><\/p>\n
\n– 1 Poppyshine\n<\/p>\n
\nIf I had any common sense I would have worn something flame retardant.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cDon\u2019t worry,\u201d Dunn pushed the Halloween mask higher on his face. \u201cEthanol doesn\u2019t burn. It explodes.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nI IDed everything in Ensign Dunn\u2019s stateroom-turned-laboratory that could kill us. Steel bulkheads trapped the vapors. Glass beakers like shrapnel. Drug scales, hotplates, and some sort of electrochemical synthesis device that Dunn still hadn\u2019t explained to me, but it had two metal prods connected by wires to a battery\u2014all of which looked like one giant ignition source.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cRemind me again how you got the car battery aboard?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThe same way I got the poppy aboard.\u201d Dunn stared through my head. \u201cBy not asking too many questions.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nHe was a sweetie, though, and probably had a crush on me\u2014likely the only reason he let me record this. Underneath the Halloween mask he wore to hide his face from my camera, he was a pale, corn-fed kid from Oklahoma who knew way too much about chemistry and moonshine to make himself anything but the most popular geek aboard the USS Gerald Ford<\/em>.\n<\/p>\n \nFor a workbench he had pried wood planks from a shipping pallet and spanned them from his rack to the junior officer\u2019s rack across from his. On the hot plate sat a pressure cooker filled with his homemade poppy tea. Copper tubing ran out the top of the cooker and coiled down into a bucket of ice. The tubing poked out the bottom of the bucket and dripped out what everyone from deck apes to O-gangers on the Ford<\/em> called poppyshine, a mildly hallucinogenic concoction that melted away the at-sea blues.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWatch where you point that thing.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nDunn would only allow me to post the video to my underground ship-zine if I agreed to disguise his face and voice.\n<\/p>\n \nWith the launch catapults on the other side of the ship and four decks up, his stateroom almost had a cabin-in-the-woods coziness to it. The drone of the engine compartment below focused the known universe to just the space around the soft, breathy gurgle from the pressure cooker.\n<\/p>\n \nA sharp rap.\n<\/p>\n \nDunn froze.\n<\/p>\n \nWe both looked at the hatch. We had been expecting this, just not so soon.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIf I go down, you go down,\u201d he whispered. \u201cRoger that?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThat was our deal. He pointed me toward the top rack. I set my camera on the middle rack, partially hidden under the pillow, climbed three bunks up, and drew the curtain shut.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWho is it?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe voice on the other side of the steel hatch came back metallic. \u201cPoppy\u2019s poppy.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nCode, I guessed.\n<\/p>\n \nLark entered. Six-foot-plus, huge shoulders, master-at-arms, keys-to-the-brig Lark. He was also a damn Tether.\n<\/p>\n \nThe Navy tried pressuring me into being a Tether just because of what dad did and the fact I got booted from school. Hell no, though. Only the village-idiot offspring of siblings volunteered to be a Tether.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt\u2019s just your people on watch tonight?\u201d Dunn tried to hide his nervousness.\n<\/p>\n \nLark didn\u2019t say anything. I swore the cerebral augmentations made them dumber. The glowing cable running from his temple pulsed in slow waves, communicating with someone that wasn\u2019t Dunn.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cOkay. Just the poppyshine then.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHow could Dunn sell to a Tether? Didn\u2019t he understand the shitgale it\u2019d cause if Lark caught me? Linked to the ship\u2019s computer, he could scan the ship\u2019s manifest and figure out I wasn\u2019t in my rack. He could have telepathed with a Tether who saw me enter Dunn\u2019s cabin. No one knew their exact capabilities. Could Lark see my body heat through the curtain? This was insanity.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201c16 ounces?\u201d Dunn asked.\n<\/p>\n \nI heard the slosh of poppyshine changing hands, the exchange of money.\n<\/p>\n \nLark\u2019s shaved, bluish head was inches below me. The fish stink from his blood disorder rose through the crack in the curtain. The fact that Tethers traded incentive pay for plastic poisoning was more proof of their numbskullry.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cStay safe,\u201d Dunn said.\n<\/p>\n \nLark grunted. The hatch opened. Closed.\n<\/p>\n \nDunn let go of his breath. \u201cAll clear.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI peeked from the curtain. \u201cA Tether?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou didn\u2019t ask.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAn asswit Tether. I shouldn\u2019t have to.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI grabbed my camera from the bed and poked my head into the passageway. The Ford\u2019s<\/em> oily air stung my eyes. Lark went toward the stern. A rat scurried out of his way.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI didn\u2019t have a choice,\u201d Dunn said. \u201cHe found me out.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI glanced back to see the off-center pull of his lips. I hated to see him so wounded. I had one foot over the hatch when Dunn pulled me back.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBe careful.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou\u2019re sweet.\u201d I patted his cheek and slipped into the passageway after Lark.\n<\/p>\n \nThe rumor\u2014and the reason I sweet-talked Dunn into letting me record everything\u2014was that some of the Gerald Ford\u2019s<\/em> highest-ranking officers bootlegged Dunn\u2019s poppyshine in order to get young sailors drunk and pliable. My plan was to follow the poppyshine to see how high up the chain of command this operation went.\n<\/p>\n \nLark prowled aft like a marionette of logs. Normally, Tethers had this eerie way of walking, chin down with their eye pointed at the deck three feet in front of them. They didn\u2019t need to see in order to move. With other Tethers nearby, they could navigate by their collective sight. But alone, Lark was more cautious, stopping and peering around each hatch he went through.\n<\/p>\n \nSo long as there weren\u2019t other Tethers around, I could follow him from a close distance without fear of\u2014\n<\/p>\n \nLark stopped and spun. His blue face and black monocle aimed dead at me.\n<\/p>\n \nThe open cabin to my right. An enlisted rec room. I hadn\u2019t noticed it.\n<\/p>\n \nInside, was a compartment full of Tethers. They stood near a cornhole board looking at me and my camera. While the rest of the ship\u2019s passageways smoldered in the crimson light of midwatch, these Tethers had two white fluorescents hung over their hillbilly game. Their bluish faces were raked with heavy shadows, and I imagined each of them cataloging everything about me and broadcasting it through their network: my rack was two decks below, my morning shift started in three hours, my posture was furtive behind Lark.\n<\/p>\n \nMy mouth ran dry. Fuckall and be cocky about it, as Dad used to say.\n<\/p>\n \nI kept walking as if nothing had changed, as if I weren\u2019t walking toward a chief petty officer holding a jar of contraband in the middle of the night. I fought to keep my legs from turning to run. I faked a real good game. The problem, of course\u2014\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cShipmate, why are you filming me?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nWhile following Lark, I had been holding the camera casually at my side recording the mason jar of poppyshine swinging by his legs. Maybe he saw the blinking light. Maybe the Tethers playing cornhole noticed it. Either way, my only option was to play dumb.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHuh? What are you talking about?\u201d My hand began twirling my ponytail. I yanked it away. No way I was letting this box of rocks know he had me anxious.\n<\/p>\n \nHe pinched his forehead just above his implants like they pained him. His naked eye winced at my name tag and rating badge. \u201cMC Nozick, you think being mass communication makes you smarter than me?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nLock it. Don\u2019t laugh. Not a peep.\n<\/p>\n \nHe moved his hand from his head toward my camera. His metHb fish stink was worse than other Tethers. The veins down his forearm were so dark they were almost black. \u201cSurrender your camera.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nBallsy. Lark outranked me, but I was a Navy broadcaster. My official duty on the Gerald Ford<\/em> was literally to record things. If this escalated, he\u2019d be questioned as much as me. And he was the one holding a jar of poppyshine.\n<\/p>\n \nI hadn\u2019t edited the footage yet though. If Lark got the video, he\u2019d know Dunn allowed me to hide in the rack. Dunn would get brought to mast while Lark\u2014and whoever Lark was bootlegging for\u2014would get off.\n<\/p>\n \nJudging from his pained migraine squint, Lark was calculating his options too. Except he had the benefit of the ship\u2019s Justwork computer. It was straining him, though. He hadn\u2019t yet noticed the black blood collecting on the rim of his nostril.\n<\/p>\n \nThe three Tethers stepped into the passageway behind me like schoolyard bullies. The computer decided. Lark reached.\n<\/p>\n \nI dropped to the deck. As Lark swiped for me, I rolled past him and popped to my feet.\n<\/p>\n \nTethers were truck stop crackheads patched together with plastic, but they could think fast. Linked through the Justwork, they could swarm you in an instant. They could even tell the ship to lock hatches, turn off lights, and sound alarms. Still, they were reliant on the same, fragile human body.\n<\/p>\n \nI kicked him in the groin before he could turn around. I bolted aft. Left at the first intersection, left again, right.\n<\/p>\n \nCabin doors flew open. Tethers up and down the passageway poked their heads out. Feet pounded toward me.\n<\/p>\n \nIt was hopeless, where was I going to go? The ocean?\n<\/p>\n \nAt the next ladder, I climbed toward the hangar deck. I heard the hydraulics of the hatchway closing. The green light bathing the hangar bay was getting smaller. The clangs below me were getting closer. I dove into the hangar.\n<\/p>\n \nThe hatch behind me sealed with a crisp puff of air. A handful of non-Tether aircraft handlers working overnight stared at me. A few seconds passed and they returned to their work, loading an aircraft on the lift.\n<\/p>\n \nMy heart settled chestward. The ship\u2019s engines droned. An empty trash bag swirled in the corner. I caught a whiff of the sea under the heavy jet fumes of the hangar. Beyond the lift was the night\u2019s vast sky. Dawn was not that far away and lent a tranquility that you don\u2019t often find on a carrier, like the moment before you unwrap a care package from home. So long as I didn\u2019t expose Dunn, everything would work itself out.\n<\/p>\n \nThe hatch behind me released its hydraulics. The next sound was the aircraft lift kicking on. It went up toward the flight deck loaded with an F35.\n<\/p>\n \nI removed the memory card and left my camera on the deck for Lark to find. Maybe it would buy me some time. I put the card in my mouth and ran for the lift.\n<\/p>\n \nThree feet high. Four feet. It was rising faster than I anticipated. Below the lift, the howling dark of the sea appeared. If I missed this\u2026\n<\/p>\n \nI jumped. My hands clamped the edge. My fingers dug into the asphalt as the wind gusted through my dangling legs.\n<\/p>\n \nA grating metal screech came from the lift followed by pings of snapping metal rods. The lift stopped.\n<\/p>\n \nDammit, nothing on this ship worked right. The Navy used to pride itself on being shipshape. Now, if it wasn\u2019t a computer-brain hybrid, no one cared.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMC Nozick, get down here.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nBelow, my ankles dangled beside Lark\u2019s ice blue head. I let go and thumped back on the hangar deck.\n<\/p>\n \nJust on the other side of a safety chain and twenty feet down, was the Pacific Ocean. Four more Tether MAs circled behind Lark. The whole hangar stopped to watch.\n<\/p>\n \nI spat the memory card into the ocean.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cGood morning, Lark,\u201d I said. \u201cCan I help you?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n <\/p>\n \n– 2 The Devil\u2019s Shame<\/em>\n<\/p>\n \nThe way Commander Wade screamed it, I was a ninja pirate capable of commandeering the whole ship. Punting Lark\u2019s nutsack to the moon, evading four Tethers, storming the hangar deck, and grappling up the lift. Screw the Navy, I should have joined the CIA according to the XO.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cShe\u2019s five-two and a hundred pounds after Thanksgiving,\u201d Chief Haggenmiller said to Wade, putting up the good fight for me.\n<\/p>\n \nWade, the Ford\u2019<\/em>s second in command, was less composed. His shouting vibrated the glass in his office door. \u201cWhen Petty Office Nozick hears an order from a ranking officer, the only thing I should hear is the sound of her lips snapping shut.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThere was a pause. I imagined Chief sipping his coffee. \u201cAgreed, sir.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe chief was so sea-crusted nothing rattled him. Two years ago, he barely acknowledged me the day I first transferred into his command. I stood in front of his desk a good ten minutes in silence while he read my transfer file. He didn\u2019t even raise an eyebrow when he got to the part about me being expelled from college for harassing a professor. He just snorted. \u201cMIT, huh?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nSame thing this morning. After the XO called him at 0400 for my dress-down, he rounded the passageway to see me sitting outside Wade\u2019s office. \u201cFour Tethers, huh?\u201d was all he said.\n<\/p>\n \nCommander Wade had been yelling non-stop for minutes. \u201cI won\u2019t have felons on this ship. If she wants to carry on like her clowndick father, I\u2019ll have her taken to mast.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nDad was paroled. Besides, the Navy recruited almost anyone these days, so long as they were willing to be a Tether.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAgreed, sir.\u201d I pictured Chief wiping Wade\u2019s saliva from his face. \u201cFour Tethers twice her size trying to steal her service camera is no cause for violence.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI heard Wade inhale for another onslaught. But Chief, probably still sipping his coffee, interrupted.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAlso, sir, I\u2019m told there was alcohol present. MC Nozick should know better than to interact with sailors who may have been inebriated.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nSilence. The kind of quiet you\u2019d hear if a neutron bomb went off in outer space.\n<\/p>\n \nThen Wade\u2019s door opened and the chief stepped out.\n<\/p>\n \nI felt him glaring down at me. I didn\u2019t want to check his reaction yet. I fixed my ball cap to be sure my ponytail stuck out square and watched a fat red cockroach climb the bulkhead.\n<\/p>\n \nHe drained the last of his mug. \u201cOn my six, Nozick.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAye, sir.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe chief turned back to level a stare at me. I had forgotten his rule: don\u2019t call me sir, I work for a living.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAye, Chief.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe had a foot and a half over me and I had to walk fast like a child to catch up. The only thing that slowed him was stooping through the hatches every twenty paces.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019m guessing this was for Devil\u2019s Shame?<\/em>\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe didn\u2019t want an answer. He knew I wasn\u2019t dumb enough to admit to running an underground zine on a Navy aircraft carrier, even if he gave me more tips than anyone. Whenever we were in an editorial meeting and someone pitched scuttlebutt of something the Ford Messenger<\/em> could never publish, he\u2019d always looked to me and then say to the wall that we\u2019d have to leave it for the Devil\u2019s Shame<\/em>. But then he would come around later and give me the afternoon off, just in case there was something I wanted to go check on.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat was the plan?\u201d he asked. \u201cDo you really want to expose Wade\u2019s operation?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat makes you think it stops with Wade?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nChief stopped mid-stride to wheel on me. His long-ago acne pits made him more trustworthy, as if after all the insults as a kid he\u2019d already seen the worst in people, and not much more could surprise him.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cCareful, Lynn.\u201d He pointed his coffee cup at me. \u201cIt\u2019s cacks and giggles to post stories about berthing thieves and who\u2019s sneaking who into storage compartments. But aiming too high will start a berth-to-berth Easter egg hunt.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nWe hadn\u2019t yet left the command offices, but Wade\u2019s clerical staff wouldn\u2019t arrive for another hour. Still under darken ship orders, the dingy red light of the passageway seeped over stashed and broken office equipment, worn furniture, and spools of wire left forgotten from some unfinished repair project.\n<\/p>\n \nAlone together, the chain of command formalities felt unnecessary.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou know that E5 last month, the one caught naked in the galley and drunk on poppyshine?\u201d I kept my voice below the ship\u2019s hum. \u201cNow she\u2019s an E6 because she kept her mouth shut about who she was with.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe news registered in the chief\u2019s jaw muscles. He had daughters. Except for them, I\u2019d never seen him display any emotion before. He was the one who passed me the rumors about the secret X-ray parties. He did it offhandedly, as if they\u2019d disappear as soon as I started poking around. But the parties kept going.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cTell a civilian reporter.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHow? We\u2019re underway for another four months.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nWe both knew the answer: The Devil\u2019s Shame.\u201d\/em> Plenty of mainstream journalists followed it. Plus, I already had my tracks covered. I had a network of gateway proxies set up around the ship bouncing my internet traffic around. I could toss them overboard if I felt the noose tighten. They\u2019d have to investigate more than a thousand sailors if they wanted to trace where the posts for Devil\u2019s Shame<\/em> came from.\n<\/p>\n \nChief started walking again. Stomping nearly. He threw open the hatch to the Ford Messenger,<\/em> went past the front counter, and shut the door to his office.\n<\/p>\n \nHim being this worried was unusual.\n<\/p>\n \nThe Messenger<\/em> was the official news source for the sailors aboard USS Gerald Ford<\/em>. Our offices looked it too. Low-ceilinged, windowless, and gray dull metal everywhere: gray metal filing cabinets, gray metal stools, gray metal pipes crossed over gray metal air ducts. Even the linoleum tile was ashtray gray flecked with toenail white.\n<\/p>\n \nOur September issue, stacked in a hand truck in the corner, waited for distribution. The cover story was about redesigning Ford\u2019<\/em>s battle flag that hung on the ship\u2019s island. Under that was the headline to my hardest hitting story yet for the Messenger<\/em> : NAVIGATION STEALS PLAYERS FROM REPAIR. Eight hundred words on how sailors assigned to the Repair Division were playing for the Navigation Department in the upcoming, ship-wide basketball tournament.\n<\/p>\n \nDevil\u2019s Shame,<\/em> however, was for news uncensored by command. Every time a sailor was taken to admiral\u2019s mast, I divulged the full details, which always seemed different than what Admiral Hahn acknowledged. Or once, someone slipped me the FMS scores from all the Tethers on the Ford.<\/em> I published them to show how many extra points they got just for wiring their brains with plastic. In the two years since I started the feed, I kept the writing sharp and trustworthy. The tone I went for was a resigned justice, as my masthead slogan suggested: \u201cAin\u2019t Hell If Someone Shames The Devil\u201d. I also maintained a steady stream of gossip, like the going price for contraband and who was fraternizing with whom. For one, it kept readership high, but the gossip also gave me cracks to the bigger stories. I exposed the correspondence course cheating ring after first hearing about it from two lovebirds who couldn\u2019t keep a secret. The X-ray parties were shaping up the same way. I just had to figure out how to write it without revealing myself as the author.\n<\/p>\n \nMy fingers hovered over the keyboard. Plenty of sailors saw the mob of Tethers chase me into the hangar bay. Someone could have easily overheard Wade screaming at the chief. But how could I get at the poppyshine without exposing myself and Dunn?\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHere\u2019s a tip for you, Nozick.\u201d MC Byron swung into the Messenger<\/em> office with a what\u2019s-up smirk.\n<\/p>\n \nByron did Mass Communication with me. He was also a jujitsu gold medalist from the age of twelve. He taught classes four nights a week in a makeshift gym in the forward anchor room.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cSomeone found a jar of poppyshine sitting under a ladder on the second deck,\u201d Byron said.\n<\/p>\n \nThat\u2019s how I get the X-ray parties into a Devil\u2019s Shame<\/em> post. That was my first thought. My second was, was he baiting me?\n<\/p>\n \nByron sparred three or four moves ahead. It was more like chess with him. What looked like an opening turned into a gambit. If he backed up I would think I caught him off guard and go in for a take-down. He would shake his head at my foolishness, grab my gi, plant a foot into my belly, and tomoe nage me over his shoulder.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThanks, but I don\u2019t drink,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \nHe blinked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cSorry, gotta use your words. I never learned Morse code.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAin\u2019t hell if someone shames the devil\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe really thought I\u2019d cop to it? \u201cI don\u2019t write for Devil\u2019s Shame<\/em>, sorry.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHorse\u2019s ass you don\u2019t. I know you. You\u2019re the only one on this ship with the balls to take on the Tethers like Devil\u2019s Shame<\/em> does.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nChief Haggenmiller emerged from his brooding session looking more worried than when he went in. His glare nailed me from across the room. \u201cReport. In here.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nInside, I shut the door behind me.\n<\/p>\n \nHe shook his head before any words came out. \u201cNo more Devil\u2019s Shame<\/em>. This is too big. We have to go to command now.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nDidn\u2019t we just come from command? \u201cSir?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThis is an order.\u201d Saying this appeared to calm him. His normal unimpressed face of a Navy chief returned. \u201cWait here.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe went toward the coffee pot in the newsroom, but I suspected he wanted to leave me here to think. He was making this into a teaching moment. Dad tried to do this too, before he was indicted.\n<\/p>\n \nI checked the photo of the chief\u2019s daughters. I looked to see if the photo on his desk still matched the one I had embossed in my head. It was still there, two girls squished into a bumper car with their mother, the chief\u2019s wife of eighteen years, all laughing. Though the photo was less vivid than the one that unspooled in my mind when I couldn\u2019t fall asleep. In my imagination, it was saturated with realness and moved and told the entire story of the day. A birthday party at the amusement park, ice cream cake, fireworks at night. I envied those girls with equal parts gratitude and sadness. While at sea, they could only call their dad once a month on a sailor phone, but for ten months a year they let me borrow him.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cLet\u2019s say everything works perfectly.\u201d He shut the door, sat behind his desk, and leaned back with his mug rested on his stomach. \u201cLet\u2019s say you ID a single officer who\u2019s coercing young sailors. What happens after that?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou know how I know about the E6 getting promoted?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI stared empty-eyed at the back of Chief\u2019s forehead while I spoke. Any emotion here would make him think it\u2019s personal. I think part of him liked that I was expelled for trying to take down a cheating professor.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWade demoted her friend for refusing an X-ray party. She\u2019s trying to transfer out, but Wade won\u2019t let her.\u201d I dropped my gaze toward Chief\u2019s left eye. \u201cNot until she goes to a party.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe HVAC kicked on. His chair creaked as he shifted weight.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThere will be an investigation,\u201d he said. \u201cYour sources will unravel. Brass from Pearl Harbor will ask who knew what when. Your name will come up. My name.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nFor a second, he shot a glance at the photo of his family on the desk. His gaze returned harder than before.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNozick, in a few weeks there\u2019s a weapons test. The entire Seventh Fleet command will be aboard. I\u2019ll tell them about the X-ray parties. The poppyshine. I\u2019ll say I think Commander Wade may be involved. All I ask is that you leave it alone for now.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe was asking me to cut off an arm. He had his kids. I had The Devil\u2019s Shame<\/em>. Even as I nodded, I knew I\u2019d disobey. Honest to God, I wish I would\u2014could\u2014I wish I was capable of just shutting my mouth and getting in line like everyone else.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMC Nozick, are we crystal? This won\u2019t be posted in Devil\u2019s Shame<\/em>?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAye, aye, sir.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n \n– 3 Ambuscade’s Fourth Wall\n<\/p>\n \nI caught the first Tether watching me that afternoon. Ramirez sat on a bucket outside the Messenger\u2019s<\/em> office scraping rust from a bulkhead. The light fixture outside the office had been busted for weeks, but instead of pretending to fix that while spying on me, they sent someone to zero-heartedly drag a razor blade up and down the passageway.\n<\/p>\n \nRamirez was a heavily tattooed hick from Florida with teeth so big his lips didn\u2019t quite cover them. How the Navy managed to inflate his ASVAB scores, I had no idea. I pictured him as a teenager getting drunk and shooting trees for fun back home. The perfect Tether recruit, half criminal, future rapist, unfit for anything legit. I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if he used his link to the Ford\u2019<\/em>s Justwork computers to spy on women in the shower.\n<\/p>\n \nHis metHb reaction to the plastic implants was bad. The whole passageway reeked with his old fish smell. The cable running down the back of his neck pulsed slow waves of light. I imagined his sighting of me bouncing from Tether to Tether across the ship all the way up to whoever was running this poppyshine operation. Lord knows it wasn\u2019t Ramirez.\n<\/p>\n \nI pinched my nose as I passed behind him.\n<\/p>\n \nHe pretended to focus on the brown flakes gathering around his boots, but his non-monocled eye tracked my feet. He brushed the metal chips into the corner with the rat droppings and popped up as if his orders arrived: follow her.\n<\/p>\n \nDad worked in finance; he never took me outdoors. But Ramirez, the way he stalked in my blind spots, I guessed that he hunted as a kid. I decided to screw with him. I made like I was heading toward my berthing. I kept that course and let Ramirez spread my location through the ship\u2019s Justwork. I let all the Tethers think, she\u2019s going to her rack. Then I about-faced directly toward Ramirez.\n<\/p>\n \nHis chin jerked up. The prey was coming for him.\n<\/p>\n \nBetween us was a ladderwell. I sprang left and slid down with my hands on the rails and feet in the air.\n<\/p>\n \nRamirez\u2019s boots chased, but too slow. I was down a second deck before he could sight me again.\n<\/p>\n \nLeft to starboard. Left again to forward. Up a ladder. Right to aft, up another ladder, and back going the same direction, same deck, but different passageway. Not a single Tether. I shook them. It wouldn\u2019t last long, sixty seconds maybe. But whichever Tether showed up next, that would be the next tier in the poppyshine pyramid.\n<\/p>\n \nI headed toward my original destination, the enlisted Comms Room at the end of the ship. Back when the Navy cared about morale, they installed sailor phones, but now with Justwork\u2019s Tether computers hogged all the bandwidth. I got twenty minutes a month to try calling Dad.\n<\/p>\n \nPetty Officer Moole jumped into the passageway ahead of me wheezing and adjusting her eyepiece.\n<\/p>\n \nInteresting. They chose a woman.\n<\/p>\n \nMoole and I shared a berthing. The skin above her snarled lip was noticeably darker. The implants gave her a constant slow nosebleed.\n<\/p>\n \nShe was between me and the Comms Room. We approached each other like caged tigers.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAfternoon, shipmate,\u201d I said. \u201cXO is driving his remotes all over the ship today.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe cracked her knuckles and wiped a run of brown blood from her nose. She hated being called a remote.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cOh, don\u2019t get so mad,\u201d I said over my shoulder. \u201cJust think of all the special remote pay you\u2019re getting. Not like you had to study for it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nTwelve non-Tethers waited for an unbroken sailor phone. At least the waiting let me collect scuttlebutt. The best Devil\u2019s Shame<\/em> tips came from sailors calling home. They gossiped about who got promoted, drama in the ranks. The juiciest intel that day came from a COD boatswain who said he offloaded all sorts of luggage for inbound Distinguished Visitors. Apparently, some of these DVs had so much luggage it was sent in advance. The boatswain told his friend back home that the luggage tags had their names and\u2014a bit creepily\u2014he looked them up. All the DVs were pretty females working for Admiral Hahn\u2019s Pearl Harbor office.\n<\/p>\n \nX-ray parties, I thought.\n<\/p>\n \nWhen a sailor phone opened, I sat and punched in Dad\u2019s number. After several rings, a woman appeared on screen. She leaned over the desk like she had to run down the hall to answer the call.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cGood evening. Ambuscade Care Center. How can I direct your call?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHi, Natalie, how are you?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nNatalie smiled and caught her breath. \u201cLynn, my dear, how you stay? No more trouble you causing?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhen have I ever caused trouble?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe lifted her head from between both arms to look at the screen over her glasses. \u201cYou a thousand miles aways on a boat. How\u2019d you get there by obeying the rules?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nCompared to the Ford<\/em>, the scene behind Natalie seemed clean and potpourri smelling. The only walls I had ever seen at Ambuscade were the ones surrounding her. They were the same gentle pink as her bright wool cardigan. There were fake paintings of flowers and haystacks. The furniture was cheap and generic, like the set to an infomercial. It was studio-quiet on her end too.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou done that computer class already?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI shook my head, half in response to the automata correspondence course I still hadn\u2019t finished, but also in response to what her chitchat meant: again, I wouldn\u2019t be able to talk to Dad.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cGirl, you say your college credits is gone in four months. You know your dad wants you done.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHow is he?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe shook her head like she had the last eighteen times. \u201cSame. Still no speaking.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cCan\u2019t I at least see him?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nAfter Dad lost his vision the state released him into a halfway house. Then came a quick descent into spacey uninterestedness. Nothing could motivate him, not even me getting expelled from school and joining the Navy. By the time I finished boot camp he had stopped speaking. His parole officer found Ambuscade for me.\n<\/p>\n \nNatalie gathered up the silence in a hurry. \u201cBut I know exactly what your father would say. Be done with those college credits. The Navy is no place for somebody smart as you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nA timer popped on screen. Two minutes.\n<\/p>\n \nWhat the hell? The Navy couldn\u2019t even give me my lousy twenty minutes anymore?\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cCan you ask him something for me?\u201d I stammered to get the words out faster. \u201cAsk him to write me. You, or someone else, can dictate.\u201d Ever since he was admitted, Natalie was the only one who ever answered the phone at Ambuscade.\n<\/p>\n \nMy words hung there like they needed disinfecting. Something in the way her lower lids flitted, something rehearsed, made me feel like I was watching a performance.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019ll do just that,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I know what he say. He\u2019ll say leave the Navy and stay out of\u2014\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nMy screen rebooted.\n<\/p>\n \nHonest, I think Dad would tell me to figure how to make money off all the Tether dummies. Thinking of it then, if Dad ever did write to me, how would I know it was really him?\n<\/p>\n \nRamirez and his fish stench were on my heels as I left the Comms Room. I didn\u2019t have any more energy to play games with him. Moole\u2019s eye waited to pick me up in women\u2019s berthing.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThat\u2019s why command don\u2019t like you,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019re a dropout.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHer rack was opposite mine in a cubicle of nine sailors stacked three high. She lay with her head propped on a pillow and a brown tissue stuffed in her nose.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMoron, you didn\u2019t even finish the first year.\u201d The eye behind her monocle glowed white as if she scrolled through my expulsion file right then. \u201cYou put on like Tethers are less than you. But you got just as much school as me.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI wasn\u2019t about to explain about MIT professors testing off-syllabus then offering extra credit for joining a greedy pyramid scheme. \u201cWho\u2019s your brother dating now that you\u2019re Wade\u2019s remote control?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI scolded myself. Why did I goad her? I wouldn\u2019t even be in the Navy if I knew how to keep my mouth shut.\n<\/p>\n \nMoole hissed. \u201cWhoops. Accidentally, marked that public. Guess everyone is gonna know about you and professor Vo-oh-ray.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nVouray. She was Quebecois. The glare she hammered me with after I went to the provost about her pyramid scheme, it was thrilling. I felt like Lady Justice with her sword coolly by my side. But then the provost called me back in. He told me harassing faculty was expellable conduct. He said I could either voluntarily accept a three-semester suspension, or he would recommend expulsion to the Administrative Board. Turns out, only the Navy takes a drop-out with a disciplinary record.\n<\/p>\n \nMoole leaned off her rack and brought the rot around her implants close enough to smell. She whispered, \u201cLeast I got a future. Wade\u2019s gonna deep-six you soon enough. And if he don\u2019t, I\u2019ll float-test you myself.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n \n– 4 The Devil’s Tuning Fork\n<\/p>\n \nThis wall-less prison they had me in was hermetic. I couldn\u2019t ask anything about the X-ray parties. With my Tether minders always around, no one wanted to be seen talking to me. I even skipped jujitsu just to save Byron and them the hassle.\n<\/p>\n \nFor two days this went on. Like the sun and the moon passing the planet back and forth to each other, Wade\u2019s Tethers handed me off around corners and between compartments. Always one of them over my shoulder. It was almost an omnipotence they had. An untouchable cage of light, there but unseeable, there but unprovable. All of it bubble-gummed together with a computer and a network of future-less numbnuts needing a paycheck.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNozick, come here.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nCommander Wade. He materialized behind me. Not ten minutes earlier, he had been in the Messenger<\/em> offices speaking with the chief. He left and the chief assigned me to write up the installation of new cooking equipment. Now Wade stood alone in the galley as slit-mouthed as a debt collector.\n<\/p>\n \nMy Tethers had disappeared, too. What should have felt liberating, instead pinched in around me. Just the XO and me, a Petty Officer Second Class who\u2019d never make First Class if I didn\u2019t Joe Navy right up.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThis way.\u201d He jerked his head toward the bulkhead. He leaned to my ear, hushing. \u201cI know it\u2019s hard to stand by when you think something is happening.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nLike coercing sailors with drugs?\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI feel bad about it,\u201d he said. \u201cI wanted to make it up to you by letting you cover next week\u2019s weapons test.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe stood back to measure my reaction, but he was getting nothing from me. What happened to Chief\u2019s plan of telling Fleet Command about the poppyshine and X-ray parties? Did the chief say something already? He wouldn\u2019t set me up, would he?\n<\/p>\n \nRather than let any of these tells show in my face, I watched a line of ants climb the wall behind him.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThere\u2019ll be a bigwig defense contractor aboard,\u201d he said. \u201cCIA, too. This could be a break for your career. All Hands Magazine will want something on it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nAll Hands, the Navy\u2019s premier propaganda rag. Getting on staff at All Hands got you to the Pentagon and then maybe a cushy post running PR for a three-star. I couldn\u2019t care less. It was still the same brainwashing, only with Pentagon brass reading it. But I knew enough to feign enthusiasm.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cGreat, sir. Thank you for the opportunity.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nWhy? This weapons test had the whole fleet worked up. Why give a troublemaker like me access? It had to be a trap.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cGood then, I\u2019ll let All Hands know that I\u2019ll be reviewing your articles before they\u2019re sent.\u201d Again, he checked for my reaction and came up empty.\n<\/p>\n \nWatertight, sir. AJ-squared-away ready for duty. Don\u2019t know nothing about officers having sex with sailors high on poppyshine. The ant troop was somewhere above our heads by then. I stared through to the back of Wade\u2019s head and gave a curt nod.\n<\/p>\n \nHe grunted, looking unconvinced. \u201cYou should start doing pre-interviews with the combat department ASAP. Also, take this. Chief Haggenmiller said he trusts you with it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe walked away, leaving me with a stiff piece of paper. It was a photograph of the chief\u2019s wife and two daughters squeezed into a bumper car. The photo from the frame on his desk.\n<\/p>\n \nI was wrong. There were prisons more effective than wall-less ones. You could lock someone up with their past.\n<\/p>\n \nMy world imploded after Dad went to prison. I barely remembered the trial. Mostly, I remembered the slow unraveling of everything that was regular. Family and friends disappeared. Strange visitation routines. New homes every five months.\n<\/p>\n \nThe ants now crossed near the oily mesh of an exhaust fan. Single file, even when a wayward ant veered from the procession and the Ford\u2019s<\/em> vents sucked it up, the ants marched on. That\u2019s what justice was, a greasy, black void. If I pursued this poppyshine story, that\u2019s where I would lead Chief and his family. They\u2019d pin whatever I did on him. My childish idealism would consume us all.\n<\/p>\n \nI whispered to the empty galley. \u201cAye, aye, sir.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n \n– 5 Contagion\n<\/p>\n \nThe C-2 Greyhound floated down toward the Ford<\/em> through an iron blue sky. It slammed into the deck, caught the wire, and arrested to a violent stop. After a moment of frozen tension, it rolled backward a few feet and stopped.\n<\/p>\n \nI recorded the landing from the tower with Admiral Hahn in the foreground, just as Wade said. I was getting better at following his instructions. Like a damn circus animal. Next, I shot B-roll of Hahn on the flight deck giving orders, again, making sure I only got back angles so the camera didn\u2019t see his face puckered against the stink of jet fuel swirling around us.\n<\/p>\n \nThe Greyhound\u2019s cargo streamed onto the deck, a dozen fleet officers with support staff composed entirely of young women wearing white heels and the old dress skirts the Navy tossed out years ago. They even had new white float coats that made their lipstick stand stark against their cranials and goggles.\n<\/p>\n \nLark and Wade bounced a glance off each other. Wade looked away first and then Lark went back to ogling the bare legs crossing the deck. The Tethers outside the ATO shack crackled in laughter. The bluish men grinned and slapped each other while Moole rolled her eye and dragged a sleeve under her nose.\n<\/p>\n \nLark was probably broadcasting to the Justwork. I squeezed my camera tighter and resisted turning it on the chuckling hyenas. It would only upset Wade.\n<\/p>\n \nA clique of civilians followed the women, but hardly anyone bothered to notice them.\n<\/p>\n \nHahn leaned into Commander Wade\u2019s ear. Wade then turned to me to yell over the propeller\u2019s roar. \u201cThat\u2019s enough filming. Pack up. Prepare for the hangar event.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nAye, aye. Petty Officer Suckup at your service. For the last week I churned out garbage articles a thousand words at a time for Wade. The new weapons system being tested, the warship we were sinking, even a listicle on how the cooks were preparing for the DVs. All without my Tether minders hovering. They had nothing to fear, not with Chief\u2019s daughters at risk.\n<\/p>\n \nI capped my lens and headed back to the ATO shack. At the shack, in part to avoid whatever intimidation Moole wanted to give me, I looked back to the flight deck.\n<\/p>\n \nHahn, wearing dress whites, swaggered past the foul line to greet one civilian in particular. At first they shook hands. Then the civilian pulled Hahn\u2014a rear admiral with twenty thousand sailors under his command\u2014into a hug. As if asking permission, bowing almost, Hahn led the civilian toward the aircraft lift.\n<\/p>\n \nEven with all the clumsy flight gear dangling about him, the civilian ambled with his arm over Hahn as if the Ford<\/em> were his own private yacht. The deck crew scrambled to unbuckle his cranial, but he shooed them away, popped it off himself, and tucked it under his arm. He was rich-handsome, a man with choices. He had surfer length, graying blond hair and rolled up shirtsleeves showing tanned forearms. As the lift descended toward the hangar, he ignored the commotion around him and instead scanned the sea as if looking for a wave he could catch while us worker drones prepared his next appointment.\n<\/p>\n \nI had read about John Rawls, but I wasn\u2019t prepared for how calm he\u2019d make me feel.\n<\/p>\n \nI had forgotten what I was doing and had to scurry down the ladder in time to record the presentation. A podium, a stage, and half of the Ford\u2019<\/em>s crew waited for us in the hangar. The women had disappeared leaving just the fleet officers and, I assumed, the Justwork defense contractors.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cLadies and gentlemen, let me begin by saying\u2026\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHahn had us bored in seconds. The Tethers stared at the back of the head in front of them while the non-Tethers swung their attention around in search of anything more entertaining.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cTomorrow morning, the Gerald Ford Strike Group will begin a 180-second barrage of approximately nine thousand missiles, torpedoes, and artillery at the decommissioned ex-USS Themis<\/em>. Not to see if we can sink her. Instead, we\u2019ll test if a new class of sailor can protect her. I\u2019ll turn it over to Justwork\u2019s founder, John Rawls to explain.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHahn and Rawls exchanged a stiff handshake with none of the chumminess from before.\n<\/p>\n \nIf Hahn\u2019s presence was like brutal sunshine, Rawls was a cool tropical breeze. He unhooked the microphone from the podium and walked out to the edge of the stage.\n<\/p>\n \nAll the Tethers lifted their heads in unison. Rawls\u2019s unexpected ease must have reset Justwork\u2019s algorithm. With eerie choreography, hundreds of necks craned to gather new information and feed it back to the ship.\n<\/p>\n \nRawls skipped the traditional thank-you-for-your-service and went straight into a joke. \u201cAfter that long plane ride with all those khakis, I\u2019m surprised I still know how to operate a wrench.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe hangar echoed with laughter. Even some of the officers chuckled at themselves.\n<\/p>\n \nRawls waited for the joke to fade before he turned serious. \u201cTraditionally, cerebral implants have a processing ceiling equivalent to the human brain. I won\u2019t bore you with the math, but theoretically, we should only be able to intercept roughly nine hundred targets per minute. But Justwork thinks the Navy deserves better.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBetter than Space Force?\u201d Someone shouted from the back.\n<\/p>\n \nRawls fired back. \u201cA hundred times better than Space Force.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nA few hooyahs rolled through the hangar.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe problem with Space Force,\u201d Rawls said, \u201cTheir augments are slowed by the human brain. By tethering many brains together, Justwork can produce levels of performance exponentially higher than any single entity operating alone. Like flies or insects function optimally in hives, our new Defense Flock93 will combine the best parts of a Navy sailor and multiply it again and again.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHooyah!\u201d Came from the crowd. Then another. \u201cHooyah! Hooyah!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe chants gathered and synchronized. Hahn came out from behind Rawls and alternated between clapping his hands hard and ginning the sailors with arm pumps.\n<\/p>\n \nRawls, who looked like he had more to say, bowed and yielded the stage to Admiral Hahn.\n<\/p>\n \nI framed the shot in my head, but didn\u2019t dare record it: Hahn, meaty and red-faced, screaming while Rawls watched from behind the way a judge watches a drunk stagger into a bar fight.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHooyah! Hooyah! Hooyah!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI wasn\u2019t the only one not clapping. Another man, who watched me from behind the officers and civilians on stage, kept his arms behind his back. For as large as this man was\u2014as big as Dad, even\u2014it was amazing how he nearly disappeared amongst the defense contractors. He had the same rumpled slacks and button-up shirt. CIA was my guess. He had soft, putty-textured skin, and two faint scars on both temples. He looked shapeable.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNozick, pay attention.\u201d Commander Wade took my elbow. \u201cYou need photos of the officers shaking hands with enlisted. I want a Tether in each one.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nWade escorted a parade of fleet officers and enlisted sailors before my camera. We all faked our way through it.\n<\/p>\n \nI focused on protecting the chief. Protecting me too. Maybe if I could stay out of trouble, ingratiate myself with Wade and Hahn, I could get myself off this ship. Get out of the Navy. Join the CIA or work for Rawls. Even the Tethers had a better plan than me. Suck up to command, get in line, do what you\u2019re told.\n<\/p>\n \nAs the bodies cycled through my viewfinder, I spotted a reflection in the windshield of a helicopter. It was the CIA guy above me on the flight deck. I turned to see who he was looking at. But in the time it took me to turn my head and look up, he was gone.\n<\/p>\n \n \n– 6 Every Ventriloquist Needs A Dummy\n<\/p>\n \nWade\u2019s edits rotted my stomach. But I kept my cool.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDescribe the emotions in the hangar better.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cSay Admiral Hahn inspired them.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cTell us how many sailors waited to greet the admiral.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nPropaganda drivel meant to get more funding from Congress. I numbed my brain to it. If I wanted to fight for what\u2019s right, I should have stayed in school and out of the Navy. It was an hour into midwatch by the time All Hands<\/em>\u2014or Wade\u2014was placated.\n<\/p>\n \nI needed to kick something.\n<\/p>\n \nMost of the Ford<\/em>\u2019s five thousand souls slept in her droning silence down passageways draped in the hollow shadows of vacant red light. I took the long way to the gym. Up to the hangar and over all the crew quarters and then back down before reaching the boxing room. I wasn\u2019t going anywhere near the DV passageway. If I didn\u2019t hear the X-ray parties, I stood a better chance of staying uninvolved.\n<\/p>\n \nAfter last week\u2019s pathetic performance pulling myself up the aircraft lift, I wanted to work my abs. I wrapped my legs around the heavy bag and did hanging sit-ups, then shadowboxed the mirror for three rounds before starting on the bag.\n<\/p>\n \nJust as I started comboing, Ramirez leaned his head into the boxing room. He gave a sleepy nod\u2014presumably more to Ford\u2019<\/em>s Justwork than to me: person-of-interest located, I\u2019m going back to sleep.\n<\/p>\n \nThey didn\u2019t need to watch me. They had an ax over Chief\u2019s head to keep me in line.\n<\/p>\n \nI went at the bag harder, but it wasn\u2019t working. Each strike tempted more resentment. Not that these X-ray parties were happening, I was over that. It was the bullying. Hahn and Wade knew they had me. I spend all this time criticizing Lark and Moole for being mindless Tethers. How was I any different?\n<\/p>\n \nMy knuckles bled. I was the remote control.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cOh my God, they have punching bags!\u201d A tiny woman with wavy blond hair giggled at the hatchway. \u201cAircraft carriers have punching bags!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe staggered into the boxing room with her uniform unbuttoned showing everything you\u2019re not supposed to.\n<\/p>\n \nYou forget how monotone the Navy is. Everywhere is drab gray metal. Then in walks a woman with devil red lipstick. Under the boxing room\u2019s milkwater fluorescents, her lips were the color of revenge.\n<\/p>\n \nShe took a cartoonish squatting position in front of the bag next to mine and made machine guns sounds with each punch. She tried to keep a brawler\u2019s scowl, but after the fifth punch, she lost to the poppyshine and erupted into a giggle fit.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI punching. I punching.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nJesus, they were taunting me now.\n<\/p>\n \nThe woman was a Seventh Fleet shore staffer based in Pearl Harbor. I remembered Lark watching her catwalk across the flight deck. How the hell could they let her out of the X-ray party? They didn\u2019t even care anymore.\n<\/p>\n \nEventually, Lark himself came and took her by the wrist. At the hatch, his ice blue face looked back to me.\n<\/p>\n \nIf he broadcast my reaction through the Justwork, I hope it said this: \u201cGo to hell, I ain\u2019t falling for it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI laid into the bag. Not hard, but methodically. I churned through my combos. Front kick, front kick, cross. Jab, weave, sweep. The rhythm lured me back into a trance, back to dwelling on being Wade\u2019s remote. How did this happen? It was the Devil\u2019s Shame<\/em> that they took away. That\u2019s what separated me from the Tethers, having an outlet, a voice against the bullies. Such a silly project that tricked me into thinking I was more than a cog in Hahn\u2019s machine.\n<\/p>\n \nAfter eight rounds, I quit the bag and went to the cardio room next door, which was really just a dozen treadmills underneath the Ford\u2019<\/em>s main HVAC compartment. The soot-colored ductwork above needed constant repair so they just removed the ceiling and let the ship\u2019s innards show.\n<\/p>\n \nI propped my computer on a treadmill, typed \u201cJohn Rawls\u201d into the search box, and started jogging.\n<\/p>\n \nContent Blocked. The Navy\u2019s standard page appeared on my screen. Normally, Ford<\/em>\u2019s filters only blocked porn and high-data vids that stole bandwidth from Justwork\u2019s computers.\n<\/p>\n \nI tried other searches. Justwork, Rawls, Tether inventor, biotech entrepreneur. All blocked.\n<\/p>\n \nWhat the\u2026\n<\/p>\n \nJust as I was about to connect to one of the proxy servers I had hidden around the ship, Moole walked in.\n<\/p>\n \nSomething changed. The way her eye targeted my computer before looking anywhere else. The way she took a stationary bike in the back which gave her clear view of my screen. The way she moved, like a rat along the floorboard, on a mission. No, they were watching me again. I must have tripped something new in Justwork\u2019s algorithm. I should have used my proxy servers from the start.\n<\/p>\n \nI checked my screen to see what Moole could see. My last search had duped the filters somewhat and found news stories mentioning Rawls in passing. They used phrases like \u201cdespite his tragic upbringing\u201d, \u201clived in a shipping container\u201d, or \u201cfatherless from the age of twelve.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nJoin the club. I was twelve when they imprisoned Dad.\n<\/p>\n \nMoole was mid-sip from her water bottle when her head whipped toward the hatchway. She seemed to hold her breath and brace herself. The CIA guy entered, the large guy with scars on his temples who didn\u2019t clap during the hangar presentation. They faced each other, but neither gave an acknowledgment. They were like two hawks circling the same rabbit.\n<\/p>\n \nThe CIA guy came toward the center of the room. He didn\u2019t move the way I expected him to. Most people who spent sixteen weeks in boot camp have a rigidness to the spine that never fully leaves. Instead, his knees had more bend than normal, as if he concentrated on absorbing all the sounds his massive body made. Still, his walk had a familiar quality to me that I couldn\u2019t place. His gaze, too, it was spectral in how he seemed capable of taking in the entire room without looking at any one thing. It reminded me of waking in the middle of the night to see my childhood dolls, their white plastic eyes already staring at me. After minutes of screaming, Dad would finally walk in to turn the dolls away.\n<\/p>\n \nHe threw his sweatshirt across the arm of a treadmill and went to fill his water bottle at the fountain behind me. He passed in front without making eye contact or moving his lips. But he said: \u201cYour water bottle looks empty.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nSpooky as all hell. Never before had I seen someone able to communicate without actually moving their mouth.\n<\/p>\n \nI checked Moole in the mirror.\n<\/p>\n \nShe watched him, not me. Only after I slowed my treadmill did she switch back to me, processing, confused. The LEDs on her temple flashed berserk. I pictured the whole situation sending Justwork\u2019s algorithms into a frantic spiral.\n<\/p>\n \nI stepped off the treadmill and followed the ventriloquist.\n<\/p>\n \nThe water fountain was in an alcove at the back of the room between two tiny changing rooms. By the time I made it to the fountain, the CIA guy was gone. How, I don\u2019t know. I didn\u2019t even hear the locker room door open.\n<\/p>\n \nI unscrewed my water bottle and put it under the fountain.\n<\/p>\n \nThe men\u2019s locker room door opened with no more sound than smoke. The ventriloquist\u2019s head appeared in the crack. The plastic of his eyes had dimmed. He made a slim motion with his head to join him.\n<\/p>\n \nThey caught me searching the internet for Rawls. That\u2019s what I assumed. The ventriloquist was CIA charged with protecting Justwork. Admiral Hahn sent him to scold me. Another warning to back off.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNow, Lynn,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n \nHe knew my name. My feet moved like on marionette strings.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cStand on the toilet.\u201d He pointed to a bathroom stall. \u201cPetty Officer Moole is checking the women\u2019s locker room now. She\u2019ll be here in ninety seconds.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nAgain, he said all this without moving his lips, and he did it without raising his voice beyond a hush. It was as if he could crumple his words into a ball and toss them through the air into my ears.\n<\/p>\n \nThen it clicked. He knew Moole\u2019s location. Suddenly the scars on his temple took on new meaning. He was a Tether.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe relationship between John Rawls and Admiral Hahn is of concern to us.\u201d He took off his shirt as he said this. \u201cWe\u2019d like to ask your help in investigating it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe locker room door opened. From the stall, standing on the toilet, I couldn\u2019t see anything except the ventriloquist whose expression had turned grumpy.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDo you mind?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThis he said while moving his lips like a normal human. It gave his voice a familiar tone, like a morning call to breakfast.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cSorry, sir, I\u2019m looking for\u2014\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThere\u2019s no one here but me, sailor. Privacy. Now.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI knew that voice. My mind chased memories around in circles.\n<\/p>\n \nThe door closed. The ventriloquist buttoned his shirt and went back to throwing his words.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou can get off the toilet. She\u2019s in the passageway looking for you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHow is he driving Moole like his own personal remote control? \u201cWho are you?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI put poppyshine in her water bottle. Wait until it takes effect before watching the video.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nWhat the hell was he talking about? \u201cWho do you work for?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHahn has rigged the weapons test. I need you to prove it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nNo. I mean, hell no.\n<\/p>\n \nWho did this guy think he was ordering me around? I wouldn\u2019t risk the chief. He was one of the few people who didn\u2019t care about me being expelled. He never once mentioned that Dad stole millions of dollars. Mr. Ventriloquist could work for the White House for all I cared, I wasn\u2019t going to do anything against the chief.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cRawls and Hahn are using the Tethers. Using you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe seemed capable of seeing more than just my thoughts. It was as if he could see my past. As if he were there himself to know which puppet strings moved me the most: I was no Tether, I wasn\u2019t going to let someone like Hahn bully me.\n<\/p>\n \nI didn\u2019t say anything, but he already read me.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cGood. You can call me Marid.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n \n– 7 Tethered To Who You Are\n<\/p>\n \nBy the time I turned the corner from the men\u2019s locker room into the cardio room, Marid was gone. He had to be CIA. Who else could disappear around corners like that?\n<\/p>\n \nThe room, normally pounding with the sound of sailors on treadmills and the catapult launching, was still. On my treadmill, under my computer, was a memory card.\n<\/p>\n \nRunning boots shuffled to a stop behind me. I smelled the metHb before I turned around. Moole and Lark. She looked tiny compared to his massiveness.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhere\u2019d you go?\u201d Moole wiped a trace of blood from her nose.\n<\/p>\n \nNot your damn business, now is it? I fisted the memory card and kept my mouth shut. I didn\u2019t want to cause more problems. For myself and for Chief. But also because I wanted to see what was on the memory card.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI ran to the bathroom.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI checked the head.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cShe checked the head, Nozick.\u201d Lark massaged the crown of his head. \u201cWhere were you?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nWhat, you report my pee breaks to all the ship\u2019s Tethers? They probably got in trouble for losing me again.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI needed more privacy.\u201d I faked a stammer and looked at Moole. \u201cYou know, girl privacy.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI didn\u2019t even know what that meant, but it made Lark squirm.\n<\/p>\n \nI gathered my computer and water bottle from the treadmill.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhere are you going now?\u201d Lark asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cShower and bed.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThey parted to let me through. Moole fetched her towel and water bottle from the exercise bike and chased after me leaving Lark behind.\n<\/p>\n \nI took the route that passed by the DV passageway. Drunk laughing and music grew louder. Down one passageway, the blonde from the boxing room in a heavy kiss with a fleet officer.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cFrickin Wade,\u201d Moole mumbled. She uncapped her water bottle and drank.\n<\/p>\n \nMarid, I thought, the poppyshine.\n<\/p>\n \nAt our berthing, I turned on Moole. \u201cYou getting in the shower with me?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHer feet stayed planted on the deck, but her head swayed. Brown blood ran unwiped down her chin. Her eye glazed over.\n<\/p>\n \nWhat is she reporting back to the Justwork? Did they monitor her in real time? Could they detect her blood alcohol levels?\n<\/p>\n \nI pretended normal. I stepped around Moole and stowed my computer under my rack beside the photo of the chief\u2019s family. In one sweep, I collected my shower caddy and camera. I tucked both under my towel and I checked over my shoulder.\n<\/p>\n \nMoole\u2019s eyepiece faced my general direction, but she was stoned. Could they still see me? I guess I would find out how tethered the Tethers were.\n<\/p>\n \nI went to the shower, turned it on, inserted the memory card, plugged in my earphones, and pressed play.\n<\/p>\n \nThe display on my camera was small and I could barely make out the title screen, fuzzy-white font over a black screen:\n<\/p>\n \n \nAPPLIED FUTURES IMPLANT CONFERENCE 2024, Hong Kong.\n<\/p>\n \n \nEven smaller letters crawled across the bottom of the screen. I had to pause and zoom to read it.\n<\/p>\n \n \nCLASSIFIED SURVEILLANCE FROM CW#3.\n<\/p>\n \n \nThe screen lit up to a tiny restaurant scene saturated in pastel colors with tables and chairs packed together. The camera angle moved as if positioned from a human head. It was a head-up display. Data framed the recording: location, a map of the restaurant and surrounding buildings, a recording counter, a distance meter, and a message box.\n<\/p>\n \nTwo icons floated in the vision field and pointed to the only two visible diners: #H and #R.\n<\/p>\n \nIs this what Tethers see all the time?\n<\/p>\n \nHahn and Rawls sat at a table near the window under a neon sign advertising noodles. Hahn wore a civilian suit. If the title date was accurate, the years since the video was shot had not been kind to him. He was much healthier there in the noodle shop, thinner with a longer neck that bobbed up and down listening to Rawls.\n<\/p>\n \nTo me, Rawls had the same ageless peacefulness that he had on the flight deck. He took slow sips of broth while explaining\u2014dumbing down, I thought\u2014something to Hahn.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe problem with NeuroScan\u2019s implants is they don\u2019t allow for a multi-path process, something I perfected back at Dannemora.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHahn cocked his head.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe penitentiary,\u201d Rawls explained.\n<\/p>\n \nDannemora was where Dad was held. Where he went blind. I pulled the camera display closer to inspect Rawls\u2019s face. What was he doing at Dannemora? What was he perfecting?\n<\/p>\n \nHahn shrugged. \u201cNeuroScan\u2019s implants don\u2019t need to be improved. With billions in DARPA funds, they control the market.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cListen, defense is not Justwork\u2019s market. I couldn\u2019t care less. My prosthetics are minimally invasive. We network them to brain\u2019s perforant for a quicker reaction time, especially during stress. I\u2019m not going for soldiers. I want cops.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThey talked about Justwork\u2019s specifications, but the words drizzled over me like mist. I was still hung on the possibility that Rawls might have known Dad. He might have been there when the accident happened.\n<\/p>\n \nDad didn\u2019t know what happened to himself. I learned a lot about how freedom of information laws worked\u2014or didn\u2019t work\u2014but I never got an answer to how he lost his sight. Listening to Rawls change the subject so quickly from Dannemora to helping police make quicker decisions, it felt like a bully stabbing his finger against my chest.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNozick, you still alive in there?\u201d Lark\u2019s voice echoed through the shower room.\n<\/p>\n \nWhat the hell was he doing in the women\u2019s berthing?\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cPrivate time, Lark, private time.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI focused back on the surveillance footage.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019m not quite sure who you pissed off,\u201d Hahn said, \u201cbut the Secretary of the Navy is pressuring me to buy NeuroScan\u2019s implants. Not Justwork\u2019s.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nRawls leaned back. The head-up display zoomed-in on his face. As calm as he appeared, his beach blue eyes came alive. \u201cI think the secretary made a bet on NeuroScan earlier in his career and he\u2019s willing to double down to preserve his ego.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe paused and regarded Hahn like a bonsai tree.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cEgo is a powerful thing,\u201d Rawls said. \u201cPerhaps the most powerful thing.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe Tether recording the footage zoomed-out to show Hahn again.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI could make a similar bet,\u201d Hahn said. \u201cOn you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nRawls batted his hand. \u201cNot sure I\u2019d take that kind of career risk if I were you, Captain.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI could be convinced.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThere was a clang of a dropped piece of silverware. Hahn and Rawls looked directly at the camera, at the Tether or whoever recorded it. Hahn went back to his soup, but Rawls leaned forward as if he couldn\u2019t be sure what he saw.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cJohn\u2014\u201d Hahn pulled Rawls back. \u201cI could be convinced.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nA long hesitation stretched between them. \u201cHow much?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cA thirty percent stake in Justwork.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nRawls shrugged. \u201cFine,\u201d he said before turning back to look harder at CW#3.\n<\/p>\n \n \n– 8 Ain’t No Shame For The Devil\n<\/p>\n \nMy camera had been moved. That was the first thing I noticed when I woke. My computer too. My dress uniform was hung backwards. Someone had to have taken it out and put it back wrong.\n<\/p>\n \nMoole had left already. Her bunk was perfectly made and smooth. On the floor beside my rack was a drop of black blood.\n<\/p>\n \nI was scared to check. If the video with Rawls and Hahn was missing\u2026 It would mean things would get so much worse for me and Chief. My hands shook as I reached for the empty soap bottle where I hid my valuables.\n<\/p>\n \nGone.\n<\/p>\n \nMotherofgod.\n<\/p>\n \nLark. It had to have been Lark watching me through Moole\u2019s monocle and seeing me take the camera to the shower. The people who became Tethers, to them justice was a tool for getting what\u2019s owed to them. Hahn should be court martialed, but instead Lark would use the video to get something for himself. Shaming the devil was a joke for Hahn and them to laugh at in the officer\u2019s ward.\n<\/p>\n \nI spent the next thirty minutes searching my clothes and shower caddy to be sure I hadn\u2019t misplaced the card somehow. I begged the universe for it to be a mistake. Not for me, really, but for Chief and his girls.\n<\/p>\n \nI was late when I finally arrived at the Messenger<\/em> offices. Byron stopped typing to look up at me. It wasn\u2019t a why-are-you-late look.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cCommander Wade is in with the chief,\u201d he whispered as if sharing a rumor. \u201cWade was here before Chief. Waiting.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI spoke before I thought. \u201cDid he have a memory card with him?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nByron squinted the same way he did when I made a mistake while sparring.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNever mind.\u201d I crept around the front desk.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThey said to tell you to knock when you got here.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI tried to think, but my head rang like a dropped cauldron. What could they possibly accuse me of? I didn\u2019t make the video. I didn\u2019t post it to Devil\u2019s Shame<\/em> . I just watched it.\n<\/p>\n \nAs I knocked on his office door, it occurred to me: Chief didn\u2019t ask for any of this either.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cCome.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nNeither Wade nor the chief looked away from each other when I entered. It felt like walking into a poker showdown. Did Wade know about Hahn\u2019s corruption? Was he in on it? Did he tell Chief? Would the chief choose to protect his family over me?\n<\/p>\n \nIt was selfish of me, I know, but I wanted to know who Chief would choose.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNozick,\u201d Wade said.\u201d \u201cWe\u2014All Hands\u2014wants you to get some video of the Themis<\/em> before the weapons test.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWe\u2019ll go over this morning.\u201d The normal grit of the chief\u2019s voice was robotic. \u201cAll of us.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe lifted his eyes for the first time, right at me. The concern was gone. The pits and lines of his face that I had known so well turned hieroglyphic. I\u2019d let him down. All he wanted was no problems, and here I was making a huge problem.\n<\/p>\n \nWade stood. He looked at my camera. \u201cAlways ready, aren\u2019t you, Specialist.\u201d He didn\u2019t wait for an answer. \u201cA heli is standing by.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNow?\u201d I asked with more shock than I should have.\n<\/p>\n \nWade marched out without so much as looking at me. The chief stood and waited for me to leave.\n<\/p>\n \nI couldn\u2019t read him.\n<\/p>\n \nHe seemed to understand this. With the XO in the outer office, he picked up a picture frame from his desk\u2014the one that held the photo of his wife and two kids. It was still in my rack. He flipped it up so I could see it was empty. He nodded toward the door.\n<\/p>\n \nI understood. He wasn\u2019t going to ruin his family for me. I was on my own.\n<\/p>\n \nLark waited outside the Messenger<\/em> office and led us single file\u2014Wade, me, then the chief\u2014toward the flight deck. Even through the passageway\u2019s grime I smelled the metHb fish stink approaching. Sure enough, Moole, Ramirez, and two other Tethers met us halfway, their gazes waiting to receive us as we rounded a corner. Moole raked me over with an eye still puffy from the poppyshine. She didn\u2019t even bother with a tissue, she just licked at the trickle of brown blood coming from her nose.\n<\/p>\n \nA helicopter and several Justwork employees, including Rawls, waited for us on the flight deck. The civilians were hungover in rumpled clothes and guzzling water. We coptered to an amphibious ship where two twin-engine patrol crafts were lowered into the water and sped us toward the Themis.<\/em>\n<\/p>\n \nI picked the boat with mostly Justwork contractors. Except for Rawls, the civilians appeared equally creeped out by the Tethers\u2019 synchronized movements.\n<\/p>\n \nThe ex-USS Themis<\/em> was anchored ten miles south of the strike group\u2019s position. We smashed through the waves for thirty minutes before reaching her. One of the Justwork bros turned green and vomited over the side. He drank more water and threw up again. Rawls sat calmly admiring the sea, occasionally grinning at the sudden drop off the backside of a wave.\n<\/p>\n \nThe Themis<\/em> was an ancient, Newport<\/em>-class tank landing ship built before combat shifted to AI and augmentation. She didn\u2019t have the Ford\u2019<\/em>s garish bloat, instead, she had a long and elegant hull like a rusted nail waiting to be shivved into a sleeping child. Lonely and beautiful, when the PB pilots cut the engines, we could hear the groan of her steel plates shift with the rolling sea. The tape I got in the shade of Themis<\/em> was haunting.\n<\/p>\n \nThe last crew aboard installed the Defense Flock93 systems and left a small dock and accommodation ladder to climb the sixty feet to the main deck.\n<\/p>\n \nAt the top, Rawls tapped my shoulder. \u201cCan I show you the D-Flock components?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe entire trip to the Themis<\/em> I resisted the urge to ask him what he was doing at Dannemora Correctional Facility. Now might be my chance. Did he know what happened to my father?\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe system is essentially a series of canisters.\u201d Rawls pointed to some fifty oil drums daisy-chained around Themis<\/em>\u2019s deck and hanging over the bulwark. He lifted the lid off one canister and reached inside and pulled out a palm-sized aviation drone.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cSix hundred per canister. Thirty thousand, all simultaneously controlled by just fifteen Justwork Tethers back on the Ford<\/em>\u2014or hundreds of miles away if we want.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nRawls grinned like Christmas.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhen they swarm, they can immobilize missiles, mass shooters, drivers who blow stop signs. They are like night insects, always there but never seen.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI got heartburn looking into the canister. I imagined a human Tether with mile-long tentacles made up of these flying shards of metal. Thousands of tiny fingers extending around the world, plucking me from a crowd, reaching down my throat, clogging and nicking until I drowned in blood.\n<\/p>\n \nHe whispered just then. \u201cImagine a world where the law is finally more powerful than the lawless.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI wasn\u2019t sure if he said this to me or my video camera, but the stare he pinned me with was definitely not for the camera. It occurred to me that Justwork wasn\u2019t creating a new level of computing power. It was playing with godhood.\n<\/p>\n \nI whispered back, \u201cNot if the lawless control these things.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nMoole\u2019s shadow fell over us. \u201cXO wants us to take you below. To video the D-Flock power system.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nLark waited by the steering tower massaging his scalp in pain. Under the beating sun, his ice blue skin vanished behind his web of metHb veins. When I didn\u2019t move right away, Moole positioned herself behind me and Lark pointed down a ladder that disappeared into the Themis\u2019<\/em>s dark belly.\n<\/p>\n \nI looked for the chief, but he had wandered to the far side of the deck with one of the Justwork engineers.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNozick, hurry.\u201d Wade laughed. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to be here when the tests begin.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI went first down the ladder. I didn\u2019t get three steps before Lark started down.\n<\/p>\n \nThe ruthless equatorial sun made the blackness below deck nearly complete. The only light came from the glowing D-Flock cables running from the canisters above deck and wrapping around the ladder\u2019s rails. They pulsed in slow, rolling waves, the same as a Tether\u2019s cable. Only when the cables turned and ran horizontal to the ladder did I know where the deck was.\n<\/p>\n \nI reached the bottom.\n<\/p>\n \nRawls leaned over the open hatch above. \u201cJust follow the cable around the corner. Down the passageway.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nLark reached the deck. \u201cLet\u2019s move, Nozick.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHis monocle filled one eye socket with a faint pink light. The rest of his face was a black hole.\n<\/p>\n \nHe had night vision I realized. He could see just fine. I set my camera\u2019s flash to stay lit and act as a flashlight.\n<\/p>\n \nWe were in a long starboard-side passageway that ran the length of the Themis<\/em>. The air was hot, still, and moist. Closed hatchways lined the passageway and continued past where the D-Flock cables turned port side around a corner. Beyond the glowing cables, the Themis<\/em> reverted to a cavern echoing with the long slow creaks of hatches swinging with the roll of the sea.\n<\/p>\n \nMy camera display flashed. Low battery.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat\u2019s your malfunction, Specialist?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI can\u2019t keep my strobe on like this.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cJust follow the light from the cables.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nWhat if instead of standing behind me like a parking lot rapist, you lead the way with your night vision?\n<\/p>\n \nTo save batteries, I set my camera to take stills using the flash. I snapped a photo and then looked at the image in the display. There was a small cardboard box in the passageway ahead of me. Some sort of empty package probably left over from installing the D-Flocks.\n<\/p>\n \nI walked forward blind until I felt my boot kick the empty box. I checked the image again. Three more paces before I reached the corner. One, two, three. I stopped and took another photo.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDammit, Nozick, you\u2019re messing with my retinal display.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI check my viewer again. I had reached the intersection where the cables turned and ran athwartship.\n<\/p>\n \nA cool draft moved against my skin. The sound was different too, more hollow. The wires ran inboard far, far into the distance. After forty yards they branched out. It pissed Lark off, but I took photos every five steps as a comfort against the blackness.\n<\/p>\n \nThe passageway ended amidships in a giant open room. The mess, I guessed. Or maybe Justwork removed the bulkheads to make room for the power system. Either way, the space was larger than my camera\u2019s flash could reach. The glowing wires webbed through the dark toward metal boxes the height of a four-year-old.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cUnlink,\u201d Lark said.\n<\/p>\n \nHuh?\n<\/p>\n \nBefore I could ask what he meant, he let out a long, relieved sigh. \u201cSweet Jesus.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nBoots came from my left. Several. Running.\n<\/p>\n \nI pointed the camera and shot. Something, I couldn\u2019t see.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cFrickin, I can\u2019t see!\u201d A woman\u2019s screech.\n<\/p>\n \nFrom behind\u2014Lark?\u2014my knees buckled. I fell forward. I braced with my arm out, but in the dark, I couldn\u2019t see the deck coming. Pain streaked up from my wrist to my elbow.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cGive me the camera,\u201d Lark said.\n<\/p>\n \nBefore it was ripped from my hand, I saw the display. Moole and three other Tethers.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHow do we do this?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cJust pour it down her throat.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cShe\u2019ll spit, believe me.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNot if we shove the\u2014\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cShut up,\u201d Lark said. \u201cWe\u2019re not framing her for the poppyshine anymore.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWade ordered\u2014\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWe\u2019re not working for Wade right now.\u201d He came to where I could smell the rot of his skin. He whispered. \u201cA ten percent stake in Justwork. Ain\u2019t bad for a dumb Tether.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThey weren\u2019t even speaking in code. Lark\u2019s unlink command, he ordered them to disconnect. They could just go off the grid like that? But wouldn\u2019t\u2014\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI get first.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe air rustled. Something\u2014a boot?\u2014landed below my eye. White light. Metallic pain like fire above my gums. No, the taste was metallic. Familiar. The dentist? Then my hair, my scalp, burned and pulled my head up. Then down. Face against the deck.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWho\u2019s the remote control now, bitch?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n \n– 9 Keelhauled\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIf only you were a Tether.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI thought that\u2019s what I heard someone say. I hope it was someone else and not my own words.\n<\/p>\n \nOver and over, I heard that sentence in my head. It was my only time marker as I was dragged half-conscious through the passageways of the Themis<\/em>.\n<\/p>\n \nIf only I were a Tether\u2026\n<\/p>\n \nI came into focus while dangling midair, all of my weight hung on two ropes under on my armpits. My heels thumbed each ladder step one by drawn-out one as the light above me grew brighter until the daylight smashed through my eyelids.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou\u2019d of seen us coming then.\u201d Moole\u2019s dumbdeaf drawl was close enough to be inside my head. \u201cSo smart you think you are. But you just as owned by your ego. Chasing this justice garbage. You\u2019re the remote control, but don\u2019t even know it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThat\u2019s enough,\u201d Lark said. He towered above. He looked so loose and eased that, if not for the bluish skin, I almost didn\u2019t recognize him.\n<\/p>\n \nI lay on my back, Moole\u2019s words ringing in my head. If only I were a Tether. If only I\u2019d stop fighting everything and get in line, I wouldn\u2019t be in this mess.\n<\/p>\n \nI lifted my hand to block the sun.\n<\/p>\n \nThey didn\u2019t bind my hands. Why?\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHow long do we have to wait?\u201d one of the Tethers asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cRamirez, go check if Wade is gone yet?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThey were talking, not communicating over the Justwork.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIf you link then everyone would see me here.\u201d My words came out funny. I was missing a tooth.\n<\/p>\n \nRamirez scurried up a ladder to the bridge and poked his head around the pilothouse. He waited, watching.\n<\/p>\n \nI scanned the sea. I was on the other side of the Themis<\/em> from where we docked. Even if I screamed the others would never hear.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThey\u2019re leaving now,\u201d Ramirez reported back.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cTie her,\u201d Lark said.\n<\/p>\n \nMoole crushed an ugly laugh from her throat like she had been waiting all year for this moment. She had the nylon around my feet before I even had time to kick.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou\u2019re going to pretend it was an accident?\u201d I tried to squirm. I searched for just one Tether eye that cared. \u201cIf they\u2019ll get rid of me like this, what makes you think they won\u2019t do it to you too?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nMoole grinned and tapped her eyepiece.\n<\/p>\n \nLark lifted me by the underarms. \u201cDon\u2019t break my drones on the way down.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe drop took seconds.\n<\/p>\n \nWouldn\u2019t the Navy see five Tethers suddenly unlink like that? Could Wade just make the records\u2014\n<\/p>\n \nThe rope snapped taught and bit into my ankles. Knees, hips, spine, all shouted in sudden white pain. Arms and neck whipped upward. Just as I realized that I hadn\u2019t hit the water, the Themis<\/em>\u2019s hull smashed into my back and head.\n<\/p>\n \nOnly fog. I felt the sun\u2019s heat. An agony throbbed through the daze into my missing tooth. I smelled the sea. Slowly, I felt the blood in my mouth drain to my nose. My hair had come undone and swayed above me\u2014below me? I was looking up to see the water. Fifteen feet, thirty? The pressure in my head made it hard to think.\n<\/p>\n \nThey had to make it look like an accident. That\u2019s why they didn\u2019t tie my\u2014\n<\/p>\n \nPlummeting. I slid down the hull. The water zoomed closer. My head and shoulders plunged under. Sharp barnacles cut against the back of my neck. I lifted my face out of the water, but I could only stay above by crunching my stomach.\n<\/p>\n \nWas this Moole torturing me? Or they had to keep me hidden while they linked back to the Justwork and conducted a fake search.\n<\/p>\n \nI yanked up to catch my pant leg. My cuff ripped and I fell back below the surface. The saltwater stung the cuts on my neck. I lurched again, this time grabbing my boot laces. I pulled and prayed until I got the rope. I hauled my body above my feet. When I could finally pinch the knot between my boots, my stomach muscles swooned in cool relief.\n<\/p>\n \nIf I got out of this, I swore to God I\u2019d work my abs every damn day.\n<\/p>\n \nAbove, no one watched. They just left me to die. It was sixty feet up to the gunwale. My hands were already cramping. I started climbing.\n<\/p>\n \nHalfway up the side were two Justwork canisters. I scrambled over them and accidentally kicked the lid off one. Hundreds of palm-sized drones spilled into the sea below and sank.\n<\/p>\n \nI couldn\u2019t care less. Up I went.\n<\/p>\n \nI reached Themis<\/em>\u2019s deck a bloody mess. The flayed skin of my hands burned while the breeze stung the open wounds on my neck. I didn\u2019t even bother checking if Lark and Moole were waiting for me. I couldn\u2019t hang on anymore. I threw my leg over and collapsed on the deck.\n<\/p>\n \nThree luxurious breaths. One, two, three. Alive. If I wanted to stay that way, I needed to find Chief or Rawls. Anyone but a Tether.\n<\/p>\n \nMy camera lay tossed by the steering tower. I untied my legs, picked it up, and ran toward the starboard. Maybe if I saw Chief I could wave at him. Maybe he wasn\u2019t too far away.\n<\/p>\n \nBut there was only empty ocean.\n<\/p>\n \nI leaned over the edge and looked down.\n<\/p>\n \nHe was there, Chief came back to look for me. He was down on the makeshift dock mooring one of the patrol crafts. He did care about me.\n<\/p>\n \nI turned to bolt toward the accommodation ladder\u2014\n<\/p>\n \nLark. Ten feet away. Between me and the accommodation ladder. It would take the chief two minutes to climb to the deck.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou\u2019re still unlinked?\u201d I asked.\n<\/p>\n \nHis eyelids sank and he smiled like water. I\u2019d never seen him so relaxed. To be a Tether and to pause all that information flowing into his head, it must be exalting.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHow will you explain being unlinked for so\u2014\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nLark charged toward me and swung.\n<\/p>\n \nI leaned back. The wind of his knuckles grazed my cheek. Off balance, I fell to the deck. I imagined Byron shaking his head at me.\n<\/p>\n \nLark stooped over me. His massive arms moved in slow motion. The lapels of his uniform hung free.\n<\/p>\n \nThe tomoe nage throw. A move Byron had us drill all the time.\n<\/p>\n \nI grabbed Lark\u2019s uniform and pulled as I planted my foot into his belly. I rolled backward. As he fell forward, I kicked him over me.\n<\/p>\n \nHe flew through the air and slammed to the deck.\n<\/p>\n \nI was up and sprinting toward the accommodation ladder without a glance toward Lark. He was no match for my speed and I was at the ladder waiting for the others when he finally caught up with black blood rimming his nostrils.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThey reported you missing,\u201d Chief said when he reached topside. \u201cWhat happened to your face?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nBehind him, Rawls looked incredulous and Wade\u2019s jaw clenched like he wanted to chew through Lark.\n<\/p>\n \nWade watched me carefully. \u201cMC Nozick, what happened here?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI was no dummy. Anything I said they\u2019d refute. Get in line, stay in line. That\u2019s how you move ahead in life.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNothing,\u201d I said, \u201cI fell.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nBesides, better to shame the devil in front of a larger crowd.\n<\/p>\n \n \n– 10 Devils Of The Past\n<\/p>\n \nThe chief stayed by my side the whole way back to the Ford, <\/em>keeping between me and Moole. He looked at my puffy lip and swelling eye as if I were his sick child. But his children were back home and my Dad had turned into a blind mute.\n<\/p>\n \nAs soon as the helicopter landed, Wade called Chief away.\n<\/p>\n \nOn my own, I went back to my rack and dug out some makeup to see what I could do with my face. It was hopeless. The bruising had already started around the socket, and my lip had an uneven, purple lump. At least I could scrub the blood off. At least my blood was red.\n<\/p>\n \nI looked down to stow my makeup gear. When I looked up to fix my hair, Marid appeared in the mirror behind me. I didn\u2019t even hear anyone come into the bathroom. How did he even get into the women\u2019s berthing without getting caught?\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThey canceled your security clearance.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nSo creepy how his mouth didn\u2019t move. His doll-eyed stare didn\u2019t blink. His presence was like an infection, an invisible, unstoppable, cannibalizing force that never rested.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI had it restored. You can access the Combat Direction Center now,\u201d he said. \u201cThe weapons test is proceeding. Go shame the devil.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWho are you?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019ll help you when necessary.\u201d He turned for the hatch.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cStop! I want to know.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe stopped and turned to look at me as one would look at a child stamping her feet. \u201cYou should know that they threatened Chief Haggenmiller again. He chose to protect his family.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nMy heart split from the inside as Marid left. It felt like losing Dad all over again. I ran into the passageway after him.\n<\/p>\n \nHe vanished.\n<\/p>\n \nI ran to the nearest cross passageway. Nothing.\n<\/p>\n \nWas this guy a figment of my imagination? How did he \u201crestore\u201d my security clearance? What puppet strings did he hold?\n<\/p>\n \nI staggered back to my rack.\n<\/p>\n \nShaming the devil.\n<\/p>\n \nThe idea, it excited me. Wade and Hahn thought they controlled the whole situation. They thought they controlled me.\n<\/p>\n \nI threw my makeup back under my bunk and grabbed my camera and computer bag. I quick-timed it topside three decks to the Auxiliary Combat Direction Center they had set up just for the D-Flock93 test.\n<\/p>\n \nTwo Tethers were posted outside. Not five paces after they eyed me, Lark came from nowhere. His face had returned to its normal pained squeeze. He blocked my path. Two hours ago he threw me overboard to die, and now he stood so close I could smell the metHb coming from his pores.\n<\/p>\n \nNeither of us said anything. The Ford\u2019<\/em>s hum vibrated around us.\n<\/p>\n \nIn unison, Lark and the two Tethers guarding the hatch looked over my shoulder. Two beats. One. Two.\n<\/p>\n \nA clutch of bleary-eyed Justwork contractors turned the corner and raced toward the Combat Center.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWe\u2019re so late,\u201d one said.\n<\/p>\n \nEach pressed their thumbs to the bioscanner at the hatch. After it flashed blue, one by one, the Tethers admitted them.\n<\/p>\n \nFuckall and be cocky about it.\n<\/p>\n \nBefore the last Justwork contractor scanned his thumb, I stepped around Lark and cut in line. \u201cExcuse me, sir. I\u2019m late for duty.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nMarid better be right.\n<\/p>\n \nThe silicone disk on Lark\u2019s temple fireworked, but he couldn\u2019t do a thing with the Justwork contractor there.\n<\/p>\n \nMy hand shook as it lifted. If Marid was BS, I was dead. Breathe. The scanner\u2019s plastic was cool on my thumb. My legs bowed wetly.\n<\/p>\n \nThe Tethers at the hatch leaned in to watch.\n<\/p>\n \nAn eternity passed. If only I wasn\u2019t a constant screw up\u2014\n<\/p>\n \nDing. Blue. A psst of air released. The hatch opened.\n<\/p>\n \nLark growled something, but the other two Tethers stopped him. \u201cTop secret, sir. No Tethers.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI entered the Combat Center and the airlock puffed behind me. I turned just in time to see Lark\u2019s ice blue grimace. I smiled as the hatch closed. Did he see it?\n<\/p>\n \nJustwork\u2019s D-Flock93 Auxiliary Combat Direction Center was a long, dark room lined with computer workstations manned by young sailors and contractors bathed in green and red shadows. Ensign Dunn had a station. He avoided my gaze at first, but finally acknowledged me with an uncomfortable smile. The chief was there too, observing the test and probably also me. He nodded toward a small stage in the center of the room, an elevated and roped-off pen labeled \u201cDistinguished Visitors\u201d. Several of the fleet\u2019s female support staff waited there. It must have been quite a sight, my bruises beside their makeup.\n<\/p>\n \nFrom the DV stage, I had a clear view to the front of the room to where all the D-Flock cables led. They were more radiant than normal Tether cables and changed colors in slow waves. They ran up the center of a group of fifteen sailors, Tethers, leaned back in what looked like dentist chairs. Each sailor was fitted with helmets that dangled wires down the back like dreadlocks. These wires had a strange black glow to them like a muggy night\u2019s sky. These new Tethers wore sleeping masks and their mouths hung slack as if they were drugged.\n<\/p>\n \nAdmiral Hahn cleared his throat and stepped toward the largest monitor. \u201cBring up the video.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe screen came to life and showed an aerial view of the ex-USS Themis<\/em>. The view zoomed tighter. I recognized the dock and accommodation ladder where I was just that morning.\n<\/p>\n \nHahn wore his khaki work uniform. He moved from the monitor to walk among the seated dreadlocked Tethers. \u201cIn a few moments, the strike group will launch an unprecedented number of attacks on the Themis<\/em>. These Dreads will defend her.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nA countdown started. When it hit zero the room shook like a cardboard box in a hail storm. A chemical taste tainted the air and stung the back of my throat. The heads of the Dreads twitched almost imperceptibly. On the overhead monitor, streams of tiny drones fire-hosed from the canisters ringing the Themis<\/em>. The sky exploded into a ring of fire and smoke. As the pounding outside the Combat Center subsided, we all watched the monitor for the smoke to clear.\n<\/p>\n \nThe Themis<\/em> looked untouched and placid, lolling in the blue water like a bath toy.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cJackpot!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe shout came from the front of the Combat Center where Admiral Hahn beamed and slapped Rawls\u2019s shoulder. His secret thirty percent stake in Justwork just demonstrated how omnipotent their Dreads were.\n<\/p>\n \nI couldn\u2019t read Rawls.\n<\/p>\n \nHe didn\u2019t appear excited. He studied Hahn like a chessboard for a moment before stepping away and lifting his hands above his head to applaud Hahn. Justwork\u2019s contractors did the same, and soon a human circle surrounded Hahn and rayed him with attention and praise.\n<\/p>\n \nCommander Wade stayed back. He was just below my corner of the elevated DV platform bent over a green monitor and talking in hushed tones to Ensign Dunn.\n<\/p>\n \nI pretended to tie my boot and bent lower to listen.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAre you sure?\u201d Wade asked, scrutinizing a tactical data screen.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYes, sir, two hits.\u201d Dunn\u2019s voice trembled under Wade\u2019s double-barrel stare. \u201cMinor, but here and here. On the starboard quarter. It looks like one D-Flock canister didn\u2019t launch.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI remembered all those palm-sized drones pouring into the ocean as I climbed my way up the side of the Themis<\/em>.\n<\/p>\n \nWade lifted his head to look across the room at Admiral Hahn who was still basking in his ovation. He looked queasy and unsure. But then he stoned his jaw.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cEnsign, erase the data.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cSir?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNow.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nDunn, who must have known I was there, swiped a glance toward me. Then Wade.\n<\/p>\n \nI looked down at my camera. I was recording everything.\n<\/p>\n \nWade\u2019s mouth sucked a tiny breath.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cCommander Wade.\u201d Admiral Hahn had appeared beside us. \u201cWhich two-by-four hit the smile off your face?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nWade whispered in his ear.\n<\/p>\n \nHahn\u2019s cheeks drained. But he refused to drop my eyes. \u201cYou think I care what some trainwreck orphan records? Erase the damage report or I\u2019ll bring you to mast for this poppyshine numbskullry.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBut you\u2014\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDo it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHahn moved closer to me. The skin around his nose barely moved. Instead, it became a blank canvas. I saw Professor Vouray. I saw Natalie shaking her head to say that Dad still wouldn\u2019t speak. I saw the warden from Dannemora telling me he had no further information. Finally, I saw Rawls in the Hong Kong noodle shop telling the surveillance camera he knew the whole story of what happened to Dad.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cSailor,\u201d Hahn held out his hand for my camera. \u201cUnless you want Chief Haggenmiller\u2019s daughters to have their sweet sixteen in a Leavenworth visit room.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nChief was on the other side of the DV stage and could only watch.\n<\/p>\n \nI couldn\u2019t look at him. I was causing him so many problems. I wavered.\n<\/p>\n \nHahn saw it. His cheeks brightened with satisfaction. It was another win. Pat the child on the head and go back to ruling his fiefdom.\n<\/p>\n \nBut only if I let him.\n<\/p>\n \nI lifted my camera and pointed it right at the damage report screen. One second. Two. Hahn reached, but I snatched my arms to my chest. I turned and ran.\n<\/p>\n \n \n– 11 From A Forest In Hell\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cGrab her!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI charged out of the Combat Direction Center cradling my camera as if it were the last child on Earth. My computer bag slapped against my lower back.\n<\/p>\n \nLark and two other Tethers were right outside. Their walled-up faces reminded me they had no idea what was happening inside.\n<\/p>\n \nI stammered the first thing that popped in my head. \u201cChief Haggenmiller is being held hostage.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nLark rushed for the hatch, but the others blocked him.\n<\/p>\n \nI wasn\u2019t going to wait around for them to figure it out. I walk-ran until I reached a cross passageway and turned out of eyesight then pounded as fast as I could to the main port passageway toward stern.\n<\/p>\n \nTwo Tethers shot past toward the combat center. A third, Ramirez, also ran full speed down the main passageway. He slowed and then stopped. His head cocked confused and looked at me. His Tether cable frenzied with light.\n<\/p>\n \nFive seconds until they figured it out. Where to hide from Tethers? On an aircraft carrier? Where to hide from omnipotence? Where the mob ruled. The mess hall.\n<\/p>\n \nRamirez straightened his chin at me. He got his orders.\n<\/p>\n \nI ejected the memory card and I sprinted toward him. At ten feet apart I threw my camera at him and juked down a ladder. Down one more then forward to the mess.\n<\/p>\n \nAs soon as I walked in, all the Tethers looked up at me. They sat on their side of the mess. The non-Tethers on the other side.\n<\/p>\n \nI ran to the non-Tether side and spotted Byron. \u201cI need time to shame the devil.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe clocked my bruised eye socket and fat lip, then the advancing Tethers.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cUnder the table,\u201d he said. \u201cWe got you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI ducked and scurried toward the center of the table. I was surrounded by a forest of legs. Byron called more boots over. There must have been a hundred non-Tethers all leaned around the table, talking and joking. I couldn\u2019t see out at all.\n<\/p>\n \nI had maybe ten minutes before this ruse fell apart. I took out my computer and started writing a Devil\u2019s Shame<\/em> post.\n<\/p>\n \n \nAdmiral Attempts To Fake Weapons Test\n<\/p>\n \nUSS GERALD FORD<\/EM> \u2014 During a high profile test of the Justwork Defense Flock93 system, two of the Ford\u2019s highest commanding officers ordered an ensign to delete test results that showed the system failed. During the test, Admiral David Hahn and Commander Adam Wade viewed NTDS results showing vulnerabilities in the system. Hahn ordered the evidence destroyed and threatened retaliation if the failure was announced.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cErase the damage report or I\u2019ll bring you to mast,\u201d Hahn said to Wade and the ensign.\n<\/p>\n \nA media observer\u2014\n<\/p>\n \n \nI stopped typing.\n<\/p>\n \nThere was no coming back from this. If I posted this, I\u2019d be outing myself as the publisher of The Devil\u2019s Shame<\/em> . I didn\u2019t have to do this. I could just ignore that bully\u2019s finger against my chest. Everyone else did. That\u2019s how you got ahead in life. Stand in line. Let the powerful stab their finger at you, because if you didn\u2019t let them, then someone else would.\n<\/p>\n \nByron leaned under the table. \u201cYou almost done? We\u2019re running out of humans to distract the Tethers.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou don\u2019t have to.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAin\u2019t hell if someone shames the devil,\u201d he said. \u201cJust hurry.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI repeated the line back to myself. It ain\u2019t hell\u2026\n<\/p>\n \nI inserted the memory card from my camera into my computer and transferred my video to the post.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNozick, they\u2019re here,\u201d Byron said.\n<\/p>\n \nI typed faster.\n<\/p>\n \n \n<\/p>\n \nA media observer from the Navy\u2019s <\/em>All Hands Magazine assigned to the Flock93 Command Center recorded the interaction and the tactical system display showing the damage to the target, the ex-<\/em>USS Themis. The classified weapons system being tested was an advanced human-computer hybrid engineered by Justwork meant to protect military assets during an attack.\n<\/p>\n \n <\/em>\n<\/p>\n \nA commotion built up around me. I tried to block out the shouting, but there was movement. The legs that hid me under the table started disappearing.\n<\/p>\n \n \nWhen Hahn became aware of the media observer\u2019s presence, he threatened retaliation against the commanding officer of her department. He then ordered ship security to detain her.<\/em>\n<\/p>\n \n \nChairs disappeared from around the table.\n<\/p>\n \nI pressed the post button.\n<\/p>\n \nHands took hold of my feet and pulled me across the linoleum.\n<\/p>\n \nI dragged my computer with me. I held my breath as my file ricocheted between my proxy servers.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cPost successful,\u201d the screen said.\n<\/p>\n \nI watched the pageviews.\n<\/p>\n \n0.\n<\/p>\n \nThe Tethers had me fully in the open. There were dozens of them, but they coordinated the wrestling of my hands behind my back in eerie silence. Their metHb stink enveloped me like a rotting pile of fish.\n<\/p>\n \n1.\n<\/p>\n \nMy heart bloomed warmth all the way to the cold handcuffs on my wrists.\n<\/p>\n \nLark\u2019s breath was on my ear. \u201cPetty Officer Lynn Nozick, you\u2019re under arrest for\u2014\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nDummy had to wait for the Justwork to put the words in his mouth.\n<\/p>\n \n2.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201c\u2014for disobeying command orders.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n7.\n<\/p>\n \nThey lifted me to my feet as I tried gripping the floor with my knees in order to watch the pageviews climb. Each one was another slap at the bully\u2019s finger.\n<\/p>\n \n31.\n<\/p>\n \nThey had me upright, but I tucked my knees and collapsed right back in front of my computer to watch more. Not Hahn nor Wade, nor whoever sent Dad to jail\u2014all the devils in hell will get shamed. Eventually.\n<\/p>\n \n107.\n<\/p>\n \nAn email alert popped up. From cnn.com. More: navy.mil, npr.org, washingtonpost.com\u2014\n<\/p>\n \nA boot kicked my laptop across the floor. Moole crouched and put her face beside mine. Brown streaks of blood cut through her grimace.\n<\/p>\n \nI grinned back. \u201cIf only you weren\u2019t a Tether. You\u2019d like this feeling of being free.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n \n– 12 Lady Justice Sees The Devil\n<\/p>\n \nThey did the chief\u2019s Article 91 before mine. I think they wanted me to suffer. They wanted me to spend more time in pre-trial confinement. They wanted to haul me to court every day so Chief\u2019s wife could have something physical to hate. The Navy wanted its revenge for embarrassing them and their D-Flock test.\n<\/p>\n \nI recognized Mrs. Haggenmiller from the photo I still had of her and her daughters in the bumper car. She came to court everyday with her hair tied back like she just walked in from a tornado ready to make dinner. She wasn\u2019t allowed into the courtroom to hear how many times I told the Naval prosecutor that Chief had nothing to do with Devil\u2019s Shame<\/em>, that I didn\u2019t doctor the damage report screen, that my bruises didn\u2019t come from attacking Lark and Moole on the Themis<\/em>.\n<\/p>\n \nAdmiral Hahn had transferred his command to Pearl Harbor so he could stop by each day as court let out. Every afternoon, the jury got an eyeful of the admiral whispering in Mrs. Haggenmiller\u2019s ear and squeezing her shoulder. Then the jury would glare at me as if they already decided I was the one who orchestrated the Navy\u2019s total humiliation.\n<\/p>\n \nThis went on for a week. The second week was a little different. They seemed more tense, like something had changed.\n<\/p>\n \nAfter a full day of denying all the lies the NCIS prosecutor shoveled on me, I watched Hahn go up to comfort Mrs. Haggenmiller as normal. But as he whispered in her ear, she began trembling. Her fingers turned to claws and she dropped her purse. She took off a shoe and threw it at me.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou lying bitch!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe lunged at me. The Tether MPs held me tight by the arms but didn\u2019t stop Mrs. Haggenmiller from taking off her other shoe and hitting me four times with it on the face. They dragged me down the hallway by my wrists, letting her kick me until she got too tired and collapsed to her knees sobbing.\n<\/p>\n \nThe Tethers didn\u2019t take me back to my confinement quarters. Instead, they brought me to a small gray interrogation room. The room had a table, a broken fluorescent light fixture, and two chairs.\n<\/p>\n \nThe NCIS prosecutor sat waiting for me. \u201cSit, Specialist.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe Tethers left and shut the door. The room\u2019s light buzzed and flicked. The Navy couldn\u2019t afford to replace light bulbs anymore, but they had all the resources in the world for a mock trial.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMs. Haggenmiller is upset because she\u2019s learned of your deal with NeuroScan.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat deal\u2014\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe shrugged and slid a piece of paper across the table.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cShe had to sell their house to pay for the chief\u2019s defense. Her girls are having trouble adjusting. They miss their dad. You know what that\u2019s like.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe prosecutor leaned back, but there was something unrelaxed with him. His name was Keer. He was older and tall with hair around the rim of his ear. He was a captain. This whole thing seemed tedious and below him. A JAG captain trying insubordination over a underground zine. The way his jaw rocked side to side suggested his own annoyance too.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou don\u2019t even want to read it?\u201d Keer asked.\n<\/p>\n \nI had forgotten about the piece of paper, actually. But that\u2019s when it clicked. It was the paper he was concerned about.\n<\/p>\n \n \n\u201cI, Lynn Nozick, am the sole author of the publication know as <\/em>Devil\u2019s Shame . In order to earn a kickback from NeuroScan, I bribed Ensign Michael Dunn to lie about damage suffered to the ex-<\/em>USS Themis during the test of Justwork\u2019s Defense Flock93 system. I also admit to doctoring videos and misleading prosecutors during the investigation. Justwork\u2019s Defense Flock93 system was a complete success. I made the story up.\u201d<\/em>\n<\/p>\n \n \nHis pig-stare waited for me to finish. \u201cSign it and you can save your chief.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI almost threw the table at him. The chief never needed saving until he came along. I wasn\u2019t going to sign his coerced confession. This wasn\u2019t justice. He was lying, Hahn was lying, the Navy was lying.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI told you, Chief didn\u2019t\u2014\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI stopped. The chief\u2019s two girls. It wasn\u2019t justice to ruin their lives. There was a cost to shaming the devil.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou guys are good,\u201d I said. \u201cYou had this whole thing planned. All for a weapons program?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt\u2019s about the relevancy of the Navy. Brain-computer hybrids are the future of\u2026\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe droned on. I couldn\u2019t care less. I hated that I did this to myself all the time. Justice wasn\u2019t real. It was like poppyshine, something people got drunk on while they toiled in hell.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cCan I sign it in the morning?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nIt slipped out. It was like my consciousness was taking over. I couldn\u2019t ruin another family.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cSign it now.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nSo I did. He handed me a cold pen that clacked when I set it back on the table.\n<\/p>\n \nKeer let out a long breath. He called the MPs and I half thought he might kiss the piece of paper after I left.\n<\/p>\n \nWith my fate\u2014and the chief\u2019s\u2014sealed, sleep came easy. I woke resolved. How different would Leavenworth be from the Ford<\/em>? I\u2019d have a job, same crappy food, some books to read. The next morning, as the Tethers walked me across the sunny courtyard toward the court building, I thought, maybe this is my fresh start. The breeze felt new on my cheeks. Now, finally, I could be by myself and stop thinking about Dad all the time.\n<\/p>\n \nThe MPs stopped short. The pulse of their cables quickened.\n<\/p>\n \nA parade of female sailors came from the other direction heading toward the court building. Some officers, some enlisted, but all grave-faced and in dress uniform. I recognized a few of them from the Ford<\/em>. I saw the woman from the boxing room with red lipstick. Then, at the very tail of the formation, John Rawls followed. He wore a suit, but still had his wild, surfer-boy hair.\n<\/p>\n \nMy guards stood bewildered and gawking at everything, completely forgetting about me.\n<\/p>\n \nFrom behind, a figure crossed going the other direction, away from the court building. A voice, words tossed through the air, landed in my ear.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDid you sign a confession?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI looked. It was Marid. He didn\u2019t slow his pace, but he drilled a scowl into me.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDid you?\u201d His lips didn\u2019t move.\n<\/p>\n \nI nodded.\n<\/p>\n \nHe passed behind without looking back, slipping around the corner with no one but me noticing him.\n<\/p>\n \nCaptain Keer waited at the entrance to the court building watching the formation of female sailors. He seemed unsurprised and unconcerned with his hands in his pockets. Rawls moved toward the front and spoke with Keer who nodded and shrugged. He waved my Tether MPs over.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cGo to Admiral Hahn,\u201d Keer said. \u201cDetain him and take him to confinement.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nBefore the Tethers could move, the crack of a gunshot pierced the blue sky. Their cables flickered as they absorbed the information. They turned toward each other in disbelief.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat happened?\u201d Captain Keer asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAdmiral Hahn,\u201d the first said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cSelf-inflicted,\u201d the other added.\n<\/p>\n \nRawls\u2019s temper was unreadably placid, as if Hahn\u2014and his thirty percent stake in Justwork\u2014were insignificant. His only movement was a small slice of the eyes toward me.\n<\/p>\n \nI had been staring at him for almost a minute.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cTake her inside,\u201d Keer said.\n<\/p>\n \nThey took me to the same interrogation room. Keer\u2019s pen still lay on the table where I left it. Hours passed until the door opened.\n<\/p>\n \nMarid.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cFollow me.\u201d His mouth didn\u2019t move.\n<\/p>\n \nI walked fast like a child behind him to catch up. We went down the main hallway, out the front doors, and past the confinement building where they kept me during the trial. We kept walking.\n<\/p>\n \nKeer sat on a park bench reading a pile of papers. He looked up, then went back to his reading.\n<\/p>\n \nMarid brought me to the parking lot where court clerks and stenographers waved end-of-the-day goodbyes to each other. Two Marines waited for us.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe charges against you have been dropped,\u201d Marid said mouthlessly. \u201cYou are to report to Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, Africa.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI watched his jaw to see how he was able to speak without moving his mouth. I couldn\u2019t understand it. Only the scars on his temples moved as he spoke.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat happened?\u201d I asked\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou\u2019ll have plenty of time in Djibouti to figure it out.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat\u2019s in Djibouti?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe handed me a piece of paper. It was my signed confession. A small spray of blood clouded the corner.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThat\u2019s where Rawls went.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Charles is a reporter living in New York<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" > – 1 Poppyshine If I had any common sense I would have worn something flame retardant. \u201cDon\u2019t worry,\u201d Dunn pushed the Halloween mask higher on his face. \u201cEthanol doesn\u2019t burn. It explodes.\u201d I IDed everything in Ensign Dunn\u2019s stateroom-turned-laboratory that could kill us. Steel bulkheads trapped the vapors. Glass beakers like shrapnel. Drug scales, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107490,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,20090],"tags":[20091],"class_list":["post-138259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-tcl-40-summer-2021","tag-the-colored-lens-40-summer-2021","entry entry-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/107490"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=138259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138260,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138259\/revisions\/138260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=138259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=138259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=138259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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