DONOVAN

"DONOVAN PHILLIPS. DONOVAN PHILLIPS. YOU HAVE BETRAYED THE CAUSE. I REPEAT. YOU HAVE BETRAYED THE CAUSE. PREPARE TO FACE-"

I took my proton pistol and blasted the radio into loose wiring and vapor. I didn't care about consequences. Assuming what my mapping computer found wasn't a mistake. I would gladly accept them.

I guided my stolen hover-bike over the desolate remains of what had once been my home town. It was necessary to dodge a steady oncoming of toasted vehicles, piles of skulls, and gas fires that had been burning since 2020. The old neighbourhood had changed a bit.

My mapping computer began to pulse with an amber light. I was nearing my destination. I reved up the bikes power drive past eighty. My squadron was surely after me by now.

I was going so fast, I drove right by it. Swinging around in a sharp u-turn, I pulled up before my families old flat.

The building leaked the gas of painful memory. Just looking at its walls made me hear the barking of my dog... the scream of my mother... my brothers tears...

I shook the feeling off, I had to see if he was still alive.

I climbed up the staircase to the fifth floor where we'd resided and found our door. The numbers were still there, now scab colored instead of proud and golden like they'd once been. I opened the door. My brother was sitting in an arm chair. He was wearing a bathrobe and sipping a cup of coffee.

He was older now, his red locks had been replaced with gray ones and he was much thinner, but his eyes were the same. He looked at me with curiosity rather than surprise.

"I wondered if I'd ever see you again." he said.

"I wish I could say the same." I said back.

When he realized the state I was in, he got up and approached me like my mother would've done.

"My god Donnie... What have they done to you?"

I wasn't sure what he was referring too. It could've been the branded scar on the left side of my shaved head. My all-leather uniform. Or my cybernetic right arm. I began to share his worry and sadness. But I held my emotions in check.

"After Mom and Pop died. The Corsairs took me in. The only reason they let me live is cause I told them I had no family left. I guess I was wrong."

Little by little I let the tears flow. My brother held me in his arms as I heard the sound of transports descending outside.

"Come with me." I sobbed.

He said nothing back. He only looked at me as though I'd asked him to help me take my own life.

"Just come!" I said. "We'll escape on my bike! We'll set up camp in the badlands! We'll-"

My brother raised a finger to my lips and guided my desperate shaking form to a broken window that stared out into the world like a pupil with a cataract.

"Do you know why I chose to stay?"

I shook my head as I watched my squadron setting up their weapons.

"I chose to stay because I didn't see hope in anything but letting this all blow over. And by that I don't mean until the war had ended or a new government claimed power. I'm talking about something else."

I knew what he meant. But I didn't want to admit it.

"They'll kill us!" I cried.

"Look at what humanity has become!" shouted my brother. "Do you really want to be part of it anymore?!"

I saw what he meant. All nine of my squadron members now had their proton rifles trained on the building.

We held each other tight. And as the world exploded around us, I prayed for a better place.