Scarlet Chaos: Be The Chaos

By B. Wanto

Elaine Brody a psych nurse working with her brother in an organization called Scarlet Chaos. The small group is labeled domestic terrorists by the United States for protesting forced vaccinations that cause sterility. The group becomes more subversive until Elaine survives a biological agent used as an act of war from China. The bio attack directed at health care workers allowed the US government to pass a new law. The law identifies citizens according to levels, wiping out the Constitution of the United States and creating a caste system.

Each citizen is given the opportunity to test their abilities, proving worthiness. The testing includes a physical, blood work, DNA sampling, fitness and intellectual capabilities test. The combined scores allow one’s level to be assigned and privileges to be awarded. Rumors abound that the decimated medical personnel are disappearing in training centers. Given the word martial law is imminent, Elaine and her family attempt to escape the country. Her family can safely cross the border, but Elaine is recognized as a nurse. She is taken to a military base to be assessed, examined, and assigned for retraining. All health care personnel are rounded up to take national inventory of how many have survived the attack. She is cataloged and branded with a radioactive tattoo showing her credentials.

Elaine is sent to a re-education inside a scientific research facility. The facility is conducting psychological and genetic experiments. She and the other inhabitants of the camp have been selected as lab rats for the experiments. Her background in psych allows her to remain unchanged during her testing, but she is not unaffected. The brutal treatment of a new slave class at the camp reignites her passion for resistance. She helps a group of genetically modified super soldiers learn the power of defiance rising to fight for their freedom.

Her spicy, polyamorous relationship with two of the enhanced humans keeps her sanity and focus. Vik’s and Sean’s love for each other is echoed in the love they share for Elaine. The three of them plan an escape together, building an army large enough to conquer and heal the fractured country. Elaine’s personal belief system in chaos magic prepares her for the obstacles they will face together. They stand on the brink of Armageddon, a war predicted by all religions in hundreds of religious texts. It cannot be prevented, but it can be won. All three make a freewill choice: LIVE AND DIE TOGETHER.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662472220

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Scarlet Chaos

Be The Chaos

B. Wanto

Copyright © 2022 B. Wanto

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

This book is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, companies, organizations, places, events, locales, and incidents are either used in a fictitious manner or are fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, actual companies or organizations, or actual events is purely coincidental.

ISBN 978-1-6624-7221-3 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-7222-0 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

This book is dedicated to the thousands of people suffering from addiction—may you find your will to get help—and to my family, and my chosen family, who have always loved and supported me, especially my brother, my constant companion in my adventures.

Prologue

Daydreamer was never a word used to describe me, yet an exception could be made while observing me stare at the moon. It deeply affected me; I was lost in a sense of wonder while staring up at it, especially in its full moon phase. The experience placed my life in perspective; the moon and the universe witnessed so much.

Humanity as a whole was an infant in comparison to the universe. Humanity learned nothing in its short history. Over and over, we made the same mistakes. The same power-hungry individuals destroyed everything for their own selfish quest, and the same innocents were sacrificed to die. Nothing changed. Yet when I looked up at the moon, I felt hope. I hoped for our future. I hoped we would begin to learn. I hoped we would make something better. I hoped that we would all work together for justice and peace. But most of all, I prayed.

Like most things, the beginning occurred before you could identify it as the start of it all. The seeds of war were sown before I was born, way back in the early 1970s. Our industry was slowly dismantled by the power- and money-hungry elite. Factory jobs were sent overseas to countries like China, South Korea, and Taiwan. This was the first phase, taking away the ability of someone to make a decent living or support a family with a factory, or blue-collar, job.

The children were dumbed down by the school system generation after generation. The curriculum changed, manipulating values, making each child vulnerable, pliable, and unable to think for themselves. Lower standards were voted into place instead of insisting greater dedication to achieve. Thinking for oneself was removed from their minds. Challenging oneself to aim for greatness was gone. The children lined up without asking why and got agitated if someone sat in their assigned seat.

But the worst offense made me tremble: They accepted answers from an Authority Source—their teachers, their elected officials, the media, the internet, or Facebook—without checking the validity for themselves. The truth was no longer actually true. The truth was whatever the powers that be told us. This was phase two, the slow dismantling of the Bill of Rights. They targeted the young; indoctrination was easier with young children since they didn’t know anything else to challenge it.

The process of it all made the new truth: We were evil. Americans were the reason the world was full of pain. We had no culture, we had no traditions, and we had no honor. Other countries had those things—culture, traditions, and honor—but not the United States. The lack of industry forced both parents to work to support the family. The children were raised by the government, video games, and television. Families broke apart, and whatever was left of our traditions was lost. We were blind, and we accepted our fate unquestioningly. It was easy for us to be overthrown. The attack happened completely under the radar. It was brilliant. It was the long game.

The United States declared war on drugs in the 1980s, but the effects the war had on the American people were not felt until the 2000s. Three generations had been affected or debilitated by drug addiction. Our government publicly fought drugs but privately funded large drug dealers. They penalized their own people for consuming the drugs they helped flood into the streets. We had more people incarcerated than any other country in the Western world for drug offenses. This alone showed how drug addiction was part of the attack against us.

Fentanyl was leaked into the drug supply. It showed up in the heroin but soon touched every illegal drug sold in the United States—marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamines, Molly, and OxyContin. The synthetics, like SPICE, were dangerous enough on their own, but if cut with fentanyl, you were gone. If an addict didn’t immediately die of an overdose involving fentanyl, the withdrawal from it forced a game of Russian roulette just to prevent feeling sick. The patients I interviewed all reported, Fentanyl withdrawal made me beg to die. Sickness stumped their body. Retching caused them to double over, unable to stand on their feet.

Our children, our people, our nation, and our future were nothing but walking zombies controlled by drugs; and this was only to soften us up for domination. The next attack was subtler. Our climate began changing. Temperate parts of our country became warmer and warmer. New insects and fish appeared, once indigenous only to Asia and Indonesia, decimating the natural species. Industrial farms needed more and more chemicals to grow food, polluting our water with runoff.

Storms, fires, floods, and other natural tragedies that only occurred once every five to ten years happened month to month. The AUTHORITY blamed global warming and capitalism as the root of the evil, as the cause of our problems. Still, everyone continued as if nothing was happening. Anyone who looked deeper or paid attention was called crazy, a conspiracy theorist, or abnormal. The labels stopped that person from being seen as credible by other people. This helped the lie.

I wasn’t any different at first. I was buried in my own life and troubles, oblivious to the real truth. But I woke up. I could not sit on the sidelines anymore. I was moved to do something. I had to do something. It became my truth, restoring hope in myself and inspiring hope in as many as I could reach. I needed a chance for humanity to be free of slavery to drugs, free of lies from greedy institutions, and free to make their own choices. But despite my awakening and newfound desire to be different from sheeple, I didn’t know how bad it was or how bad it was going to get.

Chapter 1

I was not sure of who first thought of getting involved in the underground resistance. It might have been Eli. I probably followed my brother, because truly, family was family. I couldn’t remember how many times we switched between ourselves, taking turns pulling each other into our activities. I found a new museum in Connecticut, and next thing I knew, he was going with me. He saw a club in New York that caught his eye, and soon after, both of us were on the dance floor. We always did everything together, including vacation, so who started first was difficult to guess.

We even shared the same birthday. We weren’t fraternal twins or anything; in fact, I was two years older. Our mother suffered from gestational diabetes. Eli kept getting bigger and bigger in the womb, and the doctor decided she needed a C-section as soon as possible. I’m not sure if it was a joke on our mom’s part or if she genuinely loved the date, but she chose my birthday for the C-section.

The decision to become part of the resistance wasn’t like making a choice to attend the latest museum or nightclub. I suppose my mind perceived it that way at first, taking it lightly. I wanted to do something to ease my conscience, to help me grow as a person. I didn’t know the evil we would face or the loss we could experience. We were naive and arrogant, me and my country.

The one thing I could claim as truly mine was the symbol of our resistance movement. The organization was split like the government—local, state, and national. I oversaw our local group, and my brother moved up in rank to the state. Alec was our national leader, the glue between all the groups. We worked like sleeper cells, if a comparison had to be made. Nobody knew anyone else except their own group and a few key leaders they would never meet. I would never have met our state leader if he hadn’t been my own brother, pulled from our own group.

The generic name THE UNDERGROUND was used nationally and, likewise, was adopted by the state. Using generic terms to describe something never sat well with me. Perhaps it was my inner nurse desiring a proper name. Whatever the reason, I gave our local group some flair. Scarlet Chaos was the name I created, taking inspiration from the French Revolution and chaos magic.

I had read popular books about the American Revolution and how it inspired the French Revolution. This led to the beginning part of our name. The second part was a bit more complicated. I followed an eclectic path of paganism, worshipping the old gods. My grandmother taught me about the elements, feeling the energy around us, and the power in nature. She kept her altar very simple with a crow feather and a candle to represent the goddess. I asked her the name of her goddess once, but she just laughed.

Grandma would say that you didn’t need a name to call down the energies. She would take me out into the woods in the middle of the night to stare at the moon. Her lesson was for me to learn to feel the energy moving around me, touching me, inside of me, and to use that energy to give thanks, pray, and meditate. She would make me walk barefoot in the creek, feeling the life force flowing around my feet; stand in the storm, letting the wind pull and push, taking my breath; feel the mud of the garden crawling with life and giving their force to our plants; light the bonfire and watch the glow flicker, feeling the heat and energy around me; and most of all, find the calm inside myself.

Grandma called this, As above, so below. The energy around us, above us, below us, and part of every atom inside us was the energy of the gods. Learning to use this energy made one unstoppable. She always warned me to know myself and know my own demons and to find balance.

We lived in the Appalachian coal country, on my family’s farm in the middle of nowhere. The essence of life in the mountains was simplicity. You would be damn thankful for what you had, and you would pray for what you needed. We helped our neighbor because one day, we might need help. We minded our own business and were friendly, but we weren’t foolish. Foolish was Grandma’s word for being taken advantage of by bad people who had lost their way.

I took the wisdom my grandma gave me and added my own. The maid, the mother, and the crone represented the three phases of a woman’s life. The triple moon goddess was my representation of the goddess. The triple moon goddess was usually associated with being a Wiccan. I was not and never had been a Wiccan. That was an entirely separate belief system from my own.

They had the rule of three: Harm none lest you be harmed. Whatever you sow, be it good or bad, comes back to you times three. My belief was that calling upon Chaos, Nemain, and Kali to avenge wasn’t forbidden, and it was better to die on your feet than serve on your knees. I also believed one shouldn’t look for trouble, but if trouble found you, gods help them. This was why I selected a sigil for chaos magic for our symbol. The basic meaning of chaos magic was an altered state of consciousness that allowed a person to focus on one goal or thought. The resistance was a group of people that shared the same thoughts and focused on one goal: social change.

The sigil of Chaos was outlined in black with eight arms coming off the circle. I chose eight arms because of the eight original members of our small group. The sigil was a deep scarlet red color. We started tagging the symbol everywhere we could as our first act against the system. I wanted us to work a spell of rebellion throughout the country every time someone saw our symbol. I wanted it to wake that person up, get them to start checking facts, and start asking questions. BE THE REVOLUTION was my intention. It caught on quickly, at least internally.

Eli snatched it and was using it for our state level when he was promoted. Eventually, Alec, the leader of the national resistance, took it and started renaming everything Scarlet Chaos. He even added his own flair, calling everyone Scarlets when he made voice messages giving directions. He would end every message with, Remember, we are the chaos!

Scarlet Chaos was now national. I should have been excited, but truthfully, I was a little pissed. Neither Eli nor Alec ever thanked me for the creation of our identity. Alec, adding his own ideas to it, made it a slogan. I supposed that wasn’t the true point of everything, but recognition was sometimes important. At that point, my thoughts still treated it like it was a social club, not taking it with the seriousness it needed. I changed it a little in our local group to make it mine again: BE THE CHAOS.

Eli loved Scarlet Chaos. He truly found himself when he became part of the movement. It had the same effect on him as becoming a nurse had on me. He found purpose, direction, and a commitment to something greater than himself. Sometimes, you would receive a higher calling. The gods would place the pieces in front of you to become something more. All you needed to do was follow the path. Eli was always the leader of his small group of friends, but he blossomed as a leader in Scarlet.

Our local group had eight members. Five of us met in grade school, quickly becoming close friends. The EJs was how our parents affectionately referred to our group—Elijah Eli Brody, Elaine El Brody, Jeremiah Jeremy Roads, James Jax Roads, and Jasmine Jaz Mejia. It felt more like a large family meeting as opposed to a politically charged activist group. The total membership was E–Js, including my husband, Luke Wall, and two other members, Nina and Matt Evans. Nina was my best friend; we met in nursing school. Her husband, Matt, worked for a company in their IT department.

We met once a month and played Cards against Humanity while talking about the assignments handed down the chain from Alec. Luke’s brother Ray joined our group when Eli moved to state. He had recently lost his wife to cancer. I wanted him to socialize as much as possible, so he was coerced into Eli’s seat. Ray enjoyed the company, and he enjoyed the covert type of assignments we received. He had retired from his military career to take care of his wife. He was in the Marine Corps for twenty-two years. He was a sergeant first class, so he could have stayed in the corps longer.

Ray was Luke’s older brother, so he did like to show off for his younger bro. They looked similar with their raven hair and crystal-blue eyes. Ray’s crew cut, the official military look, was the main thing that distinguished them. The two brothers were very close. We would visit Ray on base and got to observe him with his men. I admired him. I was not military material, so I always thanked the goddess for soldiers like Ray. It was also interesting to watch them work.

I had always had a natural obsession with behavioral psychology. I suppose being drawn to psychiatric nursing was the next step. We used to go to escape rooms to try to solve the puzzles to escape before the buzzer. My focus would be on the other people trying to solve the locks. I would get bitched at by Luke. Stop rubbernecking and more helping, he would say to me.

Our group focused on handing out information packets and trying to educate people about addiction. We also provided clean needles and Narcan to those suffering from drug addiction, and we raised money for people affected by natural tragedies. But these were basic, self-important, arrogant drops in the bucket that didn’t scratch the surface. Eli and I became more active during the push for socialized medicine. It was socialized in name only. If it had been a truly fair attempt to give free health care for all, then Scarlets would have lobbied for it, not against it.

Health care workers protested the new reform for health care. We knew insurance coverage divided us into classes of who could afford to live and those who would die. You went to see your doctor thinking your best interests were being served, but that was a lie. They looked at your insurance to determine what you could afford. THAT was how your care was dictated to you. If the greed-driven insurance companies were kept in the plan, it would not have been fair.

We tried to highlight how the only thing that the new health care accomplished was making the social economic divide deeper. We wanted people to know that the plan would not work unless the insurance companies were removed from our care. We tried to show that giving up Medicare for a privatized company stripped them of their rights. They used the fact that people could not pay 20 percent as the key to move them.

Obviously, we failed in our efforts. It was voted into law. Overnight, thousands lost the right to the medical coverage keeping them alive. The law was complicated, wrapped in jargon, and of course, promoted with lies in the media. They provided alternative insurance to bridge the gap of loss, but it was substandard. Sure, preexisting conditions were now covered, but the care they would pay for was minimal at best.

A woman spit on me and called me a racist for handing out simplified pamphlets explaining the proposed law. The act outraged me on the inside, but I stayed calm outwardly. I’m sorry you can’t see the truth, I told her as I wiped myself off. The media successfully tied opposition to the health care to race. If you voted against it, you were a minority-hating racist. The truth was buried in propaganda bullshit.

Tests you couldn’t afford were not ordered, and treatments you couldn’t afford were not even discussed with you. The newest medications were denied to the lower classes, because insurance wouldn’t cover them. A doctor had to change their treatment for you based on what the insurance said even if you might get worse.

You want to focus on true discrimination and oppression? It didn’t care about the color of your skin. It could order you to death or save your life without your control. Something that could save your life might be denied to you because of the insurance card you carried in your pocket. NO LIVES MATTERED, ONLY GREEN$.

The new law made it worse for everyone. It created a caste system within our health care system. The political machine, left or right, did not work for the best interests of the people. The elite could afford to pay cash or have private insurance. They didn’t have to concern themselves about the reform; it didn’t touch them. Our lawmakers who were pushing the bill had their own private health care system. The law didn’t apply to them, so the ones pushing it into place couldn’t care less. They were in the upper 1 percent, untouchable. How could they objectively put a law into place that affected 99 percent of us when they were excluded? The answer was simple. They couldn’t.

The worker bees who got insurance through an employer were forced to work no matter what happened in their lives. This ensured that they would continue to be productive members of society, always working. If they quit their job, they would lose their health care. The new law allowed them to sign up for government-backed health insurance for a small fee, though many couldn’t even afford that. This new insurance was substandard, forcing them into a lower caste. They became unworthy of the best health care and were blacklisted from certain treatments. The best part was that they were unaware the caste system existed. Moving people from caste to caste was simple. The lower caste were the selected unworthy.

The lower-class working stiffs either couldn’t get insurance from their employer or were paid under the table. Those below the poverty line, those who were unable to work, and those who were on a fixed income or with little income to support themselves, those were the ones who really suffered. If they went to the emergency room, then I prayed they were blue or dying. Why would I say this? If you walked in with a legit complaint that required lots of testing, the tests would not get ordered. You would be sent away with a half-assed answer, still suffering from your illness.

You may be wondering why I am discussing insurance. It’s because this was the first step they took to divide us as a people and as a country. The small changes added up until finally, we were classified into the categories they needed. It didn’t take long for more and more people to fall into the lower caste station. More natural tragedies occurred, destroying people’s livelihoods. Three different pandemics were fought globally. These tragedies caused the explosion of the lower caste, swelling it to the brink.

Our local group escalated to more subversive actions. First, we participated in small, covert tasks. We delivered information from point A to point B. Then we organized free medical care for the underprivileged, those beneath the radar. I had doctor friends willing to help in any way possible, and we already had two nurses. We could all have been arrested for practicing medicine without the proper permits. It got worse when they amended the health reform law. Still, this wasn’t nearly as bad as what was to come.

All this was connected to humanity. How did you explain, As above, so below, to someone who didn’t want to be bothered? This was the unending circle of birth, growth, death, and destruction. You read it right: destruction! This was the last step, because the energy must be transformed into its next form for birth to occur once more. The reform to the law was simplistic. If you were gainfully employed, your employer basically signed a waiver for you to the federal government saying, We take responsibility for this citizen. If your employer didn’t require the new fitness test or if it was voluntary, you were lucky. They modeled the system after Japan’s, deciding the government would force the population to be healthy.

Getting rid of someone at a company or corporation was as easy as requiring a random fitness test. Unemployment skyrocketed with companies only selecting the most fit candidates. How intellectual or qualified you were to do your job was passé. The most physically fit—along with, We will train you—became how you were measured in society. Outcries were made about possibly trying to model the system after the one in Norway, but those were ignored. Government centers popped up to help you pass the fit tests. They were paid for by tax dollars. The stay at the facility was reported to be anywhere from thirty days to one year. They filled up quickly, reaching capacity.

The new indoctrination came along with the fitness training for free. It became like college. Right after high school, children applied to the government fitness centers. After all, it gave you an edge when you looked for employment. Anyone on disability, government employees, or welfare and Medicare recipients had to take a fit test. This included drug testing, along with a possible DNA sampling. Those on disability had to be able to prove their disability through a fit test signed off by two doctors. All I knew from my own observation was that shortly after the fitness testing went into effect, the rate of unemployment increased. Crime went up, and more fell into the lower class, forcing dependence on the government.

Jaz said her mother wept after her initial experience with the new system. She had been on Medicare, so her testing included a written test, a physical endurance test, and lab tests. She cried during her description of the testing; it hit her hard because she feared failing the exams. On the one hand, if she passed the tests, the government might find work for her to do, a job that she would have to take to keep getting her benefits. If she failed the tests, though, she would need to get two doctors to certify that she wasn’t able to work to keep receiving those same benefits. The new system wanted everybody to be productive, at least in some way, if they were at all able.

Jaz’s mom, Aemilia, had her later in life, so she retired when Jaz was twenty-three. Her mother had been a social worker, and her pension required her to take Medicare at sixty-five. She described the written exam as starting with easy questions, then moving to more complex ones. She had a physical exam, including blood work. They took nine tubes. Nobody told her what tests were conducted with her blood even though she asked more than once the names of the tests they intended to run on her blood. They simply said, Blood testing.

Her endurance test occurred last. She was given directions while they observed her: Balance on one foot. Crawl on the floor. Squat. Walk on the treadmill. They did increase the speed to a fast walk, but it ended right after that last test. She received zero feedback on how she did on her testing. They told her she would get a phone call. This devastated her, the weight of it hanging on her.

How did this become mandatory? Why did we line up when they said jump? We had to stop it. The country was already racially divided, but further division was required for the populace to accept the new system. The start was with the vaccines splitting us into two groups, vaccinated and unvaccinated. The groups, instead of representing an individual, personal choice of health, took on different stereotypes. The vaccinated were compliant, law-abiding, trustworthy, useful, and worthy. The unvaccinated were lazy, lawbreaking, noncompliant, useless, worthless, and criminal. The hate and discrimination against anyone not vaccinated was overwhelming. They were the last to get jobs in the private sector or benefits from government agencies.

At first, the HIPAA was used to further the discrimination by giving the excuse that health information was not readily available to ensure that individuals were healthy. Vaccination didn’t matter if you could prove being physically sound and mentally fit. The push to make health information open to government agencies, employers, or anyone entrusted with policing for vaccination compliance was instant. But the new law repealed the HIPPA, placing a vague privacy law in its place. Agencies or businesses no longer needed your consent to access your health information. Protecting the public was more important than your rights.

Making health information unprotected opened the door for the fit testing to pinpoint the unworthy citizens polluting society. Being unvaccinated was made a crime. Anyone unfit was now a target, and fighting against any of it was treason. Checkpoints went up, making people wait in long lines for hours at a time. The checkpoints required you to show your national ID and proof of vaccination and to conduct random health checks and search for contraband.

The random health checks required a scan that stopped anyone from faking the vaccine. Each vaccine contained a heavy metal and a gene resistant to heavy metals isolated from a bacterium. The heavy metal broke down pieces of the double strands in our DNA helix. The bacterial genes grafted themselves into the damaged bands. This allowed the normal pathway of repair to be restored in the DNA. Stem cells made the grafting and coding of the bacterial genes possible. This enabled the government to encode our cells with information or extract it.

The heavy metal that polluted our bodies was itself capable of sending biological data to the scanners. No vaccine meant no communication with the scanners, which meant harsh prison terms at labor camps. The problem was, the metal only transmitted to the short-range scanners. They searched for a permanent solution to mark the populace. Computer implants were suggested, but they were easily faked or removed. Even the metal in the vaccine dissipated in time, losing its ability to send data.

The heavy metal was still present in the body. It just lost its function over time. It varied from person to person how long the metal lasted before failing. The solution was on-the-spot revaccination. They only injected the metal, leaving out the genetic protection, keeping your DNA from becoming permanently damaged. This was to discourage faking your vaccination.

Once martial law was declared, the outcry was for an immediate solution for returning to normal life. The government answered with more fear by cutting all government benefits. The war with China forced even more dependence on government handouts. The way proposed was for a return to order, and normal life was to eradicate racism and discrimination. Every man was to earn his worth, showing he deserved what he had been given. The caste system was put into place. You were to level up, prove your worth, and take the test.

The tattoos were the permanent marking solution using radioactive dye. The metal never lost the ability to send data, and you could be tracked anywhere. Civil war broke out in our country, fracturing it into pieces. Accepting the caste system was easier than watching your children starve to death. Accepting the system was easier than being beaten by the worthy. Accepting the system was in line with our key instinct: to SURVIVE. This was my soon-to-be future. I was clueless. We were all arrogant, pampered, stupid Americans.

Chapter 2

Eli spent most of his time meeting with national leaders, planning the overall agenda. Truth be told, he had a bro crush on our figurehead, Alec. He was in awe of Alec, always telling me how noble, selfless, loyal, blah blah he was. His description went on forever about how the awesome Alec—insert whatever awesome deed he accomplished—came out a champion. The way he described Alec made him sound like Lancelot, one of the legendary Knights of the Round Table.

I had never met Alec, but his physical appearance was, I imagined, just as courtly. I could easily see him with his long hair flowing in the wind, riding up on a horse with a lance, gesturing to his adoring crowd. Luke teased Eli about his bro crush constantly, letting him know he talked about Alec too much. Eli wanted me to meet Alec. He had been nagging me about a possible date and time, but then he stopped. I figured he wanted to keep him to himself. Eli needed someone of his own.

Eli spent a lot of his time with Alec, so it was natural that he joined the national level permanently. Ray replaced my brother on the state level, coming to meet with our group every four months. It was a change from the normal operations. Ray wanted to make our group part of the inside planning of state operations. Okay, nepotism was always going to exist. Humans felt more comfortable with people they already trusted.

I helped the nationals get some passports made from a friendly neighborhood forger. This allowed me to see Alec’s picture. It showed that his frame was large, probably standing at least six feet, four inches, though I might have been underestimating. He had beautiful bluish-gray eyes and kept his light-brown hair short and thick. His broad cheekbones and massive shoulder span, along with his ancient Greek nose, made him look deadly serious. Eli and Ray said that he could palm a basketball with his hand. I knew Alec was being groomed to take political office. That was always a key point of Scarlet’s plan. He also had an almost tangible light shining through him, and I thought that his smile could rival the sun.

In comparison, my brother was six feet tall with tousled sandy-blond hair and jade eyes. His shoulder span was also large, but his legs were short. My brother’s height was mostly in his torso. He inherited my father’s male pattern baldness, to his everlasting chagrin. He didn’t have a completely bald head, but he had thinning hair with patches of baldness. Eli’s nose and eyes were beautiful. The slight rounding at the tip of his long, delicate nose emphasized his eyes. His eyes were his best feature. They were absolutely gorgeous with long lashes to match. The problem with his face was his jawline. The feature of his eyes and nose did not match his jawline. His jaw was square, almost resembling a block. He joked once about getting a nose job to even out his face.

Eli wasn’t a looker, but he was a genius. His IQ was well above 180. He studied chemical and bioengineering and had been courted by every company involved in molecular research under the sun. He had five patents before he finished high school. He was a doctor (PhD, not MD) and continued his research privately at his home lab. He was funded by grants, and some of his patents’ proceeds helped fund the underground medical clinic we created through Scarlet. Eli never had a problem putting his money and talent into helping people or the planet. He created safe vaccines to replace the ones distributed by the government. Things that took teams of scientists years to create took Eli months. There was no doubt that Eli was the important superstar in our group.

I looked a lot like my brother—the same sandy-blond hair and delicate nose with slight rounding at the tip. The structure of our eyes and their long lashes were also identical, but thankfully, my jaw was my own. I had a diamond-shaped face, complete with narrow jawline and chin. The beauty of it was lost on me. Having all that extra weight made my face too wide, adding a double chin to my jaw. My eye color favored my mother’s—a mix between hazel and green. My height was a little under six feet, around six feet, two inches with small heels. It was also mostly in my torso, just like Eli.

I went to college, collecting bachelor’s degrees by studying philosophy, psychology, and nursing. I didn’t have nearly the brainpower my brother or the other members of the group possessed. My talent was in figuring out a situation based on the people involved. Later in our activities, I could pick out government informants before anyone asked them if they needed medical help. We gave out Eli’s vaccines to the public, along with other immunizations. The clinic never got busted despite how hard the government tried.

Eli would have Ray give me a tape, asking for me to tell him my observations about certain people. Sometimes, I could feel their energy through the video, giving me a warning. This wasn’t strange; a lot of people could actually feel someone’s energy from a distance. You saw them on the tape and focused on them, sending your energy out, calling them. A connection would be made, letting the energies intermingle, and feelings or intuitions would come back. Rarely would I get more than feeling-type of messages in return, but it did happen.

My frame was large. I was plain fat. Classified as morbidly obese, straight up, I weighed over 250 pounds. Everyone in our family had always been fat. I guess we were stereotypically fat-ass Americans. My brother’s weight had been close to 300 pounds, but he changed. After meeting Alec, my brother trained all the time. He became obsessive about working out. Eli became a mass of muscle and fitness even though his job placed him sitting behind a desk. It would have been easy for him to balloon up into an unhealthy weight; but instead, he transformed into a tactical, savvy, fit soldier. I was proud of Eli not because he became Mr. Fit but because he was happy.

We both loved movies. Horror movies and comedies were the favorites we watched most of all. We watched them together, debating plotlines with a degree of believability. We would sometimes speak in code, a language only we understood, a ragtag of movie quotes that only had a unique meaning to us. He came to visit less and less. I could send messages to him in code if I missed him too much. Shortly after, he would work his way home to visit me.

Remembering how many times I called him, mimicking that one horror movie, still made me laugh. The low growling sound that chick made would kill my throat after playing that prank on Eli. How she managed to do it for an entire film amazed me! Still, our visits were slightly spoiled. My brother would brag nonstop about Alec if I let him. Sometimes, I would tease him by singing, I am the good knight Lancelot. I like to sing and dance a lot. I would pull that whenever I was tired of hearing about Alec’s surreal attributes. Usually, that would shut him up, refocusing him.

My role in Scarlet was small compared to my brother’s involved deluge. I completed every assignment handed down to me, but I had little involvement in national planning. I didn’t know much about the larger plan. Our mission was clear to all the groups spread across the United States.

Educate the masses about our elected leader’s true agenda.

Offer as much help as we could to the innocent people caught in the wheels of the machine.

Back our own leadership to take political office.

Our mission did not include terrorism. Yes, we broke the law at times, like forgery, but we were never violent. Still, we ended up branded domestic terrorists and placed on watch lists. Protesting the mass vaccines forced by the national health care system was considered a terroristic act. Now let’s be clear here: I am a nurse; I BELIEVE IN VACCINES. My issue was the link the new vaccines had to sterility, infertility, and developmental disorders. It was another step in the phase of being taken over that everyone missed.

The right to procreate was given to us by the gods. In vitro and infertility treatments were available if you could afford it. So it became true that the rich were able to have children while the poor were sterilized. This caused a further divide between the health care caste systems. It made me laugh when people talked about family planning. The organization Planned Parenthood was started to sterilize undesirables, like the mentally ill, blacks, and disabled.

Public health laws had always been used to circumvent our rights. This is strange coming from a psych nurse, but true. If you wanted to be crazy off in the middle of Alaska, hundreds of miles from people, nobody said one word to you. But if you tried that in downtown New York, you would be hospitalized.

Great care was taken to make sure your rights were protected when I was growing up. We didn’t believe that it would be changed overnight, but it was. Forced vaccines happened. You were asked by the military to give your national ID card and proof of vaccine card. If you didn’t have them, you were arrested and taken from your family. The police were civil authorities, controlled by the people, though even under those circumstances, there was plenty of abuse. But try the military. They DID NOT ANSWER TO YOU PERIOD.

My identity as a nurse still protected me. I was given special cards, and the soldiers didn’t bat an eye at me. Some saluted, or I was waved through time and again as they watched the long line of people stopped at the checkpoints. They would recognize my car, and they would wave me through before I pulled up to the gate. Soldiers with fully loaded AR-15 rifles forced Americans into a scanner. If I allowed myself to watch too long, I would cry. Ray even gave me a special sticker to put on my nurse card that identified me as a military spouse. This gave me access to government buildings without being checked in. This made it easier for me to gather information for him on Scarlet missions.

Scarlet tried to prevent all this before it happened. We collected the data ourselves that showed the correlation between the mass-produced vaccines and the effects. Brain disorders were too hard to prove; we would never be able to say whether fast food or the vaccine caused it or something else entirely. We focused exclusively on sterility and infertility. The media downplayed the negative effects, but the drop in the birth rate in the United States was too much to be ignored.

The birth rate in China dropped to an unbelievable level. Jax said that the data was statistically impossible. The data was smuggled out by people immigrating to the United States. I had a Chinese intern who worked at the hospital.