Embedded amongst the miles of rubble was the Los Angeles River, which snaked a path through the destruction. In the days of civilization the small creek was held back to be nothing but a trickling stream of polluted and dirty water. After Judgment Day it had lived up to its name. In the two subsequent battles over the reservoirs in the first years of the war, the machines had blown the dams in the hopes of washing away the entire left flank of the resistance army that had dug in inside the natural trench for defense against the first machine offensives. The inky black river filled with festering contaminated water spilled in a rush over the ducts and sewers, submerging an entire underground culture of Los Angeles history and drowning more than six thousand soldiers and civilians in the tunnels.

On the banks of this new and treacherous body of water stood a solitary church amongst the ruins of an old Spanish mission. Protected by a thick wall covered in carbon scoring from constant use as a fortification for machine and man alike, the church commanded a view of the river front, its ancient bell tower overlooking the entire sector. The entrance was guarded by a screeching gate of cold rolled Spanish iron. Lying in piles of rust, nearly unrecognizable after all the years, were burnt endoskeleton remains from a mix of many battles long ago. Within her plaza was a courtyard of pink cobblestone that had years of ash and smog stains muting the vibrant colors. Flanking the church on the left and right were conjoining adobe buildings, meant as a smaller chapel and mess hall for the Spanish garrison, were now converted into makeshift barracks for the doctor's and a patient's ward. In the time of combat it had been used as the headquarters for the endless battle to hold the river crossings. Now it served as an out of the way aide station for the bored and relieved soldiers.

In the times before Judgment Day, the old Catholic church had long been dwarfed by the grand glass and steel spectacles of tall towers that touched the Southern California skies. It had watched a small community become the center of many universes, all but forgetting what the town had once been. She was a silver dollar lost in the cushions of a much larger couch built around her. It now seemed only fitting that when that civilization had come to an end, she was once again relevant in the skeleton of the devolving society that had once had no time for her. A heavy iron-studded wooden door of thick oak was accompanied on each side by scorched stone statues of two nameless saints, cloaked and sinister in their obscurity, standing sentry in warning to any that might enter to do harm. They were shadowed by two gas lanterns that swayed to and fro in the horribly frigid breeze of the long night. From afar it was as if the church had eyes of her own, ever vigilant.

Past the doors in the interior was a shadowed room lit by lantern and generators that no longer had the look of a chapel. Above, on the far wall, was a large crucifix that kept sacred watch over a host of hospital beds and first aid stations. Make shift surgical rooms were behind every door and in every private area that could be found. They had taken the place of the altar and confessional, from the rookery to the candle room. On the floor was the stained scars of blood from thousands of men and women who had sworn to protect the last of humanity from extinction. Every room within the church had heard each desperate prayer and seen every desperate moment of doctor, nurse, and wounded. They had always come, before this war and during, each looking for salvation of some kind in their desperate hours within these very walls. Though the battlefields had moved on, and there was never a need for a frontline station again in the closing gasps before the end of a mechanical god's dream. The scars and horrors of this place lingered in every man and woman alike who wished to never again see the inside of this burned out church as long as they lived.

But even on quiet nights such as these there were still patients to attend to. Not every injury was machine related, and for new recruits the famed ruins of Los Angeles could be harsh to them on their first tour of duty. In this command there were only two types of soldiers, those who were just beginning military service with Tech-Com and those who were on their way out. Those old men and women of the "Glory Days" of the Resistance were few as it was. Most of the trouble in this sector was certainly trying to keep the recruits from killing each other out of boredom.

Boredom—that was a good excuse for what had happened to Private Shellback, Brian Garvin. He wasn't exactly one of the old men, but he had seen some things in his time in the service. He thought it would help for the way he was feeling, but it didn't. He had been the sonar officer on the USS Jimmy Carter when it was sunk. He had seen liquid metal take place of the object of his unrequited love. He had lived through the Paradox Eater and The Phantoms of the Hex when Goodnow had come back to kill him. All of it should've cleared his conscious; all of it should've made him like Jesse, so used to hell. But when he closed his eyes he could still see a man struggling to get up while they stomped on him. He could still feel the roaring of curses curl his blood as they fit a noose around his neck. But when he came back from his guilty memories, his tooth ached even more.

"You're done …"

He was startled into a loud echoing gasp by a French accented voice. The blue eyed nurse was young, maybe even pretty underneath her nun's habit. She stared at the communications officer in puzzlement, as did the rest of the bored staff. But the curiosity lasted only a moment longer. "Go!" She shooed him away sternly with a motion of her hands. Garvin slipped off the gurney bed and began cautiously slipping away under a host of strange looks.

What she had given him for his broken tooth and messed up jaw didn't seem to be enough to actually work. But he understood and was getting used to being a part of the infantry, which meant you made use of what little you would be given. Many of the guys said that it would make "even him" into a man. Truth was that he had hardly seen combat in all his years with the Resistance. He was the Sonar Officer, than he worked at regiment Headquarters, before he was shit canned after the Professor Von Rothbart incident thus landing him in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of new recruits who didn't even know what a damn IPOD was. He could talk a good game, recall past engagements to fool the new guys into respect, but honestly it was only because he had "Answered the Phones" during the engagements thus knew particular details that most of them did not.

But as he exited the church he wondered if what they had done this evening could be considered combat. If the "justice" they had committed was worth all this doubt and sickness in his stomach. He was not sure, and though he knew by the book it was, and by what they all believed it was righteous, it hardly felt that way. Was this the way all soldiers felt? This gnawing doubt of what they had done and how it stays with you. When all along, Garvin felt in his gut that what had happened was not war, was not justice, but murder. Even with the knowledge of what the man was trying to do, what he was going to do.

"It wasn't right, Garvin!" He heard an Australian accent in his head, soothing his guilt. "It's against everything we've ever stood for! Is this what your mother and sister died for? Huh, Garvin, for this to happen?!" She pushed him both mentally and physically. He didn't disagree even when he knew the answer in his heart.

Sweat began to pour down his face as he picked up his pace toward the exit. He could feel a thousand suspicious eyes upon him, haunting his steps. Over and over again he could hear his friend's voice of righteous indignation over the screams of protest and curses of a man dying slowly. In the stain glass saintly figures were hanging from trees, there sacred eyes open, staring unblinking at the blood on his hands that no water could wash off. When he lifted them they were clean, but in the gaze of the suffering man hanging from the cross above him and to the communication officer's very own they might as well have been bathed in the thick iron of sticky red liquid. When he reached the door, he threw it open as a suffocating man in a container without holes. Without a word he raced out into the night. When the door closed behind him there was not a soul inside the church but a nun folding blankets in concentration.

The night air was stiff with the smell of a foul stench from the river. It was salt water mixed with toxic runoff creating an unpleasant smell that got deep down in the lungs and made you feel a shade of green not found on the color wheel. Garvin welcomed it like an old friend as he stood in the mission's shadowy plaza of lantern light. The fresh air and open would help clear his mind, or he had hoped. He would make his way back to the barracks and hopefully he'd feel better about everything in the morning.

With an unpleasant sniff of the air, his boots crackled on shuffled stone for a foot or two before he heard quiet voices. He turned and found a couple sitting on a stone bench wrapped in charred ivy. The man wore a long issued overcoat of an officer. On his lap was a red haired girl that looked barely sixteen. She wore blue surgeon scrubs. Together soldier and doctor were talking of a future on a farm, snuggled into one another looking at the stars.

Slowly they felt the presence of Garvin's stare. The handsome Latino man had a trimmed goatee covered in blood, his jaw seemed broken and locked into place. Around his neck a vicious purple band bit into his skin, bruised permanently. Joining the greyed dead eyes of the man was the red haired beauty. She slowly followed the man's gaze till it fell on him. She was gorgeous and a horror to look upon when her left eye socket had been ripped away to reveal metal. The camera eye glowed an angry, vengeful red when it fell upon him. He nearly fell over with a startled gasp at the sight, tripping over his feet, catching the stone wall for balance.

"What the hell is that guy's problem?"

The red haired doctor of nearly thirty years asked her husband who she was completely burrowed into for warmth. The scruffy man just glared and shook his head at her. "Don't worry about him, babe." He muttered in annoyance petting his wife's hair. He craned a look to the communications officer who straightened up immediately at the sobering sight of one of the company's captains instead of who he thought they were.

"Sorry sir …" he nodded with sputtering visible breath of relief.

The man glared. "Get your shit together, Garvin, you fucking pussy." He shouted at the skinny man in his anxious departure from the plaza.

The soldier watched his back while walking into the open street. In front of and behind him were a collection of casual shadows that passed seen and unseen from the collection of fallen concrete, rusted metal, and rebar from the skyscraper graveyard surrounding them. In the darkness of the night there was a boundless energy from the occupants of this desolation. Call them old habits or a new way of life, but for many their days start at the end, an entire generation's lives spent in the darkness. Forever perplexed by what they found underneath the endless debris of a lost civilization that they called home now. Who were these angelic people on the covers of these books of glossy paper? Did they have a name? Did they still exist? Did these broken tablets do something of importance? Did this handheld device with a cracked screen actually play music at one time? Like the many hundreds of years after the fall of Rome in the ancient world there was a darkness coming to those who would see the end of this terrible war to end all wars. In place of technology of their forefathers a new brand of superstition and ignorance would spread. It was a world Garvin would not be a part of if he could help it.

Maybe that was the key to getting through this madness that had taken him. The thought that what had happened tonight would be their ticket out of this hell. Even though what had been done was not sitting right, it was a sacrifice of conscious to do something bigger and more important than a thousand lifetimes of normalcy. Underneath all the moral ambiguity and the compromises they could actually change the course of history for the better. Just standing on the ruined street he could almost smell the ozone again of the past around him, imagine what it would be like to see this place intact. If Jesse was right, he would see it all in person. He was filled with such irrational hope for his future in the past.

But it was cut short by a predatory gaze.

Across the old broken asphalt street was a twisted and oddly shaped lamp post that had been partially melted by a flame thrower. Leaning against it was a tall silhouette, with a smoking pipe in his mouth, watching the skinny man standing in the dim fringes of the mission's lantern light. He was struck with a pang of fear in surprise and in a gut instinct of a survivalist's certainty that for some unknown reason, the shadowy figure had been waiting for him.

There was a fizzle of a new flame as a fingerless gauntlet struck a match alight against the pipe. The slightest of a glimmer revealed a double breasted coat of beaten leather and black combat grade trousers with a single crimson stripe down the leg seams. Lighting the contents inside, he blew out the match with the first puffs of blue smoke. In the light half a face was obscured in shadow. A thin facial scar that ran diagonally across an eye was outlined in the glowing embers of the pipe. With each puff, a crimson light touched shadowed haunted eyes that held a steely glare, like a cold gust through a thin shirt. They were sharp and predatory, and like the thousand eyes and one inside the church, they could see the blood on Garvin, and all of the skinny man's grievous sins of the evening.

There was a visible tremor in the man's frightened frame as he moved a hand to his jaw. The excitement of flayed nerves had brought a new ache to his broken tooth. He would never know, as did any man, how just the smallest, most minuscule actions or words could seal one's fate. Brian Garvin rubbed his broken tooth in a wince and gave a shaky nod of acknowledgement to the man who knew all he needed to in the innocent action.

His sputtered visible breath frothed unevenly. "Freaking cold, eh?" There was a lisp in his voice from the cap on his tooth and bruised jaw. The man leaning on the light pole said nothing, not a word, not a flinch of a feature. He simply puffed on his curved mahogany pipe, and watched him with unblinking cold eyes, like a lion watching a hobbled zebra.

Not waiting to press his conversation, Garvin nodded as if he had been answered. He moved down the ruined street keeping the shadow in the corner of his sight. His damning gaze followed the radio operator as he passed with a dangerous flicker, like a caged animal pacing back and forth. As he walked down the street he could feel eyes burning a hole through the back of his head. It was like heat ray vision melting the bolted safeguards over his anxiety. The longer his stare held, the more the guilt seeped into him. By the time he was half way down the street he was shaking violently, the voices entering his mind again. The blood and shouts, the foul curses laid upon all of them, and of all else the body twitching and wiggling as if dancing, before he became so very still.

He couldn't take it anymore, while the bile rising in his throat came to stay. He rushed over and retched behind a charred cement wall of an overturned sidewalk. He supported himself as he threw up all the contents of his stomach, for the second time that day. He was suddenly so cold and shaken as he stood up straight. He felt as if he had crossed the wrong wires in his brain, everything twitching and not working right in his body. Quickly he turned back and was possibly more frightened to find that there was no one there.

That was what he needed to see to know that he had to get back. The barracks were just three blocks away. Brian Garvin spent every moment walking through those familiar remains of millions of lives and histories jumping at shadows the entire time. It didn't matter how much of a rational brain told him that he had to be imagining it, he knew that he was being followed, being hunted. Covering the last two blocks was the most frightened he had ever been in his life, and that was with being attacked by an undead Goodnow. What was worst was that there was no sign, no indication to confirm his anxiety. Behind him was no shadow, no crunch of gravel under tread, not a soul trailing in the dark of the night.

Most of the communication officer's unit had commandeered and occupied the entire block of buildings at the edge of the mostly intact Old City. He was bunked up in an abandoned thrift store with two other people. His roommates, Ward and Simmons, a well-built soldier type of a guy and a skinny girl with a heart of gold were bound to be there. Most nights he'd consider himself unlucky, feeling like an unwanted third wheel when they started having sex. But as he threw open the glass door he considered it another blow to his sanity to find that for once he hadn't walked in with Ward's head between Simmons's slim legs. Darkness of the dusty exterior of the abandoned store with bare, pillaged shelves and racks that had been hung with old clothes met him. In the entrance near the store front window were three cots arranged around a rusted metal brazier filled with burning hot coals aglow.

He quickly shut the door behind him and locked it. He stuck to the dark corners of the entrance, checking the ash stained brittle glass of the door. For a long time he kept watch over the sightlines of his lodging. He was never quite satisfied with the feeling of safety, but as the minutes passed he felt more content to believe his fears to be inside his mind, than outside his door. With a long sigh the submariner looked back into the dark store and shook his head.

Behind the counter was a small private bathroom that they had been using. Maybe what he needed was something cold on his face to shock him back into the world. Surrounded by something familiar, locked into a secure building, there was a calm that slowly began to repair the tears in his mind that his anxiety had ripped. Walking past the open wood paneling with a sign on the door alerting anyone about to use it that it was for employees only, the skinny man entered the dingy closet. He always noticed that even decades later the stained smell of old coffee permeated through the small room that contained only soot covered toilet and porcelain sink. Resting next to the drain and faucet was an issued bucket of sanitized water to wash and take care of personal hygiene with. Cupping his hands in the ice cold water, Garvin splashed it on his face and let out a gasp of shock. It immediately began to numb his nose and cheeks thankfully, helping his nerves settle.

It didn't last long.

Behind him in view of a small handheld mirror they used day to day was a twisting awkward figure hanging from the rafters. Garvin quickly turned to find that it was a mannequin from one of the ruined, uninhabitable stores. Around its neck was a familiar bungee cord that bobbed up and down. With a shout of fear, the radio operator stumbled out of the room as fast as he could. Boots shuffled backward in loud and clumsily steps out of the bathroom and back behind the counter. Small dark eyes were wide and the breath from Garvin's chest was uneven as he backed away in sight of the hanging mannequin.

SLAM!

Suddenly the door to the bathroom was thrown shut with force by a fingerless gauntleted hand. A familiar shadow appeared when it did. He was tall in the same leather coat, combat trousers, but this time he was cowled and his mouth and nose covered by an old blue scarf. All that was visible was shadowy eyes, dangerous and indistinguishable without light.

"Why did you murder him?"

There was a booming tremble to his voice that sounded like some terrible creature from the hellish depths of the sonar operator's worst nightmares. Cold water droplets mixed with even a more frigid sweat that built on his pale face. Garvin backed up till his lower back crashed into the counter. The force knocked the dusty cash register over. When it hit the ground it made a thunderous high pitched noise of cracking wood and a ring of the bell within. "I don't … I don't …" Was all he could repeat as he was now shaking violently. "What?" His voice took a higher octave and he shook his head in his innocent thespian performance.

The shadow sprang on him suddenly, like a violent flash of lightening. A hand struck out, grabbing ahold of Garvin's face. With a vengeful force of barely contained rage he slammed the submariner's head into the counter with an audible crack. It felt as if the weight of a mountain had fallen on his head as a sharp ache rushed through him.

"He! Need I repeat?" The demonic voice shook the dusty boards of the store. The voice, the images in his head, and the sickness spread within Garvin's conscious and heart came together in that moment. All of it overcoming at once pushed him into a helpless fight from the pressure mounting in his head.

"I don't know what you're talking about!" His answer made the predator reach back and strike him in the bruised jaw. It only made the man sob harder as he struggled against the heaviness that pressed him face first into the dust.

"Why you killed him, or I beat you to death." He warned with another cruel punch to the man's yellowing jaw.

"I don't know!" He lied through whimpered sobs.

Changing tactics, his aggressor grabbed his sleeve and ripped it away revealing a tilted black inked star tattoo on his wrist. He gave the man a deep-seated glare of hatred when spotted. "Where are they?!" He demanded with a roar of a terrifyingly boom sighting the marking on the man's skin.

A dazed Garvin just shook his head. "Who?!" He spat through watery eyes, barely able to speak.

His faked ignorance seemed to unleash the full power of his predator's rage. He grabbed the skinny man and lifted him above his head. With a heave, Garvin was flung over the counter, smashing into his cot. A cloud of dust and ash lingered above where he and his bedding had been spilled over with a painful crash. He coughed blood and tooth cap as he got to his feet. He was in an awful amount of pain and yet the survivalist inside that had gotten them out of J-day pulled him toward the door as fast as he could.

But as the submariner reached out for the handle there was a whirling sound of something sharp spinning by his ear. Garvin retracted his hand in surprise when a four pointed throwing star cleaved the door knob in two. He flinched backward when electricity surged in flashed webs of voltage from the star's center and bounced up the door's metal frame. His retreat was halted when he bumped into something solid behind him. He whirled quickly only to find a vice grip of a hand seize him by the neck. Both his small hands grabbed onto the padded wrists of the gauntlet as he was lifted in the air.

"Where the rest of them are … or that broken jaw will be the least painful injury of the night!" He was no longer roaring. The shadow was now cold and trembling in fury and effort in hoisting the communications officer in the air.

With all he held dear, Brian Garvin wanted to tell the man the truth. He wanted the pain to end, not just physically, but mentally and spiritually. But he knew that if he told him the truth he'd be stuck here forever, or worse … much, much, worse. Every time he wanted to spill all of which they planned all he could see was himself hanging from that tree. So he did all he could find himself to do at that very moment. He parroted what his friends would expect him too.

"I wouldn't tell you if I did!" He choked out.

It was the wrong thing to say. With a growl he was choke slammed to the floor. With a wheezed cough that made his throat sore, blood arced from Garvin's mouth in a squirt.

"No! NO! … NOO!"

A hand grabbed him by the back of the shirt and dragged him across the dirty floor. The minute blurry eyes saw the scolding brazier was his destination he tried to escape against stronger arms. He was set upon his knees and a hand twisted his thin bowl cut hair painfully. He screamed as his face was forced down close to the glowing coals inside.

"I've got all night!" The shadowy figure informed him with a dark hatred.

All the sweat on Garvin's face seemed to evaporate in the presence of something so hot. Even without touching the coals, the proximity to the heat stung the man's face. He sobbed each time a spittle of blood dripped onto the coals and the sizzled smell of himself filled his nostrils.

He cracked. "It wasn't right!" Garvin parroted what had been drilled in his head as rational when he himself detracted at the sight of the murder. "What he was doing with it! What he was going to do with it! It wasn't right, it, it, it … IT WASN'T WHAT WE DIED FOR!" He screamed through sobs feeling the heat kiss his cheek.

"Funny, I didn't see you at the "fall of Arcadia" or at the battles of "Topanga Canyon" and "Porter Pass". What could a glorified receptionist even comprehend about dying for a cause?" His captor asked in disgust as if Garvin was something he found in a latrine bowl. "Unless you want a free demonstration?!" He put more force pushing the submariner's head closer to the coals.

"No! Please, don't … NO!"

"Where are they?!"

"FLORES, Flores has … She, she, she commandeered a … a …"

SISSSSS!

"AN AUTOSHOP IN THE OLD CITY, FIFTY CLICKS FROM THE RIVER ON THE EAST BANK!"

Garvin's face stung in the cold air when he was ripped away from the inside of the brazier and slammed back onto the floor. The side of the uninjured part of his face was scorched and his stubbled cheek welted. He rubbed tenderly as tears fell on the very dry skin of his exposed cheek. Suddenly he was aware of the flick of leather and a metallic click.

The shadow drew a sleek chrome plated Colt from his back hip. The nicked and scarred weapon looked old and well used, its rubber handle taped for extra grip. The cowled man checked the magazine before sliding it back inside with a loud click.

"No, don't!" Garvin found his knees. His pleas were met with an obnoxious draw of the trigger. "Please, don't!" he placed his hands together as if to pray. He groveled to the intimidating shadow that had taken so much out of him already.

The man pointed the gun in between the former sailor's eyes. "You were ready enough to kill for a man's choice in brides … you don't seem so ready to die for a prejudice you claimed to be a true believer in?" The tone in his voice made Garvin feel so small, so worthless. Somewhere he knew that had been stronger, less trusting, and not so easily led he wouldn't be here. For all of his final thoughts that were running through his mind, it made him feel angry and cheated out of his own life. Here at the end he wanted no more part of the schemes he had been party too.

"I didn't kill him!" He blurted in teary eyed frustration. "I just kept watch! I just … I just watched … he got loose, and I got punched … I didn't even touch him. I, I did nothing but watch." He started strong and angry to the man. But, as he reflected, his voice began falling away from even the situation. He looked off to the side as he spoke in a timid childlike voice as if he had strayed into a waking dream. Some strange reflection of an out of body experience he had suffered from during the murder. "I just watched." He shook his head as if he didn't comprehend or even recognize himself.

Cold eyes, shadowed under cowl, stared through the sailor's poisoned soul. After a long moment the man drew forward his trigger. Garvin watched him glare long and hard before he began to nod as if agreeing with him. "You're right." He spoke evenly while lowering the weapon to his side.

"It's only fitting to leave you last, so you can watch them bury Flores and the rest of your friends with your one good eye, before I come for you!"

"Good eye?"

A gauntleted hand grabbed a handful of Brian Garvin's hair and drove the side of his face into the searing coals of the brazier.