March of War

He’d chosen an open-air market this time, given that it was a pleasant day. The air was so clean here in Starfall, Jack took every opportunity to just be outside. As expected there was a busy café for him to settle at, large coffee and news reader on the square, wooden table before him. Folks his age surrounded him, some in groups chatting and others sitting in quiet solitude.

Beyond the café, the market bustled with weekend activity as the local population got out to enjoy what promised to be one of the last good days of autumn. Out on the street it had been cool enough to make him fasten his coat, but here in the market a gentle warmth seemed to emanate from everywhere. It was still appropriately cool, but the edge was gone.

Staring blankly down at his news reader, he reached into the Cloud along the several dozen lines of investigation he’d been pursuing. Military networks had been on much higher alert ever since their theft of the micro-torpedo, but so far it seemed to be mostly an increased vigilance in guarding sensitive locations. There had been a flurry of encrypted activity a few days earlier, centered here in Starfall, but neither he nor Katja had been able to detect a coherent pattern.

They’d made one attempt to contact a known Terran asset in the city, but there’d been no response. With the extra activity by Centauri intelligence, they considered it best to stay silent whenever possible.

The mission had actually been scheduled for yesterday, but Katja had postponed it to allow the Cloud to settle. Jack would have preferred to wait even longer, but they were on a tight overarching timeline, and further delays were unacceptable.

There was no unusual activity on either the military or police networks as he tracked Katja’s car pulling into the parking lot beneath a government building. Called the Pierce Building after some civil servant of note, it housed the Centauri Department of Finance. The building itself was quiet, and except for the usual security personnel it gave the appearance of being unoccupied. Except for the very faint, highly encrypted pattern of signals they’d detected coming from the sub-basement.

<I’m on foot,> Katja reported. <No contacts here in the parking lot.>

Jack checked the view from the various security cameras. By taking control of the device watching the entry, he’d overwritten its live feed with a thirty-second clip devoid of activity while Katja drove in. Now he picked off the various viewers that were anywhere close to her and did the same thing, interrupting their real-time feed and replacing it with imagery from just a few minutes earlier.

<I’ve deactivated the sensors in HVAC trunking two,> he said.

<Roger,> she said, <entering now.>

Jack plugged into the sensors in the ventilation system, following Katja’s careful progress through the ducts and carefully masking the quantum-flux sensors for ten meters around her. He couldn’t actually deactivate the sensors—that would risk an alarm. Here again he had to replay previous, innocuous sensor readings which he’d recorded over the past half hour. It was the same game as with the cameras, just a lot harder to get right.

Katja paused, he noticed. Holding the sensors steady, he eased his perceptions back to better assess her position. She was at the first insertion point.

Moments later, she dropped out of the ventilation duct and drifted to the edge of the quantum-flux sensors. The room she entered showed no other security systems—nothing Jack could tap into directly to watch her progress—but just as she trusted him to keep her hidden, he had to trust her to get the job done.

<This definitely isn’t financial stuff,> she commented, and images from the room flashed into his mind. Just the look of the consoles revealed their military design. Katja hacked into one of them and sent a summary of information back to him. The sub-basement of the Pierce Building was a major node in the planetary defense network.

A short time later she climbed back into the duct, and replaced the cover.

They repeated the drill three more times. He covered her movements as she skulked through the venting and planted preprogrammed devices intended to disrupt the Centauri network. After she left, he couldn’t detect the disruptor pods—they were completely inert until remotely activated. Hopefully this would keep them hidden from Centauri agents until the time came.

The mission continued smoothly, and Jack kept an eye on the faint signals which periodically flashed from a series of rooms even further down in the sub-basement. He assumed they were military transmissions and he began capturing what he could. The encryption was very sophisticated, but the more he studied them, the more a pattern emerged.

There was also a standalone signal that reminded him of the alert system on the milly they’d encountered in the ammunition depot. Was there a milly somewhere in that building? It was exactly the sort of environment for which the mechanical beasts had been designed.

“Excuse me!”

His head snapped up, eyes blinking in the sunlight. A woman was standing in front of his table, hands on the chair across from him, staring down at him with a puzzled expression.

“What,” he stammered, barely remembering to use an Abeonan accent. “What was that?”

“I asked, are you using this chair?” the woman said slowly.

“Oh, uh, no. It’s all yours.”

“Thanks.” She offered a strange smile as she moved it over to her own table of friends. Feeling his heart thump in his chest, Jack released his grip on the pistol nestled inside his coat. He didn’t even remember reaching for it. The efficiency of military training really frightened him sometimes.

<You good?> he asked into the Cloud.

<Yes—starting my way back to the car.>

Jack settled back into his task of covering Katja’s movements. It took a large part of his concentration to mask discreetly the quantum-flux sensors, and now he kept his eyeline a bit higher and watched the woman and her friends. They didn’t seem to be paying him any attention. The heat of the café was suddenly stifling, though, but he didn’t dare remove his coat.

As soon as Katja exited the HVAC system, he collected his cold coffee and untouched news reader. It was easy enough to fool the parking lot cameras as she made her way back to the car, and Jack turned more of his attention to his own surroundings.

There was Cloud activity all around him, chirps and hearts and cat videos galore. It was all perfectly normal. The tables around him were full of merrymakers, and the market stalls were overflowing with local goods. He took a deep breath, trying to calm his heart.

<I’m in the car,> Katja said. <Clear of the building.>

<I’m leaving my position,> he said, rising to his feet.

<What’s wrong?>

He eased his way between the seated patrons, keeping one hand close to the pistol in his coat. No one reacted other than to give him more room, but he had the inescapable sense that he was being watched.

He transmitted his own sight into the Cloud, scanning slowly left to right as he made his way out to the market.

<Look back across the café,> she ordered.

He turned, standing still and making the motions of stuffing his news reader into his coat’s inside pocket. His eyes drifted over the tables again, lingering on the empty chair he’d just vacated and again on the group of women who had taken his spare. One of the women—indeed, the one who’d asked for the chair—peered at him with large, dark eyes. She was probably forty, he guessed, with an angular face and a lean figure.

<Ops red!> Katja said. <Turn and walk quickly away. Do not look back. Do not slow down.>

He did as commanded, pushing into the crowd and retreating.

<What’s going on?>

He kept his eyes up enough to avoid collisions, but his main focus was reaching backward, scanning for any sign of pursuit. Amid the maelstrom of signals, he noticed one device suddenly begin to move out of the café in his direction. He recognized it as a typical civilian device, but behind its signal he detected something else. Something very subtle.

Something searching. For him.

He pulled back, withdrawing all his links from the Cloud, and fought the urge to break into a run. Slipping past casual shoppers, he muttered apologies and quickened his pace. Then he scanned ahead for an escape path. There was nothing but the vast market sprawled out in front of him. The stands and tents were laid out in a rudimentary grid pattern on the flat, grassy field, so any of the side alleys would at least get him out of sight.

He darted to the left, stealing a glance over his shoulder as he did. The woman was two stalls back, eyes fixed on him. He started running, ignoring the cries of protest from people who began jumping out of his way.

<Who is that?> he shot out into the Cloud.

<Valeria Moretti.> Katja replied.

<Yes,> came a new voice in his head. <And who are you?>

Jack bolted to the right, hoping a vague zig-zag path would obscure him from view.

<I’m coming to find you, young man,> the voice said. Jack ignored it, lengthening his stride to a full sprint as he saw the edge of the market up ahead. He fired a quick scan behind him, and saw the signal from Moretti’s device. It was approaching fast. Much too fast.

He spun around, gaping in shock at the huge, bounding strides she took. She was practically leaping over the shoppers who scrambled out of her way. Three more strides and she’d be on him.

<Shoot her!> Katja ordered. <Shoot her!>

Grabbing his pistol he drew it out. He fired at the center of mass, then twice more in quick succession. Moretti staggered as she hit the ground, leaping sideways for cover behind a stall. Jack fired again, the crack of the bullets punctuating the screams all around him.

<I’m at the street,> Katja said. <Withdraw!>

Jack turned and ran, spotting a familiar beige car hiss up to the edge of the field. The driver’s door opened and Katja emerged, pulling a long, dark object after her. She raised it to her eyeline—it was her fucking assault rifle—and Jack felt a rush of heat sizzle through the air as an explosion rocked the market behind him. She stepped clear of the door and motioned him in.

He leaped into the seat, ears ringing as he heard at least three more rounds launch down her railgun barrel, and new explosions in the market beyond. Movement on his left grabbed his attention. It was Katja climbing into the passenger seat.

“Go, go, go!” she bellowed.

Jack stomped the throttle to the floor and peeled out onto the road. He cut across the lanes of traffic and diagonally through the first intersection. The dashboard flashed in protest at his unsafe speed, but Katja had disabled the safeties and he kept control. Dodging left and right past the slower cars, he sensed Katja reaching out into the Cloud.

Up ahead, the traffic signals had just switched to red, but then they flicked back to green to give him right of way. Under her electronic influence, they put a dozen blocks behind them in just over a minute.

“Pull over,” she ordered. “We have to lose this car.”

He veered onto a side street and found a service alley behind a line of stores. The loading bays were quiet for the weekend and he swung the car to a hard stop, then was out and running for cover even as Katja grabbed her gear. Seconds later she joined him next to the cover of a large recycling bin, rifle in her arms as she scanned the nearby buildings.

“Tell the car to drive itself,” she said. “All the way to Firsthome.”

Jack locked onto the car’s navigation computer and gave it a destination more than seven thousand kilometers away. Reactivating the safeties, he told it to drive the route at best, safe speed. It pulled out of the alley and signaled its way back onto the main road.

Katja hid her rifle in its case, but her hand disappeared through an opening. She stayed perfectly still, eyes scanning their surroundings and mind focused on the Cloud. He was breathing hard, adrenaline coursing through him like it would after an atmo drop or a stealth attack.

Following her lead, he reached out tentatively. There was nothing unusual in the immediate vicinity, but an overarching emergency call blanketed the city. Fire crews and ambulances were rushing to the scene of the combat, and a cacophony of distant voices cried out in shock and panic.

“Here,” she said, thrusting a small make-up capsule at him, “get this on your skin.” He popped the lid and rubbed the brown paste onto his hands and forearms, then onto his face, ears, and neck. Katja did the same, eyes darting in all directions. Within moments she’d transformed into an olive-skinned shadow of herself, just like on their first mission as operatives, but her blonde hair glowed in contrast. Reaching into her bag she wrapped a blue hijab over her head, hiding her hair under its long, silk train.

Then she examined him closely as he finished applying the make-up, strong fingers pressing against his neck and ears as she completed his work.

“You look different enough,” he said, nodding at the close-framing scarf which now masked her head and softened her features, “but facial recognition might still nab me.”

“That’s why I have this,” she said, hefting a hair-lengthener in her fist. “Hold still.” Jack struggled to keep from wincing as the device hummed to life. Katja pressed it down, not on his hair, as he’d expected, but his chin. He grunted in pain as the follicles of his beard burst to life. Searing heat seemed to fry his skin as Katja carefully moved the tool along his cheeks. His eyes watered from the pain, but he forced himself to remain still. Finally she leaned back, scanning the alley again before quickly assessing her work.

He brushed his fingers against the new beard that covered his face, wincing as his lightest touch sent shivers of pain through his tortured skin. He sat back, slick with sweat. Trying to distract himself from the pain, he reached out into the Cloud again.

The Centauri government was asserting control, issuing a statement that there had been violence in a public market, and that police were already investigating.

“To the government of Centauria,” Katja said suddenly, in a perfect local accent, “the attack today on the Starfall city market is our message to you. Your reckless pursuit of war against Terra is killing innocent civilians in all the systems—except yours. That will now change. You will no longer be protected behind your war machines, and your worlds will no longer be safe. We, the… Alliance of Hope, have demonstrated to you the horror you are causing in other systems. End this war, and we will end our attacks. Continue this war, and more innocent Centauris will die to match their brothers and sisters in other systems.”

She pursed her lips, then uploaded her message to one of the main social media sites.

“That ought to fuck ‘em up for a while,” she said, pulling him to his feet.

Her line of thinking clicked in his mind. If the authorities started looking for home-grown terrorists, they wouldn’t be looking for Terran operatives. And public outrage was a powerful, mindless force, difficult to distract with facts once opinions had been formed.

“How did you think of that so quickly?”

She pulled him along with her into a brisk walk.

“It’s my job.” She led him by the arm back to the side street. Her grip was like iron and her smooth hip brushed against his as they walked.

“Act natural,” she said as they emerged onto the main road. “We’re walking back to our apartment. Keep your weapon hidden, but handy.”

She closed up her case and slung it over her shoulder. Then she reached into her coat, no doubt to check on her own pistol.

“We’re just a local couple,” she said, “out for a walk.”

Jack took another deep breath, then gave her an obedient nod. It was a long walk back to their place.

* * *

Katja set a relaxed pace, so it took more than an hour, and Jack often felt himself getting ahead of her as his body screamed at him to take action. Eventually she took his hand in hers and held it tight, and they strolled with the appearance of just another young couple out in the street. His beard and her hijab were probably enough to fool any visual scans, but facial recognition programs still might see through them.

The sheer number of images that the Centauris would have to search was their best line of defense. Katja’s arsenal of weapons was their last.

Slowly, slowly, he began to relax, and as she loosened her grip he almost enjoyed the walk. Neither of them looked happy, but then, with news of the terror attack spreading, nor did anyone else on the streets. Jack probed into the city security systems and noted that all exits from Starfall had been placed on lockdown—but their car was already dozens of kilometers to the south and speeding happily along a lonely right of way carved through the forests.

They both scanned the area around their building from as far out as they could manage, and the only Cloud activity they discerned was the chatter of the residents as they learned of the terrorist “bombing.” No police cars loitered nearby. No individuals seemed out of place. Moving with swift but casual-looking purpose, they entered the building and climbed the stairs.

Their apartment was the same as always, and Jack retreated to his room as soon as they confirmed that their residence was clear. He threw his sweat-soaked clothes into the laundry and climbed into a hot shower to scrub himself down, washing away the stress and fear he always felt after combat. It was never a pretty thing, but he recognized sadly how used to it he’d become.

Just wash it away with soap and water, he sighed to himself. The make-up took some effort to remove, and his skin was too sensitive to even try shaving the beard. Rubbing his sore muscles he admitted to himself that, during his time as an operative, he had bulked out nicely. Months aboard ship, with three squares and no shortage of desserts, had made him bulk out in a less attractive way, but those days were gone.

Throwing on some clean, comfortable clothes good for lounging, he re-emerged into the living room and sat down next to Katja, who was slouched on the couch. Her blonde hair was loose and stark against her still-darkened face. Tiny, bare feet rested on the table, her boots and socks lying on the floor beneath her legs.

She turned to look at him, dark eyes lambent as they reflected the deep orange glow of sunset through the broad window.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, just shaking it off.”

He could never tell if she was baiting him, or asking a sincere question. She was so closed, and her exterior was so hard, but he knew what was within, deep down, and he wished that the old Katja would return.

“They’ll figure out that the explosions were caused by Terran bullets,” she said, “but hopefully by then we’ll be long gone.”

“If we’re long gone,” he said, “then this mission will be over, and there’ll be nobody here to figure anything out.”

“True.” She nodded. “Then we’re good.”

Her words were casual—so much so they filled Jack with horror. He’d tried to shove it aside for days, but all of a sudden it overwhelmed him. He turned on the couch to face her.

“Are you for real?”

She turned slightly toward him. Her features barely shifted, but a swirl of different emotions welled up from the depths of her eyes. She didn’t reply, and he could see her defenses locking down, but he wasn’t going to be intimidated this time.

“Doesn’t it bother you? The fact that we’re planning to destroy an entire world—the one we’re sitting on right now?”

“Oh, Jack,” she shook her head. “Not this again.”

“Yeah, this again. I understand we have our orders, so you don’t have to worry about having to kill me. I’m not arguing that. What I guess I want to know is this—who are you, really, Katja?”

She sighed angrily, looking away.

“What are you talking about?” she said.

“How can it not bother you that we’re going to kill seven hundred million people?”

“We’re not the ones doing it.”

“We might as well be,” he snapped, brushing aside her attempted deflection. “We’re making it possible for the Astral Force to do it.”

She stared at him, silent in her defiance.

“Doesn’t it bother you?” he repeated. He stared at her for a long moment, trying to read her expression. She held his gaze, but with less power than before.

“It doesn’t matter if it bothers me,” she said, her voice nearly a whisper.

“Of course it matters,” he said. “As officers we’re obliged to think about the morality of our orders. It’s our duty to do so.”

“I’m not an officer anymore, Jack. I’m an operative.” She stabbed a finger into his chest. “And so are you.” She rose abruptly to her feet, turning away from him and walking toward her bedroom. He rose to follow, pausing at the open doorway.

“And what does that mean, Katja? Nobody told me that being an operative meant abandoning my conscience.”

She pulled off her sweater and tossed it on her bed. The motion bared her flat stomach before her T-shirt slipped back down into place. She unbuttoned her jeans and moved to slide them over her hips, then paused and stared at him.

“Do you mind? I’d like to take a shower.”

He turned away, leaning his back against her doorframe and looking out across the living room to the darkening street beyond the window.

“I’ll look away,” he said firmly, “but we’re still talking.”

“Can’t it wait?”

“No, Katja, it can’t. I’m not going to be brushed aside.”

“I don’t want to have this conversation again.”

“Well, we’re having it!”

There was a long pause. He kept his eyes pointed toward the living room during the silence. Then he heard the clink of her jeans dropping to the floor.

“Fine,” she said, voice calm again. She padded into the bathroom.

“Why did you use your assault rifle to cover me?” he asked suddenly. “Your pistol would have worked just as well.”

“The rifle is better at long range,” she called back, “and I knew you were up against Valeria Moretti.”

“But why did you fire into the crowd?”

“I didn’t. I was shooting at Moretti and she was behind one of the stalls. The civilians got in the way.” The sound of water running from the shower masked her last words somewhat. Jack wasn’t sure if he heard regret or not.

“So they’re just collateral damage?”

“What?” she called. “Come to the edge of the bathroom so I can hear you.”

Jack stepped across her discarded clothes and glanced into the bathroom. The shower doors were closed and obscured with water droplets, but her sleek figure was vaguely visible as she put her face under the stream and soaked her hair. When she stepped free again, he raised his voice to be heard.

“So the civilians who died today, as you fired at Moretti. They’re just collateral damage.”

“Yes.” She paused, scrubbing her face with ferocity. “Unfortunate, but worth it to Terra if I was able to kill the most dangerous Centauri agent in this war.”

Jack’s impulse was to argue the point, but he knew he couldn’t. He had enough blood on his own hands, and whether they were military or civilian, it didn’t matter.

She was washing herself down with soap, the shower doors blurring her form just enough to suggest the erotic, and Jack had to force his eyes to turn away. It was hard to remember where he was even going with the conversation.

“I guess,” he finally said, “that I’m feeling betrayed by this mission.”

“Why? Because things went to shit today, and I busted you out? It happens.”

“No, not today—thank you for that—I’m talking about the whole mission.”

“You said you wanted to make a difference, Jack.” The shower splashed as she turned in the stall to wash off the soap. “The results of this mission may be terrible, but consider the alternative. Years of war to come, millions more dead in every system as we fight ourselves to exhaustion and sacrifice an entire generation of humanity.”

Maybe having this conversation while she was in the shower wasn’t the best idea. He forced himself to focus on the argument.

“But couldn’t we just blow up one of their uninhabited planets? That would send a pretty strong message.”

She shut off the shower and reached for the glass door. He forced himself to retreat across her bedroom again.

“Maybe,” she called as he heard her step out and grab a towel. “But maybe not. You saw how many micro-torpedoes the rebels have—enough to wipe out the entire Fleet. What if our leaders know something we don’t? What if they’ve learned that Centauria is developing a similar Dark Bomb weapon? What if this attack is the only way to stop the enemy from hitting us first? We just don’t know, Jack.”

She emerged into the bedroom, towel cloaked loosely over her petite form. Blonde hair dark with water clung to her neck and powerful shoulders, and his eyes were drawn to the smooth lines of her arms as she absently rubbed at the towel to dry her skin beneath. It preserved her modesty, but it wasn’t wrapped all the way around her. Pausing in the center of the room, she looked up at him with genuine interest in her eyes.

“Why do you feel betrayed?” she asked.

“When Brigadier Korolev approached me about joining Special Forces, he said that he had a mission especially for me. He said that I could help to end the war quickly, and save millions of lives.” He knew he should say more, but he was having trouble keeping his thoughts straight with so much of her skin showing.

“Is he wrong?”

“What?”

“Is what he said to you wrong?”

“No, but…” His voice trailed off as she lifted one end of the towel to dry her hair. Her thighs were revealed by the movement, decency just barely preserved. He really had to think to remember the point of his argument. “But he didn’t tell me that to do so I’d destroy Second Earth.”

She studied him, brushing stray hair from her face. He tried to figure out what could possibly be going on in her mind. Why could she not see the obvious clarity of his argument? And since when did she carry on conversations in nothing but a towel?

“When I was recruited into Special Forces,” she said finally, “Korolev made quite a different promise. He told me that by becoming a servant of the State I would be exempted from any responsibility for my actions, as they weren’t really mine but rather an extension of the State’s will.”

He stared at her. At the peaceful expression that was settling over her features.

“That’s why you’re always saying that,” he said. “Always talking about us being servants of the State.”

“Yes.” She stepped closer, hands holding the towel across her body. “And it’s true. We will never be called out for our actions. We are forgiven all, and we are free from guilt.”

His insides were churning. Her body was so close, her dark eyes staring at him with a clear intent he’d never seen before. His stomach was like ice even as he felt himself rising to the occasion. She took another step closer, eyes locked to his.

“Are you even human?” he whispered, unable to look away.

“Oh, yes.” She reached out one tiny hand to rest across his shoulder, and one side of the towel fell away. “Very much still human.” He could feel the heat of her naked body pressing against him, felt her other hand let go of the towel and reach down to press against him.

“One of the beauties of being an operative,” she purred, “is that we’re free to do whatever we want. No judgements, no consequences.”

He shuddered as her hands roamed over his body, nudging his own hands onto her bare hips. She reached up to kiss his neck, and began to slide off his pants. He gasped, savoring the heat of her breath against him. It was like that woman, Angela, at the lake at SFHQ—who’d appeared out of nowhere and given him the most amazing night of his life.

And now, it was Katja Emmes on offer.

He stepped back, banging sharply into the doorframe. She moved into him, lips pressing against his. No judgements, no consequences. But he moved his hands from her hips to her stomach—her smooth, sweet skin and taut muscles beneath—

And shoved her away.

She staggered back a couple of steps, and stared at him in surprise. It was the first time he’d ever seen her naked, but any lust was washed away by his sudden realization of what was actually happening.

“No,” he gasped. “Not like this. I’m not going to pretend like nothing matters. Or that this”—he gestured between them—“wouldn’t matter. I thought my night with Angela mattered, until I figured out that she’s just a Special Forces prostitute. I’m not going to do the same here.”

“But, Jack,” she said, stepping forward again, “that’s the beauty of it. It doesn’t matter. Nothing does.”

“It would matter to me,” he said, seeing through the spell of seduction and recognizing Katja’s clinical advances for what they were. “Just like those people who died in the market—they matter. Just like every crew member I’ve ever lost matters. Just like this mission matters.”

She stared up at him, hands still resting on him. Then, suddenly, she stepped back, collecting her towel and tying it around her again. Her knuckles whitened as they gripped the material. Her muscles tensed visibly. For a moment, watching the expression on her face as she stared downward at the floor, he was terrified. She could kill him in seconds if she really wanted to—of that he had no illusions.

But when she truly looked at him again, he saw only fatigue.

“We can’t change what we are now, Jack, whatever you choose to think. And we will carry out our orders, or die.”

He shook his head, rubbing it where he’d slammed into the doorframe.

“I told you that I’ll do this mission—you don’t have to worry about killing me. But after this one, I’m done.”

“That’s what you don’t understand,” she said, new intensity firing her features. “We’re never done. Operatives don’t retire, Jack. We know too much, and we’re too damaged to be cut loose in civil society. All those implants in your brain—do you think they can be removed?”

“Can’t they?”

“Our brains have adapted to them, come to rely on them. I’ve seen footage of one operative who had her implants removed, years ago. She’s a vegetable, and there’s nothing anyone can do.” She shrugged. “Besides, the State will never let any of us go—we’re too much of a security risk. If we try to leave they’ll hunt us down and kill us.”

Jack slumped back, feeling the strength flow from his body. He thought of all the things he’d wanted to do with his life—cozy images, lofty dreams, the visions of a youth with many decades of adventure ahead of him. Then he tried to process the horror Katja had just shown him. An operative for the rest of his life?

“Nobody told me that.”

“Welcome to the State,” she said. “Our lives are no longer our own, but we are freed from any consequences.”

He raised his eyes to look at her. She stared back defiantly, but as he continued to study her he saw tiny cracks in her resolve.

“We may be free of consequences,” he said, “but we can never abandon our conscience. If we do, we’re not human anymore—and that’s one sacrifice too many for me.”

“You better start examining the new reality, before you go insane.”

“I think you should start looking at the old reality. If you can’t, then you’ve already gone insane.”

She stared back at him, unable to speak. Then she shoved him aside and slammed the bedroom door.