*First off, PokingFun for trudging through another of my offerings*

*The Persians marshalled all the nations under the Sun and Stars yet they were defeated by a single idea: Sacrifice, and their inability to appreciate it*

*****

It was an unfortunate convergence of poor choices, bad timing and ill intentions. When Flame stepped out of the Prometheus Club, she didn't see four cops. She saw Somerset Trainer, minion of Isobel Diaz, with three armed associates closing in on Magdalena Keverich's entourage exiting a restaurant. It was a daylight ambush in her eyes.

She knew that Mamma Keverich was coming back to town soon, that Isobel and Little M were worried/freaked out - because they had both betrayed Mamma, and that one of them had to offer the other's head up on a plate or they'd both likely end up dead. The fact that this feud would most likely end up with her as compost didn't bother Flame so much. She was a psycho.

Had Detective Somerset Trainer known that Little M was in the restaurant, she would have most likely grabbed me elsewhere. Isobel's career was in danger of going down the toilet and she was going to drag as many people down with her as possible. She was that kind of cunt. One of those people going down with Isobel was Somerset.

That did not mean she wanted to engage in a gun battle in broad daylight, on a busy street, with Keverich mobsters while attempting to bring me in on trumped up charges. It was potentially fatal and certainly embarrassing - in an Internal Affairs busting your ass open kind of way. After all, Kwan and Riga weren't part of the program. They thought this was the real deal.

Flame reached around to the small of her back for her light artillery piece. Silent, in tune with her compadres, went for her two rationally sized pistols, scanning the other way. Det. Gayle Seger, drawing forth her handcuffs, was only then starting to track my gaze back to the restaurant door and the menace there. She was critically behind in the arms race and standing in the middle of a broad sidewalk.

The other three cops were already going for their sidearms - not Tasers. Det. Po Kwan was on the far side of her car. Det. Regina Riga was in Gayle's boat - middle of the sidewalk with a firefight about to break out. Capri and I were in the middle of it all. The first move was Capri's - she dragged me with all her might toward the street.

Our choices were traffic versus bullets. Capri decided that collision with the hood of a car going around 50 kph was preferable to a minimum 9mm penetration. I was too ignorant of the physics to argue. Next, Silent started firing. Had my back not been to her, I might have marveled on how fast she was. As it was, she wasn't hitting anybody, just shooting.

After some after-battle counseling, I would learn this was 'suppression fire'; Silent was purposely not hitting anyone. Shooting cops was bad. Shooting cops in an area with extensive security cameras was worse. She was simply buying time for the rest of Magdalena's crew to hustle her boss back inside. That was her job.

Flame, on the other hand, was there to kill somebody. She knelt down in the doorway, aimed and shot. Det. Seger was a second too slow in reacting. Gayle was still clawing at her piece when the 12 mm round took her in the solar plexus. The front of her body armor never stood a chance. It was shredded.

The hydrostatic shock of the projectile ripping through her core was most likely terminal. Had she landed on a fully staffed operating table, she might have lived. The bullet severing her spine was critical all by itself. The back of her body armor did a marginally better job of slowing the round as it left her body, but it didn't stop it.

No, it flew down the street, hitting a ceramic composite lamp post. They build them to withstand the 125 kph winds (the max recorded that whip down into the spaces between the high rises) yet crumple under impact, such as a car. It blew a hole so big in the lamp post, it slowly keeled over into the street. That was a problem for a few seconds down the line. The ceramic did take a great deal of the bullet's energy.

Two blocks down, it ricocheted off a reinforced glass window, careened into the street and the conjecture was it landed on a car window catch, or went down a storm drain. They never found it. I doubted Gayle cared and I had other things on my mind when I got the news. Somerset managed to get a shot off before she realized that her unmarked police car's composite materials weren't going to have much better luck than Gayle's body armor at stopping Flame's rounds.

I suddenly understood the purpose of Flame's gun. It wasn't femismo. Her weapon dominated the battlefield. When shooting, you had better kill Flame because if you didn't, someone was going to the morgue. Somerset had just witnessed that reality. As Flame began swiveling her aim that way, Somerset dove behind her rear tire, putting as much material between her and death as possible.

Kwan was made of sterner stuff. She moved down the side of her car, toward the action and firing. Like Silent, she was more concerned with keeping her assailants' heads down than killing anyone. Det. Seger was down and her own partner was in a bad way. Riga had to dive into the narrow space between her car and the curb for what minimal cover it provided.

Silent had to duck back into the restaurant and Flame came close to being decapitated. Kwan ran out of bullets before Flame ran out of nerve. My eyes met Kwan's as she ducked down to reload her pistol. She was angry, fearful and confused. This situation made perverse sense. She knew the Organized Crime Taskforce wanted to talk with me.

Magdalena Keverich had sex with me - painful sex obviously. So why the fuck was I walking out of an eatery with Keverich mobsters? I was obviously running for my life. A fellow officer was down, maybe dead. Did this have to do with my stunt this morning, or was this something else? That was what I imagined her thinking anyway.

Flame responded to her near-death experience by giving Kwan one of her own. Her round penetrated her car's battery assembly, passed clean through, missed Kwan then hit a car driving by, wounding the driver in the lower, right side before lodging in that car's rear passenger door. A wreck was imminent, but not my immediate concern.

What was my concern was Capri and me crossing the road. It was two lanes, both way. The first lane was empty, but a delivery van nearly rolled over us in the second. A passenger car coming down lane one slammed on its brakes, as did the car behind it - that's the one the pole fell on.

By the time the van passed, I was in the lead. We dodged a car going the other way in lane three and lane four was free - that was the one with the wounded driver, but the badly wounded driver was still coming at us. We were on the sidewalk. That seemed to be as far as Capri and I had thought things out. The FBI were theoretically one way, but we couldn't see them.

The Vanishers couldn't help me unless I was out of public view. To get to them, I had to think like a Special Forces 'operator'. My mind was still wandering through that morass when Capri started dragging me away from the gunfire. We ran crouched over. I'm not sure why. The only cars parked on the street were across the way - Maggy's limo bracketed by the two unmarked cop cars. This was a 'No Parking' area.

For fifteen minutes we ran down the street, fleeing for our lives. We made it around the corner - 17 seconds had passed? Twice before in my life I had lost all conception of time. On this outing I didn't feel violated, but the gut-wrenching terror was identical. When Capri looked back at me, I could see the fear in her eyes. Good, I had too many crazy people in my life as it was.

The gunfire had stopped. Capri slowed us to a pace closer to normal. Fleeing people drew unwanted attention. We were at the crosswalk one block away when the first police car, sirens blaring and lights flashing, went racing by. I wished I could have hoped Flame and Magdalena were okay, but my heart wasn't that big and my pain was too fresh.

"This way," Capri hustled me along. "Upload your phone data."

"Damn, I just got this one," I muttered. "Drop the GPS and battery too?"

"Nope," Capri grinned. "Let's go to the Metro." One such station was right up ahead, but it wasn't our line. We sped down the steps into the underground facility.

A metro cop glanced our way, but I was looking down - and praying hard. We swiped our cards. No alarms went off, so I wasn't officially a wanted felon yet.

"Okay, we have a northbound to Bright Bay coming in two minutes," Capri whispered. "We go in the first car, stash the phones then race out the back car before the subway pulls out."

I looked dubiously at Capri. I didn't question the basic merits of her plan. Her deep breathing, flushed face and short legs worried me. Me, I was doing fine. I was, barring my full-torso bruising, in excellent shape, tall with long legs. Getting down the length of five passenger cars in the allotted 90 seconds the train was in the station was going to be close.

"When we get out, we catch the metro to Northwood in eight minutes," Capri related. Why a district called Northwood was in the Southwest section of the metropolis wasn't something I was going to worry about. "After that I guess we walk home." Using a credit card was foolish, but...

I ran over to the ATM and inserted my card then typed my PIN. I was praying again.

There it was - my $7800 from GNN. I had money! Bless Maribel and Eloise, those wonderful, wonderful social media parasites. I withdrew the maximum amount - $1000. I had never done that before, but I had seen Bethany do it - a lot. I quick-stepped it over to Capri and slipped her five hundred.

"In case we are separated," I murmured. She nodded. I had a strange flashback. I started giggling. I had a vision of a man giving a woman money for sex. How ridiculous was that? On second thought, I imagined that among the handful of rich men out there, they probably got a kick out of it. I had never heard of a male 'Joan' being arrested for solicitation. Could they?

Technically, he was doing his duty. If the moron wanted to give a woman money for helping out with that - well, it had to be more kinky than illegal. I felt pain. Capri was elbowing me.

"Stop it," she hissed. I was giggling maniacally again. The metro's air-brakes and electro-magnetic clamps were giving off their low pitched squeal as the transport came to a stop.

We were running at the doors before they separated. They slid open right on time, we stashed our phones in a first aid wall mount and began the sprint to the end of the train. That would put us out under a different camera, which we hope would help our evasion when someone finally did start looking.

We made it to Northwood, grabbed a taxi and I was recognized. Cabbies get bored. The city's roads use a grid system that 'mediates' auto behavior. It doesn't drive the car, but it cuts down on collisions and running red lights. Cops don't worry about this and an automotive 'getaway' is very difficult. Marlene, the cabby, didn't seem to hate me.

"So, are you really going to let the world crash and burn?" she asked after getting our destination.

"'Let' is a bit harsh," I rebounded. "I'm not going to stand in the way of society killing itself is more like it."

"Eh, I could care less," she shrugged. "Ovarian cancer five years ago. I'm an only child so my genetics are pretty much shot."

"That is a rather grim outlook on life," Capri noted.

"Kid, no one has ever stuck out their neck for me, so why should I bother?" Marlene shrugged once more.

I hope I didn't sound like that. I cared about people, but I would be damned if I would reward barbarity and indifference either. I was a father and I was terrified that my children might go through what I had experienced. I could keep telling myself that I was doing some good. I wasn't sure if I was, or if that was wishful thinking.

I was truly horrified by the fear that this was just me lashing out at the world for my misfortunes. That would make me as bad as my first love, the Aurora Slasher. I had loved her. I had loved her with all my heart because if I hadn't, she would have killed me. The problem was, I had really loved and cared for her.

Somewhere along the way, it had become real for me. We were going to live together and have babies - strong male babies. I had wanted that more than anything. If I loved her enough, she'd set me free. If I loved her enough, she'd let me live. In therapy, they had given me all kinds of psychological terms for that. The emotion had never gone away.

True, I was also terrified of her. For a year, any voice that sounded like her made me wet myself. I never looked at pictures of her. She wrote me letters a few times. I never asked for them. I pray to whatever divinity matters most that they never give her computer access. I'm still afraid that if I did see her I'd run into her arms and beg her forgiveness.

Maybe that is why I gravitated to women like Angel, Zara and Flame - secretly I wanted to end this and I felt they are strong enough to do it. It could be I was trying to replace my first rapist. I could be doing penance for not dying when I should have, or telling the wrong women I love them. Maybe I liked the pain but couldn't face up to it.

"Earth to Israel," Capri nudged me. "We are here." The cab was two blocks from my dwelling, in case someone was watching the place, we could make other plans.

"Here you go Marlene and good luck to you," I smiled. I paid and tipped her. I hadn't had enough money to tip anyone in ages - budget too tight.

"Thanks, Israel and be careful," Marlene laughed. "I imagine you are as popular as a tampon covered in Jalapeno sauce with the people upstairs." That was too sick/frightening/hurtful for me to think about.

"I now know what I'm getting Isobel Diaz for Christmas," Capri smirked.

"We are not going to make Christmas," I pointed out.

"I'll mail it to Hell," Capri grinned up at me full of mischief and spite. Without further comment, we made our way up to my condo. I opened the door and saw Angel up and mostly dressed (no shoes). She came right at me so fast, I freaked and backpedalled out the door.

"Sorry, Israel," Angel looked frightfully worried. I took a deep breath, stepped up and embraced her.

She hugged me tighter than I would have liked in my current mental state. In a perverse way, it felt motherly yet protective and passionate at the same time.

"Baby," Angel murmured into my shoulder, "Po called. She said you were in a firefight. Gayle Seger is dead and the culprits are on the run. Are you hurt? Are you in danger - I mean more danger than normal - for you?"

"He's okay," Capri inserted smarmily. "I'm okay too."

"You, I can replace - at the local pet store," Angel shot over my shoulder to Capri. "He's irreplaceable to me."

"Ooohhh," Capri drew out as she slipped by us to the living room and the remote. The news was vibrant to say the least. Four out of five medical experts were tearing Dr. Vasco a new asshole.

For her part, Vasco was resilient. Her bosses and staffers held fast about their methods and results. Her public speaking presence may have been exceedingly poor, but her mastery of the science was unassailable. The darkly amusing part of one interview was when a critic demanded that Dr. Vasco repeat her results at other labs across the nation.

"I can't do that," Dr. Vasco sighed. "Mr. Jensen and Ms. Sano requested that anything remaining of their blood samples after the battery of tests was to be destroyed."

"My Goddess, you didn't do that, did you?" the critic fired off.

"Of course I did. I'm their physician," Dr. Vasco seemed puzzled.

"Can't you bring them back in for more samples?"

"Ms. Sano has refused, citing that to do so might result in a denial of sexual favors in her near future," Vasco read off a report. "Mr. Jensen made it quite clear that he is willing to let us all die, though we continue trying to contact him."

"If your results are genuine," the critic persevered, "Mr. Jensen has an unknown strain of the T1 and needs to be quarantined."

"Why?" Vasco mumbled. "There is no indication that his variant of the Gender Plague is harmful to anything but the T1, and we've run extensive tests."

"How can you verify your finds with the global scientific community without the blood and tissue samples?" the critic challenged.

"After some consultation with the Psychiatric Department, we are contemplating getting down on our knees and begging," Vasco related with same voice used when contemplating the prices of toilet paper brands.

"This is not the time for jests," the critic bit back. Vasco was bewildered.

"What do you mean? We consulted some experts on male psychology and that's what they suggested giving their minimal time to come up with an answer," Vasco responded. Capri started giggling.

"You are coming across as a fraud," the critic lambasted.

"I've posted my findings," Vasco stated softly. "Beyond that, we are contacting his previous sexual partners for the past two years. We hope they can provide antivirals with their blood."

"Two years?" the critic scoffed. "That's reaching."

"Excuse me," the virologist questioned. "What makes you say that?"

"Two years?"

"Yes, from the level of degradation, or lack thereof, it is our current hypothesis that this variant of the Plague is designed to give immunity to the woman and her offspring through the child's first year," Vasco informed the world calmly.

"The belief is that by breastfeeding, the child would gain a boost to its immune system where the T1 is concerned," she concluded.

"Angel?" I looked to my lover.

"The hospital called. I said 'no'," she answered. "What we did was between us."

It was my turn to hug her. It wasn't that she had said 'no'. It was why she said 'no'. Angel kept her embrace light, which only made it more valuable to me.

"Israel, I have to go to work soon," Angel sighed as our foreheads touched. "Officer Involved Shooting plus running security for the arena tonight."

"Does this mean you are no longer with the Feds?" I worried.

"Babe," Angel laughed roughly. "You don't know how it works - two jobs doesn't mean two people; it means overtime." I wasn't sure what came over me. Maybe it was that 'love' thing.

"Wake me up when you get in," I requested. "I miss you."

The concern directed my way by Angel only made me want her more. I didn't see lust. I saw a desire to make me feel safe - not physically, but emotionally. The cherry on top was that she was yet another sane woman in my life.

"Okay, Babe," she smiled cautiously. "I'll whistle to wake you. You like whistling right?"

"Yes, that would be nice. Am I going to see you at the rally tonight?" I asked.

"What?" Capri squawked. She began beating up the sofa in her own, feisty style.

"Israel, I...okay," Angel sighed. "I'm not going tell you that going is nuts," which was her way of telling me that she didn't approve of my plan in the slightest while being respectful.

"Jerk, this isn't okay with me," Capri snarled. "Why in the hell would you go to something like the MAL fiasco? You don't believe in it. Have you decided that you want some pissed off men to beat you up because being pummeled by women isn't enough?"

"They may let me get a word or two in," I explained, "though most likely they will leave me socially impotent."

"And if they arrest you?" Capri glared at me. "Will you at least call me?"

"As soon as we get new phones," I gave a wan smile.

"Why do you need new phones?" Angel asked; at this point the whole metro/phone idiocy was revealed to us by Angel.

Of course, we had been total ignorant of the technology we were trying to spoof. The metro doors have a scanner which sweeps you when you get on each car. The beams could detect the card through several layers of clothing. That's how they know how much to bill your card each month. We had thrown away our phones for nothing. Capri mumbled something about too many bad spy movies, but looked suitably embarrassed.

Seneca showed up a few minutes later. She and Angel had a hushed conversation. It appeared that Seneca had some contacts with the local precinct and, by calling in a favor or two, could have a patrol car close by tonight - in case things went poorly with the evening commuters. I thought about it. I figured two cops wouldn't be of much use if things went bad for me.

I would rather have them in a place to support Seneca and Angel instead, if that was even possible. They left, Capri and I cleaned up and had a late lunch. I was happy my stomach had calmed down enough for me to hold anything down. Shortly after finishing, Capri received a bizarre call from her mother while I was in the bathroom. 'Mom' quickly got to the point.

"Capri - my child, do you still do that 'thing' with Israel?" she asked.

"Thing? What thing?" Capri wondered.

"Fellatio. Put his thing in your mouth until he ejaculates," Mom clarified.

"Yeah, Mom - four or five times a day," Capri fabricated convincingly. "He's a real beast."

"Oh, Good," Mom smiled. "Could you regurgitate some into a plastic baggy? Put the baggy in a chilled thermal container and mail it to me?"

"I can do that for you, Mom," Capri agreed. "I can go start on that right now, if it is important."

"You do that, Honey. It is very important - four or five samples?" Mom pressed.

"At least," Capri concentrated. "Do you want anything from our anal intercourse?"

"Ah..." Mom stammered. "Noooo, I think the oral product will be enough for now."

"Okay Mom, I'll overnight it to you," Capri smiled lovingly.

"Thank you, Capri. I'm proud of you," Mom smiled back at her daughter. They cut the connection. Capri stared at me as I tentatively stepped forward.

"She's PROUD of me being a cum-dumpster?" Capri growled. "Whore!" I struggled for the sympathy, for the diversion, for any words that would ease her anger.

"Well, I guess it's nothing but butt-sex now, eh?" I moped.

"When we survive all this madness, remind me to kill you," Capri laughed, but she was happier.

We went to the gym early today. First off, being around multiple women I barely knew wouldn't have done me much good, so going while most of them were at work seemed to be the best choice. Also, if the world held together long enough, I would be going to the MAL rally at seven. Capri said she understood. She spent the rest of the afternoon trying to stomp on my feet and kicking at my ankles.

Samantha showed up at five with our new phones. She immediately requested a hug. I readily complied; an indicator of my rebounding calm, if not sanity. She took her time and I wiggled her hips against me playfully. Sam and Capri coordinated with the other girls on what food delivery service to use and dinner plans were solidified.

Kuiko and Aniqua both had their hugs and were settling in when Capri's prophecy from this morning started coming true. Ambrosia, Fatima, Carrie, Amelia and three girls I didn't recognized showed up at my door. Whatever defensive benefits of not opening the door would give us, it would only make the mood worse, so I suggested we hear them out.

I knew what they wanted and it wasn't to tell me what a good job I'd done this morning, or to see if I was okay. We had lost a guy last night - now there were only six males left. They were probably going through the same nightmare right now, or would soon. Samantha and Aniqua met the crowd at the door. They were the biggest. I didn't have to tell them the score; they could sense it.

In this district, tribalism was starting to rear its ugly head. Faith in the city to provide for their welfare was disintegrating. Since the police (in their minds) were letting all the men in this district move, vanish, or die/be killed, the local women had to take over the responsibility for the welfare of their men.

To put it politely, the women at the door, and the doors of my fellow males in my district, were about to turn men into property. Less kindly, they were here to rape us.

It was akin to people rushing the superstores for water when disasters hit. My plan was working. Trust in cops was being thrown to the roadside. As a consequence, a very personal battle for my survival was working itself out on my doorstep. If my allies got the shit kicked out of them, I was going to get a lesson on just how bad anarchy could be.

"We would like to talk with Israel," Ambrosia said. She was learning the art of a 'request not being a request' very well.

"Talk - he's listening," Aniqua replied. Kuiko came out with a collection of knives, dumped a few on the sofa cushions then brandished two.

Had one not been a bread knife, I would have been more confident in our chances. As it was, I felt paralyzed. I wanted to go to the door, stand bold and firm as I told them to go home, thus saving my friends. I reached for that person, but he wasn't ready to jump in the fight at the moment. The best I could do was not run to my bedroom, or bathroom, and slam the door shut.

"I think he should come to the door," Fatima menaced. "We outnumber you."

"I think you know the price of admission," Capri grumbled right back. The situation was tense, the women outside were wavering - crossing the line into assault, maybe murder, wasn't easy. The question about who had the advantage on who was resolved though.

I heard a gun hammer click into 'I'm about to kill someone' mode.

"Alright, you bitches," Venus snarled. She and Roni had climbed the stairs behind the mob and out of my camera view. It didn't take me a second to realize by the look on the ladies spinning around in the back that they didn't like what they saw.

"What? Who are you?" Carrie gulped.

"I'm the possessive bitch with the gun. Now I'm not a good shot, but you idiots are packed around the door of MY man, so I'm not likely to miss at this range. Ladies inside, you might want to back up, in case I blow a hole in one of these whores," Venus growled.

"No one has to die," Roni tried to soothe down the situation. "All you ladies I don't know, there is a stairway down at the far end of the hall. Use it." Clearly walking past Roni and Venus on the stairs those two had just come up was not an option. I would have liked to think we had stepped back from the precipice of chaos, but we hadn't.

Venus didn't own a gun that I knew about. I seriously doubted she had gone through the background check and required waiting period to get one either. By brazenly threatening others with an illegal firearm in this manner, all we had proven was that my tribe was tougher than theirs - for now.

The 'invading' tribe left. Aniqua, Sam and Roni retrieved the food that Roni and Venus had left on the stairs when they heard the commotion. The girls took turns heading out, gathering a few clothes and toiletries and settling into my place. Only when we settled down to eat, did the first of two problems arise.

"Venus," Roni asked, "where did you get the gun?"

"Have none of you been listening to Israel?" Venus scanned the group. "The world is going down the crapper. We need to be prepared. We should all get some guns."

"Okay," Kuiko grinned. "I know a guy." The rest of us were skeptical.

"Kuiko, I don't think that is a good idea," Aniqua cautioned her friends.

"It's okay. He likes me and I think he has some assault rifles," Kuiko chirped. Oh yeah, that was going to make the next complex pool party a lot more interesting - not that I thought we were going to have one.

"Rule One: Always assume that at my place, or anyplace I am at for too long, they are listening in," I warned them. "Venus, I don't know what to do about your piece. Don't show it to Angel for now and we'll see what happens." Venus looked down at the gun in her lap.

"We should buy you some accessories for that," Capri added. "Things like bullets, clips; a holster perhaps."

"Oh, speaking of buying things," I pulled out my wallet, "here you go Samantha. Thanks for getting us the phones."

"Where did you get so much cash?" Roni asked. It then occurred to Capri and I that all the other women had actual jobs - that required actual work - that required actual attention.

All Kuiko and Aniqua knew was that I had called Kuiko about giving blood, some technicians showed up, drew the blood and left, and then they had called back asking to draw more blood. Since Kuiko hadn't heard from me and didn't want to miss out on some more 'epic' sex, she had refused. The reasons why I had made the request were never discussed.

I let Capri unfold the tale, from when we left the condo, the fun at the metro (which helped explain the savages at the door this evening), to the Sentinel, GNN, the shoot-out at the Prometheus Club and finally, the ride home. They were dumbstruck.

"Me first," Venus hopped up.

"What?" Roni and Capri questioned.

"I want those antivirals that Kuiko has," she clarified.

"You just want to get fucked," Aniqua grumbled.

"Don't look at it as if Israel and I are having sex," Venus reasoned. "Think of it as me getting a booster shot, an injection, being vaccinated, inoculated, or whatever floats your boat."

"Damn it, Venus," Roni hopped up too. "Israel could have been shot and killed today. The government, or some other group, will grab him sooner than later. We need to protect him, not jump his bones."

"Wait, wait, wait," Capri stood and waved all the other voices down. "It gets better."

The second problem of the night.

"Israel, what are you planning to do tonight?" Capri smiled wickedly at me. I'm sure, by the way the women were looking at me they had their psychic fingers crossed and were hoping I'd say 'I'm want to bang (insert the thinker's name)! I want to bang (insert thinker's name)'.

"I'm going to the MAL rally," I muttered. I knew that look, too. It was the 'how do we tie him up without freaking him out' look. I could feel the secret feminine communication network buzzing around me. Being a man, I wasn't hooked up to their frequency.

"Israel, have you thought this through?" Roni inquired gently.

Kuiko looked like she was going to cry - or throw herself out my window. With her size, she most likely couldn't break it.

"I don't know what to say," I sighed. "Yesterday, I asked men to stand up for their rights and resist, but at crunch time this morning, I gave up my dowel and submitted to an illegal search."

"I deceived my fellow men. I let down Kenny, who went to jail for me, and Luanga, who I instructed to do the opposite of what I did Monday," I kept going. "If I keep yelling at my brethren, telling them to resist and then I cower here while the government lies to them at the rally, I'm continuing to be a hypocrite and coward." There was silence. They didn't get it.

"I understand," Samantha spoke up. "Gut check time, or as my coach kept telling us 'winners don't hold anything back'. If you gotta go, you gotta go. Do you think they'll let any of us come with you?"

"Invitation only and security should be tight," I answered.

"Are we seriously thinking of letting him go?" Venus gasped.

"It is not our choice to make, Venus," Aniqua said. "If this becomes strictly a battle for survival, then Capri is right - we have lost the right to continue on. We have become animals."

"You know, when the world crashes down," Kuiko commented out of the blue, "I'm really going to miss the internet."

"I am going to miss batteries for my vibrator," Roni confessed. Seeing the others stare at her. "What? We can't expect Israel to perform 24/7."

"I'm going to miss microwaves," Aniqua added. "That means I'll have to learn how to cook."

"Fine - fine," Venus plopped back down. "He goes if he wants to go. The rest of you shut up so I can cry in peace."

"My Mom wants me to send her some of Israel's sperm," Capri snickered. There were a chorus of 'huh's'. "I'm thinking of going down to the zoo and milking a bull elephant and sending a bag full of that to Mom instead."

"Damn Girl, those things are huge!" Aniqua laughed. "I mean they are as long as your leg - huge."

"Really? I'm not going to ask how you know that," Capri winked.

"When I say I've been lonely - I mean real lonely," Aniqua snickered.

"Understood," Capri mused. "Kuiko, what are you doing tomorrow?"

"Not milking an elephant penis," Kuiko giggled, "that's for damn sure."

It was nervous, silly energy, but it had gotten us over the hurdle. By twisting away from fear with laughter, the group had progressed to the level where they could accept me as a true equal. My voice counted - it really counted. In my heart I knew this might be the last time I could do this - force my own will on the group.

After tonight, we would become a democracy because I could trust the group to see beyond gender and into the ideas and ideals of the speaker. True democracy was not about the tyranny of numbers, but consensus. Consensus was the result of the belief that everyone in the group, even the opposition, had worth - they counted.

How in the Hell, after all the wrong turns my life had taken, could I still believe I was an idealist? It was simple. I had not let them win. In a very crude, sexual way it was that I had the confidence in one girl, my first date, to ask her to hold off on true intercourse and she respected my wishes. In the kaleidoscope of my fractured mind, that memory burned through.

Listening to the women in my living room talking while I dressed in the bedroom, a tiny shiver of one memory collided and melded with another. No women I had ever known had not betrayed me in one way or another. That was the terror of distrust for me - but...no woman, or man, was perfect. They would all betray me soon or later.

I now understood this wasn't bad. It was human nature. We all let people down around us, even the ones we cared about. Pain had led me to hunt for perfection. That was a pointless quest and a pursuit that led to madness. What I should have been looking for was restitution. Did that person know they had wronged me and were they trying to make it up to me?

The same held true for me. Was I a true friend, looking after those I had wronged and balancing accounts with them as well? Honesty, Truth and Love - the harshest bitches on the block. I meditated for twenty minutes before heading back to my assembled friends.

"You look nice," Kuiko beamed. "Really nice."

"Thank you," I blushed slightly. More Bethany clothes.

"That wasn't a compliment, you jerk," Capri glared. "Last chance. This is stupid."

"Note and acknowledged, Ms. O'Hara," I nodded. "I need a taxi." I pulled out my phone and began looking up taxi services. My phone rang.

*FBI across the street* it read. I shuddered. I wasn't upset. I was peeved.

*Do you like my new underwear you Pervs? + HUGSZara* I hung up. I didn't care if they liked my underwear.

"Them?" Capri asked softly.

"Yeah."

"Damn it, you just took a shower, shaved and got dressed. Can't they leave you alone for an hour?" she griped.

"Who?" Roni got out first.

"Santa's Little Helpers," Capri grumbled. "I really ought to do something about them."

"Let us not revisit the whole 'you dismembered in the morgue' thing, shall we," I requested. "Besides, I gave them a piece of my mind this time."

"Not the sexy part!" Kuiko blurted out.

"What did you do?" Capri studied me.

"I called them pervs," I declared. "No, I did not, Kuiko. The sexy is all for you." She smiled.

"Oh yeah, that will do it," Capri pressed her wrist to her forehead and announced dramatically.

"What do I want to do more," Venus mumbled, "fight over the sexy or find out what the hell is going on?"

"Perverted Santa's Little Helpers who leave dismembered bodies in the morgue and have an apparent issue with Israel naked or semi-naked," Roni mused. "Capri, after he leaves, you are going to do some explaining."

"I think this is my cue to leave," I told the room then headed for the door.

"Aren't you going to call a taxi?" Aniqua reminded me.

"The FBI is going to drive me there," I grinned.

"What makes you say that?" Samantha gulped.

"When the alternative is letting me flag down a cabby that may, or may not, be homicidal, my bet is they'll drop me off at the arena," I explained.

"Makes sense to me," Kuiko nodded. "If I had a car, I'd give him a ride."

"Kuiko...for once I agree with you," Venus muttered.

"I'm not as dumb as I look," Kuiko turned that 1000 watt smile on Venus.

"Of course you are not," Roni chortled. "Otherwise you couldn't walk and talk at the same time."

I went around and kissed each one of them - on the lips. Normally that should have made them happy, but they kept looking at me like they'd never see me again. Clever girls. I left the complex and scanned the streets. There was the car, at the edge of a car park down the street. It wasn't as if there were many car owners in this part of town.

I hurried across the street and I was whistling. Special Agent Sosa lowered the window as I approached. Across from her was SA Saris, also with Dimple's team.

"Yes?" Sosa sighed. "When staking out a place it sort of blows our cover if you walk right up to us, by the way."

"That's cool," I grinned. "We aren't staying here anyway. I need a ride to the Arena."

"Do we look like a taxi service?" Sosa smirked.

"I'm going - you are following. We might as well make it easy on us - save a few volts," I reasoned.

"Get in," Saris grumbled. I gladly did so and off we went.

"Planning to get arrested?" Saris asked.

"Planning? No. Expecting it to be a possibility, yes," I admitted. "Any news?"

"Dr. Fremont is still missing, but her company hired a GlobeMaster to haul a whole lot of something to Bolivia," Sosa answered.

Seeing my confusion, Saris added.

"A GlobeMaster is a really big aircraft, used for hauling freight, not passengers."

My impulse was to say 'can you shoot it down,' but the illegality of the action was stunning.

"Anything on your front?" Sosa inquired.

"Let me see, my Capri's Mom wants her to be a cum-dumpster, seven girls stopped by my place today to drag me out of my home and make me their bitch. My tribe made them back down - this time. Now my ladies are camped out at my place, murdering my AC unit and praying I make it back home in some sort of working order," I outlined.

"Why did they let you go? Are they some kind of pansies?" Sosa mocked.

"I'd hit you upside your head for that comment, but you are driving, armed and most likely a much better fighter than me," I replied. "They are not pansies. They risked harm for me today."

"What happened at the firefight today, anyway?" Saris asked.

"Not really sure," I lied. "Bullets were flying and I was running for my life."

"You didn't see anything?" she persisted. Damn her interrogation abilities.

"Wait - with guns going off I thought you would be happy I was running away," I evaded.

"Why didn't you wait for Agents Vabishi and Fraklos to get there?"

"Capri and I got across the street so we ran for it," I shrugged.

"Next time, lay flat and we'll come get you," Saris told me.

"Thanks, GI Jane," was my snarky comeback. "Maybe if you let me have some sort of combat training I'd know what to do next time." I was making light of things, but in the back of my mind, like a cornered badger in the dark, I knew I was in a vehicle with two women I didn't know.

It wasn't like I could tell myself they were law enforcement agents and feel better. Kwan, Riga, Seger and Somerset had all be cruel to me in some way. Dimples' crew had tackled me on the ground, intimidated me, deceived me, torn away my rights and played upon my feeble psyche. Trust hadn't placed me in this car, expediency had.

The FBI was the best chance I had to get to the Arena intact. I doubted they would have appreciated me defining their actions as our evolving tribalism. I was their investment, so it behooved them to take me safely to my destination. I didn't believe they yet understood that they had stopped working for the Director of the FBI, or the Attorney General and had become self-employed.

They may have had this delusion that this would end up with criminal indictments against the people behind the Big Lie and Carabolix-37, but that was an unsustainable fantasy. Once the system betrayed them, as it had betrayed me so often, Dimples' crew would know that escape was the only option left. It was obvious to me the moment I saw Dimples.

She would never let them win. She was the only one allowed to win. I didn't count the freebie she threw my way. That was a draw at best. The ride to the Arena turned out to be nothing much. I was dropped off. Men, and cops, were all around. I dutifully showed my ID to Arena Security, they triple checked it and then brought a coordinator to check it one more time.

They realized I was in the front third of the arena floor seating. I had a nice folding chair on the outer aisle. The coordinator decided that was a bad idea so she had me exchange seats with a guy in the middle of my row. I knew why this was, though I only had theoretical knowledge how a rally would work.

When the authorities left, having neutralized me, I politely went to the man I had exchanged seats with and asked him to switch back. He seemed dubious, but when I explained that all the blame would be foisted on me, he relented. See, here is how it worked. First your Talking Heads would get up and make their speeches.

Then would come the long question and answer portion of this farce. Women would walk up and down the aisles, men would raise their hands, wave and asked if they could present a question. In a totally democratic process, these women on the aisles would provide a sound system for the men to ask the speaker their question.

The speaker answers - on to the next man. As you might guess, men sitting on the aisle seats had the best chances of being heard. Men stuck in the middle were out of luck - men like me and my 'new' assigned seat. Men like me in my original seat, were potentially dangerous. Still, things went along very smoothly until the tenth question.

Up to that point, the speakers had done their thing with the basic theme being 'all you men are appreciated, doing your part, and we love you'. Not that they were going to do a damn thing to help us beyond patting us on the head, but they loved us. They loved us because we were doing what we were told. The men in the audience ate it up. It was what they wanted to hear.

I imagined that handing us all 'little lamb' outfits to wear would have been counter-productive to their agenda, though it certainly would have been more appropriate to how these women viewed the situation. It was clear to me that all the questions the men in the audience were asking were scripted. Some had to actually look down at their phones when reading off their instructions.

Most adults don't like being treated like six-year olds, so they ignored this mounting stupidity until Man 10 stood up, was recognized and read off his question. He was around fifty and clearly in a prosperous profession, positive he was a member of the winning (female) team.

"Is it true that at this very moment Congress is voting on increasing the cycle from 28 days to 14, and abolishing marriage?" he asked.

There was a hush. By the dumbstruck expression of the woman on stage, this was not the prepared question. The problem wasn't moving the cycle to 14 days. Men were prepared to knuckle under and do their part for the Human species. But marriage? Men loved marriage. They didn't love the idea of finding love, getting married and living happily ever after.

That was idiotic. No, men loved marriage as our last refuge from a women's world. Gaining 'attachments' was a warning flag we could wave at other women, telling them 'hey, we are doing our part, so please, leave us alone.' Marriage was your shield and armor. It was 'Don't touch. I'm with somebody!'

The hope was that if someone did do something to you, your wife would scream bloody murder and things would get done. She was a woman after all. Marriage had been preserved in the Gender Inequality Act because most of the signers were either married or had been recently married and lost a loved one to the Plague.

I imagine they thought it was a quaint institution that would gradually fall to the wayside as society progressed. At the start, it looked that way. The number of marriages did slowly decline for thirty years, but about ten years ago, the trend began reversing. When a man is in his late teens, early and mid-twenties, going out with lots of girls sounds nice.

Women pay for everything, they take you to nice places and if you end up in the three- or four-way occasionally - well, you've got the stamina for it. When you hit your late twenties and early thirties, men start slowing down. Pulling a train on a Saturday night - all night - becomes a burden you could do without.

About that time, marriage starts looking good. You've probably been in a few attachments. You pick the one you can live the best with and who has the best financial status and you keep dropping hints until she realizes what you really want and she pops the question. Congratulations, you only have to screw one women for the rest of your life.

Okay, maybe her sisters, your mother-in-law and her boss, but still, that's not too bad. Ten years ago, that generation of men who grew up after the plague were hitting their thirties and they were taking a renewed interest in the dying institution of marriage. Men got interested - women got REAL interested. For women, it meant no more desperate hunting every weekend.

You wanted dick? Call your husband, tell him to be home by six and wear something sexy and it got done. Best of all, you could make that call, look around your office and see all your female co-workers dripping with jealousy. If you truly wanted to turn the screws, during that call, you told your hubby to take some enhancement drugs because you wanted it deep and hard all night long.

By this time in our social evolution, men didn't mind being treated like that too much. We had safety. As married men started to bask in their safe status, their unmarried brethren began wondering if marriage would be a good idea for them, too. More took the plunge and most of them were marrying up social and financially.

As I keep repeating, women aren't stupid. When rich, successful bankers began marrying sales clerks and custodians, the social stigma of marrying beneath your station evaporated in the burning reality that they had their genetic future waiting at home, willing to do his duty. The floodgates were open.

More married men meant fewer men in the fishing pool. That meant greater pressure on the remaining men, who were now opting into marriage to relieve that pressure. That meant even greater pressure on the fewer and fewer remaining men. Last year the marriage rate began its climb toward 30%. From the gender quota point of view, this was a disaster.

To put that in perspective, that's thirty percent of ALL men. Then you have to drop out every male below the age of 16. Then you have to consider that once men are over 59, they need a yearly physical. If something is wrong, you get a limited deferment. That means you don't have to have sex as often.

You never get to 'not have sex' unless you are on life support, or a rape victim. There are waiting lists for kidneys, livers and hearts - if you are a woman. If you are a man, they'll slap an artificial heart in you if they have to. Men must perform for the general female population - unless they are married.

Back to the question at the Arena. Men had been quietly bleating, nodding our heads, and smiling without real passion until that point. Sudden, like scenting a wolf for the first time, they were very attentive. If you were a twenty-something guy, this wasn't 'good'. If you were a forty-two year old husband, with a wife, three kids and twelve years of marital bliss, this was disastrous.

The government was about to shove you back into the deep end were packs of starving women were going to devour you because your avoidance skills were rusty. You were about to be waking up wondering if the pain coming from your groin was worse than the headache you had from whatever the hell those women drugged you with.

Oh, and by the way, you were about to lose your parental rights to your offspring and most of your shared property. Effectively you were being forced to divorce. The magnitude of this was amplified by the speaker. If she had a pat lie handy, she could have defused things because men wanted comforting words more than unforgiving reality.

But she stammered. She could have said yes, and that might have been better. By stammering, she told the men that 'Yes, you are boned, but we are going to lie to you about it'. In my opinion, she did the worst possible thing.

"Next question?"

That was the equivalent of 'Yes, but you don't deserve to be told about your fates'. There was no riot over that. No, it was something far, far worse. Before that moment, the 20,000 men in the arena thought they were part of this society. They were deluded into thinking they were equals. They thought I was a lunatic. Now?

As a group they came to a consensus and it wasn't a pleasant one. 'They think we are sheep...Mother-fuckers!' This wasn't the crowd that carried dowels this morning but they were starting to wish they had some now. The shift was subtle. Men had been sitting back in their seats. Now they were leaning forward.

There had been polite whispered banter. Now there were grim faces and quiet. I jumped up and waved my hands around. The communications girl came my way, was offering me her microphone when she suddenly realized who I was - I wasn't the man they had reassigned to that seat. She back-pedaled and another questioner was immediately tapped to speak.

"Let him speak," the man pointed my way. There was a hush. His comm girl backed up as well. Another man was found. He started asking his state-sanctioned question but then the hissing and boos began. The speaker's response was barely audible over the racket. I jumped up again. The next man repeated the plea, though it was more insistent now.

"Let him speak!"

I wasn't sure what they expected me to say. I wanted some sort of redress to our legal plight, something to defend us against the GED and the most egregious insults to our dignity. An arena security guard, neat and prim in her freshly pressed uniform, moved from the wall nearby and was clearly coming for me.

The world cracked a little more.

Five men jumped up around me and they looked angry.

"Don't," one of them menaced the guard. Cops would have kept coming. It is what they do, but this was a security guard. She wasn't armed and she certainly didn't like the mood presented to her.

She suddenly realized she was down on the floor of the arena, back to a wall with a sea of angry faces looking her way. She stepped back then ran, calling for back-up. It was the most horrible thing she could have done. Two cops were already advancing my way from the front of the arena. The ripple of the men's successful defiance moved through the crowd.

The majority of men kept their seats. They had not come to get in a fight. They were not rowdy. In fact, they were becoming afraid as most sane people do when violence approaches. Two patrolwomen came my way. Men rose as they passed by, but they held firm. Courage was the important thing. The belief was if they held firm, the men would back down because they ALWAYS backed down.

I saw Officer Passey and her partner as they closed. They didn't have weapons drawn because they didn't want to spook us. There must have been sixty men standing around me. I was still standing at my aisle seat and no men had left their seats to pour into the aisle so the cops had unimpeded access to me.

"Come with us," Passey beckoned.

"I haven't done anything wrong," I begged. She grabbed my arm...and then two men hit her. Passey went down, I heard her partner yelling for everyone to get back as the males on all sides charged in. A taser went off then the men were punching and kicking the crap out of the two women.

The source of this rage was two-fold. These men had come here completely wrapped up in the belief that they were equals. These were successful men with good homes, jobs and lives. They weren't Kenny and Luanga who worked in a factory. They were professionals and semi-professionals. They had just been told they were considered nothing but sheep and now they were being treated like sheep.

The other factor was the fact they were NOT the men with dowels this morning. They'd watched those morons getting plastered, stomped on and arrested. They didn't admire or even empathize with those men - they held them in contempt because why on earth would any man be rebelling? It wasn't that they didn't suffer from the same indignities.

They did, but they accepted it as normal and went about their days. Smacking a woman in the head with a stick was stupid. It would accomplish nothing. This was the mental quandary these men were in. The morons of this morning had been right in their futile protest and they had been the fools.

Like most people, when someone makes a fool of you, you don't say 'Gosh, I'm foolish'. No, you get angry with the person who made a fool of you. They were sheep, they had little lamb bells in the shape of a bracelet and they'd been fleeced. Those two cops had simply been too vulnerable to resist.

I pushed forward, then threw myself on Passey's body, hoping to buy time. I didn't see her partner. From later footage, I was to learn that five more policewomen came storming up from the front, tasers out and firing. Men were dropping, but not fast enough. At that crucial moment when it seemed those five women might stem the tide, the men discovered something really bad.

The floor of the arena was covered with FOLDING chairs which make nice weapons. Up went the chairs and down went the cops. The majority of the men in the arena were angry, but weren't as angry as the mob around me. Cops were pouring in from every exit so the men did what came naturally - they tried to get out.

No catastrophe is one mistake. Men were panicking and trying to get out. A stampeded could prove fatal to the crowd of men. The police had to restore order. They also wanted to capture and punish the men responsible. The commander on the scene ordered the police to hold the exits until the riot was dealt with. The policewomen were polite but firm.

The men responded like good little frightened sheep and obeyed, though they were clearly nervous. Around me, the men saw a wall of ten riot police coming from the front, backed up by a small group of normal policewomen. Riot cops had knee-to-shoulder length transparent shields and stun batons. This was the kind of thing they had trained for. They were not afraid.

The men also discovered they had seven pistols - things got worse. A few got some shots off before they were stunned into unconsciousness. Others couldn't even figure out how to work the safety. The police wall pushed forward, they were recovering the bodies of their fallen co-workers then they finally got to me.

The policewoman saw me on all fours over a semi-coherent Passey and swung her stun baton. I raised my arm to defend myself and a sharp shock burnt through my arm, but didn't knock me out. At that moment, the riot squad became a victim of its own success. Having pushed so far forward, the presented an avenue of egress for the panicking men on their side of the arena.

The human wave shattered the police cohesion. It became a desperate fight - everyone for themselves. The riot cops went down under the surge of bodies. For a second, the area around me cleared up. I saw Passey's partner. She looked to be in a bad way, but I didn't know her. I knew Passey. I was still ordering my jumbled thoughts when the bomb went off.

It had been suspended over the arena floor, disguised as sound equipment. The blast wave was focused down into the audience. The concussion knocked people down, but that was the only direct effect. The designers of the bomb weren't looking to create casualties on the floor, oh no. They were looking to spread chaos, confusion and fear.

They did that admirably. That thin blue line holding those 20,000 men at bay? They were still trying to figure out what the explosion was when the men surged forward once more. They yelled at the men to stop. Their hands went to their tasers. Most likely, the men facing the cops tried to stop, but with hundreds of men behind them urgently trying to get away from the explosion, it was a hopeless gesture.

Police escalation was simple: command, taser, physical takedown, and pistol. Most of the policewomen never got to the takedown phase. A few went straight for the pistol phase. Shots began ringing out. Police communications were overwhelmed with calls for orders, or help. At the main exit's long series of doors it got even worse.

A police lieutenant was trying to bring order out of the chaos. She could make out what was being said by a subordinate in another part of the arena.

"Shots fired? I repeat, shots fired?" she requested over her link. That's not what a man a few meters away heard.

"Oh my God! They are going to shoot us just like China!" he screamed. He wasn't rational, but a bomb had gone off, another one might go off and the cops weren't letting him leave. The rational thought should have been 'I'm too valuable to be slaughtered,' but he was gripped by fear. "They are going to kill us all!" he continued.

The closest police officer tased him. That was normal procedure; the man was starting a panic. Unfortunately, there was already a panic, the man was claiming the cops were trying to kill him, and the cops had just prove him right. He wasn't dead, or even unconscious, but the men didn't know that. They attacked.

Men tend to be taller, heavier and have superior reach. The policewomen had training, weapons, body armor and morale - they were policewomen facing men after all. The deciding factor was weight of numbers, quite literally. The men rolled forward like a wave. The front men were tasered, but couldn't fall down in the press of bodies.

There was no way the women could hold back five, six, or even seven men pushing against each one of them. Realizing the women at the first exits were being pummeled to death, the supporting police went straight for their guns. Had the men had some sort of organization, the hail of bullets might have stopped them. The men were a stampede.

Men fell and were trampled into mush. The women? They were savagely beaten to death for the most part. Some were literally torn to pieces. The men slammed into the glass doors and walls. The material was tough. It bent and bowed before finally popping out of its fixtures. The men cascaded into the city's last line of defense.

It was a police auxiliary riot unit. These women had 'day jobs' but served in uniform on special occasions, like this. What was coming at them wasn't something they were mentally prepared for. Still, they were in full riot gear, with each flank secured by a water cannon. The unit's sergeant had a horrid dilemma.

Over her comm, she could hear wounded officers crying out for assistance. A SWAT unit on the second level was in dire need and running out of ammunition. For once, men had the numbers in this cruel twist of fate, plus, they had and were using guns. An equine unit had snapped under the pressure on the north side of the arena and been overrun.

The water cannons began working over the men. That stopped them - momentarily. It was deceptive because the pressure behind the men was building up, but the police couldn't see it. Seeing the mob recoil, the sergeant acted. She ordered her command forward at a steady pace. They were going to rescue their fellow officers.

Things began to fall apart from the start. As the cannons both swung to the center of the riot squads' entry point, a man slipped around the edge of the water stream. His name was Robert White, African-American and worked at a modeling agency as a manager. He had two attachments and four healthy daughters. He was thirty-two and he was dying.

In the playback, it was clear that he was gut-shot. Had he made it to an emergency room in the next thirty minutes he might have lived. His dress jacket was gone. His dress white shirt was water-soaked and blood stained from his wound. He also had a shotgun and a preference for action movies so he had a clue how one worked.

Robert sprinted around the periphery of the riot line, jumped on the front of the first water cannon and fired the shotgun through the vision port the driver left open. Three shots later, the crew inside was dead or wounded and the cannon shut down. While Robert was becoming a martyr for all man-kind, the riot squad was falling apart.

As the sergeant urged her troops forward, the individual women were coming to the realization that their cork was too small for the hole they were expected to fill. The dimensions of the mass of men coming their way made the power of the stun batons in their hands feel irrelevant. You could see the reasonable fear in their eyes turn to terror. They knew they were about to die.

Even then, not one woman didn't go forward. The problem was some went more forward than others. The Plexiglas shield wall fractured. The sergeant tried to reorganize her people, the water cannon on her right shut off and she committed a totally rational sin. She looked over her shoulder to see what had happened. She wasn't the only woman in her command to do that.

The man charged forward with a hellish howl. The auxiliary policewomen cringed and hunched up, but none of them ran. They held their ground as best they could. Their doom was in their sergeant's decision to advance. The riot squad's flanks were open and the men come pouring around at both ends.

The second water cannon thrashed the area around it, trying to buy time for the women on the outside. Within their armored vehicle, the patrolwomen thought they were safe. Of course, the women inside the first water cannon had thought the same thing. Re-enter the doomed Robert White. He had run around the far side of the first water cannon and to the back of the second.

Something whizzed pasted his thigh and ricocheted off the pavement. Sure enough, the crew had left a back viewport open. They weren't following protocol, but they weren't stupid either. With the ports open, the vehicle was much cooler in this early summer heat. Besides, men didn't have guns, so what was the problem.

Robert White stuck the barrel into the port and fired. As he got a second shot off, something tore off a section of his calf and he fell. Unrelenting, he stood back up, felt something burn across his thigh, but still managed to get off a third shot. He was pumping the next shell in when the sniper finally stopped following fire protocol for men and put a round into Robert White's heart.

It was already too late for the auxiliary policewomen before the second water cannon went still. The initial rush of men pushed in their flanks and a secondary surge shattered their middle. A smaller, right-most faction, tried to form a circle, but fell and were overwhelmed. The left most, with their sergeant, formed a defensive ring only to be taken down by the stun batons of their fallen comrades.

This was the moment when that first sniper and two more who had rushed to join her decided that 'fuck it - they must pay' and opened fire on the mob. That was the last hurrah. The men broke up and scattered, which was pretty much what they had wanted to do all along. The blood lust was dissipating.

As one final, sad footnote, the sniper watched a lone, battered man walking among the bodies. A member of the riot squad, clearly in a bad way, made a weak attempt to touch him. He stopped and knelt by her. They exchanged words. For a second, the sniper felt remorse for opening fire on all those men then the kneeling man pulled out a pistol, pressed it to the policewoman's forehead and blew her brains out.

As the man stood up, the sniper returned the favor. As unaccustomed to true violence as men were, some snapped. Maybe he was a gentle soul who saw too much, too fast. Maybe he dreamed of striking back for years and was overcome with the prospects of achieving his fantasy. Maybe he was a bastard. Whatever he was, he was erased from the human equation like nearly a thousand of his brethren that night.

Back inside, I was in a battle for survival of a different kind. I pulled myself off Passey after the explosion. Men were scattering in all directions. A few cops pulled themselves from a floor littered with bodies - male and female. I went over to Passey's partner. I knew jack-all about first aid, but she was clearly not doing well.

I looked up to see a cop pointing a gun at my head.

"She needs help," I told the barrel of the gun. "I don't think we should move her." The gun moved up and away. She spent a few seconds trying to contact various people unsuccessfully. "I'm going to move my friend, Officer Passey, to the EMTs and I can send back help when I do," I offered.

The cop studied me.

"Where do you know Passey from?" she asked.

"We met at City Hall. She told me about her son," I replied.

"Take her that way," the cop pointed. "Stick around. People will want to talk with you, Mr. Jensen."

"I can't promise you that," I responded. She glared then nodded. She began moving off in a hurry. War was being waged against my gender. I scooped up Passey and headed off in the direction the policewoman had indicated. I began to hear gunfire. I hurried along. I was around the stage and running down a tunnel when I saw three parked ambulances, half a dozen cops and an even more EMTs.

The cops regarded me with a great deal of suspicion.

"Officers down - several around row 23," I explained. Then the echoes of automatic weapons fire reached us. I wouldn't normally be privileged to hear police chatter but the EMTs had turned their radios to it to keep pace with events.

Whole units were going down. A SWAT unit had been jumped in mid-deployment and opened fire after taking fire from men using captured police weapons. A riot squad had used tear gas to break up a knot of men only to have the fire suppression system cut on, reducing visibility to less than a meter.

What I didn't know about the group dynamic around me was that the VIPs had already raced down here and fled the scene in the limos and SUVs. The VIPs they could do without, but the twenty members of the Executive Protection Detail that they'd taken with them were urgently needed here, at the arena. The cops were pissed, but not with me - with their own gender.

The five cops looked at their Section Leader. She bit her lip.

"Shotguns and gas masks," she barked her orders. "We are going in." The cops raced to obey while the SL called her superior to inform her of their team's intentions. I wasn't sure if she got permission. I handed off Passey gingerly to the first team of EMTs to come at me.

"You might want to assign an officer to the EMTs," I suggested obsequiously to the SL. She looked like she wanted to rip my limbs off. "A good number of men were worked over with stun batons and things could go badly if the EMTs don't have a minder. The girl across from my condo is an EMT," I offered up as an explanation.

"Polanski, stick with the paramedics. There may be some pissed of males on the ground," the Section Leader called out. "Don't go anywhere," she told me.

"Yes ma'am," I replied. She led her troops off toward the arena floor. The second she was out of sight, I jogged the other way.

I broke out into the fresh air, the wail of sirens, the clap of gunfire and the screams of men. Some men were trying to get to their cars and drive away - those privileged few. The cops were already closing of the arena parking exits, so I wasn't sure what they were thinking, if they were thinking at all.

My path cut across the greenway and toward the metro. I wasn't taking the subway, I was walking along the tracks in an effort to make my getaway. I decided to get rid of my phone then realized I hadn't activated it yet. My phone didn't know it was working for me and neither did anyone else.

As a phone it was worthless but as a media device, it serviced me just fine. Once I made it to the subway tunnels, I took stock of my situation. Where was I going to go? Home? Most likely bad for me and bad for everyone I cared about. My arm still throbbed where the cop hit me with her stun baton but was functional.

My bracelet looked none the worse for wear despite taking the brunt of the impact and shock. I didn't want to sit uselessly by while the Vanishers or Dimples' people picked me up. I had to do something, but I didn't know what. The sane, rational decision was to hunker down somewhere and let someone I liked find me. Insanity sucks.

I went through some convolution to get a pre-paid phone card. Two college girls and not 'actual' sex. A half-dozen calls later, Capri knew I was still alive, she told me Angel was okay and worried about me, and I was headed into what may have been the worst decision of my life. I was drawn to it because I need to do more than live, I wanted to scream at the Void that I was alive.

Getting in was stunningly easy - there were bodies everywhere, cops and males. I was given a few quick looks, but the staff were busy and the cops were still stunned. A male nurse came into my perception.

"Hey, I'm looking for an Officer Passey," I grabbed his arm. "Can you tell me where she is?"

He looked up angrily. I was about to be told where I could shove it when the realization of who I was crossed his face.

"I brought her out of the arena and I need to tell her something," I added. He was weighing all kinds of factors before he decided in my favor.

"Bay 2-E," he told me then hurried off to the job that needed him. There were cops and guys stacked up all over the place. Doctors and nurses were doing triage. I could sense the low level hostility the police were showing the male nurses and doctor (just one so far). As I pulled the curtain aside at 2-E, Passey was putting her shirt back on.

"Excuse me?" a female nurse challenged me.

"Israel?" Passey muttered. Her head and ribs were bandaged and she looked a little off.

"Israel Jensen?" the nurse confirmed. "Listen up asshole, this is all..."

"Wait," Passey patted the nurse. "He saved my life tonight. He jumped on top of me so that the other men didn't kick me to death."

The nurse went back to studying me. That was most likely the last thing she expected a cop to say about me. She didn't understand that it was the culture and not the people I hated.

"What do you want, Israel?" Passey asked. "If they find you here, they are going to take you away." By that she meant her fellow cops.

"I have three questions I need to ask you," I began. Yes, it was a need, not a want. Passey nodded.

"Do you still breast feed?" I inquired. Passey nodded. The nurse looked angry.

"Do you want me to save your Son?" was my second question.

"Yes," she whispered.

"Are you willing to have sex with me?" was the final one.

"Yes," she whispered again.

"Is she healthy enough for sex?" I turned to the nurse.

"She has some bruised ribs and a concussion," the nurse said. "Are you serious about this? You are just going to come in and screw her - in her state?"

"I don't know how much time I'll be around," I answered. "Once I'm gone, nothing and no one will save her little boy."

Passey removed her shirt. I tossed my jacket on some medical device and quickly worked off mine. Passey was struggling with her shoes so I bent down and took them off for her.

"I must look a mess," she worried. I looked up at her.

"You are beautiful. You are a Mother and there are few things more wonderful," I said.

I stood and took off my shirt. The nurse softened slightly. She knew the pain I had to be in. The thing was, I was feeling better.

"Aren't we the pair, Raggedy Man?" Passey whispered. We both had heavily bruised torsos. I had no clue why she was calling me Raggedy Man.

Our pants and underwear piled up on the floor. The nurse had slipped out somewhere along the line.

"I wish I could give you more time," I sighed as I pulled Passey to me until our bodies were tightly pressed.

"You are giving us what precious time you can, Israel," she responded. I cupped her butt cheeks and placed her on the edge of the gurney. Slipping into her was like teardrops on my soul - honest and purifying. Passey gave a little gasp then tenderly wrapped me up in her arms. We gently rocked back and forth, her sitting on the gurney, I standing in front of her, her legs supported my arms at hip level.

It was painful sex for both of us. I was helped by the fact that the normally gorgeous Officer Passey was so battered. It was the whole beautiful = entitlement thing rearing its ugly head.

"What's your name?" I mused, not really thinking about our circumstance. Passey giggled then winced.

"Freya," she panted in my ear. "My name is Freya."

"That's beautiful," I murmured. "That was a Goddess, right?"

"Was? Is," she nuzzled me. "My family are Pantheists - pagans."

"Would that make me Frey?" I stumbled along verbally.

"No," she snickered then began kissing my neck. "Frey is Freya's brother. That would be a little weird. You are more like...Baldur, the Golden One." Our banter had a purpose. We were dispelling the desperation of the moment. We were foolishly shredding the tyranny of time. We could take as long as we wanted because we lied and said everything was going to work out.

For some indeterminate time, we simply rocked back and forth. I could feel her fire rising toward the point of combustion. What I had to do next went against my nature. It went against the dark, gnawing fear that lurked behind the reflection of every woman whose gaze I met and stalked the edges of my erotic nightmares.

"Tell me you love me," I breathed into her. "Tell me we are going to have many strong male babies together." I wanted to die. Freya Passey hesitated a moment as if she knew she was about to cause me great pain.

"I love you, Israel," she murmured. "We are going to have many strong male babies together."

My whole body shook violently. I felt my testes contract. I was terrified, but I had to live.

"Say it again," I sobbed.

"Israel?" Freya whimpered.

"Please," I gulped.

"I love you, Israel," she sniffled. "We are going to have many strong male babies together."

The fear tore my heart and reason apart. My cum fountained deep within Freya. Again and again, it shot forth. Freya tensed then climaxed, which was doubly painful for both of us.

'Take that, Aurora, you bitch,' my mind spasmed and whirled manically.

'I stole one life back. I made something good from the madness you gifted me with. You haven't won, not yet.' I'd been climbing out of that basement for nearly five years. I was almost free until Bethany kicked my back down into that pit again. Maybe this was why I had lived? Maybe I hadn't been stupid or weak for surviving when I should have died.

Maybe - please God, maybe - my life had purpose.

"After the death of my first child," Freya hiccupped. Her arms and legs were still wrapped around me. "I didn't know if I could stand to lose another." She didn't say 'son' and the fact that she didn't make that distinction confirmed in my soul I'd taken a worthwhile risk.

"I can't imagine what it has been like for you," I told Passey. "I was never informed of the birth of my children. I never knew the fear that they might not make it."

"Yet you saved me from that feeling of hopelessness," Freya breathed into my chest.

"I did it for me," I replied softly. "I don't know the world, so I can let it go, but I knew you and I don't want to be the kind of human who sees a fellow human in need and does nothing."

"You were that man before you came here," she said.

"I have been rendered worthless, Freya," I struggled for my own understanding. "Because of that I will probably never be comfortable believing I'm worthwhile. I'll have to prove it to myself again and again. I doubt I'll ever accept that I'm the man I should be, or can be. Consider it a flaw in my lenses of perfection."

"You have a way with words," she smiled. "You need to go." We dressed quickly. I wiped up some escaping semen with a piece of gauze which I then pocketed.

"Don't share that if you can get away with it," I requested.

"Which reminds me," Passey pulled out her phone and scanned me...and scanned me again. "Your bracelet isn't acknowledging my scan."

"Maybe you're special," I hoped.

"I think it is broken," she clarified.

"Perfect," I sighed. "Just perfect." That explained why the Vanishers and the FBI weren't all over my ass right now. I had no phone and my bracelet wasn't betraying my location.

The foul little stooge that had haunted my life since I was sixteen was dead. Had it actually broken and fallen off, I would have danced on its grave. To be fair, its diehard little capacitors must have soaked up the brunt of the stun baton's power before the beast croaked. We finished getting dressed, I kissed Passey good-bye and pulled open the screen.

There was a wall of cops staring at us. On the periphery were those jokers in white coats over scrubs with all kinds of collection gear. Oh hell no. I wasn't going to pee in a cup. I certainly wasn't going to jack off into one. I stifled the urge to scream. I followed that minor victory by not shutting the curtain, crawling into a corner and hoping the world would go away.

"Mr. Jensen, you are coming with us," the lead officer, a lieutenant named Metzer said.

"Lieutenant, I'm begging you, give me two minutes of your time. If you still want to drag me in, I'll go quietly and without complaint," I pleaded. "Please, I'm begging you."

"He came here of his own free will," Freya spoke up, "knowing what might happen to him."

There was no reason tell them what I had done here. Neither Freya nor I were terribly quiet. The officer blinked. She was clearly stressed and unhappy.

"Speak."

"The cure I have in my system will not help anyone here, besides Passey," I started off quickly.

"That isn't how it works. Only my body produces the antivirals. None of my twenty three children, boys and girls, produce it. It is only me and as you might guess, there simply isn't enough of me to go around. You can imprison me unjustly and milk me like a cow and you'll get a few thousand doses a year."

"Sadly, each dose will be less effective than the last. Stress breaks down the antivirals. Even then, at best the antiviral will only last two years before you need another dose. If they take me, where do the rest of you stack up with the 100 million women in the Federation? When do you think you will be getting your dose?"

"What I have will not save you," I repeated. "Given any free will, I will not help any of you."

"You helped Officer Passey here," Metzer pointed out.

"Which is the best hope you have. Despite being raped and imprisoned by a cop, gang-raped then having law enforcement laugh me out of the office, being driving to Isobel Diaz's party by a cop so I could be raped yet again..."

"Are you getting the picture? I have NO reason to help any woman whatsoever. You have been the bane of my existence since I was sixteen," I huffed. The look the cops were giving me wasn't one of sympathy. It was wonderment that I'd been allowed to babble for so long. "Why should you let me go?"

"Because I love Detective Angel Kristi. I'm truly enamored with Kuiko Sano and Capri O'Hara. I like Aniqua, Venus, Samantha and Roni. I think Francesca Silverhorn walks on freaking water. I'm erotically drawn to a warrior named Zara and a psycho I call Flame. I have every fucking reason to hate every woman who has ever lived...but I don't."

"I've pulled love out of hate. I have forgiven a few of you for your indifference to my suffering. In time, I may forgive others and do what I can. I will never have that chance if you take me away now. The Human Race will never have that chance. Lieutenant, I'm not asking you to save everyone. I'm asking you to save one person, me," I finished.

"What are you going to do if you I let you leave?" Metzer asked.

"I haven't a clue. I didn't come here with a plan or a schedule. I couldn't let her child die while I could do something. It is that simple. If you let me leave, I'm most likely going to walk around a bit and think. I didn't ask for this and it isn't my birthright. I was a lab rat and I should have died."

"I didn't, so I have to go on," I told her. Worst 'let me go' speech ever. My lecturers at Bowden would have tossed me out on my head.

"Clear a way out," Metzer commanded.

"Ma'am?" a senior officer questioned.

"He's not charged with anything," Lt. Metzer stated. "Until the possession of Magic Sperm becomes a crime, detaining him would be illegal."

Thankfully, Passey kept her mouth shut about my bracelet. They could hold me for that.

"Lieutenant - Mr. Jensen," one of the doctors stepped up. "If we could have a blood sample to verify Doctor Vasco's findings."

"I need to walk and clear my head," I evaded. "Let me think about it."

I was out of that emergency room as fast as decorum would allow. Not only was my mind teetering, my body was coming down from the rush of adrenaline followed by the exhaustion of a twenty minute sex session. In the parking lot, a black racing bike pulled up. The owner had on black leather from neck to toe with a black helmet hiding her features.

As I went to climb on, she handed me a helmet. Her size was an indicator but as the bike rocketed away, the sensation I received when I hugged her tightly gave her away. She sped off into parts of the city I was unfamiliar with before ending up at the unfinished expanses of an elevated highway - one of the Mayor's pet projects.

I dismounted, handed off my helmet then walked over to the unfinished edge. I sat down, letting my feet dangle off into the darkness. I guess-timated we were 20 meters up. I'm not an engineer, architect or surveyor so what did I know. Flame took off her helmet and followed behind me. She pulled out her pistol and chambered a round.

"How did you find me?" I wondered.

"Cops talk on their radios too much," she enlightened me. I turned my body so I could look at her. She aimed that huge fucking hand cannon my way. Looking down the barrel was definitely worse than trying to hold the damn thing. She slowly started smiling.

"This is where you start begging," she smirked.

"I want to live, but...I can't think of a convincing argument not to shoot," I confessed. Flame spun around, dancing with her arms outstretched.

"Come on, give me something," she laughed.

"Well, I'm glad you survived the shootout," I mused. "I wasn't sure at the time if I cared one way or the other. After thinking about it a bit, I think I'd be - less if you died."

"Less'?" she stopped spinning to regard me intensely. "What the fuck does that mean?"

"I really can't claim what I said was a rational statement," I answered.

"That makes even less sense," exulted happily - fucking psycho. "Are you trying to be crazier than me?"

"What? I am crazier than you," I declared. Flame looked skeptical. "Would you go out on an uncompleted bridge with yourself while unarmed? Bitch, I got you beat hands down."

"You're right," she concluded. "I hate people who are right about me." She aimed again. I stared. She looked trapped between bottled rage and something she couldn't identify. "What have you done to me?" she asked as she lowered the gun. "I think you are fucking with my mind - mesmerizing me somehow."

"People don't mesmerize other people," I told her. "Look at it this way; leaders don't take control, followers surrender it. They surrender it because the sane thing to do is live and the leader convinces you that the best life you can hope for is with them. The sane person can always chose to die instead - it is just very hard to do."

"I'm not doing anything to you, Flame," I explained, "beyond liking you for reasons I don't feel like grappling with right now. I'm certainly not offering you a better life in any way, shape, or form."

"But I like killing," Flame declared. "I'd like to kill you."

"Killing isn't so much. Death is inevitable for us all. Since we all die, why not try to make our deaths worthwhile?" I mused.

"Worthwhile," Flame scoffed. "Like saving people? Sparing your life?"

"Bitch," I chuckled, "you know me better than that."

"Killing is hastening the inevitable. Saving a life is holding death back for another few seconds - a 'fuck you' to the Universe. It changes things," I said.

"Killing people changes things too," Flame laughed. "I'd rather serve Death."

"There is no serving Death because Death doesn't need you. Death is going to win no matter what," I pointed out.

"Even if killing someone buys you a few more seconds, minutes, hours or days, Death will always come back for you because it is friendless and remorseless. It always wins in the end," I related. Flame stared at me. She raised the gun, staring down the barrel at me. She let it drop, raised it again then finally lowered it.

"That's why you fight," she whispered. "You are defying Death, trying to make a difference. You've seen people die - most likely horribly, so you know what death looks like. When you look into my eyes, you don't see Death, you see me."

"I think I do," I nodded.

"I like you. I never had a boyfriend before," Flame enlightened me.

"We are not boyfriend/girlfriend. I'm not a cheater," I responded.

"Pfah," Flame chuckled. "Not like that, dipshit. I mean me 'liking' somebody. I can't remember liking anyone before. Sure, I tolerate Little M and - Davia, but this is different."

"My whole life I've always wanted to kill people. To me it is like breathing. It's what I want to do. I don't give a shit if someone deserves it. I want them to die. I've always felt that way - until now. I don't feel the overwhelming desire to kill you. I can't say I understand it, it is so alien to me," Flame murmured.

After several minutes,

"You going to leave now?" she asked.

"Nah. I've got nowhere to go really," I shrugged. Flame came over, sat down next to me at the edge of the bridge and dangled her feet off into the dark.

"Going to beg me not to kill you?" she continued.

"Not really thinking about it actually," I grinned at her.

"Want me to go out and start saving lives?" she teased.

"I'm happy where you are right now," I bumped her shoulder with my own. "Unless you want to go and play Good Samaritan, then go knock yourself out."

"Are we friends, Israel?" Flame inquired as she rested her head on my shoulder.

"I guess so. Despite my traumatized background and your violent nature, I'm willing to accept we can get along," I reasoned.

"Are you going to beg for your life now?" she snickered.

"Bitch, were you not breastfed as a child?" I retorted.

"Not much; I choked out my mom when she tried to burp me," Flame laughed hysterically. We'd been down this road while she was punching and kicking the crap out of me at Isobel's party.

"What do we do now?" Flame wondered out loud to the night sky above.

"You could always give me a parachute then shove me off the bridge," I suggested.

"There is now way..." she began giggling as she got the joke, "...it would open in time."

"It's the false hope that often keeps us going," I pointed out.

"Do you want me to get you a gun?" Flame asked me as we rocked side to side at the edge of a long fall to a messy death.

"Well, I wouldn't mind some lessons and a pistol that doesn't threaten to blast me back to the 20th century," I stated. "A few guns for my lady posse wouldn't suck either."

"I'll see what I can do," Flame sighed happily. "You know, if I let you get away, you die and I didn't kill you myself, I'll never get over it," Flame mused. "I want to spend time with you too. It doesn't make sense. It's a..."

"Conundrum?" I offered up the word.

"Yeah - conundrum. Good word, Beatrix Potter," she snickered. "See, when you do shit like that, I don't get angry. You aren't trying to get one up on me - make me look stupid just because I didn't get much schooling."

"I'm not. Survival is a much under-appreciated art these days but that's about to change, Flame," I confided. "You are a survivor."

Flame tilted to the side, turned her torso and looked into my eyes.

"That's it. You are nice to me and not in a way that says you want to screw me, or 'begging me to let you live' sort of way. You are just fucking nice to me and I don't get it," Flame seemed truly confused.

"I'll give it a go. No one understands us. When we walk into a room, no one knows what's going on behind our eyes. You and I are totally different in what we are going through, but in that total separation from our peers, we are alone. I guess that is what I meant when I called you pure. You are pure in your thoughts. There is no confusion," I pieced things together.

"But you confuse me," Flame pointed out.

"And you don't think you confuse me? Ha, I should be running the fuck away from you every chance I get. For a guy who claims to not be a masochist, I certainly have a lot of violent women in my life," I chortled.

"Hmmm..." she then paused. "Want to have sex?" This may have been the first time Flame had actually asked a man that. I imagined she normally took it.

"Sorry, I never have sex with a woman whose clit is bigger than my dick," I teased.

"Bitch!" she wacked me with her gun while she giggled and swinging her legs back and forth.

"Woman, don't make me come over there and make you beat me up with that flyswatter of yours," I teased. Nothing was said for a while. She snuggled back to me. Outside our little world, sirens blared while the city lights turned the night sky into a dirty, charcoal-colored haze. In that tiny segment of time, we were both comfortable in our skins.

Eventually Flame found the silence unbearable. "What is it like to be tortured?" Flame inquired.

"Different tortures do different things," I tried to explain.

"Some things are so painful that the pain is all you recall. The phantom of that agony carries on long after the act is done. Other tortures are humiliating. They erode your understanding of the world. You lose your perception of the peripherals, collapsing into your core values even as those crumble apart."

"Finally, there are those thing that seem good, but are actually bad - sexual torture. They wreck you emotionally and leave your body's responses cross-wired. All of those break down your mental picture of yourself - chip you away until you are some creature you don't recognize, but that's the person you now have to live with," I sighed.

"I'd rather die," she punched me very lightly.

"It is never that easy," I explained. "Keeping you alive is part of the torture. Making you want to die then stealing even that hope from you."

"If I was about to be captured, would you kill me?" Flame prodded.

"Yeah," I nodded.

"Bitch...why?"

"I couldn't deal with looking in your eyes and not seeing that madness there - a purely selfish reason," I confided. There was a long silence.

"That's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me, and meant it," Flame breathed deeply.

"I wouldn't want to do it. I don't consider myself a killer," I sighed, "but I'm the only friend you've got."

"That's the damn truth," she snickered.

"I'm sure Davia would shoot me, but I think it is because she wants to be sure I'm dead," Flame giggled.

"Davia? Do you mean your partner? I call her Silent and I really didn't want to know her real name," I groaned.

"Why's that?" Flame asked.

"Take it easy, Lady and Gentleman," a soft female voice called out behind us. "No sudden moves." I looked to Flame. She was giving me a toothy smile and pumping her eyebrows. I raised my hands - slowly.

(Behind the Scenes)

What no one in the Federation knew at that moment was that we were racing for the final curtain call. The WHO knew that something was very wrong, but they were still digging - and desperately hoping they were wrong with what they were looking at. The UN was only learning of the footsteps of doom. They too were praying.

The moment Judas took his thirty pieces of silver he had a date with the end of a rope, he just didn't know it. This time it wasn't the fault of those doctors, jurists and politicians from forty years ago. They had never intended for the extreme efforts of the different societies they were creating to go on forever. They were buying time.

The problem was men stopped publically dying. The next generation of women would never know the flush sexual possibilities of their mothers, but they became comfortable with the system they had inherited. The men who knew what gender equality (if not downright male domination) felt like were too old to cause many problems and could be safely ignored.

They were still searching for a cure, but no one was hopping mad about it anymore. Infant boys were still dying at an abysmal rate - but in the collective memory of womankind, we always had. They became complacent. The male voice diminished then fell silent. Twenty years ago, when key world leaders learned that the male side of the species was dying out, they had a choice.

If they told the people of the Earth the bad news, the women feared that anarchy would ensue. The world economy would collapse. The civilization their predecessors had fought so hard to keep afloat would go under. It would be the End.

Or, they could make the men soldier on in futility while women waited for a miracle.

They had made a deal with the Devil, but the Devil doesn't deal in Salvation. He gave them twenty years. Old Nick was smiling behind his polite façade. He'd also provided them with the means of killing themselves. I was born a year before the Big Lie was concocted. Another boy, half a world away, was born a year later.

Like me, he had his innocence torn away at an early age. Born on Java in Indonesia, he was kidnapped and sold to the slave trade. He could have ended up anywhere, but fate landed him in the Chinese port of Shanghai. By the age of twenty, prodigious amounts of performance drugs and continuous sex had rendered his mind a shell - a few memories still bouncing around.

Outside of a small family circle in his native land, no one cared about the boy and no one would have known about him if he hadn't died. In the end, they didn't even care about his body or his name. The WHO named him Patient T2 Zero because by the time they found out about him, the only person who might have remembered his name was dead also.

It would be poetic to say he struck back at his tormentors from the grave. In fact, women had stolen away any ability to know what he had done. The fact was that on the Saturday before I moved into my condo, his long laboring T1 antibodies, his reward for surviving infancy, lost their struggle to produce more guardians than naturally degraded.

In those seconds, sometime after the lunchtime clientele returned to work, the most mutated version of the T1 virus ever seen 'woke up'. The cluster of antivirals that encased it crumbled away. It attacked the first cell it came across. In minutes, that cell became a factory. Inside an hour, the antiviral/viral battle became a rout.

Under normal conditions, the T1 Gender Plague manifested in three days and the male was dead in four more - max. The boy from Indonesia wasn't normal. He was fighting off some influenza that a few patrons had coughed on him. The housekeeper gave him something for that. He was 'profitable' after all. He had been given an injection at the start of flu season too.

The boy's blood was a soup of medicinal drugs, aphrodisiacs and performance enhancers. Both his red and white blood cell counts were a wreck from long exposure to these substances. He was fed regularly - they only chained one of his legs to the bed when he was 'working' or sleeping. His throat had hurt so much that he hadn't been eating enough. Besides, his will to continue on was already gone.

He was a prostitute, a sex trade worker, a slab of meat. If you get told that enough times, treated like that enough, it becomes all you know. When was the last time you saw a slab of meat fight to stay in one piece? Around four in the afternoon, the housekeeper came by, allowed him to go to the bathroom and gave him some food to eat.

She wasn't overly concerned about him barely eating. The boy had a good run. He'd much more than made up the cost the 'providers' extorted from her 'community'. She mused it was a pity they didn't have more Asian boys. They fetched more money. They couldn't be Chinese, of course. The police put you against a wall and shot you for that, so mainly they were Indonesians, Malay, and Africans.

When she shackled the boy back to his pallet for the evening rush, she noticed his pelvic region and penis were enflamed. She checked - the boy was still feverish. She gave him something for the fever and doused his crotch with powder so as not to disturb the clients. Had she been forty-five or older, she might have recognized the onset of the Plague, but she wasn't.

Even then, she could hardly be blamed for not understanding. No adult had died from the Plague in forty years. It was a childhood disease. In a final irony, two kilometers away was a very fine hospital. They would have recognized the ailment and quarantined the boy. He would have died, but the Human Race would not have - yet.

The housekeeper was indifferent to his suffering. She had other boys to take care of before the working class women began flocking in with their hard-earned Yuan. In a final sad reaction to the impending crisis, she dimmed the light in his room so as to not upset the clients with the condition of his genitals.

On Tuesday, as I struggled through the last few hours of my normal life, the boy's was clearly failing. The housekeeper was seeing the local patrolwoman off, with a freebie and the monthly 'allowance' money for the precinct when a junior attendant came running. The Indonesian boy the policewoman had just visited wasn't performing and the client was being noisy.

She was feeling irritable and ill, so she went straight for the 'electrical stimulation aid'. She soothed the client, jolted the boy's anus until his cock finally responded then left the room. She told the assistant to help her move the boy to the storeroom after the latest patron left. The dying boy was no longer profitable.

She wasn't going to waste the drugs to simply put him down. One day without food or water would do the trick. Besides, she was angry, she felt like crap and her pussy itched. Inside that boy on that Saturday, the T1 inside the boy had become what was known as the T2 and it had made that last, great leap. It was no longer gender specific.

The housekeeper wasn't even Patient T2 One. That distinction fell to a worker at a large electronics factory close by. On Tuesday night, she and some co-workers went out for some drinks after their shift ended. A good friend was heading out into the countryside for a wedding. A man from a nearby village was marrying into her village and she wanted to attend, much to the ribald teasing of her comrades.

On Wednesday morning, a stewardess with Air China stopped by to see her sister who was home sick with the flu. The woman teased her ill sister about going to 'those places'. The stewardess wanted to make sure her sibling had enough food because the stewardess was going to be gone a while. She had a short hop to Nagasaki, Japan, and then a long one to San Francisco.

There was much she wanted to do in the Federation city, not the least of was spending time with the boyfriend of one of her girlfriends. The first few patients wandered into the doctors' offices and emergency rooms Thursday afternoon and evening. They were treated for the flu outbreak that was currently running its course in the city and sent home.

On Saturday morning, as I was being beaten by Flame at Isobel's party, the first terminal patient was rolled in by ambulance to that very fine hospital. It took them an hour to figure out what was wrong with her. They didn't panic. They called the WHO and Beijing. They went into full quarantine.

As I was plotting out my little 'dowel rebellion', Chinese authorities were hot on the trail of the outbreak. The WHO had just flown a team out of Geneva. The 'community' that ran the brothel was figuring out that the trail led back to them. The housekeeper was dying in her room, alone. Patient T2 Zero had already died and been consumed by the flames per the criminals' protocols.

His ashes went into the river. Along with them went the only known antivirals that had ever killed a T2. That evening, the local precinct raided the brothel and began rounding up the criminal 'communities' members. A third of the policewomen were so sick they wouldn't have come into work if it wasn't for the emergency. In Beijing, the Central government met to discuss the crisis. Containing the outbreak in Shanghai was a pipe dream.

Multiple international ships sailed into and out of the port every hour. There was the river traffic every night and day. Train service linked the entire country with round the clock service. It had an international airport, two regional airports and one military airport. It had a naval base and over a division worth of troops in barracks around the city. Military personnel were always being transferred around.

Their decision was totally logical. They would start shifting 'key personnel' to distant governmental bases slowly as to not attract attention. They would lean on the WHO not make its findings known until they were 'absolutely' certain of what was going on. Once the governmental - restructuring - was underway, they would notify other key communities so they could do like-wise. The word went out of the Security net where one women saw it then decided to go see her brother.

If you were a poor assembly line worker in Hangchow, you were boned. Not that it mattered too much. As I was making my spastic declaration on Monday morning, my time, they rolled in the first reported male case. He was definitely terminal. His community had done everything within their power, and budget, to keep him alive. Only in the final hour did they relent and bring him in for help. Such was the fear that the government would 'take' their man.

The Chief of Staff at the hospital was 66. Across the dying man from her was the head of the WHO mission who was only 52. The Chinese physician started crying inside her protective suit. She'd been a medical student and later a doctor when the Gender Plague first struck. There was no doubt in her heart. The Reaper had come back for them all.

The WHO doctor had lived through the Gender Plague, but only as a child. Her iron-willed Chinese counterpart was losing it and that vanished all her doubts. She raced as quickly as possible to exit the quarantine area. She had to call Geneva. She had to contact the UN. If drastic measures weren't taken right now...she ran into her Chinese 'Communications' officer.

"The government needed a few hours to 'assess' her data before allowing a general announcement," she told the doctor. The WHO doctor was an expert in her field. So, the Communications officer repeated the same statement. This was a global pandemic. Same statement. Millions were going to die. Same statement. The WHO doctor tried to push by then saw the two soldiers calmly waiting for her.

That 'few hours' turned out to be twenty-four. Tuesday, as valiant, delusional men were getting pummeled all over the Federation, the UN began to meet on the matter. Discreet inquiries were made to the Federation's UN Ambassador about Carabolix-37. An hour after those four men in San Francisco got their asses handed to them over a collection of sticks, six women and one man arrived at a hospital with flu-like symptoms.

All but one knew a certain Chinese stewardess. The last one would later recall she had served the woman at a restaurant. Just over an hour later, the police and paramedics located her in her hotel room. She was too feverish to get out of bed. It wasn't until nightfall in the city that the Federation got the true picture.

The Chinese government was bugging out - jumping ship - getting the hell out of Dodge before the Great Wall fell on their heads. Then the panic in the Capital set in. It wasn't just the Plague. China was a huge 'X' amount of the global economy and in a matter of days they were going belly-up.

Fuck the Plague; dead people didn't eat, work, or vote. Millions of Americans were about to lose their jobs. Any kind of public assistance at this level was a lost cause. Soon there were going to be lots of lonely, hungry, pissed off women looking to lynch somebody. They wouldn't kill doctors and engineers. Doctors were their best hope for staying alive. Engineers kept the lights on.

Lawyers and politicians they could do without, or so it was believed. Pulling a 'China' was no longer possible. Not only would people suspect it after the crowd in Beijing bolted, the Federation didn't have a 'Bunker' strategy anyway. The fact that no one had told the 'little' nations of the Doom on the horizon didn't seem to bother anyone there.

Virtually as an afterthought, the Press Secretary turned to the Presidential Chief of Staff and said, "What about that lunatic on TV this morning?"

It was a clear indicator in the room how bad things were that any of them would consider a man to be the answer to anything that didn't involve stress relief and impregnation.

The President looked to the Attorney General who was thanking her lucky stars that this male idiot had stuck around after making an ass of himself to the Nation.

"I have a team on him right now," she stated confidently.

"Why isn't he in custody?" the Minister of Defense questioned.

"We had him in custody, but let him go," she responded. She was leagues above the city's old Police Commissioner. "There was nothing to hold him on at the time and he's under round the clock surveillance. He's ours when we want him." She looked to the President for the order.

That woman thought about it for a second.

"Ask him," she ordered. "Ask him to come in and help his countrymen and women out in this time of crisis. Be nice."

"If he refuses?" the AG wanted clarification.

"Snatch him, of course," the President directed. "Have Congress declare him a National Treasure as a legal pretext if you must, but bring him in."

"What if this is all a hoax of some kind?" Health and Human Services chimed in.

"Then we claim he is a promising lead, wave him in front of the Europeans so they don't panic too," she smiled. "In two or three days we will have something in place for when the dam bursts, but right now we need calm."

As they were filing out of the room, the AG put the plan in motion. No one liked what they heard.

"Riot? What riot?" the AG blurted out.

"What explosion?"

"Oh my Goddess! Is he among the dead?"

"What do you mean you don't know? Check his bracelet!" The AG gave the President a worried look. "It gave its emergency signal then cut off, did it?" Everyone was looking at the President once more. She was the team's lead striker.

"Well, find him, damn it!" the President snapped. "Find him before his body decomposes - or whatever it is that dead bodies do."

"Madam President," the AG said solemnly. "The men are rioting in the city - hundreds dead including many police officers."

"Hundreds of men? We killed hundreds of men? Oh, shit. Tell me it was a bomb that did it. Please tell me it was the MRA," the President groaned. "How did this happen anyway? How did so many get in one place?"

"It was the MAL rally, Madam President," the National Security Advisor delivered the crushing news.

The MAL was the President's baby. Congress was going to crucify her. Now she started hoping for the Plague to break out soon. That would distract her critics long enough to do...something.

"Madam President, I can have two battalions of air mobile and one battalion of Rangers in the city in three hours," the Minister of Defense pledged.

"We could use this as a pretext to round up the men in the city," the Minister of the Interior suggested. Several voices yelled 'No!'.

"There are 300,000 men in the city. Where do you plan to hold them?" the National Security Advisor reminded them.

"We use Army troops to round them up with support from the police," the DM stated. "We train for this kind of mission all the time."

"There are also 3.8 million women in the city," the National Security Advisor asked. "What do you plan to do about them?"

"We will call out the reserves," the Defense Minister answered confidently.

"Should we call out the reserves in all the MAL cities - just in case?" the NSA persisted.

"Do it," the President said. "This can be a good deception plan for preparing for the Plague outbreaks when they hit." The NSA took a quiet, deep breath. It had taken her twenty long years of crawling through the grime and slime of capital politics to get to this place and time, but with the help of her co-conspirators, she'd made it.

The noose was closing on her. They couldn't put her in the room with that initial research group, but they could put her sister there. She had been a naïve congressional staffer when her sister sat her down and gave the bad news. It had taken her weeks to agree. Once she had, there was no looking back. It was treason without an exit plan.

Putting the Reserves on the streets wasn't to maintain order. It was meant to put as many guns in as many hands as possible when the Big Lie came tumbling down. The NSA was guilty of treason, but the rest of the Cabinet was guilty of genocide. In a way, the genocide bothered her less than the callous disregard it was approached with by the guardians of the public welfare.

Why had it taken weeks for her to decide to join? It wasn't the risk to her career, or the thought of the punishment upon getting caught. It was that they weren't planning to save everyone, or even the majority. No, from the outset, the plan was to save a tiny few. They weren't elitist or supremacist; they were brutally practical.

At a critical point in a population, people stopped being doers and became 'consumers' and in the 'Vanisher' model, they couldn't afford anyone who couldn't pull their own weight. They predicted the world economy would collapse violently without hope of recovery. All their needs and requirement would be met by the group alone.

There were no bulging bank accounts or massive stockpiles of goods and food. Cash would be useless and neither food nor goods in the amount to be useful could be hidden for long. They were avoiding as many traditional human and fugitive models as possible. That being said, they knew this was a long shot. A mythical gamble, but the only shot mankind had left.

Twenty years ago, they had been called romantic idealists and their science ignored. Twenty years ago boys born of husband/wife duos had an infinitesimal greater chance of surviving than boys born of convict (drugged) fathers. It was a tiny enough fraction to ignore. In twenty years of study since then, that fraction had grown noticeably.

Capri had called it a 'love conquers all' plan. It was and it wasn't. The conspirators had gone over all the data, even the WHO study in Kwaziristan. They had found nothing to explain it. Nothing at all. Yet men were living despite all the science that said they shouldn't. At that moment, it became an act of faith.

They weren't abandoning science. Science was telling them the men were making it. The scientists just couldn't see why. The hope became that if they followed through with this project the 'why' would present itself finally, after years of failure to find a cure. They didn't know what they had, but they knew it worked.

It was simply too late to save global society. There were too few men left. The whole marriage thing was about to be moot anyway; rendered obsolete by act of Congress. The National Security Advisor had obtained a lethal dose of muscle relaxants. She had to figure what the last moment of her utility would be.

She had an idea what her captors would do to her before they believed she had nothing worthwhile to tell them and she had already decided to forgo that experience.

Across the globe, GNN was already showing the footage of several Metropolitan policewomen in the Blazer Arena finding a suspicious piece of equipment in the catwalks.

They then put it back after a member of the arena's technical staff told them what it was. It wasn't lost on the commentator that this device was off camera for a minute or that the device was the origin of the explosion as witnessed on multiple live feeds. It also proved that the explosive device didn't actually kill anybody.

Oh, it had started the stampede alright which ended up delivering a thousand casualties, but the bomb itself killed no one. That was left to the men trampling each other and the policewomen turning to deadly force after the struggle for containment became a fight for survival. There were twenty MAL rallies across the nation. Only one was a disaster but it was the only one that mattered as the sun rose the next day.