Reports from Dallas Suggest New Offensive By “Heavenly Kingdom”

A half-dozen rings later, Alexander picked up.

“Sasha?” he asked. His voice sounded distant. There was noise on the line. After a second or so Sasha heard a boom and then a strange cracking sound that had to be gunfire. It didn’t sound like it did on the movies, or even in the few VR shooters she’d played. Sasha’s heart had started to pound by the time she responded.

“Yes, Alexander! I was just on my drone, and it looks like something’s happening. The media’s saying it’s another offensive.”

“They’re right, for once,” said Alexander. “And they’re still wrong at the same time. This is something new, Sasha. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you before. But it’ll all be clear soon.”

“Is this just the Martyr’s Brigade?”

He smiled, and Sasha’s face went red.

“No. Sasha, something wonderful is–”

“Are you near the front? Are you part of the fighting?” Sasha interrupted. She’d never have done that normally. But she could hear what sounded like gunfire over his line, and Sasha was scared.

“I’m with the second wave,” he said. “The ’tracks are moving us into position now. I’ll probably have t–”

Whatever else he’d been about to say was cut short as all of Sasha’s deck apps closed at once. Her digital world was replaced with a red box that read, “PARENTAL LOCKDOWN: Come to dinner, Sasha!”

“Moooooooooooooom!” she screamed down the stairs as her eyes welled up with tears at the unfairness of it all. Alexander, the man she was pretty sure she loved, was going into battle for the first time. He was fighting right now to re-establish the Rule of God on Earth. I should have read him a poem or said something beautiful and stirring. Something about how my love for him was as everlasting as God’s own love. It should have been a powerful moment, but her heretic whore of a mother had ruined it for enchiladas.

Sasha stormed downstairs, ripe with fury but unable to vent it. Her parents couldn’t know she’d been giving money to a militant group. They wouldn’t have to drop in on her talking to Alexander to know what she had planned. Six kids from her high school had already left for the Republic of Texas to fight in one militia or another. It was a problem across the American Federation, but here, in Virginia, parents were particularly wary. The border of the United Christian States was just an hour’s drive from her front door. Ratlines in the UCS brought thousands of young volunteers yearly from the heart of corporate America to the various militia groups that battled across Texas.

“Sasha Marion, what did we interrupt that was so important you had to yell?”

“I was praying, Mother.”