The Sovereign

By Xandrea Castaldi

RESIST. PROTECT. DESTROY.

After a century of endless wars to change the tides of economies across the globe, the North American Union is on the verge of civil war. With technology blended into the cellular makeup of life, Union President Maxwell Waterhouse plans to usher in the new century as the Head of the International Gover

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Sep 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781641119252

Xandrea Castaldi

Tregetour - the Sovereign Vol. II is Xandrea Castaldi's second novel in the Sovereign Trilogy. She graduated from Southern New Hampshire University with a Master's degree in English and Creative Writing, and is from Kansas City, Missouri. She is a former professor of English at Western Baptist Bible College, and currently an editor with a content marketing firm. She enjoys crime and legal thrillers, dystopian sci-fi, historical fiction, and falling into the rabbit hole of true organized crime stories. When she's not writing, she's catching the latest Marvel release, chasing down bourbon, replacing drum skins, supporting her home sports teams, and spending time with family. She wants to adopt an American Staffy and a Bombay cat...soon.

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PROLOGUE

PRESIDENT-ELECT MAXWELL WATERHOUSE INAUGURAL ADDRESS

23RD MARCH 2067

"It is this moment that we find ourselves approaching the dawn of a new day for which we have hoped for generations; a day that marks a new beginning for our nation and for all of us. The decades have not been kind to us, our leadership has not been representative of us, and we, the people, have had to pay the high cost of that wicked failure. That burden was to sit on their shoulders, not yours. That failure was to be a strike on their record, not yours. And even still we have allowed our great nation to drown in the cold, dark chasm of broken promises of labor, broken dreams of a better tomorrow, and broken hearts for the longing of what was not to come to pass.

"I come not to reform those promises, to revive those dreams, or mend those hearts. I come to give you those anew. The flaws of those before me stop here, today, now. There cannot be unity when we are still divided amongst ourselves from our smallest establishments of government to our greatest, here. Our nation has changed drastically for the better. I only wish to continue that change, to bring new hope, and new life to each and every one under the sound of my voice and the hammer of my rule. We are no longer in the business of making decisions for our own personal gain but for the interests of our great Union, and as new emerges, so the old must pass away.

"Men who separated themselves on race, color, socioeconomics, ethnicity, or creed proved themselves to be unfit for service and unworthy of the gallantry at which they incessantly vehemently grasped, as if it could be done with his own hands or greater so, by the hands of those he oppressed. He exposed his greatest weakness and his ultimate fallacy: that he had no greater purpose than power and dominion alone. His power and dominion was not meant for lordship over and against his brother, but for his own mind. It isn't by the might of his hand that man rules, but by gaudy strength and candor of his intellect – his survival intellect. It is by that, that he is to rule or be ruled. Empower or be overpowered. Live by it or by the ignorance of its misuse or its uselessness at all. The form of a man is nothing, not his power, his worth, or his honor. It is what he holds that he did not create but matured into a stronghold for those who come against him, and together against this great Union.

"This nation once was ruled by these low-minded men, guided by their visual greed for scraps amongst pearls, instead of their greater, higher philosophy and rationale. They came together to form their more perfect union and in lieu, crushed the alliance they sought to assemble, demolishing imminent perfection before its conception.

"Archaic Constitutions and Declarations of the republic – vacuously deemed suitable for the needs of it – were not written by men who desired true Union but by and for those who only desired the union of their own brethren. Those whom they omitted divided themselves further into their own and they, too, sought to unify by division. By natural human design they in turn trampled each other for the rights and privileges to be called citizens, men—human. And thus they prolonged their hostility a thousand more years.

"Today that hostility and separation—that blinded privilege—ends.

"Survival intelligence causes the wit and will to thrive, not the privy to the privilege. Those who succumb to their failed wit will be rewarded, shepherded by their creator, to be renewed by intelligent design. Their old shells, rejuvenated into an even better one, embracing their immortal newness with a stronger mind and stronger body. Our infrastructure, our economy, our population will be rebuilt and reborn by the hands of the masters of their own survival intelligence, and in turn resurrecting our Union anew and greater than it has ever been or ever will be!

Union today, Union always, Union forever.

PART I

SERENADING THE DARKNESS

1

JULY 2093

You've got one mag left, but you've never had any time. Use both wisely.

The sleek, black, dressed electro-pistol was tight in Aria's grip when her low eye-lidded glance peered back at Eduardo in the safe, air filtered and conditioned booth behind her fifty feet in the air. Though he was tucked in the safe zone, the range was live and unpredictable. On his screen was a visual of the entire 50-acre swamp, the animals that were out tonight, the weather patterns that came and went, any dangerous or helpful flora, and a timer. The clock ran fine until a vagary of unreported winds arrived or a pack of wolves decided to hu­­nt, then another clock counted down the distance between it and the subject inside which, tonight, was his granddaughter.

Military blood ran through her veins though she'd never suited up or deployed. She was only twenty-six and orphaned long enough to learn that this pistol she held was a lifeline, her saving grace if she used her time right.

The second clock beeped, flashing, 18 seconds.

Just wanna let you know you've got a pack comin’. And a foggy rain, its Amazo—

Ahead of her she fired into the mist, followed by a thump and rustle in the dense swampy brush. Disappearing from his sight into the fog, she crouched to a wolf laid with a smoking hole square between the eyes.

The soles of her boots were covered in brownish-green mud and a few leaves she'd picked up trudging across the terrain. A growl echoed from behind, then another joined in, and another from beside. The pack had already surrounded her though in a quick purse of her lips she figured they would. She'd been inured by the threat, opening her hand to the minimized holo-connect screen stemming from beneath her sleeve. It made high-pitched soft tones as she tapped a few buttons and a yellow bar grew red, then the whole thing cut off, You can't do that.

Exasperated, she fired dual shots from each pistol and took off running through the wooded swamp and the last two wolves were on her tail.

You either kill them or you go catatonic—

—I got it, Pop!

From above, a crane swooped through the fog and fell away by a shot and hit one of the wolves but the wolf didn't stop. The further she ran, the ground became more watery and soon she'd approached the opening of a violently rushing canal, the heads of three alligators moving with the current. Long thick vines of ivy snaked through and around the canopies and branches of the cypress trees and just as she reached the waters edge she jumped, catching a vine and the wolves, airborne, barely missing the back of her legs, landed with a heavy splash into the canal, the undercurrent sweeping them downstream. As she hung there the gators made a dash for them, their jaws opened wide and crushed their bodies, sparks and quick spitfires flashing as they choked them beneath the surface. Aria took her pistol and hanging on by one hand and feet wrapped in the vines, shot the gators, a single shot apiece. Around the tree trunk slivered a snake that she shot pointblank, unmoved and undeterred, until the vine snapped. She plummeted to the canal below and was swept faster than she could recover.

The canal rushed and fed into an even faster, more threatening river and when she got to the delta, a plenitude of poison trout brushed by her exposed skin on her hands, and a cloud of red began to form. Underwater, she grimaced and fought to surface anyway, the stinging burning sensation was unbearable and only made worse by the air if she survived. Just as she caught a rotting log at the surface, the water dispersed beneath her in a wall of white mist, and while the log cracked and shattered against jagged rocks, she managed to catch another underwater vine against the wall of the waterfall that beat against her shoulder and chest.

You can let go of the vine, Aria.

No I can't, you want me to kill myself?!

You'll save yourself. Aria, let go. It'll be fine, I promise.

You can't possibly know what the bottom of this thing looks like!

Aria, Eduardo's voice was calm, even bearing a slight amusement, let go.

She took a deep breath as she put the soles of her boots against the rocks and jousted herself off, releasing the vine. The misty air whistled by her ears and the roar of the bottom grew louder as she whispered back, End framework.

The panels of the swamp and waterfall all disappeared while she laid flat on the floor of the dark basement. A sweet, sticky aroma of mud, decaying plant life, and rushing water were replaced by the humid sitting air and water, a bit of mold was making itself known, too. A pair of clean, dry boots replaced her muddy ones and once the framework collapsed, cement concrete walls appeared with only long, narrow strips of holo-guard programming lining them like crown molding.

The dirt and mud on her clothes and face disappeared, so did the piercing rashes on her hands from the poison fish. The floor of the basement was damp and cold on her roughened palms and back of her arms, and the pistol was still in her hand, half a mag left. Sliding it in a holster on her side in a single motion it was locked in and charging. She sat up gingerly. There was no point in rushing. Everything that was an emergency was all an illusion. Practice. Training. Her heart barely jumped into panic inside the framework but reality wasn't that easy as she caught her breath in the midst of a war drum in her chest. Inside had been a better reality than this but she couldn't make a crutch out of it, she'd just gotten it up and going again.

When she got to her feet, the switchboard was lit like the clear night sky, which gave her an idea and she quickly checked her holo-connect, also working perfectly. The weather was clear skies, 102 degrees. Buttons on the table blinked and it's 3D screen asked,

Core H.O.M.E. framework repairs complete.

Reset settings?

She realigned all of its settings to baseline and put it in hibernation, and the entire basement except the low lighting of the sleeping framework went dark. Hesitant to look behind her, she did, and the booth that housed her grandfather was nothing but a dusty, unused bar area that was dark and abandoned, too.

Under a balmy blanket of a fiery western horizon and a coming indigo from the east, the stars of the Swampland night appeared in the coming night brighter than they had in months. The tower roof of the Grand Victorian was the highest point of the Swamplands for at least ten miles, and it was the closest point to her beloved heavenly bodies Aria Elizondo could be without dying altogether. If she turned on the light inside the tower apartment, it was a guide, a beck-and-call for distant souls, a lighthouse of an otherwise hopeless wreckage of a perforated region, which was why she kept the lights off and climbed out through the window to the roof of isolation instead. To offer that kind of hope, at least she thought that's how the Victorian worked, was to offer too much, and she'd already lost enough to barely keep herself together. Having the constant heart for others?

Now?

Honestly, it's the only thing that kept her from taking everything else.

Crickets, fireflies, night birds, and the sloshing of crocodiles and swamp creatures exiting or barely breaking the surface waters of the hot swamp echoed from below, beyond the wired wooded fencing of the backyard. With the new rainy season slowing down, the clouds had moved out to sea and the air finally wasn't as muggy, and not needing to tote a quilt to lie on the otherwise damp shingled bed of sparkling infinity she inhaled every bit of solitude she could muster.

Seems like all the possible constellations want to come out to party tonight, too, pop, she grinned, lying on an open black biker jacket with arms folded over her stomach as she threw up a nude-nail painted finger to point out a few. Arms-length box braids relaxed wildly around her head like a crown as she lay – floated, really – ready for the stars themselves to call her up any minute. She'd be more than ready to go, too. Just wanna let you know I'm still training. And I'm still trying to figure out why you didn't program nights like this into it. Andromeda and Pegasus are definitely out. Kinda wish it was another time of year, I love watching Sirius. One of these days I'll catch that black hole. Hopefully sooner rather than later—

A soft ping echoed from her stomach and her inner wrist lit up a whitish-blue rectangular holographic screen, reflecting off of her black EleventhHour album art t-shirt and nickel-plated belt buckle. Her epidermal holo-connect program that spanned the entire lower half of her forearm glowed with two reminders: Hurricane Ballroom – 30 minutes, and Watch Council meeting – 15 minutes ago. A bright red reminder ticker flashed and rolled across the bottom, Swamplands curfew 2330! Be advised – Be indoors by 2330 tonight – Regulator Guard patrolling the region, monitoring each street and have been ordered to subdue all lawbreakers and agitators…

Since when have they not? she quietly, sarcastically asked the unresponsive message before tapping a button putting it to sleep. While she collected herself, a pang of anxiety dropped like a rock in the pond of her gut and she checked her time, 1941. Looks like I've got some work of my own to do, pop. ‘Til next time, she turned to get up, but then turned back to no one, Oh, sorry it took so long since last time but I'm sure you understand.

Squatting to her feet she grabbed her jacket and meandered across the roof to the tower window and closed it, preferring to slide down the aluminum drain pipe in similar and so familiar a fashion as every time before. She left the ever-brightening stars of a darkening sky to the security and serenity of their constellations millions of miles, or even light-years away from the chaos that awaited her.

The Watch Circuit meeting in Marc Hyde's dimly lit living room was already underway when she slipped into the front door in her jacket, jeans, and an old beat up pair of combat boots. Weakening wooden floorboards and a creaking door barely gave her away as every seat was occupied with about twelve total hosts and hostesses from the small community.

Though a few people had refreshments that had been put out on the dining room table – Union lab-modified fruits and vegetable trays, pastries that were surely laced with lab-grown food, toxins, and drugs, with clearly inorganic coffee, tea, and an unfiltered water she noticed no one had – Hyde didn't appear to have helped himself to any. He was seated at the front of the room at the opening of the dining room, with a clipboard and pen rested on his left knee. His shoulders were broad enough to make the back of his chair disappear behind him, and he sat lean and unrealistically tall, with a sharp jaw and searing eyes that other men in the room wouldn't dare stare into for long, while some women might've wished to melt in them. However, all he was to Aria was a perfect caricature of hyper-masculinity plucked from old pre-Third Civil War-era cartoons and other unrealistic showcases. Black trimmed and gelled hair, sharp starched lines of his lavender oxford shirt and heather grey professional slacks only magnified his vanity.

Posting up nearest to the darkest corner and closest to the door, she laughed inwardly at the thought, and also at the prideful self-righteousness exuding from his every breath and very existence.

…So all the weathering and safety supplies are allotted out and accounted for?

Yep. Hurley, a brown-haired woman in her early forties sat in the corner at the front of the room an arms length or so from Hyde by a small coffee table with its clearly aged lamp on. The burgundy of her lipstick stained the edge of her steaming cup of tea on a saucer in her floral-skirted lap, long slender legs crossed at the ankle. Her sweet demeanor and maturity of a woman twice her age offset the aloof combativeness of her fearless leader but the meek passivity of it and the energy the two exchanged gave Aria a mixture of both repulsion and pity.

And any medical?

From the poll we're low across the board, both in meds and supplies.

Ms. Elizondo, Hyde called her out, a disappointed teacher in a late student, would you be troubled to offer your services here?

No.

Thank you, he wrote a note on his clipboard, while the new, young bright-eyed face Aria saw across the room only shortly broke her defense.

"—I mean no as in I would be troubled and am not offering my services. Last meeting you scolded me hot because I had the skills but not the credentials. Now you're asking to have me make house calls like some doctor off of an old pre-Union western but this isn't Gunsmoke and I'm not Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman."

Aria, Emberlyn, an elderly graying blonde, olive faced woman seated in front of her in a frumpy tan cardigan, loafers, and with a black streak in her hair whispered back, genuinely trying to reign her in. Aria's gaze was solid on Hyde's and she felt her hands and the back of her neck warming. He then scratched out the note on his pad with a single hard line.

Ms. Elizondo—

—Aria.

…Ms. Elizondo, since you missed the initial poll, would you care to be counted on inventory?

Will I be sent a request to share amongst the Watch?

If it exceeds a given amount, it is possible yes.

And that amount is?

Five tenants. You do the math.

Then no, I abstain from the poll.

The intensity between them filled the room and suffocated everyone in it, a few of the attendees shifted in their seats or nervously sipped at empty cups. Hyde rose his head and his chin seemed to jut out further as if he were a disgruntled, snobby adolescent, This will limit your possibility to be able to receive aid in the future if needed, in events of emergencies, natural catastrophes,

—Understood, thank you.

From inside her sleeve, her holo-connect flashed another, silent reminder alarm for the Hurricane Ballroom and she snoozed it for 90 seconds.

Need I remind you, as the youngest of the Watch Circuit, you have great responsibilities and expectations of you—

—Cut the shit and just say that you don't want me here. You never have. It wouldn't kill me. And you speak as if the way we operate will last forever, as if we'll always be victims, tyrannically ruled and lorded over with no end in sight. There are no expectations because that would mean there's a guaranteed future, and there isn't because this Watch wasn't made to be permanent. The only expectation is that I fall in line, and seeing as how the way this is ran isn't as spectacular as we all make it seem or how we wish it was, I can't do that.

And you expect your methods to prove more effective and efficient?

I may be the youngest in here, but I've been doing this for almost ten years. My house has had travelers and shelter-seekers almost every night, some who seek me out every time they come through the Swamplands, and some who never want to leave. That kind of success doesn't happen overnight or by accident.

Her 90-second reminder pinged again and she dismissed it, walking out of the back door and into the darkening dusk.

Old downtown Everglades City was a wraith of it's glorious age that no one still alive remembered seeing with their own eyes. To this day it still smelled like shells, electro-automatic machine gun fire, and chemically molded, disintegrating cement. Ground level buildings were lucky to be boarded up, but most were occupied by the nighttime flora and fauna seeking shelter or thriving in the spot it'd found. Storefronts that hadn't been run in at least twenty-five years were nothing but shadowed rooms with stories to tell that had otherwise been burned or blown out of their walls. Looting had ended long ago, and the trash had been destroyed or consumed by scavengers soon after. When that all disappeared and they knew no humans were returning to repopulate, the wolves moved in.

The cracked cement and brick sidewalks weren't recognizable and neither was much of anything else except for a fortuitous construct of rebar or steel skeletons of skyscrapers that once were. The tallest originally stood at eighty-five stories but over the decades it had been continuously bombed and weathered down to about fifty, and every floor up to ten or eleven was nothing but hollow, rusted bars and an arrangement of bird's nests.

The three stories-high public train tracks were covered in thick dark green moss and poisonous white-pink and non-poisonous black indigo dragonbloom vines. While the northbound train was last seen somewhere around the 100 Fountain Mall and Everglades Shopping Centre in southtown, the southbound train was split into three parts along the line. The front two cars were stuck in break position in the middle of a suburb while the next three cars, about a mile north on the line, were riddled with bullet holes. The last five cars were still connected, rusted together at their long-since demagnetized ends, but their cabins were blown apart and left to burn. Their tops were either shattered, melted into the cabin, or completely gone. Windows were blown out in the explosion, and black soot covered every inch of them above the rails. Even the blue and green GulfCoastLine logo was burned away on every car except the caboose at the bottom of its emergency exit where the frame of a holo-guarded blockade around the door was outlined by the soot that kept it's unsuspecting victims trapped inside. Vines had grown over much of this, too, but the charred remains were still evident. In one of the seats that hadn't burned away completely, she could still see an outline of a parent holding their child.

Like every other major city in the Union, nothing new had been erected here since the 2058 Reformation. Most of that time the downtown area had been quarantined, until a few years ago. Their once vibrant and flourishing Gulf-side cityscape had been decimated to a lethal metropolitan wasteland.

Because of the Waterhouse policies that eroded what was left of an already waning government, no one was welcome on the streets of old downtown without a programmed military identification or a twilight work permit. Those only went to lounge singers, night crawlers, and ladies of the night and even they weren't as protected as military. Soldiers were upper class citizens but weren't subject to the same policies as soldiers before them and that was evident every night on the UnionNews. Witnessing that much torment and bloodshed could desensitize the most innocent of people and crush the spirits of anyone wanting to rise up and quash what citizens began calling simply, the Regime.

Every now and then, crossing less visible parts of downtown Aria'd find evidence of squatters but neither of them knew the other was around. One night she'd seen evidence of a family, while the next night their belongings were torn to bits and blood spatter painted their sleeping gear and the walls behind it. Reporting it would only endanger her so she decided to mind her own business, a choice that as she walked, continued to eat away at her conscience.

Regulators patrolled the streets even more heavily at night for the 1030 curfew, which meant getting caught was a matter of life-or-death. However, Aria had gone out at night so many times before – to retrieve people or animals, to retrieve or gift medicinal remedies, to smuggle seeds or supplies from abandoned or simply unmanned military posts – that she'd built up a path she knew in her sleep. It weaved from the edge of the fifty-four-acre swamp of the Grand Victorian through the willows passing on the east sides, and through a lagoon behind a line of abandoned buildings, one of them an old pharmacy her grandparents owned but she had to revoke to the government when they died. Ever so often she would cut through it and find old stashes of plants and seeds that she still grew in the basement of the Grand Victorian at a speed much faster than mother nature intended but as fast as anyone needed to survive. When she'd pass the old shell of her past though, being tracked was of no consequence as her tracks would be overtaken by vines, snakes, crocodiles, and other natural regression by the time anyone would be looking for curfew breakers.

The Reformation destroyed any idea that Waterhouse would fall victim to the fairness of democracy, and his presidency quickly turned into something more permanent when his predecessor who had aimed to run for a second term after Waterhouse's policies failed, died by a self-inflicted electro-automatic gunshot wound. Those who erred on the side of fear accepted their fate and watched their livelihoods be stripped and diminished to a tamable form. Those erring on the side of fight, however, learned to hide from the Patrols and survive. Just as she crossed a storefront, a search beam crawled along the street. Ducking in the nearest opening, she crouched behind a podium of Fire & Indigo, an old high-class restaurant. The light stretched the podium shadow above her head on the far back wall, scaring a gecko lizard off of a counter. In its retreat though, the light grazed across a blood red spray-painted warning across the back wall:

Resiste la singularidad. Protege tu alma.

Destruye este mundo.

Resist the Singularity. Protect Your Soul. Destroy this World.

Seeing it sent a chill down her body like ripples across the face of a pond from a thrown pebble, because in the midst of her heart pounding, hoping to not be exposed in this intruding light, it was affirming. The words burned across her memory though she was the one who put them there first. The handwriting was familiar, too, and thinking about it, she was here when it was painted. The ghosts could still be heard laughing, chanting, rebelling. The Resistance burned bright like that searchlight back then, consuming everything and everyone who followed with a raucous cry so chilling the government devised a nationwide street war with the Regulators to stifle it. Now it was just a simmer, waiting to be fired up one more time. Those words were rekindling.

The dirt on the floor was gritty beneath her hands as heavy boot steps ran fast past the front windows and a shadow passed. Their heavy breathing echoed as a man who'd been running for miles. Craning her neck through the dirty, partly broken front window the street was already filling with foot soldiers. Swampland Combat Unit Regulators were chasing this man on foot and by tanks, and a few shots went off and a scream echoed through the street as she looked on.

They caught him, and dragged him back towards their stopping point in the 4-lane street, directly ahead of where she'd hidden herself. They kicked him to his knees even though he was already bleeding from a wound in his leg. A soldier, a 2-star Commander General by the double gold stars strapped on his shoulders, stepped up coolly to the man.

Where do you really think you can run off to? You must not be a very intelligent man, Mr. Landell. First, you harbor fugitives and contraband, then you lie about it. You frame someone else for it and assume you can escape. What is the consequence for these crimes, again, Mr. Landell?

Mr. Landell's eyes were tearful, wide with fear and a tinge of anger.

The Death Angel coming to collect my soul? The Commander grinned but the man continued. The consequence for trying to save my daughter's life? In this place? Is a legacy.

It's death, Mr. Landell. And you have not only condemned yourself to death by way of treason, you have condemned her and your entire family, and anyone who associates with you. We told you this before, and we should've never told you at all. Now you won't have to be told anymore.

A Regulator fired an electro-automatic shot to the back of Mr. Landell's head. From the wound through his entire body he internally incinerated and disintegrated from the neck down. Skin boiled and burned hard. Blood turned black before he had a chance to bleed.

Take the parts, and the head. Leave the ashes.

Another soldier cut from his arm and the back of his head the main parts of his holo-guard equipment. The body wouldn't be able to be identified without a coroner present. They'd be hard pressed finding one impartial though, so no reason to bother. They packed onto their tank and trucks and made their way back the way they came. Aria turned, collapsed back into the counter and caught her breath a moment, the scene running through her head along with the others she'd witnessed over the years. She carefully crawled to the back of the store and through the back stock closets, out the back door to her secret pathway, vowing to keep herself out of trouble, and to keep her tenants safe. Otherwise, that would be her next.

Seething from the passive aggression of Hyde and the execution she'd witnessed, it was a welcome fuel for the coming outlet that awaited her in the booming Hurricane Ballroom, a near capacity concert venue right outside of the decaying, mostly cypress-covered acropolis. There'd been bold red signs glued to the outside walls and the glass doors that read,

No Trespassing!

Violators will be prosecuted by order of the Swampland Region Military and the Union Government!

A yellow and black caution sign read,

WARNING!

Do Not Enter!

Building scheduled for demolition by July 2089

Pulling the cold steel handle, the door was so old and worn it could've blown open with a slight breeze of someone walking by. Clearing shoulders and feet, she made her way through the labyrinth of both moving and standing bodies clothed and energetic in similar fashion, she quickly wiped the back of her thumb over her sweat-beaded hairline. Her braids were wrapped into a bun right above the base of her neck and the makeup she wore was still intact. Even in the summer humidity, her skin glowed golden blue in the flaring and fading black light of the driving rhythm of EleventhHour, the metal band currently performing. Her hazel eyes glowed blue and the 9mm pistols inside of her shirt hugged up against her ribcage beneath her bust line, the other two, pressed right below her scapulas.

Passing concessions and merchandise sales, the merchants all acknowledged her subtly. A passing glimpse. A wink and understated smile. A faint nod. They all knew she had a cover to keep. They all did. When she got across to the liquor concessions she made her way to the front, her thumbs hooked in her belt loops. A crimson red bobbed, heavily made up bartender served a green eyed, bearded man a vodka on the rocks with a wink and a sly smile. Aria smiled, amused at her shameless flirting as she then slid over. She flashed her brown eyes, pursed her crimson red lips, and shifted to one hip leaning over the counter.

Well if it isn't the queen of the Swampland metal scene!

Oh stop it, Genevieve, you know I love good ol’ blues and all the jazz standards I can handle. Friend of yours?

We'll see when the night is over. You?

Aria focused her attention on Genevieve's eyes, they flickered a flash and focused on Aria's lips while the words she spoke flowed into a reservoir of her memory, "When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination. Indeed, everything and anything except me."

Genevieve blinked and eyes flashed over once more like a switch had been turned off, her movement normal and energetic again, I know exactly what you need. She poured Aria a neat, black label bourbon and dropped a splash of water in it, "That 22nd century