had cost him his life. As had his decision to show it to the wrong person.

The ground war, should one be necessary, was also mapped out. It would be short and brutal. And once Canada ceded, as it eventually must, would come the final step. The silencing of all dissent.

And those few who continued to resist? According to the plan, their homes and workplaces and families would be targeted by angry mobs of “patriots.”

The Minister sat down. She’d have missed the chair if Lacoste hadn’t moved it for her.

Evelyn Tardiff was still alive, but unconscious.

A few feet away they found the body of Margaux Chalifoux. Trussed up and cold.

All three had to look away from her face.

“We need to bring her with us,” said Nichol, indicating Chalifoux’s body.

“No, she stays here.”

“But we can’t just leave her,” said Lauzon.

“And if we bring her?” said Beauvoir. “What then?”

They couldn’t very well take her to the morgue. There’d be questions as they lugged this contorted body down to the basement. And the mob definitely had informants in the morgue.

No, they had to leave Chalifoux. They’d come back for her once this was over.

Beauvoir and Nichol supported the semiconscious Tardiff as they made their way out of the cave.

Once back in the sunshine, Nichol tried to get reception on her phone. But she’d dropped it into the cold water and stepped on it. It wasn’t working. Beauvoir had lost his phone in the fight with the mob enforcer. And of course neither Tardiff nor Lauzon had one.

They’d grabbed the phone that had recorded the attempted murder but could not unlock it.

“Caron,” Tardiff rasped. “She’s behind this.”

“We got your pictures,” said Nichol, holding her tight. “We know.”

Then Tardiff’s blurry eyes focused on Lauzon. “What’s he doing here?”

“It’s okay,” said Beauvoir. “He’s with us. Do you need a hospital?”

“Non, non.” There was a deep cut on her forehead and a bloody slash around her throat where the rope had cut in. Her voice was gravelly, and her breathing came in gasps, but it was improving.

“We need to get away before Moretti realizes what’s happened,” said Lauzon, dragging Beauvoir forward.