Saturday August 8, 2026 [8/8 +0]
Chicago, United States of America
“Yvonne! Print me out that spreadsheet that you got from Metro Prison, the one with all the prisoner bio summaries on it?” Matthew McBride yelled across the newsroom to his colleague, while holding the phone to his ear and clicking rapidly through websites on his tablet. Yvonne shot him a dirty look but headed over to the photocopier none the less.
“Matt? Hey, is that you?” crackled a voice over the phone.
“Yeah! Yeah, hey Manny, you there?”
“Yeah, hey man, it’s been awhile. I’m still totally incognito for all that stuff I told you last year, right?”
“Manny, everything you said, everything I wrote about you… for all the world knows you’re some douchebag from Montana called Brock Mason who decided to join II for the kicks.”
Manny’s name was changed in Matthew’s Pulitzer Prize-winning portfolio of articles about the Iraq Insurgency; however, Manny actually was a douchebag. After the all-out assault on the Islamic State in 2020 by the French-German coalition, the Iraq Insurgency was born of the ashes. Like IS, the II recruited Western kids like Manny, luring them in with the promise of unlimited sex and real-life video game violence. Manny, a 21-year-old former gas station attendant, took full advantage of the former during his time in Raqqa, Syria.
“Yeah, man, solid, thanks,” Manny droned on in his Mid-West accent. “Yeah, it’s been crazy here. Something like half of the guys here just got knocked out cold around three hours ago.”
“Guys… you mean II soldiers?”
“Yeah man. It’s weird—it’s like the guys who have been here the longest tended to be the ones who got knocked out.”
Matthew mulled that over for a second. Yvonne slapped the prison bio summary on Matthew’s desk and tromped off. “Manny, I’m going to have to call you back. Keep your phone on you, got it?”
“Dude, am I gonna get paid like last time?”
“Manny, you’ll get something. Promise. Catch you later, man.”
Matthew tapped off his phone. His head was still pounding from last night’s drink-a-thon, but at least his brain was still working.
He stared at the prisoner list from the Metro Corrections Center. In it were the names, ages, crimes convicted, and other demographic information in a huge spreadsheet. Crucially, marked in pen were the names of the prisoners who fell unconscious earlier that morning.
The tablet computer on his desk beside him displayed a story from earlier that day, about a barely-averted massacre in Barcelona.
The shooter killed a young woman before local men tackled him to the ground and rendered him unconscious. Reports vary, however, as to how events unfolded. Hugo Moreno, 57, was nearby when the attack took place. He claims that the shooter had some sort of seizure and collapsed on his own shortly after he fired his gun. Other witnesses claimed they saw three men knock the shooter down in a heroic act of bravery.
Matthew checked the time stamp of the news story. This was reported just a half hour before people started to fall unconscious in Chicago’s prisons.
So they might not have linked the phenomenon to the shooter passing out, at least not at the time of this writing, Matthew thought.
Seems like the phenomenon occurred at slightly different times around the world. Lucky thing that Spain got hit just as that asshole started shooting…
Matthew sat bolt upright in his seat. Manny’s words were spinning in his head:
“…It’s weird—it’s like the guys who have been here the longest tended to be the ones who got knocked out…”
He stared at the Yvonne’s prisoner list and at the news article about the near-miss in Barcelona.
No. Fucking. Way.
Matthew snatched his smart phone from his desk and rapidly typed out a text message to Manny. He tapped his foot impatiently until the phone rang in with the response.
Matthew’s hangover evaporated and his mind became crystal clear. In that moment, he saw exactly what was going on around the world.
“No. Fucking. Way!!!” he shouted across the newsroom. Everyone paused briefly to stare at Matthew, and then just got back to what they were doing.