Jump: The Fallen: Testament 1 Read Free Page B

get someone to pay attention to the people.
    They sent a Vengeance drone and launched a couple of Hellfury missiles at that guy. I doubt he knew what hit him before the angels collected his ass. His wife and daughter did, though. They were out in the yard feeding little cherub chickens—just far enough away to escape disintegration . . . not far enough to live. That must have been something to see—feathers and guts flying through the air with their own arms and tits.
    Then some remote pilot—joystick jockey in Syracuse, NY—sipped coffee in the break room when he was done. Probably gave him a Feathered Phoenix, the coveted Protection medal of valor. Bet his initials weren’t at the top of that arcade game for more than a week.
    When the PIN reporters finally showed up, the “powers” told them to say it was “Domestic Terrorist Weapons Cache Explosion.” And they printed that shit like they were told to. We’re way beyond investigative journalism, too. An investigative journalist is just code for “Future Detainee”—Foxtrot Delta—more commonly referred to as . . . “Fucking Dead.” And no one wants to be a protectant at that prison.
    We all knew that Wyoming was bullshit. Didn’t matter—average citizen has the attention span of a three-year-old in a balloon factory. It only took a couple weeks for the story to get shoved out of their overstimulated minds. And if the beehive doesn’t sting you when you go in for sweet nectar the first time. . . Any citizen who didn’t voluntarily give up their guns got a visit from a Hellfury. That was how they dealt with the rural zone holdouts. I only heard those stories from my dad. They weren’t any prettier in person. I can hardly remember the first ones.
    Sending a missile at a farmhouse in the rural zone caused less collateral damage. Not that anyone at Protection gave a shit, but the paperwork is a bitch. I remember that.
    A Hellfury for breakfast was bad, but it was better than a “3@3.” If you lived in the vast concrete prisons of the new urban zone—and who didn’t—the countryside around them got bought up long ago by the rich and unaccountable. But if you rested your chest anywhere it would be hard to lie about a missile strike, you got an official “three-at-three.” We called it a “TAT for tits.”
    Only this tat was a bit more painful than a little needle and some ink, because a trio of black-suited, hard-booted Protection Citizen Compliance agents would bust down your front door at three o’clock in the morning. Then they ripped you, and whoever you happened to be on top of, right out of your bed, shoved a black sack over your heads, crammed you in a diaper, and stuffed you into the black van they had waiting outside. No one came back from that.
    We only heard stories from the neighbors, cowering in their homes, glad as shit it wasn’t them, while they watched a Protection cleaning crew gut their neighbor’s house. After I got done training them, those guys were thorough.
    Sure, being blown up in a drone strike is probably pretty scary, but killing you leaves everything about you behind. And when you think the wrong way, we gotta make sure it was like you never existed. Cleaning crews. . . Hah! Dirtiest sons a bitches you ever wanna meet.

    I can see the door to the roof, and there’s a poem rolling around in my head as I trudge up the last set of steps. And when they came for me, there was no one left. . . I think that’s how it ends. My father used to tell it to me when we talked about all the wars. It wasn’t because he believed that anyone could be saved by the realization that if they worked together no Protection military on the planet could control them. He knew that.
    “People want to believe that warriors think like they do,” he used to say, “that they make decisions based on morality and mercy.” And he would get a faraway look on his face, before he continued. “But an eighteen-year-old with a rage rifle, scared