With a look of biting into a very sour lemon, Kirsten finally relents, shaking off the gentle arms holding her and stalking to the side of the knothole, away from the others. Koda looks after her with concern, but Maggie shakes her head, just once. Koda nods, and peers back through the knothole, elegant brows drawn down low over piercing eyes.

“To set the record perfectly straight, ladies and gentlemen of Ellsworth, you were not lied to when you were told that there had been an android uprising. No, all of you were part of that horror, seeing sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, friends and loved ones taken away from you or killed before you. No, that certainly is not the lie. Nor is it an untruth that some of those women, your daughters, your mothers, your relatives and dear friends were taken and incarcerated against their wills, defiled in the most horrendous of ways. You have seen such horrors with your own eyes, or heard them with your own ears. A great abomination has been visited upon our country, people of Ellsworth, a great abomination that continues still!”

“This asshole missed his calling,” Maggie mutters. “He should have run for office.”

“Or the pulpit,” Koda smirks.

“The lie,” Hart continues, “concerns these beings standing beside me. They, ladies and gentlemen, are not your enemy!”

“That’s it,” Kirsten grumbles, heading for the door and pushing the guards aside like tenpins. “Let me at that overbearing, underachieving, bald-headed, drunken asshole motherfu—.”

“Woah there, spitfire,” Maggie says, grabbing Kirsten by the arm and hauling her back inside. “Let him finish his lies, then you can go out and knock him every which way from Sunday, ok?”

“You know,” Kirsten remarks, yanking her arm from the General’s grip and glaring at her, “I’m getting mighty tired of being manhandled and told what to do here. I thought I was the one who gave the orders. Remember? Me? The frikkin President of the U S of A?”

“You need to keep your calm, Kirsten,” Maggie replies as the two guards look away, uncomfortable. “You’re playing right into his hands. This brand of warfare might be a little more subtle than what we just went through, but its war just the same. Please, just listen to the rest of it, ok?”

“It’s only going to get worse.”

“No doubt it will, but we all know he’s lying, so….”

“These androids standing with me now are what they have always been: a boon to all mankind. There is no harm in them. They live only to serve. They are programmed only to serve. Not to kill, but to preserve life, to aid…life. These very androids, and hundreds, thousands like them, have gone through the jailhouses, the detention centers, the hospitals and rescued thousands of your loved ones.”

“He lies!” Kirsten growls, moving forward again, but stopping herself just at the edge of the bolthole, hands clenched tight over the lip, knuckles as bloodless as her lips. “He fucking lies!”

“Loved ones who even now, as I speak to you, are receiving the very best of care administered by beings just like these who stand in solidarity with me before all of you.” Lowering the bullhorn for a moment, Hart looks down at the ground, much like a keynote speaker, or a preacher, who is gathering himself for a momentous announcement.

In the guardshack above, Kirsten’s jaws clench tighter and a thick vein throbs to prominence at her temple.

“Androids, as you know, must be programmed to go against their natural actions. They must be programmed to kill instead of save, to harm instead of help. And I tell you, ladies and gentlemen of Ellsworth, there is only one person, one person in this country of ours with the means, the opportunity, the ability, and the reprehensible morality to get that job done. The one person who was seen, and captured, at Minot, the world’s largest android construction factory in the process of aiding and abetting the enemy, disguised as the enemy herself! Disguised so well that her co-conspirators had no idea who she really was!! The one person in this country who stood to gain the most, to attain the highest of peaks, to sit at the head of this great and undaunted country.

“The very person who lives with you now, who pretends to share your lives, your worries, your goals, but who is, in fact, continuing her quest for world domination by reprogramming our good and safe androids into brutal killing machines.

“And that person, ladies and gentlemen, that person is none other than the woman who would have the audacity to call herself YOUR President. Kirsten King. Traitor. Abominator. Killer of innocents.”

The rage washes over Kirsten in red waves. Her fingers clench into the palms of her hands, itching for the small cold curve of a trigger under them; her blood slams in her ears. She pushes away from the wall and steps up to the opening, shouldering Maggie aside, reaching for the sidearm of one of the guards—Simmons, she thinks—where he attempts to shrink himself small in a corner.

That’s what he wants. The thought comes to her from somewhere cold, deep in her mind. He wants us to lose it. That’ll prove he’s right, at least start some people thinking we want to silence him.

Very carefully, she lets go of Simmons’ gun, handing it to Koda. She meets her lover’s eyes. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to give him anything.”

“I know you won’t,” Koda replies, handing the gun back to Simmons and turning Kirsten back toward the bolthole, large hands resting comfortably on her shoulders. “Let’s just listen to the rest of his spiel, and then go on to doing something productive with our day.”

“I have come to parley,” Hart continues. “This country cannot rebuild itself and achieve the greatness for which God has intended until such a monster is removed from her self-appointed post. I wish, all of us here wish, that this be done peacefully. Open your gates and we will retrieve the good “Doctor” and you all have my word that you will be able to go on about your lives as best you see fit. If, however, her words have so brainwashed you that you are unable to see the truth that lies at your feet, we will be compelled to use force. It is a force that, I am sad to say, you will not survive. The battle you have just endured will be like a campfire to the blaze of true Armageddon.”

Lowering the megaphone, he appears to touch something at his belt. Within seconds, the formerly empty clearing is suddenly populated with androids, appearing as if from the ether.

“Jesus Christ! Where the hell did they come from?”

Kirsten turns and looks helplessly at Maggie.

“Simmons!” Maggie barks. “Get down to communications on the double and find out why we’re standing here with our asses hanging in the wind! Now!!”

“Yes, Ma’am!”

As Simmons disappears, Koda reaches for a pair of high intensity binoculars hanging from a hook on the wall. Putting them up to her eyes, she adjusts the focus, and whistles. Wordlessly, she hands them to Kirsten, whose jaw drops. “There’s got to be more than a thousand out there!”

Shouldering in, Maggie grips the proffered binoculars and brings them up to her eyes. Her lips go tight, a bloodless slash against the deep ebony of her face.

“How…couldn’t we know about this?” Kirsten’s voice is soft in the silence of the shack.

Simmons steps back into the shack, followed by Tacoma, who eases his bulk into the already crowded room with some difficulty. His expression is apologetic. “We can’t read ‘em,” he says, peering over Maggie’s head and squinting as the sunlight reflects off of highly polished armor. “I don’t know if they’re jamming us or what, but all of our scanning equipment says there’s an empty field out there.”

“Shit. And my damn computer’s totally trashed.”

“I’m not sure if that would help or not,” Tacoma replies, shrugging his shoulders. “I just…”

“I realize,” Hart resumes, “that this is not an easy decision to make, and I am sorry, deeply and truly sorry, that Dr. King has put you in the position of having to make it. That said, since I am a fair man, as most of you are aware, I will give you five hours to hand the good doctor over. Rest assured, she will be treated fairly and receive due process as is her right under the law. A law we follow. Even if others don’t.”

He pulls the megaphone away for the final time, looking supremely smug.

Kirsten’s summing up is succinct.

“Fuck.”

“Ok, let’s think about this for a moment here,” Maggie says, turning away from the bolthole. “Kirsten, are there any of your ‘Traitor Tommies’ lying around anywhere?”

“I left ten behind at the factory in case we needed them later,” Kirsten responds, rubbing at the back of her neck, where a huge knot of tension has merrily taken up residence, “but I can’t activate them without my computer.” Her eyes brighten. “I’ll head down there—.”

“No.”

Kirsten stares at Maggie as if she’s suddenly grown a second head and is preparing to use it to commit cannibalism upon her person. “Wha-at?”

“You need to get out of here, Kirsten. And not down to that damn factory, which is likely crawling with Hart’s new groupies. You need to get somewhere far, far away from here.”

“Now, wait just a minute here. I’m not going to be chased away from this base by some asshole with an agenda. I don’t care how many ‘friends’ he has, and how big his guns are. No how, no way, so just put that out of your head right now.”

“Kirsten, it’s not that.” Maggie smiles, a little, caught out and knowing it. “Ok, it’s not just that.”

“What is it, then?” Kirsten’s arms fold themselves across her chest, implacable armor against Maggie’s coming words.

“Listen to me, please.” Maggie heaves a sigh. Her hand lifts, and she begins ticking points off on her long fingers. “Your computer is gone. The code that you risked your life at Minot for is gone. And with it is any chance of you being able to turn off those damn droids, not just for now, for this damn battle, but forever. There has got to be some place, some other place, where you can get what you need to get to do the job you need to do.”