While we were flying, Kansas City had joined the others in being reduced to refuse. Cosette was violently vocal about us disappearing off of comms for more than an hour, and it felt like she spent at least that long berating us afterwards.

Though as for why exactly, I didn't think she was being exactly honest. She said it was essential we remain on-hand and up-to-date because of the crisis...but when she had us online for the whole flight, she didn't have much to say or anything to ask.

In fact, if she weren't violently denying it constantly, I'd have thought she was just scared that we'd died somehow. But that couldn't be, because Cosette was one of the most staunch and determined people I knew, and a little thing like the world crumbling wasn't going to put her in an emotional rut. No sir.

At least, that's how she acted. Chewing us out until we went from feeling missed to wishing we were actually dead.

I spent most of the flight neglecting her, instead watching the news. With four cities down and Justice now making the long trek towards Denver, the entire world had entered panic mode. Some people were proclaiming this to be the end, fearless keyboard warriors declaring our doom as though somehow giving up first made them above it all. Others had founded new bonds of humanity and compassion, found families forged by loss of real ones, with the aim only to hold and support.

Politics had become very strange. Russia, who had never been very close or sympathetic, and who currently faced the threat of the Oasian army, had committed to sending over all their available armed forces, to stand together with the United States, perhaps understanding that without us, they would fall alone.

Most of the rest of the world had shown similar support. I heard stories of millions of credits offered, of skilled labor of all kinds, of harbors to the American refugees. In Oregon, there had been a fleet of Japanese fishing ships which had landed to take on as many as they could carry, and Mexico had thrown the borders completely open, letting all pass unimpeded and unharried.

That was on the human end of things, and while there were reports of people being shitty, for the most part, it made me proud. Proud of people in general, banding together in the face of something bigger than them, something which could have killed any of them instead, without even a thought.

Because that was the other side of the news: Justice's side. He had killed many -- reports coming in speculated that he'd passed a million a while ago, and some were saying as high as two million.

As the words flowed past me along with Cosette's criticism, I just tried to sit and envision two million people. In less than half a day, two million.

Professional football games -- real ones, not like I played in -- topped out at around a hundred thousand in attendance. How many times had I fantasized about myself on that strip of green, surrounded by a wall of cheering, surging humanity? I tried to think of my crowds, the hundreds and hundreds of faces, and tried to blow up in my mind the largest game I'd ever played in by a thousandfold. And then...twenty times more than that.

My brain couldn't do it. Couldn't process that number of people. And it certainly couldn't imagine suddenly all of them being dead. That was just too much.

I tried a different take, looking around at the cold metal walls of the VTOL around me. A quick 'net search informed me a commercial flight could carry around five-hundred fifty passengers at once. Two million people were around thirty-six hundred ships full of passengers.

And to conceptualize their deaths, as I looked down at the dark ocean, immutable beneath us, that meant if one full VTOL crashed every second, it would take a full hour of such insane, senseless carnage to equal his death toll. A full hour of craft plummeting from the sky, explosions and deaths every second, and not a single survivor.

It seemed utterly impossible, but those were the numbers we were dealing with here. And that was half a day's work for Justice. At that current rate…

AEGIS looked over at me with a notes document, a calculator app, and a scowl, and asked what I was doing.

"Two million people in half a day," I told her. "That's four million in a day. US population is around four-hundred million so that's...literally every single person in the entire US dead in a hundred days."

"Oh Athan," she frowned, and gently pushed my mobile down into my lap. "Don't do that to yourself."

"I just want to know what we're dealing with."

She looked at me, deadly serious. Her eyes seemed to sparkle in the sunlight, more yellow than the sun, and more brilliant. She had such intensity, when she wanted to.

"You already know," she sighed. "Everything."

"I know everything?"

"No. You know the stakes. Justice is...well...like everyone's saying, I think he's the end. If we don't stop him, he's the end of everything. It doesn't matter how many or how fast he kills...either we stop him, and what damage he did is done...or we don't, and that's just...it."

I found it too hard to keep looking at her eyes and my gaze settled somewhere on her lap. When I was surprised by another voice piping up in my ear other than Cosette.

"PF Five to PF Actual, If you do not mind my intrusion," Moon said.

"Go ahead," I said, surprised at hearing her voice. "I thought you guys were deployed?"

"We were, until just now. Our mission ended successfully. No thanks to Tem."

"Hi Chariot. I apologize, I fried a man and I should not have," Tem squeaked.

Moon continued. "He was being belligerent. And after, the rest fell readily in line. TARGA approved of our methods, at least."

"How are things out there, on the ground?" I asked.

I could almost hear the pregnant pause Moon always gave. "I am tempted to make a joudan at your loose phrasing. But I will resist the temptation, given the climate. Things are as bad as you would expect, Chariot. People are frightened. The Exhumans we have been sent to suppress are the worst of the worst -- supremacists, who believe that this is the dawn of Exhumanity's hour."

"What does...what does that mean?" AEGIS asked, eyes wide.

"It means, things have escalated. Those who before were acting out when the XPCA showed signs of strain are now behaving as imitators of their new idol. Exhumans who see humanity as a frail oppressor are 'rising up' through the same violence Justice implicitly promotes."

"Oh no. Oh no, no, no," AEGIS pulled at her hair.

"I concur," Moon said, with unobvious frustration. "The first major incident has already transpired but has been covered up in the name of national security."

"What incident? What more could possibly be going wrong right now? Isn't Justice enough?"

"Justice, New Eden, and Oasis, you mean," Karu added.

My mobile buzzed in my hand and I found myself reading a message from Moon. I tapped the link and watched as several documents unfolded across the holo.

A series of stills from security cameras painted the scene. A refugee camp, tagged as being outside Green Bay, tents being put up, traffic directed in from cars, busses, and many simply on-foot.

And then, the scene changed in the course of a single still. There was an explosion, which radiated outwards over the course of several more pictures, and when it finally faded, the scene left behind was one of carnage and chaos, the dread and oppressive air boiled away into horror in an instant.

All except the one guy left standing, right in the middle of the blast. Grinning, directly at the camera, as though he knew it was there.

"Right now, we're seeing an unprecedented surge of cooperation and fraternity," Moon explained. "It is the only thing keeping this unwieldy evacuation effort on its feet. But if even a few events such as these break the news, the situation will shatter."

"Just another way Justice wants to break us," I swore.

"He hasn't yet," AEGIS assured me. "Even if there are a few maniacs, look at the millions of people being good to each other, opening their doors and their hearts to their fellow man. He thinks he's breaking humanity, but right now, we're more unified than ever."

"For now," I said. "Moon's right that if this ever gets out, all that goodwill is going to evaporate."

"Well," she beamed at me. "All that means is we need to stop him before then, huh? People are behaving for the moment and keeping evacuation smooth and casualties to a minimum, that's just buying time for us to do our jobs.

"Speaking of which," Karu said from the helm, "we are on approach to Oasis now."

And so we were. I didn't know how long the ocean had been behind us, but looking outside now, all I could see was the black stretch of the glasslands, flowing and scintillating as the waves had been, and the grey malaise of the sky.

"We, too, must return to service," Moon said. "We are to head to Key West this time."

"Another event? Already?" I asked.

I could hear the tiny curl of a smile in her voice. "No. I am simply out of rum, and that is an emergency."

"Thanks, Moon."

"Joudan. Be well, and be swift. The world is on our backs. Be the heroes we imagined ourselves when this all began."

I didn't have time to respond to that rather cryptic statement before I heard the tone of her changing off the comms channel. I just shot a glance at AEGIS, who shrugged.

The rest of the flight we took in relative silence. I'd accepted AEGIS' advice and put down my holo, and instead just listened to the drone of the engines and the sounds of two-million people dying in my head.

The VTOL jerked sideways, hard enough that it would have thrown me against the wall if I weren't strapped in. AEGIS swore, and I heard Karu's voice and all kinds of alarms screaming in the cabin.

"What's going on?" AEGIS shouted.

"We are being fired upon," Karu said, her voice too calm for the maneuvers she was pulling us through. Up and down this time, like the VTOL was trying to buck us. Outside the window, I heard a distant boom.

"Who is? Oasis?"

"Who else? Are the glasslands so filled to bursting with SAMs that you need to query?"

The note of irritation in Karu's voice shut us up, and we just hung on to our belts and our seats as the booms grew more intense and frequent, and the craft's shuddering switchbacks became constant.

"Just land!" I shouted.

"We are ten miles out, still."

"Then we'll walk ten miles."

"While under artillery fire? I think not."

There was a shuddering blast that I felt in my teeth, and the lurching of the craft to the left this time seemed less planned. Still, we were holding together, although the shaking had me starting to feel violently sick.

I closed my eyes and tried not to focus on the sound and how much I was being flung around in my seat. So, y'know, the only two things I had left with my eyes closed. I felt myself heave and swallowed it back down with determination.

AEGIS squeezed a waxy bag into my fingers and gave me a reassuring pat on the back of the hand.

It seemed to last forever, but at the same time, was over before I knew it. From the number of switches being flipped and the cadence of different sirens turning on and off in the cabin, I knew Karu was hard at work. The engines raced and roared, sometimes falling completely silent as we plummeted downwards in a stomach-lifting dive, only to scream to life with us that much closer to the black, bladed ground.

Until, finally, I felt us lurch, stopping so suddenly I thought we'd hit something. But there was no crash, just the sounds of the landing gear deploying, and the soft rock of the ship touching blessed ground. I went to unbuckle and fall out of the ship, ready to kiss the blackened, sharpened earth, but found my legs like jello under me.

Without a pause, AEGIS' arms were there, scooping me up and moving us, faster than I expected, bolting out the exit.

"What's...what's the rush? Were we hit?" I panted, choking on how sick the inside of my mouth felt.

She didn't need to answer. We emerged out of the ramp and into the startling desert sun. All I saw of Karu was a blue streak vanishing into the sky before us.

And right there, maybe ten feet away, like Karu had wanted to park in the shade of its walls, there was Oasis. I understood at once, down here, this close to the wall, this was a blind spot for their guns and artillery, like stepping inside a punch, this was the only place in this whole sun-blasted place where they couldn't hit us.

Not directly, and not yet, anyway. But looking up, I saw the first stirrings of people atop the wall. The lowest caste, humans, not even yet armed with the city's store of exotics. But that would change once their communal mind determined this to be an attack. We had to negate that before we found ourselves at war.

AEGIS sprinted around the outer walls, sliding to a halt in front of the gate.

"City of Oasis!" she shouted, and I slid out of her arms so she wouldn't look quite so much like she was carrying a baby around. "I am AEGIS, High Priestess of Our God, and by my rank and by your laws, I demand entrance to the sacred city!"

Her words echoed strangely. The smooth white stone and black glass shone in the sun. On this side of the city, none had stirred yet on the walls. By all accounts, she'd just shouted at nothing.

"They must have changed some things since they declared war," AEGIS muttered. "Used to be, all you had to do to get in was have your boyfriend beat up some guard and give up a few drops of blood."

"I guess we could beat up a lot of guards?" I asked. I was steady on my feet now, though most of that was the exoframe. I still felt like I was reeling at the top of the six-foot tower which was me, but I'd manage. I couldn't wait for the sick in my mouth to air out, although I knew from last time that we visited, I'd just have a dry mouth forever.

There was a sound sort of like an explosion. Something heavy and mechanical, which moved quickly and stopped just as fast. AEGIS and I looked at each other in confusion, until one of us glanced up.

"Holy shit, move!" she shouted, though why she did, I didn't know, since she'd scooped me right back up and jumped, concentric circles on her joints ablaze with the sudden acceleration. She kicked off, sending radiating cracks from her point of impact and sending us soaring towards the top of the outer wall.

I watched as those radial cracks shattered into a cloud of crystalline razor-dust, of flames and ash, as something enormous and firey impacted the ground right where we'd been standing, the mortar landing with improbable aim.

AEGIS didn't quite clear the wall, but as we hit it, she took a few running vertical strides, giving us an extra boost upwards, and her reaching fingers just caught the edge, dangling there with me cradled in one arm and straining with her fingertips on the other.

I yanked myself up at once, while she made pitiful noises and her body groaned, and when I pulled her up after me, she spent a short moment stretching and swearing, doing something which seemed not-dissimilar to popping and resetting her joints.

"Well that fucking hurt," she announced. "Think they'll fire on us again if we're atop the wall?"

"I would rather not find out. These guys are kinda...zombie-like in following their orders. I don't think they'd think it through enough to worry about it."

"Speaking of, Athan, listen. There's a loophole...in their programming. It's why they think I'm a High Priestess."

"Can we talk and run? We need to find Rio."

She nodded, and both of us kicked off the wall towards the center city. "Actually," she panted, over the roar of her engines, "it's related to that. The priests in the center ring, like everyone else in the city, they're in a fake world...but they need to interact with the high priests, and so they can see the real world a bit. I think their god censors out anyone else in the city under its control."

"I like your theories," I panted, as we flashed past people and up the streets. The middle gates were open, thankfully, and the city apparently hadn't considered this an attack yet, so we were doing okay. But there was still the innermost gate to worry about, too high to jump, even for AEGIS. "But can we focus on right now?"

"Right. Well. The point is, outsiders aren't supposed to ever be in the inner ring. Outsiders are also not under their god's control. What this means is, he's not hiding them...which means any priest can see them. And the priests are basically programmed to serve anyone they see that issues them orders."

"So you're only a high priestess because you didn't give blood?"

"Yeah. That and the other high clergy believed me when I said ordering priests around means I'm a high priest. But Athan that's what I'm trying to say -- their god let you go. If you order a priest now, they'll listen to you. And that might be super suspicious in their faith. So whatever you do, don't do that, or it might out me, and then they'll have no reason to listen to either of us."

"Okay. Seems unlikely, but okay."

We'd reached the wall, and it was higher than I remembered. Last time, the girls had blasted a hole through here with Karu's munitions, but she was flying somewhere else at the moment, I could hear her engines racing in the background of my comms.

But we needn't have worried about that. Because the gate was, to my surprise, completely open. An invitation, almost.

Complete with a welcoming party. Three of them, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, their faces grim as they watched the two of us advance.

On the left, some guy in blue frippery, like some kind of admiral from the Napoleonic wars. On the right, Rio, and the only one who looked even remotely happy to see us. She had a gun in her arms, but also gave a small wave.

But I hardly saw it. My eyes were locked on the guy in the middle.

Long face, skin tanned golden from the desert sun, and curtains of greasy black hair. A cloak, light enough to ward off the sun, but heavy enough to conceal his every move beneath it. And those Sino eyes, narrowed by hate and dispassion.

Last time we'd clashed, Saga had him by the balls by mind-fucking his beloved tree-god. I'd been forced to let him go at Rio's behest, but neither of us were on what you'd call good terms. We'd torn off his arm and fucked with his city, his faith, and his god. And he'd killed people I knew, people I loved.

Dragon was there waiting for us. And just from the look on his face, I could tell he wouldn't make this easy.