Childtime Institutions (continued)

As they walked, she continued looking at each of the doors, and into the occasional alcove, trying to find some clue as to the kind of people who lived here. She was not completely naïve, of course, trying to distance herself from those thoughts, but still she wanted to know something about the people who were about to become her companions.

“This is yours,” Kayla told her, gesturing toward a doorway on their right. It was the second to the last one from the end of the hallway and Sarena wondered whether that had any particular significance to her position there.

“Bathe,” Kayla instructed her, wrinkling her nose noticeably. “You’ll find clothes,” she added. “And then stay here. I’ll come back for you.”

She turned away without waiting to see whether Sarena understood and strode purposefully back down the hallway.

Sarena watched her go for a moment and then turned back to face the door. Staring at it, she discovered that it did not have a handle with which to open it. Her heart sank, realizing that any semblance of privacy was probably gone from her life now. She pushed hard against the dull-surfaced plate where the handle should have been and then stopped in surprise when the door did not open.

Studying the panel, she tried again—with the same results. She peering down the hallway, looking to see whether Kayla was still there, and wondered how the woman would react when she returned to find Sarena still standing in the hallway outside the door, still unbathed and in the same tattered and soiled clothing.

Sarena wondered if Kayla was supposed to have given her some kind of key, but had forgotten to leave it with her in her haste to leave. She turned back to the door, studied it for a moment, and then tried again. Again, the door remained closed.

Experimentally, she pressed harder on the plate, pushing until the tension in her fingers was almost painful. The panel suddenly depressed slightly, something clicked inside the door, and it began to open.

Sarena pulled her hand away as if the door panel had carried a charge. It had not, in fact, shocked her. Instead, it had only startled her with its sudden movement. Cautiously, she took a step backward and then peered into the room through narrow gap between the door and the doorframe.

She could see almost nothing of the room’s interior through the narrow gap. What it mostly revealed was a wall, a neutral beige or white in color, but that was all she could discern of what lay beyond the door. Carefully, she pushed lightly on the door, opening it only a few additional centimeters. The door, though, did not stop. Instead, it opened nearly all of the way, leaving Sarena to stare into what was to be her new home.

The interior was dim and filled with deep gray shadows. The amount of furniture that it appeared to contain surprised, for she had expected little more than a small bed and perhaps small chest of drawers. What she saw instead differed greatly from her vision.

The bed was wider than she had expected. She guessed that the mattress was at least a double in width and wondered why she might need such a large one.

Am I going to be sharing the room?

Although it was possible, that she might have the share the room—and the bed—seemed unlikely to her, based on the general extravagance that she had witnessed so far within the complex. Sarena stepped inside, pausing just inside the doorway, and looked around.

What appeared to be a sizable closet was on the opposite wall from the bed. Two chest of drawers and a smaller cabinet near the bed were the first pieces other furniture that she noticed.

Childtime Institutions (continued)

“Brandt!” he called out, still trying to keep his voice low. When no response came after several seconds, he called out again, raising his voice a bit more. “Brandt?”

Brandt did not answer him, but a moment later something spanged against the rear of the vehicle again. The sound did not reverberate as much this time, giving Perez even less of an idea what it might be.

Rubber bullets?

That seemed unlikely, he decided, but had no better explanation as yet.

“Brandt!” He shouted this time, not caring if he might be heard by someone else.

He tried to peer past the vehicle again, but dared not rise above whatever little cover it seemed to provide for him at the moment. Taking a deep breath, he threw himself into a roll, silently hoping that he had judged the distance correctly.

He hit the side of the vehicle hard, slamming into it with his back. That was how he had planned to learn, but not with quite as much force. It stunned him for an instant, leaving him unable to breathe. He fought back against a surge of panic, fearing that he might not recover before someone took another shot at him.

Something slid along the gravel beneath the vehicle, but did not seem to make it all the through. At least, Perez did not see anything come out on his side. He had a sudden mental image of the car suddenly exploding into flames and wondered whether he might safer away from the vehicle after all.

Too many Tom Cruise movies . . .

He discovered that he was holding his breath and let it out when the vehicle did not ignite around him. As he was still unhurt, he guessed that whoever was aiming at the vehicle was still on the opposite side from him.

“Or reinforcements haven’t arrived yet,” he whispered almost under his breath.

Damn it, he cursed, wondering, Where is Brandt?

Unable to reach the radio inside the vehicle, he reached up and tapped the controls of the one mounted on his shoulder. He opened his mouth to speak and then closed it when he all he heard was a wash of static.

Jammed? he wondered, glancing upward. Or those damned cell towers.

The signal towers were supposed to be encrypted and secure. Which meant, Perez knew, that it simply took an additional day or two for some hacker to penetrate them each time the security algorithms were changed. To convert them to scramble signals, rather than to enhance them and pass them on, was one of the first tricks that the hackers had learned.

Right after intercepting and broadcasting phantom calls, Perez remembered.

Unable to signal now for backup, Perez turned toward the edge of the vehicle, silently judging how many centimeters he would have to traverse to get there. It was a short distance, but one during which he would be noisy and vulnerable. There was no easy way to cross silently over the road’s crumbling surface.

Where was Brandt anyway?

Perez tried to shake off the hollow feeling that his partner was not going to be coming to his rescue.

I’m not even sure I can come to my own, he thought wryly.

Another spang, this time across the top of the vehicle, made up his mind for him. Perez gripped his weapons and shuffled, still kneeling, toward the corner of the vehicle. It turned out to be a wise decision, as something ricocheted off the glass of the window right above where his head had been.

He reached the edge of the vehicle safely and then turned and surveyed the area that faced his side of the vehicle. He saw no one out in the darkness.

Which is exactly how they want it.

Perez paused and then looked carefully around the edge of the vehicle.

He saw no one, which disappointed him. He had hoped to at least see Brandt’s body sprawled out on the ground. It was not there, which only made wonder more about where his partner for the evening might be.

Something spinged across the top of the vehicle directly above his head. It skittered across the rough roadway, but Perez could not see what it was or where is eventually landed. There were closing in on him, he recognized, which did not surprise him.

A sound came from behind him: the unmistakable sound of boots on loose gravel. Perez turned automatically toward the sound, expecting to find Brandt there. He barely had time to identify that it was not before the figure reached out and struck him. Darkness consumed Perez almost instantly, giving him a moment to regret that he had seen his girlfriend one more time before he died.

- 9 -

Sarena saw no one else as she passed down the hallway. She found it difficult to believe, for there appeared to be several rooms, that no one besides Kayla lived here. Her reticence at accepting Sarena did not seem to be driven by jealousy. Nor, Sarena considered, did it seem to come from the dissatisfaction of someone accustomed to living alone. The space had clearly been designed to house others.

“Where are they?” she whispered to herself aloud.

“Working,” Kayla answered flatly, with just a hint of diadain.

Sarena did not realize that she had spoken loud enough to be heard.

Childtime Institutions (continued)

“What is it?” he asked. It came out as a hoarse whisper.

“Nothing,” Brandt replied slightly louder, but still far below his usual blustering tone. “Just goddamned nothing.”

He remained standing there, staring into the darkness. He seemed to be mumbling something, but Perez was too far away to hear him clearly. Perez stepped forward and then froze as something whanged off the back of their vehicle. An instant later, he had dropped into a crouch. The bright, needle-thin laser from his gunsight swept across the darkness.

Perez could not see Brandt, but heard movement from behind him that he hoped came from the other officer. His vantage point from where he crouched prevented him from seeing the back of the vehicle. He was too far from the vehicle to use it as an effective shield. It would require him to exercise a serious body roll to reach it, and it would leave him exposed and unable to defend himself until he had regained his equilibrium. Even then, he could not be certain which direction the attack had come from. He might be no better protected than he was now, except that he would now have the vehicle at his back, possibly making him and an even easier target.

Turning his head to the side, he tried to get a glimpse of Brandt. In the bright twin streams of light coming from the headlights, it was difficult for Perez to see anything not directly contained within them. He did not see Brandt. Or, at least, no shape that seemed large enough to have been Brandt.

Childtime Institutions (continued)

Brandt had already opened his door and was climbing out of the vehicle. Breathing in a slow sigh, Perez did the same, although with a great deal less enthusiasm than his partner had displayed. Moving around to the front of the vehicle, Perez found Brandt, standing in the bright wash of light coming the vehicle’s headlights, staring into the darkness ahead. From the way Brandt’s eyes turned from side to side, sweeping the illuminated area with his gaze, Perez could tell that his partner had found nothing.

“I’m going in,” Brandt announced hoarsely. His hand moved down to rest on his weapon, stopping just short of actually drawing it.

Perez mirrored his partner’s actions automatically. “I’ve got you covered,” he responded to Brandt, while not quite sure what he might be covering the large man against. He had still not seen anything.

“Oh god,” he whispered aloud, almost as a prayer. Don’t let it be a cat.

It would not be the first time that an officer on edge had shot and killed someone’s pet in an instant of surprise. Perez had not done it himself, but he had come close on at three occasions. Such reactions could, of course, keep an officer safe and alive—it could also end up costing the city several thousand dollars. Lately, though, judges were becoming less and less likely to rule in favor of the citizen. If people were careless enough to let their pets roam free in a designated curfew zone, then they should not be surprised if they occasionally got fired on by police officers on edge trying to protect their own lives.

Brandt moved a little deeper into the darkness and then swore softly. Perez stiffened at first, ready to bring his weapon up. When nothing happened to Brandt, he relaxed somewhat, but his hand remained on the handle of his weapon.

Childtime Institutions (continued)

Beth carefully stroked Jessica’s hair away from her daughter’s forehead, feeling the heat of the fever beneath her fingers. She looked over at the pillow and felt a small swell of relief when she saw it dotted with only a few dark stains. Jessica’s nosebleed did not seem to be as bad, nor had lasted as long, as Beth had first feared.

Still, Beth told herself. I’d better have it checked out.

She had never seen one accompanied with a fever before. That part of it worried her.

Faint footsteps sounded behind her at the door. She turned to find, as she expected, to find Annalise standing there, Beth’s phone looking unnaturally large in the child’s small hand. Once that she was sure that Beth was looking at her, she held out the phone to her mother.

Beth took it gently, while offering her youngest daughter what she hoped was a faint, but reassuring smile. Annalise did not appear to accept it.

“Is Jessie going to die?” the young girl whispered. The words cracked slightly as she spoke them, as if the young girl had trouble getting them out.

A chill wave of fear and panic washed through Beth. She almost shivered, managing to only barely tremble. She stared back at Annalise, trying to control both her own reaction and how to best phrase her response to her daughter.

“No,” she told Annalise, forcing a confidence that she did not yet wholly feel into her tone. “She’s not going to die,” she went on. “She’s just sick.”

“Granma Eve got sick,” Annalise countered.

She seemed more inquisitive than scared. Beth was not quite sure what to make of that, unwilling yet to just attribute it to childhood innocence.

“Yes,” Beth answered quietly. “Yes, she did.” She took a short, shallow breath as she glanced over toward Jessica before turning her attention back to her youngest daughter. “But she was also very, very old,” she explained, surprised at the flat tone in her voice. “And old people die.”

Bryan’s mother Eve had been very old, even unusually old any more, surviving well into her eighties before the cancer finally consumed her.

Annalise’s gaze fixed on her sister. Beth opened her mouth to speak and then stopped, wondering whether Annalise might see Jessica, almost ten years older than she was as “old”.

I wonder how she sees me then, Beth considered wryly.

She offered her youngest daughter yet another smile, this one somewhat more sincere, if not less laced with deep concern.

“It’ll be okay, honey,” she told Annalise. “Go have a seat at the table,” she instructed her calmly. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Annalise studied Beth’s face, and then Jessica’s resting form, before she turned slowly away and padded back down the hallway. Beth watched her go, silently praying that what she had just told her daughter would be true.

- 8 -

Perez sat quietly in car, grunting only occasionally to ensure that Brandt did not question him too much, as they patrolled the streets that night. The dispatch radio filled the silence with a steady stream of background noise, an ongoing series of requests and updates, but none directed to them. It was a quiet night on their patrol route. That was, Perez discovered, both unusual and not. There sector was not particularly one of the more active hotspots, but things did happen there.

Just not tonight, Perez mused.

Although he was in no particular rush to put himself in danger, almost anything would have been a welcome relief from his partner’s steady stream of political and social opinions. Brandt clearly did not know—or, more likely, simply did not care—that more than a little of what spouted from his mouth would have gotten him knifed—or worse—in many parts of the neighborhood where Perez and his girlfriend lived. His fingers stroked the handle of his weapon for a moment.

Can I make it look like an accident?

He was far from serious in that thought, of course, although it had been known to happen.

Feeling a twinge of guilt at having even entertained the idea for an instant, he moved his hand away from his weapon and instead rested it on the door handle. Beside him, Brandt continued to drive, giving as more attention to the road, to Perez’s relief, than he did to the logic of his arguments.

They were nearly finished with their patrol through one of perimeter neighborhoods when Brandt suddenly slowed the vehicle. Perez pulled himself from his reverie and looked around, seeing only a dark street ahead of them. All of the overhead street lights were out in that immediate area, either from deliberate action on part of the neighborhood’s inhabitants or, equally likely, Perez knew, lack of maintenance from the city. Even through public funds were allocated for public safety, there were some areas where the city work crews refused to enter. Enforcement was almost impossible, with the only other option being that the work crews be assigned a police escort. Since there they were already not enough officers to perform the basic patrol routes, such assignments rarely happened unless one politician or another needed to get some positive press.

“What are you doing?” he asked Brandt, dropping his voice to whisper without realizing it.

At first, Brandt seemed to ignore him. The officer peered into the darkness of the street, looking intently for something visible beyond the range of the vehicle’s spotlights.

“Brandt?” he whispered hoarsely. “What is it?”

“Shh,” Brandt hushed him, turning in his seat as he tried to get a better look at whatever it was that he thought he had seen outside of their vehicle.

Perez grimaced, looking hard into the darkness himself now. He saw nothing unusual, but then he had no idea what it was that he was looking for.

“What did you see?” he finally asking, tired of waiting for his partner to volunteer information.

“Don’t know,” Brandt whispered back. “Something.”

Perez resisted the urge to roll his eyes. While he had seen nothing unusual, he suspected that it had been a dog or some other animal darting off into the night at their approach.

“Something,” Perez repeated, trying not to sound irritated.

Brandt nodded, still staring into the darkness, his head swinging slowly from side to side as he continued to fail to find it.

“It was probably someone’s cat,” Perez offered.

“Too big,” Brandt responded. “I think it was a person.”

Perez checked the clock display. It was past curfew. Anyone still out on the streets without a waiver or not on some kind of official business was technically violating the new statutes. They were, Perez knew, enforced with widely varying levels of regularity and severity.

Childtime Institutions (continued)

Shifting her elbow beneath her, she began to rise. Bryan continued to hold her tightly, preventing her from completing the motion. She paused, surprised by his subtle restraint.

“I get it,” he told her, keeping his voice low. “We’ll figure something out.”

Figure something out!

Beth began squirming underneath him, twisting her body to break free of his hold on her. He resisted at first, but then finally released her. Propped up on her elbow, she stared down hard at him. She could make out the outlines of his face by the shadows visible there. His eyes looked back at her with bright intensity.

“This is our daughter we’re talking about here, Bryan!” Her voice rose, but remained a loud whisper that she hoped would not carry to the children’s rooms. “Our daughter.”

Bryan stared back at her. His expression did not change; his lips did not move. If there was anything that he wanted to say, any response he might have to her statement, he kept it to himself for now.

Beth pushed herself upward, almost sitting upright now. She slapped her husband hard across his chest.

“Bryan!”

He stared back at her without flinching. Beth stared down at her own hand, examining it as if it were not a part of her, as if it belonged to someone else. She had not meant to strike him. She could not even remember thinking about doing so . . . but she had done it.

She continued to stare at her hand for several long moments and then let it drop to her side. She collapsed onto Bryan, landing with her head on his smooth, tightly-muscled chest. She did not start weeping again. She wanted to, but could not find the strength to let the tears loose again. Instead, she sighed deeply and tried not to whimper.

Bryan’s arms enfolded her gently once more. Instead of feeling restrained, she felt warmly cocooned in a safe place. Her mind still struggled with terror over her daughter’s possible fate, but she no longer felt the urge to strike out—at least not at her husband. Exhausted now, she drifted off to a restless sleep.

When Beth woke up the next morning, her eyes felt grainy and raw. Then she remembered the night before and sighed. Bryan was gone, already on his way to work.

Probably already there, Beth concluded, glancing at the display of the clock on her nightstand.

He had managed to leave, as usual, without waking her. When they were first married, this had annoyed her to no end, while Bryan had believed that he were merely being considerate. Emotionally, she had believed a morning farewell kiss to be thoughtful and romantic, while pragmatically it also helped to ensure that she would not sleep past her own alarm.

A few children later, she had come to see it his way. Uninterrupted sleep became a rare and precious commodity. That extra hour or so, when she could get it, sometimes made all the difference in her ability to deal with her day.

Beth stretched, resisting the temptation to rub at her eyes, not wanting to grind the grit back into them. Her eyes also felt swollen, more than was usual in the morning.

Probably all that crying you did last night, she silently chided herself, although she did not feel particularly ashamed about it.

She sat on the edge of the bed, trying to hold back a yawn, remembering what all of the tears had been about. Her fears were no less real than they had been the night before, but they felt a bit less immediate than they had. They had more than two years before Jessica would face the same judgement that Denice had. Far from a lifetime, she knew, but long enough.

Long enough for things to change, she told herself, searching for some hope.

Long enough for what, Beth did not know.

She rose from the bed and shuffled toward the bathroom, her melancholy replaced with her recognition of a more basic and immediate biological need.

A short time later, while she was in the midst of both preparing breakfast and packing lunches, the first of her progeny descended the stairs and entered the kitchen. Beth knew without turning who it was, basing her deduction solely on the sound and cadence of the footfalls.

“Good morning, Ani,” she called out to her youngest daughter. “Pancakes will be ready in a minute.”

Annalise remained still, staying where she was, and made no signs of moving toward the kitchen table.

“Jessie’s sick, mama,” her daughter told her.

Beth looked up from the griddle and studied her youngest daughter.

“What?”

Annalise nodded. “She threw up in the hallway.”

Refusing to surrender to a sense of growing panic, Beth placed the spatula on the counter and turned off the griddle. Wiping her hands absently on her apron, she headed quickly for the stairway.

Entering the second-story hallway, she caught an acrid hint of what was, unfortunately, an all-too-familiar odor. She swallowed hard against her automatic reflexes and then the lumpy, viscous puddle on the carpet less than a meter from the children’s shared bathroom.

At least she tried . . .

She averted her eyes, and then held her breath as she passed the mess, trying not to think of the unpleasant cleaning task ahead of her.

Beth checked the bathroom first, but found it empty. It smelled as it normally did: a slight bit musty with a faint, sharp tang of chlorine. It did not seem as though Jessica had made it there, Beth decided, so she closed the door and headed toward the bedroom that Jessica shared with Annalise.

The door was ajar and Beth saw Jessica sprawled diagonally across the bed, her comforter pulled up haphazardly around her. Her head was turned away from the door, her face buried in her pillow. Beth sat down carefully on the edge of the bed and rested her hand on her daughter’s back. The tightness in Beth’s chest eased when she felt the regular rhythm of her daughter’s breathing.

She reached over and touched her daughter’s forehead. Beth’s fingertips tingled with the heat of her daughter’s fever. Again, she felt relief upon discovering that it was probably due to some illness and most likely not from something foolish that her daughter might have done with her friends the night before.

“Jessica,” she whispered. “Jessie?” she repeated when her daughter did not answer her.

Jessica mumbled something into her pillow.

Beth tried again, resting her hand now on her daughter’s shoulder. “Jessie.” She tugged very lightly, just enough, she hoped, to get her daughter’s attention. “Jessie,” she repeated. “Come on.”

Her daughter’s words were lost in the depths of her pillow.

“Come on, sweetie,” Beth urged her. “Turn over so I can see you.”

Muffled noises sounded again, but this time Jessica began to slowly turn to face her mother. Jessica’s eyes shone brightly, but they did not focus on her mother. Flushed with red, Beth could almost see the heat radiating from her daughter’s cheeks. Her breath stopped, though, when she saw the dark twin streams that issued for her daughter’s nostrils. A fever was one thing, Beth knew, having dealt with her family’s fair share of flu and other school-borne illnesses. But she had never seen one like this.

“Ani,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady and calm. Her youngest daughter had followed her back upstairs and had waited in the doorway. “Get me my phone, please,” she told Annalise. “Right now.”

“Yes, mama,” Annalise replied softly, and was gone before Beth could turn to add anything else.

Childtime Institutions (continued)

The kitchen, he thought.

With main living room unoccupied and all of the bedrooms empty, that was the only place remaining inside the house where he might find some clue as to the whereabouts of his family. The only other location was the garage—and he tried not consider that just yet, as his mind threatened him with images of his family’s horrifying fates within that space.

He found the kitchen deserted and no one sat at the small table that sat in the space just beyond it. Through the large bay window behind that, he could see a large slice of the backyard. It too, appeared to be deserted. He leaned forward, taking another step, and was able to glimpse most of the remaining yard area. Empty. He turned his gaze back toward the interior of the kitchen.

Both relief and renewed concern filled him when he saw the dishes on the counter and in the sink. Only a few of them were clean, which meant that Sarah had been interrupted while washing them by whatever had happened there. A small plate remained on the table, he saw now, which meant that someone had been eating there as well. Whatever had happened, wherever they had gone, it must have taken place a few hours ago. He could not imagine Sarah allowing any the children, or herself, any kind of snack so close to dinner time. Harlin looked around, looking for other signs of things out of the ordinary.

Aside from being unexpected, Harlin found nothing unusual about neither the plates nor the food that he found. The plates were the general purpose ones that Sarah used every day and the food seemed to consist of what he might have expected Sarah to serve the children during the day. He had never paid that much attention to it, for he was rarely home during the week to witness what she fed them.

He paused in the middle of the kitchen and breathed a sigh. Despite the additional evidence, he was no closer to understanding where his family might be and why. They had been there, he could tell, for most of the day, but during the past few hours. Something had interrupted Sarah, but he had no new clues as to what that might have been. As far as Harlin knew, there had been no earthquakes or any other kind of event that might have caused them to leave the house suddenly. It had to have been sudden, he decided, for Sarah had not left him any kind of message that might have explained their departure.

Or had she?

He walked through the kitchen and small dining nook again, searching for any sign of a note. He found none, even after checking the floor beneath the table. He had not seen one anywhere else in the house, and he was fairly certain that its out-of-place appearance would have caught his attention. That left, he realized, only the garage as the last location within the house where he might find further signs of his family. His mind whispered insistently to him not to look there, but he forcibly ignored it. Doing that, though, did little to relieve the tight pressure that gripped his chest. Inhaling deeply, he ignored the murmured warnings that continued within his head and headed back through the house toward the garage.

- 7 -

Dinner was a quiet event. Beth attempted to engage the children in conversation, but her heart was clearly not into it. She prompted them for more information if they offered any, but did not press them for it as she might typically have done. If Bryan noticed anything unusual in her behavior, he did not mention it. That was characteristic of him, though. He rarely—very rarely—would have pointed it out in front of the children, unless he felt that she was being either unrealistic or unfair to them. It was not until much later that evening, when they had both come to bed, that he asked her.

She began to tell him, even going so far as to open her mouth to speak, when she broke into tears. He let her cry, holding her gently, whispering reassuring syllables to her until enough of the tension and fear had drained away so that she could speak.

“Oh, I’m scared for her, Bryan,” she said, choking it out in a single breath, afraid that she might start crying again. “Terrified.”

“I know,” he whispered, not needing to ask which “her” she referred to. “I know.”

She stiffened against him for a moment, uncertain whether he fully understood the depth and breadth of her fear for their daughter.

Childtime Institutions (continued)

He also found the master bedroom unoccupied—although in that case the bed remained very neatly made.

Harlin’s eyes noticed one thing, though, that troubled him slightly: one of Sarah’s shoes lay on the carpet a few centimeters from the bed on the side on which he usually slept. The shoe rested on its side and, from where Harlin stood, the one that matched it was nowhere in sight. It was unusual not only in that it was out in the open without its mate, but that it was out on the floor at all. Harlin could remember only a handful of times when Sarah had not kept her shoes neatly stacked in her closet—and all of those had taken place during their much younger days when they were either dating or newlyweds.

His head began to buzz unpleasantly from his swelling uneasiness. He walked over the shoe, picked it up, and examined it, turning it over in his hand. It looked undamaged as far as he could tell. Looking down, he quickly scanned the floor for its mate. He failed to find it. Still holding the shoe, he moved toward the bathroom.

It, too, was empty. Harlin stood, rolling the shoe absently between his hands, trying to understand the situation: the house had been unlocked, his family appeared to be missing, and there were as yet no clear signs as to where they might be—or what might possibly have happened to them.

Harlin placed the shoe lightly down on the bed and headed back into the hallway.

Childtime Institutions (continued)

- 6 -

Harlin moved cautiously further into the house. The curtains, not quite drawn closed all of the way, allowed in plenty of light for him to see by. Although the driveway and front yard had denied that any toys belonged to the household, Harlin saw definite signs of their existence here. One of his daughter’s dolls lay discarded in the main living room. A red toy car, slightly smaller than Harlin’s shoe had rolled under the formal dining table.

On seeing these things, as misplaced as they were from where they belonged, Harlin began to relax. His family still lived here, which ruled out any possible delusion on his part. His key had fit into the lock (even if the door had not been locked), and he remembered giving Jonas that car as a present just that past Christmas. Sweeping his gaze across the visible interior of the house, Harlin looked for other signs of recent activity or habitation. He remained otherwise motionless, listening for sounds or voices coming from anywhere else in the house.

It was too late, he decided, for the children to be napping. There were all rapidly getting to an age where it was getting more difficult to get them to settle down, even to rest, in the afternoon. His wife never napped, unless she was ill, using the time instead to catch up on the housework or, very rarely, just relax with a book.

Hearing nothing from the reaches of the house, Harlin took a deep breath and looked around again, deciding to start first with the bedrooms. If the children were home, that was where they probably were.

As Harlin made his way down the hallway, he tried to remember if there had been some kind of outing or event that he had forgotten about. No reminders had popped up on his calendar—and Sarah was very good about making certain that he did not miss any important family events.

To him only a few moments to find that all the bedrooms were empty. All the beds were made, although the children’s beds were a bit rumpled, either from a half-hearted attempt to make them, or from being used at some point during the day.

Childtime Institutions (continued)

Beside her, she heard the officer the snicker hoarsely. She half-expected him to shove her further along the hallway.

She saw no one else, but her surroundings made her feel even more unkempt and ragged than she already had. This was a clean place, neat and organized place. She did not belong there—and Sarena’s chest tightened as she began to wonder why she had been brought there.

A woman appeared near the end of the hallway. Sarena would not have realized that the woman was there had Sarena not seen her. It was not until she was only a meter or two away that Sarena heard the woman’s footfalls made sounds like whispers in the deep carpeting.

“All yours now, Kayla,” the officer said, stepping aside so that the woman had a clear path directly to Sarena.

The woman paused less than a meter away from her, eyeing Sarena as if she was an exhibit in a professional dog show. Sarena thought she saw a hint of something like disapproval in the woman’s eyes, but was convinced that was entirely it. It did not seem so much directed at her as toward someone, or something, else.

Sarena almost turned her head to see whether it was the officer who had provoked such a reaction, but the woman did not hold onto him with her gaze as Sarena thought she might if she was accusing him of something distasteful. In fact, she barely looked at him at all, Sarena noticed.

“Yeah,” Kayla agreed. Her tone told Sarena little about the woman’s opinion on that. She sounded half-irritated and half-resigned to the situation.

“I’ll go then,” the officer said, sounding both awkward, and a bit snippy, Sarena thought. She wondered whether the officer had expected something else—and, if so, what.

“You do that, Curt,” she told him, no longer speaking directly to him. Her eyes had returned to Sarena. Sarena felt as if she were being sized for clothing or something. “Go hunt something else.”

Curt snorted and then turned, walking the few short steps back to the elevator. The doors had remained open. Once he was inside, the elevator doors closed. Sarena had not seen him touch his control again and wondered whether the woman, Kayla, controlled the elevator.

The woman had made no kind of motion, though, and Sarena began to wonder whether they were being watched. They probably were, she decided, and whoever it was also controlled access to the elevators on this level.

“First thing,” Kayla said. It took Sarena a moment to realize that the woman was speaking to her. “A shower.” Kayla wrinkled her nose, although not exaggeratedly so. “Sooner than right now.”

When Sarena did not move, Kayla demonstrated a faint, but visible, sigh. “This way,” she directed Sarena, and headed back down the hallway.

Sarena hesitated, and glanced back toward the now-closed elevator doors. There was no exit for her there. She turned and looked ahead, realized that her only path for the moment was forward, moving toward whatever her future might now bring.

Childtime Institutions (continued)

- 5 -

Sarena followed the officer, remaining just out of his arm’s reach. He might surprise her with a sudden movement, but she was certain—well, pretty certain—that she could dodge out of his way he caught her. Her punishment for doing so, though, might be worse than whatever he might have originally intended to do to her. Men were like that. She had seen it.

The officer said nothing to her as they moved down the corridor. He glanced occasionally toward her to make certain that she was still there with him, but gave no other indication that she otherwise existed in his world. The hallway he took her down was long. Doors, all of them the same dull gray color, the color of freshly cured concrete, interrupted the walls at regular intervals. Sarena tried to read the numbers, but could not find them, and wondered how anyone knew which door led to which room.

They stopped at the end of the hallway at a different of doors. While still featureless gray, these looked more like polished pewter than the dull gray of the other doors that she had seen. The officer pressed his finger against something on his belt. A deep electronic chime sounded and the doors opened, revealing a brightly lit interior.

Her stomach tightened at the sight of the elevator. Once inside, she would be trapped. Panic rose in his chest. The officer gestured for her to enter, looking impatient. When Sarena hesitated, he looked ready to grab her arm and pull her forcibly inside. Fighting back the building wave of anxiety, Sarena moved past him and entered the elevator. He moved in after, blocking her exit as he tapped the control on his belt again. The doors slid closed and it was all that Sarena could do to prevent herself from trying to dash past him.

He stood almost at attention the entire time that the elevator car was in motion. He remained facing the door, not bothering to check to see where she was. His hand, she noticed, rested on the handle of his weapon. She waited silently, barely daring to breathe while the elevator car moved upward. For some reason, that made her feel better than if it were descending into the lower levels of the structure. Scenes of dungeons and interrogation rooms danced through her thoughts. She pushed them away, telling herself not to be foolish.

No one keeps their dungeon on the top floor of their castle.

She did not know about interrogation rooms, but she suspected that the police those were kept in the basement as well.

The elevator slowed. The officer’s hand tightened on his weapon, which Sarena thought as unusual. This time, he waited for the doors to open, not bothering to once again press the control at his waist. The doors slid open. The officer stepped out of the elevator and moved aside. Sarena walked to the doorway of the elevator and stopped, staring at what she saw beyond it.

The lighting was different here, muted and less harsh than she had experienced in the levels below. The floor was carpeting like a deep plush lawn, but colored a soft ivory instead of green. It was clearly some kind of living space, not like the starkly functional areas she had seen on the lower floors. The area, she sensed, was designed for comfort, not necessarily efficiency.

“Come on,” the officer said, finally speaking. “Get moving.”

Sarena glanced up at him and then down the thickly carpeted hallway. She felt hesitant, as she were intruding somewhere where she knew she should not be. But she was clearly meant to be here, she decided.

They wouldn’t have brought me all the way up here just to punish me.

Although that might ultimately be her fate, nothing in her surroundings radiated that kind of threat. Cautiously, she stepped forward, almost gasping in surprise as the deep carpeting gave beneath her feet. She did not quite stumble, but was afraid for a moment to move, unsure of her footing.

Childtime Institutions (continued)

“We have a problem,” the sergeant began.

His voice almost echoed in the nearly silent room. Perez tried to remember his name, and he sat too far from the sergeant to read the name on his badge. Heads turned slightly and faint whispers rose, ending abruptly when the sergeant opened his mouth again.

“Two of our patrol officers have disappeared,” he said.

Voices around Perez began to rise again.

“Disappeared,” the sergeant repeated. “Dis-a-ppeared,” he enunciated. “Your fellow officers,” he went on. “Without a trace.”

Conversation rose around Perez. He heard the high pitch of rising panic in some of it.

“The fourth pair in two months,” the sergeant amended with emphasis. “Without a trace.”

He tapped a control and the panels behind him filled with images. One of them, Perez saw, displayed scrolling lines of text. Although he could not read them clearly from where he sat, he suspected that they showed either a timeline of the events or a relevant excerpt from the dispatch transcript.

The full impact of what the sergeant had said hit Perez. Eight patrol officers had disappeared during the past two months. Eight. Armed officers.

“So far,” the sergeant continued. “We’ve identified no clues as to how or why. There have been no witnesses—at least none willing to come forth.” He gestured toward the panel that Perez had been studying earlier. “All communications were routine,” he reported. “Until they failed to check in.”

One of the more senior officers seated toward the front of the room raised his hand. The sergeant’s eyes flickered toward her for an instant, but he did not acknowledge her. Perez suspected that he already knew what question she was going to ask.

“All of the . . . disappearances,” the sergeant went on, “happened throughout the city. There’s nothing—so far—to suggest that they are associated with any particular neighborhood.”

The officer’s arm dropped to his lap. Perez took a slow breath. It was the one of the first questions that he would have asked—that, and whether the missing officers had anything in common. He was certain, though, that would have been one of the first things that the department would have investigated. If they had found something, Perez guessed, this briefing would have an entirely different tone and topic.

One of the lieutenants leaned forward and whispered something into the sergeant’s ear. The sergeant listened for a moment and then nodded. There was no change in his expression.

“We’re short on facts,” he announced. “We can’t even tell you what to be on the watch for.” He looked grim—an expression that Perez felt seemed uncharacteristic for the man.

The sergeant’s gaze swept the officers gathered in the room. “Be more than careful,” he said. “Be more than vigilant,” he warned them. “Call in everything,” he told them. “No matter how minor it might seem.” Voices began to rise again. “We’ve brought in relief dispatchers to handle the load,” he said, and the noise level subsided.

“Now get out there,” he instructed them, much his typical gruffness returning. “And be safe.”

Perez rose and looked around, searching for his assigned partner. Although he still could remember his name, he was pretty certain that he would recognize him on sight. It was difficult, though, to make out a single face among the small crowd of uniformed figures. Most of the officers were heading toward the two exit doors, one on each side of the room on either side of the podium. Perez was about to give up, trying to decide which hallway might give him better odds of locating his partner, when someone tapped his shoulder.

Startled, he nearly stumbled over his chair. A low chuckle sounded from behind him. Perez was certain that he recognized its source. His stomach knotted and he tried not to grimace.

“Were you looking for me, Jose?” the voice said.

Perez turned slowly, forcing his expression into a rigid mask.

“No,” he replied flatly, somehow managing to not grind his teeth together as he spoke.

He looked up into Brandt’s face. The other recruit had at least five centimeters on him, as well as weighing in at least an additional twenty kilos. From the first day that Perez encountered Brandt at the academy, he postulated what he, in his head alone, called The Mind-Mass Ratio. His theory went along the lines that a person could have both body mass and brain mass, but there was some biological law that dictated the proper ratio for each. He had never calculated any kind of value for it, although he guessed that a logarithmic scale was involved, but considered Brandt as the prime example to prove his hypothesis.

“Too bad,” Brandt grunted. It would have been stereotypical, Perez thought, for Brandt to also sneer, but that is what he did.

Must have a very limited set of operations.

“Ferrero transferred out,” Brandt told him. “To Tennessee . . . or Minnesota, or somewhere like that.”

Perez nearly bit his lip, failing to see how those states were even remotely related. They clearly were in some way in Brandt’s mind.

“Okay,” he responded cautiously.

“So I’m your partner.” Brandt grinned. The expression completely failed to put Perez at ease. “For today.”

Perez suspected that Brandt meant to imply something ominous with that statement. While it did little to put him at ease, it did give Perez hope that he would only be stuck with the behemoth for a single shift.

And if someone decides we’re the next ones to “disappear” . . .

He hoped his temporary partner’s size would prove to be a sufficient deterrent. Perez tried not think about whether any of the missing patrol officers might have been about the same size.

“For today,” Perez agreed, trying to sound deferential.

Brandt grinned again and aimed a slap at Perez’s shoulder. Fortunately, Perez saw it coming and was able to lessen most of the impact. As a result, he only jerked forward slightly and did not nearly tumble to the floor. Brandt seemed disappointed, but let it pass.

“Let’s move out, partner,” he announced, quite a bit louder than was necessary.

Perez turned away so that there was no way that Brandt could see him sigh.

It’s going to be a long night . . .

Childtime Institutions (continued)

She was not even sure what she planning to make. Her mind, though, seemed to have it under control. It was not until several moments later that she even realized what her hands were doing and paused, a box of dried pasta in one hand, and stared at it in confusion. She did not remember removing it from the pantry, but there it was in her hand. Beth took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and then took another one.

When she opened her eyes, she placed the box onto the counter, and then studied the array of ingredients she had gathered. With some relief, she saw that there was all appropriate for a family pasta dinner—except for the diced jalapeños, those did not make any sense at all. With a barely audible sigh, she returned that can to its place in the cupboard, and then began to prepare the meal.

Get a grip, Beth, she scolded herself. It won’t do you any good for the kids to see you like this.

She shot a quick glance toward the living room sofa. Ben remained obliviously immersed in his video game. Nick would know when he got home, even if she tried to hide it. He had always been able to tell . . . even when it was infuriating. She tried to force the images from her mind, those both of Denice and of Lori, and wished that Jessie were home. Not that it would have mattered one way or the other in terms of her daughter’s fate later, but it would have helped her better right then.

She turned on the faucet and, as the large pot filled with water, she wondered what dinner would be like at Sallie’s house—if they could eat at all.

- 4 -

Perez snapped his boots closed and rose, testing their fit. He flexed his arches and then cautiously wiggled his toes, hoping that the salve Merise had given him would prevent his blisters from getting any worse. It had helped with the irritation, but the sensation created by the greasy layer of salve was almost worse than the blisters. Almost.

“Perez!”

One of the more senior patrols officers, Perez thought he had been on the force for about year, nudged him hard against his shoulder. Before Perez could fully react, the man spoke again.

“You coming or what?”

Perez bit back his retort. It annoyed him to be treated like that, but knew that it came with being new to the force. He silently vowed to never treat new recruits the same way after he had gained some experience on the streets—and he wondered whether he would keep that promise. Being on the streets changed people—he had seen it happen. He had watched as friends, fresh new officers on the force, turned into people that he barely recognized any more. Again, he had vowed not to let it happen to him.

I’ll quit the force first.

Again, he wondered whether he would be able to keep that promise as well. He had fought hard to earn his place and rank—low as it was for now. He was not sure that he could abandon them both simply to appease what might be some misguided form of nobility on his part.

He rose hurriedly, making sure that he failed to stumble over his own boots. With a rising sense of panic, he tried to remember who he had been paired with for the night. Sawyer had the night off, so he had been assigned to a different partner for this shift. He had not recognized the name and, since it was not a familiar one from his class at the academy, he had assumed that it was one of the more experienced patrol officers.

Falling into step behind the other recently-graduated recruits, he tried to force his memory to produce the name.

George-something? Jorges? Jorgensen?

No, he realized, none of those were right. He was not even certain that it even contained any of those sounds. His mind did that to him sometimes: teased him with hints about what he wanted to remember, only to finally reveal something that the real answer was barely associated with his vague recollections.

Entering the briefing center, he took one of the seats toward the back of the room. He sat down next to a female recruit that he did not recognize from his class and would have flashed her a quick smile had she even remotely indicated that she was aware of his presence beside her. Her gaze remained directed straight ahead and her expression did not reveal even the slightest flicker of change. Perez gave an inward shrug and turned his attention toward the front of the room.

They had arrived a few minutes early, but one of the things that he had learned very early on was that showing up early would rarely gain you any attention, but arriving late would almost certainly guarantee that you be noticed, often severely and publicly. Perez was not sure which of the two was worse—and vowed never to find out.

A sergeant and two lieutenants appeared at the front of the room. Behind them, the briefing panels lit up. The official insignia normally displayed on them dissolved to reveal a series of statistics. Images appeared next to some of these. What they meant, Perez did not know. He suspected that he, along with the other patrol officers present, were about to find out.

What little hushed conversation that was around him stopped as the sergeant stepped close to the podium. The two lieutenants flanked, looking ominously serious. Their gazes swept across the those gathered in the room, pausing occasionally to settle on a particular person, but never for long enough for Perez to figure out who it might be that warranted those few moments of special attention.

Childtime Institutions (continued)

Something still stabbed at her heart, nonetheless. Beth wished that Jessica were there at home, just so that she could see for herself that she was safe. There was no reason, of course, that she would be taken, that she would suffer the same fate as Denice. Not yet.

Not ever.

Her silent affirmation, while firm with a mother’s conviction, would be equally powerless when the time came.

If the time came.

Beth had been spared it, as had her older sister. Her youngest sister, though, had not. But whatever unspecified criteria there was, she had been rated unacceptable. Their mother had screamed and cried; her father had remained stoic throughout. Beth remembered the day with a bright, sharp intensity. Lori had worn exactly the same slack expression as Beth had seen on Denice’s face.

Lori had never recovered from it. Physically, she had healed, but she was never again the same bright and driven young woman that she had been before the procedure. Only a few months later, Lori had taken her own life.

Beth remembered that night as well. She never knew if Lori had intended it to be painless or quick. From the contorted expression on her sister’s face, and the twisted curls of her fingers, Beth doubted that it had been either. She was never told exactly how her sister had managed it. There had been stories and rumors, sure, but she had never asked. Her parents would probably not have told her in any case.

Reaching automatically into cabinets, she began removing items with which to begin to prepare dinner.

Childtime Institutions (continued)

- 3 -

Beth slowed at the corner before making the right turn onto Artum Street. As always, she checked for oncoming traffic, surprised when she recognized the dark teal sport minivan make the left turn coming off of Artum. She was not sure at first, but then she caught sight of Sallie behind the wheel. It seemed odd to her that Sallie would be out driving right then.

Didn’t Denice have—

Her question ended in mid-thought when she saw Denice in the back seat. Beth recognized the distant, almost-blank look on the young girl’s face instantly. The color drained from her face as her stomach felt suddenly hollow.

Oh. God. No.

Beth had seen that expression too many times, on too many young girls’ faces, to try to convince herself that the reason for it was something other than what it was. Jessica, her own daughter, was still two years away from having to face it.

Two long years, Beth told herself, knowing just how quickly they would pass.

The other car disappeared into traffic and Beth was startled into motion by three abrupt honks behind her, nearly colliding with a bicyclist who had decided that she was not going to move and dashed forward in front of her. The cyclist aimed a scathing backward look at her. Beth suspected that he might have punctuated it with a rude hand gesture had he not been forced to steer with both hands in order to maneuver through the late-afternoon traffic.

Beth wanted to pull over, to give herself a few moments to regain her composure, but there was no way to do it, no place along the curb where she could rest for just a moment. Besides, then she would be late picking Carson up from wrestling practice. Thankful for once that traffic was slow, she breathed slowly, keeping the lightheadedness at bay through sheer force of will. It was not until she pulled into the parking lot that the dark spots finally subsided entirely and she was able to breathe normally again.

Carson did not seem to notice anything amiss when he opened the rear passenger-side door, tossed his gear inside, and then climbed in himself.

“Can we stop for some strips?” he called out from the backseat. “I’m starving.”

It was far from unusual for him to be hungry after training. She usually remembered to bring something for him to snack on, but it had been that kind of day.

Normally, she would have objected, arguing that it would ruin his dinner. Instead, Beth just nodded mutely, still numbed by the realization of what must have been done to Denice. She shifted the car into gear and headed out of the parking lot.

They went through the drive-through, with Carson shouting his order from the back seat. Beth passed her card to the cashier without looking at them, earning her a cautious look that she did not notice. Carson did not bother her during the rest of their drive home, content with filling his mouth and stomach with flavored processed beef strips and French fries.

Beth still felt numbed by the time they arrived home, but her thoughts had started to regain some order and clarity. She considered contacting Sallie, but decided that Sallie and her family would likely be dealing with more than enough well-meaning sentiments that evening.

It might be best to wait a day—or two, Beth told herself. To let things settle.

Carson clambered out of the car, generating a lot more motion and noise than was probably necessary. Beth reminded herself to check the back seat for any gear that Carson might have left behind, for it was Paul’s turn to take their son to practice next time. She had a meeting with the Director that she could not reschedule.

Entering the house, she called out Jessica’s name before realizing that she had done so.

“Jessie,” she called out, trying to ignore the clear quaver in her voice. “Jessica!” she repeated, her voice rising to a pitch quite a bit higher than was normal for her.

A voice came from the couch. Her youngest son Ben sat hunched down into the cushions with a death grip on a game controller.

“She’s over at Desiree’s house,” he reported. “Said she might be home for dinner.”

Beth nodded silently, almost absently. Any other time, she might have been annoyed by the news, but this time she just filed it away the information for later action.

Childtime Institutions (continued)

He visually inspected the car once more as he walked toward the front door. The lack of toys or other signs of recent outside activity continued to niggle at his mind.

He slid the key into the top lock, and old-fashioned manual kind. Very few of the houses still had working digital systems. Harlin had read several articles about how easily they could be hacked with simple car key remotes. He strongly suspected, though, that such talent was probably beyond the abilities of the gang members who controlled the area near enclave’s main entrance, so he did not worry much about that aspect of it. The truth was that they were too difficult and expensive to keep functioning. He knew of only one home in his immediate neighborhood that still relied on such a system, but then there were a great many rumors about that particular house.

It took a moment for it to register that the key did not turn as it should have in the lock. Momentarily disconcerted, he realized that it had already been unlocked. He withdrew the key and experimentally tried the other keyhole, finding that it too had not been locked. His chest tightened again. Mary never left the door unlocked—never, unless the children were outside. He took a half-step back and studied the door frame.

He could not tell whether it looked any different than it had before. Battered and dented from years of hard use—of toys, bicycles and packages being knocked against it—that he could discern any new damage to it. The paint appeared to be cracked or flaking in all of the same places. If someone had tried to force their way into house, he could not readily read the signs of such an intrusion. Still, with a growing knot in his throat, he turned the handle and slowly opened the door.

He opened it only slightly more than a hand’s breadth, pausing to listen to the interior. Silence greeted him—and that served only to disturb him further. He should have heard the voice of at least one of his children. Even if they were all gathered together watching a video stream, he should have heard that too. But he heard nothing.

His heart beat hard within his chest. Each beat thrummed through his body like a heavy bass beat from that music that so many of the teenagers seemed play to far too incredibly loud. He fought the temptation to throw himself through the doorway. If his family was inside, but simply being uncharacteristically quiet, he would look foolish. If intruders had entered his home, he might startle them . . . and that could end badly too. So, cautiously, he eased the door slowly open wider, peering into his home’s interior, and silently hoping that he was all nerves for nothing.

Childtime Institutions (continued)

Easing carefully into the slight right turn, he slowed to avoid hitting any of the children—or cocky adults—who might move into his path. His gaze remained fixed on the barely paved road ahead, avoiding even fleeting eye contact with those he passed by. Sometimes, with some of them, that was all it took. More than one person had been killed within the enclave under such a pretense. The police, privatized as they were now, did not care. Unless there was a chance for them to make a scene of their own, they rarely came.

Harlin thought he could remember a time, when he was very young, when the police were public servants—peace officers, they had been called then, to differentiate them from the soldiers and mercenaries. When the federal and state governments had collapsed under the weight of their own greed and corruption, publicly paid law enforcement also disappeared.

His chest relaxed as he cleared the first two segment of the neighborhood. Although closest to what had once been the main entrance, it had become one of the most dangerous areas. Harlin had long suspected that it had something to do with its proximity to some of the major thoroughfares, but it seemed to him to be equally treacherous from both sides.

Fewer people were visible as he drove deeper into the complex. This was the area of the enclave where most of the older citizens and established families with younger children tended to make their homes. It was shielded on one side by an immense cinder-block wall. It was nearly three times as tall as a normal man and, even if someone found the ambition to climb it, what lay on its other side was not worth the effort. Harlin had only seen pictures of it—a vast and grimy automated industrial complex. When the wind shifted during the summer, even the faint stench that made its way over the wall, supposedly designed to prevent such occurrences, was enough to make some of the enclave’s inhabitants violently ill. When it happened, he simply closed up his house and prayed that it would get no worse. Samantha’s lungs were fragile enough as it was without the added strain of trying to breathe through the noxious vapors.

His driveway was clear, which was surprising. More often than not, he was forced to park along the street until he could convince his children to gather their toys or, failing that, doing it himself. He had learned long ago that there seemed to be some kind of invisible line or silent code of honor that prevented the gangs who roamed the streets at night from disturbing vehicles parked in a driveway. Those parked along street, however, appeared to be fair game. Harlin had made that mistake only twice, and countless times just beginning to drift off to sleep only to suddenly remember that he had left the car parked along the narrow sidewalk.

The car shuddered convulsively as Harlin shut off the engine. He silently prayed that it would start again in the morning. Locking his door, he checked to make sure that the other doors were locked as well. No sense in inviting trouble. That makeshift code of honor, he knew, only went so far. Unlocked cars would probably not be damaged, but roving gangs might take what they wanted from its interior as a kind of payment—a tribute, as it were—for not vandalizing the vehicle.

Childtime Institutions (continued)

Traffic was surprisingly light, even given the late hour. Most of the other engine-powered vehicles that he had encountered were in even worse shape than his own. A few of the ones that had passed him in the darkness appeared to be missing windows; one had even lacked a passenger side door. Seeing those made Harlin feel somewhat better about the sorry state of his own—but no less certain that it might grind to a halt at any moment.

He turned onto the drive that led to his enclave. It had been a gated community once, long ago. The remnants of the security gates that had once restricted entry into the complex were still visible. The metal had long ago been taken to be turned in for scrap or other uses. Only stacks of broken bricks remained, looking very much like the pillars of an ancient, crumbling house.

Bits of shattered masonry crunched beneath his tires. Harlin hoped that was all it was. So little tread remained on the car’s tires that he feared that a small shard of glass might puncture them.

Childtime Institutions

– 1 –

Governor Jelan felt the child’s neck bones crunch beneath his fingers. He did not so much feel it directly as through the faint vibrations that traveled along the structure of his cybernetic arm to where it connected with his own bones. Lacking direct sensation in his fingers and hand, it was the best he could manage. Still, he found it sufficiently satisfying. He might have wished for more, wanting the full range of feeling—if not more—in his replaced limb, but after his father’s scolding when Jelan had expressed his disappointment by killing two of his surgeons and badly crippling another one. The last one would never perform surgery again. He had finally—and reluctantly— accepted that his needs were still just a little too far ahead of the current state of biomedical technology.

The child dangled limply from his still-outstretched hand. It had made only the faintest sigh as it had died. That Jerrick had heard clearly enough. Unlike his replaced limbs, the aural implants had not diminished his hearing one bit. In fact, they had enhanced it, allowing him to hear both higher and lower frequencies than he had before. He could now also hear whispers in his presence that previously might have gone unheard. People had died because of that.

An unpleasant aroma reached his nostrils and, almost without thinking, he let the child drop. It fell to the stone floor with a soft, muffled sound—something like a small skeleton falling into a gel mattress. Jelan did not look at it, nor did he turn away. Instead, he moved his gaze alone to what remained of the child’s family.

Only his mother and older sister remained. The father had already been dealt with, although now Jelan wished that he had thought to have the man die before the eyes of his family.

Man! Jerrick almost snorted aloud.

The father had lasted less than two hours before he had succumbed. His inquisitors were typically far more capable than that, able to prolong their interrogations for days before the accused succumbed under their techniques. They had been, Jerrick though, perhaps a little too eager when they had driven the spikes up into the man’s genitals. Jerrick did not smile at this, but he did experience a faint, but noticeable, flush along his cheeks at the thought.

Before him, the mother struggled against the officers who held her. She did not scream out, although Jerrick suspected that she wished to. Her eyes remained fixed on the dead body of her young son, squirming and twisting in a vain attempt to reach his small, lifeless body.

Jerrick considered her for a moment. She was, he remembered, generally unskilled and, now, too old to be of any use to him in any of the places where he normally sent such women. Yet, she might still be of some use in some menial domestic capacity somewhere. She would either die there or else sustain herself with her hatred of him and her dreams of one day possibly realizing her retribution. He had seen it many times before.

His eyes turned now to the daughter. Although it was difficult to tell through the grime and much-worn clothing, Jerrick could tell that she was well into adolescence. The ill-fitting clothes hid her figure somewhat, which was probably intentional, Jerrick knew. Still, he could see that breasts were well-formed and he could picture them—and her—bare under his hands. Her face was expressionless, her eyes turned downward. He could not tell whether this was from fear or to hide them from him. Nothing in her posture was in the least way threatening, but he had seen that before: assassins carefully trained to be as still as statues until they saw their moment to strike. One such had cost him both of his arms and hands from the middle of the forearm. She had tried to kill herself before she was caught, but his surgeons had salvaged enough of her that his inquisitors were able to spend some time with her before she had died.

This one, though . . .

Jerrick nodded to the officers holding the mother.

“Take her to the domestic labor pool,” he told them. “Perhaps someone might find some use for her.”

“Yes, sir,” they both responded, almost in unison. Jerrick noted that the one on the right must have been female, although it might have been a conversion.

They removed the mother from the room, even as she struggled to reach the body of her dead son. Sounds that were not words gargled from her throat as the officers dragged her away. They were cut off abruptly as the door closed behind them. At least that was probably the reason, Jerrick considered. The officers might just as likely have clubbed her into silence once away from his sight. In either case, he really did not care.

His eyes returned to the girl. He took a step forward, his hand moving to rest on the dagger that he wore at his side. It was more than ceremonial—as many agitators had come to learn. She neither stirred nor looked up at his approach. Jerrick tried to remember her name, but was not certain that he had ever known it.

As he moved closer, he caught the familiar aroma of someone who had not bathed in several days. He was not surprised at that, considering the conditions under which they had been held. He stood before her now. Her head remained bowed before him. Reaching down, he took a handful of her tangled hair. It might have been chestnut when clean, but it was difficult for him to tell for sure.

He pulled her head upward slowly, and with surprising gentleness. She fought to keep her eyes aimed downward, but there came a point when she no longer could. They were silver-blue. Jerrick found himself surprised at how bright they were. It was not tears, he realized, but a fierce intelligence. If there was anger hidden in them as well, he could not see it—although he would not have been surprised to find it there.

Her face, he saw, was quite lovely—not beautiful in the way that so many of the courtesans and actresses were, but in that manner that made men look twice without quite understanding why. He studied her, trying to decide her proper fate. She looked back at him without any change in expression.

A faint smile formed on Jerrick’s lips. He released his hold on the girl’s hair and her head dropped forward again.

“Take this one to The Chambers,” he instructed the officer who stood nearest to the girl.

“Yes, Governor,” the officer replied. This one was definitely female, Jerrick noted, although her expression revealed no deference or opinion as to the fate of the young girl.

The young girl did not struggle or resist as the officer led her away. Nor, Jerrick noticed, did she follow the officer meekly. She kept in step, showing no sign that she might attempt to bolt at her first opportunity. This intrigued Jerrick even more. He would have expected fear, or at least beaten resignation, but the girl demonstrated none of that.

This one will bear watching, he warned himself.

Once again, he tried to remember her name, but failed to come to a full recollection of it.

Sarah . . .

It was something like that, he recalled, but that was not it exactly.

I’ll know soon enough.

He continued to observe her until the doors closed once more, cutting her off from his view.

Jerrick turned back toward the small audience that had gathered to witness his actions. His gaze swept across the floor, pausing for an instant on the limp body of the dead child. It had soiled itself, he saw, and the stench of it had grown stronger. He gestured toward it, catching the eye of one of the senior guard officers standing nearby.

“Return that to its mother,” he told the officer. “If she still wants it.”

“Yes, sir,” the senior guard officer acknowledged smartly as he motioned for two junior deputies to come and fulfill the Governor’s orders.

Reluctance played briefly across both of their expressions, but they masked it well, moving toward the lifeless form on the stone floor. A third officer joined them, handing one of the other guards a folded piece of cloth. The third officer turned away and left without a glance at the fallen child. The other officer knelt, unfolding the cloth and spreading it open along the floor. The first guard helped him lift the body of the child into the cloth, although his assistance was probably not needed. Neither of the officers, though, seemed to get too close to the child’s body.

Together, they folded the cloth around the child’s body, tucking it around it until it looked like nothing more than a large bundle of crumpled cloth. Each of them took one end of the bundle and carried it from the room. Jerrick watched them only until they left his sight, not turning to see them exit the chamber.

As his gaze surveyed the members of the audience, he saw a mixture of fear, hesitation, and even the occasional glimmer of admiration. Those, he knew from experience, were the ones to watch most carefully. They were the ones who aspired to power of their own.

He turned and nodded toward his chief clerk, signaling that he was ready for the next item on the morning’s agenda.

– 2 –

The car, a scarred and dented Honda sedan manufactured more than a decade earlier, shuddered its way along the shattered streets. The shock absorbers, probably those that originally came with the vehicle were no match for the shallow crevasses and potholes that comprised much of what remained of the original road. Metallic groans issued from the car’s chassis as it moved along. Not for the first time, Harlin expected each sound the vehicle made to be its last.

The Benefits of Wrestling with One’s Conscience

I’ve always preferred strong women. That’s probably one of the worst-kept secrets of my personal and romantic life—such as that is. What I’d always meant, though, is that I usually found myself drawn to strong-willed women. A demure and submissive one can be a nice a change of pace, but I tend to get bored with them quickly. I prefer spending time with someone who can be a partner in our decisions and adventures, rather than me having to make all of the decisions. Although Sarah was a bit of a surprise, once she got a bit smashed . . . but that’s a story for another time.

I don’t remember why I’d gone to the bar that night. I usually don’t like to drink alone. It’s more of a social experience with me, even if I do occasionally indulge myself with a drink alone at home. I think I was waiting for a buddy who didn’t show. He ended up having a fight with his girlfriend or something and never made it. I had about finished nursing one drink, stalling for my second one until my friend got there, when I noticed her at the bar.

I’m not sure how she drew my attention at first. It might have been some kind of unconscious recognition, or maybe something about the way she moved or held herself. At first, I thought she was a large woman. I don’t necessarily find that unattractive. I’m not usually drawn to them, but some have a way of carrying themselves, a certain air of self-assuredness and confidence that announces, “This is the way I am. I’m comfortable with it.” Some of the best sex I’ve ever had in my life has been with women who were carrying with few more pounds and inches than many people find socially acceptable. Their loss.

When she turned toward the guy on her left, clearly someone that she wished was sitting somewhere else in the bar—if not on another continent—and revealed her profile that I recognized her. It was then that I also realized that those few extra pounds I thought she was carrying were all muscle. It had to be. There was no other way that she could perform the way she did in professional wrestling ring otherwise. I’d seen her take down men a quarter again her size—and take down hard.

And speaking of hard, I discovered that my rod had gone swollen and stiff against the fabric of my pants. That bothered me . . . a little. I’ve never thought of her—or any her other female wrestling companions—in quite that way before. Clearly, something in my brain did.

Now, I’m no fool. I know that those cage matches are as much theatrics as athletics. Big and beefy as those guys (and girls) are, there’s no way their bodies could take that kind of beating and be back two days later for Round Two.