Alex sat on one of the benches in the operations complex’s gym. The space occupied half of Building One’s second floor and offered treadmills, spin bikes, free weights, and resistance machines. The clock on the wall told her it was just after two in the morning. She was alone, as she had been since her arrival an hour ago. The day shift was asleep and those covering the night were unlikely to bother her.

Two hours earlier, she had awakened from her dreamless slumber and gone to the shower. Her right shoulder, still swollen and black-and-blue, ached whenever she moved it. She had thought going for a run or working one of the machines would help loosen it up. However, even after an hour of sitting and staring at the gym equipment, she had yet to begin working out.

The floor-to-ceiling mirrors behind the weight racks offered constant reminders of the battle in New York: the scratches on her face, the faint burn mark on her cheek from the hot bullet casing, and the bruises on her knees and down her legs.

Did it really happen? Wasn’t it just a bad dream?

In a random kaleidoscope, the events flickered through her memory like a movie on fast-forward: the young man who had cut his own throat, the gutted empty skeleton, the explosions of blood and brains from the two men on the bridge, Hensley falling as if he had tripped and then lying still with a small hole in his helmet, Webb with his strange black mask, and Martin with a metal one, too.

Martin…

He was no longer simply General Martin of the New England Alliance. He was her biological father. Did that change anything, though? All that was different was that she knew. She and the team had still fought the first battle of what might well turn into a war. She was with the Directorate. He was with the NEA. Knowledge and genetics couldn’t change battle lines, couldn’t bring back the people who had already died. But what about going forward? She pictured Martin’s helicopter lifting off from the rooftop and disappearing into the flaming, smoke-blackened skies over New York City.

Alex closed her eyes to ward off the memories.

Manhattan lay over a thousand miles away from Colorado Springs. Yet she still felt so close to it all. The granite mountain that was supposed to protect the complex from a nuclear blast couldn’t ward off the horrific sights and smells from those firefights. The training hadn’t been enough. Nowhere near. Because how did you train for watching someone’s head explode or seeing one of the members of your team sprawled dead on the ground?

She looked up as the door opened with a shrill creak. To her surprise, Captain Shepherd entered and walked toward the men’s locker room. A gym bag hung from his shoulder. Shepherd spotted her and paused. They held eye contact. She raised her hand in awkward wave. Shepherd looked from her to the locker room door before altering his course.

“You training for the four hundred?” His cheerful voice interrupted her somber, melancholy memories and almost irritated her.

“Not exactly,” she said and gently massaged her bruised shoulder.

“I saw you win the women’s sprint competition a few years back. That was pretty impressive.”

The competition had been one of the Directorate’s annual morale building events at Peterson Air Force Base. She had felt so proud after the race, standing on the winner’s box with the gold medal around her neck, waving at her father in the front row.

There was an awkward silence, and she realized she had not acknowledged Shepherd’s comment. She nodded and then turned her gaze back across the gym. She was rarely alone with Shepherd or any other member of the team. Her conversations with him from before New York were always about training. Now… they were all closer, weren’t they? She and Shepherd and everyone else. The survivors of the battle. During a ceremony years ago, Lunde had quoted from an old Shakespeare play. Something about shedding blood together and becoming brothers. Did that count for women, too?

“Trouble sleeping?” Shepherd said.

Alex regarded him for a long moment. In the past, the questions like those always accompanied a mild squint of his eyes, him studying her – or more accurately, him assessing whether she had what it took. Not that she could blame him, really. She had been an unknown back then. An amateur at best, a liability at worst. A girl who had lived a sheltered life within the mysterious Cheyenne Mountain complex. A girl with no training joining a newly-formed unit of the Directorate’s best soldiers. Yet now, his voice carried genuine concern.

She nodded, slowly. “I slept earlier. Too early. I thought I’d come here and work off some energy but…”

“Don’t push yourself too hard. We just went through a lot.”

“How come you’re in the mountain?”

“I was working with Sergeant Paul to put together our debrief. I drove over earlier this evening and… Well, time flies when you’re having fun, you know? Figured I’d work off some energy, too.”

“Don’t push yourself too hard.”

Shepherd chuckled. “Good advice.”

“Did you get everything done?”

“For the debrief? Yeah, mostly. I’ll be here a couple hours early tomorrow to put on the finishing touches.”

“Sounds like a pain.”

“You know, when they told me, ‘Shepherd, you’ve got leadership quality, why don’t you try out for the officer corps?’ I never thought I’d end up spending so much time putting together slides and splicing helmet cam footage. I swear I’ve learned more about computers and software than small unit tactics since I got here.”

“Do you regret it?”

“Hell, no. I’d take Colorado Springs any day over where I grew up. The pay’s a lot better, too.”

Alex lowered her gaze to the floor. At the start of her training, she had been so excited to finally get out of the mountain and do something, even if it involved rigorous work that often left her entire body aching in the aftermath. After New York, though, could she really say any of it had been worth it? They had gone to the NEA to discuss a treaty and had ended up starting a war. And two of them hadn’t come back home. If she had never agreed to join the team, would any of them have ended up in Manhattan? Without the team, Hensley and Neill would still be alive.

“Will you tell me something?” Shepherd said, quietly.

She looked up and found uncertainty in his expression.

“Will you tell me what General Martin said to you?”

My “new father.” First Ellzey and now Shepherd.

She could almost see Martin’s face, or rather his mask with its steel blue eyes looking at her through the slits. And what did he say? At the forefront of her mind was only the way his soft voice had caressed her name.

“I understand if you don’t want to… or can’t talk about it,” Shepherd said.

Alex looked at Shepherd. His face was deeply tanned and freckled. Although he was only a few years older than she was, hints of crow’s feet wrinkles stood out at the corners of his eyes from sun exposure and squinting. He was looking away toward the treadmills, seeming almost embarrassed he had brought up her now-classified meeting with General Martin. She wanted to tell him everything: about Martin, Webb, her father… about her mother. Shakespeare was right: after all that had happened in New York, Shepherd was no longer just a captain and she a special attachment to the team. A force stronger than blood linked them together.

He glanced up at her, and their eyes met. She felt her eyes beginning to fill with tears, and she struggled to maintain her composure. She hated being a tearful, emotional woman.

“It’s my dad.” Her voice was soft but she felt as if she were shouting. “He… he isn’t my real father.”

Shepherd was silent.

She turned her face away so he wouldn’t see her tears. “In New York, in his office, General Martin told me he used to know my dad. They were friends before the plague. Close friends. They were both involved in a military project in Antarctica. I think he wanted to say more, but then you guys…” She smiled through her tears before continuing, “Well, you guys showed up and ruined the party.”

Shepherd simply grunted.

“I had a meeting with my dad after we got back. He said he couldn’t have children. So he and Martin and my mom decided to use artificial insemination. So… So that’s where I came from.”

She remembered the tragic expression on her father’s face and those words, inexpressibly sad: And we all lived happily ever after.

“I guess I suspected it when I saw General Martin. He was wearing a mask, but his eyes… his eyes were like my mom’s and like mine. They were the same color. They even had the same expression.”

She paused, and her mother’s face from the photograph in her father’s office came to her. She pictured the radiant smile as she felt tears drop from her nose and fall onto her shoulders. In the silence of the room, she could hear their breathing: his controlled and regular rhythm and her own sniffles and suppressed sobs. She did not want to break down. Above all else, she did not want to seem like a weak, weeping child.

After a long moment, Shepherd finally said, “Shit, that’s a big load.”

In spite of herself, she laughed. “Is that all you can say?”

“I don’t know what else to say. Your father and General Martin…? And now Martin is your real father? You must feel awful.”

Shepherd’s unaffected response helped steady her. “I should have known. I should have known when I saw him. Those eyes… and the way he said my name.”

“I know he’s your biological father, but that doesn’t mean anything. Your dad… he obviously loves you. He raised you. You’re still his daughter.”

“He told me some other things.”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

“Who?”

“General Martin. He made it sound like my dad might have been involved with the outbreaks. He also said the Directorate’s killed at least a thousand people in the last two years and that we treat our communities like slave labor camps.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Shepherd said. “It’s NEA propaganda. They’re trying to blame us for the things they do.”

“I’ve never been to any of the communities. Have you?”

“I came from one of those communities. We barely had food or electricity before the Directorate showed up. Sure, some of us had to join up with the military – I was one of them – but I always had a warm bed and meal at the end of the day. The NEA’s territories would join us if they weren’t occupied and locked down. If we treated our people like the NEA claims, we would have an uprising.”

“Maybe.”

“General Martin is our enemy.”

“It… felt like he was telling me the truth,” she said with a shake of her head. If only she could feel as confident as Shepherd. But her father had confirmed that at least some of Martin’s claims were true. So could she so easily dismiss the rest of Martin’s story? “I just want to know we’re on the right side.”

“Remember that video footage I told you about?” Shepherd said.

“On the trip back? You said there were bodies in the subways, right? You told Webb he was in for a rude awakening.”

“When you see the videos, you’ll know we’re on the right side.”

“How bad is it?”

“You can see for yourself at the debriefing.”

“Did anyone figure out who they were?”

“Not yet.”

“What about that guy who attacked me in the bus terminal? He made it sound like he was part of a group. Maybe the bodies belonged to them.”

“It’s possible. We don’t have any idea how many people were living in New York before the NEA moved in. There could be dozens of communities around Manhattan. I bet one of those communities was giving the NEA trouble, and the NEA wiped them out.”

“And then hid the bodies in the subway?”

“I don’t know,” Shepherd said. “There were so many of them. And the way they were killed… Well, you can see for yourself later.”

“It must be awful to have to live like that.” Her memory returned her to the dark and decrepit bus station concourse. If it looked that bad aboveground, the tunnels had to be in even worse shape. How could anyone choose to live under such horrible conditions? Except it wasn’t about choice. She had taken so much for granted while growing up: the electricity, the food, her clothes, and the discipline and cleanliness inside Cheyenne Mountain. Most people outside of Colorado Springs struggled just to stay alive. And until New York, she had believed without question that the Directorate’s mission was to bring civilization back to them.

Shepherd’s only response was a solemn nod, after which he stretched and yawned. She hadn’t noticed it upon his arrival, but Shepherd looked tired and worn. He had stayed awake for the duration of their drive from New York to the Directorate’s territory and then for the whole flight back to Peterson.

“I’m going to get changed,” Shepherd said. “Are you going to stay here?”

“I don’t know. I’m kind of hungry, but the cafeteria’s closed.”

“The fridge in the officer’s lounge has some food.”

“I don’t have the code.”

“I can get you in.”

“It’s okay. I can wait until tomorrow.”

“When was the last time you ate?”

She looked down at the water and tried to find an answer. The journey from New York to Colorado was a blur. She vaguely recalled snacking on the contents of an MRE while with Shepherd in the command vehicle, but she had no idea how much time had passed since that tiny meal. “I don’t really remember.”

“We’re getting you something to eat,” Shepherd said in a firm voice. He held his hand out to help her to her feet. She smiled at him and then took his hand. Dizziness came the moment she stood, but the world evened out after she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Are you okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” she said before gesturing toward the locker room. “Are you sure? I thought—”

“Don’t worry about it. I can work out later. Ready to go?”

“Sure.”

The complex’s hallways were as empty as an hour earlier. When they arrived at the officer’s lounge, Shepherd typed his code into the access pad and then opened the door.

She moved into the lounge and went to the combination refrigerator and freezer. Boxes of snacks including chocolate, granola, and energy bars sat stacked on shelves on both sides of the refrigerator. She picked out a chocolate bar wrapped in aluminum foil and then opened the refrigerator.

Fruits and vegetables filled the refrigerator to overflowing. She took a soft pear from one of the drawers and then shut the refrigerator door.

Across the room, Shepherd was holding a paper cup and standing next to a water cooler. He filled the cup and then downed it with a gulp. “Wish they had some alcohol around here,” he said absently. “For medicinal purposes, you know?”

She smiled, her mouth full of pear and chocolate. The food was delicious, and she could feel some of her energy beginning to return. Good thing I kept off the treadmill. I probably would have passed out.

She went to Shepherd, who was refilling his cup. When he stood and looked at her, his focus shifted down her body. She followed his gaze and realized the cold of the refrigerator had made her nipples harden through her bra and t-shirt.

She blushed. Shepherd raised his eyes and smiled. It wasn’t his usual cocky grin. There was something more in it.

“Maybe I better go for a run… or a cold shower,” Shepherd said. Alex was surprised to see he also had a slight blush on his darkly tanned face.

So the cocky, mission-directed, all-knowing Captain Shepherd is also a horny so-and-so. She found the notion strangely comforting.

“Captain Shepherd, can I ask you something?” she said with a hint of slyness.

Shepherd’s blush was now much more prominent. She wanted to savor the look of embarrassment on his face, but despite her amusement, she wanted a serious answer to her question. Her voice took on a more subdued tone as she said, “Does it matter that I’m related to General Martin? I mean, does it matter to you… and to the rest of the team?”

Shepherd appeared relieved but it also seemed her question had blindsided him. After a long moment, he asked, “Should it?”

“I don’t know. I mean, he’s with the NEA. You said it yourself: he’s our enemy. But he wasn’t like an enemy. He wasn’t anything like I expected. I think he actually cared about me. It’s not like all of this suddenly makes him like my dad or anything… but I’m still related to him. What if people find out? What if—”

“Listen,” Shepherd said, his voice low and earnest, “I can speak for myself, and I think I speak for the team. You’re one of us now. You were out there. You took the same risks. You could have been killed the same as us, and you didn’t run. In fact, we did the running to the subway, and that’s when we noticed you were missing.”

“But… I couldn’t save Hensley… or Neill.”

“Alex,” Shepherd said and moved closer. “You’re going to have to get over it. Everyone in the team… we’re all like family. But when someone gets hit, you have to let it go! If you don’t, it will eat at you until you’re no good to anyone.” His tone softened. “You want to know what the team thinks?”

She looked up at him.

“They think you’re a hero. If you hadn’t taken out those buildings, we would have been chopped up like liver. The consensus is if you hadn’t been there, none of us would have gotten back.”

“Still, you had to come and rescue me.”

Shepherd’s grin returned. “Then we’re even. You saved our butts and we saved yours.”

He makes it sound so easy, she thought, but the lingering questions refused to go away. She continued to wonder if General Martin, who had spoken so gently to her and who at times had seemed barely able to stand from his chair, could be the monster so often vilified by the Directorate. As she looked at Shepherd’s confident smile, she also wondered if the two men they had shot on the bridge could have been members of a peace delegation as Martin claimed. What if we started the fight? What if it was us and not the NEA?

“Listen,” Shepherd said, “we’re all a little worn out. You look like you’re dead on your feet.”

“I do?”

“Yeah, like a zombie. Why don’t you get some rest? We can talk about all this later. Maybe after the debriefing.”

She glanced down at the carpet, again remembering her father’s voice calling out to her as she had fled from his office. “Do you want me to be there? For the debriefing, I mean.”

As if reading her thoughts, Shepherd said, “You’re going to have to talk to your father sooner or later.”

“I know… It’s just…”

“Get some sleep and think about it in the morning. If you’re still not comfortable with attending, I’ll cover for you. I’ll say you’re not feeling well.”

“You will?”

“Yes. I can’t tell them about your meeting with Martin, but it’s your decision.”

“Thanks.” She offered Shepherd a grateful smile.

She flicked the aluminum wrapper and the remains of the pear into the garbage bin at the door and then followed Shepherd out of the room. They walked side-by-side back to the gym, but before they made it more than a dozen feet from the officer’s lounge, she heard a voice from behind. “…You can’t blame yourself for what happened, Hank. You told the Committee you were against the operation.”

Shepherd froze and then looked toward what Alex recognized as General Lunde’s voice. Shepherd pointed toward an open storage room ahead. Alex gave him a confused look but then nodded and followed him into the dark room and into the cover of the shadows.

“They knew there was a cult in Manhattan,” a second voice, that of her father’s, said. “They knew. It’s unacceptable that they withheld it from us.”

“Were they hoping Alexandra would encounter one of the cultists?”

“There’s no other explanation.”

“Then they are trying to push the timeline forward.”

“Not only that, but they had the audacity to send an agent here to interrogate her.”

Shepherd raised an eyebrow. She whispered the name, “Ellzey,” which elicited from him a mixed look of disgust and anger. The reaction did not surprise her. As much as she disliked Ellzey, Shepherd’s contempt for him ran much deeper.

“Is he still here?” Shepherd whispered.

She began to reply but then paused as General Lunde said, “The Committee can only do so much as long as you have the support of the Directorate.”

“I’m more concerned about Alexandra’s support. If she doesn’t side with us when the time comes, nothing else matters. I’ve never seen her as upset as this afternoon.”

There was a genuine tone of regret in her father’s voice. She was tempted to step out into the hallway to talk to him, but she was also curious to hear more of the conversation.

“I can speak to her in the morning,” Lunde said.

“It’s best if we leave her alone for now. She’ll come see me when she’s ready.”

The footsteps stopped several meters from the supply room. Alex heard one of them type a code into a door’s keypad. She realized Lunde and her father were entering the officer’s lounge. She felt an odd relief she and Shepherd had left when they did. She held still until the door opened and closed. Shepherd let out a long breath and then peeked into the corridor. “All clear.”

“Why did you want us to hide?”

“After New York, I’m not one of your father’s favorite people.” He grinned. “And I’m sure he wouldn’t approve of me being out with you at this hour.”

She held back a shy grin. “General Lunde said something about that. He said my dad might be… kind of mad at you.”

A shadow of worry crossed Shepherd’s face but he replied in a neutral tone, “We’ll find out at the debriefing.”

“I don’t blame you. For what happened, I mean. It wasn’t your fault the NEA captured me. And you came back for me.”

“Your safety is my responsibility.”

“Still, if my dad is mad at you, I’ll tell him it wasn’t your fault.” She hesitated before continuing, “I– I’ll be there tomorrow. I’ll come to the debriefing. Just in case. I promise.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She offered Shepherd a timid smile.

“Well, I’m going to haul ass to the gym. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Okay.”

Shepherd turned and jogged down the corridor. She glanced toward the officer’s lounge. The door remained closed. She considered going after Shepherd. Watching him run would be nice. She could even join him on the adjacent treadmill, maybe challenge him to a race. She dismissed the notion as quickly as it formed. Sharing the gym alone with Shepherd wouldn’t be the best idea – at least not right now. If her father found out, it might plunge his standing beyond her ability to help.

Maybe another day, she thought with a smile. As soon as she reached her room, she keyed the door and went inside. The lights were on as she had left them, and she flicked them off one-by-one as she went to the bedroom. After turning up the air conditioning, she removed her running shoes and sat on the edge of her mattress. The ventilation system sputtered to life and sent a cool draft into the room.

She scooted up the bed and then lay back with her head on her pillow. On the wall beside her hung the painting that was so often the last thing she saw before switching off the lamp and closing her eyes. She sometimes imagined the painting was a window allowing her to look out and see the swirling starlit sky above a peaceful village. Shatterproof glass and a stainless steel frame guarded the painting against the elements. On some nights, she ran her fingers along the lines of the brush strokes as if she could touch the texture and colors through the glass barrier. Each color had its own feel: blues were gentle, like the rare and distant memories of her mother. The grays were tentative, a short tap and release. The yellows were vibrant and hot, almost burning the fingers.

Gazing into the painting, she thought of her father and recalled his strange conversation with Lunde. She wondered what he meant with his talk of cultists and needing her support. She frowned, thinking of the regretful tone of his voice as he spoke about seeing her so upset. I shouldn’t have run away from him.

With a sigh, she pushed herself up off the mattress and walked to her dresser. She took off her shirt and sports bra and set them aside. After glancing at her clothing drawers, she shrugged and returned to the bed and crawled under the sheets. She recalled Shepherd’s look in the officer’s lounge, and it made her feel warm and tingly, like the bright yellows of the painting, and also gentle, like the blue. Blue and yellow make what? Green? What does green feel like?

She grinned and was still smiling when she fell asleep.