Breed

Chapter Thirteen

"I'm sure it would be less dramatic if you just told us what was going on," Linc said.

"And I'm sure it wouldn't suffice," Anita said, switching on the television in his office.

The students crowded inside, around them in a half moon. She flicked through a few channels, before finding a Seattle news station, showing footage of smoke rising up out of the city from a traffic helicopter.

"For those of you just joining us," a woman narrated from the studio, "there is smoke rising from the middle of downtown Seattle. A transhuman protest today turned violent when confronted by police in riot gear. Transhumans and transhuman sympathizers were protesting the NSA's transhuman tracking program, which was outed earlier today by a transhuman hacker.

"The program is similar in scope and dimension to the kinds of intelligence gathering revealed by infamous leaker Edward Snowden. However, this program is targeted specifically at those exhibiting extrahuman capabilities, regardless of their immigration status. It's important to note that this program is separate to the Transhuman Registration Act passed by Congress and administered by the Department of Justice, though presumably both programs interact."

Anita changed channels to Cox News. Four pundits were seated around a table. "These animals set fire to downtown Seattle," an overweight man in a suit bloviated. "We aren't talking a drum circle jerk passing legalized pot around. These aren't people; human beings don't act like this."

They cut to a video of a man's hand transforming into a claw and extending, and tearing a riot shield away from a policeman with it. Then a second clip played, fire erupting out of a woman's mouth and engulfing another cop's shield and helmet.

"They don't want law and order," a woman with a scowl said as they cut back from the video. "They want to rule, by fear and coercion. If we don't do something to stop this, I think we're witnessing humanity's last days."

"Is anybody else hungry?" Drake asked. Mikaela turned and blinked at him. "What? That kind of high-quality xenophobia makes me hungry. Or all of the physical activity."

"We aren't foreigners," Ben said.

"Xenophobia also covers anything 'strange,' not just foreigners. Linguistics major. Trust me on this one. And if it isn't white, Anglo and particularly Saxon, these protestants want nothing to do with it."

"What about her?" Irene asked, pointing to the scowling woman, who was a shade darker than Rox and was likely Latina.

"She's light enough that for all they know it's just a dark foundation. Or their bigotry has evolved to a point where it's not the color of your skin, but whether or not you're a big enough xenophobe to hang."

"There's still some leftover pizza on my desk," Linc said.

"Cool," Drake said, and followed his nose away.

"Though how anyone could eat at a time like this, I don't know."

"You got a microwave? Cause that's how I'd prefer to eat it."

"I think he meant emotionally," Mikaela said.

"I'm a stress eater," he said, opening the box.

"And you eat when you're calm. And once while you were sleeping."

"I was on some heavy painkillers," he said. "The Ambien haze is real. And I fell asleep eating pizza. But I was still hungry, so I dreamed I was still eating- and I was, apparently."

"Sure," Ben said, "who hasn't done that?"

"Ahem," Cris said. "Am I the only one still preoccupied with the race war on the television?"

"Not a race war," Drake said around a bite of room temperature pizza. "We aren't a different race- just a different breed."

"The breed war, then," Cris said.

"I think most of us are in shock," Rox said, and put a hand on Cris' shoulder.

"How'd this happen?" Irene asked from the back.

"I'll show you," Anita said, and flicked to another channel.