“Thursday at seven?” I asked, my voice lifeless.
Theo nodded. “This wasn’t an order.” His eyebrows drew together, pleading. “I thought you’d say no. I?—”
“Well, I didn’t. It’s too late to go back now.” I left the room before he could say anything else, hurrying down the main stairs, cursing all the circumstances that had brought me to this point.
The NAO and its power-hungry Commander.
The declaration of war against our peaceful allies.
The civil war that destroyed us.
It had been three years since the NAO ratified the New Constitution.
We the People of the Unified States, in Order to restore our greatness, secure our borders, and uphold the rights given to us by God, establish this Constitution to ensure freedom, prosperity, and law and order for all true American citizens.
The worst part?
We did nothing. We willingly stepped into a cage and realized too late that a fire had been lit beneath it. Each small move on their part was a match added to the flame. We let a censored media calm our worries while we slowly burned alive.
Because autocracies do not happen overnight.
They start slow. Prettily. With words likeunityandpatriotism.
They grow with bribes and manipulation.
They bud in the death of free speech, where saying the wrong thing can earn you an execution.
They thrive when fear outweighs morality.
Then they disseminate, and nothing short of civil war will stop it.
Except we were losing that war, and I wasn’t sure that a damn thing I did could help. This was the end. My certain death at Lucas Scott’s hands would be in vain, and all I could think was…
It shouldn’t have ended like this.
2
The Fracture
The National Stability Force shall oversee all corrective measures to enforce compliance and re-education of nonconformists, including compulsory labor and supervised custodial interaction with military personnel.
—ENFORCEMENT MEASURES AGAINST INSURRECTIONISTS, N.A.O.C. 6 § 3218
It shouldn’t have started the way it did either. As I stepped out of Theo’s office, the events that had brought me to this moment played through my mind like a horror show through a child’s viewfinder.
Richard Haynes had been president for six months when I first heard about the controversial New American Order. Their ideals centered on this idea of uniformity. True Americans, they said, fit a certain mold. They looked a certain way. Held certain values. In a televised speech, the New American Order was lauded by President Haynes as a much-needed organization tobring the US back to its grand origins—one people, one religion, secure borders.
And Ilaughed. Because hadn’t we done this before, a century ago? This was 1930s Germany all over again. No way would people fall for this. My father, on the other hand, was a political journalist, and their rhetoric appalled him.
We demand the union of all Americans.
Only true Americans should be citizens.
All non-American immigration must be prevented.
It wasn’t long before the NAO disseminated throughout the administration. American citizens ofquestionable descentwere imprisoned and expatriated. Women were systematically removed from employment for thebetterment of the nuclear family. Our overextended government was dismantled, and the people thought,Good. It’s gotten too big anyway.
We were all idiots.
