I have never been arrested before. In a way, it is refreshing to be on the other side of the bars — back home in Hive Delta, the three of us helped arrest a small-time gang leader a few years ago. Here, in Alpha, we are trespassers and outsiders, our crime — generally existing outside of the Hive and trying to get in.

If Hive Beta was an unofficial capital of the Anthill, Hive Alpha was the government — the centerpiece of Humanity’s resistance against the vampires. I’ve been here just once, years ago, when I and Eliza were sworn into the Hive Guard and trained with our peers from other Hives.

Hive Alpha is built within an abandoned nuclear missile silo, around the missile itself. For this reason alone, the Hive is so secure and long-standing, with even the bloodsuckers being reasonably afraid to accidentally detonate an unexploded nuke right at their doorstep. What the vamps don’t know is that the missile is a dud — the payload salvaged and repurposed decades ago, put into a small reactor to power the Hive, with zero rocket fuel even to push this thing out of the silo.

“Ash? Are you sleeping?” Eliza asks and lightly kicks me in the thigh. I look up and see her looming above me, hands crossed on her chest.

“I’m thinking, Eliza. At least one of us has to do it, you know.” I retort. She kicks me again, this time harder.

“If you’re done abusing your brother, little moon, I suggest you sit back and relax. Maybe have a nap or something,” Salazar sounds off from the other corner of the cell, “This whole arrest thing is just a part of the procedure. We’ll be out soon.”

The old man’s eyes are closed and his back is against the wall — clearly following his own advice about a nap. I groan and stand up.

Our cell was small and claustrophobic for three people. No beds to sleep on, no chairs to sit on. Just a bucket in one corner and a rotting mattress in the other from one side, a metal grate on the other, and a weak lamp on the ceiling.

John was put into a solitary cell, with a sturdier door and a guard standing near. The fuckers also confiscated all of our stuff and refused to check up on John with an actual doctor. They put us here, closed the doors, and forgot about us for what felt like a few hours — I couldn’t tell the time without my watch. I approach the old man.

“Sal, I appreciate the optimism but I would appreciate answers more. Alpha was always secure and paranoid, but now it seems like they’ve been waiting for us specifically. Arrested us on sight,” I crouch so my eyes are on the same level as his, “Is this because of that “contact” of yours? What exactly are we putting ourselves into?”

Salazar opens one eye and grins weakly.

“Ashton, my boy, I have no idea. My job was to get you here and here we are. The rest will be explained by the contact, who should get us out any minute now,” he pauses then adds less confidently, “I hope.”

I’m not exactly impressed or happy with his explanation but I don’t press further. Instead, I sigh and return to my place near the wall. Eliza is still pacing across the cell nervously, restless.

I close my eyes and drift off. Only to be woken up by another kick in the thigh.

“Eliza, can you stop fucking kicking me, please?” I snarl and open my eyes. The figure looming above me is not Eliza. A guard, full riot gear, his face covered by a helmet. He is lanky, with spindly arms and legs, the added bulk of the armor looking out of place on his frame.

“How about I punch you instead, princess? Would that make you happier?” he growls and tries to pull me up by my throat.

I grab his arm and let him raise me, then grin and spit in his faceplate. The moment of confusion is just enough to secure the lock on his wrist, bending it at an odd angle. In one continuous sequence of moves, I step to the right, kick the guard in the calf to unbalance him, sharply pull his wrist down and the whole body follows. He is not exactly an amateur either — the bastard shifts his weight during my pull, letting the inertia tumble him into a roll rather than a fall, the armor suppressing the brunt of the impact.

The guard stands up just as quickly, several feet away from me, shaking his hurt arm and wiping the spittle from the faceplate with the other.

“I’m going to fucking choke you right here and now,” he snarls. I chuckle and assume a fighting stance, beckoning him with my left hand.

“Enough.”

The low, rumbling voice is like a slap in the face to the guard. He stands at attention, saluting to the person standing in the hallway. I follow the guard's gaze and awkwardly salute too. Of course, it just had to be him.

General Rushmore. The Iron General. The man responsible for creating the Hive Guard, who was one of the ideologues of the Hive distribution in the first place, who helped establish some semblance of order and government in the Anthill for the last fifty years or so. For all intents and purposes, he is the government.

The Iron General, standing in front of my cell and stopping me from fighting a fellow Guard. I suddenly feel very small and uncomfortable — I idolized the man since I was a child, like just about every other boy in the Anthill.

Rushmore was Black, tall, and still muscular despite his age. Broad shoulders, sculpted face with a square jaw and sharp cheekbones, clean-shaven and bald. The General was dressed in the officer’s uniform of the Guard — the same stripes on wrists and arms that mine has but with a long coat and an officer's cap over his head.

He enters the room and glares at me.

“Ashton Brooks. Scout of the Hive Delta. Is there any particular reason why you have attacked this officer?” Rushmore asks, his rumbling bass reverberating across the small cell.

“Sir, he attacked me first, sir,” I try to sound calm and self-assured. Rushmore scoffs.

“I find it hard to believe, son. Officer Wood, you’re dismissed. Scout Brooks, with me.”

He turns around and starts moving, hands crossed behind his back and fully expecting me to follow. I shrug and follow him, with Wood jostling me in the shoulder on the way out. I ignore him, this time.

We move from the brig zone of the complex and out to the main part of the command center at the lower parts of Hive Alpha, then up the staircase to the second floor, to what was once the control room of the silo. People keep greeting Rushmore, saluting him or giving quick reports, the whole building busy with Guards, analysts, and such.

“Where are we going, sir?” I ask. Rushmore replies without turning, continuing his stride across the corridors:

“My office. By the by, you’re a sound sleeper, Scout Brooks. Didn’t even notice your family leaving the cell. A bad quality for a scout, don’t you think?”

“It’s been a long night, General. Lots of running, lots of fighting. You’re welcome, by the way. We killed the Hunter. ”

He scoffs and turns to me for a moment:

“So I heard.”

When we finally reach the General’s office to the right of the control room, a guard closes the heavy metal door behind me. The room itself is spartan, clean and dominated by a huge executive oak desk in the center of it, cluttered with papers and folders. Rushmore goes straight to the old-fashioned leather chair behind the desk and beckons me to sit in the opposite chair. I drop into the worn leather and find little respite in it — it’s as if the chair was specifically designed to hold the occupant as rigid and uncomfortable as possible. When Rushmore sees me seated, he states:

“You’re a long way from home, son.” He stares at me, expecting me to answer something to keep the conversation going. The problem is that I cannot tell him anything right now and I hate talking about nothing in particular. I don’t know who we are supposed to meet, and I don’t know where Eliza is. I start with the last question.

“Where is my family, sir?”

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Rushmore raises an eyebrow and replies slowly as if weighing each word, his eyes fixed on my face:

“Your siblings and Salazar are having a similar discussion with a certain individual. I am here to prepare you, to help you ease into it, so to speak. I take it you’re not a fan of small talk, correct?”

I grunt in response. Rushmore nods and declares with zero context:

“We are losing, Scout Brooks.”

“Come again?”

“I’m getting straight to the point of the discussion. We are losing the war against the vampires,” Rushmore elaborates, then takes a hefty folder from the top of the pile to the right of him and throws it my way, sliding it across the enormous table. I catch it and open the folder, an unpleasant feeling creeping up on me. Inside are several pages of graphs, with dates and numbers, showing a trend of some kind.

“What am I looking at, sir?”

Rushmore stares me right in the eyes, his voice emotionless, as he answers:

“You are looking at the countdown to our extinction. This folder shows the existing data and a projection of how many years the Anthill can hold on, with the estimate rounded down to more pessimistic numbers, just to be safe. Flip to the last page.”

I do that and see where the graph ends, with the final estimate written in big, red numbers and letters. Five years, ten months and eleven days. The date of the countdown starts at last month.

“I, uh,” I have to lick my suddenly dry lips before proceeding, “I’m not sure I understand, sir. What happens after five years and ten months?”

Rushmore drums his fingers on the table, annoyed at my question.

“The last known holdout of humanity dies. It can be starvation, civil unrest, or a raid from the Tunnel Rats and the vamps. It’s not important - all scenarios are accounted for. What’s important is what we do about it.”

He watches me intently, gauging my reaction. I scoff and say:

“With all due respect, sir, but it seems like a load of bullshit. We have been surviving in the Anthill for what, eighty years, give or take? We already have established food and tool production all over the tunnels, even trade routes between the Hives. We have a civilization here, as much as one can call this,” I point at the world behind his office window, "civilization.”

Rushmore shakes his head.

“I didn’t want to believe it either, at first. I had the numbers double, even triple-checked, the best minds of the Anthill joined together on this task. The numbers add up, with small discrepancies between the months and the days. But it’s always five years. Five years, Scout Brooks. After that, well, who knows? The Humanity with capital H will live on as slaves and cattle, any attempt at unrest and freedom smothered in its wake. But we, the Anthill, people who live in Hives? We will all become just a cautionary tale.”

Rushmore stands up and opens a safe behind him, then pulls out an old bottle of something, amber liquid sloshing inside. He places two glasses on the table, then sits back down and asks:

“Fancy some whisky?”

I shake my head and ask instead:

“Why are you telling me all this? Are you Eliza’s contact? Was it all some kind of a roundabout way to get us on board with whatever this is?”

He chuckles and replies, smiling:

“Smart man. Quickly put it all together. Yes, Scout Brooks, I am the contact and I have brought you three here for a reason. Enticed your sister with a large sum of tokens through third-party mediators and helped set up a suitable patrol route for you to slip away. Salazar was just a way to get you to Alpha.”

He pours some whisky and slowly drinks it, savoring the liquor. I have to practically pry information from him. This is starting to get irritating.

“To what end, General? What’s so special about me and mine? I mean, you could have just ordered us to get here. You’re a General, the General after all.”

Rushmore puts the glass back on the table, empty. For a second, he looks very tired.

“I couldn’t just order you here, Brooks. We have enemies in our midst, right in this building even. There are not many people I can trust and one such person asked me to watch over you and your sister, many years ago. I did just that and now I think you are our best chance. Do you truly think the vampires don’t know, how weak we actually are? They have double agents, we have double agents, it’s like Cold War of pre-Dawn times all over again.” I want to interject but he raises a finger and stops me.

“I’ve read your file, I’ve interviewed your commanders, I know a lot about you if not everything.”

He pauses and sends another folder to me. It has my name on it. I don’t open it. Rushmore continues anyway:

“No respect for authority, an individualist to the core. A good athlete, an even better fighter, a tactician. Eliza is the same, except she’s a marksman, not so great in close quarters. John - well, he’s a special case, arguably more dangerous than both of you combined. The Hunter’s recent demise at your hands only proves my point. I’ve been watching over you and Eliza since the day your father went to work for the vamps.”

“Betrayed us, you mean?

I clench my fists in a knee-jerk reaction, then force myself to relax. He doesn’t miss it.

“Yes, Brooks. You could say that,” his voice is low, soothing as if he’s trying to calm a wild animal, “The point is I know you would be the best fit for the mission at hand. I am also not the only one who thinks that way.”

A suspicion crawls into my mind but I smother it at the same instant. It can’t be him, that’s impossible.

“We have collectively decided that I should give you the rundown since we strongly believe you would overreact otherwise, derailing the mission at the most crucial moment of preparation.”

Again with the “overreacting” bit. Irritating.

“General,” I try to keep my voice as level as I can, ”Whatever it is, I would like you to show it to me already, let me meet these people. It gets kind of tedious, waiting and listening to you talk.”

Rushmore stares me down, his gaze heavy. Then he cracks a smile.

“Let’s go then.”

The General leads me through the Hive, an armed convoy to my side. It’s hard to tell if it’s for my protection or to not let me run away. We move between the crude shacks and tents, a giant missile constantly looming at the periphery of my vision. The smell of fried meat and mushrooms makes me salivate and reminds me that the last time I ate was however many hours ago. Rushmore personally returned my watch so now I at least know that it's half past ten in the morning already.

Just as in the command center, people in the main Hive greet the Iron General, give me suspicious glances or avoid us altogether. I can hear someone haggling in a shop shack down the section we’re in and a dog barking somewhere a level above us. We keep moving down, to the lowest sections of the silo. Rushmore doesn’t say a word to me and I don’t speak either, ruminating on what he said.

Eventually, we reach a heavy steel door with a wheel, like a bunker within a bunker, with another pair of guards in riot gear posted near it. They salute Rushmore and the tallest of the two approaches the General, whispering something into his ear. Rushmore nods and slaps him lightly on the shoulder.

“Good job, Sergeant McTavish. You and Scout Brooks —with me. The rest — stay put, stay on guard.”

McTavish grunts and gets the door, spinning the wheel and pulling it open. We enter and the Sergeant closes the door behind us, falling in step with me. Behind the door, there is a long corridor lit up only by the red emergency lights. We cross it and enter the main room. The room is right under the missile, a junction for several maintenance corridors ending in this big cylindrical hall. A big ventilation fan is inside the floor of the hall, covered by a grate, spinning slowly and emitting a steady but quiet hum. Yellow light is coming from below the grate, courtesy of several powerful lamps all around the fan’s tunnel. I can see tables put all around the hall, some details on them, and a giant contraption in the center of the whole room. There are people too. It takes me some time to process what I’m looking at.

I see Eliza, who gives me a slow wave, her face concerned. Then Salazar, who’s leaning on a table and staring at the floor, his arms crossed on his chest. I recognize the general hulking shape of John, who stepped away further into the dark. And then there is him.

The fucking bastard. I knew it.

“Hello, son,” my Father says and starts approaching with a weak smile on his face. I raise my hand in a “stop” gesture and Father stops, his smile disappearing. I turn a hundred-and-eighty degrees, facing the General. I’m so angry I practically spit out each word:

“Whatever it is you want me to do? I’m not doing it if he’s involved. Let me out.”

“I’m afraid I can’t, Scout Brooks. I’m-

“I don’t give a fuck, General. Let me out or I’m gonna let myself out, over your unconscious body.”

Sergeant McTavish bristles at that, ready to attack me any second. Rushmore puts a hand on his shoulder.

“As amusing as it would be to watch Sergeant teach you some manners, we don’t have the time for family drama. You will work with your father and the rest of your family and you will do what I need you to do because it’s bigger than all of us.”

“Oh, enlighten me, sir, what’s oh so fucking important?” I inject as much venom into my tone as I can. Rushmore ignores it and stares me right in the eyes as he replies:

“Behind you is the biggest EMP bomb in the world. I need you to deliver it.”