Chapter Three

The walk from chow hall to barracks was taut with anticipatory guilt. Every night, Mike masked his shame behind a nothing-face, a stoic soldier’s mask, as the squad filed out with the rest of their platoon beneath the blazing white and blue visor of Knight-Captain Finley. Mike was the last one out, as always, head down, watching the backs of Sixie’s boots with his heart thumping in his mouth. It had nothing to do with Twofer, though he was still on Mike’s mind, and everything to do with Alpha. This heat was the animal part of him, the core of sin his moral self enfolded like a barbed wire fence. Pavlov’s dog drooled at the sound of a bell; Mike’s bell was the efficient shuttle from mess hall to dorm, the walk back down to P-Town.

The elevator took them twenty layers beneath the graceful double spires of glass called Lord’s Cradle, home of the Host and, at the uppermost levels above the clouds, one of the avatars of God Himself. The underground PatriotSoldier barracks were properly known by their numbered floors, B-34 to B-16, but everyone called it P-Town. Every Patriot was bunked on those eighteen floors: eleven for the PatriotRifles, the grunts; four for the PatriotRanger heavy armored units and tank squads, like the Sams; and three for the black-ops and special forces guys, the P-specs.

The elevator emptied them out onto one of many identical, spartan floors, pie slices in the high-security catacombs that housed the UNAC’s standing army of Nephilim. Mike breathed easier here, where the Templars and Controllers rarely went, and where the only visible reminders of God’s vigilance were armed checkpoints. From there, it was a short hike to their dorms. Alpha lingered by the entry to the common area and caught Mike by the arm as he stepped inside, pulling him around on the one foot as the door closed. Mike pushed away with a short laugh, shoving his chest. Alpha caught his wrists, and to Mike’s relief, he finally smiled.