Apocalyptic Trifecta

Sam was eating a yogurt in the Rec Room, watching his team engage in a high-stakes game of pool. The stakes were undisclosed to Sam, but he saw a predatory grin on Ann as she lined up the winning shot. A bead of sweat rolled down Tom's temple as his knuckles whitened on the pool cue.

A siren blasted through the tense silence, and Ann's shot went wide. Tom sank to his knees in relief as Sam began to shovel the tasteless goop into his mouth. The flavor for the food processor ran out eight generations ago, as far as Sam could recall, so he squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed before he regarded his team.

Their game abandoned, the two of them were busily throwing on body armor that had been neatly stacked, Sam followed suit, throwing his armor on in a matter of seconds. "Tom, take a picture," Sam called to Tom, who snatched up his submachine gun and leveled it at the pool table, initiating the recording device with his thumb.

"But sir!" Ann cried, horrified.

"Life happens," Sam said, shrugging the stiffness out of his body armor before he picked up his shotgun. "It's not like you weren't going to enjoy either outcome." Sam flashed her a grin. "Besides, Tom might miss."

"Outcome aside, winning is winning." Ann said, hefting her twenty five pound rifle with ease.

The three of them ran out of the Rec Room, barreling past the kitchen, where Tom's experiments to recreate cheese sat on the countertop, bathed in the pale light of the glowing ceiling. About five generations ago, cheese had been removed from the menu, and Tom had since been trying to make his own. He'd come a long way in the generations since, and had his own names for all the different kinds he'd invented.

There must have been an acute problem with the cheese processor, not the milk production tech, because they still had milk and yogurt, bland as it was. No one on the team had the tools or skills to fix it, and the gradual decline of the facilities functions was a constant burden on Sam's heart.

Sam took his mind off his worries with his hobbies, but he knew Ann and Tom had noticed as well. They took solace in each other, forming a stronger bond than the designers of the facility had ever intended.

"Line up," Sam commanded, standing in front of the Mission Port. He reviewed Tom and Ann's equipment, then had Ann check his. "You know the drill, we enter quiet, figure out which sim we're dealing with, and then plan accordingly. Only use your grenades in the event of a Z sim or if the computer throws us a curveball."

"Let's get this done sir, I've got a hot date tonight," Tom said with a grin.

"Not if you miss," Ann crooned into Tom's ear.

"Cut that shit out," Sam said, glowering at the two. "Until this is over, you two keep it professional. I hope I don't have to remind you of why we're on our current generation?"

"No sir," Tom and Ann said, straightening their shoulders.

It had been a day like this, with Tom and Ann getting caught up in each other, when the computer decided to throw one of its infamous 'curveballs', unleashing a horde of zombies on a mission that had been supposed to be an easy sweep. Tom and Anna had gone for each other, and unknowingly left Sam in the cold.

Sam had gone down first, torn to shreds by the blunt teeth of the ravenous undead, and without his extra gun, Tom and Ann had been eaten alive shortly after. It was one of their most humiliating deaths.

"Keep that in mind," Sam said, glancing up at the now defunct mission briefing board, now just a grey reflective surface. Sam took a deep breath, and punched the red button to open the gate to the training area. It was one of Sam's greatest fears that one day the heavy iron plate would refuse to move, leaving them to starve endlessly to the sound of a blaring siren. The food processors stopped giving out food until the sim had been completed.

The heavy iron plate rolled aside, revealing bright, untarnished metal where it was inset into the wall. Had the door been that bright at some point? Sam couldn't remember. Silently, Sam motioned for his team to follow him, and the three crept into the darkness of the testing chamber.

Looking around the urban environment, Sam signaled 'C' back to his team, denoting the location they had found themselves in. the sims used an alpha numeric combination to denote the testing area, and the situation they were simulating. There were twenty six different environments with one hundred variations for each of them, meaning a total of two thousand six hundred different scenarios.

They knew them all by heart. Sam glanced back at the portal leading back to the Living Quarters, and saw the steel plate embedded in a blue and tan building labelled 'Police'. Some urban scenarios had them emerging from black trucks labelled S.W.A.T, and those usually meant a surgical strike.

Coming straight from the police building was never a good sign, as many of the scenarios involved large numbers, such as riots or zombie hordes. Sam got low to the ground and crept forward with Tom, while Ann climbed one of the nearby building's drainpipes before ducking into an open window.

Sam waited with his hand on Tom's shoulder, watching the window while Tom covered the street. When Ann's head reappeared and she gave them a thumbs up, he squeezed, setting them on their way down the road.

Sam caught Tom's eye and gave him hand signals. 'search for objective until reaching Ann's effective range, then rejoin.'

Tom nodded, and they separated, creeping down the street, checking the buildings one at a time, being mindful to stay in Ann's line of sight. Each building showed no sign of occupants, with a handful of faux furniture in each one. There were signs that the computer had placed a hostile in a building, and after sixteen generations, they could recognize the subtle signs without even entering.

Sam came to the end of the row of buildings, and turned to Tom, giving him the clear symbol. Tom fired back with 'hostile around corner behind Sam.'

Sam dropped low and peeked around the last building, onto the street. Indeed, there was a Horde, standing silently clumped together about thirty yards down the street. Sam motioned for Tom to stack up with him, and for Ann to take a better position.

The two of them waited for Ann to climb another building and travel through the guts of the fake homes until he spotted her hand giving a thumbs up from a window overlooking the Horde.

Zombies weren't particularly smart, and as long as Sam and his team didn't walk out onto the street and wave their arms, they would have no idea where the bullets where coming from. Zombies were much more of a problem when the sim distributed them randomly, or deployed a 'rabbit' to work them into a frenzy.

Sam glanced back at Tom, nodded, and pulled a grenade from his belt. It wasn't a Z scenario, but there couldn't have been a more perfect situation than this, and so Sam pulled the pin, keeping his thumb tight around the spoon. Sam sized up the distance, and threw the grenade before tucking his body behind the wall.

There were a few rising wails as the grenade skittered across the pavement, and a handful of seconds later, a percussive thud slammed through Sam's chest. Chips of concrete scattered from the opposite wall where shrapnel buried itself.

Sam counted another two seconds, then peeked around the corner. Most of the zombies lay still, a few of them giving gut-wrenching shrieks as they flopped about and two were still standing, eyes rolling in their head as they searched for the cause of their predicament.

Uninterested in giving them a target for their ire, Sam gave the signal to Ann, and with two blasts from her rifle, the last two lay among their writhing bretheren.

"It's about time we got an easy one," Tom said, his shoulders relaxing.

"Let's not assume anything yet," Sam said, hoisting his shotgun. "The computer could still throw us a curveball."

Tom didn't say anything, but his face soured, and he held his gun tighter. Sam still remembered his first orientation, the men in the white coats who removed him from the nutrient bath, and told him his name. All the information Sam had in his head, to make him more 'relatable' as they put it, was no good without some real-life interaction first.

And why not? They were designed to interact with humans on some level, they would have to, to coordinate with police units on site. They had given him a basic education, taught him lingo, and warned him that the computer was designed to throw the unexpected at them occasionally.

A 'curveball' they had called it. Sam tried to imagine a curved ball, seemingly an oxymoron. The ball would already be curved, why call it a curve-ball? They had learned to fear them, though, as every generation seemed to end in bloody, screaming pain because of these men and women in white's 'curve-balls'.

Then they had disappeared. No explanation, no warning, just thousands and thousands of training sessions, with the chips in their skulls constantly recording their brains so that a new generation could be grown without a drop in their combat effectiveness.

Sam and Tom turned the corner, their eyes scanning left and right as they walked toward the writing pile of flesh. Ann watched their backs from her high vantage point, ready to knock a zombie down if one lunged up at them or snuck up behind them, giving them plenty of time to run.

Sam stood beside Tom and kept a lookout while Tom strode from corpse to corpse, diligently putting a bullet in each zombie, moving or not. Each of them had been tagged by the computer, and the door wouldn't open until each one was fully dead.

"It's times like this I wonder," Tom said, punctuating his phrase with a bullet in a writhing corpse. "Where do they get all these zombies, logistically? I mean, they ran out of cheese, and flavoring for the food, and coloring. The only thing that still seems to come just fine is these fucking things, guns and bullets." Tom shot a still corpse in the head. "I get the feeling that the bullets will run out before these guys do."

Sam shrugged. "They probably grow them onsite, like us," he said, his eyes scanning the street for movement.

"So, they grow a perfectly normal human, and then turn it?" Tom said, frowning, keeping his mouth tightly closed with every shot, unwilling to allow back spray into his mouth. "That seems... wrong somehow."

Sam grunted his assent, and Tom executed another zombie. As the echoing gunshot faded, a cracking sound echoed through the enormous dome. The pavement slanted under Sam's feet, throwing him off balance.

"Wha-" Tom's voice was cut off by an exclamation of surprise as the ground fell out from under him.

Sam saw Tom begin to fall, his gear rising in the air as though it had become weightless. Off balance as he was, Sam was only able to throw out his left arm. Tom caught Sam's hand and the weight brought Sam to the ground, his arm painfully stretched across the hole.

Tom's weight tore at the tendon's in Sam's arm, twisting them out of shape as Tom hung over the empty expanse. Sam dropped his shotgun and braced his left hand, letting out a cry of effort as he pulled, the muscles all the way down his back crying out in pain at the awkward angle.

Finally after what seemed like minutes, Tom's fingers found purchase on the edge of the hole and he hauled himself to the surface while Sam supported him. The two of them rolled away from the hole in the ground before coming to a stand.

"What the fuck was that?" Ann shouted from high above them.

Toom glanced at Sam, whose eyes were locked on the four foot wide hole in the center of the training area, then back to Ann. "Curveball, maybe?" he called up to her with a shrug.

The street lamps turned red and a chilling voice began to emanate from the entire facility. "Security breach, a lockdown is temporarily in effect."

"I don't think it's a curveball," Sam said, shaking his head and carefully retrieving his shotgun which lay near the hole. Sam stepped away and turned to signal Ann to keep her eye on the gaping chasm in the concrete while Tom and Sam checked out the alarm.

A flash of light from Ann's window dazzled Sam's eyes and a gunshot rang through the dome, nearly drowning out Ann's scream. "To me, run!" her voice pierced through the alarm just before another shot rung out. Sam glanced behind him and saw motion through the blue afterimage of Ann's muzzle flare then turned and broke into a sprint, following Tom into the doorway beneath Ann's perch.

A half dozen more shots rang out, and Tom held the door, slamming it closed once Sam barreled into the room. The two of them grabbed the fake refrigerator with practiced efficiency and slammed it down in front of the door.

"What was it?" Sam asked, blinking the afterimage out of his eyes.

"some kinda bug," Tom said, his face pale. "About eight feet long."

"Bug?" Sam asked. Sam glanced up the stairs, where he heard more shots being fired. Sam threw himself up the stairs and came to stand beside Ann.

Sprawled out below him were the corpses of a half dozen giant insects, with more pouring out of the hole and spreading out across the pavement.

Sam wordlessly tapped Ann on the shoulder, and she stopped firing. In the ensuing silence, Sam and Ann watched silently as the enormous red ants began picking up the bodies of the zombies and pulling them into the hole in the facility that led into their nest.

"We need to get the hell out of here sir," Ann whispered, her face ashen.

Sam didn't know if she meant their current situation or the facility that had been their home for sixteen generations. In either case, the answer was "Yes."

"Barricade the window," Sam said, and they turned a couch over in front of it, as quietly as they could, leaving just a sliver of window open. They went downstairs, closing the door behind them.

"What's the deal?" Tom whispered as they came down the stairs.

"Ants," Sam said, sitting down on the floor of the apartment building, his eyes scanning the house for things they could use. "Really big ants."

"What's the plan, then?" Ann asked, sitting beside Tom, who settled on his haunches, placing a hand affectionately on her shoulder.

"The plan is," Sam said, his gaze settling on the wooden furniture. "We're making a smoke screen, and we are leaving.

"Back to the living quarters?" Tom asked.

Sam shook his head. "We're leaving the facility."

Ann and Tom stared at Sam wide-eyed. "What?" Anna said. "How are we gonna do that? there's no exit, and the chip-"

"The chip is passive outside the Living quarters," Sam said, his eyes turning to the barricaded door. "and the exit is right in front of us."

"No fucking way," Tom said, "It'll never work."

"Do you wanna wait?" Sam asked, his gaze boring into Tom "Do you wanna wait until some critical system fails and we get trapped inside the Living quarters and starve to death forever? Do you wanna to wait until the ants make holes in the Living quarters? Or better yet, the Baths? Do you wanna wake up and be cut into pieces by giant mandibles over and over, forever?"

Tom's expression hardened. "Can we kill them?" he asked, leaning forward. "All of them?"

"Maybe," Sam said, "But then what? Go back to waiting around to get killed again by a sadistic computer? We haven't seen the Technicians in thousands of runs, and this represents our one chance to do what we were meant to do."

"Kill zombies?" Ann asked.

"Save lives," Sam said.

Tom sighed, his gaze wandering toward the door. "Yeah, when you put it in terms of escape, or die horribly forever, it really clears things up."

"How about you, Ann?" Sam said, shifting his gaze to her.

Ann put her hand on Tom's knee. "I'm going wherever Tom does, or he's going wherever I do," she said firmly. "Plus it sounds like we're gonna finally get to kill something other than zombies, which is a plus."

Sam chuckled. "Alright," he said, rubbing his hands together. "We need to make some preparations."

The dome was covered in a thin layer of smoke, and a repurposed air vent collected the smoke and forced it into the tunnel, smoking it out. It had taken days to break back into the living quarters, and they had nearly died of thirst, with the constant, droning voice of the alarm reminding them of the lockdown every moment of the day.

After they had gotten back inside, work had sped up, as one of them stayed in the testing ground to prevent the test from resetting while the others gathered food and supplies. Sam had taken the first watch, his body aching with the need to drink but comforted by the pale blue glow of the lights of the living quarters shining through the shattered concrete wall.

Ann returned with a bottle of water, and Sam had drunk greedily, before handing it back. After getting their food back, they stocked up on ammo, and staged it just outside the reach of the ants bustling about the street, inside a barricaded house.

Finally, they climbed up to the top of the dome and secured a pipe to one of the vents pumping air into the dome before lighting a bonfire of soaked wood furniture and plastics under an improvised intake.

"Ready?" Sam asked, shining the light attached to his shotgun down into the cavernous opening in the pavement.

"Yep," Tom said, taking a deep breath.

"Yes," Ann said, fixing a wet rag over her mouth.

"We go as fast as possible without losing sight of each other," Sam said. "If you lose the group, stay there and make some noise." Sam rapped the butt of his flashlight against the steel of his gun, creating a distinct clang.

Tom did the same, and Ann followed suit, each of them confirming the sound the other two would make.

"Tom, watch the rear," Sam said, pointing at Tom.

"Mark dead ends with the red," Sam said, handing phosphorescent red spray paint to Ann. "The chances of getting into a firefight are high, so don't be stingy with the paint. I want to be able to see at a glance where we've been already." Here we go. Sam thought to himself.

Sam turned back to the hole, found the bottom with his flashlight, and jumped in. The tunnel was filled with a smoky haze that stung Sam's lungs even through the wet rag. As Tom and Ann jumped in, Sam began to creep forward, his shotgun trained in front of him.

Chapter 2

A cold wind buffeted Faera's rabbit skin hat, but she stayed still in her perch, cleverly disguised as an eagle's nest. Only two hours 'till the shift change. She thought idly, her eyes scanning the mountains and forest, especially the road leading to the elven base.

Faera's cheek rested against the cold steel of her rifle as she scanned for signs of a human attack. Elves had been treated with awe and wonder until the collapse of human civilization had led to a radical change in their perception of them.

Now, the illiterate barbarian offspring of the once civilized people hunted the elves tenaciously, under the superstitious belief that elf flesh cured disease, promoted virility or increased their lifespans. It was nothing that a high power rifle round through the head couldn't ward off, most of the time.

Other times, the barbarians assembled en masse, and the elves had to use mortars or machine guns, quickly putting an end to their thoughts of immortality and sending them hooting back to their caves.

Faera cocked her head to the side. Were they still cave dwellers? The man she had shot fifty-odd years ago had been wearing something like homespun wool. It didn't matter, really. The mountain was already considered to be under the most terrible curse, staving away most would-be elf hunters.

A flicker of movement caught Faera's gaze, and she shifted her scope, tracking it. "Is that..." Faera's eyes widened as she recognized the object. Faera scanned her scope left and right through the forest and spotted more movement, and more ominous objects.

Faera leaned to one side and began frantically fishing out her brick of a radio. She pulled the antenna out and clicked the radio on with a hiss. "Base, this is the watchtower, we've got artil-"

Faera's words were interrupted as a flash came from the distant edge of the forest, followed by dozens more. "Artillery incoming!"

Faera's thumb came off the talk button, and the comms officer responded in an incredulous voice. "Artillery? Are you fucking with-" the response was cut off as explosions rocked the base, blowing apart the fortifications like so many stacked matchsticks.

A rolling thunder washed over Faera as the report of the first barrage reached her. dozens of flashes of light and smoke came again from the far side of the forest, and Faera braced herself as the explosions rocked the ancient tree her lookout was built into.

Faera looked at the base, and saw complete pandemonium, elf corpses lay strewn across the base, and screaming reached her ears even from this distance.

Faera looked through her scope at the artillery again, and started picking off anyone she could see manning the machines, but it amounted to little. The dense forest between her and them made shooting anything almost impossible, but their indirect fire still came raining down on their heads.

"Fuck, Fuck," Faera repeated over and over as she looked for something she could do, some difference she could make. Down the road, a dust cloud resolved into a dozen jeeps, and Faera found a target for her anger.

Faera lined up a shot in front of the driver, and pulled the trigger, feeling the familiar recoil as the bullet soared forward, intersecting the Jeep's trajectory. The window bloomed a white flower with her bullet at the center, and the Jeep jerked momentarily before it continued on, unperturbed.

With a growl, Faera started to unload on the lead Jeep's windshield. After the first jerk, however, it didn't slow or change its course, as it would have had she killed the driver.

The Jeeps came to the elven base, and dislodged dozens of soldier from their covered beds. The soldiers were wearing white jackets with gold embroidery, with large buttons cinching the piece together. If Faera had to guess, their clothes looked like a mash-up between the garb worn during the American Civil War, and religious vestments from the former Vatican. Of course, the humans wouldn't have known that.

Each soldier bore a steel saber, running through the gaps in the defensive wall, without a care for the smattering of bullets from the elves. A few of them fell, but many more made it to their targets and cut down the long-lived people where they stood.

Faera replaced her magazine and took aim at a man in a red coat, seemingly leading the attack, when her radio turned on with a brief burst of static. "Faera," came the voice of her father. His voice was tired, but retained the steel of command.

"We're pulling back into the emergency shelter and closing the door. We need you to get help." Faera stayed silent, the crosshairs of her scope hovering over the brown haired man in the red coat. His cheeks were sunken, and his eyes intense. With a wave of his hand, a blast of fire erupted from a watchtower, incinerating two elves.

Faera pulled the trigger.

The shot rang in her ears and pummeled her shoulder, while the bullet flew out toward the man's heart. Something akin to heat distortion filled the air around the man, and the bullet hit the wall of the elven base beside him.

From a distance, the enemy hadn't been able to tell where the shots had been coming from, but now the man in red and a few of the saber wielding zealots craned their heads to look at the ancient tree a hundred yards from the base with a commanding view of the surroundings.

"Faera, If you don't leave and get help right now, we are all going to die!" Her father commanded over the radio. "This is an order. Drop what you are doing and seek assistance from another settlement."

Faera took one last look at the humans dragging elves back to their Jeeps and sorting the living from the dead, throwing screaming men and women into separate cages, and still corpses onto a flat truck bed. Faera clicked the radio on, and brought it to her mouth.

"Yes, sir," she said, her teeth gritted as she saw one of her friends loaded onto the back of a truck. Faera flew into action as the magician leader of the attackers pointed towards her perch, sending a half dozen soldiers up the mountain to retrieve her.

Faera slid down the ladder even as a missile of pure energy tore a hole through the camoflauged sniper nest. Faera hit the ground and started running west, away from their base and the road, deeper into the forest. By the time the humans made it through the traps surroundings her perch, she was long gone.

Faera trotted through the forest, making a plan as she ran. If she followed the river, after a few miles, she would encounter Gentle Nights, a farming town so named for its uncharacteristically warm winter nights. Not once in the five hundred years since the elves had come to this place had it experienced an early or late frost, and the night sky was especially beautiful seen from their unique vantage.

After she warned them of the attack, she could catch a ride in one of their trucks and ask assistance from the elven outpost of First Word, where the elves diligently guarded all the knowledge humanity had long since lost.

Faera came to a sudden halt. How did the humans get artillery? How did they go from homespun to mass produced in just fifty years? Their Jeeps were at least a hundred years ahead of their clothes. Faera's brow furrowed as she thought. Was some radical elven group assisting the humans in hunting down the other elves? It wasn't possible.

As Faera thought back to the men with eighteenth century sabers jumping out of the late twentieth century vehicles, she shook her head. It didn't matter right now, perhaps some human had deciphered one of thousands of decaying, ancient books strewn about the world, and made some lopsided scientific progress.

If that was the case, it wasn't long until one of the monkeys had the bright idea to create small arms. Faera shuddered. The elves had to be warned. Faera started running with renewed purpose, cutting through the forest with her rifle strapped across her back.

Faera kept up a steady pace, gliding through the woods silently for hours. When she finally reached the river, she came to rest on the bank, panting as she splashed herself with the clear water. Faera suppressed a shiver as the cold water ate the outermost layer of warmth away, cooling her taxed body.

Faera plopped down on the rocky bank, not minding the uncomfortable stone in her exhaustion. She reached into the pouch on her belt and removed a bit of salted meat she'd been saving for the end of her shift, biting into it as she rested. Faera chewed, staring out into the glittering water, her eyes losing focus.

After catching her breath, Faera glanced up at the sun, which was already beginning to slide into the west, toward her destination. Faera stood and chased after it, running along the bank of the river, through the patchy shade provided by the trees.

An hour later, Faera arrived at Gentle Night, where the river met a hot spring and made a bend around the farming down, cocooning it with constant warmth. The sun dyed the fields of wheat red as it sank below the horizon. The farmhouses clustered together on the edge of the fields looked warm and inviting, with their lights on and doors open to exchange the hot air of midday for night's cooler temperatures.

Faera set her eyes on the path and happily trotted down the dirt road, reinvigorated by the sight of the town. Fruit trees covered a field to her left, their flowers just past their bloom. She jogged until the porch lights from the sturdy wooden buildings shone into her eyes, and then stopped.

Where were the dogs? Every small farming community had animals, one of the more common were dogs, for their added security. In fact, she should have heard barking the minute she was within eyeshot of the village.

Faera squinted her eyes and scanned left and right. There were no chickens or cows either. Not a single animal was in sight, and not a sound could be heard coming from the village. Faera dropped to a crouch and pulled out her pistol.

Keeping her profile below the level of the wheat, she slunk the final distance to the village. Approaching the nearest house, Faera silently entered the front door, her breathing as quiet as possible. The inside of the house was made of bare wood, polished by decades of use. Three pairs of muddy boots were sitting near the entrance, the dirt dry and cracked. The living room was divided between a kitchen and a dining. Their fridge looked homemade, cobbled together from the guts of other refrigerators.

Tacked into the wood exterior of the fridge were clumsy pictures of animals and trees, and one more amusing one that looked like a stick figure girl conquering a city, smashing buildings and breathing fire. in a neat hand, the girl's father had written 'Future Plans'.

At the other wide of the room was a hall that divided the rest of the house into but two more rooms: the parent's room and the children's room. Faera crept down the hall, her ears straining to hear any noise louder than the pounding of her heart.

Faera stopped in front of the parent's door. with a quiet breath, she opened the door.

A heinous screech filled her ears, and Faera nearly jumped at the sound of the door squealing in protest. Faera recovered quickly, speeding up her opening of the door to silence the rusty hinges. The bedroom opened up in front of her, and Faera saw two forms lying still on a simple mattress.

The two adult elves were tucked in, and there was no sign of foul play, and so Faera strode up to the closest, and grabbed her by the shoulder.

Faera was aware that being grabbed on the shoulder in your own home in the middle of the night was one of the more terrifying things that could possibly happen, but this was an emergency.

"Ma'am," she said, shaking the woman's shoulder. Without a response from either of the adults, she turned the woman onto her back. The woman's eyes were open, a cloudy white. Her skin was pale and cracked as though she had been drying for a day or two. Faera suppressed a gasp and placed her fingers over the woman's throat, checking her pulse. Getting none, she checked the man, finding him in the same condition.

Faera studied the two staring corpses for a moment longer before she went to the children's room. In the children's room were three beds, two stacked on top of each other in a bunk, and the third against the window. In the the top bunk was a boy approaching adolescence, dead in much the same way as his parents, and beneath him was a toddler, endlessly staring up at the bunk above him.

The bed by the window was empty.

Faera approached the window slowly, her training telling her not to stand directly in front of it. The windowsill had clumps of dirt in its center, as though someone had been climbing through it. When Faera checked the bed, she found dirt in and around the bed as well.

Assuming these people all died at the exact same time, and that the parents would be cross with any child who got that much dirt in the house, Faera guessed this dirt had been tracked in by a child after the event had occurred.

"It's okay," Faera said aloud, holstering her pistol. "I'm not mad, it's okay." Faera said, on the chance Window Child was still around. It was a good chance, most children aren't capable of straying far from their homes. "You can come out, I want to help you."

Faera heard a scraping sound come from behind her, from the parent's room. She turned and entered, her hand resting lightly on the grip of the gun. Faera came face to face with a little girl, wearing mud-stained overalls. A nest of trash had been pushed out from under the bed as she had crawled out.

"Are you a mage?" the girl asked. "Can you fix mommy and daddy?"

Faera frowned and shook her head, kneeling down to hold the girl. "No, I can't help them, I'm here to help you."

"No!" the girl screamed and began thrashing. "I don't want help, I want you to fix Mommy and Daddy!"

Faera held the girl until she exhausted herself, keeping a constant ear out for movement other than the thrashing girl in her arms. "What's your name? Faera said, tilting her chin down to see the girl who had become limp. "Mine's Faera."

"Beatrice," the little girl said quietly, sniffling.

"Do your friends call you Bee?" Faera asked.

Faera felt Beatrice nod. She held Beatrice out and met her eyes. "Bee, listen to me, Is there anyone else left in the town?" Bee shook her head. Faera took a deep breath. "I'm going to warn First Word, and I'm going to take you with me."

Bee shook her head. "No, I wanna stay with mommy and daddy!" she said, shouting again.

"Bee, if you stay here, you'll die."

"I don't care!" Bee shrieked.

Faera took a deep breath. "Bee, if you die it would make your Mommy cry, and turn your dad to alcoholism, and eventually he might start hitting your mommy, who would get a divorce and start living with dozens and dozens of cats. Do you want to be responsible for that kind of domestic violence?"

"That's not funny," Bee sniffled, a smile momentarily gracing her face. "They're dead."

"I know," Faera said, hugging her. "And you're alive, and the only thing that your parents wanted while they were alive was for you to be happy. And the first step to being happy is being alive."

"Be happy Bee," Beatrice said with another sniffle.

"No one says you have to be happy right now," Faera said, standing. "But you do have to stay alive, and for that you have to come with me, okay?"

Bee nodded, and took Faera's hand, and the two of them left the silent house. On the way out, she snagged the keys to the farmer's truck. Faera lifted Bee into her father's truck, then the girl scooted into the passenger seat, allowing Faera to sit in the driver's seat.

Faera looked down at the unmarked stick shift and blanched. "I'm sorry in advance for the bumpy ride," she said apologetically. "I'm not very good with a manual transmission."

There were a few false starts and grinding gears, but eventually, Faera and Bee were coasting down the dirt road that lead to First Word.

"Do you know what happened that night?" Faera asked. Bee shook her head silently. According to bee she had woken up two days ago and everyone had been dead in their beds, somehow expiring in the night. Every single one of them had been staring at her, she said.

Faera had seen the open eyes, but couldn't guess the cause. "Did anything strange happen that night?" she asked.

"I crawled out the window and went to the lake to watch the stars," Bee said. suddenly a thought occurred to her and she put words to the idea "Is it my fault?"

Faera slowed the truck and it died because she failed to shift properly. With a sigh she turned and looked directly into her eyes. "No," she said.

"But daddy told me not to-" Bee said before being interrupted by Faera.

"Listen, nothing you could have done could have caused this. the only reason you're still alive is probably because you went to the lake that night." Faera said.

"Then, if I had known, I could have brought Mommy, Daddy, Thomas and Eric." Bee said, sulking.

"Prescience," Faera said as she restarted the truck, which rumbled to life, sending a beam of light across the dirt road. "That's a pretty tall order. You got lucky, end of story."

Faera kicked the truck into gear and it lurched forward with a grinding noise. Faera inwardly apologized to Bee's father for manhandling his truck. They resumed their journey silently, and the exhausted Beatrice fell asleep, nestled against Faera's hip.

The night wore on with the truck cutting a swath of light through the dark woods along the trail between themselves and First Word. Faera yawned, covering her mouth with her hand, when she opened her eyes again, there were three figures standing in front of the truck, waving their arms. Two of them holding a wounded third between them.

Faera stomped on the brake and studied the humans in front of her in shock. Two men and a woman bore weapons and armor perfectly reminiscent of the late twenty first century. There was even a small LED lighting the thumb of one of the men, where the display on his smart gun rested.

Bee woke up, having been thrown to the front of the car. "Oww," She said, rubbing her head as she sat up. "That hurts."

"Stay down, Bee," Faera said, her heart pounding as the two carried their wounded companion toward them. They hadn't seen that she was an elf yet, the glare from the truck was too strong. Then again, who else besides an elf would own one?

Her understanding of the world had been turned on its ear, with the technology they had thought lost reappearing in human hands. Maybe they were ghosts? They didn't show any sign of Not being straight from the twenty eighties. In any case, they weren't elves.

Faera made her choice and unstrapped her pistol, waiting for them to get closer. The three came to the driver's side window. "We need medical assistance," the man holding the wounded one said, peering into the cab, his night vision obviously hurt by the headlights. "Can we get a ride to the nearest hospital?"

Faera shot him in the face.

Chapter 3

Sam squinted and blinked, trying not to let the tears from the smoke cloud his vision. "Mark it," he whispered. Ann leaned down and marked the offshoot with glowing red.

"Looks like the murder hole it is," Tom said jovially.

"Grenade?" Ann asked Sam.

Sam shook his head, tapping the earthen walls with his hands. "I have no idea what a second grenade would do in these tunnels," he said.

"Then what?" Tom asked.

"speed," Sam said.

The murder hole was the only branching path they had yet to go down. The reason was that the tunnel opened into a massive communal chamber filled with thousands of ants, lethargic from the bad air they had pumped into the tunnels. Unfortunately, there was no alternate route to the surface.

"Tom, you're up first," Sam said, "Blast a path through them. Ann, follow behind him and watch the sides, I'll take the rear. And make it as fast as possible."

Tom arranged his clips for easy access and Ann fiddled with her submachine gun, making sure the safety was off.

"We ready?" Sam asked. Tom and Ann nodded. Sam pulled up his mask.

"Go," Sam said, and Tom jumped around the corner, sprinting through the crowded chamber with Sam and Ann trailing right behind him. They got a quarter of the way through before an ant reared up in front of them with its antennae waving, testing the air in front of them. Tom put a controlled burst through it's chinenous face, and the fight was on.

The ant flipped onto it's back silently and thrashed even as the team leaped over it. A barbed leg knocked against Sam's helmet as he leapt between the flailing legs. Going around would put him in range of the rearing ants on either side, and so he took the hit and kept running.

Ants crowded around from every direction, and Tom switched to full auto, turning the approaching army into a nearly impassible wall of waving spears. Still, it was only nearly impossible, and the three of them, souped up on adrenaline, ducked under, dodged around, and jumped over the tangle of sharp, flailing limbs.

Ann fired short bursts to either side as they ran, content with slowing the ants down, while Sam glanced over his shoulder to gauge the rate that the ants where gaining on them. Normally, the ant's would have been able to outrun them, but they had been exposed to the bad air for a long time now, and the effects were showing.

They were pulling away from the ants behind them, whose increased bulk was a hindrance when climbing over their brethren still in their death throes.

As they approached the tunnel they had decided on, the one with the highest angle, a barbed leg caught Sam across the torso and face, digging into the Kevlar surrounding the ceramic plates in his chest.

Sam's velocity brought him to a tumbling halt. The stop had been just long enough for one of the forerunner ants to catch up to him. Sam felt an ant's claw painfully pinch down on his shoulder and draw him up. Sam was facing down, but he knew what would happen next.

The massive mandibles that adorned the ant's mouth were going to snip off his head. Sam intstinctively hunched his shoulders and leaned his head back, and sure enough, he heard a cracking sound transmitted directly into his ears as the mandibles came down on his helmet. Sam's hand came up to his chin, and without time to open the strap, simply tugged with desperate strength.

A snap sounded, and Sam's head came free of the helmet as the mandibles crunched the rest of the way through, with the ant rearing its head back, believing it had just pulled his head off.

Sam pulled his knife and stabbed the claws pinching his shoulder, and fell free, face to face with a white, wriggling grub about half the size of his torso. It had a dark splotch of what appeared to be organs inside pale white, translucent skin.

"Sam!" came a shout from the tunnel. The ants closed in, and Sam lost any time to think. He picked up the massive grub, and held its wriggling mass between himself and the approaching ants as he backed toward the tunnel. The ants immediately became more agitated, waving their antennae in indecipherable confusion, but didn't attack him through the grub.

Sam kept backing up, running backward at a jog while holding his hostage in front of him, brandishing it in front of the oncomers, sliding and tripping, but never quite falling as he made his way to his team.

"You're here, drop the thing and we'll help you up!" Tom shouted, and Sam threw the grub at the aggravated ants, forcing them to catch it. He turned back and jumped up, catching Tom's arm at the edge of the entrance to the steep tunnel.

There was a tug on Sam's leg and he felt a crack, accompanied by a throbbing pain and the sound of gunfire over his head. Ann's hand's joined Tom's, and they pulled Sam the rest of the way up.

Sam tried to stand, and his leg folded out from under him with a cry of pain. he swallowed the pain as he saw the first barbed legs beginning to follow them up into the tunnel.

Sam forced himself to a stand on one leg and brought his gun to bear on the entrance, pulping the questing feet of the ants. The shot threw him off balance, and he leaned against the wall.

"Come on," Tom said, roughly yanking Sam's left arm over his shoulder. "You can still watch the back. Tom began to drag Sam along the cold dirt floor and Ann scouted ahead of them. Sam held off the approaching ants by turning them into writhing masses of pain every time they got too close, their flailing limbs buying a little extra time for his team.

After what seemed like hours, Sam felt a cool wind blowing across his face, and he lifted his head, alarmed. Sam lifted his shotgun, and found Tom kneeling at Sam's foot, bracing his lower left leg with... some kind of wood.

"Easy there chief," Tom said, tightening the gunstrap around his leg. "We're going to have to find a Technician to take a look at this leg, maybe find a hospital?"

They had inferred a long time ago that Hospitals were where the sick and injured went to get better. The hospital sims always had posters of the human body, beds, and things similar to the tools that the Technicians had used on them when they were hurt.

"We sure as hell aren't going back the way we came," Ann said, her eyes scanning the dark woods.

"Are these... real?" Sam said, picking up a stick with his hands, and snapping it off with a dry crack in one hand. Tears came to Sam's eyes. It wasn't plastic. Sam had no idea what it would feel like, and discovering something new for the first time in thousands of sims made something burst in his chest.

Sam began to sob, burying his face in the grass, savoring the smell he'd imagined, but never known.

"So... a hospital then?" Tom said, his brow raised.

Ann sighed. "He's lost it," she said, her eyes scanning the dark woods. "let's get him to a hospital and see if they can put him back together."

"Wait," Ann said. "I see lights. Someone's coming this way."

Tom and Ann picked up Sam and began dragging their weeping CO on a path to intercept the lights moving through the woods. The lights were moving fast, and so the two jogged through the woods, jostling Sam between the two of them.

"Alright, we're good here." Tom said as they found the well-worn dirt path. "Let's flag them down." The truck approached them, its beams blinding Tom and Ann, while Sam's head hung down.

The truck came to a skidding halt in from of them as they waved. Tom and Ann carried Sam around to the side of the truck and Tom started talking. "We need medical assistance," he said, patting Sam on the back as he tried to see the driver's face. "Can we get a ride to the nearest hospital?"

The barrel of a gun emerged from the cabin of the truck and with a flash of light, a bullet tore through Tom's head, and he fell away from Sam, who steadied himself against the car.

Ann jumped forward and pulled the slide back on the gun, even as the shadow in the truck turned it towards her. With the gun temporarily disabled, Ann twisted it to capture a hand. There was a feminine cry of pain from the truck.

Ann held the murderer's gun with her right hand, twisting her hand up and out of the way as Ann reached across her waist and drew her sidearm, her whole world focused on killing the bitch in the truck. Ann pulled the gun free from the tough fabric holster, that dragged across her smartgun with a ziiip.

Ann leveled the gun at the shadowy figure in the cab, her vision narrowed down to nothing but the silhouette. An animal snarl unconsciously rose from her throat as she pulled the trigger.

An impact numbed her wrist and sent the shot up through the roof of the cab. The gun slipped from Ann's hand, clattering into the dirt. Ann turned to the side and saw Sam leaning against the side of the truck. He had slammed a stun gun into the underside of her wrist.

"What the fuck are you doing, Sam?" Ann asked, her voice cold.

"Listen," Sam said. On the far side of the truck's cabin were the cries of a little girl. "We can't kill the girl's mother in front of her, we have to arrest her. The moment you took the gun away from her, it was no longer self-defence."

Sam looked into the truck's cab, and could faintly make out the woman sitting inside, staring at him. Blood rolled from her ears, and she watched the two of them with fear written across her face.

"I don't give a shit," Ann said, reaching for her knife. "I'm getting her back for Tom." Sam launched himself forward with one foot and tackled Ann to the ground, using his bulk to his advantage as he pressed the stun gun against her ribs.

Ann gave a cry of pain and writhed under the assault of electricity. Once Ann was limp, Sam added another shock to her nervous system that should keep her out for a few minutes, then he hoisted himself to a stand with on arm on the truck, and his wounded leg curled up underneath him.

Sam's gaze flickered over Tom's still corpse, and his stomach turned. Sam swallowed down the white hot anger that urged him to do the same as Ann, and addressed the truck, leveling his pistol at them.

"Ma'am, please step out of the vehicle," Sam said, his voice steely. "You're under arrest for the murder of a Human Resources Rapid Response Team member." The woman in the car stared at him with wide eyes for a moment then she glanced down at Ann, still incapacitated, before the truck roared to life.

" Shit," Sam said as the truck began to slide by. Sam fell forward and grabbed the side of the truck bed with his left hand. Sam was pulled along the dirt road as the truck gained velocity, jostling his injured leg.

"AAH!" Sam let out a cry of pain and effort as he tossed his gun into the truck bed and then pulled himself up and into the truck travelling down the bumpy road. Sam swung his unwounded leg up into the bed and pushed himelf the rest of the way in, rolling onto his back.

Sam located his gun and grabbed it, sliding up to the window of the truck. Sam knocked on the rear window of the truck with his pistol. "Pull over!' he shouted, making sure the woman in the cab saw him.

The truck slammed its breaks, and Sam's great bulk was slammed into the cab of the truck, knocking the wind out of him.

Then the truck's engine sputtered out, the driver having failed to shift it to neutral. "Fucking manuals!" Sam heard cursing coming from the cab, along with the young girl's whimpering.

Taking the chance, Sam swung out of the cab and hopped up to the door, opening it, and pulling the driver out, throwing her onto the dirt road with one hand. She looked about to scramble to her feet when Sam leveled his gun at her and switched on the recording device.

"Suspect is female, Caucasian, early twenties, minor gene cosmetics in the ears and eyes." Sam said dispassionately. "License and registration, please."

"You're kidding, right?" the woman said, coming to a stand.

"Are you saying you don't have one?" Sam asked. The woman crossed her arms.

"Alright then," Sam said, shifting his grip on his gun as he leaned on the truck. "I'm taking you to the nearest police station.

The woman tapped her finger on her arm, and Sam regarded his throbbing, splinted leg for a moment. "You're taking us to the nearest police station. Where is that?"

She pointed the direction the truck was facing. "There's a town that way," she said.

Sam nodded and began hopping around the front of the truck, never taking his eyes off the woman who'd shot Tom. Sam opened the passenger side door, and saw a little girl hiding in the footspace. Sam picked her up by her shirt and deposited the thrashing child on the passenger seat before jumping in himself, favoring his leg.

Sam gazed out the open door at the woman. "Ma'am, I suggest you come with me. My team member is going to wake up any minute now, and she's not the type you can stop with words.

She seemed to consider it for a moment, before she nodded and climbed into the car, watching Sam closely. With trembling hands, the woman turned the engine, and put the truck into gear. After a few false starts, the truck was once again cutting through the darkness.

Ann woke with a start, her ribs and neck aching where Sam had hit them with the stun gun. her knife lay beside her, half buride in dirt in the scuffle. "That fucker," Ann said, groaning with pain as she sat up. Tom's still corpse came into view, and it felt like her stomach fell out.

A stabbing sensation entered her heart, and Ann crawled toward Tom, resting her cheek on his chest as she cried. Why would Sam side with a killer over avenging Tom? Until now, through all sixteen generations, Tom had never died without her, and the loss was hollowing her out.

Ann found her pistol lying in the dirt, and contemplated it for a long time, her head resting against Tom's unbeating heart. Ann stood and retrieved her gun, idly wiping dust from its smooth metal surface. If she ended herself, would she wake up again to Tom's smiling face?

Ann considered the gun in her hands a moment longer, before she looked back to Tom, then back the way they had came. Ann holstered the pistol as a new idea took her. she could always get killed some other way, but right now she needed to know if it could be done.

Ann took Tom's grenades and ammunition, then pulled out her knife and set to work.

Chapter 4

The enormous human sat across from Faera on the bench seat, his eyes alert and watching her closely. He held the gun pointing away from her and Bee, resting his back against the door of the truck. Faera hadn't been able to tell because he had been slumped between his comrades, but he was massive, a solid four inches taller than his friends, who were themselves rather large, especially when compared to the average malnourished modern human.

Compared to that, the man across from her was a giant. He was folded as comfortably as he could have been , but the man's knees approached his chest to make room for Bee and Faera. He was broad, too. With one heavily muscled arm, he'd flung her from her seat in the car, and instead of just shooting her, he'd tried to read her her rights.

"You have the right to an attorney..." he'd begun as she had climbed back into the cab, astonishing Faera. The man truly believed he was some kind of twenty first century law enforcement. His monologue perfectly matched her memory of reruns of crime dramas from that age.

"Can I ask a question?" Faera asked.

"Apparently," the man with the gun said, glaring at her with his bright green eyes.

"Whats your jurisdiction?" Faera asked, deciding to take a careful approach." who do you work for?

"Rapid Response teams are under the command of the United States Government, dispatched to aid local police with special situations stemming from the Gates," he said. "And before you ask, yes, we have the power to make arrests."

Faera glanced at the human in the passenger seat. "How old are you?" she asked.

"I don't know," he replied.

"Where did you come from?" she said.

"That's classified," He said.

Faera sighed and rolled her eyes. "What's your name?"

"S four M," Sam said. "You can call me officer."

"Look," Faera said, "I'm sorry I... killed your friend. I thought you were trying to kill us."

"Doesn't change what you did," Sam said, watching the woman, studying her sharp ears and large blue eyes. The girl in the seat shared many of her features, so the likelihood was high that they were mother and daughter, conceived after the gene cosmetics were in place.

"I don't make the final decisions," Sam said. "I'm sure the judge will consider your extenuating circumstances."

The woman glanced at him for just a moment, her brows furrowed, before she turned her eyes back to the road. "I don't mean to alarm the guy with the gun," she said, turning around a pit in the dirt road. "But the world might be a lot different than you think it is."

"How so?" Sam asked.

"Let's just say that the united states didn't really survive past Twenty eighty-six," she said.

Sam sat silently and digested that. long minutes went by as the three of them travelled down the bumpy road. "It doesn't matter," Sam said his gaze fixed on her. "I'll turn you in to local law enforcement."

"Suit yourself," Faera said. They were driving toward the first bastion of Elvenkind, First Word. The idea of receiving any kind of punishment for killing a human on their land was laughable.

"What's your name?" Sam asked.

"Why, officer?" Faera asked.

"So that I know how to refer to you in my report," Sam said.

Faera broke out laughing, and both Bee and Sam watched her with concern. "Now I know you're not faking it," she said. "Only the real thing would do paperwork."

While Sam was processing her strange words, she spoke. "My name's Faera."

The woods parted before them, and the truck followed the road through the meadow until the headlights revealed a smooth stone wall that looked like poured concrete at first glance. A massive wooden gate was built into the wall, and Faera drove right up to it, and began honking.

A moment later, the gate swung open, revealing that the wall was at least twenty feet deep, and they pulled in as the gate closed behind them, leaving them sandwiched between the first and second gate.

A man stepped out of a wooden gatehouse against the wall and peered into the truck. Faera was about to open her mouth when Sam spoke. "Good evening, sir, could you bring a representative of local law enforcement? this women is a suspect under my custody."

The elf at the gate stopped with his eyes wide and his mouth open. He glanced at the big man's ears, his guns and clothes, and then at Faera. Faera nodded, and he ran off.

"That man had gene cosmetics for his ears too, didn't he," Sam said, wondering. "I can hardly believe we'd run into your brother at the gate."

Faera shook her head. "He's not my brother, and it's not gene cosmetics."

Sam glanced after the man who had only left at Feara's nod, who looked suspiciously like her. "You didn't bring me to some kind of cult did you?"

"What would you do if I had?" she asked, a brow arched. "Take me and the girl hostage?"

Sam bristled in his seat. "If they tried to attack me, I'd kill them."

Faera whistled. There were at least fifteen thousand people in First Word, and This S four M character looked like he thought he could take all of them.

"Tell you what," Faera said. "Since you didn't actually hurt anyone, I'll ask them not to kill you."

Sam shifted in his seat and leveled his gun at Faera. "What did you say?" he demanded. The tension hung between them like a palpable air, until Bee started crying.

"What's going on here?" an authoritative voice came from the gate, where a man wearing a badge of office stepped up to the car. "why the hell did I get woken up in the middle of the night by a panicky boy about a hum-" the man's voice stopped when he came along the passenger side window and caught sight of Sam.

Sam cautiously stepped out of the truck, balancing on his good leg, even as his world spun slightly. "Sir," he said, "I've arrested a woman for the murder of my partner and attempted escape. I'm aware that this may be outside my jurisdiction, and intend to seek justice by cooperating with local law enforcement."

The man with pointing ears that held a man of hair in check sized up Sam, his eyes taking in all the details. "Did she do that?" he asked, pointing at Sam's splinted leg.

"No sir," Sam said. "That was a giant ant. She shot and killed my subordinate before we were able to take her gun from her."

"We, are you saying there are more of you?" the pointy eared man asked, the light of the floodlights above them brightening his dark brown leather vest.

"Yes sir, one more," Sam said. "However she was left in a violent state of mind after the loss of her partner, so I'd like to pick her up in person tomorrow after she's had time to cool down." The man thumbed his chin for a moment.

"Alright, I can tell you aren't lying," the man said. "Alpha, Juno, take her to the jail and get her story. Find a place to house the girl, as well."

Faera's grin died when two soldiers stepped out and pulled her from the car, carrying her by the arms toward the gate. "Wait, I'm a scout!" she said. "I've got a message for the city! I have to speak to the Mayor!" Faera's shouts died down as she was taken beyond the gate.

"As for you," the sheriff addressed Sam, who watched Faera with confusion. What did she mean by being a scout with a message? She never said anything like that to Sam.

"You look like you could use some rest," the sheriff said, raising his hand. "Why don't you get some sleep?"

The last thing Sam remembered was telling the man that he could keep going long enough to reach a bed. After that, he drew a blank.

Faera was escorted down the hall to the Mayor's office. "Sorry about that, Faera," Gunderson, the mayor said. "I felt as if it would be the best way to keep him calm. Care to explain what you were doing in Derrick Fall's truck, with his daughter and an improbably well-armed human?"

Faera took a deep breath, her nose taking in the scent of books and stationary, mixed with the rich wood from the furniture, and she began telling her story. The mayor's eyes narrowed with suspicion as she described the attack.

"So you're telling me the humans reinvented artillery and jeeps, but not guns?" he asked, a sneer on his face.

"Yes sir," Faera said, "In addition the village of Gentle Night is all dead. You can ask the little girl about that." Faera could tell that the mayor wasn't taking the news well, but she had no choice but to tell the truth.

"And the human you brought with you, with the smartgun and the implant in his brain, what was his role in all this?"

Faera shrugged. "Pretty much what he said," she said. "A team of three relics from before the fall of man walked out onto the road, and I shot one of them."

"Without determining whether they were hostile?" The mayor asked.

"They were human," Faera said. "Who wouldn't have believed them to be hostile?"

The mayor rubbed his head. "You know what my problem is?" He asked, eyeing her. "My problem is when people come to me with such obvious bullshit stories, but just enough evidence to pressure me to launch an investigation, wasting time and money."

"East Mountain is under siege!" Faera said, leaning forward. "The humans were well armed and organized. They only have enough food to last a week in the shelter, and the humans are probably peeling that steel door off its hinges as we speak! We need reinforcements now!"

"Well let me just pull those out of my ass," The mayor responded bitingly. "I'll tell you what we're going to do. We're going to send a team to check out your story about Gentle Nights, and if you're telling the truth, we'll send a squad with small arms to mop up your... human problem."

"That's not enough!" Faera shouted. " there were hundreds of them, they have fucking Jeeps!"

"I find myself doubtful," the mayor said, folding his hands. "humans have been throwing sticks until about fifty years ago, by the reports. Are you sure you didn't just see catapults and wagons?"

"YES!" Faera shouted.

The mayor rolled his eyes. "Escort miss Faera out. There's room for her in the local jail until we get this mess sorted out. I'm going back to sleep."

Strong hands grasped Faera by the arms and began pulling her down the hall, kicking and screaming.

Sam opened his eyes and found himself on a cot. Sam's first thought was of Tom, and a wave of nausea swept over him. Had he been doing the right thing, not killing her, or had he simply been following his programming? It had been so difficult not to riddle her with bullets when his anger had made it feel like the right thing to do.

Had her daughter not been there, Sam was pretty sure he wouldn't have stopped Ann. Sam glanced around the room and got his bearings. He was in a cage of iron bars set into the ceiling. The rear wall looked like drywall painted a boring light puke green.

Sam swung his feet out of the bed, assessing the situation. His room was joined at the walls by two other holding cells, and three more across the hall. In the cell across the hall, he spotted Faera, desperately sawing at the bars.

"Good morning," Sam said, coming to a stand, leaning against the bars. He tapped his left foot against the floor and felt no pain. it seems as though they had fixed his leg, which was a good sign. Waking up in some kind of holding cell, however, was not.

"It's afternoon," Faera muttered, not taking her focus away from where she sawed at the bar.

"And what are you doing?" Sam asked.

"Escaping, obviously," she replied.

"Good luck with that," Sam closed his eyes and took a deep breath, put his hand on the cell door and pushed. The iron barred door swung free, and Sam walked out into the hall. Faera watched him, her jaw gaping as he began walking toward the office.

"Wait," Faera called, but Sam kept walking, ignoring her pleas.

"Guess this was the only place that had a free bed," Sam mused to himself as he walked down the hall. "Must not have a hospital." Still, Sam thought as he glanced down at his whole leg, for not having a hospital, they did a damn good job.

The team had gotten broken bones time and again, both before and after the technicians disappeared, and once they were gone, healing took months for the bigger bones. Sam kneeled down, and rolled up his pantleg, and spotted a pale pink scar across his calf where the ant had grabbed his leg.

It seemed like these people at least had some technicians on staff. Sam stood and rolled his foot, feeling a little stiffness, before he continued on his way.

He stopped at an iron gate providing one extra layer of security between the jail and the office. A rough looking man with pointed ears stepped in front of the gate. He looked about fifty pounds lighter than Sam, and he glared up at him with a steely gaze.

"Step back," he said in a hoarse voice.

Sam stepped back. With a clunk, the iron gate swung inward, nearly brushing his nose. The heavily muscled man limped to his desk and sat down, grabbing a card off the table and reading it.

"Says here," he said, reading through the card. "That your weapons are no longer legal for law enforcement, and so you'll be provided with new gear at no expense, assuming you still want to do police work."

Sam twitched, a little uncomfortable at losing his guns, but calmed quickly after imagining a less-than lethal alternative with the same stopping power. "I was made for it," Sam said, standing straight.

"So I've heard," the man behind the desk said drily, "You're going to need to read this." he pulled out a heavy tome and dropped it on the desk. "It's a primer on the law, required reading."

Sam nodded and picked up the book, then paused. "Does the united states exist?" he asked.

"Nope," the man said, waving Sam away. "You want a history lesson, visit the library. Your exit's that door there, it'll be a long tunnel, and a guy will have your gear at the end."

Sam nodded and tucked the book under his arm, heading out the door the man had pointed to. There was a two hundred yard tunnel leading to the exit. At the gate stood a slender man with a table in front of him. Beyond him was an iron gate with nearly blinding sunlight behind it.

On the desk was a collection of long steel and wood objects. "What, umm," Sam said, turning one of them over in his hand. The thing looked like a ridiculously oversized knife. "What is this?"

"your weapons," the slender man said cheerily.

"But what is this?" Sam asked, pointing to the rusty blade.

"Umm..." the man said, tilting his head in confusion. "A longsword?" Sam pointed to the next one. "Oh, that's a mace, and a glaive, Morningstar, shield..." the man continued pointing out weapons, but Sam tuned his voice out as his stomach sank. He couldn't imagine these to be nonlethal, not to mention they were nowhere near as good as his guns.

Matter of fact, most of them were rusted. Sam reached out and took a steel ball attached to a long wooden handle. The entire thing was about six feet long, putting it at about chin level with Sam. It, from among the weapons on the table looked like it could be used to subdue people as it had no blades or points.

"Good choice," the man said, ducking beneath the table. "Your body armor is here." He opened a wooden chest beneath the table and came back up with Sam's bulletproof vest.

Sam shrugged into the vest, then regarded the man at the table. "Do you have any communication devices? Two way radios?" he asked. The man shook his head.

Sam sighed. It looked like there was no helping it. He'd just have to make the best of the situation. Being above ground was already a dream fulfilled, talking to people other than Tom and Ann tingled his every nerve with excitement.

Thinking of Tom brought his mood down again. The perpetrator was in jail now, but he still felt like garbage for convincing Tom to follow him up. Sam blew the feeling away with a breath and squared his shoulders. He just needed work to keep him busy until he could process Tom's death.

Unless Ann tried to get him back. Sam cocked his head to the side in thought. What was the range on the transmitters on the chips in their brains?

Sam began to brighten. Maybe he and Ann could exterminate the Ant colony with some heavier than air poison or possibly even go back into the facility from the ground level entrance. It was food for thought, but Sam got the feeling he would see Tom again.

Sam lowered the iron ball to the ground, using the heavy weapon as a walking stick. "Okay then, I'll be good with this. Can you tell me the way to the sheriff's office? I have to retrieve a friend of mine from the woods.

"Umm...." The man at the gate shifted in his seat. "Just, um, take a left after you get out of the gate and look for the sign."

"Thanks," Sam said.

The man nodded and heaved on a lever, opening the gate with a rattle.

Sam walked out onto the sandy street, squinting against the bright light after the dim gatehouse, and heard the murmur of the crowd.

The sound of people intensified as Sam stepped out into the glaring light. A slam resounded behind him, and the gate was closed. Sam's eyes adjusted and he found himself not standing on a sandy street, but on the edge of a massive circle of sand, surrounded by fifteen foot walls that gave way to row after row of stone steps, with thousands of people seated on them. Every eye in the stands was turned on him.

This can't be good. Sam thought. A man's voice rang out, somehow overpowering the entire assembled crowd.

"Now presenting, for your entertainment, the scourge of yesteryear," The voice boomed above the crowd. "The face of fear for so many of us, A monster in the skin of a man, programmed to kill without remorse. Mothers, if your children shy at the sight of blood, cover their eyes! For we have to fight in the colosseum today, a commanding officer of the Rapid Response Teams!"

"Goddamnit," Sam said, quoting the technician's curses as he tossed the law book aside into the sand.

A massive image sprung up in the center of the colosseum, showing an unmistakable figure rounding up and executing people with pointed ears. The video was paused just as the man glanced at the camera, and sure enough, Sam's face was glaring back at him. A wave of jeering boos washed over Sam.

"Goddamnit!" Sam shouted, his voice lost in the ocean of jeers. Sam swung the mace onto his shoulder, testing the heft of the weapon. It wasn't his fucking fault they downloaded his brain into hundreds of clones and then... ordered him to kill these people... was it?

"This monster deserves no easy death," the voice continued. "And while it would be a simple matter to unleash a demon to tear this S four M unit asunder, it would simply be over too quick, without impressing upon the young ones what a threat it truly was."

The voice took a long pause, and Sam spotted the announcer on a special box on the upper stands, with a thin black stand in front of him. "No, dear viewers, we are going to start small," The man, dressed in gaudy, eye-catching robes spoke. "We are going to make a week of it, and see where this monster stands among others of its kind!" The orator held his hands up for applause, then lowered them slowly. "Worry not, if this... thing fails to last until the finale, our good master Theold will battle the final beast for your pleasure. It's sure to be a show!"

At Theold's name, a cheer rang out through the crowd.

"Starting to think Ann had the right idea," Sam said, scowling.

"Well then, there's only one thing to introduce," The orator spoke. "And that is our heinous monster's first trial!" The gate across the arena from Sam began to rattle open.

Sam started to run, sprinting at full speed toward the dramatically slow gate.

"Bred in the swamps around the Gate of Entropy," The orator spoke, his head tilted back and eyes closed. When he opened his eyes again and spotted Sam almost to the opposite gate, he stumbled over his words. "This beast will... Eh?"

Sam leapt under the gate and slammed the mace down on the chitinous horror, it had pincers that looked as though they could sever bone with ease, and mandibles covering a gaping maw that appeared to have its own fingers.

Unfortunately for the monster, its handlers had yet to free it from its restraints, and Sam's repeated bashes crushed whatever passed for a nerve center, and the creature slumped to the ground.

"And, umm, that's why the S4M model was so feared, ladies and gentlemen, it matched intellect with unbridaled bloodlust... it's a shame we weren't able to see. Can we get security to the monster pen, please?"

One of the handlers went for his gun and Sam smote him with the mace, slamming him against the wall before he collapsed silently. The other took one look at Sam and ran out into the Arena, covered in the blood of the monster.

Gasps of horror filled the stadium as the bloodsoaked man tripped and fell in the center of the arena in apparent gruesome death. Sam leaned down and tested the collapsed man's pulse before he snagged the gun that had clattered to the floor.

The gun was a simple six shot revolver, but it was certainly better than nothing. Sam hefted the mace again, deciding to keep it. Sam glanced up, and saw that the route the monster had come from was gated off by thick iron bars.

Whistling, Sam strode up to the thick bars and hefted the mace. With one powerful swing he bent one bar to the left, and with a second swing he bent another to the left, allowing him to slide through.

As Sam strolled through the tunnel, three guards jumped out into the tunnel, and so Sam shot them in the stomach. Sam stepped out of the way long enough for them to realize they'd been shot, before continuing on his way past the three men shaking in shock.

"As long as you get medical attention immediately, you should live," Sam said, clapping one trembling man on the shoulder as he took their guns. Luckily the coliseum issued the same arms to their staff, and so Sam was left with two guns and twenty one bullets.

Sam tucked the second pistol away in his vest and continued down the hall with his trusty iron-topped stick. Sam had to admit that it had worked nicely. At the end of the hall, sam entered an enormous room filled with cages on wheels.

Howls of rage and rattling sounded as he entered the room, and Sam's eyes widened. Giant snakes, lizards, insects, and many more he couldn't recognize. One particular monster caught his attention, a creature shaped like a braine with short stubby legs and long, fanged tentacles.

All told the thing was about the size of a horse. Sam came to stand in front of it. it was disgusting, really, the entire creature was dripping mucus, and whatever passed for its mouth flapped open and closed as it breathed noisily.

Sam put one foot on the lip of the cage and stepped up. The slowly undulating tentacles struck like snakes, wrapping themselves around Sam's arms. Sam's head started to go foggy.

The loosely flapping mouth peeled away, revealing rows of serrated teeth. A jolt of fear ran through Sam and he squeezed the trigger of the gun reflexively as the fangs of the tentacles bit down into his arms.

The monster shrieked, and began pulling Sam in as the fog in his head cleared. Sam tilted the barrel of the gun down and unloaded the rest of the bullets straight into the pulsating brain, the Tentacles began to whip around frantically, and Sam was spat from the cage like a fruit pit.

Sam sat up, groaning, his arms bleeding from the shallow wounds on his arm. Sam took another look at the brain-thing, but looked away when he felt himself wanting to approach it again.

"You're lucky, human." Came a bass rumble from Sam's left.

Sam glanced to the side and spotted a towering man with a horned wolf's head. He stood nine feet tall, dwarfing Sam by comparison. His upper body was covered in grey fur, and his lower body was naked, with powerful muscles the size of Sam's entire arm corded all through his body.

"And you are?" Sam asked.

"A fragment of the Devouring Beast, Kein'Maddal," the monster said, throwing its shoulders back.

"Cool," Sam said with a shrug, turning to continue toward the exit.

A roar filled the room, rattling Sam's breastbone. "I can forgive your ignorance, mortal, but do not slight me by turning your back."

"And?" Sam asked, turning back to face the monster.

"I am being held by these lesser beings for their entertainment," it said. "I find the situation unacceptable. Free me, and I will aide thine escape from this place.

"It says on this sign in front of your cage not to accept any deals from you, not to say your name three times, or break the iron circle built into your cage," Sam said, catching a glimpse of the iron circle it stood inside.

"Of course they wouldn't want me out, It's not in their interest," The demon said. "But that sign doesn't apply to you, does it?" It stomped agitatedly, pacing in its tiny cell.

"Says here that you tore the last guy who opened your cage to bloody pieces." Sam said.

"Lies!" roared the demon.

"Well, I'm not one to gamble with those kind of odds," Sam said, turning away. "Good luck fighting the old guy.

"It's Theold," came a commanding voice from the opposite end of the room. The assembled monsters fell silent in a wave that pushed out from the man with the salt and pepper hair. He wore a simple red robe that fluttered as though it were in a light breeze, six inches above the floor.

He was tall, almost as tall as Sam, and his ears were distinctly pointed.

"I've been wondering," Sam said, pointing at Theold. "Do all people have pointy ears nowadays?"

Theold squinted, regarding Sam with a penetrating stare. "You really don't know what's going on, do you?" he asked, raising his chin.

"Not really," Sam said with a shrug.

"I was hunted by one of you once, you know," the man said, placing a hand on his chest. He pulled aside the collar of his shirt, revealing a puckered bullet wound below his breastbone, near the heart. "Five hundred and thirty five years ago."

Sam whistled. "Damn," he said with a shrug.

The man's gnarled hands released his shirt and he regarded Sam. "You're a little different from the ones I've met before. It's a shame to kill one that feels as clean as you. Perhaps you haven't been given any additional programming. Factory settings, as it were."

"I'm still trying to get my head around the fact that I apparently both never left the facility and at the same time committed genocide," Sam said. "And that you're over five hundred years old. That I'm five hundred years old. It's a lot to take in."

"Indeed," the man said. The sound of footsteps approached. "The time for talk grows short."

"Yup," Sam agreed, dropping the spent revolver and drawing the spare.

"Sleep," Theold said, with a wave of his hand.

Sam toppled to the floor.

Chapter 5

Faera impatiently sawed at the iron bars, cursing her inability to will them apart when she heard a dozen footsteps approaching in the distance. Faera sprang back onto her cot, concealing the file in her hair.

Five men supporting the clone's bulk walked down the hall, the mayor following close behind. the guards opened a cell door and threw him in the direction of the cot.

Mayor Kine stopped in front of Faera's cell, reaching his hand into his pocket and retrieving the keys. Kine had bags under his eyes as he swung the door open, moving like a tortoise.

" Come with me," he said, his voice quiet. "Gentle Nights checks out, so we're sending you back to East Mountain with a squad."

"That's not enough," Faera hissed "The humans hav-" Faera was stunned as the exhausted looking mayor lunged forward to clap a hand over her mouth. He glanced at the guards who were strolling back out the jail, relaxing after they were gone.

"That information could cause a panic, Scout," he said, referring to her by her title. "The city council was unwilling to sign off on funding anything more than one squad, so I pulled some strings and made sure it was composed of veterans. I interviewed them, and these soldiers are taking your warning very seriously, if not the city council."

"I asked around and two more squads of veterans are going to be taking paid vacation... In East mountain. To, and I quote, 'hunt the most dangerous game.'" Mayor Kine said.

Faera blinked. "Wow, that's actually almost enough." Upwards of twenty people with assault rifles wouldn't be able to wipe out the hundreds she saw piling out of those cars, but they would probably be able to make them hurt enough to drive them away.

"I busted my ass on this one, Scout," Mayor Kine said, leaning close. "Those men have instructions to beat the shit out of you if this is a hoax."

"Not a hoax," Faera said, shaking Kine's hand. "And I appreciate your effort, sir."

"You better," Kine muttered, turning away. "Follow me."

Faera followed behind Mayor Kine, sparing one backward glance at the man sprawled across his cot.

"What's gonna happen to him?" Faera asked as they exited the security gate.

Kine glanced over his shoulder. "They're gonna make an example of him," he said. "I argued that were he programmed to kill, he would have done it already, but the council's composed of old codgers with PTSD. One of them actually climbed under his desk and started hyperventilating when we showed them pictures. The rest weren't much better."

"Wow," Faera said. "Guess I got lucky."

"You surely did." Kine said, guiding her to the street.

"That's a bummer," Faera said, turning left toward the city gate. "He seemed like he wanted to help people."

Sam lay in the bed with his eyes closed, breathing slowly. He had woken mid-carry, but felt the hands of at least four men at all times, and chose to bide his time. Like this, he had overheard an interesting conversation that gave him a lot to think about.

First, there was some kind of military activity happening in East Mountain, second, it was caused by humans, and the third point that could be gleaned from this was that these people weren't human. Sam put his hands behind his head and mused. How then, would he get out, and which side would he choose?

Sam knew his own face well, having seen it every morning in the bathroom's cracked mirror. Sam could tell that the man who had executed those pointy eared people was in pain. Siding with the humans would be safe, but he would wind up becoming exactly what they had accused him of being.

On the other hand, there was no way to live in peace with the non-humans, because he apparently stood for something they reviled. Sam tapped his foot against the air, replaying one of the songs in the Rec Room jukebox.

For now, he would have to escape and witness more of the world with his own eyes before he made a decision.

"You other brothers can't deny..." Sam said aloud, tapping his foot.

Faera came to the city gate, the evening sun beginning to set. It had already been twenty four hours since the attack on East mountain, and her heart hammered with the anxiety.

At the gate was a military truck, outfitted with armor and space for six soldiers. Beside it was Daniel Fall's truck, loaded with three men in the cab and five in the bed. A third private truck held another six.

"Here's your team," Mayor Kine said, Indicating the squad in the military truck. "You'll be along as a guide, Captain Maillard will be in command, and the rest of his platoon," Kine motioned to the two civilian trucks loaded with soldiers "Will be joining for R&R."

"Right," Faera said as the captain stepped forward. The man showed the first signs of aging, meaning he was most likely nearing his six hundredth year of life. He'd probably been born on the other side of The Gate. He held out a hand and clasped Faera's with a warm grip.

"Name's Captain Maillard Scout, If you'll pardon my brevity, get your ass on the truck, East mountain doesn't have all week." The captain pointed at the least full truck with his thumb.

"Yes sir," Faera said, scrambling up into the truck. She was pleased to find her weapons in the bed, and she began strapping her holster on as the truck rumbled to life. The grim-faced elves around her were armed to the teeth, and they sat upon ammos cases as long as she was tall.

One of the elves riding with her pointed out which were which, and Faera took two extra clips for her sidearm and rifle, slipping them into slots on her holster.

All told, this was going about as well as could be expected.

The drive back to East mountain was a two hour one, bypassing Gentle nights, and following the road that Faera had avoided for fear of Humans running her down in bulletproof Jeeps.

Once they crossed the bridge, and East mountain was twenty minutes away on foot, they pulled off to the side, and the captain addressed them. "Alright, listen up, the report from the scout here was that the humans softened up East mountain with artillery, then blitzed them with jeeps carrying several hundred swordsmen. The men and women of Eat mountain fell back to the emergency shelter and sealed themselves in."

"That was," The captain said, checking his watch. "Twenty eight hours ago." His gaze scanned across the assembled soldiers. "We're going to return the favor. Holdan, I want you to take your squad to the edge of the forest and disable any artillery you find, the last thing I want is to get shelled like a dumbass. If you run into something unexpected, launch a red flare and retreat."

"The rest of you are going to follow our guide here to a good vantage point, then we're going to have some target practice. According to the report, there's a good chance that there's kidnapped elves among them, so take good aim, and no grenades unless I say so."

The soldier called the affirmative, and Captain Maillard met her eye. "Get moving," he said.

Faera broke into a jog, and the captain and two squads followed her, while Holdan's broke away to the east, where she had last seen the artillery.

Faera approached the last hill overlooking the base, and motioned for the rest of the soldiers to crouch. Faera shimmied to the top of the ridge, and gazed down at the base.

The empty, burned husk of the base stared back at her. the shattered walls and watchtowers had been set aflame, and the massive steel plate that protected the emergency shelter from dragons had been peeled away like the lid of a tin can.

The Jeeps and soldiers that had swarmed the area the day before were long gone. the last line of defense hadn't even held a single day. Faera's fists tightened, sending twinging pain up her forearms. She motioned the captain up, and he surveyed the wreckage of the base with a grim expression.

After a few minutes observing the smouldering wreckage, the captain stood. "Miss Scout, come with me," he said, passing his gaze over them. " Tennins, stay here and provide cover in case something unexpected happens. Everyone else is coming with me to look for survivors."

Faera set off down the hill, without waiting for the others to stand, letting gravity assist in her flight down the side of the mountain. jumping over roots, Faera's feet only seemed to touch the ground in fits and bursts as she flew through the trees.

Finally, Faera passed entered the open area that had been cut out of the surrounding woods. A single road led through the center of the woods, leading to the elven base buried in the side of the mountain.

Faera smelled the smoke of the burning base as she ran up the path, jumping over a pile of smouldering logs that used to be the wall. Faera scanned left and right, seeing nothing alive in the main yard. houses for the soldiers spouses and support staff lay in ruins, collapsed as though they had been flattened by the hammer of an immense giant.

"Hello!" she called out. "Is anyone still alive here?" Silence was her only answer. Around her, she saw the corpses of humans, surrounded by flies. Each of them had been stripped of all their valuables, and left to rot, naked in the dirt.

There were no dead elves, though. Heart hammering, Faera rushed to the Emergency Shelter, jumping over the peeled open steel door. inside there was a destroyed barricade. Faint brown stains on the walls and floor showed where blood had been spilled. A single long stain covered the center of the entire hall, where each and every elf living here had been dragged out through the blood, alive or dead.

Faera shivered as he blood ran cold. Why the hell did they go through so much effort just to kill elves? As far as Faera knew, there were no people besides the oldest elves who could remember a time before they resided on Earth. So the humans had simply passed learned hate from one generation to the next.

That still didn't explain the Jeeps and the artillery. Faera walked deeper into the Emergency shelter, and found beds overturned, and failed barricades knocked aside. She came to the communications room and saw that someone had taken a sword to the radio. Faera moved on, turning deeper into the Emergency shelter until she came to the Common Room.

The furniture had all been moved to create barricades near the entrance, and at the center of the room, every firearm of the base had been piled on top of every book they owned and lit on fire.

Written in flaking brown blood, the word 'blasphemy' dominated the room as it sat directly in front of the scorched, useless guns that lay on the powdery ashes of the base's accumulated knowledge. Faera felt something dark growing, as if the hunts of her kind had manifested some dark, physical form and stood right in front of her.

The muscles in Faera's jaw tightened as she looked at the offhand desecration, the tendon's in her hands straining as she made fists.

"I'm sorry," Captain Maillard said, approaching from behind her. She must have been standing there for longer than she thought, because Maillard was telling her that they hadn't found any survivors.

Faera wiped her cheeks and regarded the Captain. "Thank you," she said quietly. "For coming."

"Just wish I could have been here to lend a hand," he said.

"You and me both," Faera said, nearly sobbing.

"When we report this, they're going to have to take this seriously," he said, "Between this and Gentle Nights, we've got to get off our asses."

"What are you going to do now?" The captain asked.

"I'm going to follow the trail the artillery carved into the ground and kill as many of them as I can," Faera said, her eyes narrowed. "Maybe I'll even save some of my friends in the process." Faera thought back to the living elves that were being loaded into the cages. If she were fast enough, she could save a few of them.

"Come back with us," Captain Maillard said. "If you run after them half-cocked, you're just going to end up dead. Take a few days to calm down, make a plan, and get supplies."

Faera glanced back at the captain, and saw the pain in his eyes.

"Did this happen to you?" Faera asked.

The captain nodded. "my son had a homestead to the south," he said.

Faera nodded, not needing to hear any more. She turned and walked back out of her former home, her anger smouldering in her chest.

The ride back to First word was a silent one. All the optimism and nerves mixed with bloodlust was washed away, replaced with sullen anger, disappointment, and fatigue. Faera sat among them, her rifle leaning over her shoulder as he mind wandered.

How was she going to get her people back. Faera knew that a large portion of them were still alive, and best case, would be sold as slaves.

Worst case, they were being kept alive to keep their 'ingredients' as fresh as possible so that these short-lived savaged could try to gain their powers by eating them, or mixing their blood with mercury and drinking it, or some other stupid shit.

When the humans from the twenty first century still been around, they had done the exact same thing, albeit with more care and precision. Sequencing the elven genome and trying to isolate what made them so long-lived, and uniquely gifted at manipulating the energy that seeped through the Gates.

Eventually, in their envy and frustration, they had tried to exterminate them. Even then the quest to unlock their secrets had never halted, simply devolved to the modern notion that drinking elven blood gave one long live and virility.

Faera rolled her eyes. If there ever was a stupider reason for genocide, it was those carried out for aphrodisiacs. Rhinos, elves, and myriad other creatures, killed to make their dicks hard.

Faera followed the rest of the troops into the base, and was debriefed with the rest of them. the Mayor and the council kept trying to insinuate that the deep grooves left behind by the artillery had been something else, wagons, for example.

They dismissed offhand Faera's report of Jeeps, and without eyewitness accounts from the soldiers with her, they assumed them to be a fabrication to convince them to take the matter more seriously.

Then they condescendingly told Faera that of course they were taking it seriously, and that no one was more concerned about the threat than they were. Faera jumped over her desk, over the bar full of Elders and punched the bastard in the face. That was Faera's last day in the service.

The charges were dismissed in light of Faera's circumstances, and she was washed out less than a week later.

Faera woke up the next morning, and rolled her shoulders, stretching out a muscle she'd strained in the attack on the council member the day before. She had been fortunate that the damage inflicted had been slight, otherwise she might have found herself in jail.

As Faera's thoughts turned to jail, she recalled the human who'd been in jail with her. apparently the man had been some kind of war criminal, and so he had been sentenced to death by arena participation.

Faera stood and went to the sink, brushing her teeth in front of the mirror. As she did so, she could hear the cheer of the crowd from the arena. The hotel she was currently staying in rested in the shadow of the massive piece of architecture.

It was a barbaric custom, one carried over from their previous world. participation was more or less voluntary nowadays, with the advance of technology.

A rousing cry made Faera turn her head to look at the coliseum out the window, out of the corner of her eye, she saw the reflection of her pointed ears. If it weren't for those, she'd look pretty damn human.

Curious, Faera put her finger across her ear, imagining it stopping there. It truly did look like a human ear, if only is stopped there. Suddenly, Faera was struck by an idea.

She knew how she was going to find her friends and family that had been taken. Faera threw her clothes on, dropping the brush in the sink, and went out onto the street, looking for a place to buy some scissors.

Faera sprinted downstairs, tossing a few bits at the guy behind the desk.

After a quick afternoon shopping, and consulting with some body modification specialists, she found herself sitting in a chair with her ears marked with a grease pen.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" the tattooed elf asked, a scalpel in one hand and a cube of ice in the other, pressed against her ear. "there's not a whole lot of coming back from this. It might even get you shot on sight."

"Not where I'm going," Faera said.

The tattooed elf shrugged and then flicked her ear with a finger. "Can you feel that?" he asked.

Faera shook her head.

"okay," the elf sighed, brandishing the scalpel. "Here... we... go."

Chapter 6

In the days since his first attempt, Sam had been foiled two more times before they simply put him under constant guard, with two elves watching him twenty four hours a day. At least, when they weren't making him fight in the arena.

Sam was laying in his cot with his head propped up by the brick wall, reading the elves book of Law, tapping his feet against the bars of his cell as he did.

The door swept open, and Sam's two guards started, coming to stand straight. The first guard was a slender woman named Hera, who worked in her sister's bakery after hours, and the second was Thomas, a veteran of the Division war, who collected memerobilia across hundreds of years.

Thomas and Hera stood away from their card game, turning pale as their superior's gaze passed over the damning evidence. The table they played upon was pressed against the bars of the cell, with a stool in Sam's cell completing the setup.

The heavyset elf took all this in with a scowl, then his gaze snapped to Sam. "You're on," he said.

"I've been reading this book you gave me," Sam said, holding his place with his index finger. "And I invoke a Citizen's right to choose whether or not to fight in the arena."

"That's just stupid," the elf said, his scowl deepening. "You're not a Citizen."

"I was here when this country was founded, ergo, I am a Citizen," Sam said leaning against the bars.

"Only elves can be citizens, numbnuts," the heavyset elf said, his complexion reddening.

"Not true," Sam said, flipping the book open. "And I quote. Any person within the border of the nation at the time of its founding, and anyone born within those borders thereafter is a Citizen of the last stronghold of humans and elves, Metade."

Sam leaned against the bars of the cell. "The last stronghold of humans and elves," he repeated, musing. "Sounds pretty clear to me."

"I don't have all day to argue minutia," the overseer of the arena said, drawing his gun. "Now you're going to go out there, and you're going to fight, or die. I don't really care which." The overseer's arm twitched, and he motioned for Sam to move.

"It was worth a shot," Sam said with a sigh and tossed the book down onto the cot. Sam only had one day left until the end of the festival, where he was scheduled to die fighting a demon.

Demons, from what Sam had been able to gather, were impossible to kill by mortal means, which basically meant an execution. Sam stepped out of the cage, and walked in front of the overseer, down the path he knew well by now.

"So what's on the menu today?" Sam asked, looking at the assembled weapons as the gate closed behind him. The overseer stood behind it, still watching Sam with a steely gaze.

The young man behind the counter flinched away from Sam and held out a boiled leather cuirass. "Since you used the radio in your vest to contact Town Hall and tried to become a landowner, we have to issue your armor."

That wasn't all Sam had done, but there was no sense telling the young man that. Sam's recent escape attempts had been less violent in nature than his first, as Sam was determined to change the elves opinion of him. It didn't help that they put him into a situation where he had to kill in front of an audience every day.

"It's fine," Sam said, rapping his knuckles against the leather. It was hard and rough, not even dimpling under Sam's weight. "It wouldn't stop bullets, but thankfully that isn't going to be an issue."

The boy smiled nervously, his gaze shifting to the overseer, who still had his gun leveled at Sam. Sam shrugged into the stiff armor, and regarded his selection. Once again, the table was covered with weapons and this time Sam was aware they were meant to be lethal.

Sam grabbed a short sword and sheath combo, strapping them on, picked up two thin knives and slid them into his leather boots. Finally Sam grabbed the newly fixed Old Faithful, the dented iron ball on the end of a replacement steel shaft.

The overseer gave a nod to the men manning the gate, and the gate in front of Sam began to grind open.

Sam stepped out into the Arena, his eyes quickly adjusting to the brightness of the open-air stadium. "Okay," he said, hefting his mace as he studied the environment that had been raised out of the arena floor. Great slabs of stone formed walls and corners, providing a smattering of cover throughout the arena.

The gate on the far side of the arena was concealed behind a wall of granite but the creatures had most likely already been released. Ever since the first match, the people in charge had made sure he hadn't had another chance to blitz his opponent.

"Now, the scourge of the ancient world has been released on the unsuspecting villagers! Watch and be terrified at the efficacy of this abomination's slaughter!"

Sam cocked his head to the side at the 'Unsuspecting villagers' comment. They weren't actually going to send unsuspecting villagers into the arena, so what was the game?

Sam spotted a pair of beady eyes staring at him from above one of the walls. One of the eight foot stone walls. A deep, resonating howl of rage swept through the arena, spreading as more and more voices took up the call.

"Seems like the villagers have caught the scourge red handed in the middle of its deadly assault!" the announcer elf crowed, his voice echoing through the stands. "Perhaps these innocent sheep can fend off the wolf.

A moment later, one of the 'innocent sheep' stepped around the wall, and Sam forgot to breathe for a moment.

A man, nine feet tall and ugly , with a heavy-boned face and a massive frame, loped into view. The most startling thing was the heavy makeup applied to the thing's face and the points crudely stapled to their ears.

The audience roared with laughter as the ogre halfheartedly dressed as an elf came into full view. The beast showed no sign of paying attention to the staples in its ears, or the paint running beneath its weeping nose and drooling lips.

Its focus was entirely on Sam. With a bass rumble, the ogre started sprinting toward Sam, its bone club probably made from the femur of a cow or some other large animal, whistled through the air as it approached.

Sam dove under the feral swing and started running, seeking cover behind the stone walls.

"Audience members who are unable to see behind the wall may watch the screen for a close-up of the action," The announcer said. "It seems as though, after seeing the boy raise the alarm, the scourge decided to go straight for the heart of the village in an attempt to catch them off guard!"

Sam stopped and changed directions, taking a hard left and putting some stone walls between himself and the drooling 'young boy'.

"Oh, the scourge has turned away from the villagers who are actively seeking him, and has decided to circle around the poor young boy," the announcer said as Sam crouched between two walls and took another left.

"There's a villager waiting for the scourge, ladies and gentlemen, we may see the end here," the announcer said as Sam came to the end of a hallway created by two massive stone walls. Sam slipped a knife out of his boot and threw it up and over the wall, clattering against the stone.

A roar sounded behind the wall, and the earth shook. Sam ducked out and saw the ogre with its back turned, its club buried in the sand of the arena. Sam heaved the long handled mace up, and down, crushing the massive beast's thick skull.

The faux elf slumped to the ground, to a jeering cry from the audience.

"The Scourge has some damn good instincts, I'd say," The announcer said, rubbing his chin.

Sam rolled his eyes and pointed to the glowing orb that was tracking his every movement and then to his ears. "You know I can speak English, right?" Sam asked.

"Oh, it appears as though The Scourge can recognized the speech patterns of higher life forms, and somewhat infer their intent from tone." The announcer said.

Sam shook his head and returned his mind to the task. Sam kept creeping against the wall, when a whizz followed by a gust of wind burst past his left shoulder.

Sam glanced behind him, and spotted three ogres wielding crossbows as big as a small man. Sam had enough time to go limp and let gravity take him to the ground before a volley of wrist-thick bolts pierced the air above him with tangible shockwaves.

The ogres snarled and punched the one who had fired early in its eagerness, and missed. Sam sprung to his feet and charged the ogres, who tried to bring their enormous crossbows down on his head. Sam ducked low and slid past them, breaking the shin of the one closest to him with Old Faithful.

The wounded ogre collapsed to the ground, and Sam had just enough time to plant a killing blow against the side of its head before the others fell upon him. Sam rolled out of the way of the man-sized crossbows, and caught sight of another six ogres with clubs sprinting towards them.

Sam vaulted off the still twitching corpse of the ogre and sailed over the eight foot wall, crashing down into the sand on the far side. The open design of the arena meant the ogres could have gone around in a matter of seconds, but they stubbornly attempted to follow him straight over the wall.

The ogres were clumsy and slow, and as the first one folded himself in half over the wall, Sam stood and delivered a killing blow to its head.

"It seems as though the scourge intends to divide the villagers and kill them one at a time, showing a near-elven level of intelligence and sophistication," the announcer called over the screaming crowd.

"But," the announcer said, raising his voice. "Now the village chief has joined the battle! Can he save his people?!"

A deep voice began chanting, and Sam's stomach dropped. Sam turned away from the wall and began sprinting away at full speed. The deep voice came to a roaring crescendo, and the wall blasted stone shrapnel in every direction.

Sam's left shoulder began to itch, and he spotted a sharp chunk of granite lodged in his skin. Sam glanced back and saw an ogre with a taller stature than the rest, flanked by two more wearing actual armor and wielding swords that must have weighed over a hundred pounds.

The club wielding ogres flooded through the gap in the wall while the crossbowmen began to reload.

Sam let out a shout of frustration, and dodged around a wall, sprinting away from the eleven giants with all the speed he could muster.

Crossbowmen against armor, Sam thought to himself as he ran. Sam lead the club-bearing ogres on a merry chase, separating them from the crossbow wielding ogres, who he didn't allow to see him.

Finally, Sam turned back and leapt over a granite wall to come face to face with the crossbowmen. As he fell, Sam threw the short sword at one ogre's hand. The blade flew true, and sunk deep into the meat of the giant's wrist. The giant reared back, clutching its arm and dropping the crossbow.

Moment of truth, Sam thought to himself as he rolled out of the way of the second ogre's shot. The quarrel blasted through the stone wall behind Sam.

Out of the corner of his eye, Sam spotted the two guards of the ogre mage lumbering toward him, wearing hundreds of pounds of steel over their vital areas.

Sam lunged forward and snatched the enormous crossbow off the ground, Sam fell backward onto his back, holding the immense weight of the crossbow up with his legs. Sam spotted a moment of dim realization on the armored ogre in the lead, before Sam squeezed the release with his shoulder. The crossbow bucked and nearly sent flipped Sam upside down.

The bolt tore a hole through the lead ogre's thick breastplate and buried itself in the second. The lead ogre dropped to the ground while the second knelt, clawing at the bolt trapped in place by his armor.

Sam flung the heavy wood away and rolled in time to avoid a stomp from the wounded crossbowman. The other threw its unloaded crossbow down and lunged at Sam, dropping all pretense of civilization as its mouth began to froth in rage.

Sam ducked and pushed forward, passing between its legs. When it turned around and lunged again, Sam met its charge with a blow from the mace to the ogre's forehead. Blood shot from its nostrils, and Sam jumped straight up as the monster slid beneath him, laying limp.

Sam scanned the battlefield. Wounded crossbowman, wounded armor, mage, and six tree-trunk wielding, slobbering giants hoisting themselves over the walls. Sam's gaze caught on the mage. The ogre fixed him with a steady glare that spoke of intelligence.

Sam locked his gaze on the mage, intent on not missing a single moment. It pulled one heavy nailed hand back and snarled a single syllable, then pushed its hand forward as though it were tossing a shot put. The air in front of the ogre's hand wavered, then a ball of crackling energy manifested, flying toward Sam even as it split into three identical spheres in midair.

"Shit," Sam said, rolling out of the way of the speeding blasts. The balls of light swerved in midair and slammed into Sam's chest, leg and back. Sam cried out in pain, and the stiff boiled leather fell away, smoking and mangled.

Sam rolled to his feet and looked at his right leg, which was now showing black through his burned pants. The skin felt numb, and Sam smelled burnt flesh. Sam tested his leg, and found that it still moved, albeit stiffly.

"It seems as though The Scourge's plan to eliminate the ranged ogres first and whittle away the rest of them has hit a bit of a snag," The announcer said, his voice booming across the sand as Sam started running away from the ogres again. "What do you have to say on the subject, Theold?"

"I think we just saw something strange, Galt," the old elf's voice rang in Sam's ears. "The S4M units would never have stopped moving long enough for a mage to cast a spell. I can only guess that this particular one had a reason for stopping."

"What might that be?" the announcer asked, curious.

Sam sprinted away from the mage, his leg slowly growing more and more painful. Same was able to separate and kill two more ogres as he ran, but his lungs were burning, and his leg was losing strength quickly.

"If I had to guess, he-"

"It," The announcer reminded Theold.

"It," Theold's gravelly voice came back over the microphone. "Probably wanted to see a magical attack first hand so that it could develop a countermeasure against me."

"I see," The announcer said, nodding sagely. "After all, these things were quite the quick studies back in the day, isn't that right, Theold?"

Sam glanced up, and saw Theold give the gaudy-robed announcer a level stare.

"That doesn't even begin to describe it, kid," Theold said, his tone flat.

Sam came to a stop, leaning against a granite wall, his feet sliding in the dry sand of the arena as he gasped for breath.

"Looks like The Scourge is slowing down," the announcer said. "This village of elves may yet prevail, repelling the evil invader!"

"Gimme a break," Sam said between desperate gasps for breath. One mage, four clubs, and two wounded left.

The mace had grown heavy in Sam's hand, and his short sword was sticking out of the wrist of one of the wounded ones. If he was lucky, the ogre just plucked it out, but Sam suspected the thing would shatter the weapon as soon as it had been removed.

The ogres were more cautious now. At the mage's intructions, they were searching the labyrinth of walls for him in pairs of two, never leaving each other's sides.

Sam limped to the corpse of the first crossbowman and flipped him over. the crossbow was unharmed despite resting under the bulk of the ogre. Sam grabbed one of the bolts and began winching the crossbow, his left arm aching where the shard of granite rested.

The heavy wood creaked as the bolt fell into place in the receiver. With a grunt, Sam hoisted the crossbow over his shoulder, and started tottering forward, looking for a place to set up an ambush.

"Looks like it's going to try the crossbow again," Grant said. "I know we're all dying to find out how this turns out."

Sam glanced over his shoulder at the commentator, and briefly considered shooting him with the massive crossbow. Sam shook his head and dragged himself out into the open. It wouldn't help him in the long run, as great as it would feel to shut that guy up.

Sam heard a roar of challenge to his right, and he flung himself to the ground, orienting the crossbow on the charging ogres. The crossbow bucked out of his weakened grasp, and caught the lead ogre in the throat. The second pounced on Sam, whose escape was a moment too late because of his wounded leg.

The ogre shook Sam violently with one hand, and Old Faithful flew out of his fingers, landing in the sand. The ogre gave a sadistic grin as he held Sam aloft, winding back his club, as if to strike off Sam's head.

"And there we have it, ladies and gentlemen, The Scourge of the Ancient World amounts to approximately-" Grant's voice cut off when the ogre slumped over, collapsing in a boneless pile. "What just happened, Can we get an instant replay on that?" Grant's brows furrowed as Theold chuckled beside him.

Sam limped away from the dead ogres and retrieved his mace. "Two clubs, two wounded, one mage," Sam chanted the number to himself over and over to pace his breathing and distract himself from his leg, which was beginning to weep blood from the cracks in the burnt skin.

The giant floating image above his head zoomed in on Sam's last moments with the ogre, slowing them down drastically. As the ogre shook Sam, he'd retrieved his second knife from his boot. When the ogre had stopped moving for a moment, Sam had launched the knife through the ogre's eye deep into the giant's brain.

"Wow," The announcer said, leaning back as he watched the replay. "I'm going to be honest folks, It's my job to talk up the monsters, but that was just terrifying. It's no wonder the old folks are terrified of them. Do you have anything to add Theold?"

The old magician caught the announcer's eye for a moment and leaned into the microphone. "Just that they came in groups of three, Grant."

"Hats off to those brave guards who nearly died slowing this thing down long enough to give Master Theold a chance to stop it," the announcer said, "Now back to the fight. It's finally starting to wind down, and the outcome is anyone's guess."

Sam waited for two ogres to be on the opposite side of the wall and jumped down behind them and dispatched the giants with hammer blows to the head. "Two wounded, one mage."

Sam hoisted himself back up onto one of the walls and spied the mage in the distance, his palm glowing above the wrist of the crossbowman. Sam saw his shortsword discarded beside them, thankfully unbroken. It was possible that the second armored ogre had died, but it was unlikely.

Sam followed the wall to the edge of the labyrinth, and began limping against the outer wall of the arena. Sam rounded the corner of the maze of walls and saw the two ogres.

Sam planted the six foot blood-covered mace in the sand of the arena and took a deep breath.

"Bring it!" Sam shouted with every fiber of his being. For a brief moment, the chattering of the audience lulled, and it was quiet. Then the elves began to shake the very sand with their bloodthirsty cheers, mirroring Sam's exclamation.

The formerly wounded ogres stomped forward, swinging one of the Veteran's discarded swords. Sam waited until the last moment, leaning against the wall for support until the blade was almost upon him, then lurching forward.

The massive steel blade buried itself into the wall, and Sam almost casually brought the mace down on the ogre's skull. The ogre slumped forward, and Sam started limping forward again, intent on the mage.

A shock tore through Sam's body, and the wind was driven out of him. Sam looked down and saw that he'd been pinned to the wall by a bolt from the remaining Ogre veteran. The thick bolt in Sam's stomach was buried in the wall behind him, and the heavy metal fletchings jutted out of his stomach.

"Ugh," Sam tried to take a breath and nearly threw up. The veteran ran up to Sam, the bolt that had been jutting from his armor had been snapped off. The veteran pulled the hundred pound giant-sized sword from the wall and grinned down at Sam.

Sam wasn't paying attention to the ogre above him, he was watching the mage, who chanted with lightning coalescing between his weaving fingers. The mage drew a line between his hands, aiming at Sam, and lightning leapt out to crash against the rocks of the wall.

Sam shoved against the wall, tearing himself free from the bolt's fletchings, and fell to the ground. The lightning cascaded over him, the veteran, and the wall. As if seeking the larger target, the lightning was drawn to the veteran, and only a few bolts licked against Sam's skin.

The veteran fell on top of Sam, driving all the wind from his lungs. Sam struggled to pull himself free as another spell began rolling off of the ogre mage's tongue. Sam's vision began to dim as he realized he wasn't going to get out from under the ogre in time.

The mage chanted the last syllable of the spell, and a bead of orange light took shape between his fingers. The elves were on their feet, screaming imprecations at Sam, at the mage, and the announcer. The sea of screaming rose to a crescendo, when a gunshot cut through the noise.

The orange bead floating in front of the ogre mage detonated, and the mage erupted in a ball of fire. Confusion swept through the stands, with a few elves beginning to panic until the announcer began to speak again.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the announcer said, motioning to the screen. The floating image showed Sam pulling a small pipe out of his pants, and a blast of smoke and fire escaping from it. "It seems as though The scourge of the ancient world is a cheater, and snuck a homemade pistol onto the arena floor."

Theold stared at the announcer agape. Blown away by the man's thick headedness, "You do realize that the S4M unit never signed the waiver, right?" Theold asked. "By definition, he can't be considered a cheater. And besides, when classified as a monster, if he was able to sneak it past security, he should be able to use it in the arena. What would you have done?"

"I would have died with dignity," the announcer said, raising his nose.

"Sure, while someone else goes home and fucks your wife, I suppose," Theold said. "Get the medics in there to retrieve the combatant, the show's over."

Grant watched Theold stand and leave, his face crimson with rage and embarrassment. "You heard him," he snarled before standing and making his own exit.

Chapter 7

Sam woke chained to a hospital bed. Sam's entire body ached, but it was most acutely sore in his leg and stomach, where he had sustained grievous injury. Sam grunted, peeling up his gown to inspect the damage. The hole in his stomach was covered by a gauze bandage, and his leg was pink below the knee.

"You'll make a complete recovery, If that's what you're concerned about," a voice said from beside Sam.

Sam started, glancing over to see Theold, the man who'd stopped his escape the first time. "Can't say that it's nice to see you again," Sam said, his tone dry.

"I Think you'll appreciate this visit, actually," Theold said. "Now cover up, you have a guest." Theold motioned at Sam, who had peeled his hospital gown away.

"Why?" Sam asked.

"Why should you cover up or why do you have a guest?"

"Both," sam said.

"Fuck it, I'm too old to care about this shit if you don't," Theold said before leaning out the door. "He's ready."

The door swung open, and the woman from the truck walked in. Faera, Sam recalled her name. Faera had bandages over her ears, covering the distinctive features of elf kind, but Sam recognized her face easily. She entered the room, and froze, staring at Sam.

"What do you want? Is this a conjugal visit or something?" Sam asked, his mood souring. Sam had no idea why these people were bothering him. Theold seemed to have some kind of academic interest in him, or perhaps an old grudge.

Faera blushed and tore her eyes away from Sam's body and focused on his face. "I've got an offer to get you out of here," she said, meeting his eye. "I help you get out, and you help me get my family back."

Sam painfully sat up in the bed. "What makes you think I would help you?" he asked. " you killed my friend, I saved your life, and you reciprocate by leading me to this place." Sam motioned at the city around them to the limits of the chains on his arms.

"would you have believed me if I'd warned you?" Faera asked.

"No," Sam said with a growl.

"Look," Faera said. "I'm sorry I killed your friend, I was scared and ever since the moment we met, you've held yourself to a higher standard than me. I was just hoping... that optimism and willingness to help people is still there."

Sam's eyes narrowed. "How many people did you say were kidnapped?"

Faera's shoulders relaxed. "About fifteen hundred, give or take. I expect a large part of that number are dead."

Sam stayed silent, watching her closely. As she began to fidget, he spoke. "Who took them?"

"Humans equipped with technology they shouldn't have reinvented yet," Faera said, dreading his response upon hearing that humans were the culprits.

"And what do you need from me, specifically?" Sam asked.

In response, Faera's hands went to the bandages on her ears. "In elven society it is a taboo to alter your ears," she said peeling away the bandages. Beneath the white gauze, her ears looked like a human's, albeit a bit pink at the tips, presumably because they were still healing.

"No one else is willing to do what has to be done to find my family," Faera said, her gaze resolute.

"But why do you need me, specifically?" Sam asked. "Why not just go alone?"

"I'll field that one, S4M," Theold said.

"It's Sam," Sam said, fixing the old man with a dark look in a moment of hostility.

"I should have guessed," Theold said quietly. "In any case Sam, human society has become a bit... tribal in the time since you were created."

"How so?" Sam asked.

"Statements from scouts and interviews with prisoners indicate that women are property in the human lands to the east," Theold said, his face bitter.

"You need me as a cover." Sam said, musing.

"I can't force you to do anything, and we are nowhere near on equal footing, but please help me," Faera said, kneeling beside the bed.

With her body close to his, Sam struggled to maintain his senses. It seemed as though his entire body wanted to explore every inch of hers. Her green eyes were wet with suppressed tears, and her lips were round and...

"You're making it hard," Theold said offhand. "For him to think."

Faera backed away, and Sam tried to cover himself, but the chain around his wrists complicated things.

"I have one condition," Sam said when he'd managed to shrug the gown back over himself. It helped a little.

"Name it," Faera said, her eyes once again directed at the ceiling.

"If we succeed, I want both of you to tell everyone exactly who helped you," Sam said. "I'm sick and tired of being treated like a monster."

Faera glanced down and looked him in the eye. "Easy," she said, nodding.

"All right," Sam said, motioning to the cuff on the bed. "Get me out of here." Theold nodded, and with a wave of his hand, the handcuffs sprung open. Sam's skin prickled slightly as an invisible force washed over him. Sam watched the mage's hand closely, looking for the secret behind it.

"Convenient," Sam said, sitting up and heaving his legs over the edge of the bed.

"We brought some clothes," Faera said, handing Sam a linen bag. "Change into those, and then Theold will see to your disguise. We don't have much time, so make it quick.

Not needing any encouragement, Sam tore off the gown and slipped on the elven clothes while Faera turned away, stealthily taking glances at Sam's reflection in the hospital window.

Sam found himself admiring Faera's body, glancing up at her surreptitiously as he stooped over to slide on the pants.

"Yes, yes, you're both physically attracted to each other," Theold said with a sigh. Faera and Sam stiffened, and Theold clapped his hands. "Hurry it up!"

Sam threw on the clothes, reddening as he had found himself suffering from the same distraction he had often had to curb in Ann and Tom. He hadn't understood how pervasive the influence of attraction was until he experienced it first hand, and he found it impossible to shut it out.

"All right kid," Theold said, placing his hands on either side of Sam's face. "Close your eyes and hold still."

Theold's hands were rough, but warm against Sam's cheeks. Once again, Sam felt an invisible force that seemed to flow from theold's hands in waves, settling into his skin with pins and needles. It felt as if his face had somehow fallen asleep like an appendage.

"Why'd you call me kid?" Sam asked, looking down at the aging elf as he stepped away. "Haven't I been around for hundreds of years?"

"You may have been taught every method of kicking ass that humanity ever devised," Theold said, appraising Sam with a critical eye. "But you're as nervous around women as a teenage boy just starting to notice boobs."

"Thanks," Sam said, rolling his eyes.

"It might be a problem," Theold said. "If you seem too sheltered for your stature."

"I'll keep that in mind," Sam said, tugging on the collar of his shirt.

"Is the clothing okay?" Faera asked.

"It's a little tight," Sam said as individual threads popped in his collar, loosening it.

"Biggest we could find," Faera said, handing Sam a mirror. "When we get to the east, we'll have to change clothes again. Can you walk?"

Sam looked at himself in the mirror, and was astonished at his new face. His hair had lightened, and his cheekbones had seemingly raised. His eyes had widened, and he had the distinctive points on his ears.

Sam reached up to feel his ears, but beneath his hand, they felt exactly the same. "It's an illusion, good for a couple days," Faera said. "Can you walk?"

"Yeah, I'll make it," Sam said, putting the mirror down.

"Alright, you don't have a lot of time," Theold said, turning to leave. "Get out the gate before the alarm is raised or you're screwed. I need to be somewhere else."

"Thank you," Sam said. "I thought you hated me."

"It's an old story," Theold said, before vanishing in a gust of wind.

Theold teleported to his home, and staggered to his recliner. The toll of magic he'd used today washed over him in a wave of exhaustion. Theold put his feet up and stared at his trophy, a single black pistol mounted on the wall.

Theold remembered the fear and sadness that had gone through the mind of the implacable killer when Theold had finally defeated his hunter. Theold had taken a peek into its mind, curious about the thoughts of such a deadly machine, and instead found the dissatisfaction of an empty life mingled with the fear of a dying man.

Theold sighed and closed his eyes, his frail body barely making a dent in his old couch. Maybe this one would achieve what all the others had wanted. A life of his own.

Sam's eyes lingered on where the elf had disappeared for a moment before Faera opened the door and walked out, forcing Sam to follow her.

"Stay as relaxed as possible," Faera said over her shoulder. "To everyone else, you look like an elf."

"An enormous elf," Sam said cynically. Despite his doubts, the two of them walked out of the hospital without anyone stopping them, although Sam felt many people doing double takes on account of his size.

Faera took him to a truck on the side of the street, and from the hospital it was a short drive to the gate. At the gate, an elf eyed them critically, his gaze running across Faera's bandages.

"What happened to your ears?" he asked.

"What!?" Faera shouted. The gate guard pointed to his ears with a quizzical look.

"Oh these!" Faera said. "Factory accident. We got word about the land at Gentle Nights being up for grabs, and my husband and I decided to give the manager the finger!"

"Braver people than me," the elf said, motioning them to proceed.

Faera nodded to the gateman, and stepped on the gas. The truck rumbled down the road, bumping the two of them to and fro. "Husband?" Sam asked.

"Gotta start the cover sometime," Faera responded with a shrug. At the fork, Faera took the road leading to East Mountain.

Two and a half hours later, they reached the edge of the forest. Faera grabbed a bag of homespun clothes out of the back of the truck and tossed half of them to Sam.

Sam and Faera dressed and put the truck into neutral, hiding it in the woods.

"How do people walk in these?" Sam said, wiggling his toes in the straw sandals.

"Same as everyone else," Faera said, grabbing the rest of their supplies from the back of the truck. She slipped a knife into her boot, then tossed Sam a shepherd's crook.

The smooth wood felt good in Sam's hand. "What's this for?" he asked, running his finger along the curve.

"Herding sheep," Faera said. "And defending yourself." She added when Sam gave her a look.

"Never seen a sheep before," Sam mused, running his thumb along the wood. Faera jumped down from the truck bed and handed Sam a roll of copper coins with square holes in the center, held together by a length of wool string.

"Money," Faera said as Sam examined the coins. Faera watched Sam hefting the foreign currency and pondered whether Sam's complete lack of common sense would be a blessing or a curse.

"Alright, let's head out," Sam said, tying the string around his belt. He turned away from the forest and began to march, before turning back. "Where, exactly?"

Faera shook her head. "You know as much as I do about the modern human world. We'll just have to walk until we find a road or get some directions."

"This was poorly planned," Sam said, turning back to the east, and marching forward.

The two walked out into the plains with the noonday sun above them. Hours went by and they kept themselves occupied by telling stories.

"assume I know nothing," Sam said, glancing over at Faera. "About the dangers of the world, because until a week ago I assumed zombies and humans were about the extent of it.

"Zombies!" Faera said with a laugh. "They're far too slow to be a threat to people, they have absolutely no higher brain function."

"I assume they were dangerous because of population density," Sam said.

"Not a problem anymore, I suppose," Faera said, glancing at the top of the next hill. "What you really need to be careful of are mind stealers."

"Are those that short brain thing with tentacles?" sam asked. "Make you want to come closer?"

"Yeah, they'll eat your brain in a heartbeat." Faera said.

"What about demons?" Sam asked.

"You can go your whole life without meeting a demon," Faera said.

Sam snorted.

"They're pretty rare. A demon is a fragment of a dark god, usually sheared away in battle with another deity."

"So gods are real?" Sam asked, his eyebrow raised.

"Where I come from," Faera said with a shrug. "Anyway, Demons aren't the sort of thing that you come across on earth.

Sam snorted.

"What's so funny?" Faera asked.

"I met one." Sam said. "In the monster pens, on my first escape attempt, I met one who offered me anything if I let him out of his cage. I'm pretty sure he was supposed to be the main event. You got me out of there the day before I was scheduled to fight him."

Faera stared at him, her jaw gaping. "What was he like?" she said, her eyes wide.

"He was about as tall as an ogre," Sam said, raising his hand. "Furry upper body, naked lower, big old dong, and a horned wolf head. Threatened to kill me when I didn't let him out."

"Damn," Faera said, shaking her head.

"Okay, keep going," Sam said, "What else is there that can kill me? I have a vested interest in this sort of thing."

"Never camp next to a swamp at night without surrounding yourself with a ring of salt," Faera said.

"Why?"

"There are slugs that can burrow directly into your brain..."

Torus Grant, the owner of the Arena, had a problem.

"What the fuck am I supposed to do?" he moaned, clutching his head. The clone was missing, the mage refused to perform, and the demon was... well, a demon.

He had bought an extra day by claiming that he was making sure that the clone was in the best of health, giving him an extra round of healing at great expense to Grant, but the truth would come out in less than twenty hours.

The fights up until this point had whipped fans into a frenzy, and if he didn't deliver the final bout, their wrath would fall directly on his head, and his pocketbook. And he couldn't afford to keep the demon contained forever. The damn thing cost him an arm and a leg every phase of the moon, when a mage had to reapply its bindings.

Grant stopped pacing the floor of his office. The demon. The demon was the solution to his problem. Grant strode across the room and picked up the phone, punching in the number for his go-to magician.

Twenty hours later, Grant was standing in front of the assembled audience of the arena. "Ladies and gentlemen," he boomed, enjoying the way his voice echoed through the stands. "Today you came to see the epic showdown between the scourge of the ancient world and a demon straight from the other side of the Gate!"

Grant let the wave of cheers crash over him, reveling in the uplifting sensation. Grant turned the Observers on himself, and donned a frown. "Unfortunately, that won't happen today." He said sorrowfully.

Scattered murmurs and catcalls spread through the arena like wildfire.

"The truth is," Grant said, slumping his shoulders. "The Scourge escaped from the hospital last night, and is at this very moment plotting the downfall of elven civilization."

Boos came down on Grant like a scalding rain.

"And you've all seen what it can do!" he shouted, his voice echoing from nearby buildings. "It will stop at nothing, and no one man can hope to defeat it!"

The boos faltered, replaced with some screams of fear.

"But I, dear viewers," Grant said, his voice gentle. "I had a thought."

"What is this arena, compared to the wildness of nature?" Grant asked. "The Scourge is smart, adaptable, and strong. It thrives on unpredictability. Why not confront it on its home ground, for your viewing pleasure?"

Grant gave the signal, and the arena floor opened, revealing the demon at the center of a circle of enchanted iron. The audience gasped at the appearance of the monster, shying away from the edges of the stands.

"This demon will be the one to deliver our justice!" Grant said. "Make the pact!"

A red- robed mage walked out to the center of the arena, stopping just short of the iron circle. Kein'Maddal paced the interior of the circle, watching for any slip he could exploit. The mage set a brazier in front of the demon, and removed an ogre sized quarrel covered in dried blood from his robe.

"I bind you to these conditions." The mage said, his voice amplified for the crowd. "Bring no harm to elves, or by inaction allow harm to come to them. Seek out the bearer of this blood and kill him. When you have done this, you will return to your home plane immediately. These are the terms."

Kein'Maddal leaned forward, salivating. "Agreed," his voice rumbled through the arena like a shockwave without need of a microphone.

The mage began chanting, scraping the dried blood into the brazier. He set aside the bolt and threw mystical ingredients into the brazier and lit it with a flick of his wrist. The smoke curled around the demon, and one of the Observers affixed itself to the monster's shoulder before a resounding crack detonated through the arena. The thick iron circle penning in the demon was broken, and the monster launched itself into the sky, sprouting wings from its back as it flew eastward.

"Looks like he went East, ladies and gentlemen," Grant said. "We've partnered with our sister company, Strong Entertainment, to bring you twenty-four seven coverage for free on channel eight until the monster is dead."

A rising cheer spread through the crowd, and Grant soaked it in. "Now, let's take a look at that live feed..."

Chapter 8

"Something's changed," the red dragon mused, shifting his weigh atop the accumulated wealth of a dead nation.

"My lord Tyranus?" a nearby human spoke, its tiny voice barely reaching Billy's ears.

Billy was the dragon's name, and it was how it thought of itself, after all these years. Born in a lab, the first thing to cross Billy's eyes had been humans, and for the first three seminal years of his life, he'd though he was one too.

The researchers had been astonished by Billy's intelligence, and they had amused themselves by affording the baby dragon a classic education, which in retrospect may have not been the best idea.

"My lord Tyranus?" The man said again as Billy twirled a twenty seven pound gold bar between two claws. The trick was to slow down on the upswing so that the momentum of the gold could carry it around the claw.

The only problem was, having been raised by humans, Billy was considered to be a pansy by other dragons, despite having grown bigger and stronger than any wild dragon under the tender care of the Harvard Biology Department. A couple hundred years after the fall of man he'd even found his family, and they had dismissed him offhand for not following dragon etiquette.

Why should he have to ritualistically posture and fight, stretching his neck as high as possible to compare heights? It made no sense. Dragons were naturally more intelligent than humans, but an education was something to disdain, especially if it came from humans.

If the dragons had studied the planet's history before they declared themselves the masters of the world, they may have been ready when Billy sent some expendables to their lairs with backpack nukes.

Needless to say, There were no other dragons left on Earth. Now that Billy was entering his adulthood though, he was beginning to experience the longing for companionship. Perhaps he could go through one of the Gates and court a female of his species.

Billy sighed, a gout of flaming liquid dribbling between his massive fangs and spattering on the ground, evaporating into the air as it combusted. He didn't really know what a red dragon courtship entailed, but if the behavior of the others who settled Earth's land was any indication, it would involve him wrestling his mistress to the ground and taking her by force.

While such an animalistic method had appeal, Billy had always wanted to try cowgirl.

"My lord Tyranus?"

"What!?" Billy asked, turning his head to address the man standing at the edge of Billy's pile of gold and gems. Billy's voice boomed, ringing from sheets of hanging brass and silver, creating a melodious undertone to his question.

The force of Billy's breath rocked the man back on his heels. A small amount of burning liquid squirted out of Billy's mouth before he was able to shut the flap in his throat, and it trickled down the pile of gold, like a merrily burning stream down a mountain, ending its journey at the man's feet.

"I'm sorry, my lord, but you said something had changed?" Billy's chamberlain, a large man by the name of Thomas, asked.

Billy blinked slowly, unwilling to admit he'd become lost in thought. He rewound his short term memory, and found the moment Thomas spoke of.

"Yes," Billy said. "I felt a disturbance in the force."

Thomas didn't get the joke, but to be fair, it was somewhere around six hundred years before his time. Hell, it had been ancient when Billy had been born.

Thomas stared back, blind devotion written across his face. "What was it, my lord?"

"I felt one of the threads of the world snap," Billy said, using imagery to describe leylines to the ignorant savage. "There will be recoil of some kind, you can be sure of it."

Billy paused and closed his eyes, breathing in deeply, and strummed the leyline below him like a guitar. The echo that returned was off-putting and discordant.

"Something has stirred," Billy said, feeling the land through the magical current. "There was something evil underground. A presence that had been there for so long I had grown numb to it is gone.

Billy's mind raced, crossing out ideas. It couldn't be another dragon, they had all been accounted for. Humans didn't have enough magical 'weight' to register on the leylines. Elves had settled a nearby site of power, but they hadn't yet intruded on the forest, where the presence had been.

It could have been an elf, Billy reasoned. How would an elf have survived for six hundred years hiding from the humans in a cave? The obvious answer was magic, so a powerful magical practitioner moving for the first time in centuries was Billy's first guess.

It was times like this that Billy wished the internet was still around. He could probably get a clearer picture with google maps.

"What shall we do?" Thomas asked.

Billy shook his head. "It is no threat to me," he said, glancing at Thomas. "But it would best be dealt with quickly, that it does not impact my people too harshly, don't you think?"

Thomas nodded. "Your concern honors, uplifts and obligates us, my lord." Thomas said, saluting Billy.

"Prepare the stage," Billy said, Idly squishing the gold bar between his claws. "I wish to address my people."

The next morning, with the rising sun glittering off his scales, Billy stood on a concrete platform, where a statue had once rested, but in no living memory but Billy's, had there ever been anything but the stage.

Billy stood at the center of row after row of bright crimson, black and white banners, which from any vantage point, drew the eye to him. A massive milling crowd stood below him, desperately pushing to get closer and perhaps receive the blessing of their living god.

"My beloved people," Billy said, his rumbling voice amplified magically until it reached every corner of the city. "My most treasured possession."

"A hundred years ago, in the time of your great grandparents, a choice was made to follow me in separating from the ignoble way of the empire that dominated the Mississippi. I am eternally grateful for your trust, and the honor you have given me over the years." Billy said, his voice stirring the crowd.

"I bore witness to you, a weak, broken people, cut off from your roots, starving and poor, grow into the proud warriors you are today." Billy shifted his wings as he reared back, overlooking his domain.

"Your ancestors fought," Billy said. "The empire tore at them as men, tried to make them animals. Every day, they would struggle, and burn, and hunger, for the one chance that could see them free."

"Every day they witnessed the evil that had corrupted the empire," Billy said, scanning the crowd. "The evil that turned it against us, but more importantly against itself."

"The Mississippi Empire follows a doctrine no man can ascribe to," Billy said, enjoying the transfixed stares. "They think to enslave the world and supersede your proud race beneath another."

The assembled humans murmured darkly. "Yes," Billy said, grinning inwardly. "I speak of elves."

"The ruling class of the Mississipi Empire seek to abandon their blood, favoring that of the elves," Billy said. "The emperor himself is tainted by their blood, and hopes to win immortality for himself."

"Let me reiterate," Billy said, holding up a claw. "The very same man who treated your great grandfathers like dogs, who attacked and killed many of your grandparents, and who you and your parents are locked in a fierce war against, is the Emperor of Mississipi."

"And while he schemes and brings woe to generation after generation of our people, the elves slowly tighten their stranglehold over his country, marginalizing humans further and further, causing women steal away from their husbands at night hoping for trysts with elven men."

At this, loud boos and disgruntled yelling washed across the crowd, and Billy allowed the anger to grow, waiting until it had sufficient force before he directed it.

Billy's wings snapped out with a crack of thunder.

"Do not blame them," Billy's voice boomed over the crowd. "They do not do it for sport, or some perverse attraction to the inhuman creatures. These women see no future for their pureblooded children, and so they do what they must. The roots of the problem run deep, spreading through the lifeblood of the Mississippi and taking hold like a cancer."

"If we are to survive as a nation, and as a people, we must defend ourselves from the encroaching threat." Billy said.

"And we are a nation, truly," Billy said, stretching his neck to peer out over the crowd. "Your great grandparents gave you freedom, your grandparents gave you land, your parents gave you thriving cities. It is this generation that sees all these things come to fruition."

"As a nation, We have the metal and the mettle to defend ourselves as we have never done before," Billy said. "To that end, we must set the needs of the nation in the forefront to ensure a strong country for your children, and their children in turn. We will not dally in the games the empire tries to play with its currency, we will keep our workforce strong and pure. The compulsory labor is a necessary measure to keep ourselves free from the grasp of the Empire that seeks to enslave you.

"And once you have built the foundations of your own great empire," Billy said. "Your children will live a life of happiness and security, with my blessing." A smattering of applause rose from the crowd.

"But we cannot do this in the shadow of the empire, my people," Billy said. "We must purge the corruption that we have witnessed from the face of the earth. We will give the arts and literature of our people to theirs, and remove the spread of malignant ideologies, burning it from their consciousness like the cancerous growth it is."

A wave of cheers washed over Billy as he spread his wings and released a gout of flame into the air, sending a wave of palpable heat over the skin of the massed onlookers.

"We must be vigilant," Billy said. "For this taint encroaches from more than our north and east. I have felt stirrings from the west as well, an ancient beast that lay dormant for hundreds of years has begun to move, and it will seek to spread its corrupting influence through our land. Guard yourselves, and guard your neighbors, for the most priceless possession that this country has is its people, and it is with solidarity that we will drive back the forces that seek to see us undone!"

With a final flare of flame, Billy brought the speech to an end among chants of 'Tyranus, Tyranus!' The poor fools didn't even know the meaning of the word he'd chosen his public name from. Billy supposed that was only to be expected when he himself was the author of all books on history and literature. All truths save his own had been washed away over generations of controlled education.

The exception to this were people long-lived enough to see what he had turned his nation into, namely elves, especially the ones who'd been around in the beginning, of which only a few hundred remained. Billy wanted to erase their knowledge more than their selves, since elves made such excellent snacks.

"There is a spy among us," Billy said with total confidence despite being personally unaware of one, but when wasn't there a spy? His voice cut through the chanting while he extended his senses through the crowd. The hearts of three of the humans in the crowd began to hammer. "There are spies among us." Billy corrected himself.

"Not to worry, I've marked them, my people," Billy said, almost gingerly stepping down from the pedestal, the crowd flowing around him like water as he walked. Hands reached out to touch him, seeking the blessing of their god, feeling a bit like rain. It didn't particularly bother Billy, as oil was good for his scales. The three humans began to leave, backing away from where they stood in the crowd.

"Link arms," Billy commanded. "Join hands with those around you."

At his word, the crowd went from a liquid to a solid, trapping the three spies inside the wall of flesh. At this point, in the stillness of the crowd, the struggle to leave was made glaringly obvious, and Billy's worshipers grabbed these men who tried to flee of their own accord.

Pleased at not having to track them down himself, Billy sat on his haunches in the center of the crowd. "Bring them to me," he said, waiting. A wave of hands lifted the three men into the air and deposited them in front of Billy, kicking and screaming.

"Hold them down," Billy said. the three men were held fast to the ground by dozens of willing hands, only capable of turning their heads.

"Do you know," Billy said, lightly breathing on a claw. "What the empire does to spies who have failed their mission? Especially ones who've given away state secrets?" The men, stared up at him with terrifified, wide eyes.

"We'd never tell you anything, monster." One of them, quite probably the youngest, said.

"You've told me that the empire is experiencing a famine," Billy said, craning his neck to look down at the emaciated man before him. He blew a controlled jet of flame over his claw and then sliced through the man's homespun shirt, burning away the wool in gouts of flame as the spy whimpered.

The shirt fell away, smoking, revealing ribs that stood out from the skin, and red rashes across his body.

"Hold his head." Billy commanded. Hands secured the boys head in place. Billy switched to a different claw and pressed up on the boy's lips, studying his gums, then his eyes, tongue, and heartbeat. The little heart trembled beneath his touch.

"It's okay," Billy said as he found himself smiling. "I'm a doctor."

"Unfortunately," Billy said, "I never took the Hippocratic oath." Billy switched to his hot claw and began lightly carving the symbol of his supporters on the spy's inner thigh. At the spy's tortured screams, Billy hummed to himself, wondering when the boy's libido would eventually get him killed.

Probably a woman down on her luck in a cheap brothel would turn him in to the state. Billy wished he could see how it would all turn out, but his part in the play was done. Billy set a claw lightly on the spy's forehead. "forget," he said, and the spy's eyes rolled back in his head.

"Let this one go," Billy said cheerfully. "He's served his purpose." As the spy was carried away, Billy turned his head and locked eyes with the more grizzled spy, a bearded man decorated with scars from a life of hardship.

"Next," Billy said jovially, reheating his claw until it glowed a cherry red. As they dragged the man closer, billy took the opportunity to sharpen his claw, dragging his others across the cherry red one, sharpening it while it was relatively softened.

Billy repeated the inspection on the older man, and came to the same conclusion; the empire was starving. Billy ran his gaze over the scars of whip lashes, and the thick calluses on the man's hands.

"As an adult male of some age, you've probably got a much more developed sense of stability," Billy said. "How would you like your own land to the east? As far from the empire as possible."

Billy's read on the man was that as a former slave or convict, he would gladly accept independence from a nation, and be his own master, but the man shook his head, tears in his eyes.

"I can't," the man said. Billy raised his eyebrow incredulously. "They have my wife n' kids."

"Ah," Billy said. Billy reached down and pricked the man's shoulder with his claw, letting his blood form a small pool on the cobblestones. He dipped his claw in the pool and scratched out a circle of symbols on the stone. With a flash of light, three small humans lay in the center of the circle, two girls and an infant in the eldest girl's grasp.

"Well, now I have your kids," Billy said. "So what'll it be?"

The man showed a heinously tortured expression. "I-" he began to speak when Billy interrupted him.

"Hold," Billy said, raising the girl's hair away from their ears. "I see," he said, turning his gaze back to the spy. "You must be considered quite successful back home, having a half-blood for a wife."

"Unfortunately, I must rescind my offer, and replace it with a new one," Billy said. "A job offer, one for you, and one for your... spawn."

"Don't worry," Billy said, savoring the man's anguish. "it's not as stressful as spying."

"Consider your girls lucky," Billy said. "They are young enough to be taught their proper place."

"I think you men can take care of that," Billy said, addressing the crowd, who chuckled, crowding around the unconscious girls.

"No!" the spy shouted, "Leave them be, I'll tell you everything!"

"You'll tell me everything!" Billy boomed, his voice ringing from the mountains. "Or they will die. What happens to them while they live is no more than a consequence of their birth. And I hope you were listening to me as well." Billy swung his head to address the crowd. "they must live, so treat them... gently."

Cheers rang through the crowd as they escorted the sobbing spy away. There was only one job for a man who'd been tainted by the touch of an elf. They were sending him to live out the rest of his life in hard labor. The same was true for women born with the taint of elven blood, although their duty required less heavy lifting.

"Next," Billy said, crooking a claw. The third man was brought before Billy, and he immediately began to grovel.

"My lord, I care nothing for Mississippi, I swear I'll tell you everything-" the man said, before Billy rammed a claw through his lungs.

"I hate it when they think they can manipulate me," Billy said before tossing the corpse into his mouth and swallowing it whole.

Chapter 9

"Thanks again for the ride," Sam said, sitting beside the farmer while Faera kicked her feet off the back of his wagon. The entire wagon was filled to the brim with potatoes, and Sam found himself marveling at the sheer quantity that was being hauled to market by a team of four massive horses.

"Don't mention it," Hank said. the man was wearing a short sleeved shirt, looking like nothing more than a sack with three holes cut into it. the shirt went down to his knees, and Sam was suspicious that the man wasn't wearing anything else underneath. "You saved me a lot of money, in truth."

"How's that? Sam asked, curious. "You had all the tools to do it yourself."

"Would have taken me a whole day to fix it," Hank said. "Maybe longer just finding a way to prop up the wagon while I worked on it. All the while the potatoes would be rotting in the heat. You did me a hell of a favor, kid.

"I guess timing is everything," Sam said.

"That it is," Hank said, nodding in agreement. "Tell you what, take an armload of potatoes with you when we get to town, your wife looks like she could use the food."

Sam chuckled and glanced over his shoulder at Faera. "Thank you sir," he said with a grin. "Faera, thank the man." Faera's shoulders stiffened for an instant.

"You are very gracious, Hank," she said sweetly, twisting to peer over her shoulder.

Hank grunted in assent. "Keep some of them. If you're planning on starting a family in the wilds with nothing but sheep, you'll need all the help you can get."

Sam twirled the hook in his hand, enjoying the smooth feel of the wood as it spun. "I don't have any sheep, unfortunately. This is an heirloom from my grandfather." He said.

"All the more reason," Hank said. "I spent a good fifteen years clearing the land with my Hanna, before she passed, and it was a struggle. We would have died several times if not for the kindness of strangers."

"Say, if you have a daughter in the next five years, do you suppose you'd be willing to trade her for a wagon and some horses? My son is turning eight soon, and I gotta think about the future, y'know?"

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," Sam said. "We don't have a daughter yet."

"Time flies my friend," hank said, spitting a dark brown glob of something off the side of the wagon. "But you're right. It seems a little premature to ask before you've even been through your first winter.

"Are they bad here?" Sam asked.

"Not particularly," Hank said with a shrug. "The winters are pretty gentle, not like up north, but it's the winter that separates out the men who are serious about the freedom of homesteading from the ones who are playacting.

"I see," Sam said, leaning back in the bench seat, gazing up at the fluffy clouds rolling by. When they had first encountered the road, they had followed it to where Hank had broken down, spilling his haul across the dirt path.

The story they had come up with between the two of them had been that of a homesteading couple, escaping the restriction of the city. Faera was Sam's young bride, purchased just recently.

The farmer had thought it odd that they were newlyweds, considering Faera's apparent age, but he;d been more than happy to receive assistance fixing his wagon.

"Want some chew?" Hank said, holding out some cured leaves to Sam.

"Nah, tobacco is a carcinogen," Sam said.

Hank gave him a funny look.

"It' s a fancy word for unhealthy," Sam said, covering his slip. "My grandpa taught it to me."

Hank squinted at Sam a moment and shrugged. "Sounded like one of those fancy elf-words."

Sam grunted as Hank tucked the leaves back into a stash built into the wagon.

The three of them rode on in silence, the wagon bouncing as they crested hill after hill. In the distance, a haze was forming, and Sam stood in the gently rocking seat.

"What is that?" he asked, unable to make out the shape of the mountains in the distance.

"Just give it a minute," Hank said, switching the horses to pick up the pace. "Once we reach the top of this hill, we'll have a good view of the valley." True to his word, the wagon crested the hill a short while later, and the entire valley was laid out before them.

Sam could make out the dirt road winding down into the valley, and the farms that had carved plots out of the forest's edge. Below that, a river winded its way through the valley, and in the distance, Sam could barely make out a solid line, a man-made structure, engulfed by a cloud of dust.

It was a city wall, Sam realized, and around the city was a swath of shining steel, milling slowly around it. Sam squinted, and saw eddies and currents in the shining steel that moved around the city. It was what was kicking up the dust, Sam realized.

"By Tyranus, the city's under siege," Hank said softly. "Damn, Damn Damn!"

He glanced at Sam and spoke. "I'm going to trade for tools with the nearby farms and then heading back. I'll lose a lot of profit this year, but I'm not ready to orphan my children just yet." Hank said, looking back down at the sight in front of him.

"What's going on?" Sam asked.

"The empire's attacking us," Hank said. "Are you blind?"

"No," Sam said idly, stepping off the wagon as he watched the army surrounding the city. "We'll get off here. Hank, If I were to say, catch an elf, where would I take it?"

"What, are you looking to catch prisoners of war?" Hank said, turning the wagon around as Faera jumped off. "No place to sell those blighted elves in this country, that's for sure." He looked Sam and Faera up and down.

"You ain't homesteaders, are ya?" Sam shrugged. Hank rolled his eyes. "Whatever your purpose, don't go getting yourself killed trying for a big score. You seem like decent folk." Hank reached behind him and tossed them each a couple potatoes.

"For the road," Hank said, shaking his head as he drove the horses back down the hill, toward the farmsteads they had already passed.

"Let's get closer," Faera said, setting out down the road. "I need to get close enough to see their uniforms."

Sam pocketed the potatoes and walked after her, his longer stride covering the distance easily. The two of them continues down into the valley, losing sight of the city and the army surrounding it multiple times as the day wore on.

As the sun was turning red in the evening, the density of the farms increased, until they simply found themselves trekking from one field to the next. The farmers who owned the fields must have sought shelter elsewhere, because the farms nearest the city were not only abandoned, they were also stripped of food.

The two of them made camp for the night in an abandoned house, roasting Hank's potatoes for a change from the stale, dry bread they had packed for the trip.

The next morning they came in sight of the army. Rows upon rows of grim-faced men stood in massive squares, surrounding the city. wooden towers and ladders were tucked behind the lines, ready to be used at the first sign of weakness.

The soldiers wore Indigo blue under their polished steel hemets, giving the impression of a blue ocean bristling with steel. The rear ranks rested while the ones in front pushed forward, attempting to climb the city's walls.

"These aren't the same people responsible," Faera said, overlooking the battlefield. "Their clothes are totally different. I wanted to be sure they weren't just wearing a different color, but now I'm sure. The design of their uniform is from a completely different era than the ones who attacked my home. In addition, I see no artillery, no jeeps. Nothing more advanced than thirteenth century."

"So, do we go on inside and ask around, then?" Sam asked as he watched a fourty foot ladder pushed away from the wall by long poles, sending a dozen men screaming to the ground. Sam took a bite of his baked potato.

"We'll have to," Faera said. she glanced back at Sam with a raised brow. "Do you have any suggestions?"

Sam shook his head and finished off the last of his potato half from the night before. He watched a man in an elaborate outfit step forward, covered by the massive shields of his guards. With a wave of his hand, a section of the wall began to sag, toppling to the ground.

"Might not be too hard," Sam said. after he spoke, the army began to surge forward, attempting to mount the pile of stone and force their way in.

When only a few hundred had reached the other side, the massive stone blocks that had made up the wall began to spin violently, grinding the men climbing on top of them into paste. The soldiers who had been allowed in were surrounded and dispatched while the stone field was impassable.

In a matter of moments, the fallen wall was still again, but this time it held a predatory stillness, like a spider waiting for more flies to catch in its web. The only visual difference was that the stones were all covered in a sheen of red that leaked out from beneath the pile.

"Maybe it will be hard," Sam said, his eyes widening.

"Does it bother you?" Faera asked.

"What?" Sam asked.

"Watching humans kill each other en masse?" Faera asked.

Sam shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "I was supposed to take part in violence, so it doesn't bother me much, but I always kind of assumed it would be for some important reason, like protecting the law or defending the nation. Now that it's all gone... Yeah I guess it kinda sucks, watching Americans kill each other like this."

"They're doing something," Faera said, pointing to the army, who were loading massive barrels onto trebuchets that dwarfed the height of the city's walls.

The first trebuchet fired, and its barrel came down on the meat grinding stones, scattering in a wave of black. "Is that oil?" Sam asked.

"It's pitch. They're trying to stick the blocks together," Faera said.

"huh," Sam said, sitting. "Why aren't the defenders trying to stop it?

"Because they can't," Faera said. "Besides, the defending side need simply light the bricks on fire to prevent an incursion," Faera said.

"Then why try to cover the bricks in pitch?" Sam asked.

"Because if the defending side does light the blocks, they will crumble into gravel, and the next wave will be able to cross unharmed."

"but no one wants to be the first ones over the pitch," Sam said. "A stalemate,"

"In essence. The two armies will temporarily divert their attention elsewhere until the battle grows more desperate."

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Sam asked.

"Cover our clothes in soot and sneak in under cover of darkness, risking immolation on discovery?" Faera asked as another barrel shattered across the mountain of stone.

"When you say it like that it doesn't sound as good," Sam said.

That night, Sam and Faera snuck into the city, anticipating either being crushed or incinerated as they scaled the mound of enormous stone blocks, moving from shadow to shadow an inch at a time. Sam spent hours staring at the same block of stone beneath him, not daring to raise his eyes, the brightest part of his body.

Finally, the two of them found themselves inside the walls, and when the guard changed, they dashed out of the line of sight, stripping off their soot-blackened farmer's over-alls and stashing them out of sight.

"What's first?" Sam asked.

"You stay in the alleys for now," Faera said, unfolding her clothes from the empty grain sack she'd carried in with her.

Sam had simply been unable to find clothes to fit him in the abandoned farms, and had covered himself in pinned together sheets. Sam rinsed the soot from his body in the smelly water of the river that passed through the city, dreading that any of it get into his eyes or mouth.

"Why's that?" Sam asked, wiping himself dry.

"You are almost seven feet tall," Faera said, her back turned. "You can do nothing but draw attention. I'm going to make some inquiries about the elves. If the city falls and we get separated... try not to kill all of them.

Sam snorted. "Not likely," he said quietly, examining the deep alleys surrounding the river. I'll be haunting the alleys, then. If the city falls, I'll meet you downriver, wherever it happens to branch."

"Sounds good," Faera said. "It should only take a day."

Faera shook her hair, flinging water across the stone-reinforced bank of the river before setting off deeper into the city, taking half the rope of coins with her.

Sam watched her leave, casting an appreciative gaze at her figure, shaking himself when she turned a corner, leaving him alone by the river.

"To hell with that," Sam said, following the alleys toward the main street. A scrawny man with rotting teeth and a knife at his side glanced up as Sam approached, jumping to his feet with his hand hovering near the handle of his blade as he snarled.

The man's eyes traveled up and up, until they reached Sam's face as Sam regarded him calmly. The cutthroat sat back down, averting his eyes.

Sam squatted down in front of the man and took out two coins from the roll, waving them in front of his face. When Sam had his attention, he spoke.

"If I wanted to sell some elves in bulk where would you suggest I go?" Sam asked, setting the coins down in front of him.

"No elf-flesh trade in this city, fool," the man said, shrinking away from Sam. "By order of Tyranus, everyone knows that," the man said, shrinking away from Sam.

"It's a basic fact of human nature that illegality will create a demand which can only be filled by an underground market," Sam said, resting on his haunches. "It's not a matter of asking whether or not it's happening, simply Where."

The man stared at him, wide eyed. "You sound like him," he whispered.

"What?" Sam asked.

"Are you with the force of god?" the man asked, standing as he pressed himself against the alley wall. "I've done nothing wrong, I do my daily work, and no more. You'll get no confessions from me s-sir."

The man slid down the side of the alley, keeping his eyes on Sam, until he finally turned his back and ran.

Sam sighed and stood up, staring after the lean man, then down at his feet. "Shit," Sam muttered, noticing that despite his panicked appearance, the man had enough of his wits about him to snag the two coins on the ground as he sprang away.

Sam shrugged. It was like Faera had said, he stood out, in a colossal way. Sam ran through the conversation in his mind, noting where it had broken down, probably because of his use of language. He also considered the name that the man had mentioned. Tyranus, Sam mused, had some pretty haughty undertones.

Perhaps he would be better served learning more about the man who dictated how the slave trade was handled. Oftentimes, officials in positions of enforcement would be bribed by the very vices they were meant to regulate.

Sam continued down the alley, until he reached the main street. The distant sound of battle, and the muted murmur of women were the only sounds in the street. Sam glanced out and saw women going about their daily ritual, occasionally sending worried glances up to the city wall. If Sam were to walk out, he would become the center of attention, visible from all angles, surrounded by women who barely brushed five feet tall.

Sam grunted and turned around, winding his way through the back-alleys aimlessly until he stumbled upon a young boy playing by himself. Sam knelt down beside him .

"Hello," Sam said.

"Hi," The boy responded without looking up.

"Who is Tyranus?" Sam asked, wondering if the boy knew anything useful.

"Momma says he's God," The boy said, hitting small stones against each other, knocking them out of a scratched ring in the dirt. "Says he led our people away from the bad people who were hurting them, and now the bad people are trying to come get us, but Tyranus will stop them."

Sam's brows rose. Was Tyranus a title then? "How long ago did that happen?" he asked.

The boy glanced up at the sky. "Ummm," he moaned as though making some great effort, probably studied from his father. "Momma said my grandfather's grandfather was Tyranus's first, umm... loo tannic."

"Lieutenant," Sam supplied.

"Yeah, that one," the boy said, returning to his game. "She says he'll remember our family one day and give us his blessing, but Da said she's full of shit."

"That's mean," Sam said. The boy shrugged in response.

"How about elves?" Sam asked. "How does the current Tyranus feel about elves?"

"Elves are evil," The boy said as he flicked rocked together. "They steal and lie and strangle the money, and crowd out real people with their long lifes and hurt them with their evil magic. They have to be purged for the golden age of humanity to return."

"I'll assume you didn't come to that conclusion yourself?" Sam asked.

"You ask a lot of questions," the boy said, glancing up at Sam, his eyes going wide as he noticed Sam's size. "Are you with the Force of God? Momma says they ask questions and make sure our minds and bodies are pure, or else we disappear. Are you going to make Da disappear? He argues with Momma a lot about Tyranus, and she says he's not pure when she gets mad at him."

"If I were a Force of God," Sam said, quietly. "Would it be a good idea to tell me that?"

The boy shook his head quietly, his eyes wide.

Sam ruffled his hair. "I'll give you a pass this time, kid, but next time a stranger comes up to you and asks strange questions, think a little more first, okay?" he said, coming to a stand.

"Ralian!" a voice screeched from a window. Clattering and thumping sounded from the house next door and the door flew open. A young woman grabbed the boy by the wrist and hauled him into the house, sparing a fearful glance at Sam.

Sam sauntered away, finding an alley to tuck himself in and review.

"Secret police of some kind, combined with a god-king who targets the people's discontent at a small, easily identifiable fraction of the population while maintaining their feelings of victimization by a larger force." Sam said with a sigh. "It's almost textbook. What a hell of a world I've found myself in."

Chapter 10