section.
OK, Ruppert answered.
The windows closed in reverse order, leaving him to face the page of ads. The conversation he’d been putting off for two months had lasted less than a minute, but left him with a new set of problems. How would he explain his night out to Madeline? He could hardly invite her to come with him. What if he was arrested by authorities while meeting with a dissident? Would Terror step in and protect him? He didn’t even know the name of the Captain who’d given him this assignment. At least he had George Baldwin from work.
He should report his plans to meet Sully’s friend to Baldwin, keep the Terror man updated on what he was doing, but part of him resisted the idea. Part of him wanted to operate as secretly as he could manage, maybe hold open the door to betraying the Department of Terror if he found an opportunity.
He thought of Hollis Westerly-the man was clearly dangerous, probably insane. As much as Ruppert had learned to loathe Terror, even he couldn’t argue with taking a man like Westerly off the streets. He would feel little guilt about turning Westerly over to Terror, and maybe that would settle things, and he could try to resume a normal life afterward.
The screen beeped and a new window appeared: TIME EXPIRED. PLEASE PURCHASE MORE TIME. Ruppert wished he could. Between Terror and the terrorist dissidents he’d been ordered to infiltrate, his chances of survival seemed miserably low.
FOURTEEN
“I know where you’re going,” Madeline said. She looked straight ahead at the car in front of them, avoiding his eyes. He was driving them home from Sunday church services.
“I’m telling you the truth, Madeline. You can call George Baldwin, the Terror man at GlobeNet. He said I have to help him with something tonight. He didn’t give any details, but-”
“Yes, Daniel. I’m sure your friend at work will cover for you.”
“He’s not my friend. He works for Terror.”
Madeline said. “I just hoped our vacation would put an end to it. I thought it would bring us closer together, like we used to be, but I guess nothing ever will.”
“What vacation?”
“St. Lucia.” Her face crinkled in anger. “I thought you’d forget about her.”
“Madeline, I was never seeing anyone else. And we sure as hell never went to St. Lucia. You know that.”
Madeline rolled her eyes and looked out the passenger window.
“We’re not in public, Madeline. You don’t have to do this.”
“Do what? Talk about your mistress?” She snorted. “Mistress. Almost sounds classy when you say it like that.”
“You never even thought I was having an affair until those Terror agents told you I was.”
“What does the Department of Terror have to do with anything?” Madeline snapped. “Just plan to stay home next weekend. I’m ovulating.”
Ruppert drove on in silence. The rift between them had widened into a gulf too wide to bridge. The most honest moments of their marriage had come just after Terror deposited them back at home. Now she’d cut him off, casting him in her mind as just another person to whom she had to prove her unquestioning faith and patriotism.
He could see their future from here, a continual retreat away from each other into their isolated, individual selves. Terror had severed whatever connection the two of them had shared. He wondered if it was a strategy, breaking people apart so that they stood alone and powerless, or if they’d done this to provide Ruppert an ongoing reminder that nothing in his life was safe from Terror. A smoldering hatred rose within him as he understood that both he and Madeline had been violated so deeply that they might never recover.
They didn’t speak again all afternoon.
The city of Los Angeles had never restored Malibu after the big mudslide of 2019, and neglected to repair any of the collapsed infrastructure of south L.A. after the earthquake of 2024, but somehow it had no trouble raising funds for Nixon Stadium, completed in 2027 with seventy thousand seats. At each of the four cardinal directions, a towering statue loomed at the upper lip of the stadium. The statues were identical: angels-or archangels, Ruppert supposed-their wings spread open like a canopy, their beatific faces bowed towards the playing field, their hands clasped in prayer.
Ruppert bought a ticket for section 469, then sat down in the middle row of 472. He had no competition for seating. The lowest levels were packed, but only scattered clusters of fans populated the top level. He had empty rows above and below him. Apparently there weren’t many Packers fans willing to travel all the way from Wisconsin to watch an insignificant June early preseason game.
He waited impatiently through the first two quarters of the game, eating popcorn that tasted like salted Styrofoam. He kept his cap, stamped with the Archangels logo from three seasons ago, pulled low over his eyes, though he doubted he would encounter anyone he knew up all the way up here when much better seats were available below.
As the clock ran out on the second quarter, the Archangels were ahead 12-7, and it had not been a particularly eventful game. When the halftime buzzer sounded, a voice spoke directly into Ruppert’s ear, making him jump:
“What did I miss?”
He turned to see a lean young man, maybe half a foot shorter than himself, with a mop of sandy hair. He wore a Green Bay Packers jersey. He had sat down just behind Ruppert and leaned in close to talk.
“Not much,” Ruppert said. “We fumbled in the first quarter, a little bit of a scramble, but your guys didn’t take it. Other than that…” He shrugged.
“These early preseason games,” the Packers fan said, shaking his head. “I don’t even think the players care.”
“I don’t even think the coaches care,” Ruppert said, and the man laughed, then stepped over and dropped into the plastic seat next to Ruppert.
“You look taller on the screen,” he said.
“I’m always sitting down,” Ruppert replied.
“Maybe that’s why. I’m glad you finally decided to meet me. It took you one hell of a lot of courage.”
Ruppert cast a few nervous glances around him, but no one seemed to be paying them any attention. All eyes were riveted to the half-time show set-up as stages wheeled onto the field, along with the Tree of Justice, a five-story scaffolding with beams extending out in every direction. Most of the beams ended in a square platform, and on every platform stood a blindfolded man with his hands shackled behind him, more than a hundred men in all. Each man had a limp noose around his neck, anchored to a beam over his head.
“You’re Sully’s friend?” Ruppert asked.
“Yeah, we were…yeah.”
“Have you heard from him?”
“No. They have special places for people like me and Sully, you know. Personality modification. Behavior programming. Try to cut the sin out of us. If he’s lucky, they just killed him.”
“Jesus.”
“And I’d rather not talk about that anymore right now, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” a voice boomed from every speaker in the stadium. “Please rise as the Ladies’ Choir of the Holy Kingdom Shopping Plaza Community Dominionist Church performs ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic.’”
Ruppert and the young man both stood and applauded along with the rest of the crowd. Scores of women in white choir robes had arrayed themselves on the tiers of a stage at center field, their backs to the Tree of Justice.
