Chapter 2 The Fracture
The Fracture
The National Stability Force shall oversee all corrective measures to enforce compliance and re-education of nonconformists, including compulsory labor and supervised custodial interaction with military personnel.
It shouldn’t have started the way it did either. As I stepped out of Theo’s office, the events that had brought me to this moment played through my mind like a horror show through a child’s viewfinder.
Richard Haynes had been president for six months when I first heard about the controversial New American Order.
Their ideals centered on this idea of uniformity.
True Americans, they said, fit a certain mold.
They looked a certain way. Held certain values.
In a televised speech, the New American Order was lauded by President Haynes as a much-needed organization to bring the US back to its grand origins—one people, one religion, secure borders.
And I laughed. Because hadn’t we done this before, a century ago? This was 1930s Germany all over again. No way would people fall for this. My father, on the other hand, was a political journalist, and their rhetoric appalled him.
We demand the union of all Americans.
Only true Americans should be citizens.
All non-American immigration must be prevented.
It wasn’t long before the NAO disseminated throughout the administration.
American citizens of questionable descent were imprisoned and expatriated.
Women were systematically removed from employment for the betterment of the nuclear family.
Our overextended government was dismantled, and the people thought, Good. It’s gotten too big anyway.
We were all idiots.
Now, walking away from Theo’s office was like floating in a dream.
My gaze drifted over the familiar surroundings of headquarters, suddenly colorless as I balked at what I’d agreed to.
The museum we’d covertly transformed into our home base was a winding building.
Rooms led into more rooms with seemingly no end.
Half stairs would fade into oddly shaped alcoves with glass display cabinets, now empty except for the ever-present layer of dust. Sporadic ornamental fireplaces and dried-up fountains decorated several rooms that had been converted into sleeping quarters or training facilities.
On the ground floor, three French doors led to stone terraces, though the windows had been shuttered by metal.
The back patio opened out onto extravagant sloping gardens, decorative ponds, and a gazebo with a single bench inside, all overgrown and rundown with time.
Far behind that, a creek was crisscrossed by quaint wooden bridges.
An ode to what once was.
Tragic beauty.
In the current state of cruelty and unrest, the artistry seemed wasted.
Violence had darkened our lives even in the days when the gardens had still been manicured and neat, so much that by this point, I hardly thought twice about it.
I was thinking now.
I didn’t want to do this.
I didn’t want to be a plaything for a Hunter.
Hunters enjoyed violence the way normal humans basked in sunlight—it was an expected boon to life on earth.
When President Haynes was found guilty of violating the Fourteenth Amendment two years into his term, I rejoiced.
Surely this meant people would finally see the ruthlessness inherent in his administration.
But the next day, the judges were doused in gasoline and set on fire. Members of the NAO murdered them—unofficially, of course—and their loyalists celebrated.
His dissenters went quiet. Fear seeped into our bloodstream, an icy poison.
“It is a tragedy,” President Haynes said in a statement following the event.
“Sad. Very sad. My thoughts are with the families of Judges Hannity, Armstrong, and Strauss. Even though I disagreed with their decisions, no one should face violence for doing their job. I have always said our legal system needs reform. These are the things that happen when you let illegal criminals into your country, when you forget the importance of loyalty and family, when you allow women and dissenters to serve in positions of power. We must restore law and order to make this country safe for all true Americans.”
The subsequent spree of brutality against judges and representatives who disagreed with the party went ignored and unchecked.
No one saved us from the violence.
Just like no one would save me from it now.
I passed a doorway to one of the downstairs common rooms, and Devon’s voice called out, “What did the general want?”
For two seconds, I considered ignoring him. Did I have the mental capacity to pretend everything was fine?
Instead, I entered the room and flopped onto the couch next to him. “Nothing important. Checking on me. You know how he is.”
Adam sat nearby, strumming his guitar, but he stopped, curious eyes meeting mine. Born with a level of trustworthiness that shouldn’t be allowed, Adam was often privy to information most didn’t have. Would he find out about this? Did he already know?
“Heard the Prime Delegate is here,” he said, referring to Williams.
“Yeah,” I replied. “Something happened with the Hunters, I guess. Theo wouldn’t talk.”
Adam raised a brow. “No surprises there. Hunters gonna hunt.”
Oh, the truth of that.
Toward the end of his term, when presidential elections drew closer and we had the slimmest chance of ousting him, Haynes enacted martial law and instituted the National Stability Act—a sweeping set of legal doctrines that dismantled the presidency and created an autocracy under a white flag boasting the symbol of the NAO, the Brotherhood Cross.
With it, he also created a brand new branch of the military.
The National Stability Force.
The NSF was sold to the American people as a body to protect us.
Really, it was the militarized police force of the NAO, intent on eradicating dissidents.
We started calling them Hunters the moment we realized they were authorized to shoot citizens dead in the streets.
A protest near the Capitol turned into a bloodbath when Hunters gunned down hundreds of Americans merely for disagreeing with the NAO.
The verdant grass of the National Mall ran crimson, ornamented with the bodies of innocent men and women, people who only wanted to exercise their right to peaceful protest.
The Capitol Hill Massacre had been proof that the NSF didn’t exist to protect the people. It existed to protect the party.
A Hunter has come forward offering information.
Another roll of my stomach brought the acrid taste of bile, which I had to swallow down. Why had I agreed to be his contact?
I forced Tekqua’s face to the forefront of my mind. Insider information would likely be the only way I’d ever gain knowledge of what happened to her. If she’d really been captured, maybe I could find her—even if I had to succumb to compulsory labor or custodial interactions to do it.
More than that, maybe I could help end it all.
Because the worst part was that the NAO had achieved their goal—we were living in a New America, one in which the government had been weaponized against those who didn’t fit the mold.
They’d infiltrated our schools and hospitals, determining what our children would learn and who our doctors would treat.
They censored our internet, allowing us access only to NAO-approved sources.
To end the war on deliberate political mendacity, they allowed a single national news outlet—Unified News—and controlled all the information disseminated.
The mass exodus that followed the Capitol Hill Massacre was the nidus of war.
With our airports controlled by the NAO, Americans became refugees as they drove, biked, or even ran across the militarized borders to safer territories.
These dissidents were called rebels and charged with treason.
Border patrol was ordered to gun them down on sight.
Suddenly, the NAO wanted everyone kept inside as opposed to kicking everyone out.
Our neighbor to the north opened its arms, appalled by the new regime. President Haynes deemed this an act of aggression and claimed Canada was harboring enemies of the state.
He declared war, sending troops to the borders to attack the peaceful nation north of us.
The Security Restoration Campaign.
With the presidential office suspended, Haynes named himself the Commander. He ratified a novel constitution for the NAO and called his new nation the Unified States of America.
He tore our country in half, and the people who didn’t agree, the dissidents, those still brave enough to fight back… Well, we did the only thing we could.
We sank our nation into the sea of civil war.
It would be years before anyone called it the Fracture, but whoever coined it hit the nail on its bloody, jagged head. It divided the entire world into slivers.
The UN, dismantled.
NATO, destroyed.
The WTO, demolished.
No one ever believed it could happen. There were too many fail-safes, too many protections.
We overestimated the strength of those defenses against a power-hungry man in want of a kingdom to rule.
A man with a loyal following of zealots.
A man who’d convinced them all their greatest enemy was within.
He tore us apart from the inside.
Even now, I wondered where we’d gone wrong. How had it come to this? How were we losing?
I gazed at the haggard remains of our rebellion—off-duty soldiers, clustered around janky tables, conversing on threadbare loveseats and sofas.
Devon fiddled with the threads on the cushion between us, bringing my attention back to him.
He was thin, almost delicate, with devious and fine-spun features.
Adam, on the other hand, was a teddy bear.
He had a quick, easy smile and warm eyes.