Chapter 25 Vanguard #2
I nod, but I don’t tell her the rest. I don’t tell her I know exactly what happened because I made it my business to know. Pulled every string, called in every favor, tracked down every officer who was there that night until I had the full picture burned into my brain.
Twelve officers. They sent twelve armed ‘federal’ goons to raid a twenty-five-year-old woman’s apartment at 12:48 in the morning.
A no-knock warrant, something issued at the drop of the hat in those days.
She woke up to flashlights and shouting and men in tactical gear flooding her bedroom, and they say she reached for her phone on the nightstand.
Maybe to call 911. Maybe to call me. Maybe just to record what was happening, because that’s who Emma was.
She documented everything, believed in the power of bearing witness.
Or maybe she didn’t reach for anything at all. Maybe she just sat there in her bed, hands up, waiting for the execution she knew was coming.
An agent fired three rounds. Two to the chest, one to the head.
They found no weapons in the apartment. The agent wasn’t even placed on leave. He was probably promoted. Congress did nothing, same as it ever was, and no charges were ever brought. State-sanctioned violence is woven into the country’s DNA, after all.
But I knew the truth. Everyone knew the truth. They’d been watching her, wanting her taken out ever since she delivered her speech on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial on the cusp of the Dark Decade, a speech I can recite by heart because it lives in my bones.
“They keep asking when the war will end. Syria, Iran, the forever wars our brothers and sisters have been fighting since before most of us could vote. But here’s what I’ve come to understand: the war already ended. It just changed addresses.
The surveillance. The no-knock raids. The algorithms that decide who’s a citizen and who’s a threat.
The behavioral prediction systems flagging you for what you might do.
These aren’t new inventions. We exported them first. We tested them on villages in places our news won’t name. And now, the weapons have come home.
I know what some of you are thinking. November. The next election. If we just mobilize, if we just vote harder—
Look around you. Look at who funds both sides.
Look at the defense budgets that pass unanimously.
Look at the tech company contracts that survive every administration.
The Democrats aren’t coming to save us. The Republicans never pretended they would.
This isn’t left versus right anymore. It’s top versus bottom. And we are very, very far from the top.
But here’s what they don’t want you to remember: they tried this before.
They tried it in Baghdad and Kabul, in Sana’a and Mogadishu.
They had the guns and the bombs and the satellites and the endless money, and it didn’t work.
You can’t occupy people forever. You can’t surveil your way into legitimacy.
So yes, it’s here. And yes, it’s terrifying.
But we’re going to do what people have always done when their governments fail them.
We’re going to build something new. Not inside these broken systems—outside of them.
Mutual aid networks. Community defense. Real solidarity that doesn’t depend on who’s in the White House.
They’re trying to turn collapse into control. Fine. Let them. Because when the institutions crumble—and they will—we’ll already have our own.”
I first heard that speech when I was deployed, a solider who became a soldier because they didn’t know what else to do.
The guilt I felt for being where I was while America was starting to crumble, the fact that it was my sister spearheading some of the movement—it’s guilt I still carry to this day.
Guilt upon guilt upon guilt.
I don’t tell Mia any of this, though, because it’s several levels too deep on a day I’ve already emptied my heart out to her.
“My father died six months after Emma,” I go on, finding my voice again. “Heart attack. They said it was natural causes, but I think he just…stopped. Stopped trying to live in a world without her.” I pause. “I almost stopped too. Would have, probably, if Julia hadn’t found me.”
Mia tenses slightly at her name. I don’t blame her.
I continue. “She came to my father’s funeral.
Said she’d been watching me for a while.
She had her eyes on my military record, my psych evaluations, my potential.
Said she could give me a purpose, a way to make sure what happened to Emma never happened to anyone else.
” I let out a sour laugh. “I was so fucking broken by then, I believed her. I would have agreed to anything that made the pain stop. And while I knew Global Dynamix was a horrible company, they weren’t the military or US government—at least that’s what I wanted to believe.
I wanted so badly to distance myself from the very people who killed my sister for speaking out. ”
“What did they do to you?” she asks. “What was the procedure?”
I’ve been dreading this question, and I’m surprised it’s taken her this long to ask me about it, especially since it’s more than relevant to my profile piece.
“They enhanced me. That’s the official term.
They took their time with it too; I was sequestered for years in their labs and facilities.
All the tests and training and procedures, then more tests, more training, more procedures.
Each time, they made me faster, stronger, better in every measurable way.
” I hold up my hand, turning it in the golden light.
It looks human and feels human because I am human, but I know what’s underneath the skin—the technology baked into my reinforced bone structure, the neural mesh that lets them monitor my brain.
“Then there was the final procedure,” I say slowly.
“They told me it would complete the enhancement, unlock my full potential.” My jaw tightens.
“I don’t remember much of it by design, just the going under, counting backward.
They say you don’t dream while under anesthesia, but I dreamt like someone losing their mind.
The things I saw…that darkness. It still haunts me.
” I shake my head, refusing to think about it further.
“And then…waking up. Afterward, I was different. Stronger, yeah. Faster. Maybe even smarter. But also…” I search for the words.
“Disconnected. Like there’s a pane of glass between me and everything else.
I don’t get tired the way I used to, don’t get that hungry.
Sometimes, I catch myself going through the motions of being a person—eating food I don’t need, pretending to sleep—and I wonder how much of me is still the kid who grew up in this house and how much is just… the device they built.”
Which is probably why my feelings for you are so consuming, I think but I don’t dare say.
Mia is quiet for a long moment. Then, she shifts, turning to face me, her hand coming up to cup my jaw.
“Look at me.”
I do. Her eyes are dark and serious, pinning me in place, like she can see through all the walls, all the armor, straight to the broken thing underneath.
“You feel guilt,” she says. “About your mother, about Emma, about not being there to save them. A device doesn’t feel guilt.
” Her thumb traces my cheekbone. “You feel joy when you fly, frustration when you can’t help someone, fear when you think about losing control.
Devices don’t feel those things either.”
“What if that’s just conditioning? What if Julia programmed me to?”
“You feel something for me.” Her brows come together, looking so sweet and vulnerable. “Don’t you?”
The question cuts through every defense I have.
“Yes.” The word comes out hoarse. “God, yes. More than I should. More than I know how to handle.”
“Did Julia program that?”
“No.” I know this with absolute certainty. Whatever else they did to me, this feeling, this ache in my chest when I look at her, this need to be near her, to protect her, to show her who I really am…that’s all mine. “No, this is real.”
“Then you’re still you, Nate. Whatever they did to your body, however much they changed—the man who protected his sister, the soldier who wanted to save people, the person who looked at me on that rooftop and made me feel like I wasn’t alone for the first time in years—that’s still you. That’s not programming.”
She kisses me, soft and slow and achingly tender.
This woman will be the end of me, I just know it.
When she pulls back, her eyes are wet.
“I see you,” she whispers. “The real you. And I’m not going anywhere.”
We stay in the hayloft all afternoon, the sun slanting toward the horizon sometimes talking, sometimes sitting in total silence except for the creak of the barn and the wind whispering in the rafters.
I tell her about the hunting trips with my father, the only times we ever connected.
About the night when I was eleven that I got so angry and scared, I pushed my mother down and took the belt for it.
About Emma sneaking into my room afterward, whispering, it’s not your fault. None of it is your fault.
Mia tells me more about her brother, about the accident that took him and her mother, the guilt she carries for surviving it when she was safe at home. The life she had to leave behind, the grief they had to run from. We trade scars like currency, each revelation making the next one easier.
By the time the sun shifts to deep gold, I feel lighter than I have in years, emptied out and filled back up with something cleaner.
But underneath the lightness, a familiar weight is growing.
My watch sits on my kitchen counter at the penthouse. For the first time in two years, no one knows exactly where I am. No one can reach me if something goes wrong.
“You’re thinking about it,” Mia says. She’s gotten good at reading me—too good. “The watch. Being off-grid.”
“Damn hard not to.” I look out through the gaps in the barn wall, at the deepest blue sky. “Right now, somewhere, something bad is happening. I know it. A fire. A robbery. A car crash. Something I could stop if I was there. Someone I could help.”
“You can’t be everywhere.”
“I know.” But knowing doesn’t help. “It’s just…” I lick my lips, trying to find the words, “this is the first time I’ve chosen myself over the job. First time I’ve said ‘no, I’m taking this for me.’ And part of me feels guilty as hell for it. A big part.”
She’s quiet for a moment. Then, she says, “When I was starting out in journalism, I had an editor who worked me into the ground. Sixteen-hour days, weekends, holidays, you name it. If there was a story, I was on it. I burned out completely within a year. When I finally collapsed, she sat me down and said, ‘You can’t pour from an empty cup. You have to take care of yourself before you can take care of anyone else.’ Which, you know, was something, considering she was the one who was working me to the bloody bone.
But she had a point. I needed to make time for myself, and if I didn’t advocate for it, no one else would.
” She shifts closer, resting her head on my shoulder.
“You’ve given them everything, Nate. Your body, your privacy, your life.
Is it really so wrong to take one day for you? ”
I think that over. I know part of me says yes, it is wrong. Duty doesn’t take days off. People are counting on me, and I can’t afford to be selfish. The city of New York can’t afford for me to be selfish.
But her head is warm against my shoulder, and the sky is beautiful, the air sweet. For the first time in longer than I can remember, I feel something close to peace.
“No,” I say finally. “I guess it’s not.”
Danny appears in the barn doorway, silhouetted against the waning light. “Boss? Sorry to interrupt, but the sun’s going down in an hour, and I’m deflecting calls like crazy. We should head back—unless you want to spend the night.”
I look at Mia. She looks at me.
“What do you think?” I ask.
She smiles—a lopsided smile that spears my heart—and says, “I think we should stay.”
I nod at Danny. “You mind heading into town? If Pat’s Blues and Burgers is still there, you could pick up patty melts for us all.”
“I’ll do my best,” he says, touching his fingers to his forehead in salute.
“Patty melts?” Mia asks.
“Hope you brought your lactose pills.”