4. Forced Veils

Resting his chin on his palm, Ryan Kesseler haphazardly scrolled down a list on his workstation. Names, locations, ages, success rates and other statistics flew past his eyes, a green circle next to each row. When he reached the bottom, he flicked the cursor to the top and began again. He was supposed to be rewriting his sorting algorithm (as the other watchers already had), but he had so few trainers to watch lately it wouldn’t help. After glancing around to confirm no supervisors were watching, he minimized the program and opened up a web browser. His preferred news site opened and headlines screamed at him in bold font: UCA RETRACTS NEGOTIATION OFFER, PM KETTERING WARN TERRORISTS OF “ANNIHILATION”, RIOTS KILL 30, HUNDREDS DETAINED. Ryan wondered if they were just rerunning the same stories with different headlines. Before he could click on a different page, his monitoring program threw an alert on the screen:

Trainer/Harvester 217: Deceased

Contacting supervisor

“Shit!” Ryan hissed at the screen. Seconds later a supervisor was at his station, leaning close enough for Ryan to smell the enormous man’s liberal use of cologne.

“Get sat-vis on him,” the man barked. He pressed a button on his headset, shouting “Two helicopter teams, harvester 217 residence and current location, dispatch channels 81, 82, 77. Nets authorized, use non-lethal force.” Other watchers leaned into the aisle to see the commotion. Ryan wished the supervisor would be more quiet. The satellite image opened on the screen: a house in blues and greens was visible, and 3 red outlines near it. One of them was very bright; the supervisor noticed it.

“That one there, the pink one. Get closer,” he said, stabbing the screen with a fat finger. Ryan zoomed on the figure, noting the steady, pulsing variation in the hue. The supervisor grinned, purring “We got a natural.”

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Penny stood motionless, one eye staring straight down the sight to where Hank had stood. His body lay on its side, a failing heart still pumping blood through a large chest wound. The boy slowly walked backwards up the stairs, hugging himself tightly. Second floor windows lit up, and Penny noticed her hand had begun to shake. She put the pistol back in her pocket, and motioned to the boy.

“Come on now, I ain’t gonna hurt you or nothin’. We gotta get out of here, now you come with me, alright?”

He continued backwards towards the porch, keeping his eyes fixed on her. She heard footsteps coming down the stairs from within the house. “Come on now boy, we have to go! Now!” she stammered, reaching for her pistol. The front door burst open, and a tall, bearded man crossed the porch in two steps, shotgun in hand. Penny grabbed her pistol, leaping sideways and cocking the hammer. Her foot caught on the ground, causing her to tumble onto her side. She brought the pistol up, aiming at the man’s chest when the air exploded with a fury of crosswinds and spotlights. She shielded her eyes and saw massive helicopters hovering some 30 feet of the ground in front of the house. The blinding light caught the gunman off guard, allowing her precious seconds to leap behind a bush next to the porch. The next second machine-gun fire tore across the porch and ground floor. Penny pressed her hands against her ears against the painful cacophony of helicopter blades and gunshots. When it stopped, she peered through the leaves at the house: then entire front wall had been destroyed by the bullets, and inside lay bloodied, tattered bodies dropped over the remains of furniture. The man with the shotgun was a pile of torn flesh and bone shards. Troops in thick black body armor jumped out of the helicopter, guns aimed at the house. A voice boomed from the airships:

“Come out with your hands raised! We will not shoot you! Come out with your hands raised, now!”

As Penny slowly rose from the bush, hands stretched above her head, she saw the boy walk out of the wrecked house, hands pointing to the sky. His face was expressionless, disinterested. A soldier lifted him up and turned back towards the awaiting airships, briefly motioning towards Penny. Two more soldiers walked towards her, guns lowered. She stood behind the bush, arms raised and terrified.

“Put your arms down, girl, it’s alright. You have to come with us,” said one of the men through a face mask. He reached over the shrub and picked her up. “Everything’s going to be alright, don’t worry. It’s going to be alright.” He put her over his shoulder, and they stepped into the open aircraft. She pulled her knees to her chest as the door closed and they lifted off into the night sky.