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.