It’s been happening everywhere – people’s bodies found at home, at their offices, at restaurants, their brains and hair and blood spattered over every surface, as though they had just burst. The worst part is that the group claiming responsibility is, on the one hand, so disorganized that they have members who don’t even realize that they’re part of a terror cell. How do you feel if you’re a high school kid whose mom has asked her to carry a package to band practice, and that package contains cash, fake documents, or bomb components? Sure, that kid has heard all the rhetoric, but she’s too young to fully appreciate that blowing people up rarely helps anything.

I stumble on something that resembles a Tupperware party. The hostess has brought in a large aquarium with sand strewn with big, fake-looking plastic clams and treasure chests. The aquarium is full of actual sea water, and the guests are pulling things out of the water and opening them to see what prize they’ve won. It’s a decorative hair comb! It’s a jaunty hat! There are men and women there, and everyone’s in that giddy mood that accompanies the prospect of getting something for nothing.

My friends and I come in to see the host’s face temporarily fall, then a mask of smug derision fall into place. “You’re too late. They’re with us now.” We go around the table, confiscating people’s prizes. Some of the people fight us, because even though the prize cost them nothing and has only been in their possession for five minutes, they will feel cheated if it’s taken away. We show them the truth: the hair combs and hats and other baubles are all made of C4 with tiny detonators. It’s not much, but certainly enough to blow someone’s head off. The faces are suddenly pale and much less enthusiastic, swiveling in the hostess’s direction, looking for denial. Her smile hardened and glittered.

We threw the aquarium and its contents into the ocean (conveniently a few feet away), and we grabbed the hostess and threw her in too. She didn’t even try to swim, and I noticed as she sank that her body looked already drowned—bloated and wrinkled and pale.

But now her people are after me. I head into a coffee place to hide, but they’re there. They bought the place not long ago, and are using it as a source of information. People never think of servers as spies, and have unguarded conversations over latte. A woman approaches me, and I know that she’s trying to kill me. So I act like I’m high. I want her to think that I’m incapacitated and will be an easy mark. She’s young, she might buy it. I ask her to direct me to the bathroom, and she takes me in the back down a long hall. I start opening doors off the hall, telling her that they should put in 3-way doors – the kind that can have up to 3 different rooms on the other side of them, depending on how you turn the handle and open it. She looks smug and relaxed, so while she’s fumbling in her pocket for something, I disappear into one of the doorways that leads to an outdoor area. She thought it led into a broom cupboard, but the 3-way door thing is true, and I know how it works. I’m outside before she can follow me, and use my superior knowledge of forbidden physics to step over the patrons’ heads to the outside.

I’m out of her reach for now, but they’re still looking for me.