Another roll of my stomach brought the acrid taste of bile, which I had to swallow down. Why had I agreed to be his contact?
I forced Tekqua’s face to the forefront of my mind. Insider information would likely be the only way I’d ever gain knowledge of what happened to her. If she’d really been captured, maybe I could find her—even if I had to succumb tocompulsory labororcustodial interactionsto do it.
More than that, maybe I could help end it all.
Because the worst part was that the NAO had achieved their goal—wewereliving in a New America, one in which the government had been weaponized against those who didn’t fit the mold. They’d infiltrated our schools and hospitals, determining what our children would learn and who our doctors would treat. They censored our internet, allowing us access only to NAO-approved sources. Toend the war on deliberate political mendacity, they allowed a single national news outlet—Unified News—and controlled all the information disseminated.
The mass exodus that followed the Capitol Hill Massacre was the nidus of war. With our airports controlled by the NAO, Americans became refugees as they drove, biked, or even ran across the militarized borders to safer territories. These dissidents were called rebels and charged with treason. Borderpatrol was ordered to gun them down on sight. Suddenly, the NAO wanted everyone kept inside as opposed to kicking everyone out.
Our neighbor to the north opened its arms, appalled by the new regime. President Haynes deemed this an act of aggression and claimed Canada was harboring enemies of the state.
He declared war, sending troops to the borders to attack the peaceful nation north of us.
The Security Restoration Campaign.
With the presidential office suspended, Haynes named himself the Commander. He ratified a novel constitution for the NAO and called his new nation the Unified States of America.
He tore our country in half, and the people who didn’t agree, the dissidents, those still brave enough to fight back… Well, we did the only thing we could.
We sank our nation into the sea of civil war.
It would be years before anyone called it the Fracture, but whoever coined it hit the nail on its bloody, jagged head. It divided the entire world into slivers.
The UN, dismantled.
NATO, destroyed.
The WTO, demolished.
No one ever believed it could happen. There were too many fail-safes, too many protections. We overestimated the strength of those defenses against a power-hungry man in want of a kingdom to rule. A man with a loyal following of zealots. A man who’d convinced them all their greatest enemy was within.
He tore us apart from the inside.
Even now, I wondered where we’d gone wrong. How had it come to this? How were we losing?
I gazed at the haggard remains of our rebellion—off-duty soldiers, clustered around janky tables, conversing on threadbare loveseats and sofas. Devon fiddled with the threadson the cushion between us, bringing my attention back to him. He was thin, almost delicate, with devious and fine-spun features. Adam, on the other hand, was a teddy bear. He had a quick, easy smile and warm eyes.
Cursed with watching everyone I loved die, I’d pushed these friends so far I couldn’t truly call them friends anymore, but both of them were good men. Great men. Men worth dying for, surely.
Maybe what I’d just agreed to with the Blood Colonel would save their lives.
I seized a faded magazine from the coffee table to avoid Adam’s stare. “I can’t believe they used to care about this bullshit.” I glared at a comparison of two women wearing the same dress—an entire page dedicated to who looked better.
What a fucking joke.
“These are the things you worry about when you have nothing to worry about,” Devon said.
“Well.” I threw the magazine back onto the table. “Both of those women are probably dead now. Wonder who wearsthatbetter.”
Adam snorted and returned to his guitar. “I found some chocolate on a raid the other day, Soph. You take my KP duty and I’ll give it to you.”
“No deal,” I said. “Last time you stole me chocolate, it was chalky and terrible.”
He faux-gasped. “The things I had to do to get that chocolate!”
I forced a laugh. We’d all done terrible things for scraps of information or supplies. Our resistance was built on theft. Even our soldiers were stolen from the NAO—Americans who refused to bow.
In the early days of the war, the NAO’s military was focused on the Security Restoration Campaign in Canada. During thattime, renegade bands of the US forces turned against the new government and joined the rebellion, forcing the Commander to divide his military. He called troops inland to fight the rebels, strengthening the NSF into a true hunting force. In a speech made over our only remaining television network, Commander Haynes called the rebel forcesweaponized defiance, and the phrase took fire.
