For starters, my thanks to PokingFun for keeping her head above the rip tide long enough to edit this work.

In Peace, daughters bury their mothers. In War, mothers bury their daughters. The death of sons is too painful to recount.

*****

(Behind the Scenes)

By act of Science I had ceased to be a rarity of one. All seven of my sons were capable of producing the T1I1 - the Israel 1 - antivirus. Their underdeveloped testes could do it, but weren't. The watch word was puberty. The current scientific consensus was that removing a portion of their sex organs was also unlikely to produce positive results.

Still unknown to the Federation researchers, the Chinese had the answer to the production dilemma and it was coming their way, one infection at a time. If they had, they probably would have started praying. After all, could the T1I1 kill the T2? All the mothers were getting lawyers - and private security. Before long, the Ministry of Justice would start issuing warrants.

In Shanghai, where the first mass burnings of corpses was beginning, a tired hospital worker was touched by a patient in the Dying Ward. It was across the street from the hospital and had been a mall before commandeered by the city. The worker was, in reality, a part-time supply clerk. After being laid off from her textile job, this was the only job she could find.

She'd been given extensive first aid training when she started work a few months ago, so now she was in charge of a whole section of the Dying Ward. People reaching out wasn't all that new to the worker anymore. People were being eaten alive and their fevers were extreme. This one though - her eyes were clear and she asked for water in a weak but steady voice.

The woman was dying, that was certain. She'd been given minimal support for the last...4 days? The clerk's heart began racing. This was a 'day 2' center. The Plague ran its course in a total of 4 days...so this woman should have died two days ago. The clerk rushed over, took one of the two thermometers for the entire ward and took her charge's temperature. 39 C.

The clerk raced over to the one doctor (a male medical student actually) and dragged him over to the patient. The dying woman had risen to the rank of patient in that attendant's eyes. The doctor examined the patient's body, ignoring her shame, and nearly fell over. The clerk had been quiet so as to not cause an alarm. The doctor yelled for two of the volunteers to grab a stretcher and come running.

These volunteers were women who had decided to help out at the hospital in this crisis because...it seemed the right thing to do. Now they removed the dead women from the Dying Ward and took them to trucks for cremation. It was doing something. They arrived with the stretcher, but the woman still appeared alive. 'We are going to the hospital' he informed them.

That was new. They crossed the street, passed the soldiers and the group walked straight to the Hospital's Chief of Staff's office. Her assistant informed the medical student that the doctor was asleep. 'We have a patient in Day 9' he responded. The assistant nearly tripped over herself running in and rousing her boss.

Ten minutes later, he was happy to be allowed to simply observe the specialists at work. The woman was nearly dead alright. She'd been fighting off the T2 Plague for nine days now. For half that time she'd only had an IV drip to sustain her. Three things made her different. She'd been gifted with a small dose of T2J1 (Java) antivirals.

That could only mean she had sex with that poor, dead boy. Unlike the other patrons, she'd been given enough of his seed to last this long. The second difference was almost a fatal one. She'd been cannibalizing her own body to save her unborn child, who was really nothing more than a lump of tissue at that time. It was good old Mother Nature trying to see the next generation through the womb and into the light of the world.

The final difference - somewhere, the doctors guessed a day and a half earlier - the antivirals hovering around and protecting that little lump of proto-boy realized that the tissue had grown to a sustainable size and they attacked it. It wasn't out of cruelty. It was out of necessity. They were fighting that battle to keep the mother alive, but without the ability to replace their losses, they were succumbing.

Quite frankly, there weren't enough of them and they were dying by the minute while the T2 kept getting stronger. The T2J's needed a factory and the lump of boy was it. A few select cells died and became antiviral factories and the counter-attacked into the mother's body - and they were starting to come out on top.

The swelling was going down, the fever was breaking, plus her heart rate and breathing were steady, if weak. For the team of doctors at their breaking point, this was a breath of fresh air. One was going to live. They also realized that this little boy wasn't going to be saving anyone else for quite some time. Extracting him would most certainly be fatal and provide a onetime dose for only a handful of people.

Instead of keeping thousands of patients alive, they now had to keep one boy alive. They conferred, agreed that they all were of one mind, then separated. The head of the WHO mission had been supplied with her own satellite hook-up this time. She called Geneva then the UN, giving them all the data they had. What she got back was surprising.

They already had a virtual carbon-copy of the T2J antiviral, but they were calling it the T1I1. Apparently there was an adult male in the Federation running around with it. There was also a nasty rumor starting to surface that he'd been killed in a police action in his home town. The WHO doctor wept silently at her desk. It felt like her gender was trying to commit genocide on themselves.

The Chief of Staff sat down with the battalion commander of the unit assigned to protect the hospital. By disease and fortune, it was a young captain. The Chief of Staff laid out the whole story. The boy wouldn't be saving anyone but himself and his mother for months. Most likely, everyone in the hospital and her unit would be dead by then.

If they harvested the boy, there would go the last, best chance for any of China to survive. She had to tell Beijing before their spies told them. Beijing would demand the mother and boy, she would delay as long as she could. Eventually they would see through her deceptions and then they would come to take him by force. The Chief of Staff wanted to know what the captain going to do when that happened.

(Back at Home)

"What do you want?" I requested.

"We are here for you, Israel Jensen," the voice answered. I looked to Flame once more.

"What if I don't want to go with you?" I tried to sound brave as I responded. There was a pause.

"We are with Zara," the voice countered.

"There are two of them," Flame whispered. "I can do this."

"Bitch, we are dangling off the edge of a bridge. Have you lo..." I mumbled. "Yeah, you have. Knock yourself out."

"Why isn't she here then?" I inquired.

"She is here," the voice said. I put a hand on Flame's thigh.

"Don't move," I whispered. "They have a sniper."

"You sure?"

"Yeeeaaahhhh, pretty much," I nodded.

"I'm tossing you a phone," the voice informed me.

"Toss it to the woman," I pointed. "Her hand-eye coordination is much better." The phone didn't fly high. It actually skidded to a stop less than a half meter away. I looked at Flame who looked at the phone then back at me.

"Bitch, it's right there. Pick it up yourself," she groused.

I picked it up, flipped open the opaque cover and was gifted with the sight of Flame's back with a little red dot centered between her shoulder blades. Flame was looking out over the city. I thought she was bored. After nudging her, she looked over the picture and smiled. She leaned into me. The dot followed. She leaned away and the dot followed.

"Good sniper," she smirked to me. "Okay ladies, you can have him," Flame called out to our visitors.

I typed *HugsZara*.

A few seconds later *Come In*.

*Not Ready Yet*.

*Please*.

*You probably can't understand how much that means to me*

*No?*

*Not yet*.

The closer woman began backing away. A few meters and on the other side of the roadway, a second woman did the same. I had to wonder about their interest. What rejection would be one too many? Did other men get this much leeway? No, they didn't. They bailed out the first chance they got, yet I was sticking around.

I stood up and followed them for a few meters before stopping. I still had no plan.

"Hmmm," Flame walked up to my side. "You don't see that every day."

"You are not supposed to see them at all," I confided.

"Do you know what's weird?" Flame tapped me with her gun.

"You still don't want to kill me?" I guessed.

"Yeah, it's freaky-weird," Flame nodded. "Do you think that sniper-chick is still watching us?"

"You are asking my advice about women and guns?" I gasped. "God, we are a fucked-up pair."

"Tons of fun," Flame laughed. "Let me take you home."

"Your home, or my home?" I worried.

"Your home," she snickered. "My clit intimidates you." Now she was giggling.

"Thanks," I smiled. We remounted her bike, put on our helmets and headed into the city.

"I have never said this before, but I'd like to take you someplace, tie you down and make long passionate love to you," I confessed through our helmet links.

"You make passionate love to a lot of women," she countered.

"No, the 'tie you down' part," I clarified. "I don't normally do that."

"What makes me so special - not that I'm not special, but why this?" Flame snorted in amusement.

"There is no way in hell I'm giving you an orgasm when you have ready access to a weapon, or any other means of hurting me," I squeezed her tightly. She was quiet for several minutes.

"Cool," she murmured.

"Yeah, it would be," I agreed.

"Then do I get to kill you?" she perked up.

"No, damn it," I bumped helmets with her. "First I get dressed, then I open the window and then I untie you, hopefully jumping out the window before you get your gun."

"Bitch!" she laughed. "You are going to make me work for it."

"That's what friends are for," I teased.

"Thanks for clearing that up for me - Bitch," she shook with amusement. I couldn't do this with anyone else. Death and killing weren't things I embraced.

I didn't like violence, but I was causing tons of it. I didn't joke about casual violence, except now I was doing it with Flame. I wasn't sure why I liked her. I couldn't pinpoint that factor, or moment that put us in this current setting. She'd beaten me up, beaten me again, then I spasmodically came on to her, came on to her again...and she'd responded.

It wasn't a one-sided relationship. Flame wanted something from me that was equally indescribable. I don't think she'd felt alone before she met me. She hated everyone, so didn't really miss their company. Just like some office functionary, she was going through the motions of life - even if that life was that of a Mob enforcer, thug, and killer.

She wasn't an adrenaline junkie. Her fearlessness had robbed her of that thrill. In the firefight she had not flinched or panicked. I believed she had become completely emotionally detached. Oh, God - I made her laugh. Not in an artificial professional comedian kind of way, but a 'looking at someone and discovering they make you happy' way.

Unintentionally, I had made Flame feel something - anything - and it was tearing her up inside. It wasn't happiness. Flame felt happy when she killed people, or made them cry. Perhaps that was it; I gave her happiness that didn't involve her taking something, be it a life, or sense of security, from another person. That had her confused.

We pulled up to my place in relative silence. What I didn't know was most people, even in their places of work on second shift, or just working late, were glued to their video feeds. Even at the hospital, I had not grasped the magnitude of the carnage. I put the helmet up.

"Take care and no 'Death by Cop'," I patted Flame's shoulder. She opened her face plate.

"I can't die," she grinned. "I haven't killed you yet. Want me to kill you now?"

"I want you to live," I replied softly. She laughed, dropped her visor and sped away. I took the steps to my apartment two at a time. I was tired, but I actually wanted to see some female faces for the first time in forever.

I accessed my door and recalled that Venus had a gun, so I called out.

"It's me." I opened the door and stepped in. All the women, from whatever place they had staked out on my living room floor or furniture were looking, or craning to look at me. Kuiko and Capri had their arms out so that no one grappled me in the entryway.

"Where have you been?" Capri inquired with barely controlled fury.

"I...I had to..." I mumbled.

"Skip you banging that cop in the GODDESS damned emergency room and your version of the Gettysburg Address to a room full of ladies in blue who wanted to shoot you - fuck nut Bastard," Carpi growled.

Honesty is never the best option. In fact, honesty is the refuge of the unimaginative and thoughtless, or so I've been told.

"Well, you remember that girl with the hand cannon in the shootout this afternoon..." I managed to get out.

Capri put her face in her hands and groaned.

"I got on a bike with her, we rode out to the road construction on the new freeway..." I continued.

"Where on the new freeway?" Venus rumbled.

"That part of the unfinished overpass," I informed them.

"You mean the big, uncompleted bridge - that part of the new freeway?" Venus pressed.

"Yeah. We sat at the end, dangled our feet off the edge and talked for a bit," I tried to make my insane decision sound reasonable.

"Gee, Israel, did she try to kill you - the mobster hitwoman?" Capri muttered.

"Ah...she pointed her gun at me a few times, asked me if I wanted to die a few more times, but she couldn't pull the trigger," I enlightened them. "We talked."

"ISRAEL!" Kuiko squealed at a deafening pitch. "The cop nearly killed you tonight! Wasn't one time enough? Do you want to scare us to death? Do you want to leave us?"

Kuiko freaking out was expected. The look of fear on the rest of their faces was unfathomable to me.

"What am I missing?" I asked. Roni and Angel not being back was starting to worry me.

"Israel, what is the last thing you remember at the Arena?" Aniqua requested.

"Shooting - a lot of it. The cops at the exit with the EMTs arming themselves and heading in. I was listening to the chaos on the radio, but I was really concentrating on escaping. Why?" I looked around the room. Samantha was channel surfing until she found one of the local updates.

Confirmed Dead: 152 Women - 849 Men. Final figures still unavailable.

Oh God, it was the second biggest disaster to overtake male-kind since the last days of the Plague. It was highly unlikely that anything would surpass the Holy City, but Carabas in Brazil had just been supplanted as the second largest slaughter of my gender in 42 years. The most demoralizing piece was the three SWAT snipers on the Arena with their back up weapons going to fully automatic fire at the men below.

During the Gender Plague the countries of the Developing World went three ways. Some, like the Republic of South Africa, clung to their democracy and rode out the storm. Others, like India, went to Emergency Rule and they survived. The last group, like Brazil, tried to walk the middle path and they collapsed. The public didn't know who to trust, so they began looking out for themselves.

Brazil made it into Year 6 when the police in Brasilia rioted. The government called in the closest military units to restore order. The military tried to seize control, the executive branch of government was decapitated and the country went to shit. A few months later, the legislative body set up shop in San Paulo and began reasserting control over the coastal regions.

Their navy had remained loyal through the crisis so not only did the democratic government survive, but the Brazilian export economy didn't wither and die. They grimly persevered for eighteen months until the UN was finally able to cobble together some kind of relief force from the member nations.

On the Brazilian/UN side was that they were organized and well-equipped. The rebels were balkanized and often as much threat to each other as to the central government. Brazil took back their capital and launched an offensive against the largest of the rebel groups. They drove the rebels back to their base at Carabas.

On the eve of the last government offensive the Revolutionary Council met and decided on their final course of action. There were men on the Council. It is said that one objected but the other two agreed. In the last hour before dawn, the rebels rounded up every male still under their control and executed them. The rebels considered it a last act of defiance.

The UN considered them all War Criminals and hunted most of them down. It was the end of old Brazil though. The upper Amazon basin remained lawless even until this day. The government was too afraid that other female groups would do the same thing and the real estate wasn't worth the risk.

The Holy City was a different, and far more horrifying, legacy. Before the Plague, there were places where men not only ruled, but women were barred from any true power. As a result, when the men started dying off, there were no, or not enough, professional women to take their place. The electricity went out, hospitals were overrun and law and order broke down.

The UN was doing triage and if your country couldn't at least limp along, it was abandoned to its fate - unless you had oil. In those bygone days, it was a petroleum driven economy. There were some fucked-up places around the globe that should have bit the dust, except the UN had to keep propping them up, or everything would have broken down.

Human Rights abuses? They would deal with that later. Few women want to talk about exactly what the UN was thinking back then. They kept the engine of civilization turning and they paid for it in blood. Whose blood? The blood of women. See, around Year 8, there just weren't too many men left in these Male Dominated cultures.

Life was horrible, but the men simply wouldn't give up their power. They filled their security forces with whatever men they could lay their hands on. Things got so bad that these powerless women protested. The questionably recruited and poorly trained security forces raped and killed them for their audacity. Massive atrocities were committed.

The UN did nothing - sort of. They covertly began supplying all kinds of aid to the women while publically appealing for mediation. The men were having none of that. It was their God-given country and women had better know their place. Apparently God decided their places was behind a machine gun, rocket launcher, or rifle.

The men still had more plentiful equipment like tanks, artillery, helicopters and planes. What they didn't have were numbers. They couldn't cover everywhere at once. Soon enough the women grabbed and held onto valuable parts of the landscape. The UN recognized their movement and it was payback time.

Every advantage now turned the women's way. If anyone in the UN thought this was a bad idea, they were ignored. The UN was thinking a popular insurgency overthrowing a corrupt, outdated regime. They weren't thinking of thousands and thousands of brutalized rape victims, traumatized and often mutilated suddenly seeing a light at the end of the tunnel of their suffering.

They didn't give a crap about the survival of the UN, Peace, Prosperity and the Human Race. They wanted to silence the demons in their heads forever. They wanted to make sure that they never heard a woman cry out in unanswered, wretched agony ever again. They pushed the men back to the Holy City - their last stand.

Most of the female fighters were relatively sane. They knew what was going on around the globe. They agreed with the UN that certain men, if captured alive, would suffer international justice. Most of the men would spend their lives in permanent detention so that their culture could attempt to rebuild. It was the only rational thing to do.

The fighting was incredibly brutal. Hardcore elements on both sides refused to take, or be taken, prisoner. For seven days the women pressed forward. In the core of the city, the last band of fanatics died to a man. After that, the resistance collapsed. Most of the male army by this time were the scrapings of the barrel.

Old men in their seventies, young boys in their early teens, the ill, the infirmed and the mangled; this was pretty much all that remained of a male culture that had lasted thousands and thousands of years. The UN representatives stepped in, helped sort out the men and prepared to rebuild. Those women mentioned earlier? They weren't done. There were men still alive.

The male army had used a variety of chemical weapons on their female enemies during the conflict and those dissolute women had been gathering up the stockpiles as they were overrun. They rolled into the outdoor prison camps with those weapons, pretending to be a food delivery. The men gathered around and the women detonated themselves - in all the camps.

Those who didn't commit suicide began opening fire on the men who weren't dead, or dying fast enough. Some women fired on those zealots. Other women simply fell down and wept. They couldn't shoot the women who had fought and bled so much for their cause. If the men died, they died as a people. It was an internal conflict they couldn't handle.

Between the battle and the mass murder afterwards nearly 25,000 men died. Fewer than three hundred remained. Today, a Pakistani regiment guards the city. It is still a place of pilgrimage, but it has never been repopulated. It remains pretty much as it was abandoned, forty-one years ago, a silent reminder of all that can go wrong with the human species.

Back to my plight.

"I didn't say or do anything at the Rally - honest," I pleaded to my female companions.

"We know you didn't," Capri grumbled. "That's why you are not on the list."

"List?"

"The arrest list," Venus snapped. "They are using facial recognition to file arrest warrants for all the men who broke the law at the rally. It's over two thousand names long and posted so that all their female friends and neighbors can turn them in."

In the midst of this disaster, what insight did my mind grab on to?

"At least Kenny should be getting out of jail soon," I mumbled. Where in the hell were they going to hold all these people? Hell, how were they going to try all these guys?

"So, what's with the cop?" Venus stared at me intently. "The one you fucked."

"That would be Officer Freya Passey. She's a pagan," I evaded.

"I wonder what her review of you is going to be like," Samantha studied me with conflicting emotions.

"Oh...there's a problem with that," I looked heavenward.

"Problem?" Capri choked. "Do you mean 'problem' as in you snuck off and murdered the Mayor, or something that is remotely fixable?"

I was beginning to question why Capri kept hanging out with me.

"My bracelet is broken," I confessed.

"How did that happen?" Aniqua inquired.

"Have you seen that whole bit with me, on top of Passey - the riot cop - the stun baton hitting my wrist?" I outlined. "That apparently fried it."

The women looked around at each other.

"Oh, thank Goddess," Capri exhaled. "I thought it was something important."

"Damn, Israel, we don't give a crap about your bracelet," Venus groused. "Can I have my sex now?" Capri, Aniqua and Kuiko all pelted her with something.

Kuiko used the commotion to hop up and come my way.

"Hugs?" she smiled hopefully. I opened my arms and she flowed into my embrace. She began breathing deeply my scent and rubbing her cheek against my shirt.

"Damn it," I groaned. Kuiko looked up, concerned.

I tried to turn her around and pull up her shirt.

"No!" she insisted. "You were bad. You weren't thinking of us. You should have come straight home." Kuiko wasn't angry about Passey. She was angry because I had acted without concern for the group - our group.

"I apologize, to all of you," I groaned. "I honestly can't tell you what I was thinking. It - it all changed and they'll never fix it. Men rose up in defiance and they are going to crush us for it, but their brutality doesn't matter anymore."

In a cosmic twist of black humor, the situation had reversed.

For forty years the female regime had been keeping men internally disorganized and obedient. There were a multitude of all-female groups. There were even a good number of non-gender groups, but there were no male-only clubs (unless you included male musical groups). Unlike the cross-cultural men that took public transit with their sticks today, this male group had been uniform.

They were some of the best men could put forward. Not the smartest, richest, best looking, or most famous. No, they were the iconic representation of what all men were supposed to want to be. They played by the rules, got ahead and were living the good life - and they had been gunned down at a meeting the women invited them to.

Robert White had most likely not identified with the man in the chicken processing plant, the microchip production line, the mechanic, or the starving artist, but they had identified with him. In their hearts they knew society wanted us to be like Robert White - pre-massacre. To complete the picture, the doctor, lawyer and banker identified with him too - as one of their own.

The police had still gunned him and hundreds like him down. Males weren't salivating with glee as Robert took out those two water cannons. Most couldn't understand that kind of dire courage. What they felt was horror - horror that he'd been shot in the first place - shot in the gut with his life placed in jeopardy. It was the horror that their sense of security had been shredded and the promises they'd been believing all these years were lies.

Men were uniting in fear, disbelief and outrage. They had been rendered into one mind - 'They have betrayed us'. On the other side of the aisle, it was the opposite. Women were being torn asunder. What had the police been thinking? Why hadn't they let them leave? Why hadn't the men been punished?

What were the men going to do next? What should they do to protect the men? What should they do to control them? Is my man in danger? Sure, all women knew policewomen carried a sidearm, but they would never use them, right? Well, they had - mostly to defend their lives and those of their partners.

But women didn't care about that. Cops had shot men! It was like China only a hundredfold worse. Women were confused. Society had told them as they grew up that men 'liked' it, that they didn't mind the aggression and most of all, men were safe to be around - docile, though no one would have dared use the word.

"Israel, you did your thing. It was your right," Aniqua stated, "but have some mercy on us. It is damned hard to watch you walk out that door then witness all that madness on TV. We were worried. You called, but you wouldn't come home. No, you had to go into a building full of cops and screw a woman - and then you disappeared again."

"Couldn't you keep in touch?" she persisted. "Did you even think about us?"

"Yes I could have and no, I didn't think about any of you," I confessed. "I was a lousy friend and...I'm going to continue being a lousy friend. Frankly, all of this," I indicated the women in the room, "is a lot for me to take in. Worse, it is necessary for me which makes me resent all of you."

"Huh?" Venus muttered. "In the video you said you liked us."

"I like all of you a whole bunch - but I don't want to," I pleaded. "The last time I took a shower, I was terrified one of you would come in and hurt me. It is not any of you - it is me. When Flame had her huge, fucking pistol barrel pointed into my face tonight I couldn't even muster enough fear to beg for my life."

"Damn," Capri whispered. Kuiko started quietly to shed tears onto my chest.

"Sometimes the desire to live until the next day was all I had to keep me going," I stated. "Even as you gave me your care and affection, you were breaking me down inside. I spent three years learning to avoid and live without women. In a week that had become a futile endeavor."

"I can't live without you even as I know it is going to tear me apart. I want to be free and I want to be alone. I can't have both so I've chosen to be free because that lets me be with all of you," I finished. "I'm going to be a terrible friend and you deserve better than a fucked up guy like me."

"No we don't," Kuiko sniffed. "I don't want anyone else but you."

"I'd sell Kuiko's left tit to make you work right - or righter," Venus sighed. "I'll still take the man I'm here with though over any other I've ever met." Samantha seemed to calm down. Capri was relentless.

"We need to establish a punishment system for you - maybe a denial of sex," Capri grumbled.

"Eeep!" Kuiko peeped then shook her head rapidly over my chest. She wasn't happy with that idea - not one bit.

"Capri, just so we are clear," Venus menaced. "Sammy and I are about to kick your ass for even suggesting such a thing."

"Fine, fine," Capri held up her hands. "Let's compromise. Kuiko, punish Israel." Kuiko turned her head sideways, regarding Capri while her ear was listening to my heartbeat. "You know, teach him a lesson." Kuiko's eyes grew wide. She hurriedly help me get her shirt and bra out of the way then stripped of my jacket and shirt.

"Well?" I asked softly. I was wanting to do this more than I initially thought I would. I welcomed the frivolity of the act; the carefree sensuality.

"Put me against the wall and pick me up?" she meeped.

"Is that a question or a command, Mistress Sano?" I teased. It came so easily with her.

"Mistress Sano..." her face blossomed into a smile that seemed to erase the tear-tracks on her cheeks. "I like that. Lift me up, press me against the wall and get to nipple licking!"

I picked her up, pressed her against the wall and began my nipplage.

"Damn it," four women muttered behind me.

"Support your weight with your legs around my hips and your arms on my shoulders," I instructed Kuiko.

She was curious, but obeyed. I released my hold on her ass, brought my hand up to the sides of her breasts the pressed them together. I tongue flicked her now adjacent nipples.

"I warned you I'd get them both next time," I admonished her.

"Mistress Sano approves," Kuiko purred, "...approves."

"No, Capri," Venus mocked my lawyer, "you couldn't say 'Venus', could you?"

"Nope," Capri smirked. "You getting pissed off is normal. Kuiko wailing is a noise I can live without."

Capri was a clever girl and way ahead of the game. By foisting Kuiko on me she was reinforcing our congealing dynamic. She would let Kuiko lead the way. No one else had heard her declaration of love for me, so this simply seemed like fun. I had little doubt that she knew this was healing me. She was creating isolation in a crowded room; just Kuiko and me.

I would give the girls sexual fun. It would be a personal relationship that would move me beyond what I did with Officer Passey - I still had to explain that. They were my partners. I wouldn't belittle them with the term 'attachment'. We were one group, one entity, not some cosmetic appendage or accessory.

In retrospect, Kuiko had been the perfect choice. She was our 'Omega'. She wasn't the prettiest, the best built, the smartest, or even the most athletic. She was wacky - just a smidge off kilter. The other women, sadly, didn't see her as a threat. Angel was a threat. She was the Alpha. Kuiko though - if Kuiko could get this level of attention, by their thinking, any of them could.

Kuiko was not my Omega. She was my liberator. Before anyone else, she had connected with me. Angel stole my heart, but she still hurt me. Kuiko gave me patience and time. She sensed my frontiers and there she stopped, waiting for me to let her in. I prayed to the Divine that she made it out of this mess with me intact.

I was so caught up in my threads of this Kuiko experience I missed her coming to fruition under my ministrations.

"Israel, I'm - ah - ah - ahahahhhhaaahhha," she orgasmed. We clung to each other as he slowly regained control of herself. "Thank you," she whispered.

"He made her come, didn't he?" Samantha murmured. "With his lips..."

"Fuck all of you," Venus growled to the room. She stomped off to the shower. The water was running in seconds, the glass door opened then shut. Capri started giggling.

"Don't worry, Israel," Capri snickered. "Forcing Venus to take a cold shower can't be better than sex with you, but until then, it will do nicely."

"I need to change," Kuiko grinned sheepishly at me. Her crotch was soaked.

"Me too," I sighed. My belt and the top of my pants were damp as well. Kuiko and I changed clothes, the cold shower didn't' seem to have done Venus much good and after some consensus building, I was convinced to sleep on the sofa with the ladies around me.

It was much later when I woke up. I hadn't heard Roni, or Angel come in yet but Dimples' FBI was close by again - apparently I was lost and the Attorney General was looking for me...

The fact that my bracelet wasn't talking to the system never came up. Dimples' people didn't get around to it and my sanity kept me from mentioning the fact.

The Federation Government had thought I was dead, but my stunt at the hospital went viral, so they knew I was alive again. Officer Passey was vocally and profusely refusing all attempts at a vaginal swab. Outside, a city-wide curfew was in effect. The Armed Forces Reserves were being called up and the rumor was that regular troops were on the way.

All that left me truly curious about who was knocking at my door an hour before dawn. I activated the TV and nothing happened. It was on but not responding. I began to panic then I recalled the past two days of my life. I got off the sofa and headed for the door.

"Who is it?" Capri and Aniqua asked at the same time.

Samantha and Kuiko were slow wakers. I lightly knocked on my own door then opened it. Sure enough, it was Zara and those two women from the bridge earlier in the night. I silently stepped aside and ushered them in. The middle woman, the one I had talked to on the bridge, had two carrying crates worth of stuff and she went straight to the kitchen.

"Israel," Zara began. "We need some of your blood."

"Okay," I nodded. There was a short pause.

"Shit," the middle woman griped as if she had just lost a bet. The third woman chuckled and removed her ball cap. They all had ball caps, jackets and street attire.

The third woman had short, shockingly white hair. Like Zara and the other woman, she was fit, but with a different quality about her - more agile than tough. The second woman was of the same mold as Zara - quietly competent though she smiled more often, with her raven hair pulled back in a ponytail reaching half way down her back.

I migrated into the kitchen because, while tiny, it wasn't packed with as many women as my living room. The second woman was kneeling beside her two crates, pulling things out and stacking them around her while wearing blue surgical gloves. One of them held my curiosity. It was a 30cm cube. It seemed to be solid plastic except one portal on top and a small open sphere in the middle.

"By the way, I'm Jen, the woman in the kitchen is Brandi and, in case the word hasn't gotten around yet, the last woman is Zara," the white haired woman introduced the new group.

"Who are you with?" I asked her.

"NASA," she snorted. "That was cool - you figuring it out."

"Frank, let me stick your finger," Brandi requested. I extended a finger her way and it was dutifully pricked. Apparently I was 'Frank'.

"Who are the rest of you with?" Venus prodded. Zara hesitated.

"1st Special Forces Operational Detachment - D," she replied. "Both of us."

I knew who that was because of my studies. By the look on Venus' face - like she'd been hit in the face with a skillet - she knew too. Everyone else seemed clueless.

"Oh," Kuiko popped up, "you shoot people? Just like real soldiers?"

"Yeah Kid," Jen chuckled, "just like real soldiers."

Brandi extracted some of my blood in a miniscule hollow tube. She trimmed that, opened the top of the globe and fitted the tube into a series of rollers. She sealed the tube and then, in stages, the tube descended into the heart of the cube. Brandi switched her attention to the small screen device at her knees.

At first, all it showed was some roughly circular objects - grey and fuzzy around the edges. A few seconds later, red objects, about the same size as the grey ones entered the scene. Brandi grew tense, so I began to massage her shoulders while keeping my eyes on the screen. One of the red - cells - they had to be my blood cells - turned grey and ruptured along the sides.

The grey objects were ruptured, infected blood cells. My blood cells were getting clobbered. One by one they succumbed. Brandi was almost too tense for words. I picked up on her chanting 'come on, come on' as if some sort of encouragement would help in this lopsided fight. I caught sight of the miracle first.

On the edge, one of my blood cells began turning grey then stopped. It was turning red once more. Brandi began muttering 'oh please, oh please, oh please'. A grey cell began to wither, blacken and die - then another. In seconds a colossal trouncing was in progress. Brandi could barely scroll the screen back fast enough to catch the death of the infected cells. In two minutes, it was over.

"What does this mean?" I inquired gently. Brandi looked up and me and smiled.

"It means we are not all going to die," she breathed deeply for the first time since this experiment began.

"Israel is too nice and shell-shocked to ask you what the hell is going on, but why don't you enlighten me?" Capri stood on the sofa, on her knees, looking over the three Vanishers.

"The Plague has broken out in China and made its way to the West Coast. We have operatives and men we'd like to rescue in threatened areas. We were hoping to inoculate our people so that they don't get infected. Infected people have to be left behind," Jen explained.

"How many men are going to die?" Aniqua groaned.

"Wait - you said 'our people'," Capri's eyes narrowed. "Why would you need to inoculate woman against the Plague?"

"This is a new plague," Zara finally spoke. "It is killing everybody." How exactly does a person respond to that? I wanted to erase the last five seconds of my memory and trundle along like nothing was wrong.

Well, more wrong than was normally wrong for me.

"Israel, you have to vanish - now!" Capri insisted. "No more screwing around. Let them take you out of here to someplace safe." I did not want to deal with the logic or emotion behind that statement. Capri wanted me to go, knowing she was going to die in some unpleasant manner.

"Why did you call me Frank?" I turned to Brandi. She was setting up another machine that had tubing and a really sharp needle.

"Inside joke," Brandi's smile tried to be comforting. "See, I'm Brandi the Veterinarian, Jen works for NASA and you're Frank the Duck."

"I don't get it," I mused.

"Are you really a vet, as opposed to an honest to Goddess doctor, or paramedic?" Kuiko wondered. Aniqua groaned once more.

"Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, courtesy of the University of Minnesota and Uncle Sam," she confirmed.

"I thought I'd work with K-9 units, but after my initial evaluations, they informed me I had another valuable skill set that I'd been overlooking," she added.

"What would that be?" Capri muttered.

"I'm really good at blowing things up," Brandi chatted while setting me up for the blood withdrawal.

"Oh Goddess," Venus gulped. "Were you girls behind the Arena bombing?"

"Yes," Jen replied.

"You killed all those people," Aniqua stood up angrily.

"Wake up," Jen growled. "What did you think was going to happen when society crumbled?"

"Billions are going to die. We can't save them. We - the movement - have to bring the government down before we can move to stage 2 of the plan. If you ladies can't deal with that, you are hanging around with the wrong man," Jen continued.

"Israel?" Samantha called out.

"I figured it out, Samantha. I didn't know at the start, but I figured it out. Everyone you know, who is not Angel, or Roni that is not in this room will be dead in two months," I sighed.

"Oh...you are trying to save as many as you can," Venus murmured. Had I a cohesive plan, or an iron will, maybe I would have understood that enough to save more.

"Do you know why Frank is so willing giving up his blood right now?" Jen asked the group.

"He's got hot-sexy eyes for Zara?" Kuiko offered. Jen snorted. Zara's back was to me.

"Well, that and...look around the room," Jen told them. "Do you know how many women are on the list of those to be taken to safety?"

"None," Capri responded.

"Precisely...and he's trying to change that. Of the nearly twenty-six hundred men we have 'vanished', less than twenty asked for another woman to be saved - every one of those asked for their mothers," Jen stated.

"Israel asked you to save us?" Kuiko sounded surprised.

"Asks the woman who was fuck-stunned for thirty minutes," Jen joked. "He hasn't asked. He didn't have to. That first Sunday, he was on the list. The following Saturday morning, he was off it because he had a female attachment. We kept an eye on him, just in case."

"Saturday night he took a beating you cannot imagine because he wouldn't betray Angel Kristi," Jen explained. "Men don't do that. We never give them the chance, but Frank did. We didn't know what Carabolix - 37 was yet. All he had to do was tell another woman that he loved her and treat her the way he treated Angel. He wouldn't do it. He was back on the list."

"Since then, somewhat inadvertently, Frank has been working his ass off to help us with our plans," Jen mused. "We didn't think he knew about our background until today, but he put all of the pieces together - seconds after freaking out and walking into a wall. If he hadn't been screwed-up in college, and wasn't a man, he would be on the fast track to academic recognition, political office, or the head of some conglomerate."

"Instead, he's a mess, but he's a mess that gets to live as the world dies," Jen finished. My mind was still in the kitchen. Brandi's equipment wasn't powerful enough to see either the T1I1 or T2 viruses, but it was clear that my guys had cleaned house. It also meant...

"You brought a sample of the T2 to the city," I whispered to Brandi. She nodded.

"It was risky, but we had to know if we had to write off dozens of our people. Now," she sighed happily, "thanks to you, we don't. Some of those people I've known for years."

"Until Frank," Jen continued, "we weren't planning to save anyone but the chosen men, despite their disadvantages. Now, your small crew might make it."

"You'll save us because he loves Angel?" Kuiko inquired sadly.

"Love conquers all," Capri murmured.

"Basically yes," Jen nodded. "Because he loves all of you, you might just make it."

"That means I get to have sex with him again!" Kuiko exulted.

Yeah, the world was going down the crapper, billions dying, civilization as we'd come to know it was fading into darkness...but having sex with me again made it all okay with Kuiko. She was wonderful.

"Me first," muttered Venus.

Things calmed down after that. I was given a pillow for my head and two for my feet as I lay on the floor giving up two pints of my blood. Brandi was going to replenish me with two fresh pints of blood plasma to keep me going. Somewhere along the process, Brandi left for a spell and Zara came in.

She took my free hand and held it tight. Our eyes met. She had that some comforting glow about her. I was woozy and very tired - barely awake.

"How did I get so lucky?" I whispered. Her eyes grew brighter and her glow warmer.

"Get some sleep," she advised and off I went.

(Wednesday)

"Wake up," Capri was calling out quietly while shaking me by my shins. With no feminine face over me as I awoke, I didn't have to worry about freaking out. "Eloise called Kuiko and asked her to come back in and be re-interviewed." That was pretty sad code for me and Capri to come to the Sentinel offices. The cloak and dagger ratcheted up my worry.

I sat up. The other girls were all awake now too. I came to a sad realization. I was a whore by necessity. I was trading my body for services. There was also no misunderstanding in the relationship either - except, maybe for Capri...and Kuiko...and Angel. Maybe I was simply a morose bastard filled with self-loathing and self-pity. I was being a jerk.

"I'm going to take a shower now," I stood up and announced. "Venus, can I convince you to join me?" I wasn't going to have my sex life become a matter of 'turns', or a rotation. Monogamy wasn't going to happen. It was a selfish fantasy on my part and totally unfair to my friends - my female friends. Thank you, Kuiko.

For a second, Venus froze. She was up and removing her shirt so fast it tore; she was trying to steal back that second.

"Sure!" she declared. Venus rushed past me on the way to the bathroom. I could hear the shower coming on as I finished undressing, placing my clothes in my bedroom hamper.

Damn, laundry day was overdue. That was a problem I'd have to save for later. At the moment, I had to make my way to the bathroom where a terribly frightening, and terrifically sexy, naked Venus was waiting for me with a burning hunger. I had faced the black depths of Flame's gun, a wall of angry cops and the threat of that unknown cop in the arena, so I could do this.

"There are going to be some ground rules," Venus held up her hand. Uh-oh. "Whenever I do something that is starting to weird you out, you let me know - right away."

"Uh - yea - wait, why do you get to set the ground rules?" It came out more as a plea than the strong voice I wanted to project.

"I want to have sex with you again. I want you to want to have sex with me again. You don't have to treat me the same way you treat Kuiko...unless you want to," Venus grinned wickedly. "Now let's get in the shower before all the hot water runs out."

"Trust me, that doesn't happen," I reminded her. Angel and I had a real...time in the shower.

I followed Venus into the shower then began shifting around. I couldn't get her rhythm. It was like...

"Are you a virgin?" I whispered. Venus gasped and her eyes widened.

"What makes you think that?" she countered with bravado.

"Let me rephrase - you are a virgin," I said softly. Another denial formed on her lips, but then she nodded. I quickly cupped her jaw and kissed her. I kissed her again then French kissed her. Her tongue was ready and willing. Venus had no idea what to do with it. I inched back.

"Let your tongue follow mine. I won't bite," I soothed her.

Her smile went from uncertain to aggressive. She wasn't Kuiko - Venus was unskilled but confident. She initiated the next kiss and took my advice. I had to break the embrace because I was not prepared for a tongue wrestling match.

"Next: French kissing is not a contest finished with a three count," I joked.

"You do know if you tell any of the girls about this I'll - I'll - I'll nipple twist Kuiko until she cries," Venus threatened. I was willing to bet the first idea in her mind was 'punch me'. She was not Kuiko, not Kuiko, not Kuiko...I spanked Venus' ass.

"No you don't," I challenged her. I was gaining solace in my mentorship and that let me wash myself clean of the corrosive toxicity that threatened my joy of life and take delight in Venus' body.

"You hit me," she smiled.

"I spanked you," I corrected, "and nipple punishment is my teaching technique. Find your own."

Venus snickered, tried to stare me down then relented with a kiss.

"Deal," she panted when the kiss broke once more. "I think I like being spanked." Oh, God.

I dodged our next connection, going for her jawline instead. Her hands fumbled to redirect me, but I slipped past her efforts to her neck. I lightly kissed my way down to her left nipple, tickled it with my tongue then nipped it with my teeth. Venus' hiccupped, her teat flared and her body spasmed. Her hands insistently held my head in place.

My hand drummed against her hip, giving her a gentle reminder of where the 'freaky' began for me. It took a few seconds, but Venus did relent, though she groaned as she did so. I switched to the right nipple, sucked the whole, half-dollar sized areola into my mouth then worried it briskly with my teeth while suckling like a starving infant.

I could feel her muscles ripple around me. She pushed her breast forward, doing with her chest what she couldn't do with her hands. Her arms were flexing, her fists clenching and unclenching, her calves and feet pushing up so she could tilt farther forward. Venus was hissing her extreme arousal through her grinding teeth.

My hand went straight to her pussy, my thumb hunted for her clit while two fingers slid straight into her cunt.

"Ai, ai, ai, ai," Venus chirped. She was nice, juicy, warm and ready to go. I kept this up for over a minute.

Her clit, stubby but thick, came out to play and I began to tap on it like a telegraph signal.

"Oh, fuck me Israel," she pleaded. "If I've been good, stick it in me - if I've been bad, forgive me, but please, please fuck me. I don't want my first orgasm with you to be from your damn fingers."

"If that's what you want," I murmured to her with true affection. Venus was aggressive, but she didn't know what to do. Her hormones had to be racing. She couldn't order her thoughts through the storm clouds of her emotions. I was telling her that she was on the right course while she took control. I knew that would make Venus more comfortable and happy.

I leaned against the back of the shower. Venus put one foot on the quarter meter lip between the tile floor/lip and the glass door and wall. She pushed up, balanced her hand on the far wall and poised crotch on my stomach. I wedged my left hand between our bodies. I straightened up my dick and rubbed it back and forth over her twat before Venus trapped it in her slit and slid down.

It was easy for me to see women as leering, lustful villains wanting to take from me. That was not a far-fetched picture based on my experiences. I had let that caricature stop me from reaching out. It had stopped me from really seeing women for what they were - past their prejudice of my gender and their perceived place for me in their world view.

They were confident yet fearful, emotional and confused, practical dreamers and romantic pragmatists. The fascist proletariat - good one Capri. We were blessed by our differences, not divided by them - we complemented one another. Nature never intended for us to be at each other's throats until one or the other was dead or subjugated.

Crap - the Vanishers kept getting smarter and smarter in my estimations. If you reduced the equation down to raw survival all the extraneous shit went out the window - pure democracy. You couldn't emotional, or physically, wreck another member because the group needed everyone working at their best so that the group could survive.

The gender ratio would still favor the women, but even that was purely practical. It would take time to train the men to be equal contributors to the group. Men would have to earn the right to be considered an equal. This wasn't a carrot at the end of a stick. It was a goal with set mileposts and a graduation date. We would seize equality by our own efforts, free of doubt and the fear it could be taken away.

And some of us would end up being devoured by tigers, or chipmunks, or whatever other ravenous monsters roamed the Federation wilderness. Things weren't going to be easy.

"Oh Goddess," Venus moaned loud enough to be heard across the hall, "this is so much better." I image she meant 'better' than artificial aids.

She placed her palms against the wall on either side of my head, grinning triumphantly, while trying to leverage her hip gyrations with her limited mobility. I rested my hands on her ample, muscular ass cheeks - Kuiko's were smaller, but firmer. Venus' and Angel's were very much alike.

I took over Venus' revolutions, lifting her free of her footholds.

I could tell she was mildly surprised at my strength. Since I buckled under so often, it was normal to see my social weakness mirrored in physical under-development. It was too easy for women to ignore the enforced workout regimen of men meant we were indeed tougher than we looked.

"Oh - shit-damn, that feels great," Venus purred as she added her thigh compressions to my lifting to keep control of her sensual stimulations. Debra had been nice, but it had been 'work'. I didn't want to think about Magdalena at that moment. Angel was love, Kuiko was fun and Venus was - easy.

She was easy in that she knew what she wanted, and once I opened the portal and showed her the correct pathway, she gladly took the lead. True to her word, she was experimenting in the things she could do to bring me pleasure, but it was all her.

I could have sat back and made all the proper noises and she'd have been happy. I didn't cheat Venus. Once she had established her mistress-ness of the situation, I tuned up my own game. I began chewing on her breasts and teats, spanked her ass and played with her anus, kissed her with enough tongue to excite her sense of domination and bit her lips.

My ejaculating first caught me by surprise. Normally I was more in control. I attributed it to the blood transfusion earlier as well as a lack of sleep.

"Oh my Goddess," Venus growled victoriously, "you came inside of me - you came." She struggled on with that sense of accomplishment for thirty more seconds.

"Ah - SHIT!" she screamed. Her vagina, while not super-tight, clamped down on my slowly deflated cock. Then the waterworks began, both top and bottom. Venus began sobbing tears of joy. Her vagina coated my balls with thick, creamy fluids. Her body shook through an intense orgasm for nearly half a minute before her forehead fell on my collarbone.

Slowly her head turned so that her mouth was puffing her breaths on my neck.

"When are we going to do this again?" she panted. There was a pause as I was putting my own mind back in order. "If you say next month, I'm going out there and paddling Aniqua's bottom. I've caught you sneaking peeks at it when you think no one is looking."

I was starting to think that I didn't need an Alpha female - I needed a God-damned referee. There was also another way to approach this, I discovered.

"When do you want to make love again, Venus?" I murmured playfully. I saw the pleasure in her eyes. That was more than she hoped for.

We hadn't graduated from mentor and student. It was wonderful seeing the dawning realization in her eyes. I wasn't going to be the problem - her female cohorts were. She'd 'won' me. She now had to face the wrath of her peers over that deed. Sure, she could say 'let's do it at lunch', but then she'd have to face down the other six women.

With that came the understanding that Angel and Kuiko had convinced me to be available too. Monogamy wasn't going to happen so she would have to work it out with the other women. This was a totally different outcome than she'd expected. Having the upper hand in our relationship was a bitch.

She couldn't even be angry with me because this was what she wanted. Welcome to equality. I could refuse to choose. There was no longer a power structure that required me to do anything sexual so I could freely concede the initiative to the ladies without giving up a thing.

"Are you smarter than Capri?" Venus studied me, face to face and eye to eye.

"Please Goddess, tell me you are the smartest person I know," she teased me. "Please tell me you are smarter than that red-haired witch, because if she can trick me as easily as you just did, I'm never going to live it down."

"Venus, I am happy to be with you here, right now," I replied. "That's all that matters to me."

Venus kissed me deeply, pulled back and gave me several slow pecks on the nose and lips.

"That was very sweet of you to say," she purred. She gave me another passionate French kiss.

"You aren't going to answer my question, are you?" she glared.

"Not in this lifetime," I grinned.

We cleaned up and exited the shower. Venus gathered up her torn shirt, shorts, bra and underwear. I reached out and took her hand.

"We can dress in the bedroom if you prefer," I offered. She looked like she was about to fall over. Venus had considered Kuiko's review to be so much hysterical tripe...until now.

It wasn't the sex. I really thought she liked it. It was a simple, adolescent romantic gesture - the holding of hands. It wasn't sex, it was affection - and effortless gesture that said 'I like you' and there was not enough of that going around these days. Venus blushed slightly.

"Sure," she tried to sound nonchalant.

She was going to a boy's bedroom and she was NOT going to have sex. The possibilities expanded in her mind. 'He cared - he really cared'. Sure, I also cared for some other girls, but now, for the first time, she was on the inside looking out. She had a guy who WANTED her, and that was a magical thought all on its own.

For a poor working girl like Venus, this had been a cruel dream dangled just out of reach. She was attractive, played baseball and had steady work, but she knew in her heart she wasn't marriage material. Men married up. Whatever man she might get was destined to leave her, not matter how hard she tried.

When she first came at me, is was as a She-Wolf, trying to get one good bite, one taste, before I departed for greener pastures. Against pre-ordained fate, she was here, at my side, her partner and mate. She could nuzzle up against me (cautiously) and expect gentle contact in return. Sex isn't slamming a cock into a vagina - that's rutting and all mammals do it.

Sex is contact and connection. Sex is sensual as in utilizing all your senses to comprehend the pace your partner is setting. It flows both ways as you give and take, act and respond. They told women this stuff in romance novels. They also teach it to broken men in therapy so we won't be afraid to give again. Venus had this now - a romance with a broken man.

"No peeking," I admonished her as I began getting dressed. For a moment she almost laughed at me. We'd made love only a minute ago. Then she felt my frontiers closing in, rolled over and buried her face in my pillow (Angel's actually). I hadn't asked her to leave and she honored my request. We were both making steps forward.

"Finished," I informed her when I was done. Venus rolled over and stared at my ceiling.

"Oh Goddess, I'm getting to be as bad as Kuiko," she moaned. She noticed my confused expression. "We caught her back in your bedroom, humping your pillow last night, making these cute little whimpering sounds," she enlightened me.

I would have been really weirded out if it had been one of the other girls. I was still a little weirded out though because - well - I had put my head on that pillow last night. Couldn't someone have warned me? Maybe this was their revenge for me not coming straight home.

"I'll go change clothes in Capri's room," Venus said as she hopped out of bed. "You can watch if you like," she added with a sexy hip-bump.

I opened the door for her. As she stepped out, I responded.

"If I do that, we might end up having sex again," I warned Venus.

"NO!" screamed Capri from the living room. "And have less impressive sex, Jerk!" Venus looked decidedly miffed in Capri's direction. I thought miffed because the alternative was murderous.

I made my way to the kitchen and breakfast...someone had bought me/us food - a 'filled all my cabinet space' amount of food.

"Thanks, Capri," I called out.

"I swear it looked like all you ate was gruel and those loathsome power-shakes," she answered.

"I didn't get my curvaceous body by eating healthy, damn it," she added.

"Actually, you look a bit out of shape," Kuiko noted. Capri pulled out her stun gun.

"Don't make me spark up your little ass," Capri grumbled. Did every freaking sound carry to every corner of my abode? Seriously? I stepped out with my bowl of milky granola.

Kuiko looked my way and grinned.

"This little ass?" she giggled. She turned facing away from me and slowly bent a quarter over. Capri's stun gun crackled again. "This little ass?" Kuiko repeated but this time she bunny hopped, in reverse, toward me. A smile over her shoulder and another bunny hop.

"That's it!" Capri shouted and lunged, stun gun in hand, toward Kuiko. Fortunately, Aniqua intercepted Capri and wrapped an arm around her waist to pull her back.

"Slow down, Red," Aniqua pleaded. "I need her so I can make rent." Kuiko wiggled her cute, tight little posterior at me. Capri almost broke free.

I had a sneaking suspicion I was contagious. I was making people around me crazy. It could also have been the close confines and high stress from knowing the world was about to end. Maybe I was getting better and realizing that not everything was my fault, or within my ability to fix. I also realized that Angel and Roni were still not back.

Thankfully, Kuiko backed down - the other way. Capri took a shower and dressed. She had eaten breakfast while Venus and I were otherwise occupied. Venus came out to the expectant stares of the other three women.

"How was it?" Samantha inquired. "Did you enjoy yourself? Did he enjoy you?"

"It wasn't bad," Venus shrugged.

"I'm about to beat you back into the Stone Age, Bitch," Aniqua growled playfully. "Spank my ass, will you? Besides, it isn't like I mind him checking me out, but did you have to tell him we all knew he was doing it?"

As noted on my first day in my condo - this place was built like crap. The only damn thing that seemed to work was the water heater. That worked like gangbusters. Otherwise, the walls were way too thin, yet somehow offered great acoustics. Wait, the windows appeared to work well. I guessed I'd have a better chance of running through a wall into the next condo than jumping out my window.

Of course, that meant people could get at me by punching through the walls. That would make my walls marginally less effective than my door's security system. In my short history here, it did a better job at keeping out those I wanted in than hindering those I wanted to keep out. This retrospection was costing me more sanity than I could afford to lose at the moment, so I stopped it and went back to eating.

Kuiko and Aniqua were leaving with us today. Kuiko wanted to talk to 'her guy' who turned out, according to Aniqua, to be a 67 year old ex-Navy veteran co-worker. Despite our disbelief in Kuiko's enthusiasm, Aniqua believed there was something to this relic. She suspected he got cigarettes from somewhere and drank more than a 'skittish whore' - Aniqua's words.

How in the hell that old geezer was passing his physical was a mystery solved by Kuiko - he was banging his doctor on a regular basis. It seems he was in perfect working order despite his plethora of bad habits. Why hadn't he had sex with Aniqua or Kuiko? His words - 'I go to work to get away from those sex-starved bitches'. He only banged college girls (and his doctor...whom he knew from her college days).

My life became dependent on non-communication, miscommunications and lies...and I was totally ignorant of the facts so crucial to my survival. Outside was a strong, steady downpour and we were expecting rain, on and off, until mid-afternoon. Capri relied on a rain hat instead of an umbrella so I stooped down to give her some shelter under my device.

Kuiko and Aniqua waved goodbye under their umbrellas as we parted company - they were taking the bus. Had I seen or heard the helicopters, I would have worried. The visibility was low and the sound of the storm dominated the air, so I didn't and was momentarily okay. Something else I didn't know - someone was tracking heat signatures.

Kuiko and Aniqua were one group, Capri and I another, and lastly, and more important to the viewers, there were two head signatures in my condo - Venus and Samantha. They didn't have to be at work until nine. Capri and I were across the street and nearly a block away when we heard the small convoy screech to a halt in front of my complex.

There was some sort of 'armored' vehicle with a turret and gun. Two others were those light transports called jeeps and hummers in various incarnations. The final two vehicles were like the first one, but with a smaller gun and a lower profile. Those two were also disgorging troops who were now running into my building.

There was another fissure in our old reality.

I must have had a look of anguish on my face. Venus and Samantha were in danger and I was powerless. Capri kept a painfully tight hold on my arm. There were three women right behind us. They were also looking over their shoulders as the drama unfolded. They turned and looked at me, recognizing my face. They rushed forward, I was gripped with fear.

Inside one meter, they slowed and closed ranks. They were shielding me from the view of the convoy - standing between me and danger. As we passed through the intersection between us and the metro, we heard a low 'pop' followed a second later by another. What I didn't know at the moment was that they had blown my door then tossed a stun grenade in the room.

They'd blown the door for the same reason they hadn't accessed my internal security footage - they were doing something illegal. There was no State of Emergency, or Martial Law. No Federation agency had called the Army Rangers in to assist. Nope, the Minister of Defense had decided that I would be 'safest' in her custody.

You really couldn't blame the Rangers. She was the freaking Defense Minister. The average trooper assumed she was acting responsibly and within the law. At the core of this disaster was the big, honking unit the Armed Forced had that studied all kinds of chemical and biological threats. They had reached three conclusions.

The T2 was going to effectively wipe out mankind.

The T1I1 was the best bet to keep a few thousand SELECT individuals alive.

The sole known source of the T1I1 antivirus was strolling around the city in danger of ending all sentient life on Earth by way of any number of fatal urban tragedies.

Upon reading that report, the Defense Minister's response should have been foreseen. 'Fuck the Ministry of Justice and their slavish devotion to the Constitution - I want to live.' She still wanted to remain Defense Minister so she had to do this carefully. A few Rangers, backed up with some helicopter support, were going to make a quick raid into the southern suburbs, grab Mr. Jensen then roll back out before anyone was the wiser.

For the Ranger lieutenant in charge of this part of the raid, this was a real problem. She had swept Mr. Jensen's apartment, but neither of the 'bodies' were Jensen, or even cooperative. The Minister of Defense, conferenced into this fiasco, was furious - these were some of her best, Goddess-damned troops and they'd taken a corner kick to the tits and let the ball bounce into the goal.

'Wait, weren't there two other clusters of heat signatures?'

'Yes, one was boarding a bus and the other was entering the - subterranean - metro station.'

About this time the Ranger lieutenant and her Captain were becoming truly curious as to why no one was accessing the city's top notch security system and simply telling the unit where their target was.

New plan - the land column was going to stop and search the bus. The Captain, with the other two squads of the Ranger Platoon, were going to repel down to the metro entrance and search for him there. The Captain had a suggestion.

"Ma'am, there is a Metropolitan police cruiser pulling up right now. Why don't we ask them to help?"

"Go in there and get him!" the DM growled.

"Madam Minister," the Captain protested. "I think this is a really, really bad idea." The Captain knew the DM was former military. She'd been a fighter pilot. The Captain also knew the woman had zero experience with special operations and urban warfare.

"Do I need to relieve you of your command?" the DM seethed.

"No, Ma'am," the Captain ground out.

The Captain had to think about her women, if she was even acting legally anymore, and if there was any way to accomplish her mission that didn't involve a firefight in a crowded metro station.

"Shoulder arms," she commanded. This was going to be fun in the same way getting the inside of your eyelashes tattooed was fun. "We locate the target, put a perimeter around him then extract him from the situation." The Captain was a Buddhist and she was really starting to worry about karma.

Even as her helicopters raced for the metro, the operation was hitting a serious snag. As the land column began to pull out, a car sped up to them, crossed 'traffic' and swerved to block their progress. The Ranger on the .50 swivel mount covered them. The driver and passenger of the car stepped out, holding up their badges.

"FBI - Gender Investigative Unit. Who is in charge here?" Special Agent Fraklos called out. The Lieutenant informed her command chain of the current events as she dismounted and headed to the now-soaked FBI agents. Fraklos was coming to meet her.

"Get out of there," the Defense Minister demanded. The Lieutenant stopped.

"What? You can't be serious," she sounded confused and exasperated. "I have two FBI agents right in front of me."

"You have the guns - get out of there and return to your forward base," the DM clarified. The Ranger Lieutenant had enough.

"Listen and listen good, Minister," she snapped. "I am not going to fire on authorized Federation agents without a God-damned (she was old school) good reason. Nor am I going to engage in a high speed flight from justice. Ma'am, I suggest you get your shit together before you issue anymore senseless orders. Kilo-6 out." That done, she stepped up to the agent, saluted and started trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

After the women I barely knew shielded me from scrutiny, we made our way down into the metro. Lots of women...and Kenny and Luanga...and three guys I didn't know. Unlike, me, Kenny and Luanga, these guys looked tough. They were all over six feet and 225 lbs. They also had dowels. Following this sign of the coming Apocalypse, a fourth man appeared.

He was pretty average looking. I could tell he was better off than most of the other commuters which left me a bit more curious than fearful of his approach.

"Hello, Mr. Jensen," he began. I offered and I shook his hand. "I'd like your help." That was new - a man asking me for help.

"What - oh, his is my friend and lawyer, Capri O'Hara. These two gluttons for punishment are Luanga and Kenny." I looked to the other three newcomers. "I haven't met these three yet."

They introduced themselves as Rashid, Quinn and Tone. Tone had decided that our (men's) problem yesterday was that we hadn't been in large enough groups to make a true difference.

The women vastly outnumbered us, but we outnumbered the cops - especially in localized skirmishes like this. They knew I'd be here and that trouble would follow. They promised not to start something but they also promised to not back down.

"Mr. Jensen, I'm Doyle Crane and I've created a blog covering our struggle - the one you started," he smiled. "It is called 'The Final Word'."

"Call me Israel, and I didn't start this. The second women decided we're somehow less than them, this was inevitable," I countered.

"Glad to see you aren't a demagogue," Doyle chuckled. "Something tons of my readers want to know is why did you save that cop then copulate with her."

"When do you think the Feds will shut you down?" Capri interrupted. I was pleased to see that Doyle didn't seem to mind.

"Soon, I think," he shrugged. "I have a Computer Technology from Lakeview Community College. I'm going to try to keep it up as long as possible. I have to do something."

"Cops," Quinn grumbled. Sure enough, the same two officers from yesterday were coming our way.

"Her name is Freya Passey," I answered Doyle. "She has a three month old son who doesn't have the Gender Plague yet. The antiviral in my blood and semen provides immunity."

"You are trying to save lives...nice," Doyle nodded.

"Alright - the same crowd plus some," Cop One remarked. "You know the drill. Hand over the dowels and open your coats and containers."

"No," Tone glared. I echoed that 'no' a half-second later.

"I guess we arrest you then," Cop Two sighed.

"What for?" Capri snapped.

"No," Tone kept glaring.

"We aren't doing anything wrong," Kenny added.

"If you want them, come get them," Rashid growled. Tradition clashed with mathematics. Before last night, forty years of experience told those two policewomen that we would fold despite outnumbering them. Today, it was distance, how quickly they could draw and shoot their tasers and how we would handle the violence.

The six men plus Capri WERE going to counter aggression with aggression. Even if they dropped the two biggest men, they would still be swarmed. Two on one wasn't good. Three on one would be desperate. The women in the metro looked completely willing to sit this round out. This morning, to these women, cops shaking men down for sticks seemed trivial.

"Is there a problem here?" a voice called out from the side. It was Debra, she had her hand in her purse and she was giving the cops a baleful look. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. Capri was a known gender-traitor, but Debra? The sudden prospect of more and more women rallying to the side of men caused the two cops to retreat.

They called for back-up. They explained the problem - men not surrendering their dowels. Explanation? There was a mob of us - and some women too. Could they possibly proceed without aid? The two cops looked us over. Five more women had joined our defiant stand. 'No'. The cops were told to retire from the confrontation.

Every woman but Capri were smiling and viewing this as a great stride forward. They had recognized the plight of men and made a stand. They felt good about themselves. It took them a while to realize the men weren't jumping for joy. The cops had our faces and names. They'd come back for us later.

As our knot of resistance entered the metro a tremor moved through the crowd behind us. Two groups of troops in urban camouflage had entered the station and they were rushing to board the metro too.

Several people repeated the same refrain - 'Oh my God/Goddess, is that the Army?'

"Hey," Tone bumped me, "is there something you haven't told us?"

"Tone, I am such a lousy member of this society, I couldn't begin to tell you why they might be coming for me," I shrugged. Tone smiled at me in the same way a cop smiles at a man before the 'tuning up' begins. This was 'not good'. Ten soldiers piled into the rear/fifth car with me. Ten more made it into the first car.

Through the press of female bodies, I met Ambrosia's gaze. I could see the conflict. I'd rejected her. My women had threatened her. The odds of her coming out on top in this mess were small. She tapped Amelia and turned away. I almost missed the two taking out their stun guns. But I had so I noticed them gathering forces and moving to the fourth car to protect us from behind as well.

As Ambrosia's little group moved to the next car, the pressure behind me grew and I was swept forward. One soldier offered her knee for another to step on. That woman rose up, spotted me and the communication began over their little headsets under their helmets. The Rangers formed a wedge and worked forward.

Our only option was to retreat to the fourth car, but that ran the risk of the group becoming separated. A mental haze was whirling through my ability to process the world correctly. I tried to move to the 'rear' of the group. Capri lost contact with me. We became a mess of women and men interspersed.

Tone was facing the oncoming soldiers. I tried to get to his side. Somehow I could fix this. A hand grasped my right upper arm in a vise-like grip. I tried to shrug it off with no luck. Looking behind me I saw a woman unknown to me. She was silent and grim, of Mexican heritage, with a compact, five foot-nine body.

I failed to pull free on my second attempt.

"Fall back," the woman hissed. At the same time, we noticed Tone push his jacket aside as his right hand reached behind him and pull forth an automatic pistol. The leader of the soldiers pushed the last woman aside. Tone pointed the gun at her face, point-blank.

"No!" I shouted. There were gasps and cries of alarm. A man had a gun which equated to a man had lost his mind and gone homicidal in the feminine mind. The soldiers froze. It wasn't panic; they were professionals and opening fire in a crowded commuter car was abhorrent to them. Tone was furious. The woman, a Captain it appeared, was coolly taking in the situation.

"Tone, if you came all this way just so you could act like a woman, get off my damn train," I declared in a voice that was blessedly calm and steady. No one flinched. I reached out with my left hand and placed it gently on Tone's pistol. The Captain realized that I'd placed my pinkie finger between the hammer and chamber - now I had to thank Flame. Tone didn't seem to get it.

"You were soft on that cop," Tone grumbled.

"Wrong, I was true to myself, Tone," I replied. "Women shoot us when we are defenseless. They treat us like we were worthless - like our lives have no value beyond a cock and ball set. Is that what you want to be like?"

There was a false stillness. I couldn't concentrate on the task at hand and take in all the turmoil boiling around me at the same time.

"Huh?" Tone stole a look my way. The stars were aligned properly. The Captain didn't rush in.

"Do you even know this woman? If you want to shoot her solely because she's a woman, you are as bad as every cop who shook you down," I explained.

"She's not threatening you. She's doing her job, that's all. She's - an equal - a human being," I continued. "If you are going to kill her because she has tits then what are any of us fighting for? How can we expect dignity if we don't extend it? Put the gun away and prove to every woman here that they need to be more like us - like you, please."

Tone tilted the gun up until it was pointed at the ceiling. I withdrew my hand, he lowered it and put it behind his back once more and everyone drew a collective breath.

"Very well done, Mr. Jensen. Now come with us," the Captain said.

"No," I responded.

"After all that, you are going to make me detain you by force?" she grinned in a non-condescending way.

"That won't be necessary..." I got out.

"Because he has a lawyer," Capri finally managed to wiggle in front of me.

"Morning Jarhead; does the Posse Comitatus Act mean anything to you?" Capri snarled. "You are currently tap-dancing over the Supreme Court as we speak. Bitch, you aren't getting demoted, you are going to prison." The Captain regarded Capri.

"Jarheads are Marines. We are Rangers," she corrected my legal counsel. "We are operating under an executive order directing us to seize and detain Israel Jensen."

"Rocket Rangers, Girl Scouts, or Brownies - I don't give a fuck," Capri sneered. "Until I hear something resembling a declaration of Martial Law if you lay a hand on Mr. Jensen, I will have all of you arrested."

"Really?" the Captain scoffed.

"I'm with the Public Defender's office, Sweet Cheeks," Capri gave a feral glare. Technically, this wasn't a lie. She had not been officially fired yet. "I am an officer of the Court. I will deputize everyone on this metro and have them use whatever means necessary to subdue and detain you and your fellow Green Pixie Faeries."

Two things were crucial to this scenario. One was that Capri was the greatest litigator of her generation, or the best poker player. The other factor was that the Captain was NOT a lawyer, or even a student of the law. Though the lawyer's argument sounded far-fetched, Capri was absolutely convincing. Stacked with that was the Captain getting a really hinky feeling about this whole mission.

"There is still the matter of the man with a handgun," the Captain pointed out.

"What gun?" Capri instantly replied. The Captain decided the best course of action was for her squads to fall back to the doors and exit at the next stop. As soon as the Rangers retired, Capri turned on Tone. Considering that we were pressed tightly together and he had over a foot on her, Capri had to stare straight up.

"You are an idiot," she snapped. "Did it occur to you that there were nine women behind her in body armor with assault rifles who would have shot the hell out of all of us had you killed their officer? Did you think at all, or do you suffer from testosterone poisoning of the brain?"

"Bitch," he grumbled, "I still have a gun."

"Please Tone, don't make me kill you," I sighed.

"I have a gun for you too," he tried to stare me down. I laughed.

"There is a professional killer within five meters of me that will not hesitate ending your life," I explained. "You will never see it coming." That Mexican woman had to be a Vanisher.

I could tell Tone was trying to figure out who it was. I wasn't giving any visual clues. I kept looking at him.

"You are with the women," he sneered.

"Duh," I replied. "Haven't you been listening? I don't make friends based on gender, or profession. Doing so would make me a dick, and not in a good way."

I looked around and realized that I had imparted a certain level of understanding to both the men and women with my words. They understood that I was a nut - except Capri and Doyle. Doyle had captured the entire encounter and speech on video. Capri already knew I was a nut but believed in me anyway.

"What about the Arena?" Quinn asked. "They slaughtered us. We have to do something."

"Okay - what?" I looked at him. "Are we going to kill one for every one of ours they killed? Why don't we make it two to one - better yet, five to one? How much is going to be enough?"

"We have to do something," Kenny complained.

"Not a damned thing we do, Kenny, will bring any of the dead back to life," I pleaded. "There is nothing we can do for them. If we take revenge it is because we want to hurt women and no better reason. We all know women who deserve to have their asses kicked. That's not important because nothing changed last night." Now they were sure I was bonkers.

"Yesterday morning they treated us exactly the way they have for forty years. Last night 936 men and 178 policewomen died in under thirty minutes. The fundamental situation did NOT change for us men. They are treating us the exact same way today," I continued.

"They didn't take our dowels today," Luanga countered.

"True, but irrelevant. They shouldn't have asked for them in the first place. To have changed, the cops shouldn't have even showed up," I explained. "To have really mattered, none of the women in the metro should have even called the police on seven peacefully assembled citizens. Women continue to treat us as second class citizens, except now many more men realize it."

"Wow," Doyle laughed after an extended period of silence. "You are not out to make many friends, that's for sure."

"Around the age of five we figure out we can lie to our mothers and get away with it. From that point on, dodging responsibility becomes an accepted approach to life," I answered.

"After that, it is easy to see nothing as your fault. You can ignore almost any injustice around you because it isn't you, you can't make a difference, or isn't that someone else's job? We were all so afraid of dying, men accepted subjugation and women accepted subjugating us to be the only option. Now we will reap what we've sown," I sighed.

"You could all do worse than treating the next few days as if they were your last," I begged. I didn't want to tell the whole truth yet. They wouldn't believe me yet - that was coming. At the next stop the Ranger departed. With that done, I had one other chore to attend. I went to the fourth car and wiggled through the crowd to Ambrosia.

"Thank you," I said. Her look was not that of a happy camper.

"Does any of this make a difference?" she asked.

"It does to me," I nodded.

"What are you doing tonight?" she hinted.

"Sorry, but this is it for me - my last ride," I confessed. "After this morning, I'm gone one way or another. I am glad my last image of you won't be one of fear." It was all I could offer.

"I wouldn't have hurt you," she grumbled. She didn't get it, even now.

"Would you have taken 'no' for an answer? Would you have let me go to the rally?" I countered.

She was kind enough not to lie to me and I was conscious enough of her warring emotions to retire after a moment's silence. When I made it back to my knot of men and Capri, I expected to get some shit for my sojourn. They looked at me with concern.

"What?" I inquired.

"Hold out your hand," Capri directed me. I did so. My hand was shaking like a leaf in a gale.

"You look like you are about to keel over," Capri informed me. "Please accept the fact that you are saving people. I don't know why you want to get beaten, battered and killed, but stop it. We need you - as sane as you can be and alive." Those words were accentuated by the tears welling up in Capri's eyes.

Paraphrasing an old saying: my desires were writing checks my body and soul could not cash.

"You would think after all the crap I've heard you went through, you would want payback more than any of us," Tone gruffly stated.

"I do and I did," I met his gaze. "Last night, I saved one of us and I saved his mother too."

"When I do that, Tone, I'm spitting in all their faces because they didn't break me," I declared. "I am a good person and I won't let any woman take that away. I don't need to beat some woman in the face because I know I'm better than that. I'll pop one in the head to remind them to give me some respect. We deserve respect. You cannot take that with the barrel of a gun."

"That's fear and that's what they've been doing to us for way too long - and it clearly hasn't worked," I grinned. "We are here, proving that point. We are not afraid anymore. We will not bow down ever again." Tone stared at me for a few seconds then nodded.

"I'm still angry," he grinned.

"Brother, you would have to be crazy not to be angry," I sighed, but in a positive way. "We've been beaten down, degraded, ignored and lied to. If all you have is anger, then all you have is what they've given you since you were born. The trick is dropping all their crap and being who you are supposed to be."

"How do we figure out what that is?" Quinn mused.

"Pole Dancer!" one girl close by blurted out. We all slowly turned and stared at her, even the women. "Hey, he's kinda good looking and I like meaty men."

The world cracked a tiny bit more.

"You first," Quinn challenged her. He crossed his arms and looked at her sternly.

"What?" she gulped.

"You pole dance for me first and then I'll see if I want to pole dance for you," Quinn announced.

"I - ah," she stammered. "I don't think I could do that." There were a multitude of things Quinn could have said, many of them harsh and confrontational. Instead...

"Pity," he smiled at her. "You are kinda cute. I like the short feisty ones." She was embarrassed yet smiling. That little exchange was the highlight of our ride. A man and a woman - strangers - had played. A few sentences, a few words, but they'd experienced a playful exchange. In my heart, I prayed they walked away enjoying that moment and exploring the possibilities of such a thing.

We exited at the Downtown Central Hub. The seven of us made our way upstairs to the edge of the downpour.

"Excuse me," the 'pole dancer' woman called out. She approached Quinn. "Can I scan you?" she murmured. She didn't need to ask; the law was on her side.

"So...maybe, you know, we can talk later," she mumbled. We were all blinking in surprise.

"Sure. I'd like that," Quinn smiled back at her. He held out his bracelet, she scanned his ID and off she went. "Shit, man," Quinn shook his head after she was gone. "I don't know what to make of that."

"That's what we are fighting for," I answered softly. "We want to be asked. We want to be able to say 'no'...or 'yes' if we like."

"Eh, we are all still going to get arrested," Kenny groaned.

"Not likely," I shook my head. "All you guys need to get the hell out of town - like before noon if you can."

"Are we, or are we not, worried about getting arrested?" Tone inquired.

"Something much worse than arrest warrants is coming down the pipeline and you don't want to be in a populated area when it hits," I cautioned them. "The rest will come out soon enough."

"Hmmm..." Quinn mulled over the situation. He rolled up his jacket collar and took off into the rain...after that woman.

"Israel, you are annoying as crap, but take care, Brother," he hugged me. I was still freaked out. I was pretty sure a man had never hugged me before. I fended off the others with handshakes and then it was only Doyle, Capri and me.

"Off to the Sentinel?" Capri asked.

"I have to stop by City Hall," I replied. Capri was glaring at me venomously. "I need to say good-bye to Francesca," I explained. Capri gave a deep sigh then nodded. As we approached that imposing structure that had launched my fall from sanity, I used Capri's phone to call Francesca. It took a few seconds.

I could envision her looking at the number and the caller ID and wondering who the hell Capri O'Hara was.

"Ms. O'Hara - Israel?" she answered.

"It's me. I'm outside and I don't think coming in to the office today would be wise. Can you come out and talk to me?" I pleaded.

"Considering the wreckage you made of the administration Monday and yesterday, and the tragedy of last night - we are swamped with work," she sighed. "But, for you, who has made my life SO interesting, I'll be right out." She hung up and the three of us waited in the rain. I didn't even dare stand in the outdoor entryway to get out of the rain, such was my popularity.

Doyle Crane cut through the silence.

"So what's going on at the Sentinel this morning?" There were a great many things I could have said, should have said, but somehow my tongue ended up talking and my brain sat on the sidelines.

"I make this shit up as I go along," I grinned. Doyle waited for the punch line.

"Mr. Crane, you do realize Israel isn't doing a 'crazy act'; he really is insane," Capri told him. Apparently that possibility had not occurred to Doyle.

"How has he avoided the GED for so long?" he whispered.

"I run real fast," I confided.

"He has the very best lawyer, his girlfriend is a cop and he has the sexual prowess of Eros, Greek God of Female Transcendence," Capri explained things far better than me.

"How about I say he's insanely lucky?" Doyle offered.

"Works for me," I sighed.

"Israel?" Francesca called out softly. It was almost drowned out in the rain. I moved inside the covered area because she hadn't brought an umbrella. She reached out, cupped my jaw in both her hands and kissed me on the cheek.

"Time has not made you wiser," my former boss chided me. "Thanks for getting all of us our jobs back. Bethany seems to have disappeared though."

"Don't look at me," I chuckled. "I am done with her and moved on. I came because I need a favor."

I pulled Francesca tightly to me so that my lips were beside her left ear. Her arms spread around my waist and hugged me.

"Francesca, get out of town - right now. Something bad is coming and you need to be as far from any populated area as possible. Grab some food, clothes and stuff and make a run for it," I whispered.

"If you tell me where you might be, I'll try to catch up with you if I can," I promised.

"I have a cousin who owns a place outside Cody, Wyoming. I'll go there," she whispered back. Security cameras watched the area but our heads were obscured by my umbrella and the rain hopefully would mask our quiet words. "She's a Silverhorn as well."

"I have to go, Francesca. I hear there are some Inuit who aren't howling for my head yet and you know I can't stand that," I joked. I was off to battle and she knew it. She gave me one more good squeeze.

"Remember you don't have to do all the fighting by yourself," she smiled sadly.

"Despite my best efforts I've made a friend, or two," I grinned.

"Like that Ms. Sano," Francesca teased me.

"Ugh," I lowered my head in shame.

"Israel," she put a finger beneath my chin and tilted my head up, "never be ashamed of giving anything your best effort."

There was a pause. "I won't stand for it, you hear? Now go. I have to go walk on water for a few more minutes as civilization comes crashing down." I had already said good-bye in my own way - until we meet again, hopefully - so there was nothing more I could say that would have added any meaning.

At the Sentinel Eloise gave me the plan for the day. Doyle was in the 'bull pen' with the other journalists. The President of the Federation was going to make a personal appeal for me to join the National Government in dealing with this crisis. In case I was feeling 'uppity', there was going to be a special taskforce of the FBI around to make me behave.

"Do you know who is in charge of this Watch Dog group?" I inquired.

"Some hot shot out of the Capital named Enola Treyvon," Eloise studied me. "I think you've met her." How did Eloise know all this shit?

"Yeah, we've met. She opted not to keep me in custody at the time," I replied in the least informative way I could think of.

"There has to be a story in there somewhere," Eloise pressed.

"Which you are not going to get," Capri intervened. "Did you miss Israel nearly getting killed in the shootout yesterday with your favorite mobster and the cops?"

"Since neither you, nor Mr. Jensen were questioned, I would discern you both made it out before things got too bad," Ms. Granger smirked.

"So, are you going to GNN this morning, Israel?" Eloise turned to me.

"Sure, why not?" I shrugged.

"What's your exit strategy this time? I don't think 'running down the stairs' will work out all that way with the FBI standing around waiting for you," she prodded.

How in the hell was I going to get out? Dimples would give me a head start, but what then? I needed something - a big distraction - that didn't involve people dying.

'Never be ashamed...of my best...efforts?'

The chaos that had haunted my life had me leaving multiple things undone - like laundry, and the Sexbook account Troy Berry had created for me.

Flash mobs had expired during the Gender Plague. A generation later, women rediscovered the spontaneity/activism of their parent(s). I had never participated in one. I had been invited to a few, but anything associated with women and the word 'mob' was a nonstarter for me. This morning, I was relying on a piece of social media I'd never used to do something I had avoided like death itself.

Here was hoping I still had fans.

I had to borrow Capri's tablet and off I went. I had over 32,000 'friends'. There were 1,754 unanswered requests.

"Israel?" Capri asked gently. Both she and Eloise looked over my shoulder.

"Wow, you are a rock star," Eloise mused.

"I didn't know Sexbook had a Fan Fiction page," Capri noted. I was back to wanting to die of embarrassment. I didn't deserve this, as in I wasn't worthy of this level of attention.

"What's the plan?" Eloise prodded.

I began referencing locations and ages of my 'friends', created a list and launched my appeal.

*I am the real Israel Jensen. I'm not promising anyone any sexual favors whatsoever. The last 48 hours have been a mess and I've done things you must all view as questionable. I regret only that I cannot do more for more people.

I have always been drawn to passion and I've been lucky to share that love with several women close to me. I am sick to my soul that I let my wounds keep me from the thing that turns out to have healed me the most. I owe Angel and Kuiko, whom you may know, and Freya and Venus whom you do not. Debra, I apologize I couldn't be more. M...

In an hour, I am about to do what I've done every other morning this week - something colossally stupid and definitely something that is going to piss people off. This is going to be my last hurrah - for some time, if not forever. Odds are I'm going to end up in either Metropolitan or Federation custody. I'm going to make a run for it anyway.

That's where all of you come in. I need your help. I have nothing to offer in return. If any of you are crazy enough to help, gather in front of the GNN building at 8:15 this morning. If you don't show up, never be afraid to say you had a chance to do something asinine and pointless then wised up in time. May whatever face of the Divine gives you comfort be with you.

Israel Jensen*

I was hoping to hear something in ten minutes, or so. I had barely handed the tablet back when a message popped up.

*What is your favorite color?* GoldenDoe34 sent. Huh?

*Kelly Green. My Mother had a recreation battle flag of the Irish Brigade in our living room at home* I answered.

*That's not what your page says* she pressed.

*That's because Troy Berry set up the page without consulting me* I replied.

*Where did you and Venus have sex?* PandorSweets sent.

*I'm not sure I should say. That was between us* I countered.

*She said in her review of you* PandorSweets stated. What the...?

*My bracelet is broken. I didn't think women could post reviews* I wondered.

*Hold on* GoldenDoe34 posted. Then,

Freya

*Thank you, Israel, for saving my life and the life of my Son. Remember, you were the man who cares deeply before you ever came to be at my side.*

Venus

*I should hardly need to say that the sex was wonderful. It was. As any woman who has ever had intercourse with him has said, Israel gave his all as if I was the only woman in the world that mattered. What was special to me was what came after we made love in the shower. As we dried off...he reached out and held my hand.

He took me to his bedroom then asked me to close my eyes as he dressed because at his core, he is a shy, gentle soul. This may not make sense to many of you, but at that moment I felt I was important to him. He let me inside his fractured world, told me I could stay by his side as long as I liked and I'm grateful.*

"Less impressive sex, you dummy," Capri whispered. She was smiling. "I would have never guessed Venus could be so eloquent."

*Thank you GoldenDoe34. I don't normally read my reviews. I don't engage in sex for the words that come after I am gone, but for the sight, sound, taste, touch and smell of that one woman at that one place and time.

I don't like being graded, or rated. I would certainly never degrade a woman by boasting to the world our deeply personal experience. I know it is common, accepted practice for women...I wish it was not so.*

*Goddess! It is you!  * PandorSweets exclaimed.

*I agree. No one could be so enchanting, yet irritating at the same time* Verbena Queen joined in. *I'll contact my clubs*

*I'm texting my senior class* GoldenDoe34 added.

"Oh hell," Eloise snickered, "what have you done?" I had no clue what I'd done. Seriously, why would anyone assume I knew jack-all about a dating site? Why would I think I would know what I was doing? I'd avoided, or been kept isolated from, sexual encounters for most of my adult life.

I would not claim ignorance. I knew the basics of social media. I knew that I had an odd appeal and that Troy had preyed upon for his own sick desires. Now I was using the affections aimed my way for my own ends. The best I could say about my plan was that I'd told the truth about what I wanted and the total lack of reciprocity on my part.

I was using their sexual fantasies to urge them toward rebellion. I was walking into a feminine nightmare of my own creation. A horde of women (I hoped) was going to engulf Capri and I, shield us from our pursuers and then be abandoned to their fates. I would do my best to warn them before I ran. I didn't know what else I could do.

Yesterday had been a splash of water to the face. Today, the oceans were boiling. In New York City, a construction worker with a steel pipe went berserk. He killed two policewomen at a food truck, critically injuring two more and one bystander. Only after two other officers confronted and shot him fatally in the neck did they realize he'd added body armor and enough padding to negate the effect of tasers.

Yesterday, fewer than five thousand men threw themselves at the barricades. Today it was fifty thousand and counting. We only detected the rumblings at this early hour about what was coming. In Atlanta, men all over that city walked off the job at ten a.m. Thirty percent of the men walked. In Hawaii, the governor ordered that all gatherings of more than two men were banned.

The backlash was overwhelming. Eighty percent of all men on the islands boycotted - everything. Middle School and High School boys walked out of their classrooms. Local GED departments 'detained' the organizers. That also backfired. Protestors swarmed GED stations, staging sit-ins and getting arrested. Jails were flooded. Men and women signed a petition demanding the governor step down.

In Managua, sixteen male college students gathered in front of the Ministry of Justice building with two bolt cutters. Publically, they cut off each other's wrist bands. They made no attempt to flee and were promptly arrested. In Phoenix, college and high school boys attacked the metro system with stink bombs.

In Boston, men of all ages pelted Federation, State and local office buildings with Red, Green and Blue paint balloons; the colors of the Federation. In Calgary, they parked trucks in intersections, disabled the ignitions and abandoned their vehicles. Except for Hawaii, there was no rhyme, reason, or organization to it, beyond things at the very local level.

The gem of it all was that, outside of that one incident in New York, my brothers were taking my lesson to heart. It wasn't 'get the women'. It was 'we will no longer sit silently by and be ignored'. Things were about to get much worse. Congress had passed the 2nd Amendment to the Gender Inequality Act, to take effect in 90 days. Marriage was gone.

The women in Congress weren't morons, but they weren't men either. Even those who were wives didn't truly understand because they weren't husbands. The greatest burden to fall would be, again, on the men. On Sunday, the ex-husbands would have wept. On this Wednesday, they were fighting mad.

Whether you call it a Cyclone, Typhoon, or Hurricane, there was a forgotten element to this storm. Forgotten by almost everyone, even me. They were the daughters. Specifically, daughters with fathers who were now seeing their papas being ripped away and they weren't happy about this at all.

Only a small number of marriages had children of an 'effective' age - say, over the age of 12. The average family in this group had, on average, four daughters. If you also had a son - well, he was already working out his 'man' issues. These daughters - they understood. They had been marginalized and neglected. Their society had just pooped on them in a big way.

Their parental structure had been severed in twain. The parent they saw the most of, and in most cases, were closer to, was being forced out the door. No one had consulted with them in any Goddess-damned way, shape, or form. With the bang of a gavel, their primary caregiver was told to vacate in 90 days, or else.

The law was very clear - men had to permanently abandon their shared dwelling and maintain their own domicile so they could be 'accessible'. That's right, little girl. We are throwing Daddy into some sleazy bachelor pad where any skanky whore can use and abuse him. Oh, and lest we forget, Dad probably has a few 'nieces' as well - with Aunts Suzy and Karen coming by so often it should be of no surprise.

These young women were traumatized by the destruction being levied on their lives. They weren't sure about what to do - until the boys stood up and marched off to fight their little, hopeless war. Then the girls knew exactly what to do. It started with a trickle of support but quickly became a torrent.

There were still fewer daughters/nieces with Daddy/Uncles than the total number of men. The difference? Women felt entitled. They were not afraid of the cops, or repercussions. Yes, the Hammer of Justice was about to fall on their heads too. They just didn't see it coming so they swarmed into the streets in far greater numbers.

Yes, this meant the police and military reserves were about to use tasers, rubber bullets, tear gas and stun grenades on 14 and 15 year old girls on streaming video. Do you want to make things worse? Remember, the majority of marriages are in the top tier of society. No, that's not Josephine the electrician's little girl.

That's Augustine on the Board of Directors of your Bank who just saw her baby take a tear gas canister to the gut. Then you had Patty, the friend. She was watching Carmella heading downtown because they are turning Carmella's Dad, a nice guy - she's met him several times - into a man-whore (whom she couldn't possibly afford on her allowance).

She probably had some teenage fantasies about him too, though she'd never tell Carmella. The more she thought about it, the more Patty decided that she was not going to let some wacky old bitches, who didn't understand today's modern woman (like Patty), tell her how the world should work. She imagined Carmella's dad would be grateful...maybe really grateful.

The more she thought about it, the more Patty was sure he'd scoped her out a few times. Suddenly, joining Carmella and sticking it to some cops sounded like tons of fun with a 'real' possible pay-off at the end. Carmella's dad was going to see her as a grownup woman now. Yep. Patty gathered up two of her pals who were bored anyway and talked them into helping Carmella.

She showed them a picture of Carmella's dad working out in his home gym to seal the deal. Carmella was happy to have three of her buddies joining her. 'Do they think her Daddy will be happy with their protest?' 'Yes', Carmella assures them, 'her Daddy will be very happy she has such good friends'. The three girls smiled.

In twenty minutes, one of those friends was thinking that calling a rubber bullet 'non-lethal' was patently deceptive. Dialing this all back to me - I had told all my fans where they could gather to do 'something'. Somewhere along the line, they informed a pissed off daughter. Suddenly, all those pissed off girls whose sperm donor had hung around had a focal point for their frustrations.

They knew I would be at GNN. It stood to reason the cops would come and get me - it was my thing. The girls no longer had to storm a police station, or government building to get their message across. There were going to be plenty of police sitting out in the middle of the street with no walls to hide behind. This was about to give a whole new meaning to the phrase 'Daddy Time'.

With the coffin so full of nails, there was one more to go in. Even after forty yours of the Gender Inequality Act, men were still essentially men - especially teenage 'men'. A hundred years ago women took to the streets in parts of the Federation, stood up for their equal rights, cultural liberty, took birth control pills and burnt their bras.

Men marched with them. I was sure a few actually believed in the cause - equal rights. Most believed in something else. Women had for centuries clung to a mythical virginal status. During the sexual revolution, women were giving it away. No ring, payment, religious conversion, or promise required. Hell, sometimes you weren't even required to say anything at all.

In high schools and colleges all across the country, hormone-racked boys were watching girls stand up and walk out of class. In many cases, the rich girls. These guys didn't care about marriage. If they only had sex once in a 14 day period, something was seriously wrong with them. They could get girls all the time - walk alone anywhere for fifteen minutes and they'll find you.

So why would they join these privileged young woman? Passion. These young women were passionate about an issue that didn't involve bondage of some kind for the boys down the line. Men - men who are not like me - liked passion. They liked it a lot. Now, my high school and college brethren weren't stupid. They weren't marching alone.

That's how you ended up naked, God-knows-where with fifteen different phone numbers and 'Call Me' scrawled over your body in lipstick. They did the socially conscious thing; my brothers called all of the brothers in their group and they traveled as a pack to join the girls. This became a twofold problem if you were a law enforcement official on the street outside of GNN.

Last night you gunned down, or otherwise eased into a terminal state nearly a thousand 30, 40, and 50 year old males. Now you are staring down bands of teenage boys interspersed in a sea of hostile girls. Using non-lethal dispersal means would 'normally' break up these children except, what would happen when the girls saw young men dropping next to them?

Fear would become fury. Shock would become rage. Why? If women had been part of the crowd at the MAL Rally, something very different would have happened. Women would have died in droves because women defended men. They'd been doing it for forty years - in their cultural minds anyway. It was why they felt entitled.

Male economic input to the world was negligible. It was a woman's world. The provided for us, kept us safe (mostly) and if they took advantage of us a tidbit, well...they were doing ALL the work, right? These small knots of teenage boys had joined this female protest. The boys had become 'their' boys.

Sure, that meant many of them were going to be 'asked' later to perform, but that's pretty much why most of them were there in the first place. That also meant when a cop put one of 'their' boys down, the women got protective. It was what their culture had been beating into their skulls for forty years.

This did not mean the young women respected the boys - it meant they wanted to get fucked just as much as the boys did. Twenty girls see one boy go down and they suddenly realize he's going to the jail, or the hospital (no one dares think 'morgue'). That means no dick for them. Back to that passion those guys came sniffing after like the horny dogs they were.

Hormones don't play favorites. They erase reason and common sense in both genders equally, especially when you are young. That young lady KNOWS that the boy those nasty evil bitch cops just knocked down was going to fuck her to the stars in a few hours. Sure, they'd never actually made eye contact, but she knew...she knew.

Now, you Evil Cop, you are about to experience why this frustrated teenage girl burned out her last two vibrators with her unrequited lust. If you are the cop in question, you realize that this teenager had nineteen friends in the same basic mind frame and they are all coming for you. If you are a Metropolitan Policewomen, the past 12 hours have been tough for you and it's getting tougher by the second.

Most likely you haven't gotten much sleep. Worse, you've seen the respect for your career start to plummet in the eyes of your fellow (female) citizens. 178 of your sister officers died, a few quite horribly. Nearly a thousand males died. There was no way to look at this in a positive light.

Yesterday's male demonstration had been an annoyance; so comical that she probably joked about it with fellow officers. Today there had been too many to hold back. As she knew it would, chaos had ensued. Allowed to their own devices, men had inflicted their own brand of discipline on the ride to work. Foreheads were getting wacked all over the city.

Women were learning some tough lessons. Using pepper spray in a confined area was bad. It is even less effective when men have 'tote' umbrellas that open on a moment's notice. They apparently made nice shields. Stun guns are nice, but dowels have a longer reach. The world turned full circle.

On Tuesday, women had swarmed men for their impudence. Today, most sat out the conflict on the sidelines. In a final irony, the cop was learning the lesson Israel had learned three and a half years earlier as Campus Security laughed him out of their office. 'If you let them get away with it, they'll try for more'.

Women: 'You went to a Sorority Party. What did you expect would happen?'

Men: 'We went to the Arena as YOU told us to and then you slaughtered us.'

Without even considering my personal tale, if the first statement wasn't spoken, the second would have never have happened.

When women accepted the first statement, the second was pre-ordained and resistance was inevitable. The cop feared the third statement more than anything.

Men: 'We don't care anymore. We will fight until we break you, or you break us.'

Few women appreciated that pitted 300,000 men versus less than 12,000 cops.

With that calamity swirling around my periphery in time and space, I walked with Eloise, Capri and Doyle to the GNN building. We had trouble. In front of the building were three of those light personal transport vehicles (jeep/hummer). The closest and farthest had this 80cm wide hexagonal things on top with some sort of gunner/technician.

The middle vehicle had the biggest damn shotgun I'd ever imagined (an auto-grenade launcher I was later told). Ten other soldiers were in evidence. Across the street where six patrol cars, with officers holding the outer perimeter. Message - this was a Fed show. I was about to back-pedal my ass out of there. To be honest, I was going to break and run for my life. I didn't want to go to prison, or some secret lab.

Special Agent Sosa stepped out of the small gathering of cops, soldiers and suits at the door and headed my way. Gut check - acid test - prom night. I didn't know what the heck to think.

"Come on, Jensen," she beckoned. The two women and one man around me hesitated. I shrugged and walked to then beside her as she led me into the building.

"Do you know Keyser Söze didn't actually exist?" I grinned.

"Oh freaking wonderful," she muttered to herself as we entered the elevator.

"Who was Keyser Söze?" Eloise asked.

"Some guy from an old movie. Tons of men die. It's not real popular these days," I informed her.

"But he didn't really exist?" Doyle wondered. "Huh?"

"It is the study of myth and the power it can hold over the human mind, in the movie's case, a fearful hold," I explained.

"So the man was a myth," Eloise mused.

"Yes, but the belief that he did exist made a band of rational men risk their lives out of fear that he'd hunt them to the ends of the earth and kill them," I stated. The doors opened and there stood Dimples with two of her people - Norris and Tambora.

"Mr. Jensen, this way," she pointed to her right. "The rest of you, over there, she pointed to the left and the way into GNN studios. Capri stuck with me.

We took a few steps, the two agents looking around cautiously while Dimples remained confident.

"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist," Dimples quoted. We were temporarily safe.

"Are Fraklos and Vabishi back yet?" I asked.

"They are on the way. They had an issue to resolve. Now, how is this going to play out?" Dimples studied me.

"New strain of the Gender Plague broke out in China last week," I began.

"This strain attacks men and women with an insanely high mortality rate. It has been in San Francisco since Thursday, but with a three day incubation period, it is only now starting to appear. The antivirals in my blood do counter it, so there is that," I finished unloading.

"Are you absolutely confident in the source of this information?" she frowned. I nodded then Dimples made a phone call.

"This is Enola. I wish to talk to my Mother," she stated. There was a pause, "Mother, is the government about to engage in extreme action beyond Sierra?"

"Are you anywhere close to the target of your current manhunt?" asked the serene voice on the other end.

"Yes, very close," Dimples responded.

"Good. Keep it that way and Enola, I'm afraid I'll miss Christmas again this year," Dimples' Mother said. "Good-bye Enola. I have work to do." The connection died.

"Who is your mother?" I inquired quietly.

"Flora Treyvon, Deputy Director of Operations for the Ministry of Security," Special Agent in Charge Enola Treyvon replied. The Ministry of Security was the counterpart to the Ministry of Justice. Security handled external threats; the combination of the pre-Plague foreign intelligence services.

Rumor had it that Operations was the section that toppled governments and assassinated people. No one official admitted to that, of course. It was perversely comforting that I continued to associate with the most lethal form of womankind available. Had I joined up with another gentle soul like Kuiko, the shock might have unhinged me.

All of that also made the word choices of the two of them made sense. No mention of plague, China, quarantine, or my name. It took me a moment to place Sierra - the Sierra Nevada mountain range west of the Rockies. I also had the feeling that Enola and her mother had never missed a Christmas, but they knew they'd never share another. That had been their true and final good-bye.

"So that influenza outbreak in Shanghai isn't the flu," Special Agent Pamela Norris mumbled.

"Three days to incubate then four days to kill you, if it runs with the historical models," SA Lena Tambora added. "We are all going to get infected. It sounds like most of us will die."

"Why isn't there a nationwide quarantine?" Norris asked Dimples.

"Economics," SAC Treyvon said. "Examining global travel, trade flow, infection rates and time since inception, the whole world is going to be infected. The Federation economy is going to do more than collapse - it is going to die. The Government Executive is probably positioning key industries and resources so that they survive."

"Just like the Vanishers," I mumbled.

"Correct in both ways," Dimples smiled.

"How so?" I asked. I was thinking 'both?'

"They are both survival plans and they are both illegal," Dimples smirked. Now Capri giggled.

"Israel," Capri addressed my confusion, "the President is letting millions and millions of Federation citizens become infected when she knows better. This is murder on a grand scale."

"Enough," Dimples waved her hand. "Time to take Israel to face the press one last time."

"Dimples, are you going to let me go when this is over?" I timidly requested. Maybe I should have called her Special Agent in Charge Treyvon.

"Of course," Dimples smirked. "I can't hold you and I can't keep you hidden, so my best bet to meet with you later is to let you make a run for it. Please do not think I like you."

"Oh, you are still sore that a man outsmarted you," Capri mocked Dimples.

"That is incorrect," Dimples arrogantly dismissed Capri's charge.

"Liar," Capri smirked.

"No, I am sore that ANYONE outsmarted me. Being a man never entered the equation," Dimples smiled back in her oh-so-superior way. I leaned into Dimples, brushed her hair aside until my lips touched the rim of her ear.

"Mary Wollstonecraft," I whispered. It was all I could give her; she had trusted me, and all I could give was a name. On second thought, I could have only said 'Mary' and she would have found me. I was really worried about the wrong group of people. I needed to keep focused on me and Capri.

We were soon back in the studio. The mood was very different today. We were all looking down the barrel of a gun, politically speaking. There were even two members of the President's Public Relations Office on hand to make sure things went okay.

"Elvira Booker," one of the two officials introduced herself. I deviated past her.

I went straight at the woman who was eyeing me intently. I slipped one hand behind her back to pull her close and used the other to tip her face up for a kiss. We held it there for several seconds then I felt a quick series of stinging sensations against the back of my thighs and buttock. I kept my hand at her back, but backed off from the kiss.

"Bad boy," the little script writer scowled. "I didn't give you permission to kiss your Mistress." Huh? Oh, the stings behind me had been her riding crop. Well, this would definitely convince the people around me I was nuts. I lowered my head in contrition.

"I apologize Mistress for my hunger for your body, my thoughtlessness concerning your authority, and my willful ignorance of your majesty," I begged softly.

Her voice dripped with rapture.

"Kiss my foot, Dog," she commanded. I knelt down - there was no way I was groveling on my belly (I'd been forced to do that), lifted up her left ankle while she steadied herself by resting a hand on my head, and kissed the toe of her foot. I waited. She tapped my shoulder with the riding crop then I put her foot down.

"Back to work, Dog," she purred. "Your Mistress will punish you when it is more convenient for me. Scurry." As I stood up, I flashed her a quick peek. She was radiant, confident and vibrantly alive. For me, it was another spark of happiness given to another. It was also confirmation that I had to escape. Otherwise I could end up with a leash, dog collar and little else.

"Ah...ah," Elvira regarded us. "Is he going to be capable of a rational response?"

"Ms. Booker, are you prejudiced against alternative lifestyles?" Capri rallied to my defense.

"Oh, please," Elvira countered. "That was a bizarre form of workplace encounter in anyone's book."

"Absolutely," I nodded. "Normally I get a ball gag and she uses me as furniture. She is obviously in a good mood today. Let's not spoil it." Elvira stared.

"The answer to your question is 'yes, he really is off his rocker'," Dimples remarked dryly. "He is capable of intelligent conversation. That will not be your problem."

"Fine," Elvira finally turned back to me, "the President is going to ask you to volunteer to help your Nation in its time of need - to help with scientific research regarding a looming threat to our population. You need to understand that we need you to say 'yes'."

"Okay," I nodded. "Can I stay in the city? I have friends here."

The rules for a verbal exchange are the same for a physical exchange. Intelligence, initiative, audacity, and application of power. I noticed what she wasn't saying. There was no mention of the coming plague. This was yesterday's battle. They knew better. They didn't seem to understand that I knew better as well.

"We will most likely have to take you to a facility closer to the Capital, initially," Elvira assured me. "After some initial research, we should be able to at least allow you some visitation."

She lied like the pro she was. It sounded like she actually had negotiating power, which I knew she didn't have. I was a PR guy too.

The last time I made a decision as a Public Relations Officer, they kicked my ass into Federation custody along with pushing me into the unemployment line.

"Thank you," I smiled. "If it isn't too much of a pain, I'd like Capri O'Hara here," I indicated my friend, "to stay close by. She's my legal counsel."

"You will be legally represented by the Ministry of Justice," Elvira informed us. "A special unit is being formed to handle your case exclusively." It took me a moment to realize this was a trap.

I was an asshole, a pain in the buttocks and the man who had proudly declared he'd never help another woman, much less the country.

"No way," I shook my head. "I'll help. That doesn't mean I trust you people. Last night I realized I had to do more - too many of us died. That is why we are even talking right now." That was laughable. We were talking right now because some moron on the Capital thought this would be good PR for the President.

Otherwise I'd be somewhere else and without even the illusion of control over my life. This wasn't the approach I'd taken with Dimples and Shelia. That had been a case of withholding information. This was a case of feeding someone - Elvira - the lies she wanted to hear based on her selfish desire to succeed.

If the Presidential plea worked, Elvira could chalk up a big one in the win column. Most likely that would lead to a promotion and hopefully Press Secretary one day. After that, she would retire and become a paid pundit until the end of time. Elvira believed I had a conversion experience when I was surrounded by all that death because she wanted to believe it.

Still, I was willing to bet that Dimples tipped things over in my favor. She was calm and in control. Elvira trusted Enola's judgment and Enola was giving every sign that she believed in what I was saying. Piercing the male psyche was Dimples' job. What Elvira didn't know was that while Dimples had done her job unraveling me, she was now - not only on my side - joined with me in fighting a greater evil, namely Elvira's boss.

"How about this?" Elvira proposed. "Before we take you out of the city, we define Ms. O'Hara's status as your legal voice?"

"Make that phone call right now and I'll do this," I replied after a few seconds of pretend thought.

This was the best of both worlds for Elvira Booker. She wasn't overcome by her prejudice against males. She was better than that. No, she was being taken in by the belief that, while she thought I was smart, she was smarter. She was going to put on a show in front of me, I'd eat it up and she'd come out of this smelling like roses. She'd win and personally trick me doing it.

Elvira made that call, was transferred and then went into her sales pitch on my behalf. She really gave it her all. I interrupted the call the same way I had with Capri's boss on Thursday. Sure enough, it was the President's Chief of Staff. I was suitably embarrassed, gave the phone back and the deal to include Capri was done.

Elvira tried not to look victorious. She'd suckered me good. She should have gone with her first impression. Hadn't Dimples told her that I was totally insane? I wasn't afraid of the President or her legions. The person I was most afraid of at that second was Mistress Script Girl. The lady was a woman on a mission that left me curious about how happy I wanted to make her.

They finally let me at Maribel Cartwright who seemed amused by the whole Elvira interaction. She reached out and covered my mic while also covering her own.

"This is going to be a complete disaster, isn't it?" she humorously whispered.

"Do you trust me?" I responded.

"Hell no," she giggled.

"Then I think you are right," I grinned. "What's next?"

"I think starting off with a few commercials would be wise," Maribel sighed. "Once this shit storm starts, we are seeing in through to the end."

"Thank you, Maribel. I know you haven't done what you have done for me. That's okay. I think you have helped the world in a way that really matters," I confided in her.

"Goddess," her eyes grew wide, "this is going to spectacularly suck, isn't it?"

"And how," I chuckled. Maribel released our audio hook-ups.

3 - 2- 1, and we began. Maribel began her spiel, opening up the issues for the audience as well as paving the way for the President. I was given a cursory introduction which was a nod to my celebrity status. My buddy from Ontario was there as well as that nice neurologist from Texas who hadn't thought I was a complete idiot. For five minutes we all danced around the subject.

The - blank - at the Blazer Arena was the 400 kg gorilla in the room. I wanted to say massacre. The women wanted to run with the word 'tragedy'. We all agreed that far fewer men would have died if men hadn't panicked. They were less enthusiastic about concurring that death by lead poisoning would have been eradicated if the cops had run first.

Elvira moved to the stage manager to let her know the President was about to come on-line. She also motioned for Dimples and her people to close in. She wasn't taking chances, or so she believed. If anyone at GNN was annoyed with Doyle Crane doing a simulcast, they didn't say anything about. There was an added benefit that, from his viewpoint, you could see the Feds closing in on me.

"Greetings, Madam President," Maribel smiled politely.

"Hello again, Maribel," the leader of the Federation gave out such genuine warmth and comfort. "Hello to you too, Mr. Jensen, or may I refer to you as Israel?"

"Thank you very much, Madam President. Whichever name works for you," I smiled.

"I apologize for this interruption, Maribel. A matter of national importance has arisen and I want to take prompt action," the President kept going. Huh? Yeah, like I normally have armed females closing in on me just out of camera range...wait, I do...oh fuck. My life really is a mess.

"The issue of the reduction of male reproductivity has come to the attention of myself and my administration and there is no time like the present to attack this issue. Mr. Jensen, your personal adversity has gifted the human race with a second chance to throw off the yoke of fear invoked by the Gender Plague," the President declared.

"I am personally inviting you - no, begging you, to help out your people, your nation and your race," she appealed. Hmmm - had I not despised her and everything she stood for, I might have been moved to actually help out. As it was, she hadn't used the magic word and it wasn't 'please'.

"Come to a research facility near the capital, run by the Ministry of Public Heath, and we can start working today and figuring out what makes your antivirals so special that they may truly hold the secret to global human survival," the President mothered me.

"I can hardly say 'no' after an emotional appeal like that," I tried to look stunned. "But, I do have one request first." Everyone paused. Elvira was definitely starting to rethink what I'd told her. I hadn't said 'Yes'; I had said 'I'll do this', which was now open to all kinds of interpretations in her mind.

"I have a friend named Dara Castelo and she is going to die without your help," I pleaded. The President was a pretty good public speaker. She was capable. She was also tired. The President went for the rote response.

"Israel, my people will do everything possible to look into her problem and work to keep her alive. I promise you," she added.

She had, in fact, promised nothing, which was what I expected.

"Great," I beamed. "She's on the West Coast where a new version of the Plague from China has broken out. Since its mortality rate is somewhere near 100%, could you find her and get her out before the quarantine goes into effect. In case you can't, and if you are listening Dara, I never told you I loved you. I was too ashamed and I'm sorry for that."

By the looks I was getting there was only one thing worse than a babbling nutjob Prophet of Doom, and that was a babbling nutjob Prophet of Doom who was annoyingly correct.