I remember the marks on my body that would be healed years later when the Vyrus took up residence and cleaned house. The marks discovered by sympathetic schoolteachers.

I remember my mother and father struggling in the arms of the police. The last memory of them. And then the others.

New sets of parents, none for more than a year, none a particular improvement over biology. And I remember the street where I taught other children the lessons I had learned at home. The grasping hands, the lash. I remember seeing fear in someone else's eyes, and that it made me feel larger.

I remember running the streets, warlord of my tiny tribe. And then being found and being poisoned. And fear and helplessness returned. And then Terry and the Society and something new. A reason. And years of work and learning, as I am taught how to be in the world. Then the discovery that I have become Terry's favorite tool. His sharpest instrument when it is time to apply fear. When it is time for the lash. Then not wanting any longer to be the whip.

I remember being alone and doing the job.

The Coalition and the Society and their dirty little errands. The job that is just survival. And then Evie. And I remember her whispering to me in the dark of my room while the day was bright outside, telling me what she felt. And having nothing to say to her in return except lies about who and what I am, but telling them all the same. To keep from being alone. And then the years since, years close to the edge. Balancing between Evie and the job. Every step closer to the edge of… something. I remember Whitney Vale. The almost human look in her eyes when I took the knife from her, the cough when the blade went in. And Leprosy, the bite in the back of his neck reeking of rotting. And the picture of the girl, alone somewhere, helpless. And her mother's breast pressed against me as she kissed the edge of my mouth. And Philip babbling over Dobbs's strangled corpse. And Daniel asking for my help as Jorge vomited his life into the room. And Dale Edward Horde, arrogant and cruel, experienced in the use of the hands and the lash. And Amanda's hand chained to mine, close by one another, covered by cloth. And the scouring acid in my veins. And a smell that isn't there, describing something that cannot exist. And the basement of the school, scene of a crime no one has defined, but one I can too easily imagine.

And screaming. People screaming. Someone I know screaming.

And I am not dead.

Not dead.

But not alive.

The basement of the school, illuminated by a hissing camp lantern.

Marilee is screaming. She has a reason to.

– Use the condom.

– I don't like 'em.

– I gave it to you for a reason. Use it.

– Fucking. Can't feel anything.

– Neither will you leave any traces of your semen.

– OK.

– We can afford a certain level of contradiction in the evidence we leave behind, but let us not bow to hubris and become, dare I say it under the circumstances, cocky.

– OK, OK.

Horde's goon opens the foil packet. He's kneeling next to Marilee, his pants and drawers pushed down his thighs, struggling to roll the rubber onto his semi-hard penis. Marilee is on her stomach, skirt torn half off, panties around her ankles. She's bound and gagged and drugged, but the bacteria is running in her now and her screams pierce the room as she struggles against the belt looped around her wrists.

I am spilled against a pile of junked desks. Thrown here to be dealt with soon enough. When Horde is done with his wife and daughter.

He's naked, standing above the sheet of cardboard where I smelled the residue of his rape of Whitney Vale, his rape of the dead. His daughter sleeps peacefully at his feet. Her shoes and socks removed and set neatly to the side. He watches the goon put on the condom, tug the panties from Marilee's ankles and position himself between her legs.

– Not yet.

The goon looks at him, dick in hand.

– What?

– Wait. Turn her head. I'd like for her to see this. And keep your hand away from her teeth.

The goon shakes his head, grabs a fistful of Marilee's hair and twists her face toward her husband. Horde is roped with lean muscle and pelted with graying hair. He squats next to Amanda, his penis sharply erect between his knees, and he begins to undo the button and zipper of her jeans.

– Self-control is a virtue. I always told you that, wife. With every one of your infidelities I would remind you that your inability to control your appetites was a weakness for which you would eventually pay.

He opens his daughter's fly slowly, then butterflies it and pauses, gazing at the triangle of white cotton beneath.

– Giving in to one's passions on a constant basis weakens the individual, as well as the passions themselves. Self-control, willpower, not only strengthen the individual, but also sharpen the appetite.

He inserts his index fingers at the waistband of Amanda's jeans and begins to tug them down over her slight hips.

– Self-control allows one the time to fully contemplate one's desires, and to imagine detailed scenarios in which those desires might be fulfilled. It also allows one the time to arrange circumstances so that the most favored of these scenarios might come to fruition.

The jeans are off now, and he folds them carefully and places them atop Amanda's shoes and socks.

– And if you look back, I think you will see how it is that your lack of self-control, and my own ample supply of this virtue, has led you to be in your current position, and me to be in mine.

He runs a finger over the elastic waistband of his daughter's panties. He nods his head.

– Now you may begin. But make sure she is watching me.

The goon grunts and clumsily tries to shove his now utterly limp penis into Marilee while still forcing her to watch her husband. Horde tucks his fingertips into the panties and begins to slide them down. I close my eyes. I can close my eyes. And I can feel my body. And it is not filled with pain. I open my eyes.

– Hey.

No one hears.

– Hey!

They hear this time. The goon, with a handful of Marilee's hair and something less than a handful of limp dick. Horde, with his daughter's panties pulled just past the tops of her hip bones. They both stop and turn their heads to look at me where I stand leaning crookedly against the pile of desks.

– Stop that.

Horde purses his lips.

– He was supposed to be finished?

– I've got it.

The enforcer is on me. He appears before me from whatever corner he has been lurking in, seizes my throat and shoves me through the pile of half-rotted desks. The wood tops of the desks splinter and crack and he pins me to the wall, fingers digging into my neck.

Horde holds up a hand.

– Don't kill him. He needs to be shot.

The enforcer keeps his eyes locked on my face.

– I know. He's strong.

Predo keeps them gorged on blood. That's what Terry told me. He said that short of the Secretariat, the enforcers are rationed the largest shares of Coalition blood. They feed to surfeit, their appetites always appeased. Predo keeps himself lean, hungry and subtle, but his instruments are often blunt and hard. I have likely never fed as well as this one feeds daily. He is strong, trained and experienced in the use of that strength.

Which is the advantage he retains when my heart explodes. But first it stops.

Death has truly and finally arrived.

Good.

I have failed. Failed as a child; failed as a man; failed as a revolutionary; failed as a lover; failed as a goodguy. My only success in life has been as a pawn. Fuck it, I never asked to be any of those things. And my life was over by rights long ago. I've just been waiting to catch up to it.

Then my heart explodes, beating a manic rhythm, and I realize my life is not over. Hell. The world shivers and splinters, vibrates at a frequency beyond my senses' range of reception, and then resolves into clarity.