By Scott Holleran
Dense fog enshrouded the nation’s capital, casting the hill in silence for what seemed like a spell. Only the large block building at the hilltop could be seen above the thick mist. The giant, square, windowless building looked like a low-slung bunker dressed in a wafting mass of gray. On the roof, a bowl-shaped machine rotated on a pole.
Courtesy of Grok AI
From somewhere near or far came the low sound of an air raid siren. When, for 60 seconds, the fog cleared from the building to a sprawling tent at the bottom of the hill, a woman wearing a loose skirt inside the tent behind a military police barricade sprang forth, leaping over the barrier and breaking into a sprint up the hill. A gunshot fired at the moment she ran. When the woman fell to the paved road, her body lay motionless on the wide, empty avenue of mothers, as it was named. Banners depicting gigantic portraits of leaders and emblazoned with slogans as exclamations lined the roadsides. The boulevard was silent. Everything was still.
The barricaded tent at the base of the hill blocked the boulevard to the building, which was fronted by a concrete barrier to protect the structure from attack. A lone soldier, wearing protective gear including a helmet, stood before both building and barrier. The high-ranking soldier, armed with an arsenal, wore a vest equipped with explosives. Peering through vision gear, he saw that he had wounded the woman with his rifle. The woman is the man’s wife.
Courtesy of Grok AI
Police tanks and artillery flanked the building, boulevard and the whole vicinity. Standing on wheeled machines, police soldiers rolled toward the fallen woman to bring her back behind the barricade. They needed her to be alive. They needed her to reach the soldier. They knew she was the man’s wife.
After retrieval and transport, the woman, who was conscious, was carried by robotics into the camouflaged tent and dropped onto a cot, where a stout female nurse in fatigues pulled her up to treat the woman’s shoulder. “You’ll need to speak to your husband,” the nurse told her. “Otherwise, you will be executed as an accomplice. Do you have children?”
The woman felt pain as the nurse pulled her arm. “No.”
Farther down the hill, at a distance from the tent, an army unit’s three-piece marching band played the old republic’s anthem. The tune was rarely performed—playing the song was dissuaded, though not expressly prohibited—and, without a mandate forbidding it, the trio was free to play on, which three men did, either in support or opposition of the one equipped to destroy the building. The sound of a bugle holding on a single note cut through the fog.
The nurse paused to listen, then continued: “Being childless makes it easier. You can die knowing children won’t suffer.” The nurse smirked and added: “They torture the children.” The nurse pressed a bandage as she wrapped adhesive around the woman’s flesh wound, which she’d dressed too tightly, pushing hard against the wound each time she wrapped tape around the bandage.
“I know you do,” the woman replied, “you do it for the children.” The woman looked straight up into the nurse’s eyes and held the gaze. Bearing pain with each wrapping of the bandage, she spoke as if pronouncing plain judgment with neither sarcasm nor sincerity: “You serve the community.”
A military police commander stepped to the foot of the cot. He stopped and stood, listening to the old anthem. “Get up,” he told the woman. She complied, slowly rising and feeling lightheaded. She threw her head back and let the soldier get a look at her face and her defiance. “What’s next,” she said as a statement, stepping close to his face.
“Get on with it,” she dared him.
The police commander turned around, motioning her to follow as he walked past a heavily guarded bank of screens sheathed behind thick, clear plastic. The woman noticed her husband in several images at various angles on multiple screens. A large screen in the center was blank. Seated technicians in headsets turned to the commander and nodded. He turned to the wife and said: “Call your husband.”
The wife looked to the front of the tent—where she had started her doomed sprint—gathering her thoughts. She extended a hand with the palm facing up until someone dropped a device for her to use to activate a video to her husband. As the woman waited for him to appear, a line appeared in the middle of the blank screen with her image to the right. The space on the left remained blank.
“Tetonia.” The voice was her husband’s. She closed her eyes to listen to the sound of his voice as technicians adjusted their seats and headsets while focusing on the image of the Kriminal, which appeared on the left side of the screen for the first time.
Several top-ranking military police officials converged in a cluster, moving closer to the bank of screens to look at the soldier threatening to blow up the government housing center. The chief of state and executive bureaucrats—government leaders—were being held hostage in the building. The Kriminal had known they were there. He had entered the building at night. He had messaged the military that he would destroy the building if anyone moved in or out of the building and he’d warned the military police to keep distance. He issued no demands. He made no other statements. He told officials to gather in the housing complex’s main hall and annexes which had been cleared and decorated for the Party conference where they’d been scheduled to announce the season’s executions.
Courtesy of Grok AI
Police knew the Kriminal. He was one of their own. He ranked in the upper levels of the military police establishment. He had started as a senior technology officer before enlisting in the military guard corps. He’d advanced in rank because he obeyed orders. He’d followed every order, including killing civilians.
Within seconds of messaging the military command and seizing the building after issuing the threat, the man was seen speaking to a resident’s daughter. The girl ran. Minutes later, following his instruction, children, civilians and non-government personnel—mostly custodial crews and prostitutes—passed his inspection, streaming through and out of the building one by one, walking along a trail behind the massive building. A path curved downhill toward a pond. Boats waited to take them to where they’d be ferried in police trucks to a safe distance.
The lone bomber’s every movement was tracked from those inside the tent. The air raid siren’s ominous sound accompanied his menacing presence. “Turn that off!” The commander called to no one in particular. No one responded. Fog amplified the steady, droning hum. Everyone inside the tent knew the broken siren was easily triggered, getting stuck on the low, dull hum. During one episode, it went off when a pair of civilian children had been detected playing close to the government housing complex. Technicians labored for seven weeks to shut it down.
Tetonia addressed her husband above the hum. “It didn’t hurt me,” she said. “It’s a slight flesh wound.” Her wound was not slight. The bullet her husband fired had penetrated her shoulder. The bleeding had stopped. The bullet remained.
Her husband stayed silent. He looked into the lens and spoke as if he was looking into the eyes of his wife. He did not move. His face showed no expression. It would be difficult to estimate, let alone calculate, the number of eyes upon him during the exchange. There were thousands in the upper military police echelons. Camera surveillance made possible that everyone with the power to initiate the use of force could watch. Tetonia’s husband knew they were watching.
Even in an ashen gray-green helmet, everyone could see that he was uncommonly handsome. Dark eyes matched dark facial whiskers which cast a shadow along his sharp jawline. His was the face of a man who is neither too old nor too young—his face exuded a sense of purpose, control and peace. His eyes fired with passion, focussing on the lens. His unblinking softness made them look like two dark pools of calm.
Tetonia knew her husband’s face. She studied every inch, starting with his eyes, which she looked into for a long time before one of the military officers pinched her shoulder. Only then did she speak again. Searching her husband’s eyes—recognizing an inner, barely detectable agony—she paused.
“I’ve made a deal with God,” she said slowly, lowering her chin while holding his gaze. “You won’t be unhappy.” At that, she closed her eyes, drawing a breath to soothe herself from the lie she told, knowing he would understand. It was part of their code. Exhaling, aware that she was a prisoner of the police apparatus, she slowly lifted her eyelids. Seeing a glow in her husband’s eyes, she made an effort not to let the smile inside show on her face. She knew that he knew what she meant.
She remembered the day that they’d met. She was an artist though she hadn’t yet come to know it. She was walking back to her proscribed pod after a day of government service in the capital. Embittered and discouraged, Tetonia walked slowly and looked down. Hearing a somber tune, mirroring her emotion, echo within a black space leading to the front door of a bar, Tetonia paused, turning and entering the space before stepping into the bar. Drawn by the melody, she walked across the checkered dance floor with tables and chairs and took a seat at a bistro table, ordering what she could afford—a cup of water at a fraction of what she was paid in a week—feeling lost under the strange new government she had learned to fear. Sitting alone at a bistro table among other solo friends and lovers of those on the dance floor watching dancers dance, Tetonia immersed herself in the sorrow of the pleading song. She looked up at the sound of a man’s laughter.
She saw him standing at the bar above the sunken dance floor. People gathered around the handsomest man she had ever seen. His black hair was short. He was tall and muscled and, while she noticed his physique, which was long and perfectly curved and proportioned, she marveled at his face, which was framed by wide shoulders. His eyes glimmered like shards of onyx. As she looked upon his face, the man at the center of the attention suddenly looked upon hers. He stopped laughing.
For a moment, her eyes met with his and he looked upon her more intently as if he was looking into her soul. Her heart fluttered. She nervously rose from the table as if she was in a kind of trance, moving without use of her muscles. She walked up the steps toward the bar, away from those gathered around the handsome man, whose dark eyes followed her. She went to the end of the bar and held onto a corner with both hands because her head felt light and she felt unsteady, as if she would begin to laugh, faint or cry. Tetonia closed her eyes.
When they opened, he stood before her. “What’ll it be?” He asked in a voice which was light and deep. He towered easily, looking at her with a smile in his eyes. She felt both safer and in awe, like she was in the presence of some type of god. Later, she remembered that she was trembling. When he moved closer, she sensed his whole body. He told her: “I’m here, little bird.”
She had never felt stronger and more vulnerable at the same time. Hers was the queerest sensation she’d known yet she felt at ease—fear and despair fell away. He put a drink in her hand. He told her a silly joke. He leaned his body as if to shield her from the bar, the crowd, the music, herself—and every worry of the world. Keeping her chin low, longing to fall into his arms, sensing the breath of his body as her shield, she felt immobilized. She didn’t say a word. She listened and she laughed—like she’d never heard herself laugh—and she smiled. She would later recall that, when she spoke, she made an effort to be as articulate as she was intelligent and that in his eyes she saw that he was mocking her—as if he saw her through everything that was bringing her down. In that instant, she felt her whole body—her bosom, voice, sternum, knees and toes—rising in love. She sensed in his comforting, confident smile and mocking manner that he was rising in love with her.
Just then, she heard the music of an old English tune laced with the sound of a mandolin. Her life felt as though it hinged on that single moment and, as if in reflex in an attempt at composure, she rested her hand on his forearm and looked at him with simple desire. When he said, “would you like to go now?” She nodded and they laughed, as if they both knew it would go up to this. She took his hand and they stepped into the cold night air. He walked close to her, letting her steps lead the way. He didn’t ask questions. She wanted to know everything about him. She felt the quiet and knew that she liked it.
He told her he was leaving for a tour of duty at dawn. He’d been out with comrades in his military group. He spoke of wanting to go. She decided then that he was certain that what he was doing was good. She wanted to think so, too.
She knew better but she didn’t care because she also knew she wanted to be with him, looking into his eyes and feeling him looking into hers. She wanted to belong to him. From that moment, as they walked and smiled, listening to their steps echo in the cold of that capital city night, she knew that she did.
Three years passed. Both became aware of the government control of their lives. They strained, adapted and struggled to be honorable and they both knew it was futile. Nothing they did could reconcile their virtue with the evil of the actions they were forced to undertake. Tetonia found an innocuous low-ranking job at a government library programming children’s propaganda. He was her husband by then. They laughed less often than they used to, finding humor whenever they could, assuring and loving one another in silent stares over meals and in bed. When a neighbor reported them with suspicion to police, they decided to create a code. The next day, her husband started planning an escape.
Now, standing in front of top government officials’ housing, stepping toward a drone camera hovering before him, he spoke: “Let my wife come to me now.”
The commander in the tent nodded, lifting a hand to a technician seated at a screen with images of snipers posted near the building. Tetonia’s eyes held her husband’s. She wanted to speak and she didn’t dare.
Video of her husband went blank. She surged. “Let me at him,” she said to her keepers. The commander—decorated in medals, badges and stripes on a leather jacket and leggings—nodded. He stood before the doe-eyed woman named Tetonia. “Follow orders,” he said, adding: “Or we’ll shoot you both.”
With contempt, she asked: “What difference can that make?”
“You will have to watch him die,” he answered. “You love your husband. Our Predictive Scientist says you’ll want to live so you can mourn and avenge him. Disable the weapon. Inject the poison. If you don’t, you’ll both be shot.”
The commander stepped aside. The nurse, who knew the poison would instantly kill her husband, said: “She’s already been shot. We can remotely explode the bullet inside her from within.”
Tetonia knew the nurse was right. She had pledged to poison her husband hours ago when he first appeared in front of the building. “Yes,” she said to the nurse, whose mouth took the form of a sinister smile, “you can kill me.”
As she did, two soldiers on either side escorted Tetonia toward the front of the tent. Standing behind thick plastic covering, she waited. Opposing poles slid underneath the tent, affixing to the covering at the bottom, lifting it upward like a skirt.
Facing a wall of fog, Tetonia sprang into the mist. Fog floated in patches over the hillside—she ran faster in the clearings—and neither military police nor the Kriminal could always watch the wife running up the hill to her husband. She kept pace, did not wince in pain and stayed fully conscious of the bullet lodged deep inside. Her mind reeling, Tetonia thought only of him—in nightly fits of misery, chaos and torment. She ran and ran, pushing herself up, pumping her arms, imagining her legs were springs as she recalled the last time she wrapped them around his body. Her memory of him, accompanied by the low hum of the broken siren, propelled her up the hill.
By the time she reached a clearing near the building, its flat, plain roof with the rotating bowl loomed. Far above, she spotted a swarm of gray, white and black drones, armed and unarmed, watching and ready to destroy everything she loved. Tetonia kept her purpose foremost in mind. Accepting whatever would come, she kept memory, composure and momentum.
She knew he would want to look closely at her, holding—piercing—her with his eyes. She knew that the man she loved the highest would notice everything. She chose not to cry. She decided to soften her face, so it wouldn’t look hard. She chose to breathe evenly, despite the pain, to put air into her lungs and to display for him her capacity to love. She wanted him to look upon her and see only that which he adored. She was filled inside with rage and fury and wanted only beauty to show on her face. Whatever was to become of the one she loved, Tetonia wanted his first sight of her—which might be his last—to be a vision of her love for him: the singular sight of her strength, beauty and wondrous, admiring exaltation.
Tetonia broke through the fog, slowing to a stroll, when she saw her husband and she started to collapse. He noticed, lunged and caught her, holding her while drones encircled them.
“Kristos,” she whispered his name as she appeared to wilt and winked, “go along.” He winked back as she reached into her skirt for an object, covering the tip, drawing her arm back and thrusting her fist into his chest, appearing to dig a needle into his heart. He recoiled and fell to the ground, surreptitiously deactivating the explosives as he did.
Tetonia fell. Husband and wife appeared motionless. Drones zoomed, whirled and hovered. The tented command center stirred. “Dispatch the bomb crew,” someone said. “Death crew, stand by.” The commander leaned into the screen. “Zoom the wife,” he said. Tetonia didn’t appear to be moving. Her eyes were closed. A message appeared onscreen: BREATHING UNDETECTABLE / BODYSCAN IN PROGRESS. A camera zoomed into her husband. The same message came on screen.
“Retreat, assess, exterminate as necessary, prepare to disarm and retrieve Kriminal corpses,” the commander said. Everyone under the camouflaged tent relaxed, turning restless—shouting into screens, machines and boxes and accelerating movement to and from their positions—and someone was heard communicating with the chief of state and building inhabitants: “Stand by for evacuation.”
A technician stationed at the edge of the tent noticed an anomaly on one of the screens. “Enlarge,” she said into a headset. A drone camera zoomed. The technician leaned into the screen. Her jaw fell. “This can’t be real,” she murmured. The muttering was monitored by a facilitator. “Number 24, what’s in view?” The facilitator asked. The technician number 24 struggled to hear above the noise in the tent. “Number 24? Respond.” The facilitator repeated the command.
By the time agent 24, unaware that a facilitator had picked up her comment, could hear the command—“repeat, facilitator?”—Kristos and Tetonia had escaped. Footage later revealed that two flickering holograms appeared on the government building walkway—while the couple broke away.
A hunt for the married fugitives began in the capital city. Drones tracked and fired upon a dozen ghost images. In reality, the duo had activated pre-recorded holograms, rolled out of range and quickly made way to the building’s roof, where they huddled beneath a lip of the parapet. They waited unrecognized with evacuees during a rooftop rescue transporting inhabitants to a nearby contingency center. A commission later concluded that the Kriminal husband and wife remained undetected with building residents at the evacuation center for four days. This enabled them to monitor the hunt from inside the military state.
The couple had planned the scheme for three years. With minor deviation and variation, they had escaped as intended. The exception is the gunshot. Without knowing that the human figure charging from the bottom of the hill was his wife, Kristos, shooting to stop, not to kill, downed Tetonia. Later, when seated together at the evacuation compound on a cot under the glare of an emergency bulb, he examined her wound in silence. When his lips parted, Kristos looked like he was about to speak. Tetonia reached and pressed two fingers to her husband’s lips. “Not here and now,” she whispered. “What you’ve done, you’ve done. We both matter, don’t we?” She added: “Let us not admit darkness from what’s past.”
Later, surveillance technology captured a conversation which was recorded 13 days after the hilltop escape. A transcript was included in the final report. Agents estimated that their last recorded exchange occurred somewhere at a high altitude near the mountains, though technology had malfunctioned and added nothing about which one could be certain.
The recording caught words, if not meaning, in conversation:
“Am I in the right position?” The voice, which sounds light, higher and as happy as happy can be, is Tetonia’s.
“Yes,” her husband replies.
Above the sound of wind whipping, minutes later, he tells her: “Slip this through the loop. Good job. Drink this up—then follow me.” A few seconds pass before Kristos can be heard laughing and the laughter’s spilling out with abandon. Then, with a tone of irony, he says: “C’mon, let’s go.”
“Yes, my dearest,” Tetonia says in a voice which is smiling, as if she’s stretching her body in sunlight while listening to an overture climaxing with exuberance and joy. Finally, as if Kristos turns to look back and check on her, with a blend of flirtation, happiness and desire, she adds: “With no problems.”
***
Award-winning author, writer and journalist Scott Holleran lived in Chicago for 21 years and writes the non-fictional Industrial Revolutions column as well as short stories. Read and subscribe to his non-fiction newsletter, Autonomia, at scottholleran.substack.com. Listen and subscribe to his fiction podcast at ShortStoriesByScottHolleran.substack.com. Scott Holleran lives in Southern California.
