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“You look hungry,” she says.

It’s our little joke I guess, for lack of a better way to describe it. It was the first thing she said to me when I saw her that night.

As a Defender I’d lived frequently in less than desirable circumstances: sleeping on the ground or in vehicles, subjected to the elements and shortages of food and water. I’d learned to cope with the physical demands of the job – which initially gave me an edge on the street. But my compassion got the better of me. If I had lucked upon some food, but I saw someone else smaller, weaker, younger, older, needier, I’d give it to them. They probably needed it worse than I did – like the jacket to my Gray Issued Basic clothing – the uniform of the ununiformed after we returned from The Trenches.

They wanted us easy to spot. You see women – or what are supposed to be women – wearing GIBs everywhere you go. It’s all they left us with.
We went into Processing and they took our weapons, our Battle Issue Gear clothing and everything else they deemed as ‘sensitive.’ That included pretty much all of our personal items such as journals, photos, pillows – you name it – if it wasn’t physically attached to us they argued that it could contain mission sensitive information or that it could have been exposed to contaminates.

And then they tested us all for fertility – but not to submit us to the breeding list. Most of us were sterile – big surprise there, but they surgically sterilized those ‘lucky’ few to ensure that they wouldn’t become pregnant and pass on abnormalities from our exposure to harsh chemicals and toxins.

We were also briefed on the new Breeding Laws in effect that strictly forbade Defenders from intimacy with a man. Most of us didn’t care – but somehow it seemed unfair that they took so much from us and left us with so little. But in the end, what was just one more regulation to follow?

Just five months after storming out of the Center I had taken all I could – or maybe more appropriately, given all I could. I tried to care for the weaker women and younger girls I encountered, the occasional old man too dried up to breed and to weak and undereducated to be of use.

But I had nothing left to care for them with. I gave my boots, my socks, my jacket and most of the food I found to those who needed it worse. Then I gave my will. Or maybe I didn’t really have one to give and I finally realized it. Just another Defender turned Streeter – not allowed to beg, relegated to the allies by the local Force Officers whose top priority is keeping the street clean.

Relegated… Another one of her words. I use them more and more now. Maybe she’s right – maybe we aren’t that different…

I was in MY alley. I’d found it and went there frequently because it was one of the few places with a clear view of the night sky. That night the moon was high and full. The stars were so sharply drawn on the black curtain over heard I thought I could see their jagged edges.

The air was bitter cold and I yet I sat still as could be, slowly letting myself go numb – knowing the last thing I would see would be the night sky and knowing they would find me in the morning, dehydrated, frostbitten and dead. And I wouldn’t care. I’d let go of caring long before now.

Then I saw her – at the head of the alley.

She wasn’t pretty like the woman in the Center.

No.

She was beautiful.

Her white fur-lined coat elegant and fitted – her long blond shiny hair literally reflecting moonlight – just like her white clothes and pale skin. She was definitely not in hiding. No one was crazy enough to be out past curfew and fully clothed in white.

For just a moment I wondered if the old fables of angles were true. I’d never been a Believer. I wasn’t anticipating fading into some eternal rest or reward. I knew that when my heart stopped that night that nothing would remain – except maybe an emaciated carcass of what had once been a Defender.

Then I knew; and as if to confirm my suspicion, she ‘popped.’ I’d never seen anyone ‘pop’ before. It’s when someone at a distance instantly closes the gap between you. Her kind were the only ones we knew of that were capable of ‘popping’ but here I’d believed the Council when they said they were all dead. I should have known better by this time.

“You look hungry,” she said softly directly into my ear. I closed my eyes, but her breath was not warm. That was part of the modification. At the time they were tracking Fighters with infrared sensors. So the Modified Fighters were essentially cold-blooded. They’re body temperature was exactly the same as the air temperature.
Even the Force Officers wouldn’t know she was there if they couldn’t see her with their own eyes.

I opened my eyes and stared straight ahead – not at her. I was not afraid. Maybe this was the better way after all. I wouldn’t have to wait to die now. She was an Angel – an Angel of Mercy and she was here to end me quickly.

“Are you hungry?” I asked softly – vapor rising deceptively from my lips now parched and numb from cold.

“I already ate.”

Her cheek pressed firmly against mine and yet may face was so numb with cold that I could only sense the pressure of her face, and not really feel her skin against my own. But I could smell the meat on her breath. Real meat – and blood.
This was not a dream or hallucination. This was real – perhaps the first real moment in my life. I was not afraid, but my pulse quickened. Maybe it was the anticipation of what I thought for sure was soon to come. Maybe it was being actually physically touched by another living being – or maybe it was just her beauty. But I suddenly felt alive. I suddenly felt excited. I suddenly felt like something was about to change forever – and I was right.

“You won’t last much longer here – but you know that,” she crooned. I’d never heard a voice like hers before. I’d never been spoken to like this before. I saw twisted humor in the moment and wanted to smile – perhaps for the first time in my life, but my lips were so dry and tight that they only twitched and cracked. I inhaled a bit sharply in what felt like possibly a laugh.

She squatted down in front of me and took me in playfully with her eyes.

I’d thought that the night sky was the most beautiful and last thing I’d ever want to see – but I now knew I was wrong. Her eyes danced and sparkled like the crystal bright stars never had. Stars were cold and distant but her eyes were living, breathing, burning into me and seeing me with an intensity I’d never been seen with before.

She didn’t seem cruel – but still I knew what she was and what the inevitable conclusion of this exchange would be.

“I’ve waited long enough,” I managed to bark out in a barely audible whisper between gasps. “Do what you’re going to do and let it be finished.”

“Perfect moments like these my pet, are best enjoyed with patience.” She smiled.

“I’ve…” my speech slowed considerably under the weight of my labored breaths as my head finally started to swim and darkness began to close on me. “…waited,” I continued, “a long time.”

“So what’s a few more seconds?”

Her face and searching eyes dimmed and blurred before me and I slipped into a sensation of falling. It seemed to last forever and I wondered if the back of my head would ever hit the pavement. And then everything was quiet and black.

Moving On

She is feeding now. And when she is done we’ll find food for me. Probably at some upscale restaurant tonight – as her dinner had quite a bit of cash on him.
I don’t feel guilty for the part I play in her hunt. I have the stomach for killing. Of course killing men is a more deadly offense right now since there are so few of them.

Tonight’s sumptuous feast (her words, not mine) actually offered to pay her to let him live. She quietly told him she’d take whatever he had – after he no longer had any use for it. She’s draining him slowly now – his punishment for thinking that her loyalty could be paid for with money.

I’ve read the propaganda about her kind, but quite frankly she’s the only form of true justice I’ve seen in my lifetime. And still she’s compassionate.
It seems almost like a different life now – but it wasn’t so long ago she found me in the street.

I knew I was going to die that night and I was ready. And then I saw her. And I knew.

I’m not sure how, but instantly I knew what she was. I think it was her boldness combined with her beauty and of course, the time of night. No one is out past curfew except the criminals, the Force and the Streeters. I was a Streeter and I was looking for a way out.

“You were in the Trenches. You can find work at the Center,” I was told.
But people who say that haven’t been to the Center, and they certainly haven’t been to the Trenches. It’s actually not so bad now. Most of the fighting is done because quite honestly, none of us remember why it started in the first place. And those stories aside – there’s really nothing left to fight for anymore.

So I came ‘home.’ I don’t even know why. I was told that Defenders were being called back and following orders was all I knew.

They bussed me right from Processing to the Center after stamping me with my Discharge Tats – upper right shoulder. And there I sat and waited with hundreds of other women just like me until my number was called.

“25756.”

I stepped up to the cubicle beneath where my number glowed in red on a simple black industrial screen. The woman who sat opposite from me was unlike any I’d ever encountered. She was a throwback to the old vid files that you can find if you hack into the PDB. Her long hair neatly pulled back from her face revealed fine finished features and colors painting her skin.

My commanders didn’t look like that. The women combatants we fought didn’t look like that. The civilian women struggling to stabilize their lives day to day and run households and work at construction sites rebuilding their cities didn’t look like that.

She was pretty.

It didn’t seem right somehow to be sitting there in my GIBs in this cold, sterile, industrial building across from someone that was ‘pretty.’

She looked up at me and smiled. It was a courteous professional smile – but not sincere. Her voice was soft and lyrical.

“Number?”

“25756.”

“Date of birth?”

“Three, thirteen, eighty PA.”

“We were born the same year. Last duty station?”

“New London, United Union.” Why the superfluous information? Why would I care when she was born? Was she trying to bond with me? Gain my trust? Had she ever been outside of Newmerica? Had she ever answered to drill instructors and commanders? What could this pretty female possibly have in common with me?

She typed. She scrolled.

“Portal please.”

I rolled back the gray cuff of my GIB sleeve on my right wrist and popped the protective cover off the portal in my wrist. She plugged in the interface.

The listings scrolled into my conscious. Construction. Desk Jobs with the Force. Industries seeking private unarmed guards.

“I don’t see your job on here.”

“These are the jobs your training has made you best suited for. “

“My training made me best suited to be a Defender.”

“Your services as a Defender are no longer required. These companies however could benefit from your skills.”

“Why don’t I see any listing for Force Officers?”

“Force Officers are required to carry weapons – but you are no longer authorized carry a firearm.”

“Probably because I actually know how to use one,” I muttered.

“I beg your pardon. You might want to remember that you are interfaced – our conversation is being recorded…”

She wasn’t so pretty anymore. And I saw it. The polite veneer, the make-up, the smile and the soft voice – it was all there to disguise what they at the Center did not want us to know. We were not welcome. We were not wanted. We weren’t ‘as good’ as the women who’d stayed behind to rebuild. The ones who’d found places in civil training schools and had families wealthy enough to keep their daughters close to home. The ones who were still allowed to breed. The ones who actually still looked like women.

Defenders were now a sub-class of society. Newmerica was moving on. The Council had a focus on peace, rebuilding and population reconstruction and there was no longer a place for the warriors they’d created to keep them safe. They didn’t trust us with weapons. They didn’t want to waste the time to teach us new skills. We were now just a source of cheap labor.

“Never mind.” I stood to leave.

“You’re still interfaced. I cannot let you leave without a job assignment.”

“Oops…” I yanked the cord and cringed slightly as the system security voltage coursed through my veins. It’s the safety measure they installed to make sure we don’t disconnect our interface manually. It might work on civilians, but Defenders deal with much worse in the Trenches – or at least, we did.

Her face turned to stone and she turned back to her system.

Part of me wanted her to challenge me. Part of me wanted security called. I wanted one last fight. A blaze of glory. Maybe they would lock me up.

No such luck.

She looked past me as if I’d already walked away.

“25768.”

I walked out of the Center doors. No alarms sounded. No car came to get me. No escorts carried me off. No officials intercepted me. And I suddenly knew I was completely on my own.

Understanding (is overrated...)

People don’t understand how it happened. How it happens. But then again this isn’t the first time in my life I’ve been somewhere and no one seems to understand how.

Understanding is overrated.

I don’t NEED to be understood. Ever.

Understanding is a luxury item with no real use or importance.

I need food. I need a place to live. I need money. And yes sometimes I really NEED a fix. Understanding? Sympathy? Empathy? Love?

Love…

Guess I can do without those because you can’t spend them. You can’t eat them. They don’t keep you warm at night when you can see your own breath and you squat in some corner to take a piss and you can’t believe anything steaming could possibly be coming out of your own body a for a moment that part of you that the piss is flowing through feels warm – warm enough that you don’t even mind that you ass is hanging out completely exposed because it went numb a long time ago. You’re just not sure if it was from the cold or from sitting on the pavement…

But I digress.

She tells me when I digress. She likes fancy words like Digress.

They roll off her tongue like foreign poetry – silky and hypnotic. Her eyes blaze and she smiles ever so slightly. Everything she does is elegant. She says it’s about understanding time and timing and being sure of one’s self. She says she was once like me.

But I don’t think she ever could have been like me. She’s classy. I’m just crap. But now I belong to her. And people say I’m crazy.

“Isn’t it dangerous?” they whisper. “What if she – you know…” they’re too chicken-shit to finish the sentence out loud.

“Kills me?”

It makes me laugh actually. After jumping out of air transports and fighting in The Trenches on three different continents in The Last War, people really have the nerve to ask that question.

Of course they don’t know that when they first meet me.

I look different now. My hair is longer. I wear clothes that cover up most of the Duty Tats and scars. People could almost mistake me for a regular woman. But beneath the nearly feminine veneer she has fashioned for me I’m nothing more than an empty shell.

“There is a way to fill the emptiness,” she sometimes croons.

“Not your way.”

“No,” she chides. “Not my way.” And she licks her blood-stained lips.

She’s smarter than her peers. Smarter than I’ve ever been. She was one of the first sent to the The Trenches. And the mark she wears is far more difficult to bear – so she keeps it carefully hidden.

There are so few of her kind left that they are no longer hunted. The council has far bigger mistakes to cover for. And maybe there’s a masochistic part that appreciates her continued existence. A small portion to the Council Collective that allows her presence as reminder to themselves of how far they have come.

Who would think that the organization once in charge of all things War and death related would turn all its efforts to something that should be as instinctual as breeding.

No worries here. My weapons, the burning reactors, the dust clouds in Chinazikstan – all left me sterile.

History tells of a time before my time – before her time even – when men fought their own wars. They started them and they finished them.

But not The Last War. It was a war that the men could not finish – and so women were sent when there were no more men. There were more of us anyway, they argued.
But all this is ancient history. Not the world I was born to. The world she is trying to save me from.

Soon this will all make sense. There is much to tell and more to explain. I do not care if you understand. That is not my concern. I am only concerned that you know. For someday my heart will cease to beat – either at her hand or the passage of time. And someday she too may be hunted or just meet a blazing demise. But our story is important. Her story is important. That may even be why she chose me.

But now I tire. Tomorrow is a new day for telling. And now I will dream of faces erased long ago by poor planning, miscommunication and the arrogance of men.