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Note: The following fiction story was published in the tri-annual publication, www.perdiotbooks.com

"Pago, I Am Here"
by Daniel C. Bartel

The guard tightened his grip on the rifle held firm against his breastplate, his forearm packed full of muscle. Those black eyes beneath his battle helmet warned of pain and suffering.

I looked back at my desk. We were all told to keep our eyes down, the whole class. This wasn't a drill.

Black military boots strolled about the classroom, one boot that made a thunk, followed by the awful silence of the other, the boot cushioned with the blood of Jamison, the new student from Argentina.

Poor Jamison was now slumped against the floor with blood pouring out of him-so much for his skill in speech and debate.

"Now, if anyone else wants to give us back talk, you will most assuredly end up the same way," the squad commander said. "We are the H.A.R., and we're not here to play games."

The commander's face was about as warm and expressive as a lump of hard rock. He traversed the rank and file of desks, greedy for frightened lips that might crack and spill everything. Everyone in class knew of H.A.R, the Hybrid Arrest and Retrieval Squad, the steel enforcement arm of the Artificial Intelligence Agency.

But no one knew the true extent of H.A.R brutality. Not until now.

"We can make this easy or hard," he said, continuing. "We know there are hybrids at this school. If you are one, best to give yourself up now. Otherwise, if you want to turn someone in, raise your hand."

My half-heart was about to come through my chest. I sat and waited for fingers to point at me.

"I'll ask one last time and then we go the hard route," he said.

The whimper I thought was mine instead came from the other side of the room. It was Rose, my friend from
down the street-from forever really. I hadn't heard that sound since the time she fell off her hover bike and skinned her knee when we were kids. She bit her tongue instead of crying. Tomboys don't like to show tears.

"What's wrong with you, girlie?" he said.

"I don't want to die."

"Give up a hybrid, and I let the whole class go. As simple as that."

"I don't know any. Please," she said.

"We look forward to looking inside you to know if that's true," he said, wiping her tears away with the dull side of his battle blade. "Deep inside."

I couldn't stand it. Ultimately, I was the reason for all this. I wanted to give myself up. Better to do so and spare everyone the torture of the thought machines that H.A.R. guards were setting up.

Before I met Pago, I would have.

"If you don't dry it up, you're next, missy" he said, words that slithered across his teeth.

Bite your tongue, Rose. Come on, that's a girl.

"Eyes on your desk," the guard shouted. I turned my head down again.

There was a weird smell coming from the back where Jamison's body lay, now destined to be prostrate in a grave instead of standing tall at the debate podium. I had interviewed him for the school paper on the upcoming election. He was your "atypical" high school student, I wrote, who "landed" here in the U.S., wearing sports jackets, taking issues in "with one breath" and "exhaling solutions" with another.

It was silly stuff, but we had fun with it, he and I. He even promised to appoint me to be his press secretary.
Jamison was always super-confident like that, almost as much as my other friend, Pago. The only time I remember Jamison being truly rattled was in Civics class. It was weeks ago. The discussion on communes, these internment places where hybrids-in-hiding-that being my parents and I-could surrender themselves to avoid getting caught and sent to Hiltzik Island. That's the place where, they say, hybrid dreams become nightmare.

Some communes advertised a country club life: palm trees, swimming pools, golfers, happy families-bright, smiling teeth. Media, however, really caught everyone off guard with their breaking news. Hidden cameras had captured startling images of the misery, the starvation, the corruption inside these places. Stick-figured hybrids laying their skeleton children to rest among the dead, guards using hybrids as target practice.
Everyone was horrified. There wasn't a human man or woman alive that wouldn't at least feel some pity for our kind.

Jamison pushed his golden hair back and shrugged. No comment.

"Nothing at all?" Mrs. Westin said.

"My fellow Americans and Argentineans," Hulen said, butting in. "If you elect me, I promise a hovercar in every port, a chicken in every micro-boiler and open season year round on all hybrids."

Laughter broke from around his circle-Hulen, the linebacker All-American for the Cedar Hill Panthers. He was bold, fierce, intelligent, a true child of the shoot-first-ask-questions-later H.A.R. era.

"You don't think what's happening is tragic?" Mrs. Westin asked.

"They're getting what they deserve," Hulen said.

Deserve. He was this tall, beast of a kid, who caught touchdowns, who girls flocked to, who adults and parents praised. To me, he was nothing more than a shaved gorilla in a letterman's jacket. People liked him all the same, always apt to support the winning side, the side that condoned the death of a hundred hybrids gunned down during a peace rally staged to ask that the witch hunts stop, that those starving in communes get their mono-glutamate rations.

Deserve? I'd tell you what the humans deserved, but I couldn't say it in class.

"See class, society tells us the hybrid is the enemy, but that doesn't make it so," Mrs. Westin said.

"They are the enemy, Mrs. Westin," Hulen said. "And anyone who supports them is a traitor."

"Hulen, I'm not interested in your politics. Not today, not about this," Mrs. Westin said, her chest heaving. She had these curly ringlets and ridiculous overbite but had gotten a lot more attractive to me lately. "Now, people I want someone to start a discussion. As long as hybrids can assimilate into society, should they be persecuted?

Go-"

Nothing. General fear had stitched everyone's lips shut. You never knew who was listening, which classmate secretly had H.A.R. connections.

Hulen reared up for another attack: "It's like this, Mrs. Westin, no human would've started the massacre at MLK Square. No human would've killed thousands of other people like that. End of discussion," he said.

"According to media, all the group was asking for were rations to feed their wives, children," she said.

"Hybrids are all a bunch of bloodthirsty monsters. We have to get them before they get us," Hulen said.

"Thank you, Hulen," she said. "I guess you've proved the point: as long as we think H.A.R. has the power, they do have it."

Something lodged in my throat. I swallowed, but it gurgled up anyway: "That is, if you're able to think," I said.
It got a few chuckles from my side: the chess club, math club, audio/visual club side. It caught Hulen's fire:

"You won't have anything to think about after I pound your head, chess nerd," he said.

"You two, knock it off," she said.

"I'll be watching you," Hulen uttered, staring a hole into my head.

Hulen didn't have the slightest idea what we were capable of, but he would soon learn.

My communicator whistled, luring the throaty barrels of three laser-guided H.A.R. rifles. Tiny red dots quivered against my chest, anxious to drill me with bullets. I cowered. Don't kill me.

The commander motioned the guards to lower their weapons. He strode over to me, and reached down for my communicator, unhooking it from my belt. The commander held the unit up and clicked the auto-repeat over to speakerphone. "Preston, are you okay?" My dad's voice. I could hear Mom sobbing in the background. If her voice patterns were loud enough to analyze, they would know what she was, who I was. I would be over and done with.

Dad never sounded so grieved: "Please call us. We're watching media. It's terrible what's happening. Oh son, I hope you can contact us. I swear, if they hurt one hair on your head, there'll be hell-"

The commander's thumb cut off dad's sentence. Reporters were no doubt swarming outside the school, broadcasting the lockdown. Six months ago, the nation watched on their media portals as H.A.R stormed the halls of Kennedale High School, outside Bethesda, Md. This time, the nation was watching us.

The commander played the message again: "You hear that?" he said. "No doubt the rest of your parents are worried sick about you. If you hand over what we want, then the whole class can leave."

He played the message back again, tuning in to the sound of mom's sobs.

"Your mothers, this is their grief. Listen-" he said.

I fought hard to keep the tears back. My mom's pitiful moans might be the last time I ever heard her again, I thought.

If only I had listened to that damn voice inside my head tell me not to go to school today, do something, fake an illness, anything. At least I knew mom and dad really loved me, especially mom. She was practically human, in her worries, in her tendency to be overprotective.

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