"Hey, little guy," Jacob cooed, tickling the baby under the chin. The little bundle gurgled happily at him, squirming and flopping in his grandfather's arms. "Does he have a name?"

Fatima didn't answer; it wasn't until Jacob looked up and saw the pained twist of her mouth and the jut of her chin that he realized she could not speak for fear of crying.

Finally, she whispered, "No."

"You two didn't pick a name before he was born?"

"We were going to wait. We wanted to..." She stopped, swallowed hard, scrubbed at her eyes. "We wanted to meet him first. See what he was like, what he looked like."

Jacob looked down at the ruddy-cheeked newborn in his arms. "Well, I'll tell you what he looks like: just like his daddy. Just like Michael." The baby wriggled, reaching up to tangle sticky hands in Jacob's long sideburns and yank painfully on a fistful of hair, and Jacob laughed. "Got a grip as strong as his old man's, too."

Fatima pulled her headscarf tighter around her face, tugging with anxious fingers at its hem. She always had to occupy her hands somehow. When she spoke, she waved her hands, flexed her long fingers, gesticulated broadly; when she was nervous or angry, she cracked her knuckles, braided strands of her hair, and chewed her nails. And when she was truly despairing, she rubbed and plucked incessantly at the fabric of her hijab. Though the scarf was new and very fine, the embroidery had already started to fray from endless, constant worrying.

"I know," she whispered after another long silence. She wrapped a stray thread around her finger, then snapped it and discarded it. And when she spoke again, it was softly, sadly: "They even have the same crooked toes."

Jacob pulled one warm, delicate foot from the swaddled blankets and inspected it. Indeed, the third toe on each foot was turned ever so slightly inwards, crooked just like his father's. The tiny feet were paler and pinker than the rest of his little body, and they were unblemished, having never touched the ground, never carried him, never borne any weight. Jacob hoped the boy would grow up to run faster than his father, fast enough to outrun Kane.

Tracing a fingertip across the tips of his toes, Jacob marveled quietly at each perfect whorl, each little toenail -– each perfect inch of him.

And he was perfect. He had Fatima's dusky skin and dark eyes; his head was crowned in thick tufts of hair as soft as down, the same color as Michael's. He was curious and lively, babbling nonsense syllables, perpetually grabbing everything with his reach, observing the world around him that he did not yet understand.

"I don't want him to know," Fatima said suddenly. She rose from her bed, unsteady on her feet, chin tucked to her chest. "The baby. My son.Our son. I don't ever want him to know what happened. I'm going to tell him his father died protecting Deluxe from dissenters, not that he was hunted down and killed like an animal on the street. Like a fucking dog."

"Fatima -"

"I don't want him to know!" she said again. "Give me your word, Jacob. Promise me you'll help me protect him."

Jacob hefted the child higher on his chest and reached out, placed a soothing hand on Fatima's shoulder. Beneath her KaneCo blues, he could feel her brittle bones. She hadn't been eating or sleeping since her husband – Jacob's son, his only son – had been murdered three weeks ago.

It had taken days before Jacob managed to get the story of Michael's death from Fatima, and even then, she had told it in disjointed fragments, stopping every few sentences to press her forehead to her knees and swallow the rage and agony that choked her. Accused of disseminating radical propaganda and conspiring to assassinate Kane, Michael was apprehended while walking through the streets of Deluxe with his wife, eight and a half months pregnant at the time. He'd been pinned to the ground and executed with a bullet in the back of the head before either he or Fatima could fight back.

Fatima knew she was next, so she ran. Without a choice, she left her husband's broken body behind. Wild-eyed and mute with grief, she showed up at Jacob's door covered in a bright red spray of her husband's blood and tiny white shards that - though Jacob had not realized it until later -– were splinters of shattered skull.

A week later, the baby had been born in the back room of Jacob's apartment. Fatima twisted a towel between her teeth to keep from screaming, Jacob had delivered the squalling child, and afterward they burned the soiled bedsheets. No one could know where she was, or they would kill her –- and maybe even her son, and Jacob, too. Wipe out the whole traitorous bloodline, scrub the books of the Chilton family. Clean, sterile, exactly how Kane liked it.

Now, Fatima reached for her son, pried him from Jacob's arms, and hugged him to her own chest. His eyes were alert, staring intently at his mother's tear-stained face.

"Listen, girl," Jacob said, pulling her and the baby into a hug, though Fatima resisted his comfort. "Lying to your boy is not the way to protect him. You're strong, and smart, and you'll keep him safe. We both will. But he deserves to know the truth. At least give him that."

"What good would it do if we told him? What if he decided he wanted revenge? Wanted to follow in his father's footsteps?" Her voice cracked. "I already lost Michael! I can't -– I can't lose them both. Our son is all I have left, and it's all I have left of him!"

Jacob did not like the way Fatima spit her words with festering fury, and he did not like the way they settled heavy in his belly and filled him with sadness and dread.

"I will tell him how brave his father was," she murmured hoarsely, stroking her thumb across her son's forehead. The child turned his face into her touch, eyes heavy-lidded with sleepy contentment. "I will tell him how brilliant, how handsome, how strong Michael was. I will tell him that his father was a dreamer -– but I won't tell him what it was his father dreamed of."

"The kid'll have dreams of his own someday," Jacob said.

"No." Fatima stared at him defiantly, and Jacob saw an echo of the fiery passionate woman that Michael had fallen in love with, instead of the listless, lifeless widow she had become. "Not like Michael, not like me. He will dream of duty and service and honor – everything Kane ever wanted from his stupid, loyal herd here in Deluxe. He will never step out of line, he will never defy authority. And he will be safe. Do you understand me?"

"You'll just give up on everything that you and Michael believed in? Everything we fought for?" Jacob took a step backward, feeling betrayed, bile on his tongue. "Michael died for it -"

Fatima bared her teeth. "Yes, he did! Don't you see? His precious fucking ideals didn't save him! His politics didn't protect him! He died for nothing, and that's what I am without him: nothing!"

In her arms, swaddled tightly and pressed to his mother's hammering heart, the baby began to cry.

Sixteen years later, the boy had nearly become a man. He stood tall in white shoes and crisp KaneCo blues, the stars and sabres emblazoned on his chest, and saluted with practiced movement.

"At ease, soldier. You come to me very highly recommended. Top marks in all of your drills." Abraham Kane leaned forward over his polished glass desk and inspected the form in front of him. "Chilton, Michael," he read -– then stopped, his brows drawing together.

"Thank you, sir," Mike said, filling the unexpected silence, trying not to let his nervousness show. It was fairly hard to ruffle Mike Chilton, but this was the first time he'd ever met Kane and the pressure felt unbearable. Ever since he was a kid, his mother had been priming him for military service, telling him that serving Deluxe was the greatest thing he'd ever do, the best choice he could make to honor his father. His mother had told him stories about his father, that he'd always been a dreamer with aspirations to enlist, but he'd been killed in crossfire after dissidents from Motorcity had started violent riots in downtown Deluxe. After she'd died not long ago and Mike was left on his own, sixteen and miserable, he knew it was time to sign up to serve. He wanted to make his father proud - and to clean up the ugly smear that was Motorcity, lurking below the pristine utopia of Deluxe.

Kane sat back in his chair and scrutinized Mike with a silent stare that terrified him. Suddenly, he suddenly broke into a wide, wolfish smile. "Chilton. There's a name I didn't expect to hear again."

"What?" Mike asked, gaping slightly, then remembered his training. "Uh - sir?"

"Never mind." Kane waved a hand dismissively, then steepled his fingers, looking very pleased with himself. "If only your father could see you now, eh, private?"

At this, Mike beamed, straightening his shoulders and tipping back his chin. "Yes, sir. I know he'd be very proud."

Kane opened and closed his mouth a few times as if he was at a loss for words, and then burst into a great gust of laughter.

Mike didn't understand what was funny about that... but he laughed, too.