She started unbuttoning her shirt, but her fingers fumbled. She let her arms drop to her sides and looked up at Frank. "Will you help me?"

"Help...?"

She lifted her arms and nodded to him.

"You sure?"

"Yes. It's okay."

He placed the water jug on the floor and gingerly lifted the hem of her blouse. It was nothing he hadn't already done a hundred times before, but this time felt different. Intimate, even tender. She slipped her arms out of the sleeves as he pulled the fabric up over her head. She lifted her eyes to his, tears spilling over her dark lashes and trailing down her cheeks.

"Thank you," she whispered.

She turned to face the room. Shimmering scales the color of peridot encased her entire torso like a slim-fitting wetsuit. They followed the contours of her breasts, where the scales were finer and smaller than those covering her arms and back. She tugged the hem of her skirt down a few inches to reveal her abdomen.

"Whatever happened to me made them spread."

A murmur went up around the room.

"I wanna see!"

Frank laughed. Tansy turned to him questioningly, but he just placed a hand on her shoulder—gently—and called out, "Ada, girl, don't be rude."

"But I wanna see," she whined.

Tansy whispered to Frank, "She has it? A child?"

He nodded.

"Ada? You can come see. I don't mind."

Ada made her way to the front of the room and stopped short in front of Tansy. She stared at Tansy's breasts for several seconds, her cheeks turning a few startling shades of red.

"It's okay," Tansy said.

Giving in to her intrusive thoughts, Ada reached out and ran her finger along Tansy's abdomen and poked her in the bellybutton before yanking her hand back and tucking it behind her. She shrunk into herself, waiting for an admonition that didn't come.

"I'm sorry," Ada whispered.

"I forgive you."

"I think you look beautiful."

Tansy sobbed, just once. "You do?"

"You're so shiny. And green is my favorite color."

"Mine too," Tansy said, smiling through her tears.

"I wish mine looked like yours."

"What color are yours?"

Ada pulled her disheveled braid to one side and tugged at the neck of her shirt. "They're just black," she pouted.

Tansy tilted her head to get a better look. "May I?"

"You can touch them!" Ada said brightly. "They don't hurt."

Tansy trailed her fingers along the back of Ada's neck and down her impossibly delicate shoulder. "Ada," she said, "they are stunning. I wish you see what I see."

"What do you see?"

"I see... the universe. I see whole galaxies. Your scales, they're not just black. They're iridescent. Do you know that word? No? Well, when I move my head like this, I can see colors swirling around. They might be on the inside, but they're there. Ada, your black scales are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen."

"Really?"

"I wouldn't lie to you."

Beside them, Frank turned away and wiped the tears from his eyes. The movement caught Ada's attention. She tugged on his shirt.

"Frank?"

"What, honey?"

"I'm really sorry about your nuts."

"Damn! Y'all smell worse than a boar's taint!"

The SDO kicked the door stop into place and motioned them out of the room, where officers up and down the hall made similar comments to the other detainees.

Ada held Tansy's hand as they shuffled through a set of security doors beneath a red metal sign that stated:

YARD

"Men to the left! Women to the right! Everyone else against the red wall!"

Dazed, exhausted, sick and dehydrated, covered in bodily fluids and scared out of their minds, most of them complied without complaint. Frank patted Ada's head and trudged behind an SDO, vaguely aware of someone calling his name. He waved them off without a glance; whoever it was, it didn't matter anymore. All that mattered was water and food and maybe an hour of sleep.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

He estimated the size of the YARD at around half a football field. It was surrounded by four-story windowless walls on all sides—a veritable courtyard of misery in the hacienda of hell. How had he lived 31 years without having had the pleasure? There was your goddamn miracle, if you were the type to look for miracles. Sometimes he wondered if someone "up there" was watching out for him, not that he really believed in all that stuff. Sometimes he wondered if things might be better if he did.

Nahhh.

It was too late for all that, anyway. Still, there were times that made a man think, and apparently this surreal bullshit qualified.

Someone nudged him. "Eh?" Frank said, turning around to see a man pointing ahead of them. Following the man's finger, Frank realized he was next up in a line he hadn't noticed he was in.

Three men stood beside a portable table. One man wore a lab coat and held the weapon-like instrument Frank recognized as a military grade infrared thermometer. The other two men were clearly from the Strategic Defense Office, though they wore dress blues and not the ubiquitous black tactical gear.

"Come," a uniformed man beckoned.

Frank stepped forward, trying to clear his head and get his bearings.

"Remove your shirt."

He removed his shirt. The doctor—scientist?—paused for a moment at the sight of Frank's hairy arms and torso patchily cloaked in festive purple scales. He noted something on his tablet, then checked Frank's temperature, which was normal.

"Any unusual symptoms?" Doc asked. When Frank gave him an are you fucking kidding me look, the doctor added, "Other than the obvious."

"How about excessive thirst?"

"Name."

"Frank."

Doc looked at him much the way Sarah had back in the room.

"Your full name."

"Francis Archibald Chaplin."

"Birthdate."

"November 23rd, 2095."

"Birthplace?"

"Here. Philly."

"Height."

"Six four."

"Height."

"Fine, six one."

"Weight?"

"Nope."

"What is your weight?"

"Nah."

"Fine," said Doc. "Two hundred sixty pounds."

"Wha—"

"Next!"

Frank sighed and rejoined the dwindling group. They sorted the rest of the men with quick precision. Folks without symptoms were escorted back to holding cells, the poor bastards. With only symptomatic men remaining, the group had been cut by nearly half.

Which made no sense, because they had all been feverish or symptomatic when the SDOs crammed them into those glorified cells. Had it just been the heat in the transport trucks?

He shook his head; it didn't matter anymore.

They sorted the women next. One by one, they came forward, removing their shirts or having their shirts removed for them. Those unlucky enough to be wearing dresses stood in their underwear, hunching into themselves and clutching their clothes to their chests. Old, young, big, small—like the men, they ran the gamut of shapes and sizes.

But not a single one from Brewerytown.

Frank looked around, seeing the pitiful crowd through Elio's eyes. He was right, Frank thought. The clues were in the clothing first, and the shoes, and the lack of augments. The second giveaway was the long-term effects of poor nutrition. Folks whose food and medical co-ops were cheap or free shared the same gray or pasty skin, whether it was dark or light, whether hung from gaunt skeletons or stretched over fat and bloat. Poor nutrition didn't care what color you were or where you were from. Poor nutrition was steadfastly unbiased.

The folks around him were dressed like him, standing in their only shoes, which were practical and thick. They wore patched and mended clothing chosen with little thought for style, not carefully curated outfits in immaculate condition, carefully cleaned and pressed by the robot help.

Not a single one from Brewerytown. Indeed.

Tansy stepped up to the table, still holding Ada's hand.

"Name?"

"Tansy May."

As if the whole thing weren't intrusive and humiliating enough, Doc tilted his head and looked her up and down, slowly.

"Hmm, that's your birth name?"

"It... yes."

Doc leaned over and said something privately to an officer, who nodded and spoke into a device.

"Right. Birthdate?"

As Tansy answered the Doc's questions, a third officer in dress blues emerged from the facility and approached the table, circling Tansy, Ada, and the doctor. The man's movements were strangely wolf-like. Predatory. He smiled and dipped his head when Tansy paused and looked at him, then waved for her to continue with the doctor. There was something oddly familiar about the man.

Frank paced the front of the men's group, trying to get a closer look at his face. It was definitely a memorable face. The man had clearly struggled with some serious acne in his youth, and maybe more than that. Maybe some kind of pox? Maybe burns? Acid burns could have made marks like that. Beneath the facial scars, his pink complexion didn't match the rest of his body. His mouse brown hair was thinning, and he combed it straight back and slicked it down with some sort of wet-looking paste or gel. His eyes were dark and close-set above a long, broad nose. But his singular feature was his strange mustache, which jutted straight out from his face like a wiry broom. The combined effect reminded Frank of an animal. What animal?

What animal? Come on Frank, think.

A small voice in the back of his mind whispered, otter. "An otter," Frank whispered back, and everything went suddenly, terribly still.

Frank stumbled and plunged backward through the corridors of time. He came to rest gently on the edge of a creaky bed, then crept to the door in his blue footie pajamas and peeked through the crack. Music played from beyond an opened window. His mother cried, restrained by one SDO. His father pleaded, dragged outside by another. A third turned to look at Frank and walked to the bedroom door. The man kneeled at the crack in the door, his beady eye inches from Frank's.

"Do you know who I am, child?" he whispered.

Frank shook his head and whispered, "No."

"I am Heller. I will take your father now."

"Why?" said young Frank, trying not to cry.

"I have use for him."

"Don't."

"I will, and you will not see him again."

"I hate you," Frank whispered. "You look like an ugly otter."

"An otter!" the man said, snorting. "I like that. Yes, that's okay. You can hate the otter, boy," the very bad man said to Frank. "But you can't stop him." Then he smiled and twitched his wet, whiskered lip, and took Frank's father away.

Frank came to with a start. He was back in the YARD.

The otter was in the YARD.

Heller was there.