FEEL Chapter 2: PROTECTION

Chapter 2 of my novel FEEL. Read the full novel for free on WattPad.

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Noonie clinked the key back into the belly of the cracked garden gnome—his face, long erased by the elements, already cooking in the early morning light. She placed the loyal sentinel gently back in place under the dry, empty bird bath. She pulled with all her might to open the slanted steel door, trying to be quiet. Directly above her, the kitchen window was dark. Above that, the second-story bedroom window of Christmas, who often sat through the night reading, his feet propped up on the windowsill. He'd look up once and again, watching the ghosts of his own happy childhood running and laughing in the family garden. The curtain was drawn, hanging still in the dead air.

The cellar of the Christmas house smelled of damp earth and forgotten things. Not the sweet, earthy scent of the autumn harvests spilling from the memories Christmas had shared over and over again, smiling every time. He remembered running down into the darkness as a kid to fetch jars and delicacies called for by his grandma or his mother. The smells of garlic and apples and whatever goodness was cooking just above him in the kitchen. Now the musty odor of time rushed up to greet her.

Like all the other homes along Stonewall Street, the space still served as storm shelter. In happier times, it had been a fruit cellar—back when there were fruits to pick, vegetables to harvest, and canning to be done over a hot stove in the loving kitchen just above. Barrels of apples and sacks of potatoes once filled the corners. Shocks of drying onions and garlic once decorated the ceiling. The sagging shelves against the rough stone walls were once lined with shiny canning jars—a rainbow of plum tomatoes, sliced peaches, pearly ground cherries, pickled everything, and chokecherry jelly. Sometimes Noonie would find Christmas in the darkness, sitting on the swept-dirt floor. "Just came down to feel the memories," he'd say with an unforced smile.

Noonie's hiking boots, the treads twice re-carved by hand into the rubber soles to grant them temporary reprieve, scrape-skidded down the worn concrete ramp as she playfully slid her way into Christmas's memory bank. A concrete ramp had been built directly into the center of the original concrete staircase. The low ramp had, once upon a time, allowed for the easy in and out of a garden wheelbarrow, delivering the harvest. Or made easier work of delivering a dolly-strapped apple barrel, to be carefully squirrelled away in a dark corner. The ramp was also a place for a little boy to slide down and destroy another pair of pants. The steps on either side were still there for climbing and descending—for adults who didn't know what fun was anymore.

Now the subterrene housed anything of value. In the darkness pulsing with a dozen tiny led indicator lights from various chargers connected to various bikes, tools, and electrical equipment. Noonie let her eyes adjust for a moment then grabbed her time-battered black helmet, tapped on her headlamp, and slipped on a pair of goggles that she had rescued from the garbage at work. She'd asked before taking them, just to be sure. She clipped her respirator mask behind her neck, ready to be pulled up on the go. She unplugged her bike from the inverter panel hanging on the wall above the bank of batteries.

Her bike was—sadly, she thought—one of Noonie's best friends. It was the only thing she still owned that was part of her life before the collapse. It got her to school and back. It took her to the airport to pick up her mom for a rare, unexpected visit. Their last visit. It offered her safe passage out of the fires, saving her life. And it now took her through hell—to and from work so she didn't have to live there. The bike looked a little like one of Frankenstein's creations—an old weld here, some duct tape there. Big and sturdy. The wheels were reinforced and the tires were solid and fat. The long back cargo seat could hold a passenger. With the welded saddle bag cages and the detachable trailer, the beast could deliver. And it often did. She'd leave the trailer for now, but the saddle cages would stay—never know what you're gonna find and it allowed her to carry a few supplies.

She leaned against the workbench and placed her adapter next to an old wooden crate that both hid and cradled their precious ham radio inside a protective Faraday bag, along with several burner phones. Just in case. The radio was never registered, of course. Its presence and use was a secret Christmas had entrusted to only her and, only recently, to the rest of the house, when he wanted everyone trained on it. Again, just in case. His trust in her was among her dearest possessions. All amateur communication devices were banned by the System during year two of the collapse. Cell phones weren't banned, but voice calls were first run through AI which allowed the System to control the narrative. Within seconds, AI quickly cloned any human voice new to the System or matched it in the existing voice database. From there the conversation was on an undetectable delay. Callers couldn't be certain that they were talking to who they thought they were talking to, or if what it sounded like the person on the other end of the call was saying was really what they were saying. Elaborate codes based on inside jokes and shared memories became the basis for most conversations.

Most people just disconnected, defeated. Now a voice-call was almost unheard of. Texting in code was the primary means to communicate with one another. Sometimes email. But, again, the System was always paying attention, deciphering codes, mapping every conversation, tying billions of data points to billions of data points, dropping in random casual references to how awesome the System is, ensuring its complete control. Anyone caught with a banned device would lose any accumulated points and all future access to any food, water or other resources controlled by the System. If communication was considered anti-corporate propaganda, the broadcaster would be brought in for questioning—which could last the rest of one's life.

Noonie continued to safety-check her ride, pulling a nail from her front tire with a pliers from the workbench. The amber side light of her helmet shone on the far wall with its glass jars of heirloom seeds that had been collected over decades, packed fresh dried herbs, dozens of dented label-free cans of corporate food, several small bags of grain bearing the corporate seal, and dried corporate fruits and vegetables in bundled stacks of silvery, vacuum-sealed mylar bags. At least half of the shelving held hundreds of clear plastic bags of at least a dozen varieties of home-grown mushrooms. The proteinous fungi were farmed and vacuum-sealed by Deek, the resident self-taught mycologist and Aurora, his eager apprentice right here at Myco Central, or MycoMart, or the Mushed-Room. They kept changing the name of their little operation, which didn't really need a name. The team of two kept the Christmas house, neighbors and friends well fed. Deek and Aurora also taught others how to propagate their own food crops or pharmacies, sharing spores and recipes with anyone literally hungry for more.

Bottles of emergency drinking water, in case the neighborhood tanks ran dry or got turned off, were stored closer to the steps, pre-tested for contaminants and marked for careful rotation.

Noonie's work points had filled much of this space with food and supplies from the city, her housemates had filled the rest with the foods they'd grown in the backyard greenhouse or spored in the cellar. Vital non-food finds had been pulled from ashes, or negotiated with fellow survivors, or created by members of the house combining elbow grease and ingenuity. Everything was cataloged and organized by Christmas. Her housemates were her lifeboat crew. Chosen family. And Christmas, their captain, their friend, and their sometimes-father, had chosen them all very well.

Noonie wheeled to the base of the ramp and pulled on her gloves. She turned the key and squinted to check the battery levels on the cracked handlebar display and on the spare.

The cellar was also the Christmas house's power station. It was designed and built by Christmas himself near the final days of "normal." He had seen the writing on the wall and prepped enough to survive at least for a few years off-grid. If he wanted to stay alive. What he didn't see in the Rorschach of tea leaves in his drying cup was: no rain. The extensive catchment system he'd built had remained dry for years, ever since the rains stopped. But the solar system was still running strong all these years later. It was fed by a few solar panels on the rear roof of the house, not visible from the street. Most days, the smog allowed enough sunlight for at least a trickle of electricity. That would do. It would have to.

Backpack? Check. Phone? Check. ID? Check. She added a few dented cans of food and bags of myco to the saddle cages. Just in case. Then, crouching to make the fit, she zipped up the ramp and popped out into the backyard and into the burning yellow morning. She carefully closed the heavy door and popped the padlock back in place, trying to be quiet in case Christmas was finally able to find sleep.

For a reason she couldn't explain, she looked up at the neighbor's second story window, curtain pulled aside. A freckled 9-year-old face smeared against the glass, staring down at her. Little bugger is watching me. Noonie fought all urges and instead smiled and gave a wave. Trying to be the person she knew she was. Tommy slowly raised his hand... in front of his face and slowly... flipped up... his middle finger. Funny how he makes eye contact now. Little sociopath. She put away her smile and pointed at him, then pointed back to the cat colony lounging along the back wall, and then back to him. I'm watching you. You better fucking not. She did her best to shoot lasers out of her eyes. The grubby middle finger stayed steady. Followed by the introduction of... his tongue. Nice.

Noonie silently coasted down the sidewalk that ran along the side of the house and flew out onto the quiet street, kicking up a little dust as she sped away. She drifted past the differently-colored, cookie-cut brick houses. She rolled past memories of a different time, when the street hummed with life and laughter. The towering cottonwoods had stood like guardians then, their branches reaching across the pavement to touch fingertips, creating a living cathedral of dappled shade where children once played. On summer evenings, the trees cradled the birds and whispered secrets while parents gathered on front porches, sharing beers and dreams, their voices carrying on cool breezes drifting with scent of fresh-cut grass and backyard barbecues.

Christmas had told her about the block parties, how everyone would drag their picnic tables into the street, creating one long feast of shared dishes and shared stories. Kids would race their bikes up and down the asphalt, repurposed playing cards splick-splicketing in their spokes, while mothers traded recipes and fathers argued good-naturedly about football scores. Mrs. Anderson would appear with her famous apple pies, made from fruit grown in old Mr. Krupke's backyard orchard. The night would end with fireflies dancing between the houses and over the stone wall and children begging for five more minutes of play as porch lights winked on one by one.

Now those same cottonwoods were gone, save for the skeletal twins marking the street's entrance like forgotten gatekeepers—one barely clinging to life and a few leaves, the other dead but standing, for now. Noonie looked up into the branches reaching across the street to touch. How they sat against the sky like intricate flashes of lightning. She imagined them upside down, underground their mind-boggling networks like living lungs branching and breathing for themselves but also for the earth. She imagined them talking to one another, communicating, saying goodbye.

The yellow sky cast everything in the same sickly pallor, making the entire day feel like an endless, toxic sunset. Where children once played, there was only cracked pavement and silence. It was early morning and the pavement was already hot. The front porches stood empty, their paint peeling, their screen doors permanently latched. Security bars crossed every window, transforming homes into fortresses. A curtain moved in the Thompson house. She waved good morning, but the curtain fell back into place, defeated. Even the long-established branches and roots of the neighborhood seemed to be saying goodbye.

The old stone wall that gave the street its name now wore a crown of razor wire, glinting dully in the perpetual haze. At the street's start, security bollards rose from the pavement like steel teeth, protecting the residents from the chaos beyond. Driveways—with fathers proudly buffing the family sedans while water trickled into the street gutters, barefoot kids squealing as they ran through lawn sprinklers perpetuating carpets of green grass—now lay empty and stained with oil spots from vehicles long since abandoned or traded for food or used as housing for those who had nowhere else to go.

The houses still stood, still sheltered good people, but they had transformed from gathering places to survival pods. Neighbors who once shared coffee and gossip now exchanged only guarded nods through protective masks. Gardens that once burst with flowers and vegetables had withered to dust-blown patches of earth. The charm of the not-quite-cul-de-sac remained only in Christmas's stories, in his voice that grew soft when he spoke of better days, of community potlucks and impromptu front porch visits, of children's birthday parties that the whole street attended.

Yet something of that spirit endured, hidden behind the bars and bolts. The neighbors still watched out for each other, still shared what little they had, still remembered what it meant to be a community. But they did it quietly now, carefully, like keeping a precious secret. Always cautious. Always anxious that the other shoe would drop.

The street was still home, even if home had changed from a place of endless possibilities to a fortress against the end of the world.

She rolled past the security bollards at the end of the street and paused by the battered stop sign that had lost its position of power and control years ago. In front of her and to her left lay miles and miles of ash and anguish, including the place she once had called home. She could see the little ash tornados rise and fall, scattering dread in bursts of devilish wind. She knew the moving dots here and there were human scavengers raking through the misery, all these years later, hoping to find... anything. They took a risk scavenging during daylight hours, alone. Treasures found were not always treasures kept. Professional finders worked in groups or at night when ravenous eyes were resting.

The System had a name for everything outside the city's technological barriers: "the Waste." It was branded as such in all official communications, on maps, in school curricula—a linguistic trick that transformed communities of survivors into something disposable, something other. And like so many of the System's calculated manipulations, people gradually accepted the term, internalizing their designated worthlessness, living down to the propaganda that defined them. Even those who resisted the System in their hearts found themselves using the word—the Waste—as if their homes and lives were nothing more than refuse left behind by progress. Noonie hated the term but couldn't escape its shadow as she looked out over the desolation that had once been vibrant neighborhoods.

She pulled her mask up over her nose and mouth and secured it into place. Twisting her grip, she rolled over the hill's crest to her right. Beyond the mortal remains of suburbia, Alpha City loomed, rising from the yellow and brown bruise of smog like a jagged abscess, caustic and festering.

The city's perimeter had been secured by government forces after the fires, after the crops died, after the clouds evaporated, after the people started demanding their fair share. It was then, in a display of his characteristic hubris, that Holloway renamed it Alpha City, a symbol of his self-professed dominance.

The air got soupy as she sped down toward that darkness. Even with her goggles' air vents duct-taped closed, the smog burned her eyes. A decade ago, this would have been considered a bad air day. Now it was just Monday or Wednesday. Or whatever day it was. The days had become interchangeable for most, marked only by the schedules of rotating military patrols and water trucks.

She stayed near the middle of the street, scanning constantly between the road ahead and the hollow structures lining it. Homes had been mostly boarded up, fenced off by their residents. Most of the other buildings had been picked clean years ago, some homes for desperate squatters. It was quiet and still this morning. It looked like a ghost town, but people still lived here. It was still home. She imagined the old for sale signs that used to line the street as markets crashed and people steadily lowered their asking prices, praying. The AI-generated real estate agents had once smiled perfectly from the yard signs. If you lived here, you'd be home!

Now the streets were lined with tents tied to vehicles that had run out of fuel, stopped and never started again. Entire families were now living in the same family car that took them to work or to school, on vacations and shopping sprees.

"Good morning, Mr. Kemm!" Noonie shouted behind her mask and waved. A comma-shaped man with wild white hair and a long beard that was older than she, waved back a big open wave. He smiled and bowed and it tugged at her heart. She wanted to take them all in. To help them all. She slowed and spun around. She reached for two dented cans. Sloshing one up to her ear before handing them to Mr. Kemm. "This one might be peaches," she muffled through her mask, smiling with her eyes. She reached for the other cans and the sealed bags of shiitakes and sat them on top of the sun-faded hood of Mr. Kemm's residence. The wheels had been taken off the four-door car five or six years earlier, shortly after Mr. Kemm puttered it to its final resting place.

"Oooo. I will share," bowed Mr. Kemm. Eyes wide and bright behind his dirty face. She would hand him another filter mask, but she counted three on the dash pressed between the windshield and its cardboard sunscreen.

"I know you will. I'll bring more when I can. Are you feeling better?"

"Yes, yes. Only dizzy sometimes."

"You have enough water?"

"Yes, yes," bowed Mr. Kemm.

"I'll be at the clinic this weekend as always. Come see me if the dizziness gets worse, okay?"

"Thank you, Dr. Noonie. Thank you. Thank you."

Noonie bowed her head and met Mr. Kemm's eyes. And spun her bike back on its way. She thought of the difference between the people in the city, loyal to the System, and the people left out here with nothing. She thought about how good people always seem to suffer, while those who don't care... don't care.

She passed through old neighborhoods once alive and bustling with commerce, with laughter, with promise. Most people this morning were still sleeping, their windows rolled up tight, droplets of breath and sweat condensing on the inside, reminding even those who didn't want to be reminded—they were still alive. Most street residents would flee their sun-baked tin cans for better shade beside their vehicles or against nearby buildings as the day grew on. The neighborhood would come alive again, in a way. But the games of mahjong and chess, the impromptu musical jam sessions, the conversations between friends felt more like the shed skin of a spider feigning life, blowing in the kicked up dust, startling the unexpecting.

As she rounded the dull curve that would lead her down into the valley, the houses and buildings became fewer. The cars became fewer, the families became fewer. The atmosphere shifted. She didn't know these people. And for the most part, these people didn't know each other. The Curve had become an area known for rogue scavengers and worse. A hundred years earlier, The Curve earned the name "Salad Bowl" as trucks loaded with produce, making the descent into the city, repeatedly failed to slow enough to make the turn. Crates of fruits and vegetables would tumble into the yards of some of the earliest and most diverse residents of the area. Chinese, Mexican and African-American families lived side-by-side, growing their own vegetables, bathing in the creeks and working hard to make ends meet. Christmas retold his own grandmother's stories of growing up on The Curve. "We were dirt poor. But we ate pretty good," she'd told him. "All our food we grew ourselves right there along the creek, so we were pretty much vegetarians—and all organic! No such thing as chemicals on our food. Now you pay top dollar for what we scraped by on." She'd laugh when she talked about the trucks barreling down the hill, horns blasting. "Oh, a spill was like a gift from above. Everyone would gather to help the truckers reload, of course. But there was always ruined food no one else would buy. So the truckers would thank us with bruised and broken produce. We'd eat soup for weeks!"

The neighborhood of close-knit families was displaced when progress meant the widening of the road and a flattening of the curve. Diverse people had their place, it seemed. Just not together. Not happy. Not flourishing.

Now, along the curve, occasionally someone would emerge from the shadows or from behind a burned out car, desperate enough to risk a morning attack. Her threadbare tires, solid to avoid a life-threatening flat, crunched over broken glass and scattered gravel. The machine gun of sound ricocheted off the empty mixed-use storefront and homes, their windows long since shattered, salvaged or boarded up. She tightened her grip and accelerated to near-full speed, passing her memories of the community she loved. Loves.

That's where Solo's Bagel shop was.

There's where the neighborhood dive bar kept history alive through tall tales and other embellishments.

The juice shop where she'd study until all hours—until juice became a luxury item. Now emptied and abandoned.

She passed a group huddled around a flickering fire smoking out of a makeshift metal drum. Their faces, etched with weariness and desperation, barely registered her passing. Their clothes were patched and faded, their eyes guarded. Noonie felt inhuman avoiding eye contact. But in this world, connection was dangerous, vulnerability—a door left closed. Yet, she saw something in their averted gazes, a flicker of humanity in the disconnection, a shared understanding of their precarious existence. She could taste the black smoke from their fire even through the mask. People were beginning to turn to burning tires. The trees were all but gone now, cut down in their prime by climate chaos or for those desperate for fuel. Skeletons of fallen wooden houses were being picked clean. A constant reminder of the dwindling resources and the desperate measures people took to survive.

There's Toby's Pizza.

There's where they used to hold the farmers market. All gone.

Further down the road, a figure emerged from behind a burned-out school bus. He was tall and gaunt, his eyes scanning the street with desperation in them. Noonie's hand instinctively tightened on the accelerator. He wasn't looking at her, not yet, but she knew the signs. The way he shifted his weight, the subtle twitch in his movements. He was eyeing her bike.

Noonie accelerated, the bike's motor whining in protest, but punching it obediently. She veered sharply, narrowly avoiding a crater in the asphalt. The man's head snapped in her direction, his eyes narrowing. He took a step towards her, but Noonie was already gone, leaving him in a cloud of his own dust and the fading hum of her electric drive. "Hey, man, leave her alone!" she heard someone shouting behind her. She didn't look back.

The open space around the city was partly by design of a bygone era—when city people, at least those in power at the time, ached for nature. Those already primed for the System went along with it—open space helped property prices skyrocket. Now the open space was more of a moat, making it easier for drones to spot anyone nearing the perimeter. The city sign, peeling forest green, had its white letters, along with the numbers trying to keep up with the plummeting population, obliterated by guntoters from both sides. Those outside the city made it known this land was their land. Those tucked inside its walls made it known this land is our land. Stay the fuck out.

Blue lights strobed ahead. The yellow smog turned them a seasick green. Checkpoint.

The "wall" appeared gradually through the haze—not a crude steel or concrete barrier or rolls of razor wire, but something far more insidious. An invisible line of laser grids and motion sensors housed in strategically placed fence posts, created a technological cage that wouldn't obscure that beautiful wart of the skyline. A breach, a mere flicker of movement in the wrong place, would trigger an immediate drone response. Surveillance first, then, if deemed necessary, a militarized police intervention, or worse.

Noonie slowed her approach, making sure her ID badge was visible on her pack strap. The two MPs were familiar faces, even behind their masks: the younger one, eager to prove his authority, his uniform crisp and new, his hand hovering near his sidearm; and the older woman who'd seen too much to bother with pretense, rifle held in casual readiness, finger properly indexed along the receiver.

"ID," the young one barked, though he'd checked her credentials every morning for weeks. She unclipped her badge and handed it over, watching him make a show of examining it while his partner maintained her casual but ready stance.

"Purpose of travel?"

"Genetics research. Building 7." Same answer, same destination, same time as always. But procedure was procedure, and deviation was... discouraged.

"Remove goggles." He pointed at her face, including her mask in the demand.

The acidic air stung her eyes and throat as she complied, holding her breath until she could replace the protective gear. The young MP's eyes lingered a little too long on her face, a subtle reminder of their power. Although, she noticed he couldn't look her in the eye. He compared her to her ID photo, and then waved her through. No pleasantries exchanged—those belonged to a different world.

Behind her, she heard them stop another traveler, voices rising in argument. She didn't turn around. Better not to know. Certainly better not to get involved.

Billboards suddenly bloomed out of the bleak.

Shop the PLENTY app! Everything Your Family Needs is One Click Away! A cornucopia of groceries spilled open, promises of yesterday. *Delivery Only. Points Only were in smaller print at the bottom, as if anyone needed the reminder—a cruel tagline in a world where every transaction was a measure of one's worth. The points system, a crypto-currency developed by Holloway himself, was more than just money; it was a lifeline, a weapon, a shackle. Designed to keep the city from collapsing after the AI takeover—when most jobs dried up—it had quickly spread like a virus, infecting every corner of society. Banks and paper money were relics, a quaint remembrance of a time when value wasn't tied to the System's whims. Now, points could be added or subtracted with a keystroke, rewarding loyalty, punishing dissent. And at the top of the pyramid, the oligarchs, the puppet masters, held an infinite balance, their wealth as limitless as their power. The system was a constant, gnawing reminder of the chasm between those who had everything and those who had nothing, a system that kept the gears of society turning at the cost of human dignity.

Other signs bled through the murk as she passed:

The Solution. YOU Decide When You're Ready. FREE! Only at your local Peace Center. What looked like an energy drink in a small, shiny aluminum beverage can, printed with blue sky and white puffy clouds, mocked the brown smog curtain drawn behind the sign. Noonie hated the ads. The name—The Solution—chillingly clinical and efficient, reflected the System's approach to saving resources while weeding out the "weak." Free assisted suicide at local walk-in clinics. The nefarious literal solution in a can was simply flavored water laced with a powerful synthetic opioid that caused unconsciousness in under a minute, death in less than five. To the religious, the one-swallow serving was called "heaven in a can." To the non-religious, "instant relief."

Have you called your Mom and Dad today? Forever App. The giant image of an older woman's face laughing at nothing. In these modern times, every single voice conversation whether over a phone, or near an device, whether turned on or not, has been recorded. Now, with AI technology, a few seconds of conversation could duplicate a loved one's voice for an eternity of stitched-together conversations. Matched with social media clips and electronic messages, with enough data and a little AI learning, the conversations were nearly indistinguishable—if one could forgive the occasional odd moment.

Re-Elect Holloway! Man of the People! A giant white smile with a handsomely coiffed man behind it waved from the giant sign.

"Like we have a fucking choice," Noonie said out loud, to herself, to her pain. The billboards would be seen or read by next to no one, but they were maintained to keep up appearances. To show that everything is normal. Everything is fine. Everything is just fine.

The city rose above and closed in on her like the lid of a lead coffin slowly squeezing shut. At its heart, the Helix Hotel, a monument to Holloway's ego, twisted into the smog-choked sky, its narrowing peak a deceptive illusion of grandeur. All for show, mostly empty. The colossal structure spiraled upwards, its design a mockery of nature's elegance, twisting into the smog-choked sky. The building was a feat of engineering, but just another eyesore, a monument to human arrogance—thinking we could do better than nature. Its peak, deceptively narrow, gave the illusion of a height even greater than its already considerable size, a visual trick mirroring the deceptions woven into the man and the city itself.

The research complex rose before her like a fortress—which, in many ways, it was. No windows meant no weakness, they'd said during the redesign and construction. No way in or out except through heavily controlled access points. The outer walls were smooth concrete, broken only by surveillance cameras and motion sensors, and the Human Progress Corporation logo—a gargantuan stylized glyph of a human eye—etched deeply into the concrete, an ominous, portentous presence staring out over the city from all four sides of the massive cube. Security officers wearing the same corporate logo rather than military insignia stood guard at Building 7's entrance, their weapons just as lethal as those of their military counterparts—but shinier.

The landscape began to shift as Noonie entered Alpha City proper. The rough, broken asphalt of the outer ring gave way to smoother, better-maintained roads, though fissures spiderwebbed across the surface, the city's underlying decay seeking light of day. Buildings, though still bearing the marks of neglect, showed signs of attempted upkeep—a fresh coat of paint here, boarded-up windows there, a sad attempt to cover the rot. Corporate news feeds shone from the display windows of businesses still operating, blaring the System's synchronized messages to anyone passing by.

The intense heat kept most people inside. Corporate restaurants had tried adding water misters and shaded areas to keep outdoor customers comfortable. But now, customers sought refuge from the heat in air-conditioned interiors. The few people she passed wore a mix of faded rags and corporate-issued uniforms, their faces etched with a weariness that spoke of hardship despite the city's relative comforts. Some still wore filter masks, while most, seemingly resigned or indifferent, braved the thick, sweltering air. Makeshift stalls, relegated to the shaded side streets, sold scavenged goods and cheap, mass-produced trinkets, a stark reminder of the city's economic divide. Mostly empty storefronts, their windows plastered with fading advertisements, hinted at a once-thriving economy, now a ghost of its former self. Alpha City wasn't thriving, but it was surviving, clinging to a semblance of normalcy while the world outside its walls had already crumbled.

Three separate checkpoints stood between her and the bike storage area. She ID'd her way through. No words exchanged. No good-mornings. No nods. She locked up next to the handful of other cycles, most belonging to the few employees who, like her, opted not to live in the corporate housing blocks. The sterile pods offered security and comfort, but at the cost of constant surveillance, every movement monitored, every conversation recorded. She'd rather bike through hell than live in that gilded cage.

The dressing room required another card swipe. She changed into corporate-approved attire: tan slacks, logo-emblazoned polo shirt, white lab coat with the company's emblem on the sleeve. Each item felt like a layer of camouflage, helping her blend into their world.

The elevator's final card swipe and retinal scan marked the last threshold between worlds. As the doors closed, the environmental system hit her like a physical force. The blast of cold, processed air stung her nose with its icy purity, so different from the steaming chemical soup outside. Her sweat began to dry, the climate control erasing the last traces of her journey. She took a deep breath. It almost seemed wrong.

As the elevator climbed, Dr. Noonie Reyes emerged from behind her wasteland armor. By the time the doors opened onto the Genetics Floor, she had found that familiar clinical detachment, the professional mask that made her work possible. The broken-hearted, angry, determined human version of herself receded, hidden behind protocols and procedures.

The genetics lab was all glass and gleaming surfaces. Her workspace faced Dr. Chen's lab across the hall—a constant reminder of what she was working to change. Through the transparent walls, she could see the cages, rows upon rows of them, each containing a living being reduced to a test subject. The rats watched her with their shiny beady eyes as she passed. Sometimes she imagined she could feel their gaze following her, judging her complicity. She nodded to them as she kept walking. I love you. I'm sorry.

Chen was already at work. He wouldn't look up. There would be no good-morning nod. His graying hair was thinning a bit on top, and in the back. His face was etched with the lines of years spent hunched over, squinting through microscopes and at data screens and yelling at subordinates. In his mid forties, the seasoned scientist remained stuck in his old-school ways, relying on the outdated but lavishly funded animal research that the Human Progress Corporation favored. He moved between the cages with mechanical efficiency, never seeming to look at the animals' faces, never pausing to acknowledge their existence beyond the data they could provide. She'd tried once, early on, to suggest alternative testing methods—it was, in fact, part of what she was known for. The look he'd given her made it clear that such suggestions were not welcome. She would wave to him now and again, but even that, it seemed, was not welcome.

So instead she put her head down and focused on her own work, analyzing genetic markers for empathy, running simulations, and searching for patterns in the data. The corporation wanted to understand how empathy worked so they could control it—dampen it in some populations, enhance it in others. But she had other plans. If she could just unlock the right sequence, and find the right combination, flip that switch—maybe she could help end the tribalism and the warring and the cruelty. Maybe she could help people feel human again. Really feel. Not this sanitized, corporate-approved version of emotion, but the raw, real connection that humanity seemed to have lost. And desperately needed.

A squeak of fear from across the hall made her flinch. She didn't look up. Couldn't look up. Just focus on the work, she told herself. Change things from the inside. The words felt hollow, as always, even in her own mind. But what choice did she have? The world was burning. At least here she had a chance to do something about it.

I'm sorry.

Recognizing Noonie's face, her machine logged her into her terminal and pulled up yesterday's results as scheduled. Numbers. Data. Clean, objective facts that couldn't judge her for her cowardice or complicity. The Invisi-screen's soft blue glow reflected off the glass walls, creating the illusion that her lab was underwater, suspended in a sterile aquarium, while real life happened somewhere far above, or below, but outside.

The quantum modeling software she'd developed during her unconventional PhD work had caught the corporation's attention. While most geneticists were still trying to map individual empathy markers, she'd proposed that compassion operated more like a quantum field—interconnected, entangled, capable of instantaneous transmission across seemingly impossible distances. Her dissertation committee had called it revolutionary. The corporation had called it profitable.

She pulled up her latest simulation. The 3D rendering showed empathy patterns moving like predictable weather systems across populations, each point representing a potential transmission node. Chen thought it was all nonsense, of course. "Genetics is genetics," he'd say, his voice dripping with condescension. "Quantum mechanics has nothing to do with it."

But then, Chen still believed you could reduce everything to its component parts—isolate aggression in a protein chain, switch it on and off like a light. His lab—inches away but worlds apart—was testament to that outdated thinking: rats forced into conflict, their brain chemistry altered, their genes spliced and diced until they turned on each other. All in service of the corporation's ultimate goal: a population that could be controlled through genetic manipulation. Turn up aggression here, dampen empathy there. Create the perfect workforce, the perfect consumers, the perfect citizens.

Her own work—officially focused on suppressing the compassion response—revealed something far more interesting in the data: what she actually was looking for. Like looking at a photographic negative, she saw the inverse potential in every result. Each pathway they identified as a potential "off switch" was also, inevitably, an "on switch." The corporation saw control; she saw liberation.

Her quantum empathy theory had started as a late-night thought experiment in med school. She'd been studying both quantum entanglement and mirror neurons when she noticed the parallels—how empathy, like quantum particles, seemed to defy classical physics. Two people could experience matching emotional states instantaneously, without any clear mechanism of transmission. Mirror neurons didn't fully explain it. But quantum entanglement might.

The equations predicted that once a certain threshold of genuine compassion was reached in a population, it could spread exponentially through quantum entanglement at the neural level. No genetic modification required. Just one person feeling deeply enough could theoretically trigger others to feel more deeply too, creating a cascade effect. The corporation's genetic controls would be useless against it.

A sharp squeal from Chen's lab made her jaw clench. He was preparing for another forced confrontation trial. She watched him set up the station, using the same detached precision he might use to tune a radio. That's what worried her most about him—not the cruelty, but the complete absence of awareness that it was cruel. He was the perfect product of the System: brilliant, efficient, and utterly disconnected from the consequences of his work.

Movement in Chen's lab caught her eye. Chen was waving his arms at his assistant to "move out of the way." One of the smaller female rats—the control group, unmodified—was acting strangely. Instead of cowering from the modified aggressors, she rose up on her hind legs—her tiny front paws spread wide, almost like... like she was protecting the rats behind her.

"Well, that's new," Chen muttered, making a note. "Aggression in the control group."

But Noonie saw something different. The rat wasn't attacking. She was standing guard. When one of Chen's assistants had reached for the rats behind her, she squeaked—not the usual fear sound, but something almost like... communication. A warning. A negotiation.

Chen stepped closer to the cage. "Fascinating. The unmodified subject is displaying unprecedented aggressive behaviors." He pushed past his assistant and reached for a syringe.

The rat watched him approach, still upright, still protecting her companions. She bared her teeth, and barked tiny alerts, but didn't strike. Not until Chen's hand entered the cage. Then—almost gently, almost carefully—she bit him.

"Motherfucker!" Chen yanked his hand back, the little rat dangling for a split second and then falling back into the cage. Through the thin nitrile glove, a single drop of blood welled up on his finger. "Fuck." He instinctively sucked the tip of his punctured finger. "Record thith inthident," he said with his finger still in his mouth. "Full workup on thubject 22-F. I want to know what'th cauthing this aberrant behavior." He continued to suck at the small wound, already turning away to document his observations.

But Noonie couldn't look away from the little white rat. The rat was back on all fours now, grooming one of her cagemates with what looked almost like... tenderness.

By the end of the day, Chen was looking a little pale. "Must be coming down with something," he mumbled as he packed up early. "Run the evening trials without me," he said to any assistant who might have been listening.

As he walked toward the glass door, he paused. For the first time in all the years Noonie had known him, he turned back to look at the rats. Really look at them. His eyes moved from cage to cage, lingering on each small face, each pair of bright eyes watching him. Then his gaze met Noonie's through the glass wall between their labs. There was something there she'd never seen before—a question, maybe. Or the beginning of one.

She started to mouth, "Are you okay?" But before she could react, he averted his gaze, turned and hurried away, clutching his bandaged finger to his chest like he was afraid it would leave him.