"Calm down? No! Did you see that? There was a whole leg of an animal on my plate! I'm not eating that!"

"Rich, it's their custom-"

"They can shove their custom up..." Rich's eyes raised and met those of the Purists. "Look-look, it might be your custom to eat...walking things with legs, but that's not food to me. I've had a really, really bad day, and all I want is something to eat that didn't use to have a face, okay? Is that too much to ask?"

"No," said the general quickly. He stood up. "No, it's not. Get these people some food, no meat, and a place to sleep." He walked out of the room, followed by his advisors.

Rich remained rigidly standing, breathing heavily as his body shook. Old-timer looked up at him scornfully. "What?" Rich asked.

"You'd think a seventy-year-old man would have finally learned how not to act like a spoiled little boy," Old-timer replied.

Outside, the general mused, "If what they are saying is true, then there is no military solution. We're no match for the A.I.-it owns the surface."

"But we can't just stay underground forever, General," replied an advisor.

"What other option do we have? We'll have to dig in-burrow further under the surface, and start over as a community underground. We have no choice. This isn't our world anymore. This is the beginning of the post-human era. Tell that Lieutenant-what was his name-Patrick? Put him in charge of watching over the outsiders. Once they've rested, I want to know everything they know."

8.

Thel had no idea what time it was. She and her companions had been alone together in a cramped concrete room for what seemed like an eternity. She lay perfectly still on a small cot and stared up into the nearly perfect darkness. The only light that penetrated the black came from the small cracks of the heavy iron door. An almost imperceptible pale blue glow came from the low-lit hallway outside. A young guard stood watch outside the room. For her entire life, Thel had been able to open her mind's eye and check the time readout whenever she needed to. She had been able to set herself to sleep whenever it was appropriate. This was her first experience with insomnia, and to say it was unsettling would have been a gross understatement. Her disorientation, coupled with her extreme anxiety over James, was causing her real physical pain. Her head hurt from stress, and no matter how exhausted she felt, she could not sleep.

After what seemed like several hours, she got off her cot and stood in the darkness. The others were all asleep. They had been through h.e.l.l that day and had all lost the people closest to them in life, but Thel had more to lose. That was why she couldn't sleep. As horrible as the day had been, it had brought her James, the man she had wanted for years, who it had seemed would always be outside of her grasp, but it had also cruelly threatened to take him away. After losing her sister, her entire family, and all of her friends, with the exception of her co-workers, she felt she could not stand to lose James. Not James.

She walked to the door and opened it slowly. The guard was wide awake and nodded to her respectfully as she peeked her head out the door. "What time is it?" she asked him.

"It's 3:30, ma'am," he responded, eyeing her with fascination as he got his first look at one of the outsiders.

"My G.o.d. This day won't end," Thel sighed.

"Are you having trouble sleeping, ma'am? I could bring you a sedative."

"A sedative? Something to help me sleep?"

"Yes, ma'am. A pill to help you sleep."

The idea didn't appeal to her. She didn't trust Purist technology. Everything in the complex seemed archaic."No thank you. I'd like to go to the hospital, though. I want to see our companion."

"I can't do that, ma'am. I'm under orders to watch over y'all while you sleep. The general wants you rested so you and your companions can be questioned in the morning. I can ask for word about your friend though, if you like." The guard held up a black walkie-talkie for Thel to see.

She looked at the sheer size of the communication device and suddenly knew she needed to be with James. To her, the Purist technology was pathetic. It was obvious that James was in danger.

"Can you use that contraption to ask if it is okay for me to go to the hospital to see my friend?"

"I'm sorry, ma'am. I already know what they're going to say. The general himself ordered that y'all be further questioned tomorrow. No one awake right now has the authority to overturn that."

"What about Lieutenant Patrick?"

"He's asleep, ma'am. Please just try to sleep for a few hours. It won't make a difference one way or another. Let me order you a sedative."

As the young man held his walkie-talkie up to his mouth to place an order for medication, Thel flashed magnetic energy from her hand and instantly rendered him unconscious. As he began to collapse to the ground, she cradled him, taking particular care to make sure he didn't hit his head. "There we go," she whispered as she lowered his limp body to the ground. "Just have a little nap, junior." She picked up his walkie-talkie and sent more magnetic energy through it until it began to lightly smoke. "That should keep your friends away for a little while." She dropped the instrument on the guard's ample stomach and began to jog through the hallways towards the hospital.

She had paid close attention to the labyrinth inside the complex from the moment she was escorted away from James. Her thoughts had been focused on getting back to him ever since. She had no trouble finding the hospital and was there in moments. A few military personnel were still awake, but they paid no attention to her as she made her way. She was wearing a nondescript gray shirt and pants that she'd been given after she and her companions had washed up earlier in the evening, so she didn't stand out amongst all the other refugees that the soldiers had dealt with all day. For the most part, citizens were free to come and go as they pleased in the complex.

When she reached the hospital, she walked towards the doors James had been wheeled through. A nurse's voice stopped her before she could enter. "Can I help you?" the nurse asked.

Thel turned to her apprehensively but decided to ask for help rather than zapping her way to James. "I'm looking for my friend. He had a collapsed lung-"

The nurse's voice was suddenly filled with what seemed to be genuine sympathy. "Oh. What is your friend's name?"

"James Keats."

The nurse pulled out a pocket electronic instrument that fit in the palm of her hand and began to tap the surface, inputting James's name. "Yes, we do have a patient by that name. It says here that he's still in the operating room."

Thel felt her heart jump as she heard the words. An operating room? A Purist operating room? She had learned about medical operations when she was a girl taking history in school. An operation meant they had cut open his body. An operation meant James had been sliced open, and they were moving his insides around with crude metallic instruments. An operation meant he could die. "I-I need to be with him. Where is he?" Thel asked, her voice now filled with urgency.

Thel's sudden shift was like so many shifts that the nurse had seen before in her thirty years working in the medical field. She knew Thel had instantly become unhinged like a cat feeling the first drops of a summer rainstorm. It was trouble. "You'll have to wait until after the operation."

"I need to be with him right now," Thel a.s.serted. "Please take me to him."

"Miss, I can't do that. I can take you to a waiting room-"

Thel s.n.a.t.c.hed the electronic device from the nurse with one hand and then rendered her unconscious with an energy flash with the other. The nurse collapsed, but Thel cushioned her fall, letting the woman crumple against her. All the while, Thel's eyes were on the screen of the device as she read the location of the operating room James was in.

"Hey, what the h.e.l.l is going on?" asked a doctor as he and another doctor turned a corner and came upon the scene. Thel, startled, looked up from the screen before turning to run down the hallway toward a stairwell. The doctors followed in pursuit. "Stop! Hey!" One of the doctors grabbed a wall phone and requested security over a public address system.

Thel reached the stairwell before either of her pursuers and climbed over the railing between the flights of stairs that spiraled up the many floors of the hospital. To the doctors, this looked like a suicide attempt. "Wait! Don't!" one of them shouted. They then looked on, stunned, as Thel began to fly straight up, four floors to where she believed James was. "Oh my G.o.d! An outsider!"

When Thel reached James's floor, she burst into the hallway and raced toward his room.

"...455...457..." Thel said to herself as she neared Room 460, the room in which James had been cut open at the hands of those barbarians. She stood on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet, almost tiptoeing with expectation. When she found the room, she slammed the doors open, only to find it completely unoccupied. What she did see terrified her. A white orb still shined from the ceiling onto the operating table, a stain of crimson where James would have been and several b.l.o.o.d.y metallic instruments on a small table next to the bed. "No...no!"

Thel exited the room as quickly as she had entered it.

Immediately, two soldiers were upon her. "Halt!" one of them had time to shout before they were both rendered unconscious with the speed of a thought from Thel. Increasingly desperate, Thel didn't bother to cushion their falls as they crashed to the hard linoleum floor and she ran back down the corridor, desperately peering through the windows of each room before she moved on. The two doctors that had begun this pursuit reached Thel's floor, only to see two crumpled soldiers and a terrifying outsider preternaturally gliding over the floor towards them at a terrifying rate.

"No!" one of the doctor's squealed before Thel caught him by the throat and thrust the electronic device she had procured from the nurse into his face.

"James Keats. Where is he?"

"Okay, okay! You just have to refresh..." The doctor hit a b.u.t.ton with his wildly shaking finger, and a new location appeared on the screen. "He's in a recovery room on this floor, Room 489!"

Thel released the man and flew through the hallway and around a corner on her way to 489. Again, she burst through the doors; this time the room was not empty. Four hospital staff members were wheeling James's unmoving body on a bed into a place in the corner of the dimly lit room. "Oh my G.o.d!" Thel gasped. James was ashen in appearance, and his torso was completely bound in white bandages. A plastic tube was in his mouth, and several wires were attached to his arms and chest.

"What have you done to him?" she asked, still levitating above the ground.

The hospital workers gaped, both terrified and dumbfounded.

"What have you done to him?!" she screamed at them when they didn't answer.

"Thel!" Old-timer called as he exploded into the room. Several soldiers burst in behind him, including the young guard Thel had rendered unconscious outside of their room.

"Halt!" the young guard shouted as he trained his weapon on her and crouched down on one knee, the other soldiers doing the same. Thel grabbed one of the hospital staff and placed him in a headlock with her right arm, her left hand jammed, open-palmed against his face.

"Stay back, or I'll fry this monkey's brain and feed it to you! I'm staying with James! I want to know what you've done to him!"

"Release your hostage, ma'am, or we will open fire!" the guard shouted.

"You will not!" commanded James's doctor as he strode into the room with all the authority he could muster. "Put your weapons away! This is a hospital! Haven't we had enough death for one day?"

"I can't do that, Doc!" the guard replied. "She's a hostile threat!"

"So what are you going to do?" Old-timer demanded of the guard. "She can stop those bullets and tear this whole hospital apart before you'd have a chance to duck. She wants to stay with him, so she's going to stay with him."

"Put those guns away!" James's doctor commanded a second time. This time the guard relented, and the other soldiers followed suit, lowering their weapons.

"What did you do to him?" Thel asked the doctor, her voice giving out as tears began to stream down her face.

"He's going to be okay. We fixed his lung, and we've taken care of his broken bones. He only needs time to heal. Now please, release that man," the doctor replied gently.

Thel let the staff member go before rushing to James's side. She felt ready to collapse, but she managed to drape herself over James's still body and sob. "Thank you," she said, not sure who she was speaking to. Who was she grateful to? Was it G.o.d? Was it fate? Was it James himself? She didn't know.

"You're welcome," said the doctor.

9.

Rich and Djanet leapt to their feet as soon as Old-timer reentered their room; they had been waiting nervously ever since they first heard the commotion outside and Old-timer had gone with the troops to the hospital in pursuit of Thel.

Rich wiped the sweat from his palms and tried to fill his dry mouth with spit again so he could speak. "What happened?" asked Rich.

"She's fine," replied Old-timer as he placed a rea.s.suring hand on Rich's shoulder.

"Where is she?" Djanet asked, still reluctant to trust the Purists.

"With James. He's going to be okay."

"Oh thank G.o.d," Djanet replied as she and Rich heaved sighs of relief. "Thank G.o.d."

Lieutenant Patrick entered the room, short of breath, with Alejandra close behind and equally winded after their double-time trip across the complex. "What the h.e.l.l happened?"

The young guard who'd been incapacitated by Thel stepped forward immediately and eagerly like a younger sibling, happy that an authoritarian parent had returned to dole out justice. "I'm sorry, sir. One of them attacked me and escaped."

"Attacked you?" Old-timer exclaimed. "That's rather dramatic, don't you think?"

"Stay out of this, calculator-head!" the young guard shot back, his voice filled with vitriol.

The lieutenant was silent for a moment, his jaw tight as he glared at each man, frustrated that he could not even sleep without the situation seemingly going to h.e.l.l. "Private," the lieutenant, began, addressing the young guard, "you're dismissed."

"But Lieutenant, I-"

"Dismissed!" the lieutenant repeated through clenched teeth.

The young guard caught his tongue before replying, held his breath, glared at Old-timer, and left the room.

When the door clicked shut, the lieutenant swore and grunted in frustration, balling his hands into tight fists and resisting the urge to punch the wall. "When the general hears about this..."

Old-timer and the others remained quiet as the lieutenant paced back and forth over the concrete floor, breathing heavily like an angry bull in a pen. He turned the situation over in his mind, putting his hand on the back of his neck and pulling at it with a purpose. He quickly turned to Old-timer. "You promised me I could trust you."

"You can trust us," Old-timer a.s.sured him.

"What? How can you possibly say that? You attacked one of my men!" the lieutenant replied indignantly.

"I didn't attack anyone," Old-timer answered back.

"Let's not play with semantics!"

"That was a one-time thing, Lieutenant. Thel and James have a special connection. She should have been allowed to stay with him. It was unnecessary to keep us all trapped here together so one of us would have to escape."

"That's easy for you to say! You're not the chickens in the henhouse with five foxes wandering around!"

The lieutenant's metaphor fell to the floor like a mid-April snowfall, perplexing and ugly.

"He means your powers make us all vulnerable," Alejandra intervened. "The people who know you are here are terrified. Thel's march through the complex guarantees that everyone will know you are here now, spreading the terror farther," she explained.

"I understand," Old-timer replied, "and this won't happen again. I promise you, our abilities are nothing to fear. We would never use them against you. We will only protect you."

Old-timer's words seemed to catch in the lieutenant's mind like a splinter, and he paused a moment, mulling something over as he began to pace again, this time much more plaintively. "Protect us, eh?" he said to the three outsiders. "Okay. Okay. So you don't want to be penned in a room-you don't want to hurt us? Prove it. Protect us. I'm placing you on recon duty with Alejandra, starting now."

"What?" Rich asked, seemingly choking on the saliva in his newly moist mouth while Alejandra smiled faintly.

"You will work three-hour shifts in a rotation. You'll be paired with one of my men."

"Hey, hold it, bud. We're not in your army," Rich replied.

"We don't take orders from you," Djanet echoed.

"You said you want to help. You want to protect us? Then start doing it. You can cover a larger perimeter than any of us can, and you can protect my people if there is anything hostile out there."