 
### The Two Travelers

Prelude

Washington, DC

## Beyond the Glass Wall

###  \-------------------------------------------------------

### Richard Phillip Hoffman

PUBLISHED

Richard Phillip Hoffman at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 / 2018

Richard Phillip Hoffman

PUBLISHERS NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination and any resemblance to actual person, living or dead, business establishments, events or locals is entirely coincidental.

SMASHWORDS EDITION, LICENSE NOTES

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Table of Contents

Preface

A Word from the Author

Episode 1 - Chapter 1: The Sleeping Adonis

Episode 2 - Chapter 1: The Living Art Piece

About the Author

Other Titles by Author

Connect with the Author

Preface

When I first wrote the first three episodes of the Two Travelers I was, what you might call, inexperienced, and that over time, despite a small success with several people who had read the stories and genuinely liked them, I came to understand I had not made the best story available and the errors created by inexperience had become a kind of thing many readers greatly disliked and often misinterpreted.

The following reeditions of this and the following two episodes are a reworking where I, with the added maturity and skills of experience, have improved greatly on story, character, background, and editing, to give the best possible story available without any of the mistakes that had been so detrimental before.
"All the armies of Europe and Asia...could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide."

\-- Abraham Lincoln

1

One thousand years ago two lovers met in a concentration camp-like facility known to the public as Reclamation Facility 59. They had arrived one after the other separated only by moments both landing at the United Countries Law Division Washington DC Airport, which had once been known as the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport before being known as the Jimmy Carter Washington National Airport, both utterly unaware of each other's existence.

They would both mark the beginning of their adventures after their capture when they found themselves immersed in darkness with nothing but the yellow light of an armor peeler set above them.

2

The dish-shaped device, roughly three feet in diameter and the color of spicy mustard yellow, was designed to block the part of Justin Biryukov's brain that allowed him to access his bionic augmentation armor that was presently lying dormant in molecular form deep within the cells of his body. The intense headache he was feeling came from that part of his brain being too aggressively blocked for too long, a feeling akin to that of having his head in a slowly tightening vice.

He was seated in a black metal chair with his wrists handcuffed through a single bar built into its back and covered in sweat from the heat that the leather jacket he had been wearing when he was captured was making significantly worse. The dish above him was the only light in the room but despite the intense heat it was giving off, it was still so dull and narrow in focus that it only covered him, the chair and the ground below for about half a foot beyond.

From an inch beyond that everything was pitch black darkness.

How long had he been there? Justin could not quite recall as time was funny in the dark but it was at least six hours. It took at least that long to start feeling the headache effect of the armor peeler but perhaps it was bad enough that even maybe it was as long as ten or even twelve horse. He knew it was more than that because, otherwise, he would have started bleeding from his nostrils and ears. That form of armor peeler was not really designed to be used for more than a few minutes to a half of an hour.

A door in the darkness suddenly opened and Justin winced back from the blinding light that shot across him from the white room beyond. He could not see much of anything beyond the whiteness but he could make out a man in a doctor's lab coat with red sleeves stepping inside the room carrying a dangling, twitching thing Justin knew was a bio-blocker.

The object was transparent, squishy and shaped very much like a scarab with six long metal legs in place of real legs that all wiggled around as the doctor came in holding it by its larger lower body. It looked almost alive, almost eager, and the doctor was holding it away from his body with only two fingers apparently even a little bit nervous himself.

"Is this going to hurt?" Justin was pretty sure it would but when he was nervous he talked without thinking. He felt the bio-blocker's legs on the back of his neck begin to tickle and braced for some pain.

"You would rather have your penis yanked off than experience the pain of what is about to happen," said the doctor almost pleasantly.

Justin groaned as the legs jammed themselves into his skin. "In the future—" Justin felt them jerk in further with barbed-like points added for extra pain "—can you please lie—" His voice suddenly turned into a cry of agony as the pain amplified with the legs extending metal tributaries all throughout the muscle grounding the device into his neck. "Oh fucking hell!" he groaned and then saw that saliva was dripping out of his mouth onto his jeans.

The doctor lifted Justin's head up and revealed a man's face colored almost pure mustard yellow from the armor peeler, a man with light hair, light eyes, and a hard angular face filled with hate. "You have violated Law, Berrycove, and you _must_ pay the price," he said simply. "Law has _zero_ tolerance for treason."

Justin felt the pain grow even worse with even more tributaries extending and he pulled vainly against his handcuffs as if to reach up and pull the blocker off. The chain between them prevented him from getting his hands out from the holes on either side of the chair's vertical bar but even if he could the red tinted force fields the cuffs generated around his hands would easily prevent him from grabbing anything.

The bio-blocker then stuck its proboscis into his neck draining some blood which Justin knew from his studies would turn the clear part of its body crimson and power the device and then there was the sudden relief as numbness followed with the armor peeler finally stopping. It was no longer needed for as long as Justin had that monstrous beetle on his neck his bio-armor was staying right where it was but at least the heat was gone and his headache already disappearing.

"Do you like it?" asked a man's irritated and slightly mechanical voice that sounded as if it went through a machine. It was the tell-tale sign of someone speaking in environmentally sealed bionic augmentation armor who was evidently hiding out there somewhere in the darkness. Justin had not seen him enter so he had either slipped in while he was crying out or had been hiding out there in the dark all along.

Justin looked for him, could not find him, and then watched the doctor step back out into the white room. His vision had adapted enough so that he could see it was some kind of laboratory but the door was closed before he could see any specifics.

He stared into the darkness licking his dry lips and tongue, he had not ever seen water since the day before, and said to the man in the darkness, "Oh I just _love_ it." The nanoprobes from the bio-blocker, microscopic machines too small for the eye to see, had by then killed the pain so only misery and bitterness remained. "Just love it to _death_ ," he added and then lowered his head.

"A joker too," said the voice bitterly and suddenly a very dim gray light appeared horizontally across the room on either side of the armor peeler but spread out wide enough to illuminate a man in bionic augmentation armor leaning against the back wall with his arms crossed. Most of the room beyond the gray light was still very dim, a style of aesthetics his captives rather loved.

The bio-armor of the American branch of the Faction, the common name used to refer to the United Countries' Law Division, was blatantly stolen from the United States Marine Corps and so looked almost identical to Justin's following the very common style of dual layer armor. The colors were chosen by the military but could be changeable, usually to suit the environment of combat such as green for forest or beige for desert, and for most branches there was a general two-color system.

It began as a silver-gray base suit with a light material and a clear faced helmet for practice. The inner layer was an upgraded version of that base suit with a mesh-like Kevlar merged with skin type material grown under an outer layer of protective plated armor.

The Faction's inner layer was crimson and its outer layer was a very dark black. Most of what one could see looking at them was the outer layer of black plates that covered most of the inner layer with a few plates located on the arms, legs, sides, front and back aesthetically altered to be crimson and the bottom of the hands which was an upgraded, but less effective, skin-like crimson layer which was required in the place of plates in order to keep the hands fully functional in combat and, in fact, felt almost as real as actual skin did.

The helmets were fully environmental gas masks created to give the appearance of an emotionless insect-like being. The left and right of the front had huge glass-like lenses that gave an appearance very much like that of large elongated bug eyes the same color of the inner layer. They could be made clear along with the rest of the front without decreasing protection, something that would humanize the individual on the other side, but the Faction never did that.

Any accessories a soldier had on their armor were always automatically moved up into the outer layer making whatever they were the same color as the plates.

However, all Justin saw of that soldier's accessories were the double vibration blades set above each wrist that were standard weapons on all modern soldiers and nothing else which meant he was new. Even in the dim light, Justin could see that there were no other lines in the plates aside from the very subtle red augmentation lines anywhere to indicate any other device. Since so many had turned traitor after the Faction coup their new recruits found themselves with significantly fewer accessories until they somehow earned them. They didn't even have the domestic accessory that Justin was given when he got that base set of armor that was effectively no better than a scuba suit.

The man approached him and stared down at him with those red bug eyes that Justin wanted to think of like Spider-Man but tended to more think of like Al Hedison in _the Fly_. "Son," the man's slightly mechanical voice said, "Have you any idea how much trouble you're in?"

Justin leaned back and looked up at him. "I really don't," he replied honestly. "What happens now?" He was genuinely surprised he wasn't dead. He was the second to last of his friends to get caught and he had felt reasonably certain the others, all members of former branches of the United States Military like himself, had by then been executed.

"As you are a bionic engineer yourself you know that there is absolutely no way we could pull out your bionic augmentation armor with that blocker on your neck. You also have no access to your artificially intelligent companion and no access to any involuntary chemical assistance that might have been programmed into your bio-armor."

"I do."

The man opened and closed his fists in slow-building anger. He looked like he really wanted to hurt Justin despite the fact that he had so far been a model prisoner. "Did you actually build your AIC from the ground up?" he asked in a quiet voice. AIC, which was spelled out vocally letter by letter, was short for artificial intelligent companion which was a form of bionic android that came from the armor and assisted the wearer in various ways, not the least of which was as a friend, companion and confidant.

"Yes," Justin replied. He had begun working on his AIC as a young child but it took him years to get him right. He had named him Lincoln after Abraham Lincoln who he had been fascinated with at the time and at present was inside Justin's body comatose in the form of disconnected molecules. He had always planned for him to be his engineering assistant and Lincoln managed to outscore the premade versions in the AIC engineering tests easily. "I started him when I was eight or so and finished him when I was thirteen."

"You _disgust_ me!" said the man and his hands opened and closed again making a kind of creaking sound similar to squeezed leather. "We're bombed _daily_ and you, a young man of your intellect, goes out and _steals_ UCLD property from the wreckage like some goddamn parasite!" His real personality was coming out in an oozing ugly way and Justin felt like he had to be very careful around him or he might just try utilizing the amplified strength of his armor to rip him limb from limb. "How useful a bionic engineer would be to Law! How vital for our struggle!" He was making himself mad, almost taunting himself, and when he took a step closer Justin sensed he was even angrier. "When I think of what Germany and traitor Canada have been doing—" he stopped himself, stepped back and shook his head "—I don't like selfish people, Bookycove!"

"Is this part of the Faction Interrogation Handbook—" The man suddenly rushed forward up into his face. The face obviously showed no difference in expression but his body language showed that he was on the verge of genuine violence. Justin opened his mouth to say something but the man suddenly made a fist and the two black blades on his right wrists slid out in a flash with a _shing_ sound and vibrated at extremely high velocity.

Justin swallowed and said nothing.

What was his story, Justin wondered? Was he injured over by the Fifty-Fifty Law that forced half the jobs in the country to be worked by minorities created by the so-called liberals or was he haunted by the endless debt that followed grandparent to parent and parent to child that was made possible when the Good Citizen Act was passed by the so-called conservatives? It was impossible to tell if it was those two major reasons or any number of minor ones created by either side that had set him down the road of Faction servitude but it was clear he had become one of their true believers.

Justin found himself starting to smile and said, "You'll have your accessories soon enough, friend."

The man seemed amused and retracted his blades. He then stepped back, took a chair out from the corner, and slammed it down in front of Justin with its back toward him. Then he casually sat down on it backward in order to face Justin and leaned forward onto its back. As bionic armor form fit to the body so perfectly that it never encumbered its owner he moved as easily as if he was naked. It was that way even though it could make its owner capable of wondrous things such as outrunning cars, jumping over buses and seeing in a variety of spectrums to name a few.

"I am Collector Harry Berman and you will refrain any personal comments about myself and refer to my organization by its proper name: the United Countries Law Division or the tolerable but borderline inappropriate UCLD for short." He tapped the back of the chair with one of his red leathered fingers. "You are in some serious shit here, boy," he told him. "You have to understand that."

Justin tried to swallow and found his mouth was very dry. "Collector," he said slowly, "What is going to happen now?" He had mentally prepared himself for execution but that was going to happen. They wouldn't have bothered with the bio-blocker if that were the case. They probably wouldn't even have bothered imprisoning him.

"Well," said Berman, "You have been caught stealing something rather valuable and you have connected it to your bionic matrix and all that despite knowing all ex-United States military bionic inventory rightfully belongs to the United Countries Law Division. Doing this kind of thing hurts my commander's feelings and there is not very much that I can do for you."

Even if he could Justin knew he would not and anyway those reasons were just a pretext. None of his friends had stolen anything and they were just as caught. "Did Philip tell you that was the reason he hunted me all across the United States?" he asked.

Officer Berman ignored that. "Your records indicate that you are just seventeen years of age, born and raised in California and educated from the age of ten for the former United States military centered in the Citadel Military Academy of South Carolina, a prestigious youth subdivision of the famous college founded in eighteen forty-two, and there stood out in the records as an engineering prodigy. You were accepted into some rather prestigious classes despite the—" Justin sensed his sneer somehow "—Fifty-Fifty Law. That is an impressive resume."

"Not really," Justin replied. "Most of my classmates were douchebags." Berman laughed at that but it wasn't a joke, brag or lie. The Fifty-Fifty Law was supposedly a "liberal" president's idea to ensure minorities were given a chance. In doing so they required any job to hire half their workforce out of minorities but it was noted by many that it excluded executive level jobs and any occupation that stemmed from major politically connected corporations which in such a case went right down to the most basic entry level position. In the end, that the law _only_ affected small businesses and favored corporations' competitors. Its effect did not reach up to oligarch level private schools either but it did effect various prestigious military academies which was how touched on Justin's school life.

Minorities were to be accepted in the exact same manner as jobs but due to a lower population there genuinely weren't always enough candidates who would have earned a place without that law or even desired to join. The minority who deserved his place, as was the case of Justin's friend Shawn Wallace, could never shake the general opinion that they took a worthier candidate's position simply because they belonged to a minority group nor could they ever shake the barely concealed contempt most white cadets had for them.

With half the school belonging to minorities who often didn't score half as high as Shawn and the other half auto entered members from rich military families who all tended to be incredible snobs with grades suspiciously higher than they should have been Justin never took much pride in being the head or close to the head of his class and had started out feeling very alone as one of the only "normal" children in his school.

He recalled Shawn's father was a well-educated political man, a lawyer by profession, and in the only conversation Justin had with him that touched on the Fifty-Fifty-Law he said that he believed the law was an oligarch tactic to turn the white population away from the oligarchs and against the minorities and it had worked in the short run such as by causing a rise in hate groups such as the once long dead Ku Klux Klan, various Neo-Nazi organizations and the Old True Americans but it had failed very badly in the long run when it became one of the most useful and potent recruitment tools of the Faction who were their most virulent enemy.

Evidently, Collector Harry Berman was part of that late recruitment era.

"You know, I like you, Justin," said Berman, "But there really is nothing I can do for you." As a wonder, he actually sounded like he meant it. "I'm sorry but you're going to a reclamation facility where it is hoped that we will one day redeem you."

Justin felt a shiver run up his spine. He had seen a reclamation facility in California with his own eyes not too long ago and many more in pictures and videos over the years, of the outside anyway, and he had no desire to go anywhere near one let alone inside. They were always a simple series of white buildings built like square blocks with a tower in the center that had a mysterious red light that flashed on and off above the world.

What happened inside such a series of buildings was a sinister mystery. Justin heard rumors of every sort: experiments, murders, rapes, mutilations and not just of adults but small children as well. They were ludicrously crazy tales and he didn't believe them entirely but he had never met anyone who had ever left a facility to put those frightening rumors completely to rest. No one he knew had either and he found that was the fact that gave his imagination the most chilling vibe of all.

People who entered those facilities simply never came out again. Oh the news showed videos of happy people leaving the facilities over and over again but everywhere he looked there were empty houses with full mailboxes and unread papers by the garages that all created their own kind of chilling, quiet news.

_I'm going to die,_ he thought. _I'm really going to die and it isn't going to be as quick as a firing squad._

Berman seemed pleased by his expression, stood up, and moved the chair and himself back into the shadows. "Watch this video, Justin, and do try to understand."

"Video?" The white door opened, blinding him again, and when it closed behind Collector Harry Berman the lights all turned off leaving Justin in complete darkness. "I don't suppose this will be something Oscar worthy?" he asked but, of course, that didn't say much because the Oscars no longer existed and most of the iconic films destroyed. The conservative-backed Human Decency Law passed when Justin was very young and it banned any film, video game, music video or comic that had any allusion to sex, violence, bad language, or inappropriate behavior in general, furthering the already incredible censoring system that had already existed. The conservatives cheered in the streets at their great victory but it killed virtually all of America's entertainment industry in all categories practically overnight as any attempt to follow the law and make products under those restrictions earned an audience of less than one percent of what could have been earned without them.

Afterward, violence actually increased exponentially and everywhere in all ages in all forms but the conservatives simply blamed the next liberal president for being "too soft" on crime and being a secret atheist and their voters bought into it and voted in a conservative president the next term who did nothing to reverse the trend.

A giant holographic video monitor was projected directly ahead filling up the entire wall ahead of him. It looked so perfectly real that its holographic nature was indiscernible to the human eye save for that fact that it was connected to the nothing and floated in the air. It was blank at first, just a very dark gray, before it suddenly hit him with an incredibly bright badge of the Faction: a red circle with a yellow flame in the center set over a black background. It was there for only a moment before it was replaced by a darkness that lasted for a solid minute before words were spoken.

"The Oligarchs are done and now we are in control," a voice stated.

The blackness faded to reveal a very familiar and handsome man dressed in a black suit with a bright red tie, with his hair combed straight backward, and blue eyes almost on fire with the strange intensity that emanated from them even as he smiled in a way that could completely disarm a viewer.

"My fellow Americans," said the man pleasantly. "My name is Ian Owen Williamson and I'm here to talk to you about America and how it has been saved by the United Countries' Law Division, a joint system of governmental control founded by ourselves, France, England, China and Russian from the oligarchs who have been the enemy of all humanity and tool of worship that had been their golden ticket."

Williamson's face became sad but that intensity was more powerful than ever.

"The oligarchs dominated the government with money and they dominated us with God. Those believers, those loyal ghost chasers, supported them over their own interests and fellow human beings to the end. They were the enemy's key supporters in destroying our universal healthcare, our minimum wage, all or restrictions on corporations and child labor laws. One supposes, like a child themselves, they go about imagining some fairy tale of their chosen leaders leading to some kind of Eden.

"Over the history of time we have seen the horrors of unchecked religion in its support of most monstrous of people and regimes and it has occurred yet again during our lifetime. It has been the goal of the UCLD to drop the outdated and unrealistic views of religion, gender, race, wealth and prosperity left behind from cruel religious inaccuracies and pull forth the hooks of the past that have held us down since the age of spears and stone."

His eyes were almost insane by that point, so intense that it was hard to look away. Such was no surprise from the man who ran the American Branch of the United Countries' Law Division which had once been the United States branch.

Such was no surprise from the man who had brought down the United States of America.

Ian Owen Williamson was many things but he wasn't a liar or at least not completely. Justin was no secret Faction supporter but he understood its complaints. Minimum wage was gone, healthcare was gone or astronomically so expensive it might as well be, children as young as eight had to take jobs to support families, the payoff so low that in many families required a half-dozen incomes could _barely_ afford a small apartment in a safe area. Violence was everywhere, fanatics took to the street to destroy the "heretic" just one of many forms of it, debt from generations past was rampant, corruption was astronomical high among the police, politics, and law in general, and unemployment and welfare had been abolished when over thirty percent of the population was out of work.

And many wealthy people had an incredibly insulting attitude to it all. They said "life's not fair" and "poor, poor baby, get a degree," and other such things while laughing and one girl born extremely rich actually wore a "stop being poor" at a kind of concert she was at as if it was so easy even a moron as stupid as she could do it if but they only tried. They would look a man who worked a hundred hours a week doing three jobs, look him straight in the eyes, and call him lazy because he was poor. The idea that they "worked harder" was not only laughable but impossible because, obviously, nobody could work a billion times harder than somebody else but there it was. In the end, they had lived with their delusion so long that they actually believed it was true and even acted on it.

_And they paid for it,_ thought Justin.

He found himself thinking of George Orwell's novels _1984_ and _Animal Farm_ , both banned for being too violent along with _Catcher in the Rye_ which was banned for sexuality, and then he thought about Hitler and Stalin's rise into power and understood they had something in common with modern America.

The conservatives and liberals, or what people called conservatives and liberals but generally resembled neither on close inspection, gave the Faction what they needed to rise: an enemy to act as the hero against and a society that needed to be saved. Even at that later point, Ian Owen Williamson was still acting the hero as all dictators did.

It seemed that since the worldwide coup, which they called the Global Overthrow, did not work out something in the Faction was desperately going to have to change but, since it almost certainly wasn't going to, something very bad was going to happen in its place and probably sooner rather than later. They may not even have noticed what change was necessary, and might not even at the very end and almost certainly because they probably could never conceive of it. Beyond their tactics of control and hate-manipulation the only truly necessary change at that point onward was a stepping down and a return the old world but such a thing they would never do even if it promised the leaders real pardons.

They were people that, for whatever reason, would rather burn down the world than relinquish their power over it.

"What choice did they really give us?" Ian Owen Williamson asked. "Be in debt forever, work forever, and have nothing _ever_ to show for it? Were they really surprised when we left the hovels they put us in with our guns and rage to put them in their proper place? Law is about putting the bad people in their place. Law is about taking what is rightfully ours and putting back in _our_ possession.

"Law is _justice_ and the very word that screams out to the universe that we will _never_ go back to being their slave again!"

***

Laura Adler never liked that man, not even as a child and she found his eyes disturbing.

She was soaked from sweat and as the bio-blocker's pain numbed in her neck all she could do was listen to that stupid propaganda piece and wonder the great question of why she even there.

She had been dishonorably discharged with complete legitimacy but after their not quite so perfectly successful coup they suddenly wanted her back. They yanked her from an after racing party in the Colorado Hover Racing Circuit and without a word locked her in that room for half a day or more, inserted the bio-blocker, and then threw on that horrible video.

They had not said a word to her yet but since they bothered to put a bio-blocker on her she knew that at the very least she wasn't going to be executed.

She sighed, licked her dry lips and continued to watch the video.

"We have been forced to make unpleasant choices in dealing with our slave masters but it is in the good to know that these choices have brought us the return of justice." The screen suddenly paused with Williamson's face looking into the camera with a sly look on his face. She could see that handsome smile on the sculpted beautiful face of the charming, charismatic blond man that led the UCLD over the last decade into the coup that killed one sitting president, at least three former presidents, and an unknown amount of men, women and children that were part of the group of wealthy politically connected individuals called "oligarchs" in a rather ugly, public way.

"Why did you turn on us?" asked a woman's slightly mechanical voice in the darkness.

Laura said nothing. She could see the woman's shape in the corner, a woman whose bio-armor was being illuminated just slightly by the light of the holographic monitor.

She had just been staring at her quietly without a word until that moment.

The woman walked up to Laura through the holographic screen and grabbed her face with one gauntlet and shoved her own armored face close enough for her silhouette to block out the screen. "Say something, you bitch!" the woman hissed and Laura clenched her handcuffed hands behind the chair. "Say _something_!"

Laura took a deep breath and said, "I don't think it matters what I say," she told her. "If you don't know the 'why' now you never will Collector." That was the word used to describe the people who collected and interrogated potential traitors. It was a Faction military title just like colonel or major.

"Collector Wilma Kern," the woman told her, and then she made a cut off motion with her left hand and someone watching in another room turned the screen off and the dull horizontal gray light went back on. "You, Adler, are a traitor." Kern shook her head but her body motion indicated more confusion than contempt or disgust. "You were one of the new women of our age, a warrior woman with the training skills to be one of our greatest pilots ever." She leaned over as if to examine Laura's face. "You disgraced yourself," she said like it was something incredibly insane. "You disobeyed a _direct_ order."

"I'm not sure you understand what happened," Laura replied.

"Yeah, what do I know? You're seventeen, barely more than a girl. I'm twenty-seven. I remember my father and mother both working eighty hours a week _apiece_ unable to pay off student loan debt from their _grandparents_ with what was left _barely_ covering the shitty little apartment we lived in! It was so bad I had to drop out of school and work just to pay for our utilities and food when I was just _ten_ years old! Christmas wasn't fun in my house, bitch! That money my great-grandparents died owing just got bigger and bigger and even though they made every payment with enough to cover it three times over by the time they themselves died if it wasn't for the UCLD I would have owed nearly a million dollars _each_ even if the old government would have reduced the accumulated interest which they _never_ would have! We were corporate money farms to serve capitalist lowlife oligarchs! What the hell do _you_ know about anything, Adler?"

Laura knew her mother had owed over five hundred thousand dollar debt from her own mother and three hundred thousand from her father both quintupled or more in total since the loan was taken originally a generation ago. Both had needed degrees or they would have ended up homeless, working over a hundred hours each and probably never have been able to have a normal family.

One of the major reasons she sent Laura to join the Faction was to rid herself and her daughter of that debt.

The oligarchs who collected that debt paid a very steep bloody price for it which Laura felt very sure could've all been avoided if it wasn't for the last presidential election. Senator Albert Bernstein, the last true people's candidate to get into office, had gotten a hair's width of becoming the first true president of the people in ages, the first candidate _not_ connected to the corporations or oligarchs, who had a very real commitment to fixing the income inequality, bringing back the universal healthcare, reinstating the minimum wage and countless other needed things with a full enthusiastic staff he could pull from anywhere because with funds from actual citizens and not billionaires he didn't owe the oligarchs anything and, in addition to all that, the entire country was behind him.

Bernstein was the most popular candidate in generations and in the world at the time.

But Roger Tosh stole the nomination. He was the oligarchs' supported party member and they evidently commanded the liberal national committee for his party to give him the nomination regardless of his lack of popular support. The conservative party was out of popularity so he got elected afterward but everyone saw him as just another oligarch lackey under a "liberal" flag that destroyed that bright moment where everything seemed about to change for the better. Laura never forgot that moment and how several hard men and women had openly broken down in tears right in front of her when it was announced who the candidate was.

It was Roger Tosh who created the Fifty-Fifty Law and then unwittingly pushed the United States into the power of UCLD.

And so the oligarch's arrogance and greed cost them a whole lot more than just money. Tosh too, come to think of it. Laura would have felt pity for them if they weren't taking everyone else down with them. It got so ugly that in the end she had been genuinely relieved to be discharged, dishonorably or otherwise, having naively believing she would be unburdened of being on one side or the other and able to continue on with her life.

"I do understand," Laura told her honestly.

"Do you really?"

"Yes. My mother was in debt like you."

The woman's helmet's face was unreadable but something about her body language made Laura think her face would be as equally unreadable if she could see it. "It has been decided that you are going to a Reclamation Facility." Laura looked into that emotionless armored face with wide worried eyes. "If I had it my way, Adler, I would have you shot but the powers have other plans for their investment in you."

Laura felt her heart sinking. _I am dead,_ she thought. _I am a loose end that they're going to pluck out but they are not going to make it easy._

"Not so confident now, are we?" Kern asked.

"When the hell was I ever confident," Laura replied. "I was never confident about any of this."

"One point in your favor." The door opened behind Kern and she turned head around to look at the armored soldiers standing like black silhouettes in front of a wall of white and said, "Take this tramp to the plane and get her out of my sight."

3

The first plane landed at the United Countries Law Division Washington DC Airport one hour later at around twilight just when the sun was nearly gone with the clouds turned various shades of orange above a sky that was still a vibrant blue. Justin had been pleasantly surprised to find himself riding on an American Transglobal Airlines prototype plane known as a Stardust. It had been perfected years before but since less than twenty had ever been made due to its enormous cost he had never actually expected to ride in one.

It was sleek and beautiful in the ATA style with its wings pointed straight backward like an old-fashioned jet with a narrow triangular front. It was not, however, the ATA silver and forest green externally nor did it have the incredibly opulent internal living space that was expected in such an opulent vehicle. It was Faction black with red tinted windows, the Faction flame on both wings and on both sides near the end, and the interior was just two rows of black seats no different than any normal plane except with automatically extending straps that easily tied Justin down.

After a very short and incredibly smooth ride, the ship stopped moving forward, hovered in midair for a moment, then lowered itself straight down to a landing strip. As it neared the bottom eight legs extended out of the sides to balance it perfectly on the ground followed by a ramp that lowered down from the front so smoothly that its tip landed onto the ground with just a barely audible tap or so the video of it would have had Justin believe.

Justin was then taken out with his hands handcuffed in front of him, both still covered in force fields, with fifteen other prisoners behind him in cuffs without the force fields. Nine of them were men, six of them women, with only three soldiers, two male and one female, armed with their bio-armor and heavy black laser rifles.

Three additionally fully armored soldiers awaited them on the runway with an officer clearly center with his armor and plate colors reversed in an indication of some intellectual training such as engineering, medical or something specialized. His black plated normal companions, a man and a woman, stood beside him on either side, all armed with the same big black laser rifles their companions on the Stardust had.

_They always have at least one woman among them,_ Justin thought to himself.

He looked up at the airplane as he walked down the smooth ramp, the one several aviation magazines stated was the single greatest plane ever built for the private market, and felt a pang of sadness at the thought of never flying in one again. He wasn't a big plane fan but he loved the ATA models and had a dozen toy models of them as a boy.

When Justin stood in line with the others he saw a black and red prison bus he expected and then a prison car that he very much did not. The first looked like just any typical prison bus, it actually was just an old United States prison bus but painted black and red to match the new regime with maybe some security alterations here and there, but the other one looked like a limousine with a sleek, rather expensive looking design and three doors on either side before the driver's. Both of them were hover vehicles floating above the ground ready to move in any direction smoothly over any surface save water.

"Men over there," said the red plated soldier as he pointed to their right, his amplified voice echoing all around them. "Women over there," he said and pointed to their left. Then lowered his arm, looked straight at Justin and added, "Bokov, over here."

Justin stepped out of the group that was placidly moving to either side making a straight line to face the speaker and immediately the male soldier behind the speaker grabbed him by the arm and pulled him toward the car. Behind him, he heard another plane land, took a quick look as yet another Stardust lowered itself down with bright red hover jets on the bottom, and felt the guard yank his arm up painfully enough to almost sprain something. "Do not get distracted, Bokov."

"My name is—"

"Shut up."

"Okay then."

From behind, he heard the officer in red say, "Welcome to Washington DC. We hope your stay in Reclamation Fifty-Nine is a brief and productive one."

The first door behind the driver's door opened automatically for Justin and he was shoved inside by the guard into a hard groove between two comfortable seats and straps identically to the ones on the plane came out from behind and wrapped over his arms, legs, neck, chest and shoulders. He heard the distinct sound of clicks and clacks as they locked.

The guard sat on his left and Justin thought he knew what it was he was in. _A celebrity prison vehicle,_ he thought. _This is the kind of prison bus one takes a CEO or a movie star or even the president himself._ President Tosh probably had been in one before they took him to the front of the White House and ceremoniously blew the brains out of the side of his head with an eighteenth-century flintlock pistol.

Justin stared at the black plate in front of him, completely unable to see anything into the next section, and tried to look around but couldn't see farther than the windows which had turned opaque Faction red.

For some reason, they weren't moving. "What are we wait—"

"Shut up," said the soldier again.

"Okay then," said Justin again. _Prick,_ he added in thought.

***

Laura Adler stepped out of her ship with nineteen prisoners, nine of which men and ten were women, and moved with the females automatically to the lines of men and women that were waiting.

_At least I came in a Stardust_ , she thought and wished she could have flown one at least once in her life.

"Adler," said the organizer, the title of the officer speaking to the crowd, and who must have irritated a superior really badly to end up with such a worthless job. "Come here."

As she obeyed the female guard that had been standing beside him immediately took her arm and gently led her not toward the prison bus which she expected but to a ridiculous prison limousine. The third door, the second if not including the driver's, opened for her and she slipped into the middle where the straps come over there she stared blankly at the opaque plate ahead as the car started to move.

_So expensive,_ Laura thought. Each row of seats had a retracted soundproofed plate between them indicating a genuine prison vehicle which was odd considering it was built like an authentic Lamborghini before Calvin Motors Incorporated turned them into unimpressive, streamlined mediocre vehicles no one wanted. She flew in on a Stardust and was being taken to prison in a sort of equivalent Lamborghini car but she was in the end just another prisoner. _God,_ Laura thought. _Add this kind of idiot spending into that military industrial complex shit and it'd be a wonder if any of these assholes have money left for toilet paper._

"Cute outfit," said the soldier.

Laura squirmed a bit in her sweat covered clothes. She was wearing a light green sleeveless, shoulder-less shirt that reached down just over her short black skirt where her nylon covered legs reached down to tall, high heeled black boots that rose up to knees. She had a yellow armband on her left wrist and a blue on her right, a strange balancing habit that someone claiming some degree of psychological understanding once told her was a sign she was struggling with over perfection.

"Thanks," Laura told her without believing for a single instant she cared whether Laura's outfit was "cute" or not.

The soldier looked at her for a long, careful moment, and then removed her helmet. It split apart at a molecular level, slipped quickly and painlessly into her skin leaving no trace whatsoever of existence, and revealed an attractive, dark-eyed girl with her dark hair pulled back and tied behind her head in what they called a soldier's knot. A quick glance down told Laura that she had most of her accessories which meant she had been given that armor before the coup and may have even been a cadet in her youth just like Laura had been but was a year or two younger. "What did you _do_?" the girl whispered.

Laura shrugged and said, "I'm certain you will find out soon enough."

"Tell me the truth," the girl said. "I need—I need to _know_! Did you actually do something or did they just—just get mad at you?"

_Morale is still soaring, I see,_ Laura thought sarcastically and then said quietly, "Girl, if it is not my general file you aren't supposed to know and you will not get any information out of me." It was easy to get access to someone's general file as the people who ran that section tended to be young men and they would give a girl anything if she flirted with them just a bit and it was understood that its classification level was nothing more than lip service.

Laura played the defiant prisoner but would have under normal circumstances probably have told her anything. As it was, she was in the system again and was playing her cards close for everyone's, including the girl's, safety. She mouthed the word "bugged" to the girl who nodded uncomfortably. Suddenly, the girl tensed as the window on their right cleared and the red light of the reclamation facility light could be seen easily in the dusky sky.

Laura leaned over to the window, blowing her sweaty blond hair out from over her eyes, and looked up at it. "That was quick," she said. As she was not being airlifted in they went down the roads which meant it was either an extremely short journey or all the roads had no cars the latter of which was her general assumption.

It probably meant the capital of the former United States was under martial law.

They had parked right at the entrance under the red light that got her attention, one of the many red lights that particular facility had, and she watched through the glass a very attractive black-haired young man her age with a dark brown leather jacket and jeans being escorted toward the main door which had a large sign stating it was "Reclamation Facility 59" right above "Washington, DC" in bold black letters.

She and the boy noticed bold red neon letters above the door in its frame that read, "Do Your Share and Be Rewarded." The boy was looking up at it, his face almost revealed, before the prison car started to move away. It was heading along the side of the building and then inexplicable around the back.

Laura did not know why and apparently either did the girl soldier who both looked surprised and worried.

***

Justin knew what the deserted streets meant without being told.

Washington DC was under martial law.

He resisted the urge to say "arbeit macht frei" as he went under the sign into the facility and was pushed down a series of halls that very much resembled a close quarter's maze. The place reminded Justin of a white office building with rented out rooms but somehow much colder and unfeeling. He was no architect but he had an unmistakable feeling that all the rooms would be as small, efficient and cheap as the car and planes were not which made absolutely no sense. He was led by the soldier's memory through a series of labyrinthine turns down those skinny white halls until he reached a room labeled "Workforce Doctor" which was so out of the way he felt certain it was not the kind of place normal prisoners were sent too.

The room was some kind of white colored operation room. The left wall was plain and empty, the wall ahead of him had another door and a row of crimson lockers and the right wall was just glass with endless darkness beyond. The wall with the door behind him was full of shelves containing surgical equipment, some of which looked very old but still useable, and in the center of the room was a metal operation table with various black robotic limbs with scary tool-like appendages that he didn't understand half-folded up like a dead spider in an eerie been-used-regularly kind of way.

Justin moved up to the table, eyes wide, and stared down at a little table beside it covered in knives, saws and picks. He was no doctor, not even a medic, but he was reasonably sure those tools were not used much in modern medicine. He raised his eyes slowly up toward the doctor in growing horror.

The blond, spiky-haired doctor was wearing a black dress shirt with a dark red tie and a white doctor's lab coat with its Faction red sleeves and was in the process of walking over to a shelf. He reached into a black box, found a metal bio-blocker cover, and then walked toward him. The bio-blocker cover was a simple form-fitting metal collar that had a glass-steel back that showed the bio-blocker to any who looked.

Its sole purpose was a precaution against the possibility that Justin had what it took to rip his bio-blocker off of which he was rather certain he did not or, the more likely possibility, he would find some kind of tool to cut it out which was also a long shot since he was obviously going to be heavily monitored wherever he ended up.

The doctor snapped the collar around his neck and Justin heard the _clack_ sound at the front just before it squeezed to skin-tight quality with a sense of disturbing finality. "Why the collar?" asked Justin. "It's not like I can—"

"Shut up," said the doctor. "I'm not the kind of doctor who helps people."

"Okay," Justin replied and as he pondered what kind of doctor of medicine that was he looked into his reflection in the glass-steel wall. He was pale, rather handsome some people told him, with a sculpted face, straight black hair hanging down in straight thick locks just past his ocean blue eyes. There were heavy bags beneath them because he had not slept well for weeks and there were vicious bruises that had not healed on his face and no doubt all over his body as well, from when he had been beaten into submission during his capture.

He saw the reflection of the doctor taking out a hand scanner and moving it over Justin. He could see that he was moving very fast and without much care, the line practically flying over him. "In a hurry, doc—"

"Shut your goddamn mouth!" The doctor placed his scanner on the table, took out the solid part of a holographic clipboard which was a slender remote-lie device shaped like an upside L and pressed the button to make the slightly transparent yet fully solid holograph of a neon red writing pad appear. He started to write away on it quickly with a holograph writable pen with whatever information the Faction thought relevant that was probably simultaneously being loaded into a database.

_What is the point of this?_ Justin wondered as he stared into the darkness. _What possible good—_

And then something stumbled out from the darkness. It was a man wearing a dark gray jumpsuit with a white tag on his left breast and was almost sprinting as he stumbled forward with his arms outspread wide. Justin saw clearly the man's face and hands were covered in boils the size of golf balls and he cried out in horror when he saw him trip, fall, and hit the side of the window so hard the balls on his face exploded into a spray of pus and blood across the window. Before Justin could so much as breathe a pair of black plated red bio-armored hands appeared out of the darkness, grabbed the man by his shoulders and yanked him back in.

"What the fuck was that?" cried Justin.

"We're done here," said the doctor. "Clean this piece of shit up and throw him in his cell." He grabbed another bio-blocker collar and his scanner with his free hand and left out of the door Justin had just come in. Justin guessed the other door led into that darkness which he was immeasurably relieved to not be going into.

Justin's guard took him in a different direction than the doctor.

***

The prison car stopped in a garbage enclosure complete with two large red dumpsters on one side.

The girl soldier with Laura was both confused and worried. When she looked up at Laura she saw her wiggling her head around and the girl understood and reformed her helmet.

When the straps unwrapped themselves and the door opened Laura was shocked to see a female elite soldier standing there. An elite soldier was a member of UCLD Special Forces and could easily be spotted by the inner and outer layers of their armor being both colored black but also with their absurd amount of accessories. Their loyalty was said to be without question and everyone feared them because they had a license to kill and torture with impunity. They were usually sadists too.

Laura stepped out and the soldier was about to follow when she heard the elite say, "Get back in the car and leave." The soldier obeyed quickly and sheepishly. "Adler, you come with me."

The car left with more speed than it came down with and was out of sight before Laura had finished stepping through the back door. The elite made a point of directing her from behind which Laura expected and fell into line with instantly.

Ahead of Laura were a series of hallways too small to be public with many branches left and right seemingly the length of a large complex. She found herself suddenly wondering about just what had to be torn down in a nation's capital to make room for the reclamation facility when a goofy looking spiky haired doctor with a hand scanner suddenly appeared in front of her.

"Punk bastard!" he snarled as he began scanning over Laura's body. The elite did not command Laura to stop so she didn't and so the doctor had to work while walking alongside her. He clapped a metal bio-blocker collar around her neck, pulled out a holographic clipboard after he was done scanning her with a hand scanner and began writing frantically. What he required only took him a few moments and when he was done he took a single second to look over her appreciatively.

The elite shot her hand out against his chest and shoved him backward into the wall. It didn't break anything but it was hard enough to make a _bam_ sound and her voice when she said, "Leave," seemed to carry with a threat that made the doctor very nervous. He saluted her, the Faction method almost identical to the United States version, and was quickly gone.

A moment later Laura reached an elevator and the elite stopped her with a grip on her shoulder, opened the door, and pushed her gently inside. Laura was instantly flabbergasted at the sight of the shining gold walls and a red tiled floor of an elevator utterly out of place around the boring white rooms of a reclamation facility.

Inside the elite soldier removed the armor just over her left index finger, pressed it almost daintily against the black fingerprint scanner just right of a slender black touchpad screen that contained three white digital buttons. Despite being a Special Forces level soldier there was a hint of a real girl underneath in the form of a blue painted fingernail that may have matched her eyes.

When the two red buttons formed above the three white she reformed her armor over her finger, pressed the top, and was so much the soldier in her body language that it was almost hard for Laura to believe any hint of anything otherwise had ever been there.

***

Justin was taken to a small room and stripped off all his clothes and belongings.

His remaining possessions had been placed in a black box at the time of his arrest but, inexplicably, a skinny man with a balding spot on the back of his head in a Faction uniform was moving everything from that black box to another black box that's only difference was that it was marked with a white number somewhere in the seven millions and a slender white barcode. He casually pocketed Justin's money and his top of the line blue colored celldisk when he came across them but at no point did he categorize or write anything down.

The man tested the celldisk for a moment by placing it against his left temple, where it shrunk to the size of a quarter and stuck automatically, and tapped it like a button. It was a device primarily for phone calls that would, if it was accessible, reveal images on a HUD, short for head's up display, that could show the internet, movies, books, and any other things that only the wearer of the celldisk could see or hear unless someone was allowed to connect to it. It only made an actual sound if it was off someone's head beeping or vibrating like an old cellphone while also being able to function as a speakerphone or project the HUD above itself visible to anyone looking. Justin's was not accessible however and the man's turned into a frown at the sight of the password above the keyboard that appeared in front of his eyes but he said nothing. He simply grimaced, took off the celldisk and slipped it into his pocket.

Then Justin was pushed out naked into a large round room with thirty clear sanitation chambers, each just big enough for a very large man to squeeze in without touching the sides. They looked like mirrored steel cylinders with transparent sides that bulged out slightly with wide triangular shaped hats that started out at the same width as the cylinder but ended up gradually becoming smaller and smaller until they merged into a large red tube a tenth their size that disappeared into the ceiling.

Justin had never seen a sanitation chamber with glass-steel walls before and was suddenly very self-conscious which was only made worse by the appearance of an attractive, redheaded female nurse dressed in red scrubs grinning at him. He wasn't sure what was worse; her all business attitude, her general high-level of beauty, the possibly recording red celldisk over her left temple or the way she was studying him.

The sentinel model robot standing in the corner was also not making it any easier. The black thing shaped vaguely like a squat seven-foot tall man stood with its long arms and legs looking almost merged with its body stared at him with two glowing red eyes. It looked very plain on sight but Justin knew it had many weapons of which included vibration blades, kinetic firearms, laser weaponry, grenade launchers, and many others all hidden in the robotic equivalent of a Swiss Army Knife that was its body.

Justin didn't like it or anything else made by Nystrom Robotics for that matter. They made military robotics and had a very ugly reputation in the engineering community. Justin had never been part of that of community in any serious way at just eighteen but his teachers all gave off a certain kind of disturbed vibe whenever the name came up in conversation although they denied any particular knowledge beyond "just not liking it."

He then noticed there was a different doctor there too although he wasn't looking at Justin. He was working on another holographic clipboard and probably the one who had pressed something to make one of the six red horizontal lines on one of the bases of the sanitation chambers start to glow in an indication that it had powered up.

Justin felt the nurse put a hand on his shoulder to get his attention and then felt her gently maneuver him toward the activated sanitation chamber. She had an admiring smile on her face as she pulled him along and looked over his body which, sculpted from a lifetime of physical training, clearly appealed to her. "I like you too, baby," he told her jokingly.

"Oh I'm sorry, sweetheart, but I'm already taken," she replied.

He nodded soberly. "It's okay. I'm, well—'" he sighed "—better off with a woman _under_ forty—"

The new doctor burst out laughing without lifting up his head and the nurse angrily shoved Justin into the chamber, slammed the door, and gave him a reproachful look. When she turned away from the door she pointed at the laughing doctor and yelled something but the chamber was soundproof so Justin could not hear a thing.

From above heavy red liquid poured over him with a weight that felt metallic. There was water in there but most of it was cleansing nanoprobes made of metal that stuck onto his body and cleaned everything from head to toe in a rough, unpleasant fashion. It took maybe five minutes causing an incredible itching sensation everywhere before they all at once dropped off and went down the drain like real red water where they presumably joined the rest of the nanoprobes to be used again as needed.

It was a technical improvement but water was much better for the skin and had a general sense of relaxation nanoprobe baths did not. The nanoprobes in bio-armor did the same thing but avoided the itchiness by working steadily over several hours utilizing the body's sweat with any water found from the outside such as that of rain or swamp water. When water was a rarity, such as in space, people used nanoprobe baths all the time but, as a rule, everyone still used showers and bath and on the same regular basis as they always had.

When the door opened and Justin stepped out the nurse pressed a neat bundle containing bed sheets, no comforter, a pillow, a gray jumpsuit, white socks and boring gray shoes into his arms. She gave a smile and a wink, evidently forgetting or letting go of what he said, and then stepped back to let a white dressed guard come by and lead him away.

The man's uniform was a white shirt with a badge on the upper left breast, gray pants, and armed only with a simple a stun baton. He looked kind of like a traditional metropolitan policeman which Justin heavily suspected was probably what he was. When the Faction disbanded the civilian police force many of them became prison guards which, considering the draconian nature of the Faction's laws, were rather needed.

Justin had only glanced at him for the moment before he felt the freezing coolness of the prison as he walked. It was almost freezing but after so much heat he welcomed it. He was still welcoming it as he was led through the next several halls, one of which had one side with almost of solid glass-steel showing him a large quad on his right, and then found himself in a large rectangular white room lit by dim white lights containing prison cells that made his heart sink and his temperature drop even more. He wasn't sure what to expect but he did not expect that.

The cells were tiny, made of glass-steel, with four cots within, one solitary toilet, and a force field wall at the front entrance that distorted everything within slightly. The room was a perfect square and they clung to the walls so perfectly they looked like a glass border except in the one place where the entrance and staircase upward was. There was a second level easily seen through the grated floor that was utterly identical to the first and in the center of the room was a squat, square white elevator with glass-steel sides over the front and sides.

Justin could see through the floor and glass easily enough to see that on both levels the cells with people were packed, eight people in some, six in most, yet oddly some only had two or more and more than several on both levels were actually empty.

Justin had no idea what to make of what he was seeing. Was it preparation for later prisoners? Calculated meanness? What was the point of packing the cells when your workers would die? Nothing logical came to mind except maybe just cruelty. Maybe that was the true answer to many questions in history. What were the Nazis really about? What was the Inquisition about? In the end, maybe it was just cruelty and maybe for no better reason than that someone in charge thought it would be a blast.

"Don't worry, kid," said the guard as they made their way to the elevator encased in a grated metal tube with glass-steel between the links. He was an older man with a mustache and graying white hair and he very much did not look Faction to him. He was strong, tall, and athletic like them but he was kind in a way no Faction man was. "You're on the second floor."

"Second floor?"

"Yeah," he replied and he pressed the button to raise the elevator. "The two levels here are part of the first floor. You're damn lucky, kid."

Justin disagreed with that because nobody in a reclamation facility could be "damn lucky" but after looking at all those ugly, packed rooms surrounded by glass-steel he felt very much so if only by comparison.

The elevator went onward up the past the mostly empty second level of the first floor and through the opaque white metal ceiling that cut off his view below.

***

Laura stared around herself in dumbstruck shock.

The floors were plush red carpet, the walls were bright colored gold, and there was a painting of a sunrise directly across from her in an alcove with a small table and a fancy green vase with bright red and yellow roses within. There were huge windows letting in beautiful dusk light, monitors on the walls as big as fifty inches or more showing random images of beautiful environments from all around the world time matched to Washington DC and there was even a kind of perfume in the air.

She felt the elite's fist at her back and started walking. The gesture was an obvious one: the elite soldier was threatening to have the two high-velocity vibration blades extend out from her wrist and into Laura's back if she did not start moving. It was only when Laura reached the speed the elite desired that she lowered her fist.

Laura was herded down a long and wider hallway with mostly closed black doors on either side. She thought they were most likely the Faction officers rooms, the few that were silver were probably for the highest officers, and her suspicions were confirmed when she saw through one open silver door.

In the midst of a lavish crimson floored living room with black walls was a tall blond man standing in the full crimson and black Faction uniform of a general complete with cavalry sword posing with his head held high and back straight. His high level AIC, a nasty looking black wasp-shaped multi-use officer model AIC looking like something caught in a gray area between a robot and some living insect was crouched on top of a dresser and immediately turned its red eyes toward her, its clear wings capable of force field generation and its stinger an automatic laser gun.

Its owner below was having his portrait painted by a black woman whose work, even at an obviously preliminary level, was absolutely fantastic.

Laura could only see the painter's back, a sight only revealing a woman who was slender and tall with her black very curly afro-textured tied conservatively behind her head and wearing in a gray jumpsuit but even with just that Laura thought she knew who she might be.

There was a _shing_ sound that drove all thoughts of the painter out of her mind and she continued onward at a faster pace. She heard the sound again, the sound of the sword length vibration blades retreating into the elite's wrists, and breathed easier. She did not think the woman would kill her but she very well might hurt her in some way if Laura continued to annoy her.

The elite stopped her at one of the silver doors almost seemingly at random at only twenty feet farther away, turned her to them, opened it, pushed her through and then closed them again with herself on the other side.

Laura found herself in a lavish black walled crimson floored living room with a large rectangular opening in the floor leading down to some lower level. Straight ahead through an open door was a kitchen and to her left was some kind of entertainment room complete with black couch and an almost literal wall-sized television and beyond, left of the kitchen, would be the bedroom. Looking back down below in that opening down a five-step metal grated staircase Laura saw a metal floored area with a black table on it and various drawers against its walls. Although Laura had no evidence of it she thought it might be one of the torture chambers long rumored to have been built inside of certain less-than-kind Faction officers' suites.

Despite that making no sense Laura would not have been surprised if it really was a torture chamber. The Faction machine always moved forward and it did a lot of crazy or stupid things mostly because something like only ten people in its upper echelon had the ability to alter, cancel, or counter any major architectural order while countless subordinates could create one.

Laura's eyes went back to the kitchen and narrowed with recognition at the man stepping out of the doorway.

Captain Rupert Jackson was a tall muscular black man with a hard, angular face dressed in the crimson Faction uniform complete with medals on both shoulders and the flame on the front of his black uniformed hat. He was missing the sword and various flame-shaped medals that indicated rank, specifically the long red horizontal lines of a general, but he still managed to convey the fact he was trying to impress her despite failing to do so.

"Ms. Adler," he said in a cheerful voice.

"Captain Jackson," she replied in a bland voice.

"My reputation precedes me," he said like it was a good thing of which it very much was not. The Faction would agree: he would have surely been higher ranked if his reputation had not made him the scorn of every high ranking female above him.

Another man slipped out from the kitchen in the uniform of a second lieutenant which was technically only one level lower than Jackson. He was stout and stood maybe five foot two with very pale skin and buzzed blond hair almost as light as hers with a creepy, round moon face that did not seem to indicate the man had maintained the physical expectations of the military even though she could tell he had. Laura found it was his eyes that caught most of her attention, though. They were sneaky black rat eyes that focused on her from his spot in the corner with a strange intensity that did not seem to escape to the rest of his more or less blank face.

There were two AICS in the room, black plated over crimson just like their owners with smooth red eyes, one another wasp almost utterly identical in every way to the one she had just seen, the other a centipede which was a military mechanic's AIC with thousands of different tools, a complex factory to create missing parts using its internally grown orgo-material which included the ability to create glass, plastic, wood, metal and every other conceivable materials. It was also capable of assimilating such materials should it run low on its own, capable of using its many sharp and deadly legs and laser torches to cut through virtually anything. It was not beyond the realm of impossibility for it to do tear apart a human body.

The centipede was curled into a corner almost like a snake staring at her with its smaller, beadier red eyes while the wasp stared down at her from a pole that stuck out of the wall above looking like some kind of magician's familiar. They both had the same quiet intensity as if readying themselves to leap or fire should she "try something."

"Allow me to introduce Lieutenant Stephen Croon, my right-hand man." The blond man gave her a greasy smile for a moment while continuing to stare at her almost blankly with those sneaky little eyes of his.

Jackson suddenly swooped up toward her and she stiffened uncomfortably. Her hands were still handcuffed behind her back and he was dangerous. She knew she could fight off a civilian handcuffed but a trained soldier and his right-hand cretin all at once was another story.

She watched his eyes closely for anything as he lifted her chin up with one gloved hand to thoroughly examine her face. She had what many people called a "supermodel's face" with high cheekbones, sculpted jaw and near perfect nose, or so she was told and supposed was true, combined with sensual, narrow green eyes and full pouting lips. Her hair that normally hung like silk and was presently in sweaty strands stuck to her shoulders and neck was a natural platinum blond that had remained the exact same shade since earliest childhood. "You are so very beautiful, Ms. Adler," he told her in awe-filled voice.

Laura said nothing and tried to read his intention through his eyes. She did not like what she found there so far.

"I know your entire history, Ms. Adler," Jackson said as he lowered his hand. "All your marks on physicality are _perfect_. You are a top line fighter, a very gifted markswoman, trained in hunting, a survivalist in multiple environments, one of our best pilots, trained in power armor and robotic suit weaponry as well as ground and air vehicles and art, singing and dancing—" he shrugged "—oddly. You even have the ability to juggle and do sleight of hand tricks." He gave her a sly look. "You were in the top twenty of our best racers."

_I would be in the top five if the Faction hadn't rigged our races_ , she thought and did not fail to notice that he mentioned her "physicality" first which was supposed to mean her level of health such as stamina and endurance and such but quite obviously meant her appearance.

"Your file says you love to race. You were nearly champion in the UCLD competitions as I said but you did even better afterward. After your disgrace, you attempted to become pro in non-military hover racing circuits and even won a few races despite being so young. Rock Salt Music was your sponsor. Why is it that you did so much better without us? Were you holding back? Trying to gain favor?"

"I'm certain I do not know, Captain." If he thought he was going to get her to incriminate herself by admitting she believed the UCLD rigged their races he was going to be sorely mistaken.

"Don't you?" Jackson replied and then he gave her an ugly, malicious smile. "So here's the thing. I own you now, Laura. I own every single part of your nubile eighteen-year-old body." He put his hand on her shoulder and looked down at her breasts and then back up into her face. "Every perky perfect part."

Laura looked into his eyes and was unable to stop the scorn from escaping onto her face. If he raped her she was going to make him suffer for it. Even if took a thousand years she would have her vengeance. She swore it to herself right then and there.

"You don't like that, do you?" he asked with a wider smile and reached for her chin again. She moved her head away while keeping her body still and her eyes firmly locked on his. "You are a warrior woman, one of our top crop of young female soldiers." His eyes narrowed at her expression and Laura saw an unexpected discomfort crossing them. "Did you know you are almost top ranked in our list of beauty in female Caucasian cadets?"

Laura had no idea such a list existed and found no surprise in learning that one did. "Are we finished, Captain?" she asked and he frowned at her. _You don't like that, do you?_ she thought in a mental mimicry of his voice..

"I'm going to give you a choice, Laura," he told her and Laura could feel him getting angry. "You are going to give me that tight ass to do with as I please and if you do that you'll get a special room, real food, and a real life in this place. Do it not and I'll send you down into the cells handcuffed and naked to where a half-dozen psychotic dykes would just _love_ to see how deep their arm goes."

"I choose number two," Laura said without hesitation.

"You could get to live up here, Laura," he began uncomfortably. He might have expected her refusal but it seemed the ease in which she gave it offended or maybe even emasculated him. "You could get real food and have a real life. Even possible reinstatement to the UCLD if you play ball." He smirked at that but it was an uncomfortable smirk.

"No, I'm good," she replied. She thought "crazy" described him well. Deep into the Faction system, there was no law and order as people knew it. If Rupert Jackson raped right then or there, or even off duty out on the street to a normal girl, it would have been a Faction tribunal to judge him if at all and they would almost certainly side with him.

He knew he could do as he pleased and he had gone mad with the power if it.

But there was something wrong. It was something in her reaction that was clearly bothering him, something he clearly wanted that he wasn't getting, and it clearly wasn't just her body. If he just wanted to rape her why would he have bothered to make that offer?

Whatever it was he wanted he wasn't getting and Laura knew sooner likelier than later he was going to try and make her suffer for it. His kind always did.

Jackson's eyes narrowed and his voice was full of warning. "Laura—"

"No."

"Oh really—"

"Yes."

"So you're a lesbian—"

"Oh no, I'm very much not that. Check my file closer, Captain, and you'll see that I have dated a string of boys some of which were actually black so you can also drop the idea of racism from your mind too." She looked into his eyes and prepared herself for an explosion. "I choose no."

Jackson's face filled up with rage and Laura found herself suddenly marveling at how delicate his confidence was. Such a man should _never_ have been made an officer let alone a captain. He couldn't be trusted with his own life let alone the lives of soldiers.

"You lesbian _cunt_!" he snarled in a guttural angry voice. "In one week, in one fucking week, you'll be begging me, _begging_ me, to come back here!" He pointed a finger at her at her pelvis area. "That wondrous tight thing you hold onto so dearly will be three times the size next we meet and I _cannot_ guarantee I will even want it then!" He moved up into her face and she tightened up in readying for an attack. "Beg me now, you bitch! Beg me now and I might, just _might_ , change my mind!"

"It has been a pleasure meeting you, Captain Jackson," she replied in a voice that sounded calm.

Jackson looked at her like he wanted to cut her slowly into pieces but gradually he did at least appear to calm down. "Fine," he told her. "I can wait." He called out the word "soldier" and the elite opened the door. "You take this lesbian bitch downstairs, clean her up, and take her to her cell!"

As Laura turned around she saw him stomp off into the entertainment room with his hands bundled into tight angry fists. He genuinely looked like he wanted to kill someone.

***

The second floor of cells was perfectly identical to the first except that the cells there only had one cot and only a very few were being used. The guard took him to the top of the two levels of the floor, led him to the cell direct center on the right side and pressed his finger against the black pad on the right to kill the force field.

Justin stepped into the room, hesitated for a moment, then turned back to the guard. "Hey," he said.

The guard turned back to him. "Yeah?" he asked.

"How many people are here in this place?"

"Too many and less than before," he replied and then he pressed his finger to the pad to bring up the force field and walked away, his boots sounding loud on the grated metal walkway.

"Too many and less than before," Justin repeated softly and turned to his cell. Inside he saw that in addition to a cot, toilet and sink he had a little barred window to the outside that the cells a floor below did not. He was also completely alone on that entire side and that made him feel surprisingly lonesome.

Justin tossed the bundle onto his cot and put on his clothes. It was just a simple prison jumpsuit colored gray instead of orange with a rectangular black fabric tag on his left breast with the number 7,145,948 printed over in big bold white numbers with the words "Reclamation Facility 59" in normal smaller white letters beneath. The moment his eyes caught that number he became transfixed upon it.

"How many people have been in these camps?" he asked out loud but no answer came so he made his bed and wondered the more prudent question. _Where the hell are they now?_ They sure as hell weren't let go.

He made his bed, lied down, and stared up at a ceiling of solid unlit lightbulbs deeply wondering about that last question. As the hours dragged on he came to the conclusion he had known the answer all along but he had been just been unwilling to fully admit it to himself. All those crazy rumors over the years such as forced deportation or a secret army of slave labor force fell apart in the dark of that place leaving only the darkest truth to be the most believed.

They were murdered somewhere somehow and probably under the pretext of hard but necessary labor or novel medical experimentation.

"I'm doomed," he whispered to himself and found the sight of that diseased man with the unnatural boils the size of golf balls on his face. It created such horror within himself that he was incapable of sleeping for even a moment during that first night he spent in Reclamation Facility 59.

***

The redheaded nurse gave Laura's body a look of undisguised jealously before roughly shoving her into a chamber. When she stepped out the woman practically slammed her things down onto her hands and pushed her away. Then a white dressed female guard roughly shoved the shoes on top and then gestured aggressively in the direction Laura was to go.

From behind she heard the happy snickers of several men with celldisks on their temple which included the doctor and the weaselly looking soldier slash compulsive thief who stole her celldisk and UCLD graduation ring when he transferred her things. It seemed like they had turned her into a stripper with all the men leering eagerly the whole time she undressed and as she stepped out of the room she looked back and saw that even the sentinel robot following her with its gaze.

That damn robot was almost certainly recording everything too and the little creeps would probably be chuckling all about it as they shared its recordings out among their friends but, strangely, that wasn't as important to her as it once would have been. There was something in the air, something about how that girl soldier showed Laura her face, a thing no one would have done a year ago, and that little thief too, something about how he didn't really care, and in retrospect, she sensed it in Jackson too. There was just something off about everyone and it changed everything.

_We're coming to an end,_ she thought. _Something is going to happen and they all know it. They're going through the motions but that is all this is._

"Clean bombs" were what came to mind. There was a weapon of the age: a bomb dropped from a satellite that exploded in space to form countless smaller bombs that would enter the atmosphere and explode into even smaller bombs which would aim for cities, towns, and other places of high population where they would do their final explosion into deadly murderous nanoprobes that rode on the wind.

It would create no injury to any building, street or any kind of wealth in general but, all the same, there was no bomb of nuclear origins that could equal its kill count. The nanoprobes would crawl under doors, into bunkers and cars and anywhere else unsealed in its relentless search for human, and only human, hearts, which they would instantly stop. They would even stick around for a month, maybe two, so any survivors coming out of their sealed bunker too early would share the fate of their neighbors. Bionic augmentation armor was not sealed enough to save a man or woman from it so the enemies' armies would all die alongside their civilians.

If the end really was coming, and it was certainly feeling as if it was, that would be the way it would come. The Faction had been turning against its European and Asian counterparts before she had graduated and they had not stopped while at war with the opposing Free Countries Pact known in general as the Alliance. They too had access to the same bombs and were reputedly getting very nervous as the incredibly reckless Faction leaders were starting to peer down at their launch buttons.

The Alliance would never fire first, of course, but they would fire back if fired upon but even if they didn't and the war was lost a victorious Faction could believably turn against each other and bomb their own countries along with former Alliance countries in a second war with itself that could end just as nightmarishly as the first.

"Walk faster, bitch," said the guard and Laura turned to look at her. She was around forty or so, hard faced with angular features with dark hair tied back in a professional normal back knot and dark angry eyes that had the look of natural authority. She wore the white uniform of a prison guard in its near trademark imitation of the former United States police which she almost certainly was.

She was a member of the very last remnant of the United States civilian police force, a woman whose occupation of once respected peacekeeper having been reduced to such a low enough level of guard duty that the Faction felt it was beneath a "real" soldier's dignity. She didn't have to, of course, but being any part of the former United States military or police had a black mark on a record available to any employer and being a prison guard in a reclamation facility was probably the only job she could ever hope to get and at a much reduced pay than even her pitiful pay as a policewoman had once warranted.

"Does this make you happy?" she asked her when they entered the cell block.

Laura looked at the two level of cells and was not surprised in the slightest to see a range of packing from the extremely over packed to the utterly empty. She suspected sadism as a possible cause but figured it was most likely just the absolute fear of questioning authority as the true cause of that idiocy. When new cells were suddenly available it was in character to what she knew that no one would dare ask the higher ranked officers for permission to move anyone, which would be a little too close to questioning them and overstepping their authority and in of itself could easily end in demotion or even being shot, and it wasn't worth it to anyone anyway since nobody up there ever cared even when Armageddon _wasn't_ coming. They had a ridiculously stupid mix of having the authority of the situation but without any of the responsibility should it go wrong.

"Why would any of this make me happy?" Laura asked honestly as they stepped into the elevator.

"You know why." The guard pressed the button on the touchpad to raise the elevator. It rose up past the two levels to an entirely different floor that was almost entirely her own. She was taken to the center cell on the far left on the top where she had no neighbors on that entire side and was then quickly pushed inside when the force field door vanished. The guard turned it back on, turned around, and walked away without a word, her feet making loud angry clanks as she walked.

Laura got fully dressed including her shoes and socks and looked at her number on her jumpsuit: 7,117,547 in bold white letters over black on top of smaller letters that read "Reclamation Facility 59." She looked at it for a moment then made her bed before slipping down on top of it.

She really wished she could get out her AIC Dylan, her best companion since she was a little girl, but Dylan was deep asleep in molecular form inside of her body. There was no way to get her out and there were no other friends either. She had some friends, boys she dated and girls she liked, but the only close female friend and she ever had only been temporary. Samantha Seymour in those early days was like a sister but she had broken off their friendship over something perceived against her fiancé and then later after her fiancé died became a Faction fanatic. Laura was certain that she would never see her again.

"Well," she said, "At least this will all be over with soon."
4

The first and every day that followed began at six in the morning with blinding light coming down over every inch of the cell's ceiling coinciding with a horn blowing through the intercom in the military wake-up music of the Reveille. Justin cried out in shock when it happened at first but Laura just grimaced up at the light. She had not known what would happen when the time to awaken came when she had taken one look at the lights in the ceiling and correctly guessed its primary purpose. She assumed the secondary was probably to torture bad occupants by staying on throughout the night.

They stood up, faced the force field, and followed the directions of a projected woman's image in the center in it. Both genders first shaved with the laser razor hanging on the wall near the toilet, appearances were important for some reason, and then followed the next command to make their beds, do basic stretching exercises and then wait with their backs straight in front of the force field. Several guards in the Faction red armor with black plates had appeared on the second floor and had waited there through the activity with extreme resentment.

They clearly did not like being their babysitters but it seemed whoever was on the second floor was important enough that their guardianship could not be trusted by ex-police officers who covered the first.

At seven o'clock the prisoners were taken into the cafeteria to drink water and eat nutrient filled flavor paste and at seven-thirty most of the prisoners were let loose onto the quad to do literally nothing until eleven. If they did anything more aggressive then casually talk and or walk a former police officer known as a white guard would stop them. If they were unlucky a red guard, that is a Faction soldier in their red-colored uniform, would stop them far less kindly. There were less of those but there was always at least one and they always paid attention, usually eyeballing the crowd from the corners and readying the nasty looking red rods with clear tips known as pain givers.

At eleven o'clock they exercised hard and efficiently. Justin and Laura weren't given a very strict schedule like the others were but followed a hard military routine

At eleven everyone was made to exercise rather hard and efficiently. Justin and Laura weren't given the same schedule the others were but it was by no means easy and even after a lifetime of military training both found their routines challenging. Most of the others were haunted by Faction physical trainers, men and women in red sweatshirts with matching red sweatpants who watched everything and would stab them with a pain giver if they were not exercising efficiently enough.

It lasted until twelve o'clock when another meal with the same food as breakfast was given and then a half of an hour after that Justin and Laura were in the quad again doing nothing for five and a half hours. Some of the others were pulled out by some of those trainers or red guards but most were still just sent to wander aimlessly from here to there.

Supper was also the same as the other meals arriving at five o'clock and then a half of an hour later they were again wandering around the quad until eight. Then they were put through a sanitation pod in a different, smaller room quickly with their clothes on, sent back to their cell to sleep by nine o'clock and the next morning it started all over again.

Justin and Laura's schedule was notably different from some of the others. Neither spoke to anyone on that first day but they could see that some people in their white tags looked like they were being worked to death, their bodies wasting away and covered in so much dirt and grime that a quick nanoprobe bath could not clean them off entirely or even very much.

The whole place had an air of sadism covered by quasi-scientific quackery. The idea that the entire facility was meant to facilitate some kind of rehabilitation or even some great social experiment to benefit the prisoners and society was stated but was so against what anyone saw that it was almost laughable.

If there really was a social experiment in Reclamation Facility 59 it seemed to be one of longing and it achieved its end by making sure every prisoner could see exactly what they were missing out on almost all the time.

There were monitors everywhere including the outer walls of the quad below the black glass of a walkway window they couldn't see into but knew officers looked down from and they showed all manner of wonderful things. They showed picnics, forests, beaches, skies, amusement parks, people having fun, families having birthdays, people getting married and it never ended until they were back in their cells, the one place without a monitor. Those monitors drew every eye for they were the only color they could see, aside from the blue of the sky, the red of the guards, and whatever color the skin, hair and eyes of the other prisoners which, somehow, all seemed to be fading.

The prisoners were also regularly shown good food and not just on the monitors. The red guards ate behind a curved semicircle glass-steel wall where everyone could see them in plain sight during their own meal times. They would be eating expensive cuts of American steaks, chicken Caesar salads and soups one day, French cuisine another, Italian maybe the third, Chinese a fourth and it went on never to end as the professional Faction chef was seen day and night ordering around subordinates to create their feast of food. The holes in the glass-steel let the aroma drift out to make sure the prisoners' noses confirmed what their eyes saw.

And then there was the wall: the great glass-steel wall that stretched throughout the entire facility separating it into two perfect halves merging at the semicircle guard eating area's wall. Aside from perhaps sharing a doctor, all gender was entirely separated by that wall. On the west side was the male, the east female, and that was the part of the social experiment in longing had seemed to affect them most of all. They could see each other through the wall, feel the attraction to each other, but never touch or do anything more than speak. No one was homosexual, that was well-assured beforehand, and any prisoner who had been found to be so was suffering a different fate in some other reclamation facility somewhere else.

Nothing came in and nothing went out but the outside was completely eradicated. The monitors occasionally showed additional videos of an inmate's family which were meant to horrify them by showing them a video of loved ones starving, hiding somewhere or crying and if there was a letter, of which there were only a few, they were burned in front of the recipients in the quad. Laura knew they had been read by Faction operatives first and she also knew the operative would respond to the letters with false tales of happiness, joy, personal recovery, and a newfound dedication to the United Countries Law Division.

"We can't have you infected by the outside," the projected image of the woman that had been projected onto the force field door said early on that first day to everyone when someone asked. "You need to get better. You need to be well. We will endeavor to make you so and we believe, in time, that it will work."

She sounded so reasonably sure that it felt almost possible to believe her.

***

When Justin was in line for breakfast on the first day he had looked over at the men from the first floor and found the only discernable difference in their appearance aside from that condition was that their jumpsuits' tag was white with black text instead of the other way around. He supposed his education in computer and bionic engineering, and maybe the stolen information he had merged into his bio-armor, had made him more valuable than the normal men in white tags but he wondered if it was maybe just a random thing to mess with the prisoners' mind. The poor men looked exhausted, injured, miserable and dirty and their eyes had the hollow dead look of the incredibly abused.

When Justin reached the food generator he resisted the urge to groan. "Damn," he said out loud.

Amity Food Incorporated was a despicable company under the absolute control and power of the Live-4-Less Corporation who had a de facto monopoly in all areas of the domestic food industry including restaurants and food fabricators, both private and military, and controlled all save for the fabricators found in bionic augmentation armor although they still controlled what users could make with them. Such a monopoly was only possible since conservatives' efforts to deregulate most of the laws against monopolies were achieved and with no competition it was probably so cheaply made that it was barely functional even out of the box. The sight of that evil green and blue yin-yang that was the symbol of Live-4-Less sent a groan through the heart of any mechanic or engineer with the task of maintaining any such device.

And it wasn't a particularly wonderful device to begin with. Justin's armor's own military food fabricator could make hamburgers, pizza, salads, and many, many more things provided he had the proper ingredient cartridges or raw inserted materials. That thing was just designed to fabricate flavored paste like they were astronauts on some endless space voyage.

He moved his black tray underneath, pressed the pizza button and nothing came out. He pressed tuna and nothing came out of there either. He became irritated and pressed pasta and Caesar salad and steak and hamburger and still nothing came out. "Piece of shit," he said and he pulled open the front and everyone leaned over and stared in shock.

"You shouldn't do that," whispered the man behind him. He was a wiry, tall man with buck teeth, a narrow face and blond hair that stuck straight upward almost naturally. On his breast was a black tag and like Justin himself he looked reasonably healthy. "They might break these things to test us."

"They'd have to be charging full speed to reach it before it breaks itself," Justin replied and he reached in and jiggled the main tubed cord.

"Look at it," said a man behind them and everyone leaned farther over to look inside. "It's all the same crap." It very much was and all that the buttons he had pressed do was to give a vague flavor to the one major paste dispenser. Looking at it then, Justin earnestly thought it might really have started as a device for astronaut paste but he pitied any astronaut relying on that device for sustenance.

Justin shut the compartment door, pressed the pizza button, and the beige colored gruel poured down with an ugly squishing sound. "Yay for victory," he said blandly.

The man behind him stopped Justin with a touch on his shoulder, pressed hamburger for himself, and then held out his hand. "Lyle Wilder," he said. "What's your name?"

"Justin Biryukov." He noticed several people looked back at the machine longingly and then realized that several people ahead of him had not been able to get any food at all but did not dare risk going back in line to get more with that red guard watching.

"Russian?" Lyle asked as he walked with him to a single bottle of water sticking out of a wall. When someone pulled one out another replaced it.

That was all they were allowed to eat and drink for each meal

"Yep," he replied and the two of them sat down at a black topped table. "I—" Three men suddenly sat down around him. "Wait, who the hell are you guys?"

"Relax, kid," said one of them. "My name is Lucas Randal." He was an extraordinarily handsome man with very light blue eyes, sculpted movie star features complete with a cleft chin and straight, dark brown hair long enough so that when he combed it backward the bangs went down past his ears. His tag was red with white text, the first Justin had noticed so far, and like Justin, he had a collar around his neck to protect the bio-blocker the Faction had placed there. He was by far the neatest man that Justin had seen in that place including himself with even his nails looking perfect.

Justin recognized his name and face instantly but didn't believe it. "The billionaire jet aviator?" he replied. "You're shitting me." Even as the words left his mouth he recognized the man's face even more so from more than a dozen engineering magazines he had seen him in.

Lucas Randal was the founder of American Transcontinental Airlines and the designer of the Stardust that he had so admired.

"That would be a fair assumption considering that just over a year ago you would have found me fucking supermodels in my hundred million dollar Malibu beach house instead of being here." He leaned back, uncomfortable, and when he put his hands on his table Justin saw his fingers shaking a bit.

"You created that giant airplane," Justin said in awe.

"The Hercules II, the Flying Neighborhood, yes." His eyes were strange, distant and sad all at the same time. "The very day I finished it they trumped up some charges to confiscate it and my fortune and tossed me here like so much trash." His face shifted to just being sad. "I was on my way to the celebration party. I had my sights on a former movie starlet descended from Goldie Hawn if you know who that is."

"I do," Justin replied and he looked back down at his shaking fingers and he knew the nickname "the Second Howard Hughes" had a wider meaning than he had originally thought.

"My bio-blocker is preventing my bionic augmentation armor from regulating my system," Lucas said when he saw him looking. "I developed OCD and I am an epileptic among other things." He paused. "Howard Hughes had OCD. He was my childhood hero and why I emulate him." He sighed. "I'm forgetting my manners. Let me introduce you to a couple of my friends." He gestured to the men beside him. "Jose Heladio Hernandez and Juan Reyes."

Jose Heladio Hernandez was a short but stout and strong man of Hispanic ancestry with a round face, handsome in a kind pleasant, jolly-looking way, with dark eyes and a head of slowly growing hair from being shaved not long in the past. He had a collar and a black tag just like Justin did.

Juan Reyes was also Hispanic but was as different as his friend as could be. He was an average looking man who was tall and thin with short, scraggly brown hair that seemed to puff out everywhere and he, with his white tag, was in bad condition. He had several rows of bags under his eyes, his lips were cut and bruised and there was dirt caked on part of his face so deeply that it almost looked tattooed there.

All three men were in their early thirties, about a decade older than Lyle and around two decades older than Justin.

"Justin Biryukov," Justin told them and shook their hands one by one.

"That's Russian," said Lyle.

"We know what it is," said Jose irritably and he turned to Justin. "Alright kid, you're a black tag, like me, and that's one below the top, which is a red tag, like him." He gestured with his head to Randal and then hesitated before adding in a much sadder voice, "And then there's one up from the bottom, a white tag, like Juan."

Justin looked at Reyes and felt an intense pity for him and every other white tag.

"You must be pretty talented in some way but not the head of some great company like Randal here," said Jose.

"Like American Transcontinental Airlines?" Justin replied. "I shouldn't even be close to the same level as this guy. He's United States royalty."

"There is no United States anymore," Randal replied bitterly.

"What is your talent?" asked Jose.

"I'm a computer and bionic engineer and somewhat of a prodigy, I guess. I built my own AIC."

"I am a professional musician myself," Jose told him. "I am a composer who has done of everything from the highest symphonies down to the street performances which I did in my spare time. I used to take in over half a million a year on the royalties from my recorded performances alone, was considered one of the best composers in the United States, and I am mildly insulted that I'm not a red tag."

"I am an entrepreneur," said Lyle.

"He's some kind of hacker," Jose told him and Lyle shrugged.

"I'm a dentist," said Reyes sadly.

Justin looked at him for a moment then turned to the group in general. "Are we the only ones with red and black tags?"

"Nathan Michaels over there with that kid is a black tag," said Jose gesturing with his head. Justin looked over his shoulder and saw a tall, attractive black man talking to a thirteen-year-old black boy. Justin took one look at the man and didn't need the sight of that collar around his neck or some kind of uniform to tell him that he was military.

"What rank was he?" Justin asked.

"He won't talk about it but judging by how Jackson reacts around him I would say high. The only person he really talks to his that kid and the kid needs it." Justin recognized the boy as the only child in the entire facility that he had seen. Justin and maybe a few white tags were the only people close to his age and none of them were under eighteen.

"He's sweet on his mother," Lyle added.

Justin turned back. "Who's Jackson?"

"You'll find that out soon enough," said Randal. "When you do thank God in Heaven you are not a pretty woman."

Justin felt a tenseness in everyone and decided to change the subject. "What is the difference between a black tag and a red tag?" he asked.

"We don't know," said Jose. "As far as we can tell we are exactly the same. We basically just get up, eat, exercise, wander aimlessly around all day, eat a few times in between, shower in nanoprobes in sanitation pods, and then go to bed. I guess we're valued more because we're someone famous, heavily educated or talented."

"That's it?" Justin looked at Reyes uncomfortably for a moment

Reyes met Justin's eyes with his own blazing in cold rage through intense tiredness. "Only white tags participate in Law Labor, only white tags take daily physicals, only white tags have domestic duties, and only white tags live on a first-floor cell crammed with half a dozen more people!"

"What is Law Labor?" asked Justin.

Reyes put his hands on the table to reveal they were cracked, scratched and bleeding and each fingernail was filled with dirt. "It's important work like digging a gigantic channel by the Vietnam memorial, stripping old walls of paint away from abandoned buildings before they're demolished or cleaning sewage from pipes with bare hands or toothbrushes instead of tools or robots." Reyes was filled with misery. "We are pulled out randomly at seven-thirty at least three times a week."

"I wish I was surprised—" Justin saw Lyle squirming at the sight of a large white tag man frowning hatefully at him "—what?"

"Nothing," said Lyle quickly.

If any of the other men had noticed that they gave any indication of it.

***

Jackson's predictions for Laura proved extremely wrong. It became instantly clear that the majority of prisoners in the facility were not violent by nature and upon learning that she was ex-Faction they had actually become far too terrified of her to even talk let alone be violent. Many of them would sneer at her, sometimes even call her names behind her back, but none would do more and most of the others didn't even have the nerve to do that much.

The white guards had no such problems. When she got her food and water on the first day's breakfast one of them came by and knocked it out of her hands. "Careful, bitch!" said the slender, almost petite guard and she walked on toward the other guards who were openly frowning at her. While she was still staring another white guard bumped her hard enough to knock her a few feet away as she walked by and then sneered at her over her shoulder as she walked on.

Laura looked down at the tray on the ground and found that she was not only unsurprised but did not particularly blame them as well. An ex-policewoman whose pension, position and livelihood were all but ruined because of the group she had been a part of in favor of incredibly corrupt UCLD Law Enforcers had a good reason to hate her and furthermore it was not above the realm of possibility that she was still a member sent in there as a spy. That was the way most of the prisoners looked at her and, if she was being perfectly honest, she might well have looked at herself the same way in their place.

Laura sighed, went over to a nearby table and opened her mouth to speak to the women there. All six of them stood up in unison, walked over to another table, and sat down. They were scared of her but not so scared they would not shun her in a group.

She placed her bottled water on the table, slumped down onto her forearms, and felt sad, lonely and hungry. In the glass room at the end of the cafeteria, the red guards were eating ham and bacon, laughing and drinking, and telling jokes. The smell coming out from their private mess hall was making her mouth water and the bacon smell specifically reminded her of the kind of breakfasts her father used to make for her.

One of the guards looked at her for several moments, smiled strangely, and then went over to the food counter. She took a tray, filled it with that gruel, and placed it down in front of her. "Here you go," she told her.

Laura was filled with genuine surprise and she quickly began to eat before something happened to her food. "Thank you," she told her and the prisoners around them looked at the two of them nervously, uncertain of what it meant or what the game was.

"You're welcome," said the guard and she smiled kindly but in that distant way all police had. She was attractive, maybe thirty if that, with blond hair tied neatly behind her head and a white uniform that fit comfortably around her slender form. There was something motherly and kind mixed in with that authority and Laura was momentarily reminded of her own Aunt Nadine.

"Thank you again," she said again after she finished her bad food and drank some water.

"You're welcome again," she told her and her smile vanished. "My brother joined the Faction back under optimistic circumstances. He was older, a doctor, but the Fifty-Fifty Law made getting a job impossible and the Good Citizen law meant that he was being eaten by our mother's student loans as well as his own. It had become so bad that his children had to get jobs."

"Yeah," said Laura softly. The situation of children working rarely got coverage by the United States news media and would either be downplayed or even simply denied outright if it did. It was all under the counter stuff, payment well below minimum wage and was one of the major weapons used against the United States of America when the Faction rose. As families became desperately in need of the child labor the lives of adults and children eroded into drugs, violence and depression and the Faction promised escape from that.

A great deal of Faction loyalty came from the fact that they delivered on that promise.

"He was a military doctor killed in the Italian-American War in one of the suicide bombs after Haringer murdered all those poor priests," the woman told her and Laura nodded in response, utterly unsure of what to say or do. "My name is Tricia Johnson."

"Laura Adler," she replied and then hesitated before adding, "Ex-police, right?" She seemed so nice that Laura thought maybe she was mistaken.

"Fourth generation of the Los Angeles Police Department," she told her with clear pride and then she smiled in that distant cop way again. "I'll see you around, Laura." She turned around and left Laura alone to feel strange and surprised.

Across the window, her eyes caught sight of someone about her age, a black haired handsome young man talking to four older men at one of the tables. A smile grew onto her face slowly and thought—

An attractive black woman suddenly appeared in front of her. "Hello," she said and smiled sweetly. Her hair hung around her eyes in an attractive way that made Laura think she was rich before she was put in the facility and then realized she very much was because Laura recognized her. "You're new. A black tag," the woman told her and Laura was so starstruck for a moment she could do was stare at a millionaire wearing the same jumpsuit she wore with the only difference being a red tag instead of a black. "My name is—"

"Joan Kelly!" Laura cried. "I saw you painting that asshole general! You're one of the greatest artists of the age!"

Laura had specialized in art and easily recalled how her painting teacher had raved about Joan Kelly. Laura herself had visited her mural in Harlem of New York City once with her father in what felt like a lifetime ago, a depiction of the life of the African Americans from the first immigrants and slaves through Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama to the modern day stretching across the inner courtyard of the Silver Tower. Laura had also seen a barely remembered documentary on her work in school during Black History Month too back before her father died and she was sent to the UCLD Military Academy of Tennessee. "I'm Laura Adler."

Joan smiled at her. "I knew you were different! I could tell when I—"

A Hispanic woman reached over, grabbed Joan by the arm, and pulled her back. It wasn't rough but it was aggressive. "You stay the hell away from her, Joan!" she hissed and glared at Laura. "This bitch is one of them!"

Laura stood up, looked at the woman, and was suddenly hit with another sense of recognition. She was short, quite attractive, with thick wavy brown hair hanging down halfway to her waist, with round brown eyes and a sexy curvy form. She too had a red tag on her jumpsuit but that meant nothing to Laura.

"What the fuck are you looking at?" she asked.

Laura blinked several times and then said, "You're that architect. Your name is something-issia Munoz. I've seen you before but you've lost like a hundred pounds!" That was not an understatement: the woman had been at least seventy to ninety pounds overweight on the video she had seen and had become fitness enthusiast level skinny. "You built the Blue River Track in Scotland! It's the greatest hover racing track in Europe!" She had studied that track closely and that was how Laura knew her. She may have also built the Silver Tower in Harlem judging that the Blue River Hotel's highly similar look and if that was true Laura guessed that she and Joan had been friends or colleagues long before they ended up there.

"Well, thanks for that _lovely_ compliment," said Munoz with a fake smile. "Maybe when you're done and we're all dead you can go off and have a good old rigged race in my memory!" Her fake smile left. "Stay away from her Joan and you, fascist, stay away from _both_ of us!"

"She seems nice to me," said Joan with a shrug as Munoz pulled her away.

"You're too goddamn good for this place," Munoz told her and gave Laura one hard, unkind glance back as they walked over to their table on the opposite side of the room.

Laura agreed with that last statement and felt very tired. She wondered how long it would be until she was dead or raped or whatever it was she was there for. She watched Joan split from Munoz to go over to the glass-steel wall and saw her stop at the yellow line three feet away and begin talking to a little boy of thirteen standing opposite of her. He was so much like her, not just in his face, but temperament that he had to be her son. Come to think of it, Laura remembered reading or hearing that she had a child somewhere.

The boy had a white tag but didn't look hurt or tired and Laura knew instantly and exactly what he was there for. Whoever was trying to control Joan pulled the boy in on a white tag status so that they could do whatever they wanted to him if his mother got out of line. It was probably not necessary considering Joan's temperament but moderation or forethought of that sort wasn't in the Faction's nature.

Laura could not imagine it ending well.

***

Two more very boring days passed before something happened.

Lyle rushed up to Justin during their exercise period, slipped around the dumbbells Justin was working on and put Justin between himself and something. "A problem, Lyle?" asked Justin as he stood up with his jumpsuit hanging down around his waist.

"You're hiding behind _this_ , Wilder?" asked a man and Justin turned and looked up at the man who had been glaring at Lyle the day he met him. He was almost half a foot taller than Justin, who was a solid six feet, with a huge mass of both fat and muscle but far more of the latter, a shaved head, and a tribal tattoo across the left side of his face which Justin found odd since he was very clearly European in his ancestry. "I have to sleep with five other guys in one cell," he told Justin.

"Well," said Justin, "When I'm promoted to general I'll do something about—"

"—I think someone should trade with me. I'm a big man who needs a big room." He sneered with the familiar look of a man who just didn't like attractive boys. "You don't look very big and you don't need _all_ that room." His eyes darkened. "Let's go tell the guards about our deal?"

"What deal might that be?"

"You give me that room and I—" He threw a fist very suddenly in an attempt to catch Justin off guard. He had some skill, nicking Justin across the face and tearing his lip before he had moved aside, but that wasn't enough damage to distract Justin from his opening.

Justin punched the man several times in the chest, each blow easily hitting the vital targets he was trained to hit as a marine, and when the man slowed down too much from pain he kicked him in the groin so easily that it was almost casual. When the man fell down to his knees in too much agony to even clutch himself Justin grabbed a black and red barbell, took it in both hands, and brought it down on the man's back hard enough to send him flopping to the ground where he did not get up.

No other prisoner ever bothered Justin or Lyle again.

"You are an asshole, Wilder," said Jose from not far away, a red towel resting on his bare shoulder.

"I could have taken him," Lyle replied, "But I thought it would be better for everyone if Justin here proved himself. Now no one will bother him." Justin frowned at Lyle. "Let me introduce you to my guard friend when we get out into the yard. Milton Garrett." He made a pistol firing gestures with his right hand's fingers. "He's _awl_ right."

When a red guard came in wrapped in his black plated red armor everyone tensed up but the guard said, and did, nothing except walk past Justin, grab the tattooed man by the arm, and then drag him whimpering out of the room. As soon as he was gone movement came back to everyone but slowly.

"I'm not in trouble?" asked Justin. He looked around at the physical trainers going back to their commands like "double time" and "move your fat ass" and then at the red and white guards back at their posts all acting as if nothing had ever happened. "I guess not," he added with a shrug.

When they were out in the quad later Lyle took him to a white guard who was standing in a corner smoking a cigarette and staring at them. "You are an asshole, Wilder," said the guard as they approached and offered a cigarette to Justin.

"So I'm not a fighter," Lyle replied as he and Justin both took a cigarette and the guard lit it with a plain Zippo lighter which must have been a classic because Live-4-Less managed a corporate takeover of their company and made very bad versions of Zippo that all had their hated yin yang on their sides.

The guard instantly struck Justin as a bit of a school football coach type of man. He was strong, athletic, with a mustache on an attractive half-serious, half-sarcastic face with a head of short dark brown hair and eyes a light gray that seemed to pierce everything. There was sadness there though, the kind that came from tragedy, or perhaps just some unnecessary hardship created by the former government such as one of those cruel laws that came around at its end.

Justin breathed out some smoke and asked, "So how's the business of guardianship these wonderful days?" He thought about the pain in his lip on how it would have been healed already if he had his bio-armor available.

"Oh it's just _wonderful_ ," the guard replied and held out his hand. "Milton Garrett."

"Justin Biryukov," Justin replied as he shook his hand.

Garrett took the cigarette out of his mouth with the first two fingers of his left hand. "That is incredibly Russian," said he. "How did that happen?"

"I'm a direct male descendant of an immigrant all the way back to the 1800s who refused to change his last name," replied Justin. He looked around and saw many of the whites were out on Law Labor including Juan Reyes. The others were so beat they were basically sleepwalking. Reyes had told him that no one was allowed to sit down or lean up against a wall because they might fall asleep and if they fell asleep they would suffer for it.

Suddenly Justin saw a red guard he had never seen before, a man with a great deal more medals on his uniform, stepping into the quad with his hands behind his back. "Look away," said Garrett and Justin did. "That's Bill Miller, head of the male side red guards. Trust me when I tell you he's trouble."

"Should I be scared of him?"

"Yes," he replied and then in a softer voice he whispered, "He's insecure and weak. Touch on that and he'll break your back to prove you otherwise. You get me?"

"I get you." Justin looked past Garrett, past the wall, and saw a very attractive blond girl walking around with her hands behind her back looking incredibly bored. His lips curled up into a smile for a minute but then went away as he looked back. "I get you," he told Garrett again.

***

The days were getting steadily worse.

The excruciating boredom and slow pace were bad enough but the worst part was the growing understanding that the people with the white tags were beginning to disappear. They just entered into the cell with five people one night but only four would be there the next morning and no one knew why or how.

Reyes thought there might have been some kind of knock out gas that came out from the walls of the cells after waking up groggy when one of his cellmates vanished. That bothered Justin a great deal and he thought again about that man with the boils on his face. Others died out there while working, that was understood, but these others were different. They might have just been dragged off while everyone was asleep and then killed somewhere out of sight by one of the incredibly sadistic red guards but Justin thought that perhaps they were taken into the black room and had "something" done to them.

No one knew for sure and no one _wanted_ to.

Laura noticed their disappearances too but did not dare talk about it with anyone. Mostly, she just listened as she sat alone and heard the sound of women chattering among each other about how one woman or another had vanished.

It might have been a week, maybe even a month, with the days all stretching out like one long line when the blond woman from the door announced on the intercom that "a large number" of people had been rehabilitated and were allowed to return to their families. Nobody, not even Joan, seemed to believe it. She told Munoz in Laura's hearing that if that was true her son would have been sent to live with his father in Michigan. He was _obviously_ rehabilitated and Laura very much agreed.

Justin and Laura had both heard about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial hole and both knew without being told that it was the exact size and shape of a mass grave.

As time went on a growing sense of paranoia grew in the air and the cameras and microphones that were almost certainly everywhere began to make people nervous. Why it became so much more severe no one could say but people started to deeply distrust each other. The white tags started to openly shun any black or red tag with some idea that to talk with one was to get attention down onto one's self.

Soon, the only white tag aside from Joan Kelly's son that would get anywhere near to any of them was Reyes but he was nervous. He spoke casually to Jose in what Jose stated was a highly accented Mexican dialect of Spanish which they easily spoke since their families came from the same area of Mexico but he still spoke _very_ carefully. Despite the fact that English was the primary language of the Faction Jose admitted he doubted Spanish helped very much what with their automated translators and all but it made Reyes feel significantly better. If Reyes spoke to any non-Spanish speakers it was always a very calculated, careful statement in English.

Laura noticed much of the same conclusion by gleaming off more conversations here and there from the women around her. Tricia spoke to her whenever she randomly appeared but there was a kind of deep tenseness and caution in her that prevented Laura from getting into a genuinely deep conversation with her. She didn't have any confidants and while loneliness had been a great part of her life she always had her artificial intelligent companion Dylan to talk to about her feelings.

She started to feel like she was going to go insane from loneliness and boredom and she was pretty sure it hadn't even been a week.

And everything losing their color was certainly not helping. They were removing the color from the monitors gradually while a force field that prevented rain from coming down onto the quad was doing the same to the sky for god only knew what real reason. With no one to talk to and no change in her schedule, Justin and Laura both began to feel like every day was stretching out into one long boring moment in hell.

***

"Later Denny," said Justin as he watched the thirteen-year-old boy walk off across the quad to go speak to his mother through the glass-steel wall at the exact same time he did every day. He was named Denzel after his parents' favorite actor of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries but everyone just called him Denny. "Sweet kid," he added and then marveled at his and his mother's freakish level of optimism.

Lyle suddenly patted him on the shoulder as he walked by. "How are you doing?" he asked cheerfully.

"How the hell do you think I'm doing, jackass? I'm in _prison_!" Justin found he was getting very irritated by Lyle and his ridiculous stories. There was the one where he was a soldier in the United States Resistance Army, despite not having the mandatory bionic augmentation armor, and another of being the boyfriend of Jessica Alba's descendent or clone or something who was apparently her spitting image at eighteen despite the fact there was just absolutely no way in hell, and then there was the one about him getting caught stealing five hundred million dollars from one of the ex-wealthy former United States elite recently shot by the Faction by hacking into his offshore account. That one had the ring of truth to it, he was _very_ good with computers and probably really was a hacker, but if that was true why were they bothering to keep him alive? The data version of money was not going to be particularly useful for anyone when those bombs came falling down.

"Have you heard about _her_?" asked Lyle.

"Her who?" Justin asked even though he was almost certain he knew. He had caught the blond girl wandering around again and he found himself staring at her thoughtfully at times. There was just something about her, maybe in her walk or demeanor or something, and he genuinely liked her already. He believed Lyle had just seen or sensed that and was going to make up a story about her just to irritate him.

"That sexy ass blond," he told Justin. "She is the single most beautiful woman in the entire facility and is ex-Faction."

"Oh her?" Justin replied as if indifferent. He did know that, Garrett had told him as much when he talked to him about her without Lyle around, and that was the only reason he had hesitated for so long. She was at that moment wandering through the quad with her hands behind her back looking incredibly bored and talking with that cute female guard that popped up from time to time.

Justin turned his head toward her as she turned toward him and their eyes met. An oddly shy smile grew across her face and that made one just like it grow on his own face. Once in the cafeteria, he was close enough to see her eyes and they were green, like endless grassy fields on a plain reminding him of a park where he used to play baseball with some childhood friends.

"I hit that—"  
"Bullshit!" Justin replied a little too defensively and then he decided he was done messing around and started toward to the glass-steel wall and its yellow line. "You only live once, right," he said told himself. _Of course,_ he added, _You can be savagely rejected a thousand times..._

"You're going to blow it!" called Lyle humorously.

"Fuck you!" he called back and Lyle laughed. Justin did a little too but as he neared the line he found he was actually very nervous. _How do you even talk to a woman so damn beautiful?_

***

"Hey!" called a voice from the other side and Laura turned to see that amazingly handsome boy who was usually haunted by that amazingly annoying Wilder guy was trying to draw her over to the wall. She bit her lower lip and turned up to Tricia.

"Oh he is a cutie," said Tricia with a smile.

Since the moment she had left Jackson's presence on that first day the only man who ever tried to get her attention was Lucas Randal who was admittedly gorgeous but only interested in sex which in the case of the facility was pretend sex. He was also too old for her, too flashy, and would earn her the wrath of every female already madly in love him. He was, after all, one of the richest men in America and if the Faction were to fall in a way amicably to the former United States he would get his billions back. He might even remember his former girlfriends if he did.

The boy her age was far more of something. She was not sure what it was but the moment she saw him she liked him. There was just that _something_ about him. Was it his eyes? The way he walked? She did not know but she liked it and almost as much as she liked the fact that she was the first girl he had approached without her summoning him first.

He was such a beautiful boy too. Once in line for food in the cafeteria, she caught sight his eyes. They were like the ocean, endless and blue and deep and wonderful. She felt like she could get lost in those eyes and it made her want to run her hands through his hair for some weird reason.

She walked away from Tricia and stopped at the line. "Can I help you?" she asked with a calm face.

He became much more attractive when he smiled, a man with a very kissable face and an incredible body which she, and other women, had seen in the gym more than once. With those wonderful eyes all lighting up with excitement he almost became something unearthly.

"Yes, you can," he told her with some nervousness. "My name is Justin Biryukov. What's yours?"

The instant Laura heard his voice she found she liked him even more. Something about it made her feel instantly comfortable and that had been abnormal for every man she had met save her father, her favorite cousin and Samantha Seymour's boyfriend. Men who could instill peace in the way they talked were rare.

"Well, why do you care?" she asked playfully.

He smiled wider. "I'm curious and intrigued. I've heard you were ex-Faction—"

"Oh did you?" That caught her attention but she pretended like it was nothing. What was his game? What was he playing at? If he knew already and still liked her that meant something but whether that was good or bad she did not yet know. If he thought she was a spy he might be trying to get a favor from someone inside which would make her leave immediately but if he didn't care and genuinely liked her... "Why does that matter?" she asked honestly. She realized suddenly that if he genuinely liked her she didn't know what to do. They told her all her life she was beautiful but that had not changed the fact that she was still very awkward around boys. She usually just ended up winging everything.

"It doesn't really matter," he replied. "I just need some topic of conversation so that I can start speaking to you." He still sounded a little nervous and that made her grin internally but she kept it off her face.

"Is that so?" she asked.

"Well—" Justin's eyes were thoughtful for a moment, tilting left for a bit, then he shrugged, returned his eyes to hers and added, "Okay, I'll level with you. You are very beautiful but you also kind of strike me as strong and intelligent. These are really great qualities in a girl and I would like to get to know you—" he looked into her blank face with confusion "—better?"

"Oh now I know you're messing with me," she replied with a small smile. "Was it my breasts or ass that gave you the idea I was intelligent?"

"I'm pretty sure it was your legs," he replied and they both grinned at each other. "What's your whole name? Word on the grapevine is that the first is Laura." He had been asking about her. Interesting.

"My name is Laura Adler," she told him and suddenly she had to fight to keep the blush from coming out into her face and making her sway on her feet like a little girl with a crush. "You think you're funny, don't you?"

"I really, really do," he replied. "I pride myself on my sense of humor and my ability to have conversations with beautiful girls that _don't_ suddenly become awkward."

Laura smiled at him genuinely but said, "I'm not going to be your prison wife, Justin." Most of the attractive ones were already married to Lucas Randal anyway. It was a game the women played and one they would almost certainly resent her joining. She had noticed a few had been making goo-goo eyes at Justin in the gym but he was either ignoring them or hadn't actually noticed. "Not _ever_."

"Well, that's okay," Justin replied. "I can't have some goddamn ball and chain holding me down while my life is skyrocketing in such fantastic new directions." Laura smiled wider and managed only barely to stop herself from biting her lower lip. "So," he said. "What do you do for fun?"

"Things I enjoy."

"Oh, wow, yeah, that's just super helpful," he retorted with an unhappy expression she knew was fake. "You know if you don't want to talk to me you could just tell me. I can always find some other prison floozy to yap away with."

Laura put her hands on her hips and straightened her back in a way that did not appear to be on purpose but somehow was understood as being completely on purpose and said, "Do any of them have breasts as nice as mine?"

"Are we playing _this_ game now?" asked Justin with a wide-eyed expression of fake surprise. "Are we trying to outdo each other or something like that?" Laura smiled wider, bit her lower lip, and watched Justin grin like a little boy at Christmas. "I'll take you seriously, Laura, but only if you take me seriously back." She just grinned at him. "If I were to answer your question you would first have to show me your breasts. Only then would I be able to make a proper comparison."

She laughed and asked, "And what, exactly, will you be showing me in return?"

"Science is not a trade, Ms. Adler," he replied soberly. "This is about learning and education and to be taken seriously as a lecture of anatomy." The horn-like bell rang loudly for them to leave and Justin said in his normal voice, "Can I speak to you again?"

"Yes," she told him. "You can find me along the wall of the quad when we come back _if_ I feel like talking." She turned around and walked away purposely, but again not appearing so, with her backside swaying just a little as she walked. She didn't normally act that way around boys but there was just something about him that really made her feel confident, sexual and playful.

"See you later, baby!" Justin called.

"If I'm around, sexy!" Laura called back but she knew she would be. She was already smiling in anticipation, unable to believe she finally found someone she not only could talk to but genuinely liked as well.

Leticia Ortiz appeared from around the doorframe back to the cafeteria and nearly knocked her down. The head of the female guards was an overweight, unattractive and mean Hispanic woman with a cruel and violent nature. Laura was lucky that her sights had been then and always centered on Munoz who had for some unknown reason become the woman Ortiz hated more than any other in the entire world.

"Get the fuck out of my way, traitor!" she hissed and Laura quickly moved around her.

In line for the dinner she found herself grinning almost stupidly. "I think he likes me," she whispered to herself.

***

"I think she hates me," Justin whispered to himself as he was staring down at his food and he looked over at her grinning down at her own food. "She is totally playing me."

Lyle laughed and irritatingly slapped him on the shoulder a bunch of times. Jose was off with Reyes so Justin tried to sit alone near the wall but Lyle found him and invited himself over. "You don't really think a package like that is interested in losers like us, do you?"

Justin felt mildly insulted that he was being bunched into a comparison between himself and Lyle Wilder. He wanted to tell someone and get some real advice but not from him. After a moment he decided he knew _just_ the man.

***

"Why the hell are you asking me?" asked Milton Garrett after Justin asked him back out on the quad.

"Well, Randal's not looking too hot these days," said Justin with an uncomfortable shrug. Lucas Randal was leaning up against a wall with his eyes shut, the only person allowed to do that. Had he been healthy and vocal he would have been the absolutely most perfect man to have asked advice about women.

"That's because he's stoned," said Garrett.

"Really?"

"Out of his mind."

"Why out of his mind?"

"His OCD was driving him to harm himself and he had a grand mal seizure the other night," said Garrett. "They care enough to keep him alive but not enough to unlock the involuntary impulses of his bionic armor."

"Damn," said Justin.

"Look, kid, she's standing over at the wall now which means she doesn't hate you. Simple enough, right? Now go talk to her. If she finds out you're asking for advice she'll think you're weak and dump you on the spot."

"Okay," said Justin, wondering for a moment if that was really a joke, and then he walked over to Laura, stopped on the line and said, "So how are you doing—" he immediately halted and wanted to slap himself in the face.

"How the hell do you think, jackass?" she replied. "I'm in _prison_."  
"Yeah, I know. It was stupid."

"No, not really," she replied. "You've seen the prison documentaries on the porn channels. I've managed sixteen orgasms today with a beautiful Swedish woman whose name I can't quite pronounce. I'm just in a bad mood now because by this time yesterday I had actually managed seventeen."

"You are Satan's daughter, Laura," said Justin. "You should know this."

She smiled at him, balanced a little bit on the tips of her feet, and said, "How should I be, Justin? How should I have fun?"

"Well—" he honestly had no idea to answer that and tried a flirtation move "—I would find some fun in your shower." There was no shower, technically, but he thought she would get it and have a laugh or something.

"You would only be in there if you didn't have a cock," she replied with a straight face.

_Or maybe not,_ he thought. "Are you telling me you're a lesbian?"

"Are you telling me you don't have a dick?"

Justin slapped his hands together and breathed through his teeth. "That is _not_ what I'm telling you!" He took a deep long breath. "Let's start over, talk about something fun, something girly and all that crap."

"Why not?" Laura crossed her arms.

Justin stared at her blankly for a moment. Was there more? Didn't women like to talk? There were billions of women on the planet and it seemed that most of them never shut up. Justin had apparently found one of the few who _didn't_ like to talk and there was nothing to do there _but_ talk. "Uh—movies maybe?"

Laura shrugged.

Justin twitched a bit. _Why are you making this so goddamn difficult!_ He screamed in his head. _Talk to me you annoying skirt! Speak! Commence conversation! No? Good! Fine!_ "Let's start by—uh—talking about you."

"No," she replied.

"No?"

"No," she repeated. "I don't like to talk about myself."

"You fail," Justin told her. "You fail at being a girl."

"Is that supposed to make me laugh?" she said with a deadpan expression.

"Yes!" he cried. "Yes, it is! It's _funny_!" He groaned, turned around and took a deep breath. He was about to say something indicating reasonable annoyance when he heard something he didn't expect and turned back.

Laura was blushing and giggling and utterly unable to hold it back any longer. She bit her lower lip, grinning at him, and looking like the most beautiful girl Justin had ever seen in his life. He had never seen a woman with such a strong demeanor look even remotely that cute.

"Well, looky here," said Justin. "It appears the girl with the incredible rack is shy."

"Oh you are such an asshole," she told him but was still smiling.

"I _knew_ you were screwing with me!" he lied. "I fucking _sensed_ it!"

***

They grinned at each from a distance of six feet apart.

What they felt was a mystery as neither was romantic nor desired to be but they liked the feeling and the more they felt it the more they wanted to continue feeling it. If anyone told them then and there that they were falling in love they would have both denied it, both even believed their denial, but they would find themselves curiously in doubt.

"Movies you say," Laura replied. "What movies do you like?"

"Well, banned ones are particularly nice," Justin replied. "They say the f-word and make people feel bad which is just really cool. I'm actually into late twentieth and twenty-first century films. Also video games and books. I'm a big fan of Stephen King, Clive Barker, J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert Jordon and George R.R. Martin to name a few."

"Horror and fantasy are some of my favorites too," she replied. "I'm also a big William Shakespeare and Virginia Woolf fan."

"I'm a big Shakespeare fan even though the United States banned him too." Then he smiled and added, "'I'll follow thee and make a heaven of hell, to die upon the hand I love so well.'"

"Really?" Laura replied with an eyebrow raised and then said, "'I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.'"

"Yeah, we'll see about that," Justin told her. "So, do you like nineteen eighties music?"

Instantly their smiles returned as wide as ever and the feeling came with it. They still didn't know what it was but they still very much liked it.

"We are going to get along," said Laura.

"We _definitely_ are," Justin agreed.
5

Things steadily grew darker over time but Justin and Laura found themselves capable of distracting themselves.

They talked about trivial things like movies and video games long since gone while joking and quoting as they walked up and down the line along the wall. They were not exactly happy, they were actually incredibly unhappy and their joking and talking had an edge of hysteria to it, but they weren't lonely and to some extent, they actually felt that they would be fine as long as they had each other.

Laura found herself worried about Denny Kelly. Something had shifted behind the scenes in the Faction's world and Joan either knew something or sensed it enough to become very frightened for her son. She had even approached Laura hoping that she was a spy and pleaded with her to give good reports to her supervisors in order to keep her son out of danger.

Once that had reached Justin he found every time he was near to the boy it seemed his mother was telling him to be "careful" and "quiet" and "not stir up trouble." The boy was starting to stick with Nathan Michaels all the time and Justin saw for the first time that Michaels, who as a professional soldier rarely showed any weakness to anyone, was genuinely worried for Joan Kelly's son.

For Justin, the very worst sign of all was that Lyle Wilder had stopped talking and become incredibly quiet.

"We're coming to the end," he told Justin when he caught him looking around with wide worried eyes. "Better grab onto something kiddo because this train is about to derail."

Justin did not know how long he had been waiting in that facility but when he saw light snow was just starting to fall he understood it was very close to winter and had not been very long at all. Laura said she estimated something similar to that giving him an estimate of maybe a month which seemed preposterous to both of them.

However, they still enjoyed themselves for a moment but sadly only a moment.

Justin was staring up into the sky smiling an identical smile to his girlfriend's when he heard something coming. He turned in military style, startling Miller to a nervous stop, and then looked down at the pain giver in Miller's hand. The rod was a slightly longer than a normal red colored nightstick with a tip that was a glass-steel square. When that tip was pressed against a person it spread open and the needle within entered into the flesh of whoever was stabbed. The damage was minimal but the device within the stick amplified the pain a hundredfold or more to make it feel as if the person being stabbed felt like they were being sawed in half. Then when they pulled the needle out only a pinprick of damage had been done and the glass-steel tip closed back over the needle and released sanitizing mist over it.

_He saw we were happy,_ thought Justin as he looked at him. _And now he's trying to spoil it._

Miller hesitated for a moment, a skinny, short and probably frail main with an average face with narrow beady black eyes as his closest to an attractive feature. Justin lowered his arms and Miller jerked forward.

Justin did not dodge and felt the pain giver's needle enter his side like it was an impaling broadsword. Justin crumpled onto his back bending over his lower legs awkwardly and was in such agony that he could not even scream. It was the worse pain that he had ever felt in his life, the pain of his bio-blocker a pleasant tickle by comparison.

It was then quite clear why the United States had made the possession of such an item a felony.

Miller pressed harder and Justin screamed into the air. Distantly, he sensed Laura screaming as well and the idea of her being scared forced himself to stop. When he did, he realized she was screaming at Miller to stop and was, while incredibly worriedly for him, not particularly scared. She was not easily frightened, his girlfriend.

"I said stop it, you pansy cocksucker!" Laura told Miller and as a wonder he did. Mostly out of surprise, it would seem.

Justin rolled off of his bent legs onto his chest, his hair clinging to his head, and breathed heavily. His entire body was shaking but the pain was gone as if it had never been there in the first place with only stiffness remaining. He tried to get up, found it wasn't happening, and then felt the pain giver's square tip gently touching the left side of his face.

"Cruising around for sweet blond pussy, are we?" asked Miller. "Mr. Bookytof, that sweet ass is not for you."

"It is for whoever I say it is!" hissed Laura and then Justin saw her sigh-groin in disgust when she realized how that had sounded. "Goddamn it!"

Justin tried to lean over onto his side so he could see what was happening but could only see Miller's feet facing Laura. "I didn't realize holes could talk," he told her and then as Justin got onto his hands and knees Miller slammed the pain giver in both hands down onto his back as hard as he could sending Justin into the ground in such agony that he could not even scream for the solid minute he kept it there.

When it was done Miller leaned over and said, "You watch yourself, boy!" and walked away.

"It's not that bad," Justin said when he was gone and even though it was intended as a joke he was surprised to find that it really wasn't. It amplified pain but it was somehow actually far worse when there was actual damage. Something about that made the pain in the rod much more tolerable despite its intensity although he could not exactly able to put the reason into words. It seemed similar to that of getting a really bad skin rash on a place like the forearm where it was easily contained and finding it wasn't as bad as one on the bottom of on the foot where one had to walk on it all the time even though that second rash might not be even half as bad as the first.

Justin stood up shakily ten minutes later, Laura looking worriedly at him, and said, "Even as a kid my martial arts training would have let me kick the shit out of him." His entire body trembled but by then even the echo of pain was gone.

"He would have wrapped himself in bio-armor and pounded you into the ground," she told him.

"I know," Justin replied and laughed.

Laura looked worried. "You know why, right?"

Justin did. She had told him about Jackson and he believed her personal insight into his character was strong enough to accurately guess that he had not given up on her. Miller and Ortiz were just Faction rats who acted as punisher for whoever was above them, the male and female counterparts to each other, and it was understood almost without saying that if someone upstairs had a problem with a prisoner it would be one of those two that would be the ones to do something about it. As far as Justin could tell they were the worst that the prisoners had to deal with in the prison on an everyday basis but they could be dodged. The ones out on Law Labor and certain ones above, like Jackson, were worse by a spectacular degree but few if any of the red and black tags ever saw them outside of the mess hall.

"I'm not going anywhere, Laura," he told her as he turned back to her.

"I'll understand," she told him softly.

"No," he told her. "I mean it."

Laura laughed, put her hand over her mouth for a moment then looked at him with teary eyes. "I think someday I might actually show you my breasts."

Justin grinned and said, "I'm taking that as a promise. No really, that _is_ a promise."

Laura smiled back and suddenly they were back to the way they had been as if Miller had not only never entered into their lives but had never actually been born.

***

Jose was smoking a cigarette Garrett gave him and watched Miller jump up and down and practically start screaming and seemed to have only managed to keep his amusement under control by the barest margins. He almost imagined the little brat running to a corner and crying like a naughty little girl when Daddy took her dolly away.

Miller turned, looked in his general direction, and his face turned dark. Jose turned his head and saw that Reyes was grinning at him from his place beside him.

Jose looked at him in horror and then turned and watched Miller stomping off out of the yard. He turned back and in Spanish said, "You were _smirking_ at him!"

Reyes smiled slipped off of his face like he had been slapped and he stared at him in dumbstruck horror. He had apparently been so tired from Law Labor that he had not realized what he had been doing. "You don't think he'll hurt my family, do you?" he asked.

Jose's respect for his friend grew higher and it was already high. He must have been a great father and even he had the instinct to worry for his wife and children before himself. He wondered how many men like him there were left in the world and how undervalued they always were. His own father sure as hell hadn't been one.

Reyes was terrified and Jose had no idea what to tell him while he literally saw panic growing on his face but an answer did actually occur to him. "Johnny, if they had your family or knew where they were these monitors would have been flooding you with their images."

Reyes let out a sigh of incredible relief and actually did smile. He offered Jose another cigarette but he refused. He told him hadn't smoked since his first years of college when his future wife told him she was pregnant and wanted him to quit.

Jose's face turned miserable as he turned away from his friend and felt sick to his core. If Juan Reyes was alive at the end of the week Jose would think it a miracle from God.

***

Two days later the prisoners stood in the rain.

It was not yet cold enough for actual snow, the temperature being too warm in general for anything but flakes on the off cold day, but on that day, somehow, the power of the force field above their heads flickered off and what came down was actual rain. It was icy cold and poured down like an icy shower but Laura and Justin did not care. They looked at each other, grinned like two children, and then looked back up.

The clouds were fiercely dark above their heads but Laura could see in the distance an opening in the north that revealed the bright vibrantly blue morning sky. It struck her so beautiful that she almost cried.

The monitor's had flickered off as well and on both sides and Laura saw seven women start toward Ortiz who was as distracted almost as much as the inmates. She had seemed to have not felt the rain while she started at Munoz who was dancing in the rain with Joan like they were two little girls.

Ortiz could openly hurt Munoz the same way Miller had hurt Justin but was unable to do anything more. The pain giver was where it ended and while Munoz would scream and cry she would always snap out of it as soon as Ortiz was done just like Justin had despite having no combat training and that seemed to greatly enrage Ortiz. She was getting more and more hyper focused on Munoz and that day, probably because of the rain, she was caught completely off guard as all seven women grabbed her from behind.

One grabbed the controller from her belt, another grabbed the pain giver and tried to knock her out with it, and the others held her arms and legs. Laura watched in shock horror knowing full well what would happen while being unable to do anything thing about it. They had not consulted her so she wasn't able to warn them about what a mistake it was.

Ortiz might just be a barely trained pumped up guard with a rather soft looking exterior but she did have bio-armor and that could make any weakling dangerous. She would have recommended snapping Ortiz's neck as the first move before even letting her know they were there but that was folly too. Even if someone could kill her, pop open the controller and remove the DNA key, as one of them was trying to do right then, it would make little difference. Even if that controller could somehow be made to unlock every single door in the entire facility while simultaneously disarming every alarm and defense mechanism they _still_ would have little chance of getting get out of there alive. There were only a few guards but that was more than enough to track six tired women through the maze of a facility and all of them had bio-armor. The doctors and nurses themselves almost certainly had bio-armor as well, not to mention those elites were somewhere out there, and there was little doubt there wouldn't be guns stashed in safe and accessible places all over the facility making everything even harder. They would need to get guns themselves and Laura doubted they had the intel for their location or the skill to competently fire them. Laura couldn't say what the white guards would do but it was unlikely they would help and risk ending up getting trapped in there with them.

The women that jumped Ortiz weren't fighters either. They were musicians, dancers, lawyers, or some other normal American job with one having enough engineering or mechanical training enough to understand the controller and they were weak from Law Labor and over exercise which was why their hits never disabled Ortiz as they had intended.

They had gotten the controller, gotten Ortiz, but they hadn't understood the step beyond.

The instant they moved Laura knew they were all dead.

The bio-armor came out over Ortiz's uniform and body within a second and her mechanized voice was shrieking in rage. She grabbed a random woman by the arm and with her amplified strength twisted it back so far she nearly ripped off. Blood burst out in all directions and all the women in the yard and half the men on the other side began to scream.

Ortiz elbowed a nearby woman hard enough to break her sternum, grabbed another and threw her into the air where she landed on her shoulder badly enough to break it.

She stood up covered in blood, her hat on the outside of the armor and cried out in pure rage like a high pitched roar. "You little bitches!" she shrieked in her slightly mechanical voice as she took off the hat and tossed it down. "You—little—" the double blades on both wrists shot out at full sword length "—CUNTS!"

"Ortiz!" Laura cried and she stared at her with that bionic blank-eyed bug face. Laura moved closer, but not too close very carefully with her hands held up. "The statutes of the UCLD requires that you have preapproved authorization for committing to any action leading to the loss of party materials such as workers—"

"Fuck your statutes, traitor!"  
"We didn't want to hurt you!" one of the four women screamed, a woman in her forties with curly brown hair who was as skinny as a rail and sickly besides. "We just want out!"

"Wish granted!" Ortiz rushed forward and with the humming vibration blades on her right hand sliced diagonally upward through the woman and, continuing her swing, hit the one to her left who had raised her hands up in surrender. The first woman's guts spilled out onto the ground with a wet _splat_ and the second one's chest was cut diagonally upward between her breasts through her body nearly to the spine.

Laura turned away from the sight but she could not block out the sound of the carnage or the feminine high-pitched shrieking that came from the victims. Most everyone was screaming by then and when she looked at Justin she could see him looking away with a hard concentrated expression that she knew mirrored her own. They both shared a glance filled with abject horror as they could not stop hearing those vibration blades cutting through human flesh or the agonized sounds of the torture that followed.

Nathan Michaels was the only who watched, his face hard and tense, his hands holding Denzel Kelly against his front tightly enough so he couldn't turn around and see the carnage happening behind him.

When silence came Laura looked back and saw Ortiz standing amid the corpses with their blood covering her from almost head to toe. The one with the broken sternum was dead from that alone, both women she sliced diagonally were dead, the one with the broken shoulder's face had been caved in with a foot, and the one with the remote had been cut to a half-dozen pieces and lying in a giant pool of blood. The only one left alive was the one with the broken arm and Ortiz was walking up behind her.

Joan stepped forward but Munoz caught her by the shoulder and yanked her back hard. Joan shrieked out, "No—"

"Silence!" cried Ortiz, her voice amplified to a powerful volume, and everyone except Joan obeyed.

"No!" shrieked Joan again. "You can't just—" Munoz took a hold of the injured woman who desperately tried to pry off Ortiz's fingers one-handed. Laura's eyes met the woman's and she saw sheer terror cross through them as they went wide. "Please!" cried Joan in almost savage emotional torment. "Please don't do this!"

Ortiz said nothing. She made no excuses and made no speeches. Laura turned away when she saw the position of her arms but could not block the sound of the woman's neck snapping like a squishy twig.

When Laura looked back Ortiz was staring at her through her helmet with an expression Laura sensed as pure hate and maybe some contempt as well. "And just what the fuck do you think you are looking at, traitor?"

Laura shook her head slowly. "Nothing."

"Nothing is correct." She gestured to the blood covered concrete and corpses. "They are very much _nothing_!" She looked at Munoz who held Joan tightly as she wept hysterically for a long moment before she turned and walked away.

Laura saw Tricia step quickly aside as the Ortiz walked by, her face filled with horror, and then moved up over to the dead women. Her eyes were filled with hurt but she didn't cry. She was a professional who evidently knew how to hold in her emotions in check. "Call the doctor," she told another white guard.

"They're dead—"

"Just fucking do it!" hissed Tricia and the other woman quickly tapped her white colored guard's celldisk and pressed an invisible button and started talking. Laura had not noticed until that moment that the female white guards viewed Tricia as some sort of authority figure despite the fact that she had no technical rank. It would explain why the white guards had begun to leave her alone almost the instant Tricia started being nice to her.

Tricia checked the pulse of the woman with the broken sternum, probably the most likely survivor, and sighed. When she looked over her shoulder she saw Ortiz had taken off her helmet to show her see her wide, satisfied smile before she turned and stepped out of the door.

The instant Ortiz was out of the yard almost everyone began to scream again.

***

Justin awoke in the dark around three in the morning in what might have been a week later, looked through the force field of his cell, and saw one of the red guards standing in the dark in full bionic armor staring at him. He had long become paranoid enough to sleep in all his clothes including his shoes and that night he knew it would pay off.

The force field turned off and the guard stepped in, grabbed him by his arm and yanked him to his feet. Justin looked into his masked face, tried to read what was there, but found nothing and was then dragged down the hall. He took him to the staircase, pushed him down hard enough to almost send him sprawling down, and then walked after him. Justin quickly got his balance back while nearly twisting his ankle in the process and then proceeded ahead down the zigzag stairs without a word and waited at the bottom.

At the very bottom floor, the guard grabbed him by his shoulder, pushed him through back down through those white office-like hallways, and then after a long walk where Justin's ankle thankfully felt much better the guard pushed him out through a door out into the back of the facility.

Why he was suddenly taken out to the dumpster area he could not say but there he was. It was perhaps the same one Laura had entered through because it looked just like how she described it. There was the large closed red gates, the chain link fence, the two large red dumpsters and a canopy built into the building above that kept out the rain. The cold was not kept out, however, and it was freezing to the point where there would be slushy ice on the ground beyond.

Thirteen white tags from the men's side of the facility were on their knees side by side across the front of the dumpsters with their hands behind their heads, Juan Reyes and Denzel Kelly among them, the latter shivering in just his underwear. The paranoia had not reached him but it had all of the others although some did not have their shoes.

Lucas Randal, Jose Hernandez and Nathan Michaels were there along the left wall facing the other line like at roll call. Justin was put on Nathan's right and after a moment Lyle Wilder was yanked out of the door with no shoes on and thrown on Justin's right by another armored red guard. Both Justin's and Lyle's guards removed their helmet as they approached the others by the gate.

There were several men there Justin did not recognize who could be anyone, their faces maybe having been seen once or twice in the mess hall, but the higher-ups he recognized instantly. There was Jackson who Laura had pointed out, a man who could only be his sidekick Croon, Miller, two male officers who worked in the gym whose names he did not know, Ortiz, the only female there, whose eyes were narrowing on him for some reason and the male elite who stood before the gate so still he might as well have been a statue. Justin supposed the ones he didn't recognize were Law Labor guards that all the white tags could probably name in their sleep.

Croon was carrying a long, sleek black fully automatic laser rifle in his hands and smiling a strange, creepy smile that did not quite touch his eyes.

Jackson walked between them carrying in his left hand a six-foot long silver pole that had two semicircles sticking out horizontally from its tip that created a kind of collar with an opening at the end for a neck to slip through. He rested it casually on his shoulder like it was a baseball bat or hockey stick to be carried in a casual walk in the pregame time. As he got closer Justin noticed within those semicircles were a series of little spikes with two brutal long ones at the ends near the openings which suddenly he understood were designed to dig into the victim's neck in the front in order to prevent them from escaping should those semicircles clamp together around a man's neck.

_It is a man catcher,_ Justin thought in baffled horror. It was a medieval polearm recreated with some kind of technological edge. He could see that it could open and close like one of those zoo bought animal heads on poles that kids pressed triggers with but there was some other technology in those fangs as well. Justin did not understand what it would do or what its purpose was on sight and he didn't think there was enough logic in its creation that he should. It wasn't like they needed to be captured in full plated armor from horseback which was its medieval non-lethal counterpart's intended purpose.

Jackson stopped in front of Justin and stared darkly into his eyes. "Kikov," he said.

Justin didn't dare correct him and nodded.

Jackson stared at him in a very sober fashion. "Jew."

"Jew," Justin agreed carefully.

"You do know the Holocaust never happened, right? That it was just a lie concocted to create Israel?"

Denial of the Holocaust had not originated in the Faction: the United States had never officially stated the Holocaust did _not_ happen but it might as well have since it made all mention of it illegal. According to various media outlets at the time the reasoning was because it "made people uncomfortable" and "offended non-Jews." They closed down the Holocaust museums in the United States and banned any film that made any direct mention of it including _Schindler's List_ by Stephen Spielberg despite the fact that it had been often cited by film historians as his greatest masterpiece and one of the greatest masterpieces of the twentieth century. That occurred before either Justin or the Faction were born.

Jackson moved very close and stared into his eyes. "And just what, exactly, is your relationship with Ms. Laura Adler, Mr. Bikokov?"

Justin felt the temperature drop several degrees. _He wants to kill me,_ he thought. _I can see it in his eyes._ He was afraid to answer but he was also afraid not to answer and he was afraid to lie but he was also afraid to tell the truth. There was clearly no smart answer and since Jackson would know everything anyway Justin just told him the truth. "She's my girlfriend," he said.

"Your girlfriend?" he asked with exaggeratedly wide eyes.

"Yeah," he replied.

He nodded with an unchanged, icy cold expression and said, "Well, isn't that nice."

Jackson turned from him to Nathan Michaels and Justin saw the look he had for him was much worse. Miller hated everyone, Ortiz hated Munoz, and Jackson hated Michaels. Justin wasn't entirely sure of what Jackson's expression toward him meant in its completeness but he thought he saw jealousy there. Actually, when Justin thought about it, he realized all of the Faction members were filled with a kind of hateful jealousy most likely because it was one of their organization's first recruitment tools.

Jackson turned his head to Jose, his eyes narrowing for a moment, then turned around and went straight up to Juan Reyes. Justin saw Miller growing a smug little smile as he did so.

"Hello amigo," said Jackson.

Reyes looked up into his eyes uncomfortably. "Hello, Captain."

Jackson gave him a reproachful look. "It seems, Mr. Reyes, that Officer Miller has caught you ghost worshipping in your cell. You would do that after all our kindness and good work? You would go back to the trappings of religion and resurrect one of the great wrongs of the old regime? The very regime that once made my ancestors slaves and used the preposterous notion that they came from a mythical boogeyman known as Cain to justify it?" He took in a deep intake of breath through his teeth. "I can't prove it so I'll need your confession." He smiled with wide eyes. "I have a feeling that before this night is up you will give it to me."

Reyes said nothing and lowered his gaze.

Jackson scoffed and turned to Michaels. "How about you, brother? You believe in Santa Clause too?"

Reyes looked over at Jose and Jose shook his head quickly. Reyes nodded, turned back and said, "I confess."

Jackson turned his head back, the man catcher falling from his shoulder to the ground, and said, "Come again?" The disappointment was very clear on his face.

"Yes, I have been caught worshipping Christ," Reyes said with a shrug. He told Justin he was a Catholic and if he still was he and his family had to pretend to renounce it when the coup occurred but, either way, Justin doubted he had dared to voice any particular prayer in any way that could get him caught. Justin understood what he was doing and admired him for it: he was confessing so that the focus would only be on him. He was almost certainly the reason they were all there anyway, all from that stupid smile he hadn't realized he had been making and if he was killed first the other twelve white tags might just get sent back unharmed. It seemed to Justin they might have just been there as some kind of tool to get him to confess anyway. "My uncle was a priest, you know," he said and Jackson just stared dumbstruck at him. "In Mia Loma, California, where I used to go to his church every Sunday growing up." Justin remembered that area. He had been through it once or twice on his way somewhere. "He was murdered by Christian extremists but I still find the old habits comforting."

"You confessed," Jackson said with obvious dissatisfaction. "Your family—"

"You don't have them. You'd have brought them out of you had." Hate found its way into Jackson's face and Miller's smile had turned into a bitter sneer. "I confess. I was caught praying and I was caught believing and those are the facts."

"No one else is involved?"

"No. How could they be?"

"Not even the boy?"

Reyes blinked. "What?" Jackson, Miller and Ortiz were all beginning to smile again. "How could the boy be involved? Miller saw me worshipping in my cell and as you know I was alone in there."

For the first time since Justin had arrived, he saw Nathan Michaels professional mask breaking. He looked at Jackson's back with a worried narrow-eyed expression. He was weighing something in his mind and the elite had instantly sensed it and moved between them. Out of all of them, Michaels was the most dangerous, possibly the most so in the whole prison including the elites, so if he went after Jackson the elite would have to move very quickly, and very lethally, before he got to him. If Michaels did get to him before his armor came up he could snap his neck like a twig but then they would certainly kill the boy and it would all be for nothing.

Or would they? Justin could not say what they would do anymore.

Denny looked at Michaels, then at Reyes and then at Jackson with a look of the thoroughly confused natural optimist. "I don't know what—" The blades on Jackson's right wrist shot out and startled Denny into silence.

"I confessed," Reyes told him but there was a look of hopelessness on his face.

Jackson smiled in such an ugly way that it made Reyes step back a few steps. "There is no God, Reyes," he told him in an oddly cheerful, almost insane voice. "Science has proven this fact and we know damn well how bad religious influences have been to the state of our economic wellbeing! One incompetent weakling with no skills or experience tells the masses he goes to church and prays is suddenly elected to run our country because his voters believe in God!" His voice was drooling with contempt. "The United States has had more than one incompetent and dangerous president due to this idiocy. The last one was torn limb from limb when the veil was taken down if you recall."

President Robert Bramble, so-called Born-Again Christian, conservative and maker of the Good Citizen's Law, was caught trying to flee to Germany when news of the White House being taken overreached him, evidently preferring war crime chargers from an Alliance country than from what the Americans would do to him. A mass of angry citizens caught him on the way to his private airport, killed his police escort, pushed over his car, and after laser sawing through the door they yanked him out and savaged him with their bare hands. It was rage over the Good Citizen's Law, over the hundred hour work week with nothing to show for it except uneducated, depressed, self-destructive children forced to do adult labor and the very rich bragging about how much harder they thought the worked. The attackers had seemed to be screaming in unison as if bees under the command of the same queen commanding them to kill. The video Justin saw was not edited for violence and the sight of that severed elderly man's arm encased in a hundred thousand dollar suit's sleeve would haunt his dreams forever.

"There is no God, there is only Law, and I damn well intend to show why." He held up the man catcher, pressed a button, and it snapped shut in the air once making a loud _clack_ sound but when it spread back open there was suddenly a plate-shaped red laser in between the semicircles. He held it out in front Reyes for a moment so close to his face that Justin saw it turn red from the light and then he turned it off.

"Oh my god!" Lucas hacked out from his drug haze. Even in his present state, he could easily see what it was: a device meant for the severing limbs or head from a body.

"I'll teach you too, Randal," said Jackson. "Law is not to be mocked. Law is not to be thwarted. Law is all we have and Law is all we are." He started toward one of the men.

"Run!" Lucas spluttered.

"Run!" cried Jose and the first man blinked, tried to move, but was too weak to do anything more than jerk when the collar was around his neck violently digging into his throat and spilling blood down his chest. "Oh god!" cried Jose.

Jackson turned his head back, sneered at Jose, and then pressed the bottom on his pole. Justin was looking at the man, had blinked once, and then saw that in that split second his head had rolled off his shoulders and was then bouncing across the ground to rest around Lucas's feet. Justin distinctively saw the man's bright green eyes staring up in surprise and horror.

Denny began to scream and the white tags began to shake in horror on the verge of hysterical panic.

"What did you do that for?" cried Reyes. "He didn't do anything!"

"I didn't do it," said Jackson. " _You_ did."

"Captain," said Reyes, "If I broke your law—" Jackson shoved the man catcher into another man's neck, listened to him scream for a moment, then pressed the button "—you son of a bitch!"

"That's the wrong move!" Justin cried. "That's what he wants! That's—"

"Enough!" cried a voice and, to everyone's shock, it was actually the elite soldier who spoke. "You get these prisoners back to their cells _immediately_!" He sounded, of all things, disturbed and even a little frightened. He turned to one of the red guards. "Take them all back, _especially_ the boy—"

"I outrank you, _boy_!" cried Jackson irritably and he pointed his man catcher at another white tag. "Look what—" The man ducked the device as it shot forward and suddenly everyone was in motion except Michaels.

The elite caught four white tags and pounded them into the ground with his fists while four white tags jumped onto the dumpsters and tried to climb over the fence. Croon, the only officer other than the elite not stunned in shock which included Jackson, casually moved behind them and fired into their backs. They fell back, hit the dumpsters, rolled several times over and landed on the concrete below like four useless bags of meat.

Jose and Reyes charged toward the gate but Jackson snapped out of it and caught up to them in a flash. He shoved Jose with his amplified strength sideways into the wall of the trash area which he hit hard enough to make a _splat_ sound and then pulled Reyes back by his hair. Then he shoved him to the ground ripping out everything his gloved hands had gotten a hold of.

Justin, Lyle and Denny made for the door back inside, Lucas trailing in a drug-induced shamble from behind. The door was locked and Justin kicked it as hard as he could to find that it didn't budge an inch or even make much of a noise. He raised his foot for another kick but then felt the vibration blades under his chin.

"Are we going to have a problem, Mr. Bookycov?" asked Miller.

Justin looked down at the black blades almost against his throat as he was maneuvered around carefully to face the scene. Reyes clambered up to his feet with a mouth full of blood where a tooth or two had been knocked out from his fall and threw a fist at Jackson's face. The hit might have done some damage if Jackson hadn't formed the helmet over his face at the last second. Reyes broke half the bones in his fingers on impact with a loud _crunch_ sound but seemed to barely even notice.

"You goddamned lunatic!" cried Reyes.

"Where's your God now?" asked Jackson as he removed his helmet.

"Where's yours?" asked Reyes. "There is no Law here?" Jackson gave him the cocky smile of an idiot who believes he can delude himself out of any problem. "Are we done yet? I've got an appointment with St. Peter any minute now." Jackson's idiot smile vanished and he looked rather sulky.

He had apparently thought his night would be a whole lot more fun. "I do as I must—"

"Don't waste my time, Rupert," Reyes told him.

"Why?" asked Denny softly with tears running down his face. "Why? Why? Why?" His voice was edged with panic and no other word seemed to escape his mouth.

"'There is no why here,'" quoted Jose as he stood up with blood leaking down his head over his neck.

Justin knew that quote. It was from _Survival in Auschwitz_ by Primo Levi. It was a book his mother bought for him when he couldn't find it on the school website of acceptable reading material. He had been given a "D" for inappropriate and "inaccurate" source material on his "A" paper.

Jackson didn't know the quote. He was probably uneducated to begin with but even if he wasn't that book was as forbidden just as much by Faction law as it was by the United States Acceptability Association. "Come here, brother," said Jackson and as he held out his gauntleted hand Denny backed away. "I said, 'Come here.'"

Lucas stumbled out in between them standing shakily on his feet. The activity was making him sick but he had not passed out or given up. "Think this through for a second—" Ortiz stepped forward and punched him in the stomach with her bionic augmented fist and he vomited out his gruel onto the ground before falling to his knees. He then vomited a second time, then a third and then a fourth and after that Justin stopped counting. His stomach was completely empty by then and he was still dry heaving for several minutes afterward.

Justin tried to move but felt that blade get closer. "Try me!" hissed Miller. "I _really_ want you to!"

"This is a fucking nightmare!" cried Lyle. He had not been hit but he had not fought back either and he stood then in the corner away from everything with apparently no idea what to do or what was about to happen.

Jackson jerked forward, grabbed the boy suddenly, raised his man catcher to move it forward but then saw something and hesitated. "You—you fucking—" he was suddenly without words.

Nathan Michaels had his hands on the head and chin of one of the helmetless male officers that Justin had guessed to be Law Labor men. "Start to put on your helmet and I will snap your neck," he told the man simply and then focused on Jackson. "Let go of the boy."

"Are you actually going to go through with that, general?" He pushed the boy into Ortiz's hands who held onto him tightly. "You think this will stop—"

"I am a sergeant major not a general," he said in a voice that came down like a hammer. "Think very clearly about your superior and his relationship with the boy's mother—"

Jackson suddenly jerked his man catcher toward Denzel Kelly's neck and Jose and Reyes both moved to attack in unison. One of the red guards hit Jose in the stomach sending him to the ground clutching himself but Reyes hit Jackson with his off hand across the side of the head. Jackson stumbled to the right, his man catcher slumping to the ground and Reyes got a hold of it with his good hand.

Jackson's foot came up, hit Reyes in the chest and sent him flying backward into the gates which then bounced him back forward onto the cement ground. He screamed when his wounded hand had made hard contact with the ground but stopped himself. However, the very instant he did so Jackson's boot came down on his good hand's wrist and shattered the bones within.

Juan Reyes screamed at the top of his lungs, his voice filling the air with all the emotion and pain that had been welling up inside of him for god knew how long. It stretched out across the facility like a gust of wind made of pure agony.

***

Laura jerked up, her eyes wide, and looked out of the little window. The sound of that scream was like a man being torn in half and it filled her with abject horror and misery. She stared out into the night and tried to figure out who it was.

Most people outside the facility in their cozy expensive homes for party members didn't hear anything, most of them happily asleep with happy dreams and thoughts, and many who were out outside driving were also spared because of the soundproof quality of modern automobiles. However, there were a few unlucky souls who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time to hear exactly what was going on.

A young couple who had been drinking out all night at the local Faction party bar called Law of Fun and had been kissing erotically outside by their car stopped instantly when it started and turned their heads toward the looming reclamation facility where it came from, the red light blinking on and off like some kind of evil eye. "What the hell is that?" asked the man. His girlfriend burst into tears and he put his arm around her and stared with eyes filling with growing horror. "It's okay, baby," he told her but he did not believe a word of it.

One Faction accountant had just left his car and was walking up the final steps to his expensive three-story Georgetown home's front door when it began. He was holding a bag of green apples he had just bought for his miserable, pregnant wife who had suddenly got a mad craving for them and couldn't sleep. When the screaming began suddenly he nearly spilled them out onto the pavement and found himself very much worried not for the first time about what kind of world was going to be left for his baby daughter to grow up in.

The next day he would call up his uncle who was one of the Faction's higher members and one of the bigger financial supporters and tell him exactly what happened, exactly what he was feeling, and also that he was heading to Alabama to see his wife's sister for a while. It was a preferred move, he decided, to being around when what some of his friends were whispering about came about.

He was no fighter and he wasn't about to learn to be one the hard way and most certainly not when his wife was seven months pregnant.

A waitress who worked at a bar called Law of Fun and had just made several hours overtime because two employees had quit without notice and left town heard it best of all. Her apartment was in easy walking distance from her job and she was walking by the facility when that scream began. She stumbled, fell onto her hands and knees, and began to weep uncontrollably.

She looked up at that blinking red light and made the snapshot decision of leaving town immediately. Ever since people had been whispering about illegally smuggling weapons from Canada, she had been incredibly nervous and that scream was the final straw. She did not even wait for morning and she was in her already packed car leaving the borders of Washington DC never to return before the sky was even starting to light up.

When the scream ended as abruptly as it came it seemed that all of Washington DC had become as quiet as a tomb.

Many of the other witnesses that heard it here and there, mostly homeless people and nighttime workers, went on with their lives as they had nothing else to do but they did so with increased fear.

***

Reyes did not look at either of his hands. He just lied there in agony after his scream and did not move.

"Pick him up and make him watch," said Jackson and one of the unknown red guards obeyed. Ortiz tightened her grip on the boy as Jackson approached him.

"I really will kill this man," said Michaels and Jackson stopped and looked at the officer who had his arms out carefully to avoid making Michaels nervous. Whenever he moved his arms closer Michaels's hands startled the red officer with new pain. Michaels knew very well what he was doing and the man knew it.

Jackson sneered at him and said, "You fucking bastard—"

Michaels turned to the elite and said, "Command them to take the boy inside. General Green desires the boy to live in order to maintain a steady control over his mother. Her art and use will be savagely comprised if anything happens to her son."

Jackson laughed in a cynical way. "You are just so sweet on pretty little Joan—"

"Williams!" said the elite in a loud and commanding voice. "Take Denzel Kelly back to his cell!" Justin would not have believed it if he had not seen it himself but there it was: a Faction Special Forces elite soldier with a license to torture and kill with the body language of someone deeply relieved, potentially even grateful, to an unrepentant United States marine.

There was a sudden and powerful silence and Justin felt a surge of relief and hope well up inside of him. Jackson might have lost his mind but the elite had not. General Green was an art aficionado and with Joan's son in his control he had the ability to make Joan, one of the greatest artists of the age, do anything he pleased. If anything happened to that son Joan would turn into an unstable weeping mess and the elite very well knew it.

Jackson turned to the elite slowly. "What the fuck did you just say—"

"I said to take the fucking boy back to his fucking cell!" cried the elite in a guttural, angry voice. "Nathan Michaels is fully capable of killing our fellow officer and General Green himself has personally appointed Denzel Kelly of personal interest to the party!" The elite seemed very tense, possibly even afraid, and was clearly very much against Jackson and his cronies. There was a potential there, the possibility of something crazy wonderful, something like the elite killing Jackson, but that was too wonderful to ever be believed.

"I told you that I have the authority—"

"I don't fucking need this shit right now, Rupert!" snarled the elite. "Take the fucking boy, Williams! Take him right fucking now or I swear to god I'll kill you myself!" No one moved. "You want to chime in?" he asked upward.

"He's right," said the black and red AIC wasp crouched on a ledge above them below the garbage area's metal canopy. He spoke in a very human and very controlled male voice but he was tense and spoke as if he expected any word would make Rupert do something insane. "Rupert, Green will not understand and will hold you _personally_ responsible."

Jackson looked at his AIC and for a moment grimaced bitterly without words. One of the red guards, Williams presumably, started forward. "Stop!" ordered Jackson and the guard stopped and looked very uncomfortable. He looked at Jackson, then at Michaels and his grip on the officer, then at the elite, and then back at Jackson. He looked extremely conflicted and deeply worried.

_This is a madhouse even for them,_ thought Justin. If Jackson's own AIC was trying to talk him out of what he was doing, then he was seriously out of his mind.

"This isn't a joke," said Michaels coldly. "You will lose an officer—" he jerked the head a bit when the officer began to try saying something "—Green will lose his artist and _you_ will be blamed."

"I think we should leave Denzel Kelly unharmed, Rupert," said his AIC in that same even and careful voice. "As a precaution. He may be needed later for something General Green has kept confidential."

Jackson glared at Michaels for a moment and did seem genuinely worried for a moment. The elite and his AIC had shaken him a bit, that was clear, but Justin did not see him sigh or shrug or give any sign indicating was going to give up. "The American da Vinci," he mused for a second. "Green does love his little black bitch, doesn't he?" He looked at Michaels. "You won't—"

"Don't you fucking tempt me!" snarled Michaels and then did some kind of twist to make the man in his hands cry out. "The only way this asshole is walking out of here is if Denzel Kelly walks out first! Williams, you have your orders!" The intenseness in his incredibly disciplined voice was the closest thing to panic a marine of his experience was ever apt to get.

Williams, as a wonder, started toward the boy again but Jackson barred his path with his man catcher. "Nathan—" Jackson shook his head "—it doesn't matter anymore." He turned and made his move.

Justin felt the blades actually touch his neck just above his metal collar and he shut his eyes to avoid seeing what was coming. He heard Denny screaming, then heard him stop with the hum sound of the device, and then he heard something like a _splat_ sound. He had seen people die in his life, some of them children, but none of them had been executed like that. They were killed in fighting and surviving and for what it was worth that really did make a difference and very few of them were as a sweet a child as Denzel Kelly had been.

"Oh god!" Jose whimpered. " _Fuck_ me oh my god!"

There was the sound of a loud squishy _crack_ and Justin heard the red guard in Michaels' hands fall dead to the ground. A moment later pain givers were stabbing into Michaels' body from every guard but he did not scream or even cry out. When Justin looked at him he saw he was forced down on his knees, staring up at Jackson with a cold, calculated promise that Jackson was too stupid or too crazy or both to understand the danger it represented.

If Nathan Michaels ever got out of that place he would come for him. If it took a thousand years he would find and kill Rupert Jackson. The emotional power of that truth seemed to be overwhelming Michael's person and all the pain of multiple pain givers digging into him did not even make him twitch.

Lucas was curled up into a ball covered in blood and groaning half dead in his drugged stupor. Lyle was shaking in a corner, covering his eyes with his left arm, and Jose had backed up into a different corner and was using all of his will to rein in his emotions.

Jackson turned to Juan Reyes who was leaning against the gate almost from a sitting position and asked, "Anything to say now, Johnny?"

Justin looked at him and was surprised to see Reyes was at a strange equilibrium between being utterly at peace and being in absolute agony. He looked to Jackson and said simply, "I'll see you in Hell, Officer Jackson." Then he smiled in the ugliest way Justin had ever seen and added, "Would you like me to pray for you?"

Jackson snarled and swung his left arm. Reyes's head was there one minute, gone the other, and, without the cauterization of the man catcher, a gush of blood from his neck covered everything everywhere.

The elite soldier stood staring down at the carnage with a strangely human expression of misery and sadness in his body language. "Take the injured prisoners to the infirmary and then afterward to the cleansing chambers and clean them off _thoroughly_ ," he ordered. "Then send back to their cells—"

"Miller!" cried Jackson and Miller lowered his blades obediently. Justin felt the small cut on his neck above the bio-blocker collar as he slipped free out from his grasp without complaint. "Get these pieces of shit to the infirmary and then have them cleaned up and returned to their cells."

There was no fight left on either side and Justin went along meekly to meet that wild-haired blond doctor again, receive a nanoprobe injection in his neck without a response, and then went back into the sanitary chamber naked again with that nurse looking so worried she did not so much as give him a glance.

As he stepped out naked the nurse was saying to the very worried doctor, "—and we don't need this shit! A fucking automated Norwegian stealth tank was just taken out near Baltimore and there are Danish planes all over—" The doctor made an aggressive gesture toward Justin and she turned, saw him, and quickly grabbed his clothes cleaned from the cleaning machine, put them in his hands, and sent him escorted back to his room just like the first time but by a very quiet red guard instead of a white.

In the darkness of his room, he managed to slip into sleep thanks largely in part to the numbing sensation of the healing nanoprobes.

_I am lucky_ , thought Justin as he started to drift away. _I'm not really here like these others are. I don't do anything. I just wait. They're the ones who suffer. They're the ones who are really here._ He shut his eyes and disappeared into his dreams for a while.

He dreamt an old dream of his mother and when he woke up in the morning he found he had been weeping.
6

_He also dreamt of the day he began what he called his "run" which he got from a movie and TV series based on a book called_ Logan's Run _by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson._

Just play it cool, _Justin told himself as he ordered his food from the food fabricator in a high-quality Big Burger in some random town in New Mexico called Santa Rosa just east of Albuquerque along the Interstate 40 which merged and overlapped what was once Route 66. He ordered his meal on the monitor on a bright white wall choosing a three taco combo complete with a drink and added on a shredded chicken burrito combo all from a defunct restaurant that had once been called Taco Bell._

He paid for it by letting it scan his ATM card through his celldisk which he allowed by pressing a button on its HUD. Then after about a minute one of the fabricators along a wall where a cashier counter would have normally been made a beep sound and showed his name on its little monitor to let him know his food was ready. He opened the fabricator's door and placed each wrapped thing down carefully on a bright blue tray and then took the blue and white cup that said, "Big Burger" on the side with his left hand. He filled it up with Coca-Cola from one of fountain dispenser machines with one hand while holding the tray with another and then went up to stairs to where his friends were all seated with their own incredibly varied food.

The food was highly variable because Big Burger was part of Amity Food Incorporated, a sub-company of Live-4-Less and fabricated with the ingredients and cooking style that was once separately owned by Taco Bell, McDonald's, Carl's Junior, Wendy's, Jack in the Box, El Pollo Loco, Panda Express and dozens of others Justin couldn't recall offhand. Occasionally, he would see Big Burger with different names such as Golden Bowl, La Vaca Rojo and others but that was just an illusion to appear to have more options and less of what one angry politician called "one of those damn de facto monopolies." If it wasn't a monopoly it was only so by the barest of technical margins and laws.

Amity Food Incorporated was technically gone by that time as the Faction had destroyed them when they destroyed Live-4-Less. It was a wide and powerful sweep against corruption against many corporations and Wall Street that was generations overdue and the method of its success, the erasing of accounts, removal of properties, and arrest warrants, had devastated the CEOs, lobbyists, stockbrokers and other major players in a way simple violence could never have done. They went mad at the prospect of living like an ordinary American without their golden advantages and free rides and had leaped from buildings, opened wrists and pulled triggers but for all that, very little had changed as far as Justin could tell. The UCLD had transformed Live-4-Less into a public entity where its profits went straight into the government but somehow not the economy.

Justin was the second to last to arrive. All of them were dressed in casual clothes such as t-shirts, jeans, dresses, skirts, sneakers and along with civilian celldisks on their temples that would not lead anyone to believe they were military. Justin was wearing a dark blue t-shirt, jeans, and white sneakers when he sat beside his friend Ellie Lorne who was staring down at the highly symmetrical fabricated El Pollo Loco chicken breast blankly. As soon as he sat down his best friend Tommy Newton popped out of the same stairs with his own tray of In-N-Out Burger wearing a black football jersey with the number 5 in white on the front and sat across from him next to Shawn Wallace.

" _Everyone's here and we can now begin," said Teo from the center back of the blue booth below the window. He was leaning against the backrest with an arm across the back and the bright cloudless blue desert sky looking wondrous and empty behind him._

Teo Miller was attractive, tall, almost perfectly built, with dark gold hair combed backward in a sleek 1930s style he liked with vibrant blue eyes wearing a dark blue polo shirt and black slacks. He was so attractive he had once been an underwear model, a thing Justin had not believed for an instant until someone showed him the pictures in the magazine emphasizing attractive modern gay soldiers. He didn't smile much anymore having become a very hard man in the years that followed the "Gay Cure" pill and the violent shootout at the last ever gay pride march that left his uncle dead. He had become even worse when his boyfriend, sister and mothers were taken as "subversive" by the Faction.

In his dream, Justin would feel a great sense of loss at that moment. It was one of the last times they would all be eating together like normal and the very last before they were running for their life. Over the following months, each would be caught one by one and that sense of loss and loneliness would increase exponentially. Also his dream, he knew what was coming but in reality, he had not known of it and only suspected it.

Each member had their own place and position in their group. Teo Miller was their leader and the highest ranked among them anyway, having graduated a year earlier. Tommy Newton, reasonably good-looking, blond haired, tall, athletic but too scrawny to actually play his beloved football the way he liked, was no fool but the least intelligent of them and that had somehow that led him into being their group clown and jock. He was sitting right then with two balls, one red and one blue, that had unfolded themselves into little robots and were fighting just past his tray. Shawn Wallace, actually much better built for football, was almost as attractive as Teo Miller was in a black way, and was somewhat also a jock making him the only person who actually understood what Tommy talking about and was their vehicle man. He knew everything about motorcycles, cars, planes and how to improve them. Justin was the trivia and internet expert of the group and the one who could find any lost movie, game, or book that one might wish to have and he could fix and upgrade all their computers.

The two girls were Gwen Change and Ellie Lorne. Gwen Change was gorgeous and petite, with long silky hair and beautiful narrow almond eyes on a modelesque face and was absolutely brilliant. She wanted to work in fashion despite her fantastic credits in robotics engineering and the general destruction fashion industry and, for that reason, she also functioned as the glamorous member of their group. Ellie Lorne was not nearly as pretty, a mostly plain girl with caramel colored hair and bright amber eyes, but was much sweeter and smarter by far than any of them. She graduated second in her class beating Justin by a dozen cadets and was their scholar, a person whose intellect stretched everywhere but aimed mostly for American history. She had deeply wanted to be a history teacher but since it would've been very hard considering so many incidents in American history were banned from school curriculums she ended up focusing on her second love of medicine instead.

" _We're here," said Shawn. He had a hamburger and fries from Carl's Junior in front of him. "I don't know what exactly we can do."_

" _You okay?" Justin asked Ellie.  
"I'm just thinking about how they blew up our temple in Salt Lake City," said Ellie softly. She was raised Mormon but while she did not consider herself religious, she once told Justin too much knowledge of history would make anyone an atheist, she still had family that were still very much devout: cousins, uncles, aunts and old childhood friends from her temple going days many of whom had spent time on those bicycle rides around cities in Utah where they lived._

Growing up so close to that old temple there was a good chance that she knew somebody that was in there packed with the others when it was blown to pieces but Justin didn't ask her about it. If she wanted to tell him she would.

Her story wasn't particularly unique. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindu, even Wiccan religions and pacifistic groups like the Amish, were all being savaged by the Faction who despised them after the religious riots that popped up when Justin was a child. When Justin was nine one of those riots had bled into his hometown of Thousand Oaks, California and destroyed the local synagogue his family went to on occasion. They burned it down to the ground after murdering everyone in there all in the name of Christianity and the following morning was a giant cross found stabbed into the rubble. That night had ruined his life and his family and made his father utterly unbearable. The Faction's violence was a response to years and years of things like that. Their army of crazed anti-religious persecutors was formed from men and women who had stories just like Justin's or worse who, after years of living under the Faction think tank, didn't know a good religious person from a fanatically psychotic one which was how Ellie Lorne's family of moderate law-abiding Mormon believers were killed alongside their fanatic psychotic counterparts who genuinely were as dangerous as the Faction believed.

" _What do we do?" asked Gwen._

" _Yeah, what_ do _we do?" asked Justin. Ever since he joined this military venture he had a nightmarish feeling everything was going to go wrong and that he was in an eye of some great tornado that was about to destroy everything around him. He could feel something coming, something big, and it made him very uncomfortable. It was hardly made better when the expected call didn't come and Teo had to run out and see what was happening._

He regretted nothing and knew he was, win or fail, on the right side of history.

All the branches of the former United States' military had banded together and summoned all their members from top to bottom to form what they called the Restoration Military after the election for a new president went sour. Albert Bernstein ran for president and won against Ian Owen Williamson despite the Faction's attempts to cheat the election but before he could take office and rebuild the country he had vanished. No one knew where, Justin still did not know by the time was dreaming about that meal, but he was definitely gone.

And Ian Owen Williamson had definitely become the new president in his place.

" _Things have changed, guys." He wrapped his left hand in his naval bionic armor under the table and they all looked under and saw the red, white and blue armor of the United States Restoration Military, the symbolic collars of the United States, former after the Faction's successful coup, but with the armor and plates and a clear indication of the single blade of the United States Navy. The weapons and armor that were normally coded out from the bionic control satellite were very clearly there. It was a biological thing, like the way queen insects control their hives, and could not be hacked. Only the United States bionic control satellite could turn them off and that was, last they heard, under Faction control._

Teo reached down with his unarmored hand, opened his communication accessory and activated the device accessory within called a sphere blocker located in the armor just below his left wrist but without taking it out. When actually pulled out his armor the sphere blocker was physically a small navy blue sphere on a small white stand, but he didn't dare bring it out where anyone could see it. When activated anywhere it prevented their conversation from being heard by any kind of scanning or long-range listening device. Even their celldisks were carefully blocked even though they still had some access to a variety of things for reasons of subterfuge.

Teo was the only one of them who had that particular device as part of his communication accessory because he was the only one who was an officer.

" _It really happened," said Shawn softly._

" _Locked and loaded, brother," said Teo. "You know what else?" His face was suddenly merged shock and misery that it was astounding. "They dropped a clean bomb on Albuquerque."_

They could only stare. "Tell me they had it army specific, at least," said Gwen softly. "The DNA codes to every soldier are in the databases."

" _There's no way they had the DNA of_ every _soldier there," Ellie gasped in a weak voice. "They would only get thirty percent military specific even if they had managed to crack our databases which they haven't and most DNA codes were removed or not even entered." She let out a breath of air she had been holding without having known it. "Without being code specific ninety percent of the people killed would have been harmless civilians on a lucky day."_

" _Albuquerque was where every soldier in New Mexico was hidden among civilians," said Teo. "They jumped the gun because last night one of the Alliance countries, the Netherlands or Denmark or fuck knows who, used our satellite's defense codes to take down its shields they blew it to hell. Every man or woman with United States model bionic augmentation armor is now fully equipped."_

" _If they waited they might have had us all in one place and without the civilians," said Shawn._

" _Well, they didn't," said Teo bitterly._

" _We're dead," gasped Ellie. "We're all dead."_

" _Stay calm," said Teo softly._

" _How are these people not freaking out?" whispered Gwen. "We're like ten miles from Albuquerque!"_

" _They don't know yet," Teo replied. "My guess is that Albuquerque is on lockdown and the information is being halted but my Faction insider is freaked out so something is going to happen and soon. When these people figure it out, they will go batshit crazy. He says they screwed up something and the wind unexpectedly took the probes into Cedar Crest and killed like three thousand innocent people there. If it went straight east instead of southeast we would all be dead."_

Tommy looked up. "Was Albuquerque like our entire army?" he asked.

" _No, but they hit almost all our other places all over the country at the same time recklessly fast which was why it was sloppy enough to hit Cedar Crest. Army, marines, navy, air force—" Teo spread his arms out in an exploding boom manner "—all gone. Someone ratted our army out but not with enough information so that it got to us backups so it's just a boatload of other fledglings and maybe a handful of survivors VS the world."_

So their youth and inexperience had put them out of the way in support positions that had evidently saved their lives. Not one of them was over eighteen except Teo who was just eighteen and they had been placed in outer towns under their civilian identities as a kind of backup and or support for the more seasoned military before a full muster.

" _So we just—what?" Gwen looked at the others and then back at Teo. "What do we do?"_

" _We just finish our food," Teo said and he took a bite of his hamburger from the Habit and then a bite out of his oddly perfectly symmetrical pepperoncini, chewed and then swallowed. "We're just a bunch of kids hanging out getting our kicks out on Route 66 on our way to Las Vegas."_

" _God, I do want to go there again," said Tommy softly._

" _Well, we can't because it's closed and we got caught counting cards besides." They almost smiled at each other for a second while thinking about the time they took Vegas for tens of thousands of dollars. They lost it because the Faction canceled all the wins on that wondrous last ditch party of Vegas before it was closed for good but that weekend was one of, if not the, greatest of their lives._

They all began eating their food quickly which Justin did not relish because fabricated food tended to taste blander and nowhere near as good as genuinely cooked food like the kind his mother made but before they were finished they heard the sounds of screams, violence, and explosions outside.

Teo turned around and while Gwen and Ellie leaned up beside him to look out. Justin, Tommy and Shawn slipped into the next booths and looked out west to see a surprising sight. A Faction tower buildings set within the two circular roads that led on and off the Interstate 40 onto Route 66 were being attacked by a crowd of people who rushed out of their homes. One man had a tractor and was using it to try and break through the door.

More than half the people in the crowd had firearms and they were bustling toward the Faction building with very real intent to use them. Justin could tell by just the spare ammunition clips at their sides on some and shoulder belts full of shotgun shells on others that they weren't planning on just firing once.

There had been riots against the Faction like that before but it felt different that time. It was something in the air, something about the people there, the women, older people and the proper upper class sorts like doctors and lawyers for example, who had joined into what was previously the isolated act of hot tempered young men who tended to be of the poorer citizen.

" _Finish eating quickly," Teo commanded and then looked at the projector in the center of the table curiously for a moment. He pressed his violet celldisk, pressed a button in front of him none of them could see, and said, "Check this out." Everyone tapped the celldisks on their temples and each of them saw an almost real looking but intangible screen facing them from the center of the table._

Everything projected from the screen was very clearly not real which was required by law for all celldisks due to the dangers of creating something that looked real from inside one's brain because early versions of the device had been regularly hacked to create manipulations of sight that included creating bridges over holes, realistic looking monsters and oncoming cars on the freeway and a significant amount of people lost their lives.

Reaching up they pressed the equally intangible button with a speaker crossed out on it floating beside the screen and turned on the sound only they could hear.

" _The United Country's Law Division has finally taken control of the governments of the world," said an older blond female reporter quietly. "In America reactions to the final stage coup against the remnants of the United States military are violent. All the people are rising up against the Faction calling for the Alliance of Denmark, Norway, Netherlands and Germany to support the rebellion and mobilize the remai—" It was cut off._

" _The Night of the Long Knives has passed," Ellie said._

Justin felt a chill go through him. "What is that?" asked Tommy. Justin said nothing even though knew very well what she was referring to and did not like it one bit.

" _Read a book," said Shawn bitterly, his eyes locked on the empty red screen with its yellow letters saying "SIGNAL LOST."_

" _The Night of the Long Knives was another name for Operation Hummingbird," said Teo. "It was the night Adolf Hitler and his followers purged all opposition in the Nazi Party." Teo's eyes were distant, strange and thoughtful. "She's referring to how the Faction just made a move on the army that it had once been part of in order to consolidate itself as the only military power in the United States. Operation Hummingbird or close enough."_

" _I really don't think it's working out the way they thought it would," said Tommy. "I know the Nazis were supported by Germany during that time but I don't think that's what's happening here."_

_Teo and Justin looked closer and saw a Faction soldier had changed his plates and armor to the red, white and blue of the United States Restoration Army and was firing a heavy laser rifle into other Faction soldiers as they rushed out to fight the crowd. "We got to get out,_ now _!" Teo told them._

As they started to get up the video came back on to reveal a prettier, younger blond female reporter. "Riots are erupting all over the United States in every city big and small! The coup has brought patriotism in the United States the likes of which have not been since the Sons of Liberty rose against the British—" It was cut off again and Teo quickly turned off his sphere blocker, unraveled his armor, and then led them out in a half-rush half-walk that was supposed to not draw too much attention if someone was looking.

" _At least they won't be looking for us anymore," said Tommy._

" _Don't be too sure," said Shawn._

As they were walking out Justin looked up at the blank boards called HUD monitors that were all over Big Burger automatically connected to their celldisks and became monitors. They automatically came on briefly to reveal shots of buildings burning down in New York City, a Chicago riot that showed a Faction hovercar bursting into fire from a thrown Molotov cocktail, and in Los Angeles, there was a small army of civilian men with civilian guns firing into Faction soldiers.

The guns that conservatives had for years had been promoting even in the face of rising homicides and school shootings did little against the greater technological force of the military except give them an excuse to kill them in retaliation. The fight would not be won combat to combat with civilians defeating tanks, jets, and bombs but guns or no guns it was clear they could not be controlled. That lack of control was what destroyed the United States and if it could not be regained it would do the same to its successor.

_Control brought taxes, moved products, and made everything work_ including _the military._

Just before that screen cut off Justin saw that in Los Angeles someone had lifted a car up ten feet into the air with a tow truck's force field car lifter and then dropped it onto several Faction soldiers who were firing into the crowd. As they were crushed a beat up old truck flew out of nowhere and charged into the remaining ones and sent them flying in all directions like bowling pins.

" _Damn," said Shawn softly._

" _We're changing our armors' colors and we're doing it like ten minutes ago," said Teo as he stepped outside and walked up to John Franklin who was about to come in and look for them._

He was a man of about twenty, black haired, black-eyed, handsome in a hard, angular way, muscular from his military training, and stout in build. He had been assigned as Teo's commander and like the other younger just graduated green troops for the night they had been incognito. He was the son of some admiral or general and was probably sent there to keep him out of danger which in such a case had quite clearly succeeded. Like them, he was wearing ordinary clothes, a black t-shirt and jeans in his case, but they looked off on him somehow and Justin felt certain that he would quickly and easily be picked out from a Faction line up.

In the distance, the turned Faction people numbering as high as twenty or more were talking to the crowd of rioters excitedly. They were not firing for the moment so Teo and Franklin's groups seemed safe and the rioters were calmer than rioters should be, more like an army than a mob already, and they were listening carefully to the speakers.

" _We're out," Franklin told them. "We're going east."_

" _Then we're going west," Teo replied. "In a big group, they could not mistake us for anything but what we are. In a small group, we're just a bunch of kid hippies, you get me?" The hippy movement had started to resurrect itself with its communes and anti-authority personality around the time of the religion riots._

" _I get you and I agree." Franklin shook Teo's hand. "Stay alive. We may need to get back together again." He turned and went back to his own group of friends, fifteen or so, split between a few motorcycles, an old wheeled van, and a couple of hovercars one of which was a fancy sports car that Franklin's father must have bought him for some birthday or graduation or something._

Justin and his friends piled into Shawn's ugly, old brown van. He had picked it up for almost nothing and with the help of his and Justin's AIC with their orgo-material fabrication technology Shawn had made a very good, very efficient vehicle that he had made sure to keep looking awful so as to never warrant a second look. Appearing as it did no Faction soldier would or should guess that it was capable of outracing a top of the line sports car.

The groups of young people that had almost been United States soldiers spread off in two different directions. Justin had not bumped into Franklin or his group again and he would sometimes wonder if Franklin found his way to Denmark or somewhere and joined the resistance there. Due to his general lack of social camouflage he may have also found his way into a Reclamation Facility as Justin would himself but, due to his background and lineage as United States military royalty, Justin thought it was more likely he was just shot and left dead on some street somewhere never to be heard from again.
7

_Nathan Michaels had been right about Joan Kelly_ , thought Laura.

Over the last few days, weeks or whatever passed Joan Kelly had been weeping uncontrollably between her fits of screaming and crazed panic attacks. Justin told Laura what happened and although no one had told Joan herself she seemed to have figured it out easily enough. Michaels had disappeared the night Denzel Kelly died and Justin, Jose, Lyle and Lucas were afraid to go anywhere near her let alone tell her. They would all stare miserably at Munoz as she held Joan like a child as she wailed in agony almost like an animal.

Joan was clearly no fool and she knew what those looks meant.

Laura looked up sadly into the white sky deeply wishing the force field would go down again and then smiled at Justin sadly. He smiled back at her the same way, looked back up, and then surprise entered his face.

Laura followed his gaze and saw a jet flying through the air. It was a Danish Hawker named after the pre-World War II airplane. Even though the color from the force field washed it out she knew it would be the red and white of the Danish flag. Their nationalism had become very high since the early days when the Faction made just social war on their society and it had been clear even back then that, in time, one group of Faction or the other would invade which had led them to become one of the founding members of the Alliance.

"They've made it into the interior," Laura whispered and then saw it was crashing downward. There was no smoke to indicate it in a modern plane but she knew a controlled crash when she saw one. It was soon out of sight and she did not see another. "I guess the Faction's pact with the Chinese didn't go through."

If there was one thing the Faction was bad at, it was keeping friends, even among each other, and it seemed the Chinese had evidently dropped their air blockade and allowed the Danish to make it through. The Alliance had no such personal problems. Denmark, Norway and Germany as founders but with many latecomers easily matched the might of the United States and China separately because they worked together, had few, if any, internal threats to deal with and Russia, of all places, had joined them and shouldered a major portion of the war. Laura didn't know all the details, no one did because the information was scattered and heavily filtered through the media, but it had been obvious the Faction was losing.

Which was the precise reason everyone feared the bombs.

Laura looked back down at Justin and saw him gesturing with his head. Laura turned and saw Joan just as her hand gently came down her shoulder in a weird, almost sisterly, way.

"Tell me what you know!" Joan whispered, her eyes brimming over with tears.

Laura did not have the remotest idea of how to begin let alone fully explain. "I'm sorry!" she whimpered and almost began to cry herself. "I'm so sorry!"

"I mean about the Faction!"

"The Faction?" Laura felt confused. "What exactly do you mean when you say the Faction?"

"Why are you here with us and not with _them_?"

Laura pulled her hand off of her shoulder gently and sighed. "I disobeyed a direct order," she told her. "I was then dishonorably discharged and while I was trying to get on with my life on the outside they took over and decided they wanted me back. I was one of their more promising cadets and I guess they feel like I'm an investment they don't want to throw away."

Was that all less than a year ago? Her discharge, the coup, her short-lived career as a hovercar racer with Rock Salt Music as her sponsor. Had it really all been so recent?

"They want me to be their artist," Joan told her. "I'm a valuable commodity just like my ancestors were to those long dead planters." She looked at her with unfathomable misery. "My son had no such value. He was just a boy." Suddenly, and without warning, she wrapped her arms around Laura.

Laura was deeply out of her comfort zone and hesitated for several moments of nearly panic level worry before she could make herself put her arms around her and hold her tightly.

"I have to believe you are not the monster they say you are," Joan whispered. "I can't let this hate eat me alive or I will lose all that I have left." There was a long moment of silence. "Do you think the clean bombs will be here soon?"

"Yes," she said and when she blinked tears slipped out of her eyes. "They will come down from the sky, burst into nanoprobe showers and dig their way into every human heart and stop them dead. The nanoprobes will pry into anything short of a specialized fallout shelter. It will kill the Alliance and Faction alike." She had forgotten about those bombs for a while but they were heading toward the end and there was no keeping it out anymore. "We're doomed," she said with sudden great conviction. "Everyone is going to die."

Joan kissed her on the cheek. "I know you're not like them," she told her and Laura felt suddenly so grateful and moved that she almost burst into new tears. "If you get out of here with that boy you are in love with, live! You live for me and all those who cannot live as we should!"

Ortiz pressed a stun baton against the back of Joan's head and it knocked her out in an instant "Pansy little nigger," she said with a contemptuous sneer and she wrapped her armor around herself, threw Joan Kelly over her shoulder like a sack, and walked away with her.

Joan Kelly was never seen in Reclamation Facility 59 again.

***

Within what Justin was certain was around a week there were no more white tags left.

Then black tags disappeared as well. Lyle Wilder was gone, Joan Kelly was gone, Nathan Michaels had never returned, and suddenly Justin was left alone with Jose Hernandez and Lucas Randal to wander around the quad with limited white guards and red guards alike. Laura was left alone with Munoz who would still not speak to her.

The force field failed again one day and snow came down upon them. Neither Justin nor Laura could say for certain how many days had passed since the last time that happened nor were they certain if they were in winter yet or if it was still in autumn. They didn't even know if it snowed in autumn in Washington DC. Everyone's hair was the exact same length it was when they came so it seemed impossible to find any visual marker from each other. One or two of the prisoners were said to have tried marking their walls early on but they ended up being beaten with pain givers and the marks removed.

So nobody but the guards knew for sure and they weren't telling.

When it was dinner and Jose sat down across from him Justin was in such a stunned daze he felt almost drugged. He was surprised to find Jose very animated, his hair still almost buzz short on his head with huge bags under his eyes, but he was far from broken and his expression looked intense and focused.

"What?" asked Justin blankly.

"Listen to me," said Jose. He looked to his left at Lucas who was half-asleep, drugged up to the point where he was involuntarily drooling, and turned back. "I want to talk about something important, Justin."

"Okay," said Justin.

"I know what's happening outside."

Justin blinked and snapped out of it. "What is happening?"

"The shit has hit the fan is what it is!" Jose whispered. "I don't know what _exactly_ happened, nobody does, but the Faction is moving out _everywhere_! My source doesn't think we're going to be killed and we're going to be out within days. They might even let us go."

"I doubt that," Justin replied. He was a little bit surprised Jose believed that but then he remembered something. The Nazis hadn't been able to kill all their prisoners when they fled, had they? "It's possible—"

"You're a cynic, kid, but—"

"He's right to be a cynic and I'm fucked either way!" They turned to look at Lucas both shocked by the sudden clear voice and the bloodshot eyes that focused at them half dazed, half blazingly enraged. "Fucked!" he repeated and then rested his hands back on the table after a weak attempt at hitting it. "I survived OCD, epilepsy, double standard society, half a million dollar debt because of that fucking Good Citizen Law, monopolies, half my employees getting fired because that fucking Fifty-Fifty Law, corporate takeover attempts, every blue blooded corporate rich boy out for my nouveau riche ass and a cunt ex-wife to lose everything in this place. I had built up a trillion dollar company with my own two hands but between now and the moment I die I'll never see five dollars again."

"You know they won't let us go," Justin told Jose.

Jose frowned. "If they flee and the police are still here—"

"They'll take us with them because they've invested the time to do so but even if they don't the clean bombs will get us." He sighed. "Even if they were so inclined to just walk away from whatever plans they have for us Jackson and Miller will just as soon as shoot us in the back on their way out just out of spite." He felt the collar uncomfortably and thought if they bothered to bury him he would still be wearing it. They'd find him ten thousand years later with that collar still around his skeleton's throat. There was no rash underneath due to the nanoprobes in the sanitation pods having some degree of first aid capability but it still seemed to be getting itchier and more uncomfortable as the days past.

"You know he's right, Jose," said Lucas with drool leaking down his chin. "They'll either do something with us or they'll kill us all."

"Maybe," Jose replied unhappily. He didn't want to believe it but Justin could see that he did. He had just been hoping for the best and putting stock in logic but there was no logic there in Reclamation Facility 59.

The next morning Jose Hernandez was gone too.

***

Justin heard the guard before he saw him and was relieved to see that it was Milton Garrett stumbling into his room the night of the day after Jose Hernandez vanished. He was red-faced, covered in sweat, and so drunk he could not walk without the help of the pretty female guard Laura always talked to, Tricia something, who was carrying a sleek black laser pistol that was Danish made by the look of it. He had not seen Garrett for a while and he had definitely taken a turn for the worse in that time. The bottle of vodka mixed with orange juice in his hand couldn't possibly be helping.

"It's over kid," he told him as he stumbled backward into the cell wall across from the bed, slumped down onto his bottom and began to weep. The sight of it horrified Justin as Garrett was not a weeping man by any means.

Justin sat up, threw his legs over the bed and sat on it like a couch. It was a hard bed and he did not even sleep under the covers anymore and after what happened to Denny he had become even more fervent in sleeping fully dressed even to the point of never taking his shoes or socks off even for a moment to rub his feet.

"Mr. Garrett," he said and the policeman looked up at him, "What is going on?" Justin suddenly had a vision of himself stepping out of the front doors of the reclamation facility hand in hand with Laura. "Do you mean they're leaving—"

"They're heading to France! That male elite soldier—" he laughed "—he's like your age and what happened to Denzel Kelly has really fucked him up. He told me to hide because the Faction's running and about it to fire off everything they got! The police put together enough for a small shelter but fuck! Justin, ninety percent or more of the world is about to die!"

"That's _billions_ ," Justin said with wide eyes. He found the idea prosperous, unlikely and terrifying, yet also very believable. It was too insane to be anything but the truth and they really would do it. He was suddenly sure of it. "We'll survive—"

"Our world is about to be emptied of billions of people and what good are any of us who remain?" he asked. "Do you know how to build anything that has no premade parts? Does anyone know how to build _anything_ at all? No one does. A lot of fucking good data entry work is going to do us now!"

"We'll survive," Justin said again, "And there is no guarantee all those bombs will go off and even if they do the worst case scenario is that we rebuild just like we did after the fall of the Roman Empire."

"That actually makes me feel better," Garrett replied weakly although to look at him one would not think so. In fact, moments after he said that his face became distorted in misery. "Why would they want magicians?"

"Come again?" asked Justin. He felt confusion dominate everything and was genuinely wondering if he actually heard him say that word. "You mean like a wizard—"

"Yes, magicians, Voodoo people, Wiccans, Indian shamans, whatever they could find along with psychics like mediums, palm readers and all those sorts as well. Why would they want _them_?"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Justin asked. He did not think for a second any logical military organization would waste valuable resources at the end of the world to round up such people but then again they weren't really logical, were they?

"I'm talking about my daughter being taken away because of her brief fascination with pagan witchcraft," he told him. "It was stupid, Wiccan bullshit she did when she was in high school. I know that because nine years ago she called it that when I asked why she quit. Now she's gone. Did your girlfriend ever say anything about it?"

"No. Did you ask her—"

"Hell no, Jackson's gone shit crazy. General Green tried to call a tribunal over that shit with the Kelly boy in hopes to get Joan Kelly back in line but they're too busy upstairs with the apocalypse to give a shit." He let out a deep breath of air. "If we even tried to talk to Laura Adler Tricia and I would be buried in the same grave as half the white tags."

"They're all dead?" asked Justin. He had believed they were but he had unconsciously clung to the hope that he was wrong.

"Those that aren't wish they were," Garrett replied cryptically and Justin thought about the man with the boils on his face. Garrett took the first drink of his orange vodka that Justin had seen, downed several deep gulps of it straight, and then lowered it down. "My wife and child are gone, Justin. Murdered like Denzel Kelly and all these other people too." Tears ran down his face. "I thought I could weather this. Get protection for my family by working for them—" Tricia put her hand on his shoulder and he looked up at her. The two shared a sad smile.

"We have to run tonight," Tricia told Justin in a soft voice. "We have people, other police who have banded together, but we can't take you with us because of your collars' tracking technology and we can't tell you where we're going is because this place is bugged."

Justin wasn't surprised: they were walking alarm systems at least and they might even explode if someone tried to remove them just like in a violent banned Japanese film called _Battle Royale_ that he had once seen. "You've got a sanctuary?" A sanctuary was the common name of a commonly made bomb shelter that was specially designed to repel clean bomb nanoprobes. A sanctuary could be pretty intricate and large and among the gamers in the world they got the nickname "vaults" after the _Fallout_ video game franchise's in-game fallout shelters.

"I'll miss you kid," Garrett told him. Obviously, he couldn't tell Justin whether he had a sanctuary or not because the Faction would find out about that conversation but if he and Tricia didn't have one they were dead. When those bombs fell there was nowhere to hide.

Tricia looked at Justin for a long moment before asking, "Do you love her?"

"Yes." Justin did not hesitate and did not lie: he _did_ love her and with all his heart although he had no idea why.

"Then if you are lucky enough to ever get her don't you ever let her go." Tricia smiled sadly. "She loves you too, you know, even if she doesn't know it."

Justin felt uncomfortable because he still did not see himself as a romantic. "It's weird because it hasn't been long," he said. "Six months? A year?" He honestly didn't know.

"You've been here for three months?" said Garrett.

"That's _it_?" Justin felt stupefied.

"Your schedule is designed to create the illusion of one long day," said Garrett. "You can't tell the time because no day is really that different than any other. The randomness of various events and the meals the officers are not enough to give you a sense of week or month and serve to confuse you even more."  
Justin didn't know what to say. All that came out of his mouth was, "three months," in a kind of awe. It felt like a year or more at least. _I've had better birthdays,_ he thought and gathered Laura had too. Laura was a month younger and the two of them had passed both their birthdays unknowingly. _Shit,_ he thought.

When Milton Garrett stood up so did Justin and the man uncharacteristically hugged him tightly for a moment. "Goodbye Justin," he said.

"Goodbye Officer Garrett." Justin watched him stumble drunkenly out of his cell. "Good luck."

He looked at him, saluted him with his bottle, and then took a deep drink. "You too, kid. You're gonna to need it."

Tricia smiled at Justin, walked up to him and kissed him on the cheek. "Take care. Tell Laura why I had to leave."

"I will."

Tricia touched his face. "You two will find each other someday without all this and I know you will be the happiest of all people." She stepped out, turned on the force field and left.

Justin lied back down and stared up at the ceiling with his hands behind his head. "Someday," he said, "Someday and without all this..." He sighed and added, "So cheesy," but he found a curious smile on his face.

Admittedly, that would be wonderful.

***

Laura and Munoz finally spoke a week or so later.

She sat down across from Laura in the cafeteria staring at her contemplatively. Her first name was Midissia, Laura had overheard Joan Kelly say that once before, and afterward remembered it from the television program she had seen. Her Americanized nickname was Missy.

She was always covered in bruises but as time progressed Ortiz got meaner and those bruises got nastier. When the white guards left Ortiz was relegated to doing their job and that seemed to embitter her greatly and she took it all out on Munoz. More than once a broken limb or two had to be repaired in the infirmary.

Munoz put up a very good front but Laura could see that she was starting to look her age. When she had first seen her the woman was well in her thirties but looked like she could pass for early twenties. After the mere three months that Milton claimed they had been in there, she looked easily over forty, possibly fifty.

She didn't say anything at first. "I, uh—" Laura felt a degree of awkwardness that felt as out of place as it was familiar "—I like your work, Missy, I really do." Munoz just stared at her. "I'm not one of them." Munoz's eyes narrowed. "I love your racing track—"

"I bet you love all my work: the Star-Light Tower in Sacramento, the Grand Dome in Sidney, the Red Needle in Chicago and the great Blue Tower you mentioned before."

"I really do," Laura told her. She looked over at Justin who was sitting beside Lucas. He smiled weakly, waved, and she waved back.

"Yeah, that's great. You're good, I'll give you that." Laura looked at her with a feeling of misery that reached down to her core. "You don't fool me, Adler. Not for one second. They would never put one of their own in here unless she was a spy. That pretty boy over there is ex-military, a marine, and he has information the Faction needs."

"I'm in here because of Jackson and you know why." It was very clear to every woman there what he was about although not one of them had ever spoken of it out loud.

"Why are you magically not part of the Faction then?"

"Because I wouldn't kill someone they ordered me to," Laura told her. "I had all the training, all the talent, all the skill every single Faction woman is supposed combined with this—" she gestured to her face "—but I failed in the commitment." She leaned back. "Then they put me here because they felt that all their work on me should not be thrown away or maybe they feared the remains of the United States military might wish to scoop me up or maybe Jackson just really wanted me here. I honestly don't know."

The United States military had come to her once after a race thinking she would make a good soldier. She told them her past, her reasons for being dishonored, and they still very much wanted her to join them but she hadn't. They were almost suicidal from their loss of country and purpose, she could see it in their eyes before they said the first word, and she was not surprised to see on the news shortly afterward that they had died in the last stage of the coup. That following week was the end for them: someone had ratted them out and unspecific clean bombs destroyed them when they were in a dozen different places all over the country and because they were unspecific to DNA and lethal to all human beings the bombs and wind had killed an incredible amount of innocent people in the outlying towns and areas surrounding the targets.

"Is that really it?" Munoz asked without really believing anything she said.

"It's what's most likely on record." There were good reasons to be sure but, lately, she had come to wonder if Jackson really had been the only real reason she was in that facility, the only member in that reclamation facility out of the thousands of girls that had abandoned the Faction. He could have been snooping through the pictures of former female cadets who had been caught, or perhaps even before, and had pulled some strings to get her close. She supposed anything was possible.

"You'll be the last woman here," said Munoz. "Alone with you and that beautiful boy who's not giving you whatever you need. Tell me, when this is all over and it's ascertained he doesn't have the information you need will you have him killed before or after you force him to watch you fuck Rupert Jackson?"

"Fuck you!" Laura hissed. "You don't know anything about me!"

"Oh don't I, bitch?" Munoz unfolded her arms and glared at her. "I'm the American dream right in front of you, did you know that? My father worked four jobs, a Mexican immigrant who worked eighty to a hundred hours a week with a wife who worked just as hard to save enough money for his children, _five_ children, to get into college with that payable debt, of course. Well, I paid that back and made myself a career and when they retired I built them a house in Los Angeles near all their friends and neighbors! They never hurt _anyone_!" Her voice had turned deeply emotional and tears were starting to run down her face but her hard expression had not changed. "Your people murdered them but they didn't understand, because they really were good people, and I was told that they had even opened the door for them! Seven cadets from the Los Angeles branch of the Faction, just little Mexican-American kids, the children of neighborhood kids I grew up and played with brainwashed into murdering my parents by _your_ people! They walked into that house and hacked my parents to death with those vibration blades of yours! I don't even know why they did it!"

Laura swallowed a lump down her throat and thought about her own father. "I'm sorry," she said softly.

"I wish I could believe you, I really do." Munoz's face was filled with sadness and she cried out in a kind of a groan for a moment before stopping herself. "I don't hate you, Laura. You can't help it. They turned you all into monsters. They gave you weapons and brainwashing, killed your humanity, made the United States your enemy and set you loose upon it."

"You're wrong on one account," Laura replied. "The United States made us their enemy on their own and you know it. The only true citizen of a country is one given the protection of its laws and rights and those were only given to the rich. No country with happy citizens can ever be taken over from the inside. A hundred hours of minimum wage couldn't afford a studio apartment in Seattle and you are expected to spend the rest of your life in debt just to get that much. The United States were the ones who built the Faction piece by piece—"

"I never said America didn't ask for what happened," Munoz replied bitterly and then she sighed. "You _may_ have fooled that pretty white boy, Tricia and Joan into 'opening the door' but you don't fool me. If I find out you had something to do with what happened to Denzel Kelly I'll find some way to kill you myself."

"I'm not scared of you," Laura replied. Missy Munoz was an architect, not a fighter.

"That is because fear is a _human_ response."  
Laura saw Ortiz coming and Munoz sensed it. "Missy," Laura said quickly. "You parents were killed because they were good Americans. They were killed because unlike the drug addicted psychotics that prey on your community they reminded your people, Mexican Americans, that there was a part of the United States' system that was still wonderful and worth preserving."

Munoz's face didn't seem surprised or confused but there was gratitude and even some kindness there and she was about to say something more, something Laura was almost certain would be less cruel, or maybe even kind, when the pain giver came down on the back. She jerked and convulsed off of the chair and Ortiz continued to press the pain giver down for ten minutes with her lips pulled up in a hate filled snarl that showed all her white teeth.

As Munoz was being dragged away by one leg by a still angry fully armored Ortiz Laura added in her head, _And so do you, Missy. So do you._

That was what all the red-tagged prisoners were, Laura realized. They were final few Americans who "made it" from nothing, the very last winners of the American Dream. To the Faction eyes, none of them were parasites like the born very rich or the born very poor, one living off of interest, the other welfare, and neither contributing. They were the best of the contributing center. Midissia Munoz was rich, yes, but she earned that money and contributed to society with work that could not be replicated by anyone else. Her work also created jobs and not just by hiring builders and designers or through the furnishing for her buildings but also in who worked in the buildings which often supported countless offices and workspaces as they rose thousands of feet or more into the sky. She was a once in a lifetime individual, like Joan Kelly and Lucas Randal, of great personal importance while Laura and Justin had skills that would be extremely useful but anyone with those skills would be just as equally valuable.

Munoz did not reappear again and somewhere around nightfall Justin and Laura watched Lucas Randal get taken out of the quad by Miller, slumping along in his drugged shamble with his hair hanging down over his eyes into one of the doors. Laura knew she would never see either of them in that prison again.

She did not know how it happened but somehow the last two prisoners left were just herself and the man she had fallen in love with.

***

Laura was not the slightest bit surprised to open her eyes in the dark somewhere in the middle of that very night to see the female elite soldier standing over her bed. Laura did not say a word to elite and the elite did not say a word to her. The elite simply stepped aside and Laura simply stood up and started walking and to the exact place she had expected to be taken back to sooner or later.

The elite soldier had changed somehow, her walk and general demeanor strangely hesitant and less aggressive, even less confident, and when she guided or prodded Laura that time she did it by gently pushing or pressing with her armored hand's fingers and with a notable lack of enthusiasm.

Laura did not know whether to be terrified or relieved.

When the door opened into that gaudy elevator the colors seemed so bright Laura felt like she was going to go blind and the hallway was even worse. She frowned at it, hating being denied color for so long, and ended up blinking painfully as she walked down the hall back toward Jackson's room. To the right, she saw the open door with Joan Kelly's painting and it was still there and still unfinished.

It never would be and somehow that made it both sad and happy at the same time.

She saw a window at the end of a passing hall and, for an instant before the elite pushed her gently forward, she saw darkness all around. _No lights,_ she thought.

The elite slowed her down with a light touch as they reached the door and it opened from the inside to reveal Lieutenant Croon wearing a yellow polo shirt, black slacks and black dress shoes. He looked like he had not changed even slightly in all three months and was carrying a glass of red wine like it was a party.

"Be careful," whispered the elite.

Croon stared at Laura with disturbing new eagerness, his lips curling up into a hungry smile, and he gestured with the two first fingers of his right hand for her to enter. She took two steps in and the elite shut the door and moved to a corner but on the inside.

Laura was surprised to find that she wasn't the only girl there. On the right was a pretty, if a little short, round-faced, round-eyed teenage girl with long dark brown curly hair that hung down in a ponytail. She was wearing a white blouse tucked into a black skirt with a black apron that read "Ramiro's Bar and Grill" across its front in red.

On the left was a woman of about twenty-five with a body that only a professional athlete, a fitness enthusiast or just a girl with a ridiculous amount of genetic luck could ever hope to have. She had larger than average breasts, possibly grown mammary implants, with bright blue eyes and long, silky blond hair that probably came from a bottle. She wore a dress that showed off every asset she had, low cut over her breasts and reaching only halfway down the thighs of her long sculpted legs with a top that left her arms sleeveless and revealing ornate green and red tattoos. Her lips were red too, her skin a perfect, creamy pale and was seemingly somehow almost as brightly colored than the hall.

"I'm in the fucking reclamation facility!" the blue woman cried with incredulity the instant she saw Laura. Her accent denoted money or power or both and Laura thought maybe her dress was of the highly expensive and fashionable variety. The Faction had its own sense of Fashion which was generally awful, simple and unartistic and anyone who cared about fashion had to become a historian since that industry fell apart a few generations back in the United States, England and France. They were banned because they were "offensive" and "too racy" for certain religious groups it was said. "You, explain to me what is happening this instant?"

"You've actually been dragged in this far and still too dumb to realize what is going on?" Laura asked.

"Excuse me?" She looked offended. "Do you know who my father is? How high he is in our institution?"

Laura stared blankly at her for several moments. "Captain Jackson has gone mad," Laura told her. "He murdered a thirteen-year-old boy and regularly rapes women." The girl blinked at her. "If you're father really is the big shot you say he is then I recommend that you walk out of here right now. If what you say is true the woman in black armor will not stop you."

Something in Laura's voice or face got through to the woman. She started with the other following to the door but when they tried to pull it open they found it locked but Laura noticed the elite really didn't stop either of them. "Captain Jackson, wherever you are, my father is one of the biggest UCLD supporters in the former United States! You will open this door this instant!"

When he didn't answer the blue woman turned around to say something more but the other girl blurted out, "I can't be here! I didn't do anything!"

"None of us did," Laura told her. "You need to keep your mouth shut and—"

Jackson stepped into the room wearing only a red-trimmed black bathrobe wrapped around himself with a full glass of wine looking drunk, angry but also scared. Laura saw that last as clearly as the nose on his face and with its distinctive wide-eyed darting nervous glances as well. He walked across a black mostly grated platform that formed over the lower level and stopped in front of them making the waitress very nervous.

He frowned when Laura put her hands behind her back and looked at him in a detached, careful way. "You like it down there? You like it with _him_? With that _boy_?"

Laura looked into his face and said, "I do—"

"You cunt!" he snarled and he pointed at her. "With a single word I could have him buried right next to Denzel Kelly! Would you like that?"

"I wouldn't but I don't believe you." Laura looked at him calmly. "You would have done it the very first instant you were aware of my feelings for him."

Jackson's eyes narrowed. "You know these girls are really pretty," he said softly.

"Captain Jackson, this is unbelievably inappropriate," said the elite slowly.

"When exactly did the elites stop following orders, I wonder?" He looked at her in a sulky childish way for a moment and then back again at Laura.

"I know what you're trying to do," Laura told him. "You killed Denzel Kelly to hurt Juan Reyes and you'll hurt them to hurt me _after_ I submit." If he just wanted to rape her he would have done it and if he just wanted to hurt Juan Reyes he would have done that too. Neither action needed other people to succeed. It seemed he was a psychological sadist and forcing her to submit to him under the threat of harming others was part of it but she also felt certain he would absolutely love to renege on whatever deal they made and then have a complete psychological win over her. Those were part of the rumors that she had heard way back when and by then she believed them all. "It seems, 'captain,' that your reputation _does_ precede you."

Jackson's face twitched and his free hand tightened into a fist, then opened wide, and then tightened again.

"You've gone mad, Rupert," Laura said softly. "These women are party members and most especially blue here." He took a step closer and easily stood above her but Laura did not move and stared up into his eyes almost fearlessly. She did not back up because doing so too much would put her up against the door and she would need some room in case things became physical.

Oddly, she didn't think it would or at least not for her. Jackson really did seem to genuinely need her to emotionally break, falter or give up something first. That seemed to be a genuine requirement that straightforward rape would not give to him.

There was also the small problem of attempting to rape a woman who had graduated at near the top of her class in military combat. He was very drunk and if she could get at him before his armor was up she might actually be able to kill him and, judging by his caution, he knew it. The elite might even let her.

"That boy—your boy—" he was getting very angry "—I will have him killed!"

"Are we done here?"

"I _will_ kill him, Laura!"

"How?" she replied. "He's not a white tag and doesn't he have something in his bionic armor more valuable to the UCLD than you?"

Jackson squeezed his glass so tightly it burst in his hands. Laura felt the wine splash on her face and marveled that sort of thing could actually happen outside of the movies. He looked over her body like it was a museum exhibit he desperately wanted to crawl all over and play with but was unable to.

_You can't get it up with me, can you?_ she thought suddenly. There was something about her power that killed his arousal. It almost made her smile but she didn't dare. If she provoked him too much he might just kill her in a blind rage instead.

Suddenly, he grabbed the shorter girl and threw her to ground with a thud. "You did this!" he screamed as he dragged her by her arm over to a nearby table. He picked her up and slammed her chest first onto the table where she then began to scream.

"I didn't do anything!" she shrieked. "I didn't! I—didn't—" he yanked up her skirt "—I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING!"

Laura started to step forward before she saw the gun appear out of the corner of her eyes. She looked over and saw Croon holding a laser revolver in his right hand, his other arm slipped surreptitiously around the blue woman's center with her head pulled down to his level, her legs bending a bit to accommodate his shorter height. His eyes were the cold dead eyes of a true sociopath.

It was not Laura he was threatening, she realized. He was threatening the elite soldier who was staring at him worriedly. She started to say, "Her father—"

"Who fucking cares?" cried Rupert and he ripped off the girl's underwear and moved up against her. "You did this, Laura Adler! You!" The girl began to shriek in maniacal panic and broke several nails trying to get herself of that table. Jackson began to beat her violently, the sounds of bones in her chest clearly breaking in Laura's ears, but she sensed it was more than just to quiet her. He needed her pain for some reason and he needed to take his pain out on her as well.

But it wasn't working and when his hand moved too close to her head the girl bit him and that made him scream in frustrated rage.

Laura would have killed Jackson then if she could. She would have walked up behind him, grabbed his neck, and snapped it like a twig just like Nathan Michaels had but Croon was watching her too and there something incredibly dangerous about him, something sinister that she couldn't name, and with something else that Jackson very much lacked.

It was an iron willed self-control. If she made one move he wasn't going to shoot her, he could no more kill her than Jackson could Justin. He would shoot the blue woman instead, a high ranking Faction member's daughter, and that the elite could not allow. The elite could not kill Laura either, or at least Laura believed she could not, but she could savagely beat her into unconsciousness.

Croon stared at the elite with those dead eyes of his as if he could read her mind and then casually pressed the gun hard enough against the woman's temple to make her cry out.

"I didn't know I had such power over you, Rupert," said Laura.

Jackson didn't like that and it seemed to have made it even more difficult and after that, it took him what seemed like a long unpleasant time before he quit in failure. He screamed in his frustration, armored his right fist, and slammed it into the girl's face down hard enough to break bone. Then he wrapped his bathrobe around himself and tried to appear as if he had succeeded admirably.

Croon pulled back the gun, let go of the blue woman and holstered the weapon.

"You did this Adler! _You_!" For a moment all that could be heard was the crying of both girls. The blue woman was weeping loudly like a traumatized little girl and the other one was wailing like a wounded animal. "You _could_ have prevented this!"

"That's not true," she replied and her voice was startlingly calm and even a bit petulant. "You see I'm a prisoner in a reclamation facility. I don't control the Faction or their soldiers."

"It is that boy who did this!" Jackson seemed convinced there was no way he could have failed without another unforeseen and undeserved male influence pitted against him. "Barely two words on day one and now you won't shut up!"

"It's time for me to go, Captain," she said.

"You did this!" His voice was demanding and even desperate. It seemed he had also developed a great need to make her feel guilty and ashamed. She did not know for sure and did not want to. All she wanted to do right then and there was get far, far away from him.

"Okay, Jackson," Laura replied like she was talking to a child. "I made you do it. Do you feel better?" A strange numbness was coming over her and she had the feeling that once she was away from Jackson she would break down into tears. He clearly did not sense that and seemed to find her perceived amusement galling beyond comprehension.

Jackson walked up to her and said, "You will break someday and I will be there when you do!"

Laura shrugged. It was useless talking to him. He was an idiot and crazy and utterly unreasonable.

"That body belongs to me! You are still just a woman no matter how good your statistics are or how smug you act!" The blue woman's mouth opened and she started to say something. He punched her across the face with his still armored fist without looking and she went silent as she stumbled over her high heels, fell to the ground with a _thud_ and started to cry. Croon's lips curled into a wide smile that only _slightly_ touched his eyes. "You hear me?"

"I hear you." Laura swallowed. "We finished?"

"Someday I _will_ kill him."

"You can't."

Jackson was so angry he was starting to shake. "Soldier!" The elite turned her head toward him. "You take this cunt—" She moved between them and looked at him in such way that made him step back. "Soldier—" She stopped him with a glance, turned to the Croon who instantly took a step backward but only out of a cold, calculated caution.

She held out her hand and the blue woman took it, let out a sob, and then as she was on her feet she threw her arms around her.

_A fucking Faction patron,_ thought Laura. She did not think anything would happen to Jackson but if it did it would be through that blue-dressed woman. _It won't though because it's over. Everything is over. Jackson's stupid but he's not so stupid as to miss that._

The elite soldier made a fist, extended her blades, and Jackson and Croon both stepped back. She pointed it at Jackson for a moment then turned and cut the lock between the doors in half. She retracted her blades as she let the blue woman stumble past and then picked up the waitress from the ground where she had crumpled into a fetal position and carried her out like a bride.

Jackson stepped forward. "Janice—"

She hissed so angrily it was almost a snarl as she turned and faced them with the girl in her arms. "You have fucked yourself!" she hissed in a guttural, horrified voice, "And I will be damned before I let it roll over onto me!" She breathed that mechanical way through her helmet that sounded almost like Darth Vader. "A fucking patron? Are you a fucking retard?"

Jackson answered her only with a blank stare.

The elite gestured for Laura to walk and she quickly obeyed moving to the accustomed place in front of the elite down the hall with the weeping girl in the elite's arms with the blue woman following closely beside her. Laura looked back and saw half the blue woman's face was red and she was clutching a jaw that was quite probably broken.

"Jesus," said Laura when she saw that most of the teeth on that side of her face had been not only been broken but shattered.

The elite said nothing and led her to a doctor, the one that had been in the sanitation chamber, and his nurse who both looked tired and stunned at the sight of them. The other doctor was there too, the wild blond haired one, who had put on Laura's collar the first day.

They were in some room with a glass-steel wall showing endless black similar to the one Justin described except that it had a sanitation chamber and the first doctor immediately started on the blue woman's face after helping her onto the table while the other doctor and nurse were helping the waitress on another table who looked incredibly young to Laura. _God, she must be fifteen,_ she thought but she seemed younger in personality.

"Where the fuck was his AIC?" hissed the nurse.

"Gone," said the elite. "He was giving him too much good advice and now he's off somewhere in a case waiting to be reassigned to another soldier."

"Stop," said the sanitation doctor in a soft, almost terrified voice.

"It was supposed to be _her_!" the nurse hissed with a gesture toward Laura.

"Stop talking," said the sanitation doctor in that same soft voice. "Just stop. Please."

The elite said something to the sanitation doctor that Laura could not hear and his eyes bulged open. He looked at the woman and the other doctor covered his mouth with his fist in sudden near panic and began to whisper worriedly back to the elite. He looked quite scared to Laura and when the other doctor and nurse moved up close enough for him whisper what he was told they also looked absolutely terrified.

The elite reassured them somehow and then turned and led Laura silently back to her room when, finally alone, she burst into tears but forced herself not to let her panic show, not even then, because Jackson might be watching her through some camera somewhere. She somehow managed to appear calm and unaffected despite the tears.

Somewhere in the very early hours, she drifted out of consciousness just long enough to have nightmares that made her wonder about some of the choices she had made.
8

Laura dreamt about her erstwhile best friend Samantha Seymour.

A week after the so-called Global Overthrow she finished a race that actually went rather well for her. She made third and while some of the best racers were out due to the crazed level rioting and violence she had still beat some up and coming talent with several years on her. She was not in the world's greatest racing division yet and was instead in a junior division of trick racing called Knocker which was never to be confused with NAHCAR which was a serious hover racing subdivision of NASCAR. Knocker was the name given to a version of NAHCAR that used obstacle courses usually consisting of loops, jumps, explosions and crazy natural environmental features such as mountain cliff sides and winding tunnels that, at the very least, ended up with the racer being "knocked" around hence the name. It was more popular than ever among viewers but serious racers and enthusiasts considered them overly dangerous, too flashy and far from true professional racing.

She slept well that night dreaming of the track with its three loops, one long jump, two small, one crazed vertical wall she had gone straight up and back down again in a U shape, and five tunnels intermixed and contained within the racing theme park known as Hover Gardens not far Marian Indiana where she was staying. The races were part of the theme of Hover Gardens but only some of the people who came there came for the races. It was mostly an amusement park with all the expected rollercoasters, kiddy rides, shows, bands, virtual reality games and sports and other things that one would find there usually themed to races but also old, and not banned, Hollywood films.

She was showered and dressed and was stepping out of the hotel when the sun was just starting to rise above the horizon. She wore a tight white jacket with black sleeves with the name of her sponsor, Rock Salt Music in bold blue letters on the back, form-fitting jeans, a white t-shirt and a pair of white sneakers. Her plan was simply to enjoy the day at Hover Gardens which her sponsors had given her free tickets for.

Her AIC Dylan was on her right shoulder with all six of her legs clutching onto her happily and without her plates looked like a bald white fly with jet burners under wings like an old jet that functioned at only ten percent speed.

" _Ooh, what are we going to do first?" she asked happily as she bounced around looking down at the projected map of Hover Gardens from Laura's celldisk. Dylan was connected to it and could see it through her own HUD but, for some reason or another, she preferred to sit on Laura's shoulder and look through hers._

Laura was about to answer Dylan's question when she focused her eyes beyond her HUD and saw who was leaning against her father's beat up old car with her arms crossed. "Sam," she said as she tapped the celldisk on her right temple to turn it onto standby and turn off the map and everything else in front of her.

" _Laura," Sam replied pleasantly enough but only with a hint of a smile that never touched her eyes. That was as closest to a smile Laura had seen her make since her fiancé Tom Bennett had died. "Hey Dylan," she said._

" _Hi Sam," said Dylan happily. "You look all pretty and girly."_

" _I try," said Sam._

Samantha Seymour did look uncharacteristically girly with her dark brown hair hanging down around her gray eyes to her chin in a feminine way. It used to be back length but after Tom died she had cut it to military length and worked herself into an athlete's figure that was still there. She wore a sleeveless dark green dress, the first time Laura saw her wearing any kind of dress in years, with nylon covering her legs and feminine green boots that reached to her knees. She had once been quite capable of highly feminine style and in the bluish early morning world of Indiana, she looked almost as girly and innocent as the girl she had once been.

Laura did not believe for a single instant that she had moved on.

Paula, her dragonfly-like AIC, armored black with red plates with translucent force field creating wings, was resting on her left shoulder. "Fly off with Paula for a bit," said Laura as she approached Sam and Dylan and Paula quickly flew off without a word eager to catch up on old times. Whatever problems Laura and Sam had, their AICs remained solid friends.

Awkwardly, the two hugged each other.

" _You still driving this piece of shit Collin, I see," Sam said as she pulled away._

" _Yes, obviously, and it's technically a Chrysler." Collin Automobile Industries, another sub-company under the control of Live-4-Less, had absorbed all the American car companies as well as their European and Asian counterparts into one ugly, powerful de facto monopoly. Her father's Chrysler was the only car she had and the last thing she had of him and she would have been unable to bring herself to replace it even if she could have afforded too. "How's it going, Sam?" she asked._

" _I saw you race, sister," said Sam. "Third place isn't bad?" Her voice was hard and cold but it seemed to Laura like she was genuinely, and uncharacteristically, trying to be nice._

" _What do you want?" asked Laura. They hadn't been close since they were girls and Sam had turned genuinely sinister since that thing with her boyfriend had occurred but there was still something between them and Laura wasn't quite able to make herself sound mean._

" _What are you doing out so early this morning?" asked Sam. Her voice was strange and nervous and a clear indication that something between them wasn't one-sided._

" _You know why," Laura replied. "I like mornings." Her father had been a morning person and she followed after him in that enough that she would have been running around even without anything to do. "I'm just going to get breakfast and then I'm heading into Hover Gardens and after a kick-ass day I'm going to go meet my sponsors for dinner." She was very much looking forward to that because they had actually hired a cook for the party with real non-fabricated food._

" _What are they like?" asked Sam._

" _They're alight," Laura replied and then shrugged. "They're trying to label me as a modern-day Danica Patrick or something but I don't like it."_

" _Like Cousin Bradley?"_

Laura regretted ever telling Samantha Seymour anything personal. "Yes. Like Cousin Bradley." Her older cousin Bradley J. Adler had been fond of telling her that she was a little "Danica Patrick" because he felt Laura had her beauty and talent intermixed quality that made her one of the more famous twenty-first century female racers that he knew of and it was clear he was fixated on her in the same way movie buffs might be with Marilyn Monroe, Farrah Faucet or Scarlett Johansson. Had they been alive at the same time Bradley probably would almost certainly have had a mad crush on her. "I suppose they could have used Johanna Long, Shawna Robertson or Janet Guthrie although that last one feels wrong—"

" _Look, Laura, nobody cares—"_

" _There you are!" said Laura. "What the hell are you up to now?"_

Sam's face softened and she sighed. "Come with me. You need to see what I'm going to show you." She started to walk away from the old blue hover model Chrysler but when Laura hesitated she turned around and started to walk backward. "Come, come," she said and gestured for her to do so with the index and middle fingers on both hands.

_Laura shrugged and then followed her to Sam's own old vehicle, Tom Bennett's sleek, red hover model Ford convertible, Collin made of course, and then allowed herself to be driven to a nearby restaurant on East 4_ th _St. a few blocks away. It was, unsurprisingly, a Blue Jay restaurant which was Amity Food Incorporated's middle class diner fabricating restaurant that it had all the cooking styles and ingredients of Denny's, Red Robin's, Johnny Rocket's, Red Lobster, Appleby's and several others Laura did not recall the names of._

To her, it looked just like another Big Burger with its white walls and blue interior and with absolutely zero improvements over its food despite the fancier forms of it. Anyone who ever had good fabricated food could tell that they lowered the ingredients to save money and it made everything bland and sometimes downright awful in the process. The one human, who in that middle class diner version was the host, still had the same dead gaze of the incredibly bored and miserable as his Big Burger counterpart. The one unique quality was a robot waiter with six arms that looked like some kind of stick figure but they increased the overall cost by thirty-five percent to force a tip, not to a waiter or the host, but to the company simply for the privilege of being served by an automaton.

She led Laura to a dark blue leather booth with several members of their little coterie from their UCLD Military Academy days and just like that they were all together again.

Carl Bonner, a heavy infantryman, built huge and powerful with military short hair and dark blue eyes set on of the most average faces Laura had ever seen. Roxanne Rodriguez, Roxy to her friends, was a short, petite pretty girl with pretty olive skin and silky dark hair dyed with two bangs of red on either side of her narrow, pretty Hispanic face. A robotic armor driver, and arguably a better friend to Laura than Sam had ever been, although they were never that close. There was also one of Laura's favorite people in the world, Michelle Myers, nicknamed Mickey, who was a robotics engineer. She was a pretty, shapely girl with dark curly hair and electric blue eyes who liked to tell everyone that her father named her after a fictional serial killer because her birth had murdered all his hopes and dreams.

_Also among them were two people she was very surprised to see and were definitely_ not _friends with. Damien Forde, a short, skinny young black man with buzzed hair and very black eyes trained as a sniper and almost certainly one of the truest killers she had ever personally known. The other was a girl named Rhonda Rajawat and she was very much a surprise considering she was an actual elite soldier. Outside her armor she was a very attractive girl of Indian ancestry, her black hair cut short over her head hanging around her eyes in a feminine elegant way, and her slender, tall hard body was covered in a pretty white dress that did not fit with Laura's idea of her at all. Rhonda claimed she was descended from an Indian warrior caste known as the Rajput and she had even taken the time and effort to learn to competently throw a traditional discus-like weapon known as chakram._

" _What the hell are you all doing here?" Laura asked as Mickey threw her arms around her._

" _Nice to see you too," said Roxy._

" _I knew there was a reason I liked you," said Mickey and she kissed her on the cheek before sitting back down next to Rhonda._

Laura sat down beside Carl on the end seat, across from where Sam sat down next to Mickey, and said, "I don't know what's going but that man Forde over there is a fucking psychopath and if you think you can trust the Rajput you are totally mistaken." She turned to Carl. "Hey, Carl."

" _Hey Laura." He looked a little nervous in a way he always been after she had been on a few dates with him and decided they weren't a good match._

" _Whatever," said Sam as she pulled out red sphere blocker and placed it onto the table where its black colored retractable legs automatically came out and held it steadily on the flat surface of the table. "Let me buy you breakfast."_

" _Ooh, that would be nice. Are you going to let me walk home too?"_

" _Don't be mean, Laura," said Sam and she took a deep breath that made Laura think she was concentrating on self-control. "We're—" she leaned over and lowered her voice to a whisper "—we're going traitor."_

" _That is a_ very _bad idea," Laura told them and instantly and deeply distrusted whatever plan they had if for no better primary reason then the fact that Damien Forde and the Rajput were involved._

" _A bad idea from_ you _?" asked Roxy._

" _You act like I went traitor just for disobeying a direct order."_

" _You technically did," Roxy replied. "But that could just mean you saw through this bullshit before everyone else did."_

" _Laura," said Sam. "They shot the sitting president, allowed a former president to be torn apart, another former president to be left starved to death on public display, the last living former female president was raped to death by half a hundred or more men and god only knows what happened to Albert Bernstein. He sure as shit isn't living in Copenhagen._ This _, Laura, is the right thing to do."_

Laura looked right into her eyes and in a level, cold voice, asked, "Do you really think you will be welcome in a Faction-free United States after what you did to Nancy Gomez?"

Sam looked her straight back into her eyes and said, "Yes. I. do," and then she shrugged like it was no big deal.

" _She's not going to do it," said Mickey. "I can see it in her eyes." She shrugged. "I wouldn't either, honestly."_

Roxy leaned forward onto her arms and said, "You've been out of the loop too long, sister." She pressed a button over in the air and everyone tapped their celldisks on their temples to turn them on and show them the holographic screen in the center of the table. Each one pressed the button in the air to connect to Roxy who then channel surfed quickly along the news feed line until she hit something. Most of the channels were blank, a bright red box with yellow words saying, "NO SIGNAL" above the Faction fire sigil, and it took almost five minutes before something was playing.

It was something to do with England and Laura could see English Faction fighting American Faction and the words "United States UCLD troops brought in to support English UCLD against former English UCLD turned revolutionary in London" spread across the blue bar at the bottom of the screen. "You see this?" asked Roxy. "Those are English Faction fighting us! England is turning into an Alliance country! England was the pillar of Faction Britain so if it falls so will the rest and that will make it a perfect jumping point for the Alliance against the American Faction."

" _Possibly," Laura replied. She knew all that because with great regularity news channels popped back on all the networks from unknown sources despite all the best efforts of the Faction to keep it contained and anything she didn't see she could easily find on the internet anyway as it appeared, then got deleted and then reappeared again somewhere else._

Laura reached over, pressed the sound button, and listened to the words of the emotionally moved male British newscaster. "—and England UCLD defectors have joined forces with the remaining British Armed Forces and are now surrounding the Queen of England in an astounding movement of patriotism!"

" _England loves their queen," Laura said with a shrug. The Faction probably found their situation made much worse by the fact that their queen was a girl of thirteen, or maybe fourteen, and that had served to make the English extremely defensive of her. They had already killed their prime minister who had been as corrupt as President Tosh and got about the same lackluster reactionary effect as its American counterpart had but that move against their royal family had backlashed with surprising and vicious unpopularity. They had problems with their royals, notably with tax exemption, but that did not mean they wanted them dead. Going after the royal family was a step much too far for most English people and the riots they were already experiencing had quintupled everywhere and double that when, not learning from their mistakes, the Faction executed the queen's aunt-in-law, the Dowager Duchess of York and world renown anti-Faction spokeswoman, under what most of the world felt were trumped up charges._

_Laura reached over and tapped the speaker button again to turn the sound off again. "Nobody signed up for this shit, Laura," Roxy said. "We signed up for this because we wanted to clear out the corruption, the bullshit, the income inequality and all that shit but we did_ not _want our governments to collapse. Did you see Tosh die?"_

" _I did. I also saw what happened to his conservative predecessor." If anyone thought only the last liberal president would take the full fall they were in for a surprise. They tore apart conservative President Bramble and later dragged another conservative former President Nick Vickson, Old Nickvick he was sometimes called for some reason, out of his fifty million dollar mansion to be hung from a cage in the center of Times Square in New York City by a crowd of very angry Americans where he was pelted with rocks and feces until he died by starvation and exposure. They had seen him as the architect of a pre-Faction war against Israel that had cost the country tens of trillions and murdered the American economy that had_ just _started getting better. He had starved to death up there and when considering his and Bramble's death Tosh was rather lucky. It seemed his lackluster short career had warranted only a bullet to the head._

" _This is crazy and it needs to stop!" Roxy told her._

" _How do you plan to do that?" asked Laura. "Genie's out of the bottle."_

" _There's_ worldwide _rebellion in the air and because its civilians rebelling it_ can _end this and bring back our governments."_

" _Maybe," Laura replied with a shrug. The Faction Global Overthrow had more or less succeeded but clearly the after effects were far from the results the Faction had hoped for. If they knew what was going to happen they would_ never _have done it but that didn't mean they would let everything go back to the way it was because if it did it would be_ without _them. There was no going back from treason and they knew it. "What is it now?" Laura asked. "There are thirty percent military defectors and climbing in the United States. In most of Britain it's forty and climbing very fast, South Africa thirty-five and climbing, in Mexico it's thirty or something and climbing, Brazil it's twenty and climbing very, very fast, China is on the brink of splitting in half, Canada_ lost _to their anti-Faction completely along with Russia and are now both a solid part of the Alliance—" she shrugged "—I see what you mean but you don't honestly think this is going to end well, do you?"_

They never said it out loud but all seven of them knew very well about the clean bombs. They had dropped a few smaller ones on America earlier last year in order to kill the military that had tried earlier to recruit her, and a few others to kill off the Faction rebels which was in even larger numbers then the United States military had been, all small-scale affairs indeed that were themselves devastating, but they had bigger ones. Much bigger ones.

The bombs will come, Roxy, _she thought,_ And if you don't know that you're as crazy as that sick bastard sitting beside you. _"Roxy," she began._

" _The Alliance is about to blow the UCLD satellite," said Roxy._

" _That—" Laura blinked "—that is_ something _." That satellite goes down and every turncoat Faction would get access to everything in their bio-armor had to use against their enemies. That would make things very interesting indeed._

" _Faction France is about to fall, you know," said Mickey._

" _No, it's not," Laura said. For reasons unknown the Faction really wanted France and were willing to spend great resources and take the full power of the Alliance to keep it. It made no sense but there it was._

" _France never stays conquered," Roxy replied, "And anyway Germany's backing them now and taking on seventy or percent of the Faction trying to hold France. France will be a Faction clean state in less than a week and will have reformed their army in less than a month."_

" _If they don't manage to blanket the French countryside with clean bombs first," said Mickey._

" _None of that matters and there is nothing you can do with_ her _here anyway," said Laura with a gesture toward Rhonda._

Rhonda sighed and said, "You know I'm right—"

" _I'm not hiding what I'm saying," Laura retorted and turned to the others. "She is an elite soldier. The only people who become elites are fanatics. If you think this conversation isn't going to get back to UCLD High Command with her around then you are all fucking morons!"_

" _I can see that," Mickey replied. Rhonda turned and looked at her coldly. "She's got a point about your people," Mickey added with a shrug._

" _These animals are not my people," she said in a cold, hard voice. "My people are Sikhs and the Faction did horrible things to them and_ that _is why I'm here."_

" _You were never religious, Rhonda," said Laura. "Your brother, I would believe—" Rhonda's eyes darkened "—but not you."_

" _You probably even helped," said Damien._

" _Fuck you," she replied._

Mainstream political Christians and their fanatically violent counterparts had been the primary Faction target for years but somewhere down the line they grew to hate all factions of Christianity and then beyond into all religions in general, taking a notably special interest in Muslims of all types which had ended before the Global Overthrow in a savage slaughter of innocence in the Middle-East in a somewhat ironic move to finish off what their enemy the United States had started in Israel to a completely different religion and culture. Evidently, somewhere down the road, they had finally gotten around to the Sikh religion.

" _Rhonda's been kicked out of the elites," said Roxy. "She has no access to her armor, only its unarmed basic form like you, but you will both get it back when that satellite goes down."_

" _She's not in jail or executed," Laura replied. "Ever occur to you that this a trick to get close to you and or other rebels."_

" _They don't have time for that," Sam told her._

Laura knew she was never going to convince them of anything and found herself suddenly tired of trying. She stood up and said, "Look, guys, I just want to be left alone."

" _I knew she wouldn't help," said Damien._

" _And I knew we should have left your psychotic ass at the hotel!" Roxy retorted._

" _Why won't you help?" asked Sam._

" _Why?" asked Laura with a mock incredulous expression. "Maybe one reason is that I'm not willing to exchange everything I've worked so hard for to get an almost guaranteed death sentence and maybe another is that you are only six people most of which I only marginally know and only three of which I actually like."_

" _She's talking about me," said Mickey with a smile._

Damien laughed. "That's fair," he said. "I sure as shit wouldn't trust us."

" _That's mainly because you're an unrepentant psychopath," Laura replied and he gave her an indifferent shrug in response._

" _You know me better than that," said Roxy._

" _I do but this is stupid and you have to know that." They knew about the bombs from the same source she did and if they thought they personally could make a difference they were fooling themselves. It was different when the rebel army still existed but they were all dead._

" _Laura," said Sam. "We need you—"_

" _No,_ you _need me!" she retorted. "You don't trust these guys, not completely. Carl is good but he's not too smart, no offense, and Damien here_ is _smart but he's a complete fucking psychopath and cold-blooded opportunist, yes offense, and the Rajput can never be trusted no matter what the hell she says and while Roxy is pretty right on and Mickey is awesome they also cannot be trusted because after Nancy Gomez you have too many trust issues to trust any other girl except me."_

" _Why just you exactly?" asked Roxy._

_Sam's face seemed to shrug and sigh at the same time. "Read_ King Lear _," Laura replied having absolutely no desire to ever bring up that incident again._

Laura suddenly wondered if Tom Bennett would even recognize her if he saw her then. She was as far from that sweet, good-natured happy girl that he had fallen in love with and after what happened to Nancy Gomez Laura barely recognized Sam herself.

" _Does this have something to do with that Tom you never shut up about?" asked Roxy._

" _It's time for me to go," Laura told them abruptly and she turned to leave. Sam's hand shot out, caught her arm and held onto it tightly. When Laura looked at her she saw genuine desperation and loneliness on her face. "Stay!" she said in a voice that was almost a squeak. "Let me buy you breakfast at least! Let's talk! Please, Laura, I need somebody! I'm—I'm sorry!"_

" _You've already apologized and I forgave you a long time ago," Laura told her. If she had ever wanted to punish Sam life had done it for her and a lot better job of it besides._

Sam didn't reply to what Laura told her but looked so incredibly sad.

You want to reclaim your old self and die as the girl Tom loved, _Laura thought,_ but that girl is long gone now and you know it.

The others were staring at Sam in surprise. Laura was surprised too but not nearly as much as they were. Sam had become a Faction warrior woman in the rage that followed her fiancé's death but only Laura really saw her as that girl she had once been. If she wanted to go back to that she would need a friend who was unable to see her as anything else making Laura the only choice. Roxy was no good at that, she was a genuine loner, Mickey would have worked but she had never liked Sam, the Rajput was no one's friend and the one boy capable of such a feat wasn't stupid enough to get involved with her twice.

Laura was a little but only a little tempted as she was very much done with the Faction in all ways. She was free of them, or so she thought then, and she wanted to keep it that way. She also wasn't about to throw away her career away just because Sam asked her to. Her death was going to come no matter where she was, or so she also thought then, and that being said she preferred enjoying the last few moments she had on Earth doing what she loved following her dream as best she was capable.

And anyway the time for internal military action had passed with the loss of both the United States and Faction Rebel armies. If it was going to end amicably for the Americans it wouldn't require Sam and her friends in some direct military action. It would need them and everyone else as spies, dissenters, and as normal citizens who organized other normal citizens into boycotting government businesses, destroying automation in factories or maybe create groups that disrupt the government or government-owned business and other things of that nature. If actual military intervention was required then the Alliance was their only hope.

" _If you want to win this," said Laura, "You'll have to walk the path of the pacifist."_

Sam, Roxy and Mickey knew what she meant because they had all been in the same class she learned it from. To "walk the path of the pacifist" was a statement made by a famous activist to describe how citizens utterly without violence had created the American Renaissance when universal healthcare, high paying minimum wage, and a world of income equality had succeeded into government for a few generations before the people at the top decided they needed more and chipped away at it slowly over the decades until there was once again nothing left.

" _I told you she was smart," said Mickey with a sad smile._

" _We don't have time for that," said Roxy softly._

" _Then we're doomed," said Damien with a shrug. "We're fucked and it's over."_

" _It's not over until we're dead!" hissed Sam._

Laura sighed and said, "I've got to go, Sam."

Sam stood up and then hugged her tightly. "Please, Laura, I need a friend." Her other childhood friends were all gone. Their betrayal and the loss it had caused had turned Sam into a living nightmare that had come to cost them more than they could ever have imagined and most especially to the one named Nancy Gomez. The word "overkill" came to Laura's mind when she thought about it.

Laura hugged her back for a moment then pushed away. "You're with friends now, Sam."

Sam's face turned to a mix of sadness and a grimace. "You're the last link I have to who I was."

" _I'm sorry, Sam," she said and she walked away. Sam tried to follow but Roxy caught her and pulled her back._

" _Let her go," Roxy told her and Sam reluctantly did._

Over the day, Laura found her thoughts drifting to Samantha Seymour and her one true love the late Tom Bennett. Considering how it ended for Samantha Seymour Laura decided that it was a really good thing that she herself never found love. The loss of that love had destroyed Sam deeply and Laura genuinely felt better off without it.

Less than a year later when lying alone in her cell in Reclamation Facility 59 she would surprise herself by doubting that conviction.
9

The following day was the last day.

There were no white guards left and among the red guards only Miller and Ortiz remained. By then everything had become so quiet and so very colorless that the red of their uniforms seemed obscenely bright. The two remaining prisoners stood at the line in the center of the quad and stared hyper focused into the color of each other's eyes.

Blue against green and green on blue each as bright as sapphires and emeralds amid a gray, bland world.

"Something is coming," Laura told him she felt her heart beating in her chest.

"Yeah, we're definitely in the eye of the storm," agreed Justin softly and he looked up at the grayish almost cloudless white sky and then back down at her. "You want to talk about something? Video games? Comics? Anything?" Justin felt like he needed a good distraction.

Laura felt the opposite. She felt like time was short and she wanted to do or say something that mattered. "No," she told him. "That's not what I want to talk about."

"You're right," he said and then he saw Ortiz walking toward her with the female elite. At that same moment, Laura saw Miller with the male elite walking toward him.

An instant passed where neither blinked.

Then they threw themselves forward to each other and hit the wall with a _thud_ that could be felt but not heard over the sound of a high-pitched siren alarm that bleeped powerfully the instant they crossed the line. The guards and elite didn't seem to care. They simply moved into a gentle jog as they continued toward them.

"You want to know why I stuck around, do you?" he cried.

"Yes."

"Do I get to see your breasts first?"

"No jokes, asshat! Talk!" Laura desperately wanted to hear him what he had to say it but she was smiling too. The jokes seemed to make them feel more at ease and somehow Justin knew it.

"Well, I—" Suddenly everything turned off: the alarm, the monitors, the ceiling force field, everything, making the sky a vibrant endless bright blue. The loss of power could be just the building or Washington DC or Maryland or Virginia or both or possibly even all of North America. It could even be the world.

And it was as silent as a grave.

They looked through the glass into each other's eyes and both said, "I love you." They were lost together for what felt like a long moment, never so close and yet still very far apart. They put their index fingers through one of the small holes in the wall and felt each other's skin for the very first time.

"I'm not romantic!" Justin said as he felt her soft feminine skin. "I'm not like this at all! I mean I really, _really_ hate this shit!"

"Me too!" she replied incredulously as she felt his skin back. "I mean, I like girly films, but god, I didn't think—" she had some romance in her soul, liking girly romance movies and wanted "true love," but that was all fantasy like the way boys wanted to be knights or cowboys. They were just for fun and not particularly realistic or so she thought "—I had _no_ idea!"

"Either did I but Laura I will love you forever," Justin told her. He knocked on the glass a few times to emphasize each syllable when he repeated. " _For-ev-er_."

"And I will love back _for-ev-er_ ," Laura replied knocking back on the word the same way.

Justin and Laura smiled, kissed the glass where their lips would have met had there been nothing there, but did not close their eyes. From behind, both guards were close with the elites behind them and both guards casually raising their pain givers.

They broke away with smiles on their faces and then stepped aside as the rods came down. Justin caught Miller's arm, twisted it behind his back and snapped it with surprising ease. Miller screamed in a horrified high-pitched way that reminded Justin of a child filled with confusion. He panicked, forgot to put on his armor, and fell to his knees. Justin kicked him in his stomach as hard as he could, grabbed his hair to pull his head around and then slammed his fist into his face hard enough to knock out both of his front teeth. The impact sent Miller's head jerking hard enough away that his hair came out in Justin's hand.

Laura kicked Ortiz in the leg, snapped it at the knees, and stepped aside as the woman stumbled into the glass-steel wall. She hit it face-first hard enough to shoot a burst of blood out of her nose across the wall, scream-shrieked like a banshee being murdered, and put one hand against it in a vain attempt to steady herself. Laura moved behind her, slammed her fists into her sides enough times to break several ribs before throwing her to the ground.

Justin and Laura cried out in unified victory and then turned to face the elites moving toward them. They were very well trained, much better than Justin and Laura were point of fact, and fully armored so the likelihood of success in combat with them was not particularly high. For some unknown reason, they did not particularly care.

Justin ducked one arm grabbing at him and but then the second one shoved him into the wall with a loud _thud_. The elite then yanked him from the wall and sent him rolling painfully across the cement ground for ten or more feet. When he stopped he was on his back and he found himself almost hypnotized by the blue of the sky above him.

"Beautiful," he said with a smile.

Laura jump-dodged her elite's grab, dove past her when she moved again, rolled out to her feet, turned, and then felt both of the woman's hands make contact onto her chest. She flew stumbling backward, lost her footing, and landed flat on back on the concrete hard enough to send a burst of pain through her back that she was barely aware of. She stared up at the clouds moving across the sky as though they were the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

In the sky two jets, two black stardusts actually, flew across the blue and disappeared up into the clouds.

Justin and Laura started to laugh and were still laughing when their elite reached down, picked them up and carried them in opposite directions over their shoulders like two sacks of flour.

"I will love you forever, baby!" Justin cried weakly.

"And I will love forever back, sexy!" Laura replied back equally weak. " _For-ev-er_!" They both laughed almost hysterically.

They were both in a lot of pain, the ground had been very hard and unyielding and they hit it pretty hard but it was only at that exact moment that they had actually noticed how much pain they were in.

Justin did not hesitate when the idea came to him and he cried out, "Marry me! Not prison wife! Real wife! Marry me, Laura!"

"Yes!" she screamed and they both laughed again.

"Find me again in another place, Mrs. Biryukov!" Justin cried out with absurd joy. He knew if they got out of what was coming the world would be different indeed and then something came to him. "'There are other worlds than these,'" he quoted out in sudden inspiration.

"You stole that from Stephen King, you jackass!" she cried laughing in the distance.

"I regret nothing!" Justin cried back.

"That was so much fun!" Laura called out.

"I know, right!" After that, they were too far away to hear each other.

The elites took them in separate directions out of the quad and the two travelers did not meet again.

At least, not there in that place or time.
10

Justin got nothing from the elite. He would say nothing about Laura or where they were going.

_All love needed was three months,_ Justin thought after he was taken away out of the facility laughing and slightly drowsy from the wild-haired doctor's nanoprobe heal injection. He could not believe that it had been so short a time and the memory of it already felt like it would spread out in his mind to a year, two years, ten years, or maybe even a lifetime. Boredom stretched out time spectacularly and he always knew that but never before had its ugly, banal magic ever been so focused against him.

Still, he did not feel actually there, at least not in the nightmarish way it was intended to be. The white tags were there for a sinister different reason and for them it was certainly many things but he doubted it was boring. Justin, much like the guards, had just been a witness. He had not left scarred emotionally either, nor at least to the point of a devastation like poor Joan Kelly had been, and the only thing he had truly lost in that place was his heart.

Although the sounds of Denzel Kelly screaming would haunt him for eternity he still believed he was one of the lucky ones.

That is only assuming, of course, that he didn't end up being taken somewhere and shot in the next hour or two.

He was made to use the restroom, then handcuffed again, but at the front instead of the back, taken outside and pushed down in the same spot in the same car with the same straps, almost half asleep by then and then taken back to the same place he had come from again with its windows made opaque. Whatever it was going on between Reclamation Facility 59 and the former Jimmy Carter National Airport they did not want him to see.

When the straps unbuckled and the elite soldier pulled Justin out of the vehicle the sight of what was around him made his jaw drop in such surprise that he only barely registered the nuclear evacuation siren blasting everywhere. He blinked into the bright endless blue early morning sunshine and thought he must be dreaming.

The airport was jam-packed with stardusts everywhere above a tiny thin layer of snow, thirty on that landing strip alone. There was at least ten billion dollars' worth of aviation parked all around him and that was just a very safe estimate. He would have easily believed it was closer to a hundred if someone even halfway reliable told him. "Have I taken crazy pills?" he cried out loudly as the elite started pulling him toward a nearby plane.

All around him were people, most likely Faction big shots and supporters, both male and female with children of all ages all in very expensive designer clothes or military uniforms, all charging up their ramps with their things desperately hoping to escape the oncoming apocalypse.

"Everyone's jumping ship," Justin said as he was pulled about twenty feet away to the nearest jet while the prison car hovered on away toward some other jet.

There was cold all around him but he barely noticed it despite being so underdressed for it and anyway it was soon gone as he thrust up a ramp into one of the heated interiors of the nearby wonder plane created by a good man Justin had befriended in the three months behind him.

His numbness broke when the white ramp he walked up completed its rise and completely shut off from the almost deafening sound of the siren.

"Where is my fiancé?" he asked again for the hundredth time but the elite only pulled him in an oddly gentle manner to one of the empty seats. Even before he sat down and felt the straps coming down onto him the vehicle was rising up into the air. Justin leaned over and looked out of the window and saw then what he had not seen coming over.

Nothing: he saw nothing at all.

Washington DC, the capital of the former United States of America, was standing there as still and empty as a ghost town. Parts of it were blown apart and burned down, a post-riot looking condition, but most of it was just plain empty with the clear look of abandonment. There were still buildings, still cars, still everything but no people or at least nothing moving and it was still dark enough for Justin to see clearly that there was no power out there at all. There was no power because there wasn't any need for it.

The bombs _were_ coming.

When the window turned to opaque black Justin swallowed a lump down his throat and looked over at the elite who sat down beside him. "—storage," came a voice and Justin turned to see two grunt level soldiers, red armored, black plated, stepping into sight from the front of the ship with their helmets off. "That's where all the money—" the man who had spoken saw the elite at the same time as his friend, stopped talking instantly, and then both abruptly turned around together in one fluid motion and went back toward the cockpit without another word.

"Where is my fiancé?" he asked the elite. "Pretend you're human and just tell me."

The elite's face turned toward him and, to Justin's surprise, the helmet unraveled to reveal a dark haired blue eyed man around his age with attractive, if a bit effeminate features, staring at him in the strangest way he had ever seen.

"It's over now," Justin told him. "You can tell me."

The elite soldier stared at him blankly for a long time. "She's pretty hot, you're fiancé," he said finally and something weird passed between them. Justin suddenly saw him as a person and found he could not un-see it for some reason.

"Oh yeah," Justin replied with a smile. "That's not why I love her, though. That's just why I'm super attracted to her."

The elite looked at him for a long moment. "She's got a great ass," he told him.

"Hey, that's my future wife we're talking about." They both smiled at each other awkwardly. "Where is she?"

"She's coming in one of these insane jets with my sister," said the elite but then he shrugged and looked tired. "But I don't know where any of us are going." He leaned back onto the seat as he turned away, sighed and said, "It could be anywhere."

That was true enough. It was so smooth a flight that without a window to give Justin some sense of information the Stardust could have as easily parked a block away as it could have flown to China and in no way would he have known the difference.

***

Laura felt the drowsy effects of the doctor's needle and ignored all the people and all the sights and sounds around her as she was taken from the prison car to one of the thousand Stardusts all around them and was plopped down onto a seat. She saw both doctors and the nurse slipping into a different ship with their suitcases as she climbed the ramp.

"He's going to marry me," she said again with a smile as soon as the ramp shut.

The plane was already up in the air and she could see that and the empty Washington DC all around her just before the window darkened. She leaned up against the window, shut her eyes, and smiled distantly.

"Do you love him?"

Laura looked over at the elite and watched her unravel her helmet. She was a rather pretty short haired brunette with striking blue eyes, almost the color of Justin's but darker and the exact shade of her painted nails. She looked tired, worn out, even a little traumatized, and was almost exactly her age. "I do," Laura told her. "I do love him." Then, for no reason she understood, she added, "I never thought I would ever fall in love. I wanted love like every girl, you know, but I kind of thought it was bullshit." She swallowed. "Where is he?"

The elite stared at her for a long moment. "Does he love you back?"

"Yes," she replied without hesitation. In all her life she had almost never been so sure of anything and it made her heart beat faster. "He's going to marry me." She suddenly thought of Samantha Seymour and felt a pain of sadness for her and for what she had lost in a very personal way she never had before.

"You're lucky," the elite told her and leaned back into the seat.

Laura did feel kind of lucky which was an odd feeling considering her present condition and stared at the opaque window thoughtfully until it suddenly stopped being opaque. It had been about thirty minutes into the flight, easily enough time for a Stardust to have made it anywhere in the world but after all the infighting with other groups, it was probably still in the former United States. She tried to recall her knowledge of fauna to get a sense of where they were geographically as she watched slender brown trees like poles from a green ground rise up to meet them but they were gone too quickly and then the window was just dark but not opaque. She had seen dirt for a second or two then metal for a few seconds more and then darkness prevented her from seeing anything else.

The stardust stopped, the straps undid themselves, and Laura was taken down the ramp and out into some kind of pitch black subterranean facility. Whatever opening allowed the plane to enter was closed by then and the only light there came from her stardust's interior windows and entryway above her ramp along with a second identical stardust directly ahead of hers. She could not see much farther into the room but she sensed, or maybe just believed, that it was vast and that there were many more vehicles within all turned off.

Her elite guard had put her helmet back on and with her visor's ability to see in the dark she easily led Laura through the chamber.

"He's going to marry me," she said softly and giggled in a cute, childish way that had not escaped her mouth since her father had died. "Fucking awesome."

Ahead of her, she saw a doorframe of yellow light and the silhouette of two figures disappearing into it straight ahead of her. It shut the instant they were past and the yellow lights turned off.

***

After the yellow door, Justin found himself walking down a tunnel lit with dull red lights that did not quite reach the top of his head ending at another yellow door. He heard the door behind him open almost at the exact moment the door ahead had and he tried to look back before it closed but just missed seeing whoever was there. Turning forward again he saw he was in a badly lit waiting room with dull white lights like those in a theatre that touched the couch, chairs, and him but only for the split second or two it took for him to note that they were there before another yellow door from straight ahead turned on and then opened into complete darkness.

It shut behind him the instant he walked through it and absolute darkness was there for a full second before a wall-sized holographically projected monitor suddenly blazed into blinding bright light blocking all that he could see save for a single face.

It was the familiar unattractive blond man by the name of General Daryl Green, Commander of Reclamation Facility 59, in his full military uniform complete with medals, sashes, and that symbol of fire the Faction was so fond of on his hat and shoulders.

"Justin James Biryukov," said he, "Graduate of the Citadel with honors, United States Marine Private, trained computer and bionic engineer turned scavenger, age eighteen, Caucasian, primarily of Russian ancestry, born non-practicing Jew in the old regime." Justin had never once spoken a word to nor had he been spoken to from Green making whatever it was he was going through the first piece of a conversation the two of them ever had.

He was suddenly surprised to find the man had not mispronounced his name and that he had a vicious slice that had taken a piece off his left ear that had not been there before. He also looked a little off somehow, like a man recently healed but was still sore after some great injury that could not be seen, and that made him wonder about the woman in blue Laura had met briefly and what her connections might have done in retaliation for her treatment.

It was at that moment he noticed shadowy figures in the darkness all around him illuminated only by the monitor. He saw Jackson and Croon clearly enough without their helmets and several other helmetless men and a woman he did not recognize all with rank colors impossible to tell in the light who looked vaguely familiar. She was short, petite, blond, attractive, and standing perfectly still and that last was part of something he found familiar. The answer was on the tip of his tongue but it did not come to him.

The elite moved to a corner and stood there out of the way of the monitor. Above them were several AICs clinging to poles up near the ceiling all wasps and one centipede wrapped around a single pole all looking serious and solemn.

"It is the judgment of Law that you, despite your great flaws, insubordination and intransigence, are valuable to the human race and so you will be cryogenically frozen to be awakened when you can be properly rehabilitated to where your skills will be of help in the preservation of the human race. The when and why will be decided by the UCLD and Law itself."

"Frozen," whispered Justin. It wasn't actually _frozen_ but frozen was the common way people referred to it. It was more like being sealed and according to what Justin had read it was a proven flawless success and many scientists stated that a human being could be frozen with probable infinity after the findings of a famous twenty-year sleep test.

"Do you have any final requests?" asked Green

"Yes," said Justin. "I would like to be married to my girlfriend, Laura Adl—"

The blades on Jackson's right arm came out and he jerked at him like an animal. He might have killed him right then and there had not for the blond woman who stepped between them. He stopped as dead as if she was physically a wall of vibration blades despite the fact she barely made five feet in height. He did not seem to be aware that there were also red laser sights from several wasp AICs with their stinger guns aimed and ready to fire.

"And just what do you think you are doing?" the woman asked in a soft, calm voice.

"Roberts—"

"Law does not tolerate weakness in its ranks, Jackson. You have been denied promotion for your weaknesses before and may now lose the position you have for them as well." The woman straightened her back. "Am I to now understand that your weaknesses have now turned to _treason_ as well?"

"No, god, no!" Jackson was not just scared, he was terrified, and he had even mentioned God in his fear.

Justin knew who she was then. She was Marie Roberts, a woman every American knew about. They called her Marie Báthory, Faction Butcher, Lady Mengele, the Dark Angel and other unpleasant names one might give a famous professional torturer. He could not imagine why she was there and he was genuinely scared of the answer.

"That's very good," said Marie Roberts and she gestured to the wall. "You may return to your position now, Jackson." She slipped back like a shadow and Jackson slunk back like a beaten animal. He looked up at that moment and saw the wasps' laser barrels retract into their stingers.

"Your request is emphatically denied and this trial is over," Green told Justin.

The monitor vanished and a door of blinding white light opened in the wall ahead of him. Justin covered his eyes weakly with his handcuffed arms as the male elite took him through. "This shit again," he said as he was being taken inside.

Justin watched the elite turn his head and look worriedly by his body language as the door as it closed from their side.

_He doesn't know why she's here either,_ Justin thought.

***

Laura wasn't allowed to sit in the waiting room so she just waited stood there until the door opened and then stepped into the room with a wall-sized projected monitor with General Green's face on it when it did.

She saw Jackson, Croon, a bunch of strangers at ranked officer level, a blond woman she only barely saw, and a bunch of wasp AICs with Croon's centipede before Green drew her attention and said, "Laura Adler, UCLD cadet 1st class, enlisted age ten, graduated with honors, dishonorably discharged for insubordination, age eighteen, Caucasian, of mostly German ancestry, born non-practicing Catholic in the old regime." He sighed. "You had a very bright career ahead of you and you just threw it all away."

Considering how things were turning out Laura rather doubted that.

"The UCLD has put a great deal of its resources into you, Miss Adler. Due to our training, you have grown into a very talented markswoman, pilot and fighter and in addition to a vast spectrum of civilian talents in the arts you are trained of surviving in a variety of environments. Despite your insubordination and intransigence, it is our belief you are enough of a competent investment that we don't wish to simply discard you.

"It is the judgment of Law that, despite your errors and failures, you are valuable to the human race and so you will be cryogenically frozen to be awakened when you can be properly rehabilitated to where your skills will help in the preservation of the human race. The when and why will be decided by the UCLD and Law itself.

"Do you have any last requests?"

"I wish to marry my boyfriend, Justin Biryukov." Jackson scoffed in the darkness.

Green sighed. "Biryukov had the same request and I have the same answer. Your request is very, unbelievably, incredibly, emphatically _denied_ and this trial is _over_!" The monitor turned off and a white light shot down upon her in the center of the ceiling with such narrow focus down that she could not see anything beyond.

Before that, however, she saw Jackson frowning at her in that ugly concentrated way and suspected the dreamy, happy look on her face made him very angry. "He loves me," she whispered and then she grinned. "He really does."

She turned, saw the blond woman standing just close enough to be seen, and her smile was knocked off her face like it was punched off.

_What the fuck is_ she _doing here?_ she thought but almost cried out.

***

Justin was inside a large steel warehouse lit by a ceiling of solid white light set between rail lines for large silvery cybernetic hands presently folded in the far left corner to move around. The door he entered was almost against the right wall leading out onto a grated metal walkway that hugged the right wall up to a staircase leading up onto a platform above a laundry machine and just beyond a sanitation pod with its tube turning into the back wall instead of straight up. The floor to the left was built of spike-like electrical machinery that was almost certainly powering the building in a scary and probably useless design thought up by some higher up to be "intimidating" or something. On the far left were metal pods the size of a human body almost piled up to the ceiling.

One such pod was set within a grove on the far left of the platform with its front wide open and large white tubes set into it from below.

A doctor and nurse stood before him on the platform dressed exactly the same as the two that he had seen at the facility. "Undress and step into a sanitation pod," ordered the doctor and the elite took off the handcuffs and, after three long months, the collar as well.

Justin let out a breath of air felt his free neck.

He laughed in relief, undressed, and stepped into the chamber and while doing so he felt the bio-blocker with his fingers for the first time. It was soft, jelly-like, and moved slightly at his touch. It felt very much like he could rip it off but he knew that was an impossibility that would only end with him shrieking in agony.

When the liquid came down he felt the nanoprobes work more thoroughly and longer than they had at the facility. While he stood there covered in red like he was wearing some kind of suit he looked through the glass-steel wall to see the nurse put all of his clothes, shoes included, into the laundry cleaner that looked like a stainless steel old twentieth century dryer. He could see it was on its maximum function and after ten minutes, five minutes before he was out of the chamber, they came out in an almost brand new level of clean, fully repaired and neatly pressed.

The instant he stepped out the nurse took his arm, injected him with something that hurt, and then handed him his clothes. "Get dressed and approach the doctor on the platform _slowly_ ," she told him. She gestured up and Justin followed her eyes upward to the top corner of the room to see a wasp AIC, clearly borrowed from someone in the other room, wearing the black plates over red and watching him closely.

There were a couple of grasshopper AICs that clearly belonged the doctor and nurse as well, both red with white plates, not particularly harmful but not particularly harmless either. They were the medical AIC model and they made him sad because they looked just like Paula, the grasshopper AIC who belonged to Ellie Lorne.

Justin nodded to the doctor, got dressed in what felt like brand new clothes, shoes, and socks and then walked up the steps of the platform. The pod was just high enough above the grate to be able the height of a bed or a short table and as he looked over at its gaping open maw it seemed to be calling to him.

_I'm going to be in there for a long time,_ he thought.

"My name is Dr. Frock," the doctor told him. He was an older man with eyes so dark they might really be black and silky dark hair with gray at the sides that he combed straight backward. He had an air of authority and control that the wild-haired doctor at Reclamation Facility 59 did not have even in the remotest.

But he did look at Justin like he was looking for amusement, though.

"Hello Dr. Frock," Justin replied and he moved a few steps closer. "You haven't seen a gorgeous eighteen-year-old blond woman arriving before me, have you?"

He frowned at him and said, "It's not my job to make you feel better," before gesturing for him to walk up to the pod.

"I could have sworn it was," Justin said as he walked by and heard the sound of the nurse scanning over him. Looking down at the pod Justin felt a sudden and intense influx of excitement and nervousness mixed.

"Everything's fine, doctor," said the nurse. "Nanoprobes are doing their job and he's as healthy as a mule."

Considering that the landmark twenty years long test of cryogenic freezing used an orphan child with terminal leukemia Justin felt that his health might not be quite such an issue.

"In," said the doctor.

Justin ran his hands through his hair, looked down at the white interior of the cryopod, and took a deep breath. It was a slightly aerodynamic rectangular thing made mostly of silver-like metal with a glass-steel window on the front and eight large white tubes connected to the sides from below the grated platform. Despite the human-shaped groove at the bottom looking a lot like a space in a case for an action figure, Justin felt it looked suspiciously more like a coffin.

"Any comforting words, doctor?" he asked nervously.

"Just try not to make a face."

"God, I hate doctors," Justin said and then took a deep breath, let it out, and then slipped down inside like it was a bed. The instant he was flat on his back the door shut and sealed with a loud _clank_ followed by a series of _clacks_. "Oh fuck me!" cried Justin and his heart began beating very fast. When he swallowed he felt a heavy lump roll down his throat and felt claustrophobia coming over him.

As he felt the warm clear liquid begin to pour into his pod the panic began to creep into him. If that liquid didn't do its job or it was actually water, like it was some kind of Faction taunt, trick or test, he was going to drown and die. The liquid was up past the tips of his fingers in an instant and he knew that whatever the nurse had given him had done _nothing_ to calm his nerves.

"Shit, shit, _shit_!" He began to shake as the liquid touched his cheeks and he saw the doctor and nurse above him. "Hey fuck you, Dr. Frock!" he cried out just before the liquid went over his mouth. It tasted like some kind of intense soap and he gagged for several seconds until he somehow got used to it and breathed.

Whatever it was, it wasn't water. Justin suddenly thought of the movie _the Abyss_ and remembered there was something there about the idea of returning to that point where they breathed liquid just like in the womb. _God that was a good movie! Kind of boring but damn good writing! James Cameron always raises the bar!_ Justin tried to laugh at that ancient joke but it didn't work and he knew he was going to start panicking if he didn't get himself under control.

Justin watched the liquid reach the top of the pod.

_I love you, Laura,_ Justin thought and then smiled as he calmed down. _Alright, enough whining romantic shit. I don't know how this is going to turn out now but one day I will find you. Last romantic sentiment, I promise._ He didn't know where she was but he knew then they would freeze her too. They probably already had, or would soon, because that was what the black tags were for. He knew that in his heart and somehow that turned his panic into excitement. He quickly pictured Laura's face and before everything went black his mind screamed, _This is going to be one_ hell _of an adventure, baby!_

***

Laura entered just in time to see a pod being placed neatly with the others by one giant cybernetic hand while another giant cybernetic hand placed a new pod into the grove onto the platform where eight white tubes instantly connected to it. The door then opened wide following a high-pitched _beep_ to indicate a successful connection.

"My name is Dr. Frock," the doctor told her. "Undress and step into the pod." The female elite soldier removed her handcuffs and collar and Laura undressed and then stepped inside. The female elite soldier had walked over to a male elite already in the room and somehow Laura became certain those two were brother and sister. It was something in their casual body language.

_If that's the same male elite from the facility that means Justin was just here,_ she thought and she looked over at the pod that was just placed down into its place on the wall. She couldn't see its front but she felt certain he was in there. The thought made her smile as the sanitation chamber spewed out nanoprobes over her in a great thorough cleaning.

When she came out she took an injection, put back on her cleaned clothes, shoes and all, and then walked up to the doctor who was evidently just another leering old man. When the nurse scanned her and said, "She's fine," the doctor nodded his head and added, "That's goddamn right."

Laura and the nurse both rolled their eyes. "Are we going to do this?" asked Laura. She felt a peculiar need to get on with it feeling almost panic-level fear would she would grow old while Justin remained young.

Frock smiled in a semi-cheerful way and gestured to the pod. "Your chariot awaits, my dear." Laura looked at it, ran her hands through her long, platinum hair to straighten it a bit, and then carefully tied it behind her head in a way to keep it from getting tousled up by the liquid. "Don't you worry about your hair, my dear," said Dr. Frock. "Your tits will more than make up for any mistakes your hair makes."

"How many years of college did you have to take to come up with that zinger?"

"Just get in the fucking pod."

Laura felt the bio-blocker on the back behind her hair gingerly for a moment and then slipped into the pod slowly enough to make sure her hair was firmly set behind her. "What is it about our breasts that make even the most educated men such unbelievable jackasses?" asked the nurse just before the door slammed home.

After a series of clacks, warm liquid touched her fingers and heels and she almost shrieked. She thought of being turned into wax entered into her mind and she started to shake uncontrollably for a moment. "Shit!" she hissed. "I can't believe I'm going to end up frozen the instant after I fall in love with someone." She laughed out loud and grinned up at the doctors through the glass-steel window. "Alright, enough girly romantic sentimentality," she added and said, "He's going to marry me, yes, but he needs a job and I'm going to need one too but with maternity leave, like Sweden or Denmark level maternity leave, because I'm not working when I'm nine months preg—"

She almost screamed out the word "fuck" when the liquid went over and into her mouth and knew she was going to panic, knew she was going to slam her fists against the walls of the pod and try to scream but instead drown, but before that happened she found she could breathe somehow. She felt herself calm down although the panic was still very much a possibility.

_I will find you!_ she told him. _I will find you and I will marry you and we are getting that happy fucking ending every girl dreams about goddamn it!_ She laughed internally, part hysteria, part genuine, and prepared herself.

She smiled contently at that last thought of happiness, pushing panic down for an instant, and that became the face she would hold for a thousand years.
11

The two pods were fully self-sustaining and required nothing, not even rudimentary checkups, for them to sustain their occupants. The two lovers inside did not breathe, eat, drink or even dream. In all ways possible they were perfectly and utterly safe and by the end of that very first day both were packed into black and red crates made of machine grown wood known as orgo-wood and sent off to different parts of the former United States. They would reach their destinations and be in their appointed place just in time for the first bombs to fall.

Whatever plan the UCLD had for anyone they sealed away had for some reason or another never come into fruition. Many, many years passed and though countless people would look and gawk at the figures in the pods, no one could ever open them. Societies were built, broke apart and then rebuilt while seasons shifted over and over again all in the never ending circles of life and time. Many things had their beginnings and many things had their end.

But Justin Biryukov and Laura Adler never changed: two teenagers who slept silently through the ages with their faces looking blissful and beautiful, both caught in moments of love-dreaming that showed clear for anyone to see. To those who did see them they would think of them in a variety of ways that weren't true: preserved dead, statues, spirits in glass or whatever else that came to the mind or senses of reasonability of those who lived and died in the span of centuries that followed their freezing. There was no hint of an explanation on the pods themselves, not even to someone who had access to the technology of that age which no one did, and so long a time had passed no one could remember why anyone ever had been frozen and in most cases people could not even fathom the technology required to do so.

Then one day the pods opened.
A Word from the Author

I hope you enjoyed _Beyond the Glass Door_ , the prelude of _The Two Travelers_ as much as I enjoyed writing it. The prelude and the two episodes following after are something like a "labor of love" although I wouldn't exactly call them that.

_The Two Travelers_ arose out of a simple _Gulliver's Travels_ sort of idea I had as a child when, fresh-faced and newly entered into college, I found myself faced with an aggressive series of teachers who were not restrained in their ideologies; liberalism and conservatism to name a few. Now, while most were amazing and open-minded people, I had found a few to be of various forms of hypocrites, egotists, and liars, and yet, at the same time, they remained well-respected members of their ideological group. The unwritten rule was never to question them and that they were always right.

I wasn't anything more than annoyed at the time but it got me thinking about other kinds of organizations as well, notably law-enforcement, politics and religion, and about how we have a tendency to protect people who are bad, or at least aggressively zealous, simply because they are members of our favored group. It's only to an extent, often a reasonable one, but over time it sometimes seems those people push that extension farther and farther away from what is reasonable. It also seems that such protection would no doubt lure bad or aggressive people into these groups. In time, such people could irrevocably alter or even destroy their organizations a little bit at a time, and in the future it is conceivable they would no longer be in a form required when we earnestly need them.

And so I began to write and this is where my writing led me.

Since _The Two Travelers_ are a series of stories about two people emerging from cryosleep in two different parts of the former United States, their adventures can, at least for the time being, be read separately. It is still recommended that you read them in chronological order as that is how the stories are intended to be read but it is not necessary at this point.

That is exactly why I can introduce the first chapters of Episode 1 and Episode 2 of _The Two Travelers_ as a bonus. Here you will see Justin and Laura's first moments in the new world and their reactions to the unusual people that now inhabit it.

Beyond this page lies your introduction into a world of super science, mutants, and magic left in the ruins of Old America but the old monsters are there too. The old monsters of society a thousand years beyond could no more succeed in destroying than the thousand years before.

Enjoy.

\-- Richard Phillip Hoffman

October 6th, 2018
Episode 1 - Chapter 1

**The Sleeping Adonis**

It was an incredibly hot dry day in the middle of summer with no clouds in the sky to keep the sun from beating down onto the decagonal shaped shrine located on a hill rising above the ancient village of Pomona. It was a simple white structure with a window on each of its ten sides except for the one that pointed directly east where there was instead a white door built beneath a large upside down club shape carved elegantly into the wood. Each of the windows had them too only a little smaller and adorning the tops like little hats resting on perfect, rectangular glass panes that reached down almost to the floor. They had a deep tint of white that looked almost opaque and matched the shade of the outside walls.

It housed only a single room and that room went upward as high as thirty feet to where it merged into a pole that itself went upward another twenty to where it ended with the symbol of a circle with a lowercase "t" shape below it. Once that had been a bright shining pink color, the color of the Kingdom of Angeles, but so much time had passed that it had faded into a white that did not quite match the rest of the building.

Always there was some sort of guardian, some elder who wasn't liable to "gawk" at the peculiar being within even though they almost always did and quite often despite regularly telling younger women and children that they weren't supposed to even think of doing that sort of thing.

On that particular day, around fifteen hundred in the afternoon, the old guardian left with a bundle of things in her bony arms for seemingly no reason at all and walked down the stairs built into the hill back toward the village.

Two girls watched her with no particular surprise. The security on the shrine was often lax since they put old Jan on the job, Jan, who preferred asculine woman over that of the being within, got bored often and if a girl watched her long enough she could usually time her wanderings in and out with reasonable ease.

Kelly grinned widely from her spot on the bush northwest from the shrine as the elder crept down the stairs to visit the woman she had been living with for over fifty years. When she was out of sight down amid the buildings below Kelly casually went skipping down toward the shrine with Denise following unhappily after her.

"We shouldn't be doing this," Denise stately firmly.

"Don't be such a baby," Kelly said as she went hopping along. She was what was known as an "eminine" woman and should have been the soft one in the duo. She was wide hipped, large breasted, and tall but was also slender with virtually no muscle at all which was the primary reason she was part of that group. Her hair was brownish blond, hanging long with large natural curls down her back, long hair another "eminine" trait, and her eyes were a soft, gentle brown that seemed always wide with curiosity. She was wearing brown shorts, cut off above the knees, and a short-sleeved white button up shirt. Her feet were covered in cute little green shoes that her mother, the local cobbler, had made for her.

In all ways, she appeared as all eminine women should but Denise constantly found herself somehow being psychologically pushed around by her. As Kelly was trotting along in front of her Denise watched her go with appreciation and a little worry.

Denise was what was known as an "asculine" woman and nowhere near the center of the two as some girls were. She was tall at six foot four covered in heavy muscle from head to toe both from nature and self-creation with dark, curly hair almost buzz cut short to her head in the militant style popular for generations. Her eyes were pale brown, her skin was tanned from hours of work in the fields, and she wore a black sleeveless shirt that showed off her muscles, and a brown pair of shorts almost the same as Kelly's. Her shoes were the dull, brown heavy boots of a soldier.

Kelly slipped up to the door, looked around, then pushed open the door and imitated being sucked into the building as she slipped inside. "Don't you be a baby!" her voice called out from within.

Denise groaned and followed after. If anyone saw the way she obeyed that girl she would never hear the end of it and although it _might_ have ruined her chances in the Academy once it probably wouldn't anymore. With so few girls to choose from she was practically guaranteed for Francisco Royal Academy but, even so, Denise still felt weak and humiliated for letting a silly eminine woman nag her into doing something so stupid and unlawful.

As the asculine woman she was _supposed_ to be the sensible one.

Inside Denise saw Kelly had slipped through the space between two long white tables, stepped over the painted white chain rail fence with her long limber legs, and then slunk down onto the silver coffin and spread her arms and legs over it. She seemed to melt on it like butter on toast, her body pressed up against it and staring intensely through the glass front.

"Hello Henry," she said to the being frozen below. "I have missed you ever so dearly."

Denise felt the instinct to punch herself right in the nose when she felt a slight jealousy from that corpse. "What do you think you are doing?" Denise asked in a voice that was trying to sound aggressive. She should have pulled the girl off right then, and angrily too, but she knew if she did that Kelly wouldn't come around anymore and that she definitely did not want. "We have to go now!"

"Nobody is here, silly," said Kelly as she leaned on her forearms, her lower legs curled up in the air behind her, and smiled happily. "We're all alone with Henry 7,145,948." She began to rub up against the coffin and groaned provocatively. "You're just a sexy little lady, aren't you, Henry? You would use you powerful body to rip my clothes right off. I bet you could go for actual minutes before getting too tired."  
Denise rolled her eyes. "Only women can go that long," she stated and then added awkwardly, "He's not that attractive anyway." She heard that men like the one "Henry" had been popped up from beyond the border from time to time but no one talked about them and furthermore pretended they didn't exist if someone else brought them up. It was said asculine women who, like her, had more interest in other females had always been the ones sent out to deal with them if they ever truly did appear.

"He's taller than most eminine women and just look at the muscles through his strange clothes. I wish he was frozen naked so I could see his meat. I bet it's _huge_."

"Kelly, he's a corpse, and you shouldn't—" Denise suddenly and instantly straightened up in military style as the door was flung wide open.

"Damn!" hissed Kelly as she was moving into action. She tried to fly off the coffin at maximum speed, stand herself up into a pose of casual interest, and pretend she hadn't just been grinding against a dead man's coffin but she couldn't because to get off "Henry" took away the few seconds she needed for that last part. Things were only made worse when the person who came in to see what they were doing turned out to be one of the worst who could have ever caught them.

"Why you little bitches," the woman said in an annoyed voice. The elder eminine woman stood in the doorway wearing a gray shawl of an elder, a long-sleeved blue shirt and a pair of brown pants reaching down to her small brown shoes. Her wavy brown hair was tied behind her head in the no-nonsense serious ponytail she always had it in, her eyes were big and green and wide like a deer's with hips narrow enough to make childbirth hard. When Kelly finally looked at her she saw the woman's hands were on those narrow hips and those green eyes were narrowing in anger.

Looped into her right arm was a basket for a casual picnic.

Her two grandchildren looked up from behind her, both under six, both wearing the young hopefuls' white shawls, blue shirts and brown pants. They were both blond with blue eyes, both very clearly growing up to be eminine with their doll-like appearances and cute smiling faces.

They all knew each other, of course, because everyone knew everyone in Pomona.

_Great,_ Denise thought unhappily. Out of all the people to come wandering into that room for a picnic it happened to be a would-be-politician. Clearly, old Jan had left on _that_ occasion to give her fellow elder some time alone in the shrine with her family and Lady Big Meat.

Mergi the elder, though usually complaisant, was not particularly lenient when it came to youthful impropriety. Everyone knew Mergi was a sure-in for the position of Mistress of Youth when Sandra finally retired or died and she took such impropriety seriously partly because she was just that way and partly because she feared too much leniency would lead to people believing her incapable of handling the post.  
Denise took a deep breath. "Mergi—"

"I would expect a whole lot better from a Royal Academy Hopeful," stated Mergi. "And you, Kelly, what _exactly_ do you think you were doing on Walter's coffin?"

Kelly lowered her eyes and tried playing cute. "I was just getting a closer look..."

"Oh of _that_ I am sure," Mergi replied and she placed her little blue basket on one of the white tables that surrounded the coffin. "Wait here, children." She walked into the corner and Denise and Kelly followed instinctively and unhappily. "What are you thinking, Denise?" she hissed the moment they were away from the others. "You know goddess damn well Berth's opinion on males and distraction."

"I wasn't doing anything!" Denise retorted unhappily.

Kelly twirled her hair around a bit, trying to be cute in a way that Denise knew would not work on Mergi. "Well, this was her idea—"

"Goddess hell it was!" Denise nearly screamed. She just _knew_ she should have stopped Kelly when she had the chance.

"I know Denise well enough to know that this was _not_ her idea." She put her hands on her hips again and frowned at Kelly. "Kelly, it's over a hundred degrees F and I really just don't have time for this. I just need you to give me your word that you will never go molesting Walter again."

Kelly frowned at her. "I wasn't _molesting_ anyone—"

"I repeat myself! 'I need you to give me your word that you will never go molesting Walter again!'"

There were some weird squeaking sounds from the girls and they were both hopping up and down and pointing. "Grandmother! Grandmother!" they both cried.

"Children, I am busy!"

"Denise, wasn't it your idea all along?" asked Kelly.

"That's remarkably selfish of you, Kelly," said Mergi.

"Oh come on!" Kelly replied in a whine. "She's going to get off because she asculine! Even Berth won't do anything to _her_!"

"That is not true," Mergi stated firmly.

"Of _course_ it's true!" Kelly cried. "I've never seen an asculine woman in trouble for more than a week and that one was caught _stealing_! I'll get a month of field labor for this! She'll get a day, _maybe_!"

Denise wouldn't deny that if asked but even if that was true she wasn't about to take credit for something she hadn't done. While Berth would say and do nothing, or very little, the mark might still end up on her record and that could preclude her any high post in San Fran's military.

The squeaking was getting louder and one of the girls cried out, "Louis! Grandmother, something is happening to Louis!"

"That is also not true, Kelly," stated Mergi, "And children, Grandmother is _busy_! Give me a few moments!"

"But Louis's coffin is _leaking_!" cried one of them.

All three women blinked at each other, shared a look of confusion, and then slowly looked down. A small amount of icy mist appeared around their feet moving through the room like it was alive and when they raised their eyes they seemed to notice only then that it become notably colder. That was an incredibly out of place feeling as the heat in the room was intense as the built-in air conditioner had not worked for a generation.

They slowly turned in unison to look at the coffin.

Eight large holes had appeared, four on each side, and they were somehow open and spewing out that mist. There were grooves too, like gills on a fish that were releasing something like steam out in the air only it was cold.

"What _is_ this?" asked Kelly.

"Kelly," said Mergi in a soft, warning tone, "I _better_ not find out this is somehow your fault." Mergi started forward carefully to the coffin and looked down at it. "It's—" her eyes widened "—the glass behind the door is _gone_!"

The other two moved up beside her. "It can't be," whispered Denise.

"It is," Kelly said and she reached down and wiped mist off the icy glass front with her hand. The man's face was clearly visible through the fogged window with none of the glass that had been between it and the window. "We can _touch_ him..."

Mergi laughed loudly. "You are _not_ going to be included in that right _should_ it exist," she stated sternly.

"You think he'd want an _old_ woman—"

"He's clearly dead, Kelly!"

Was he? Denise could have sworn the man was moving somehow. Was it her imagination or was she was going crazy? She did not know. She leaned forward, feeling stupefied, when suddenly a series of _clack_ sounds sent her jumping up into the air. The others had shrieked in surprise, four eminine sounds rising for their mouths, and Denise did not know what do to exactly. She was only seventeen that year and the situation felt vastly beyond her training and control. She needed to find Berth or—

Suddenly, the man seemed to have blinked, actually _blinked_ , and focused on them. "Impossible," gasped Mergi.

The man raised his hand weakly, his black hair stuck onto his face as if he had just stepped out of a pool, and said, "Where—"

All five females shrieked at the top of their lungs, turned, and fled through the door down the stairs. They were still screaming as they charged through Pomona's food district ignoring all the women who stared at them like they had gone insane.

Mergi regained her composure a few moments a later which snapped Denise back as well and she flipped back to the cul-de-sac that was called Westmont PL below the stairs with Denise following. As she walked she turned to her and said, "You, fetch Gail quickly. I think she might still be trading not far up W Phillips DR like." Like the F in temperature, no one knew what the W, PL or the DR stood for so she, and everyone else, simply spelled it out.

Denise was grateful for an excuse to be gone and she disappeared down the street to do exactly what she was told.

***

Mergi had never been more surprised in all her life and was earnestly worried she was about to have a heart attack. Her grandmother had a heart attack from a sudden surprise and, for that reason, she had always worried she had a weak heart.

A woman approached her wearing the brown shawl of the political worker, which was a politician who was at a point below any official post, and Mergi saw that was a levelheaded nineteen-year-old eminine woman named Anna.

"Wait," Mergi told her and then she straightened her back with as much dignity as she had remaining. "I'm going to explain myself to the council first before anyone else."

"What happened?" asked someone in the crowd that had gathered around them.

"The man in the coffin is alive and awake!" cried one of his granddaughters.

The girl Anna blinked at them. "Incorrect," she told the girls and then turned to Mergi. "What actually happened?"

"I must speak to Gail." Mergi sensed she screwed up in the way she spoke or the way she wore her face because Anna read the truth in one or the other.

"You _believe_ it," Anna murmured and then turned toward the shrine. Everyone was eavesdropping, they always were, and when they burst into simultaneous talk Mergi thought her brain was going to explode.

"Quiet!" Mergi screamed and they did. "You all stay far away from that shrine!" Mergi didn't need or want any new problems until Gail was there to deal with it. If anything went wrong she could shoulder the blame on her. "Do not any of you move a single inch!"

"The asculine women can go," stated Barbar from somewhere, one of maybe five truly asculine women in Pomona that included Denise, and the tone she used indicated a kind of casualness that a natural superior gave to their subordinates. She was over six feet tall, heavily muscled, with short blond hair, hard black eyes and a mean, hard face. She was wearing her usual sleeveless black shirt, black pants and tall, heavy brown boots. She was Berth's favorite and since Berth thought of her as her natural successor she had a lot more power than any other girl at nineteen.

"No, they _cannot_!" hissed Mergi and stepped in front of her and her friends. The latter were more in the middle, probably asculine but more for their personality than natural build, but it wasn't like she could stop them. They knew that and were almost instantly brushing past her. "I said, 'stop!'"

"No," said Barbar.

That was when an asculine elder appeared in front of Barbar, her short gray hair combed straight backward, and her narrow, dark eyes looking at them from the exact same height. "Is there going to have a problem here, Barbar?"

"No, Elder Murr," she said with an unhappy sigh.

"Then back away and wait. We will see how this turns out." She leaned over, whispered something into Barbar's ear that Mergi was almost certain Barbar would not like, and then Barbar walked away seething. "Barbar is hotheaded but she'll come around." Murr did not wear a shawl, asculine women wore jackets that reached to her ankles, and hers was gray in an indication that she was an elder politician that, like Mergi, was without a post but with more power because asculine woman always had more power even over those who actually held posts. Normally when looking at her on such a day Mergi would only wonder how the woman could handle the heat but by then she was beyond caring. "What is this about, Mergi?"

Mergi debated asking her to wait and decided it wasn't worth the trouble. "He's awake," she told her softly. "He is alive."

Murr's eyes narrowed. "I know eminine women are prone to weakness and wild fantasies but you are an elder, Mergi, and if you think that pretending that corpse is crawling out of his coffin—"

"I'm not lying or hallucinating!" hissed Mergi and she felt offended by what the woman accused her and even more so than normal because it was in front of the biggest gossips in town. "He's alive! I saw him raise his arm!"

"He's been sealed in glass—"

"Murr—"

"Enough!" screamed Murr and Mergi jumped back in surprise. "I can assure you, Mergi, that the attractive young man in that coffin is as dead as the beef you ate in your morning sandwich."

***

"Good fucking god I wish was dead!" Justin Biryukov groaned as the sound of the shrieking women affected his brain.

Their screams seemed to have ushered in the worst headache he had ever known and an incredible nausea wasn't helping. He felt his stomach beginning to churn even as he blinked away tiredness and while he tried to wait for some Faction man to push open the door and slap another metal collar on him it soon grew unbearable. He clambered upward awkwardly, pushed up the cryopod's door, which swung open quite easily, and then leaned onto the pod's edge as he looked around.

"What the hell?" he asked in gawking wide-eyed awe. He was in an odd ten-sided white room with weird tinted windows, five long white tables a lot like the kind found in mess halls each pointing artistically at the pod with metal legged chairs with white backs and white cushions. It was incredibly organized, the pod itself surrounded by a chain like in a museum and all very clean with the only out of place item being a single large blue basket resting on the top of one of the tables.

"Hello?" He looked around at the empty room. "Anyone here?" He felt his head spin and stomach churn at the same time and he groaned again.

The last thing he remembered seeing was that nurse looking down at him while the clear liquid came up over his eyes and then _poof_ he was looking at two women and one man in their place, none of them dressed as a Faction doctor, soldier or worker. Their clothes instantly struck him as out of place or odd, although he had no idea why he concluded that, and the only one that struck him as Faction was the man who could have been a soldier albeit without his uniform or bio-armor.

Justin clambered carefully out of the pod, slipped a bit, and the increase in nausea hit him so hard and so suddenly he almost projectile vomited what felt like half of his stomach out onto the side of the pod and the other half onto the floor. He wasn't even up on one foot before clear liquid had left his stomach again and was pouring out from his mouth onto the white tiles below almost in a flood. He grabbed onto a nearby pole for the chain for balance and emptied his entire stomach of whatever was in there for several minutes and then dry heaved for several minutes more.

He almost felt like crying in relief when it was finally done and moved away from the mess and leaned up against a clean part of the pod. "Well that sure was fun," he groaned and looked around. "Where are you people? You screwing with me or what?" He looked at the door and saw that it was actually painted wood in a way that seemed incredibly old fashioned.

At that moment he was suddenly hit with a sudden and absolute certainty that he was somewhere the UCLD had not chosen for him. They almost never built with wood, absolutely never built with art, and looking around he could see both of those were everywhere. The room itself was a shrine-like place which, considering the religious aspect, was not like to be anywhere the religion-hating Faction would choose to wake him up in. For them, it was all factories, efficiency and boring logic: their Law at work.

"It's wrong," Justin said and rubbed his eyes. "Everything is _wrong_."

He stood up and walked over to the basket, the first blue thing he could remember seeing in three months other than the sky, and, after smelling something very tasty inside, he eagerly lifted the top. Within were paper covered sandwiches, clear plastic round juice cups that that looked suspiciously similar to grenades, and real fruit. He could tell by the smell nothing in there was synthesized: it was all _real_.

Like in a dream, he picked up a green apple covered in some sort of thick sugar and bit into it. Whatever he had just vomited out did not seem to affect his taste and the fruit going down his throat was the better than any other food he could remember. It made him think of the concentration camps of the Holocaust, a thought which made him feel him feel incredibly guilty because his misery was nowhere near that level, and about the how the food must have tasted after years of worthless soup and bread.

He was also reminded of the caramel apples he used to eat with his mother. She knew a vendor on Venice Beach and whenever they went they would eat Polish hotdogs and fries, not generated but actually cooked with real meat in the old fashioned way, and then would have a desert of a caramel apple.

He could still see her smiling at him as they walked along the beach with the sun shining down through her brown, wavy hair with one hand over his and the other holding the stick with her nut covered caramel apple.

He devoured the basket's apple, regretted he did not save it for last then took a tentative bite of the beef and bacon sandwich. He found seasonings he did not recognize but it was amazing and he devoured it. "Oh god, yes, the forbidden meat!" he cried after he remembered to swallow. It seemed barely an instant passed before he had virtually inhaled everything in the basket.

Then he ran his hands through his hair, slicking it back, and then felt the bio-blocker at the back of his neck.

"Oh yeah," he said. "That."

***

"Are you sure you haven't been drinking desert water again?" asked Gail.

"That was forty-seven years ago, Gail!" Mergi almost screamed.

Gail was the Mistress of Food and Lodging, her green shawl denoting that position, and she was more than a little skeptical of Mergi's story. She wasn't very attractive, even by eminine standards, being very short, very slender and mostly shapeless up and down with graying blond hair and amber colored eyes. Her arms were crossed in a parent to child gesture Mergi found so infuriating that she just wanted to grab the long gray braid that hung down over the right side of her front past her almost nonexistent breasts and swing her around by it.

"Mergi," Gail said with a sigh, "He just _can't_ be awake. It's simply not possible." There were murmurings of agreement among the women, many still watching the shrine for a glimpse of a wondrous waken man. "Even if he was why exactly would he wake up now just because Kelly was masturbating on him—"

"Hey!" cried Kelly.

"—and _not_ in some other important era before or after now?"

"I don't know _why_ he's awake, Gail! I just know that he is!"

"Oh goddess!" murmured Murr in an oddly eminine sounding voice.

Mergi, Gail and everyone not still looking turned and stared up at the shrine. Every pair of eyes grew wide and every jaw dropped and it seemed that none of them could breathe for what felt like a lifetime. It was the most beautiful thing in the world and it seemed even Gail could not formulate a clear thought for several minutes.

"D-Denise." Denise moved up to Gail without taking her eyes off of what was above them. "Tell the council what is happening and have it assembled in the Council House immediately. Murr and I will bring the man if we can and speak to them as soon as—as possible."

Denise turned and ran off without a second thought.

"I always knew she was that sort of woman," Gail said thoughtfully, pleased with her ability to read people as Mergi well knew, "Murr, Mergi, we need to keep these women away from him until the council has deliberated."

_A healthy man always ends badly,_ thought Mergi. She had heard stories of healthy men popping up from the east, north and south, and they usually end with the man being murdered. Women go crazy over them and it was said that murder was the requirement for society's safety. Just looking up at that creature there she easily could see why.

Her entire body trembled just at the thought of touching him.

"I agree," said Murr softly. "We'll take him to the Council House." And then, as if in an afterthought she added, "If he won't come willingly I'll have to subdue him and then make him come." Her voice was distant, thoughtful and excited all at the same time.

That might not be so easy. Mergi thought he looked pretty strong and that made her wonder how strong a healthy man really was. She found that thought sent another tremor through her body.

Gail looked up at the man standing out in front in front of the shrine staring down at them asked, "What is he doing?"

***

"What am I doing?" Justin asked himself and then blinked up at the light and looked around.

He was standing on the yellow hill the shrine was set upon and could see to the west was a small shed with some bushes here and there all around but straight ahead to the east was a cobblestone path leading from the door to a staircase that led downward to an asphalt road end that looked to Justin like a cul-de-sac only it was filled with stalls of food like in a food market in an old movie taking place back when markets like those still existed. Beyond the market, he could see many more buildings most of which were only a single story tall but there a few as high as twenty stories and a few more that were of various heights in between. They were all square or rectangular and painted a dull beige color that matched the desert world around them.

He saw a crowd of people below all staring up at him with wide, awestruck eyes that made him a little uncomfortable but they were, in their normal, dull dresses and shirts and pants, clearly not Faction military.

Was it a trick, he wondered. Where were they? Where the Stardusts and the men and women in black and red bio-armor? Where was anyone but a bunch of women, he was sure they were mostly women, all very clearly surprised to see him? Looking closer, he saw there were no men there, absolutely none at all, and while that was certainly odd it seemed far less important than all the other problems he had.

One of which was that the heat was starting to make his head spin. He wavered a bit on his feet and every woman below gasped, which he also found really odd, but then he shook it off as tiredness and decided to start moving and get some answers.

"Hello!" Justin called out and they just stared at him. He held up his hand in a wave and every one of them raised their hands up in unison in a slow return wave that looked like they were displaying a gesture of peace. "Well that's just a little creepy," he added and then he started down the stairs carrying the blue basket in his left hand. "Hello," he said as soon as he reached the bottom and they didn't answer. They simply stared as one in complete awe of him and then parted to give him a path with ghost quietness as he walked.

Close up he was feeling much more uncomfortable. They were staring at him with more unabashed intensity then he had ever been stared at in all his life.

_They are all dressed kind of mannish_ , he thought. They wore t-shirts, regular shirts, shorts, pants, a few with strange shawls over their shoulders, but not one dress or skirt or feminine blouse among them. He turned to a random girl and asked, "Do you understand the language I'm speaking?"

"Y-yes," she murmured and she giggled and blushed. She was like twenty-eight or something, pretty enough that he shouldn't have made her react so girlishly like that. In Justin's experience girls didn't act that way very often after their high school years especially when they were pretty.

"Oh, uh, okay." He turned from her and noticed a short woman in a green shawl with a gray braid standing next to a very big older woman in a gray jacket that reached to her ankles looking kind of like a regulator's duster from a Wild West movie. He saw one of the women who had been above him beside her, an older woman in a gray shawl and another one, a girl, in the background among the other women crowding around steadily. The man was nowhere to be seen. "Ladies," said Justin. "Who's in charge around here?"

"Uh, b-but—no one is charging anywhere," said the woman in the green shawl in a genuinely confused voice.

Justin blinked at that, surprised to find she was not joking, and then said, "Who is your boss?" They stared at him uncomprehending. "Your commander? Leader? The figure of highest authority?"

"That would be me for the moment," said the large woman with the gray jacket.

"Oh my goddess!" shrieked a woman. "What is that _thing_ on his neck?" Suddenly everyone was screaming behind him suddenly and Justin groaned and rubbed his painfully growing head.

The woman in the jacket scream-commanded them in a rather manly voice to stop and after a moment they did.

"My headache _really_ didn't need that," Justin said and he lowered his hands. "So you don't know what a 'boss' is or what a bionic augmentation blocker is." Justin knew this to be of some important note and worth thinking about but his mind was foggy and he couldn't formulate a really good thought about the whole thing. The only thought that seemed to click was the one about the basket and so he held it up. "Does this belong to anyway?" he asked. The woman in the gray shawl stepped forward and Justin dropped it into her arms. "I'm sorry but I ate everything in there. I've only been eating flavored paste and water for the last three months and I—" she stared into his face almost hungrily "—couldn't resist. I don't have any money after the Faction drained my account but I'll make it up to you somehow."

She just continued to stare at him wide bulging eyes.

"God, you are all really creeping me out," he said as he looked at all those cow-eyed expressions. They didn't answer that and he stared back them until his foggy mind grasped onto a new thought. "Is the UCLD around here?"

"What is a UCLD?" asked the large woman.

"Yes!" cried Justin. "Thank fucking god!" He laughed. "Doesn't matter, not important, need a pair of wire cutters or sharp scissors." They stared at him. "Oh you know. Cutters, scissors—"

"I got one!" cried a voice. A girl came rushing out of the stands and immediately a bunch of women grabbed her and tried to yank the scissors from her hands. She shrieked in rage as one woman succeeded and then quickly proceeded to pile through the other woman like a football player charging to stop victoriously in front of Justin like he was a goal line with the scissors held up victoriously. The girl who found them first let out a loud, long groan of misery.

Justin stared at the girl who had the scissors and the girl who wasn't able to give it to him crying and then felt really, really uncomfortable. "Thanks," he said awkwardly as he took a hold of them and stepped back. They weren't a bad pair of scissors, they were actually the right style, bolt cutters and close enough to what he needed, and when he opened and closed them a few times and checked their edge he found they were in great condition as well although he would have wanted the cutters to be surgically sharp. "Good enough," he said.

"What are you going to do with those, Arthur?" asked someone.

"Not to—" Justin blinked. _Arthur? That's fucking weird._ "—not to worry." He checked the bio-blocker, warm with his blood and moving slightly at the touch, and then carefully moved the cutters to just the right spot or at least what he _hoped_ was the right spot. "Oh god this going to hurt," he told himself. Somehow sensing something was going to happen the legs inside the bio-blocker were already becoming slightly painful in warning.

Suddenly a very powerful woman with short blond appeared in front of him towering up above him by several inches and outweighing him in pure muscle dressed in a black sleeveless shirt, black pants and big brown boots. Outside of professional body builder, he had never seen a woman even close to that size and she looked masculine enough to easily pass for a man.

"I've noticed you, Meat," she told him and she cracked her neck and flexed and muscles in a way that Justin thought of as very masculine. He realized then how stupid men must look to women when they tried that. How _really_ stupid. "Like what you see?" she asked and he thought then men must have sounded pretty stupid too.

"Uhhhhhh no." Justin readied his scissors and felt the bio-blocker moving more viciously. He could feel the place where its head was, the place of its focus somewhere in the center of that area, and one right cut was going to kill it good. One wrong cut and he was going to be in a whole lot of pain.

The woman in front of him gave him a very dark look. "My name is Barbar, Meat! I think we should go somewhere!" Her eyes narrowed. "We're going to go somewhere _right_ now!"

Justin felt like he would have rather gotten a root canal done from a nineteenth-century sadist than do what she was implying. "No thank you," he told her. "Just let me deal with this thing and we'll, uh, talk. _Just_ talk."

"I really don't recall asking you, Meat," she told him. "Real women don't _ask_ anything of men."

"Barbar!" said the big woman with the long jacket in a warning voice.

"Look, lady—" there was a hush from the women all around him "—I'm busy right now. I'm trying to—"

"How _dare_ you call me that, Meat?"

"Just back off for five fucking seconds," he told her and she shifted a bit, surprised by his angry tone. "What I'm doing is going to really hurt if I screw up and I'm going need all my concentration."

"You can do that _if_ I give you permission, _Meat_!"

"Look, I don't hit women." Her jaw just dropped at that statement. "I'm Russian, not Irish." He grinned but when no one got the stupid joke so he let it fall off. "Look, just back off, okay?"

The woman in the green shawl stepped forward. "Barbar—"

"I don't recall asking you anything either, Skinny!"

"Murr—" the woman in green began uncomfortably.

"He has insulted her," said the woman with the jacket. "Asculine women have a right to defend their honor. Not much I can do there."

Justin blinked in confusion. "Wait, we're going to fight?"

Barbar turned to Justin. "You want to play with me now, Rober! You want to play right now!"

"I really don't want _anything_ to do with you and sex combined. I also already have a girl." Justin took a step back when Barbar took a step forward. "Please leave me alone."

"I want to punish you for your indecency," she told him and he saw something in her eyes he did not like at all. It was clear and unabashed lust. "I'll make it quick. Men like it quick."

Justin handed the scissors to a girl who squeaked happily and faced Barbar. "I really don't want to do this, Barbara."

"You do not get to choose what we do," Barbar told him. "You're a Lady Meat and a Lady Meat's only choice in this world is determined by whatever woman owns him."

"Well, if you want to fight, big girl, bring it on. Hit me with everything you got and if you're goddamn lucky _maybe_ you'll scratch me." Justin thought a second later that if his mind had not been so foggy from his sleep he would have known that saying that was a bad idea before he actually said it. "Goddamn it."

"He's gone too far," Murr stated simply.

Barbar smiled, threw a fist, and Justin dodged it easily. She threw another, and then another, Justin easily dodging them, and then she threw herself at him. He dodged, stuck out his foot, and watched her fly to the hard gray asphalt and the crowd gasped and then stared at him in a different sort of awe. That woman Murr looked absolutely mortified and Barbar looked as though she was about to go berserk.

Justin took the scissors and stepped back with his hands up in the air.

Barbar was up, her eyes filled with rage and shame. He had some fear of her at first because she was so very physically intimidating but she did not have nearly the training he did. Her skill level struck him more as a brawler more than anything else. Maybe a boxer if she was lucky but he doubted it.

"I don't know what just happened," said Justin. He had no wish to embarrass her in front of her friends and knew full well no good would ever come out of it. "I don't want to get hurt. I think that was just really good luck and I don't think it will last."

The one called Murr understood instantly. "Clearly," she agreed, "He's surprised you. You must have been a little careless with such a lesser opponent and he had gotten lucky in your carelessness. Let him go, Barbar." Her voice was calm but full of warning and even a little fear. "Let him go _now_."

Barbar growled at Justin but it seemed her eyes were not exactly angry as much as they were interested. "You are going to _suffer_ for that!"

Justin shrugged at Murr and said simply, "I tried."

Barbar charged at him like an angry boar, her large manly hands in two giant fists, and Justin found it disturbingly easy to grab her, spin her around and send her stumbling across the street. She lost balance, hit a fruit stand, and demolished it as she went flying down into it. The scissors he had carried in his hands had not even cut her.

"Am I going to have to pay for that because I don't have any money?" asked Justin.

Barbar jerked up, her body covered in the remains strawberries and raspberries, and screamed out, "I'll _kill_ you!"

"You'll do no such thing!" yelled Murr and the tone silenced everyone. "Get up and stand behind me!" Barbar frowned at her, looked like she very much wanted to do something else, but then grudgingly moved behind her. Murr spoke to her in her ear and Barbar's face was filled with incredible disgust and unhappiness.

Justin reached back behind his head with his scissors and pressed the blades of the sharp but perhaps not sharp enough edges into the beetle and then promptly missed the spot he was looking for. The instant the scissors cut into its body the legs and tributaries started to twist around in the muscle and he almost screamed from the pain. He grimaced as his own blood starting leaking from the beetle down the back of his clothes and neck and with shaking hands started to snip around for the right spot. He knew he hit the general right spot but not quickly enough to keep the legs from starting to go berserk inside of him.

A woman behind him screamed at the sight of it and he saw Barbar was about to move at him but Murr stopped her with her hands.

Justin supposed he should have known all along that trying to cut out a sophisticated organic device with a pair of scissors was going to end with him doing it the hard way. He reached up with his scissors and clipped off each of the eight legs, accidently cutting into his neck a couple of times as he did so, and after several moments of agony he pulled the beetle free of his neck and felt the bio-blocker's effect die.

Unfortunately, the legs were still being controlled remotely.

"Son of a bitch!" he cried and he threw the bio-blocker down and smashed it beneath his foot. That too did not stop the legs either and he cried, "God-fucking-damn it!"

He formed the armor over his body everywhere below his neck, the sight of which made every woman jump back in absolute stunned shock. The armor had been given to him the instant he graduated at sixteen, a rush graduation before the United States military was disbanded and he was technically assigned to the United States Marine Corps with bionic augmentation armor. He did not wear the marine colors however, that might have gotten him shot on sight by any Faction soldier wandering around during his run, and so his armor was a simple black with white plates.

Justin quickly brought out his artificially intelligent companion Lincoln from three discreet circles shaped like an upside triangle on his upper back. Within moments Lincoln had formed into a black bumblebee-like organic android covered in complex white plates. His top half containing countless utility tools for an engineered compacted into his chest while all six limbs contained hand-like apparatuses easily capable of complex mechanics and engineering. His bottom contained a small orgo-material factory and the stinger tip itself was Lincoln's laser torch. Justin had even added stripes to his body to further the bee-like appearance but he didn't have the transparent force field generating wings and he would look a little more like a jet without his bottom.

"Get these fucking things out of my neck!" cried Justin.

"Oh wow," said Lincoln as he flew up behind him. He extended a skinny wire-like limb from his top right arm and connected to the tip of one of the legs that Justin had cut off. The tiny limb quickly adapted to the very tiny connector at the end of the bio-blocker's legs and took over their programming. They stopped moving instantly, which let Justin finally relax, and then the tributaries began to retract back into the legs.

"Thanks, Buddy," said Justin and then as Lincoln worked Justin held up his left arm and projected up a small holographic screen from the thumb side of his wrist, they existed on both hands in the same place, called a scan window. It was generally a backup device of the HUD to be used if the helmet was broken and could pretty much do anything with the window-like monitor that appeared. It was called a scan window because things that were scanned would appear through the window in bright and vibrant colors while everything else was a shade of gray. Its secondary function was to show a diagram of the armor and its user showing any potential damage such as what was on his neck along with whatever amount of air that was stored within the suit, if in a situation it was applicable too, and a few other little things like the temperature. "Oh hell, it's a hundred and two degrees out!" Justin cried.

He turned off the scan window, turned to the women around him, and saw just dumbstruck shock in all their eyes. It appeared to be the only emotion they had.

As soon as the last leg came out Justin wrapped his neck in the armor and felt the healing nanoprobes slip into the wounds and work pleasantly as they healed them. "Ladies—" many suddenly frowned "—oh for—well, alright, just what the hell is wrong with that word, first off?"

"Well, Meat, ladies is a reference to men," said Barbar.

"I could have sworn it wasn't but, okay, whatever," Justin replied and then clapped his gauntleted hands together. "My name is Justin Biryukov and I would be most appreciative if any of you could explain just where the hell I am." He gestured to his AIC floating above his head looking around. "That's Lincoln."

"My name is Gail," said the woman in the green shawl and when she stepped forward Murr stepped with her. "I am the Mistress of Food and Lodging and this is the village of Pomona."

"Come again?"

"Pomona, in the Kingdom of Angeles, of which is ruled by Queen Veronica. Are you okay?"

Justin shared a shocked look with Lincoln. "Like California, Pomona?"

"What's California?" asked a girl.

"She's joking, right?" asked Lincoln.

"I don't think so," Justin replied.

Murr looked at Lincoln in surprise and confusion for a moment before turning back to Justin. "I do not know what California is but I can assure you that this village is nobody's joke." Justin found himself staring stupidly for a punchline that never came. "We need you to come with us. I'm part of a village council and it is important that we talk to you immediately and get you away from this unruly crowd."

_They seem a bit too surprised to be unruly,_ Justin thought but only said, "I understand. I'll come with you and we can just sort this whole mess out together." He didn't know what to do or where he was so he decided to play along for a bit. If he was lucky they would give him some more food because as it turned out that basket did not contain nearly enough food to satisfy him.

Gail nodded soberly and frowned at his armor. "I appreciate that you'll come willingly," she said. "We must go now, though."

"Okay," he said and looked at the longing glances of the women around him with a great growing sense of unease.
Episode 2 - Chapter 1

**The Living Art Piece**

Heavy Rain poured down either side of the triangular roof of the art museum on W Marion St. south of the 101 Freeway in Aberdeen City. It was no mere diversion into the wilder, edgier moments of humanity and was by no means considered harmless. Few people could handle art as it was, along with dancing, provocative clothing, face paints that were sometimes called makeup, video games and the savage emotions never _ever_ to be tolerated. Their destruction led to the Teachings of the Teal and an end to all violence.

Yet, for some odd, unknown reason art had slipped through the cracks of the Teachings to survive. Many frowned upon it and almost as many regularly complained about it yet somehow it always remained, always solid and stable, and as much a part of the Greenlands society as the Cathedral of the President in the ancient capital city of Seattle.

Matthew Michener stepped through the front doors of the rain and pulled back his dark green hood. At nineteen he was a slender, smooth-skinned boy with short brown hair that hung forward to the tops of his eyebrows and round chocolate brown eyes that looked perpetually curious. He was soft and did very little physical activity but that was not abnormal since he had not passed the aggression test to be allowed to do anything physical as physicality also created violence in them, or so he was taught since birth, and a strong mind that he supposedly didn't have was needed in order to handle it.

He wore the uniform of a Greenlands civilian: dark green robes with a darker green robe-like jacket over it, the latter shining and water resistant with a hood, with dark green gloves of over his hands, bright white sneakers that always had looked weird to him but somehow ended up being formal wear, and, of course, his dark gray arm computer.

It was buckled onto Matthew's left arm over his robes and stretched from his wrist to his elbow. On the top of the forearm was its small computer monitor covered in a simple square cap set just above a small QWERTY keyboard with several round extra buttons all bright colored green save for a red power button. On the bottom of his forearm was a very complicated joystick that he could've flipped out into his left hand automatically if it wasn't broken.

Every citizen from low to high had an arm computer for only one purpose: to control the robot known as a mimic that walked behind Matthew and every other citizen of the Greenlands that acted out the needs for physical aggressiveness in order to spare them the dishonor and discomfort of doing it themselves.

Unfortunately, the owner's wealth contributed a great deal to its condition.

Matthew's mimic and arm computer were hand-me-downs from his grandfather and while he had upgraded both several times they were still considerably less than perfect. The joystick on his arm computer barely worked, had a crack across the screen, and the robot was even worse.

At some point the veneer plating that gave it human form broke off revealing a skeletal shape underneath with only one glowing eye, the other lost in his grandfather's time and so unbelievably expensive he could not dream of replacing it, and there were several fingers missing on the left hand. Its left leg was messed up somehow making it limp and the sound of it clicking and clacking as it walked made Matthew rather nervous sometimes.

Despite all that, he found he had grown a deep love for his robot, and he even gave him the nickname Muddy due to the brownish bronze color that the robot appeared to have after all the paint came off.

The moment the two of them stepped into the museum Matthew knew he was in trouble.

All of the people in the black floored lobby were born members of the elite class with their gold sashes and medals, many of them in green to indicate they were still technically just a citizen like everyone else but a few of them were in the gold of low-level political positions and law enforcement, all drinking coffee with real, and technically illegal, caffeine living off of easy positions granted to them for free by their connections, with their expensive and sophisticated mimics with their heavy plates to look like the muscles of warrior men of ancient times that nobody looked like anymore.

And all of them pegged him for _exactly_ who he was the instant they saw him: a nobody they could push around.

He would have given a great deal of anything to avoid coming in on a day when the elites of Aberdeen were having a party but unfortunately his deadline was too soon for that and he expected the worst but there was a moment when Matthew thought he would be just fine. A moment when no one seemed to recognize him and seemed too busy to care and for a moment he thought he might just make it.

And then Matthew heard the door shut and turned his head to the left.

James Jacques, the curator, had stepped out of the office door directly left of the entrance and was grinning at him. He was an older man, in his mid-fifties or so, with light blue eyes and straight white hair cut in the buzz style of the Robotics Military which was stupid considering that Jock had never actually been in or even a part of any other major military institution. Despite that, his connections afforded him so many gold medals on his robes that his gold sash appeared to show the most distinguished military career one could ever have. There were so many extra models over his robes as well it was almost hard to tell if there was any green on his robes at all.

Despite his age, he reminded Matthew uncannily of a young and immature child.

"Come to see the art again, Michener?" Jacques asked mockingly.

Matthew felt his rage come boiling up within him as he stared up at the taller man. The Terrible was coming up within him, he could feel it rising behind him, and his hands started to shake with its resistance. "Yes," he said through gritted teeth. "That is exactly why I came to this museum." What did he think? That he came here for the coffee? He genuinely couldn't afford it and what else was there. "I've paid the entrance fee, Jacques. May I please pass?"

"I don't think I like your tone."

Matthew's face fell. "Wait—"

"Too slow!" Jacques cried exuberantly and his robot punched Matthew's in the face at full power before Matthew could pull his joystick up. The robot's neck broke, it fell to the ground, and everyone began to laugh. "Nice mimic, Michener!" someone cried out mockingly.

Matthew turned his head toward Jacques and the man stepped back. Matthew's expression softened after a moment and he looked back at his robot's sad expression. "What did you do that for?" he asked.

That wasn't really a question: he did it because he could. Every single year James Jacques got a new robot probably for free, or at a very high discount, from his brother in Greenlands' Robotics. It looked like a musclebound man, taller than either of them with two large, round glowing green lenses for eyes and a horizontal vent for a mouth set on a skull-like head that sat on a large body covered in green plates. There was custom work here and much it from parts made by Jim Manner, the great robotics man of the age, giving it that trademark graceful quality that made it more efficient than any of the top of the line non-customized green colored civilian robots of the Greenlands.

"It was what you _deserved—_ " Matthew looked back and the man gave him a wide smile that was almost, if not entirely, believable. "You're going terrible. I can see it in your eyes."

Matthew stepped up to him, eyes darkening, and thought, _When I go terrible, I will go terrible on you._

"I hope you learned your lesson well, Michener!" He pointed at his medals with one angry finger. "See! _See_ who I am!" He was almost chanting it for some reason. "Don't you _ever_ offend your superiors again!" The others around him all agreed, all nodding and smiling and some even laughing. Their voices echoed around his brain like it was an empty pot with a living thing trying to scratch its way out.

Matthew forced himself calm, felt the rage get pushed down, and lifted his robot up with its head dangling around on strings of wire. When he saw he was being ignored he let out a sigh of relief and was about to take his robot out of there when one of Jacques friends' robots threw itself forward, grabbed his robot's arm and yanked violently. The strength in that pristine modern robot nearly tore the limb off leaving it hanging by an even smaller thread than the head.

"What did you do that for, Gurney?" he cried.

Of course, that was the same question, and nothing had changed. The quacking elites all nodded and agreed with whatever he said to them, it could have been anything stupid or smart, and then they pointed their fingers and laughed and laughed hard. Jock didn't laugh but nodded soberly as if to say, "It was a dirty job but it was well in need of doing," and Matthew heard statements of "good reason" and "understood" and the like while Reggy Gurne went back to air handshake in the Greenlands open palm method of never touching to all his peers looking like of a man who just completed "a job well done."

Matthew grabbed his robot and carried him out through the lobby under his left arm before anything else happened, the laughter of the others filling up behind him. Someone said, "Oh ta-ta, little Matthew," in a high pitched feminine voice as he disappeared around the hallway.

He stopped himself as soon as he was out of sight, bit the top of his right hand hard, and growled so hard into it was almost a scream.

What savings he had were going to have to appear gone and he would technically have nothing left for any future incident. If he stayed clear of new damage for another couple months he might be able to pretend to bounce back giving him room to take some more damage but he couldn't help but think about all the things the money he was pretending to spend and hiding for safekeeping could have done for his robot, not the least of which was replacing that one missing eye.

"I'm sorry, Muddy," Matthew told his robot as he placed it back on his feet and then looked over it over. It had belonged to his family longer than he had and was top of the line custom-made during its day. Looking at its sad, accepting face took away his rage and gave Matthew feel a strong sense of mournfulness that only increased when he watched it limp along beside him.

He was friends with Jim Manner and his sister Martha who loved his work and hired him to draw pictures for her _Aberdeen Chronicle_ but they were not close. They liked him and he liked them back but he had nobody like family, no old friends from childhood, no siblings, no cousins, no girl or fiancé, not anymore anyway, no aunts or uncles and even his parents had passed away in various outsider raids several years back.

All he really had in the world was his job, his apartment and his robot.

Matthew put that all out of his mind and tried to focus on business. He had been through the Aberdeen Museum of Art countless times and he knew every exhibit so well that he could locate any of them by memory although in truth it was not because he was not particularly impressed with anything he had seen nor had he ever been even the very first time he had been there as a young child. He was actually more impressed by the neatness of the black floors and ceilings and forest green walls than any particular exhibit placed upon them and for him that made the museum a pathetic place indeed.

There were some digital photographs, mostly of fruit, clothing and household items in absolute perfect light so as to not have any aggressive shadows, a few exhibits that were just ordinary harmless items somehow deemed artistic and were mostly brushes, toilets and lamps, but mostly there were paintings, a majority of which were just very boring scenery pieces such as bare walls, empty rooms, treeless and flat fields and, in one risqué case, an ugly brown lamp that the artist seemed to have taken great pains to lower its natural appearance downward into incredible dullness. There was a twenty-five years or older adult section which consisted of silhouettes of dangerous tools like scissors or kitchen knives and more vague silhouettes of actual people who were apparently in the act of savage emotional states which could be taken for anger or misery but didn't particularly look like any such things to Matthew. He had been allowed in that area despite his younger age because he worked for a magazine and was still reeling from his incredible disappointment.

The truly racy exhibits were not technically part of the museum. A small additional area had been built on the side of the building for the Greenland Elite and rumors among the art community persisted that in that section were pictures of _real_ weapons, guns and swords and such, and possibly even functional displays of forbidden and evil "games" which were the terrifying predecessors of the government-controlled and censored "yames." That seemed like the biggest issue of all but Matthew didn't understand why. Almost everyone, including Matthew, played an illegal yame, which might be an actual game, left by the Canadians from time to time.

On the very top used floor of the museum Matthew walked across one of the two parallel bridges spread over five floors of empty space above the lobby and passed the one of a kind exhibit known as _Resting Beauty_ set inside of the wall the bridge was built against. It was by far Matthew's favorite and he attributed its successes solely to the fact that nobody in the Greenlands could have possibly invented it: a blond girl in gray, frozen in glass with bright green eyes that were both hypnotizing and wondrous. When Matthew looked into those eyes he thought of love, something he often dreamt about, and he once spent hours in front her drawing a picture he would use as a definitive work of personal art in what felt like another life.

He sat down inside of one of his least favorite areas with its really stupid looking fake silver toilet, several different kinds of brooms and a vacuum all probably found in some ancient abandoned village somewhere and brought in as an art exhibit by some lazy elitist would-be artist and accepted as so because he was an elite. The only thing he cared about and considered close to art was the painting known as _Plain Meadow_ which was as well named as it was awful. It was just a painting of a meadow that lacked _everything_ depicting a dirt field under a gray cloudless sky.

He took out his sack lunch which was just a small salad with weak dressing, the strong being far above his price range, a plain green apple and bottled water. He began eating them mindlessly as he sketched out an early preliminary work with improvements such trees, flowers, rivers hills and a pond with frogs, his specialty, and was only distracted from his work when he felt an odd cold at his ankles for some reason and looked down to see a bit of icy mist had suddenly appeared around his feet.

Matthew swallowed a bite of his apple, tilted his head as he stared and felt a stupefying confusion come over him.

***

For one instant Laura saw the doctor leering down at her with that nurse of his and then a golden colored bar. She stared at it blankly for a moment before realizing she was leaning up against the clear window of the pod somehow and suddenly she had a sudden vivid vision of breaking through the glass window, reaching and missing the bar and then spinning helplessly upward into the sky and space to die before she heard the _clack_ sounds of the door opening.

She stumbled out of the pod with a cry, her sense of gravity so haywire that she had absolutely no sense of anything, and then hit the golden bar hard enough just below her ribs to make her grunt. She leaned over in pain, had a moment to see people and tables five floors below, and then felt liquid project itself out of her mouth almost as if it was a living creature trying to escape. She tried to block it on instinct but it was so intense it spilled all over her right hand like a faucet and she distinctively heard a lot of people from five floors below cry out in surprise and revulsion.

A burst of powerful nausea filled her the instant she was done and she stumbled backward onto a walkway, almost fell from a stunning level of dizziness that followed, and then rushed toward the first open doorway she saw. A silver colored toilet within had caught her attention and she quickly sprint-stumbled for it.

***

Matthew froze with his hand holding his half-eaten apple inches from his mouth and an expression of deep confusion on his face.

A beautiful blond girl in gray stumbled into the room, passing behind the pillar with the boring ugly painting on it and fell to her knees before the silver toilet. He sensed what was going to happen and cried out, "Oh, that's not—" the girl vomited into the toilet and he laughed nervously the way he always did around pretty girls "—I'm sorry." Then what his eyes saw reached his brain.

His apple fell to the ground with a soft thud and he stood up, his mimic following after him awkwardly, and he quickly went to the doorway and looked out at the exhibit. He could only stare for several minutes, the sound of vomiting behind him the only sound that could be heard, and his heart both sank and soared in perfect unison.

The door to _Resting Beauty_ was wide open and the girl within was gone.

Matthew and his mimic turned their heads over their shoulder and looked over at the girl who seemed to have sensed him looking. She looked back and gave him a weak but kind smile. "What's up, Gandalf?" she asked.

"What?"

She half-grinned half-laughed and said, "It's a bad joke. You know, the book or movie—" she shrugged "—they're banned."

Matthew could only gape at the girl from that weird silver coffin was alive and _right_ in front of him. How could that be possible? "I—" she looked at him pleasantly "—I was genuinely worried that—" he swallowed "—that today would be really boring."

***

Laura thought that might actually be funny but she found her humor, along with much of her mind, somewhat dulled.

"This isn't a real toilet," were the only words that she could think to say. She noticed her clear vomit soon leaking out of its bottom, laughed, and then scooted away up against a wall and shut her eyes for a moment. Her sense of gravity was still off and she felt like she was caught in some kind of gravitational field where any direction could be up. When that gradually passed she reached over, tried to flush the toilet, and sighed. "No, definitely not," she said.

The boy came to her in a very timid, cute kind of way. "Are you alright?" he asked.

Laura looked up at him and felt nothing but confusion. Just exactly _what_ was he wearing? It looked like a forest green wizard's robe and that gave her the sudden insane idea that she had somehow woken up in Narnia or something although the computer over his arm threw that illusion somewhat. "I—" she shook her head "—no. No, I am not okay." She could taste the gel-like water in her mouth and felt an incredible depression come over her. She let out a breath of air and asked, "Where's your commanding officer?"

"My what?"

"The UCLD officer in charge of me. This is a Faction command post of some sort, yes?"

"What is a Faction command post?"

"You're not serious, are you?" she asked but even as she spoke she realized he was. His outfit was absurd and so far from a standard Faction uniform that he couldn't possibly be one of them.

"I am," he replied softly and he looked so kind and confused that it made Laura smile which made him smile back in that nervous way boys sometimes did. He was attractive, prettier than handsome but a bit too skinny for her taste. Thinking about that brought forth an image of a very handsome different boy with black hair and that killed her smile. "Are you alright?" he asked again.

"I don't know," she replied and she held out her clean hand. He looked at it in a deeply confused way for several seconds and only when she started to get up without his help did he understand enough to take her hand and help her up to her feet. The touch of her hand made him deeply nervous and he blushed at her.

Afterward she held her clean hand out for him to shake. "Laura Adler." He looked further confused and then she was confused when he pushed out his palm with his fingers vertical and made small waves with his hand. "That's not how you're supposed to shake hands."

"Uh..."

"Don't touch people a lot, do you?" she asked.

The boy took her left in his hand and felt the skin on hers for a moment as if in awe. "Touching is—inappropriate and, uh, illegal on some level." He let go and looked nervously at her.

"That is one of the single stupidest things I've ever heard," Laura told him and then felt some kind of alarm go off in her mind that didn't quite reach anything. "Who doesn't want to be touched or at least in a handshake?" She looked around at the room and instantly understood where she was. "Why exactly am I in a museum?" Other questions began spreading out through her mind but they didn't quite connect to anything either. "Where are the Faction soldiers? Where is the UCLD? Where is Justin?" She turned back to the boy with wide, confused eyes. "Where the hell is everybody?"

"Who's Justin?" he asked back.

"My fiancé." She smiled weakly. "Where is the UCLD?" He just stared at her blankly. "You do know what the United Countries Law Division, also known as the Faction is, don't you?"

"I don't but it sounds vaguely familiar."

Laura laughed suddenly, threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly. He was so surprised by that, that he seemed incapable of moving for several dumbfounded minutes, and then he realized he was supposed to hug her back. "Where am I?" she asked in the middle of her hug.

"You're in the Greenlands," he told her. "This is the city of Aberdeen."

"Greenland?" It was kind of Faction. The Canadian Faction had taken them over early on, bragged about it, and then it was Alliance again when Canadian citizens broke its Faction and then freed them. She supposed the Faction could have taken it back but with Russia bearing down on them it would have been a low priority. "Unexpected?"  
She stepped back. "Why the hell would they take me out of America?" she asked out loud.

"What is America?"

"Now I know you're screwing with me," she replied but she could see that he wasn't. Her mind, foggy as it was, could not grasp what that meant or how severe it was. She groaned for a moment in irritation and then saw a really damaged robot. "What the hell to that poor robot?"

"Oh, uh—" he swallowed and looked nervously at her for a moment "—James Jacques nearly knocked his head off and Reggie Gurney nearly pulled his arm off."

"They sound like a couple of serious assholes," she replied. "Why exactly did they even do that?"

Matthew face clenched tightly and she could see that subject angered him angrily. "When we get angry at each other we have our robots fight."

"And just how the hell will that solve anything?" asked Laura. "The person with the best robot would always win and the game would always be rigged in their favor." There was something else there but the why was still unreachable. It had something to do with bullying and something to do with her concept of righteousness. Maybe.

"It—doesn't," he replied and she could see that it made him very angry although he hid it well.

"I feel so damn lightheaded. I can't exactly think or—not talk out loud." She felt that her thoughts were out of control and that disturbed her. Her mind spun around like a tornado and she seemed to be just able to sense all the important things needing to be done or said but was just short of anything more. She felt dizzy, turned around and played with her hair a bit, and heard Matthew jump back and cry out.

"What in the Name of the President is that?" he cried.

"Oh that," said Laura as she felt the bio-blocker on the back of her neck carefully with the tips of her fingers. "I forgot about that."

"How did you forget about _that_?" he cried.

"It's been on for a while," she replied and turned to him. "Do you have a bathroom?"

"You need a bath?"'

An actual bath with real water sounded wondrous to Laura after all the months she spent in that facility. "Yes but for now I just need a lavatory. Preferably one with real toilets."

Matthew smiled at her and Laura realized he was a lot stronger than she originally took him for.

"Alright," he told her. "Follow me." He quickly grabbed his things, which consisted of a sketch pad and utensils that he dumped them into a satchel, and sack lunch with a mostly eaten apple that he tossed out in a black wastebasket as neared the doorway he led her out of. As he walked down the hallway's bridge he took a long, steady stare at the cryopod looking equally mystified and worried.

Behind Matthew that funny damaged robot mimicked him awkwardly, copying every movement he made to the best of his ability. One look at that and she knew Matthew was in trouble if _anyone_ with messed with him.

She lifted her eyes up to see several floors of space ending at a ceiling of crisscrossing bars.

"There's nothing up there," Matthew told her. "It was for additional art no one ever created."

"Art?" She looked around as they entered the next room and a depressing feeling came over her. "Oh god, this is awful."

"I agree," he replied.

Laura was in the single worst museum she had ever been into and she should know. Her father had always been a serious museum lover and had taken her to countless museums of all sorts, usually art, all over the country. She found the walls, floor and general design of the building more interesting than then any of its exhibits and since it was no Getty that was just sad.

She reached the bathrooms after walking down the stairs, a pair of white doors with the male symbol on one, the circle with the diagonal arrow, and the female symbol on the other, the one circle with a cross underneath it, both white over light green plates.

She went inside and was overwhelmed at the green: the stalls were light green, the floor a dark green, the ceiling a pale green, the walls a lighter pale green, the counters a green that was almost black with knobs of fake emerald-like design and when Laura pressed the light green soap dispenser button the soap that came out was leprechaun green.

She washed her hands and face off and felt overwhelmed by the fact she got to use real soap with water. It was the first time in three months she felt water in her hands.

She shook her head, stared into her reflection, and saw a haggard, distant look in her eyes.

Laura stepped out and felt stunned. Her mind _desperately_ needed to figure what was happening but she wasn't quite able to grasp it. After a moment, something finally clicked.

"You don't happen to know a good doctor, do you?"

"Yes, actually I do," he replied. "I can lead you right to him."

"Oh, thank god! The sooner the better!" She laughed uncomfortably and sighed. "It's been a long three months."

"Yeah," he replied awkwardly.

It meant something but Laura's brain wouldn't tell her why. "Can we go now?"

He smiled and it was a kind smile. "Sure," he said.

Matthew led her down through a building with a predictable design of square rooms with zigzag staircases, a simple building at best, to the lobby she had vomited down onto. It began at the end of the zigzag staircase with an upper area, the specific area she vomited down onto, and a lower area near the front where all the green dressed people had retreated to.

"At least the politicians are gone," Matthew said as he led her quickly toward the doors.

Laura looked at them and all of them turned their noses upward, egotistical in the extreme, and then turned away from her look as if she was utterly unworthy to look upon them.

"Where did _you_ get a girl?" asked a sash-wearing boy mockingly.

"Who's this asshole?" she asked.

"Reggie Gurney," he said and then groaned as a door to the right opened and a man rushed to put himself between them and the exit.

He was a middle-aged man, mid to late forties, maybe his even fifties, with gray hair turning white with a gold sash covered in almost as many gold medals as his green robes had, so many in fact that the green was barely detectable. To Laura's eyes he looked both ridiculous and heavily overcompensating and that robot being several inches taller and wider and far more formidable looking than any of the others made such an impression even worse.

There was not even a hint of the maturity that should have been possessed by a man in his years and he was even grinning like a boy. Not an immature man but an actual boy.

"This is Jacques," said Matthew as he moved in front of his robot.

"Is his last name Strap?" Laura let out a laugh but no one got it so she stopped with a groan. "What are you doing?" she asked when she saw Matthew was quickly moving a joystick thing manually into his palm from his computer's bottom forearm area.

"Oh, you want to fight, do you?" asked Jacques with a spoiled boy smile and pressed a button that his joystick flip into his hand. His robot shifted to an attack position and then, for the first time, he seemed to see Laura. "By the President Himself, you are a woman!"

"Sure am," she replied. "I guess you must be a genius to have figured that out."

Matthew laughed and so did several others. Jacques gave Matthew a look she recognized, a look that meant he was going to come after Matthew at some later date, and then he turned back to Laura. "Do I know you, Yellow-Hair? You seem familiar?"

"I'm platinum blond," she replied.

"Uh-huh," he replied indifferently as he looked over her body shamelessly. When he raised his eyes he had a look of "how could I miss this" in his eyes. "I should know you," he said. "A girl with your body could get the _best_ man around." He blinked a few times. "Where is your mimic, Yellow-Hair? You answer me _right_ now."

"I have an AIC but she's A.W.O.L." Laura felt her neck cramp a bit as she stretched it around and then sighed. "Look, I don't know what you expect or what is going on—"

"I want you naked," he told her softly enough for just Laura and Matthew to hear.

Laura blinked several times in surprise and then looked at him. "What?"'

"You are way too attractive to be seen wandering around with this so-called artist. I expect you know the method to ride a man's—"

"I'm about to rip off a man's—" Laura's eyes narrowed into slits and she squeezed her hands tightly into to fists to keep her rage down. She was usually quite good at doing that but evidently being frozen seemed to have taken as much of her self-control away as it did her mental control. "Just let us pass, will you?"

"You're going terrible, aren't you, girl?"

"I don't know what that means."

"It means you are on the verge of exile," stated Jacques. "I will speak privately to you about it after I deal with Michener here and perhaps we can come to some unconventional ways to pay for your cruel indecency and the very unjust way you have just spoken to me."

"Are you for real? Seriously?" Her mind wasn't letting her figure everything out but she was pretty sure he wasn't pretending.

Matthew was as insulted as she should have been but what he said was, "Do you not recognize her?" Jacques looked at him. "Are you an idiot or something? _Look_ at her!"

Jacques was offended and outraged by that. "How _dare_ you speak to me in that manner?" He maneuvered his robot into making a fist, readied for a move that would almost certainly obliterate Matthew's smaller and much more poorly conditioned robot.

But it stopped very suddenly.

Jacques looked down at his left arm and he began to shake with horror. Laura had just reached over, grabbed his hand, and pressed the red button on his arm computer casually. It was exactly what she thought it was, a power button, but what it also did was seemingly shake Jacques to the root of himself. "Y-you touched my c-controller!" he whimpered in a high pitched, creepily childish way. "You—you touched _me_!"

"Isn't that what you wanted?" she replied.

"I'll show what I wanted—" he cut himself short and pretended to fall, badly, and tried to grab onto her breasts to catch himself. It was so obvious Laura would have seen it coming drunk and it was so juvenile and pathetic it wasn't even laughable. In fact, she honestly didn't believe what she was seeing until his fingers touched her right breast.

Laura grabbed his wrist with her right hand, twisted it in the military style she was trained in, and Jacques was suddenly on his knees shrieking like a spoiled five-year-old girl who had just lost her favorite doll and Laura ought to have known what that looked like. She had once seen a doll stolen from a spoiled five-year-old girl by a Faction soldier. "My hand!" he shrieked. "You're hurting my hand!" Tears ran down his eyes like two leaks in a dam. "Oh. President of the Great Teal let me go! Oh please, please, _please_ let me go!"

Laura looked over at Matthew to see that while he was shocked by what he was seeing she somehow sensed it wasn't Jacques's behavior that created that shock and, anyway, for him it wore off quickly. His eyes narrowed at the screaming man and she sensed he was gaining a kind of deep satisfaction that came without joy.

"You let me go, you—you _violencer_ you!" The word "violencer" was filled with such contempt, hate and power that the entire crowd of people from the lobby all gasped. Matthew winced a bit but that was all.

Laura blinked. "Violencer—"

"You _touched_ me!" shrieked Jacques.

"I thought you wanted me to—"

"No, I didn't!" he squeaked and Laura sensed that he was the kind of person who could make that stick in his mind. He could tell himself anything he wanted and he would, in time, and provided he knew it couldn't come back to hurt him, come to believe it as much as another man might believe in gravity. "You have gone terrible!"

"You touched her first against her will," Matthew told him. " _You_ violated Touch-Law and was trying to hide it with a fake fall—"

"No, I didn't!" he squeaked again.

"I saw you—"

"YOU SAW NOTHING!" he shrieked at the top of his voice and from behind Laura saw every single viewer, who could not have mistaken what he was doing for anything other than it was, were all agreeing and nodding as if he spoke a gospel truth.

Laura could not believe what she was seeing.

It wasn't just that he was acting like a child but that he genuinely was one. She was nowhere near hurting him and the majority of his pain came from him pulling against her while she held him. Even then it was still around the level of getting one's knees scraped or being lightly slapped or maybe, possibly, a sore wrist but the way he had fallen onto his knees and whimpered one would think she had just snapped the bones in his wrist and was squeezing.

"Let me go!" he cried. "Oh please, please, pleeeeeeease let me go!"

"Jesus," she said softly and then he groaned and whimpered like his wrist was being broken. "There is no way in hell a Greenland man is this much of a pansy." She suddenly found herself almost convinced he was faking it. "This has got to be is bullshit." She squeezed slightly and he shrieked almost like a girl.

"Oh dear President in the Teal, I've wet myself! She's killing me! KILLING ME!"

Laura looked down, saw the pool of urine at his feet, and let go. The instant she did, Jacques threw himself across the lobby as if dodging machine gun fire, scrambled into the nearby office he had come out of, and slammed the door behind as hard as he could.

She could only stare dumbstruck and stupefied by the sight.

Once safe behind his doors his head appeared in the door's window. "You'll be sorry!" he cried through the pane of glass. "I'll call the sheriff and you'll be sorry!"

"Wow," Laura said as she stepped away from the small pool of liquid Jock left behind. "That—was really easy." Jacques had been so scared of that grip that he had even forgotten his robot which remained in the same exact place in the same exact prepared punch ready position.

Everyone was staring at her as if she had just grown a second head. Someone squeaked in a way that might have been a laugh and then Matthew did laugh. It was a strange a surprised laugh. There was an edge of hysteria to it but he got it under control quickly.

"I'll get you for this, Michener!" cried Jacques from the other side of the door. "I'll _get_ you!"

"What did I do?" asked Matthew earnestly.

"It doesn't matter," Laura told him. "He'll have to go after someone and he'll never have the nerve to go after me." She gently pushed open the doors to reveal a heavily rain-drenched street before her. "That marshmallow couldn't handle being breathed on let alone attacked but he wants to prove otherwise through you because he knows you can't fight back."

She stepped out of the building and out into the rain and felt it pour wondrously down over her. She raised her arms up, shut her eyes, and let it slip into her clothes, cold but wonderful and familiar. Thunder boomed in the distance and she felt alive and rejuvenated, almost reborn. She had no idea what was going on with James Jacques and she did not care.

She was free at last and felt ready to take on the world.

Matthew stepped up beside her with a hood up. "My car is over here."

Laura smiled and followed him as he lead her a lonely car in the middle of a parking lot. "This one is mine," he told her.

"Oh it's nice," Laura lied. The outside of the vehicle was a shade of very light green but was so chipped and scratched that it was almost more steel than paint and inside it was, to its detriment, like no car that Laura had ever seen. Its driver's seat was the only seat in the front set in the direct center and she could tell before Matthew touched it that the front lifted up like a jet as if to cruelly mislead a viewer into thinking it could go fast. The two seats behind looked exactly the same as a normal car's back seats but with dark green leather so ripped and torn it was barely serviceable and there were scissor doors that further created the illusion of speed. In what Laura felt was a miracle of bad design it somehow managed to look boring, plain and blockish while simultaneously hinting strongly at a speed and charisma it could never achieve. To Laura it looked almost like a real life version of a Lego car with hover technology. "Too much green," Laura told him after looking it over.

Once the trunk was open Laura watched robot attempt, and fail, to crawl into one of three awkward three square grooves in the flat surface where a trunk should be. It lifted a leg up, shook, fell over, tried again, messed up with its arm somehow, and that then it fell flat on its face.

_I did not think this car could get_ any _worse,_ she told herself and was grateful that it had actually remained in her head the way she intended.

"I'll have to fold him up manually to get him inside a slot to start to the car. Do you want to wait inside?"

"Sure," Laura said and when one of the scissor doors opened she slipped into the back. "Hey, how come you didn't park under the lip?"

"Only the elites and politicians can park under the cover," he said as his robot was locked in place. The instant it did the vehicle powered up with a gentle hum.

"You need a robot to start your car?" she asked him as he lifted the jet top.

"Yes," he said as he slipped inside, shut the door and then turned the key. Laura felt the vehicle lift up with a surprising amount of smoothness. For some reason, Laura had expected it to be as internally primitive as it was boring but it hovered and moved along as easily as any typical car in her day did except perhaps with less speed or grace. It left the parking lot easily enough and flew out onto the street moving casually down the road a few feet above the ground where Laura noticed the little poles on either side of the road with little tops painted forest green.

Laura thought she recognized them. "Please tell me those poles aren't what make this vehicle fly?"

"They are," Matthew replied. "If we drive past them my car would fall to the ground and I would have to pay a lot of money I can't afford to have someone pull it back over. Is that bad, you think?" He sounded genuinely curious.

"Kind of," Laura replied awkwardly. The last time she had seen that kind of technology it was at a carnival and it was specifically for the bumper cars. It was no doubt immeasurably better version used in Greenland but it was still bumper car technology. She thought there might be more to it but her thoughts were drifting farther away from her control and she couldn't decide whether she was disturbed, confused or both by any of the things she had seen or done since awakening. "This place is just so _weird_ ," she stated.

***

"How _dare_ she?" James Jacques cried for the hundredth or more time and the people in the museum all nodded their agreement. None of them were able to ascertain why a young woman of the day would dress in such unpatriotic clothes and assault his person. She was just lucky he managed to keep his temper and such a gentleman and all or by the President she would have been sorry! He was, after all, James Jacques, the Curator of the Aberdeen Museum of Art and near former military commander and _not_ just some nobody someone can push around.

Jacques had called the authorities of course but he didn't call that _sheriff_ like he had threatened. Oh no, no, he would call the man himself, Pip Patterson, the mayor of Aberdeen and close personal friend. Mart Manner might be the sheriff but he didn't understand class or respect the way a true citizen should. He and all his siblings were still just the scum of the Greenlands descended from Canadian savages sent to serve his Canadian ancestors somehow up jumped to his level.

No, Jacques needed men with power, men who were _real_ heroes, to take command and put that stupid blond trollop back in her place.

And her place was _below_!

Jacque was already feeling better and was already forgetting about the incident where he was already absolutely convinced he was not at fault at all. It was that girl, of course, who had tricked him and caught him when he was distracted and then she got very, very, lucky in the ordeal _she_ started. He would soon make her pay for that when they met again, pay for all, and there would come a day when she was sorry she was ever born.

His hands shook and the sense of going terrible was drifting away at long last.

Everything made sense, everything was _right_ , but he felt that savage emptiness that always came from successes of that sort making something inside of him want to shriek although he had no idea why. In the end, as usual, he succumbed to his easy rightful victory. There was no other direction to go as far as he could tell, and despite deeply wishing something, _anything_ , would take that emptiness away, he went on ahead.

He adjusted his clothes, looked to the left, and casually saw last season's art exhibit poster.

He decided instantly to dismiss his assistant. Despite the fact that his assistant had no access to his office it was inexcusable to have placed an out of date poster in his office. It was, of course, not his fault and never could be, and he felt suddenly disgusted with any woman like that blond whore and his assistant who thought everything should revolve around _them_ and _their_ —

Jock's thoughts died when he saw the image in the poster, the girl in the frozen glass discovered hundreds of years ago by the imperial scouts hunting around for ancient history, and he became focused on it. The woman's face was so intensely familiar that he couldn't imagine why it was so hard to recognize her and then—

His eyes bulged, his legs shook, and he let out a loud, long shriek of a scream that scared all of the museum patrons who heard it.

About the Author

Richard Phillip Hoffman is a lifetime resident of California, a graduate of CSUCI, a writer, a video game player and an avid movie-goer. As a child he had always been a dreamer, always imagining the exploring and altering of the worlds that his video games and movies provided and as he grew older he wanted to develop those imaginings into something more, to expand them into great tapestries of stories and emotions and events that he could share with the world and he does so in the form of writing. These days he is a childless bachelor who makes his home on the western edge of Los Angeles County in Southern California where he has lived all his life and left so rarely that he only has the barest academic knowledge of what snow is really like.
Other Titles by Richard Phillip Hoffman

Clan of Midnight

The Two Travelers: Episode 1

The Kingdom of Angels

The Two Travelers: Episode 2

The Pacifists' War

The Dark Knight of Connecticut: Year One

Welcome to Bartlett Bay

The Sky Invader

(Release date: Q4 2018 / Q1 2019)
Connect with the Author

**Twitter:** https://twitter.com/frog626

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