It was time. To get out of Dodge. I passed the safeword to my secretary, who blindingly passed it to my home.

Hearing this, my sergeant came in - typically, he was still natty, without a visible crease in his suit. Not a hair out of place. Quite unlike when he'd gone in and out of battle at the front with me. All those years ago.

"It's time to cut you loose, friend." That designation, 'friend', caused him to stop in his tracks.

He said, "Look, if you think I'm abandoning you now, you have another thing coming." I then said that if he was of a mind for another favour, I had one last thing I needed to do.

"Dude, I'm not ordering this. Not after all you've done - but there's a young woman at Ardua Hall, a woman named Jade. She has a tattoo. Yes, a tattoo at Ardua Hall, but give me a minute. Me, I'm headed to B.O.S., to meet a plane. My family is set to meet me there. But I want that girl, Jade, with me."

My sergeant, he looked worried. "There's something you have to know. Judd, he's dead. Shot. Wait for it….. by Aunt Lydia. Vidala had been on the critical list, but had recovered briefly, gave up Lydia. She'd been the leak, Lydia I mean. Fucking Aunt Lydia. She'll bring down Gilead, all by her onesy."

I laughed a bit. I said, "I told you, everyone had their version of, 'Cleaning up Gilead', just like Pryce used to say. Lydia had had hers." I then repeated: "Can you get this 'Jade' girl?" My sergeant said that he could try. Getting into Ardua Hall had been tough enough in normal times. But as things were falling apart, it just got more chaotic. If the Eyes or Angels had now locked down the place, he wasn't sure of anything. I told him I'd put a call into The Eyes before I bugged out. It couldn't hurt.

I mean, if there were 'Eyes' or 'Angels' any more. Gilead itself was on the brink.

DEPARTURE FROM BOS

Tuello kept looking at his watch. He said, "I'm not telling you what to do, Blaine. This is your terrain. But every minute that passes…" I told him that I knew and understood.

I then turned and opened the back door of the limousine, summoned the occupants out. I told Kathryn and our daughter to go with Tuello, into the Challenger. Which they did.

Prompting June Osborne to appear at the door, standing at the top of the stairs. "Hey, Nick," she said. "So. That's your family." June, June, June, for the love of God, not here.

She then said to Tuello, "What's the hold up? Let's go!" Tuello indicated that she should talk to her boyfriend here. I wish people would stop calling me that.

At that my sergeant drove up, at speed, in an SUV. Seeing the plane, he and three of his guys got out, the three other guys drew their weapons and pointed them at Tuello - and June. I ordered them to stand down, but for the first time, they did not respond. One of them undecidedly said, "Sarge?"

My sergeant, loyal to the end, told them to listen to the High Commander. Then he gave me his report.

"Lydia's dead, sir." He told me Judd was also dead, which I knew because the sergeant himself had told me earlier. That girl, Jade? Nowhere. She was a ghost. "She left a note, said she was eloping with a Guardian. But no one can find either Aunt Victoria or Aunt Immortelle. Something is going on." The sergeant paused, "That's not all. They kept saying that Jade's real name was Daisy. It's all fucked up, sir."

At that June shouted from the top of the stairs. The name's not Jade, she said, it's not Daisy. "She's Nichole. Nichole Waterford." Then she pointed to me - named for this guy here, Nick. She's Holly Osborne, my daughter.

Tuello looked up to the top of the short staircase, he said, "When were you going to tell me this?"

June continued. "They're in Canada, Nick. Nichole is back in Canada. Hannah is there, too. In Nova Scotia."

My sergeant piped up, weapon now in the front sling/hang position. He was standing down, and said to me, "You have to get on that plane, sir." Things are falling apart. By morning New Gilead could be gone.

I looked at Tuello. He said, "You're welcome to board, but you'll be arrested as soon as we land in Canada. You cannot take your weapon with you." Briefly, very briefly, I wondered how he was going to stop me.

I walked over to my sergeant. I handed him the AR-15, and told the other three to listen up. "It's a field promotion, I know. Who knows if it'll be valid, I guess that depends on which military you end up serving in. But, you, dude, are now a lieutenant. You no longer work for a living. These three grunts work for you. Me, I now resign my commission. Make a note of that - again, in whatever bureaucracy you end up serving in. I don't care."

For the first time since meeting Andrew Pryce, I was unemployed.

When I got to the top of the stairs, Tuello right on my heels, June leaned in for a kiss. That woman could not read a room. My 12 year-old was inside with her mother. So I refused the kiss, much to Tuello's amusement. Me, I did not want a 90 minute plane ride with a cranky pre-teen, who'd just seen her father…..

….. kiss his girlfriend. O Lord, did I just type that? For the record, the kiss never happened.

THE ICC HOTEL

It actually wasn't that bad. This had been the very room they'd had Fred Waterford in fifteen years ago. Back in New Gilead, we would have called this 'junior Commander's quarters'.

My own interrogations had been an anticlimax. Aunt Lydia had put a microdot - old technology - into one of Nichole's tattoos. The Canadian and World media were having a field day with the sheer volume of Gilead-scandal on that dot. Gilead was falling of its own weight, but Lydia had given it a mighty push.

Me, I must have never impressed Lydia much - I had exactly two mentions in thousands of pages. Two. One was my role in Commander Waterford's extradition and murder. Lydia had included in the dot the full suite of Gilead bureaucratese that had vilified June Osborne. Me, I was a mere mention.

Then there was the mention of three years previous, when I'd ascended to High Commander. Following Putnam's putsch. Once again, Lydia had included stuff about Putnam's 'reign of error', but also as how other more powerful Commanders (like Judd) had bypassed the promotion, because it would to them actually be a 'demotion', and interfere with their skimming.

In one of my interrogations, I broke out laughing. The ICC panel scolded me, saying that none of this was funny. However, what they'd put up on the screen for my comment, had actually been the data accumulated by my sergeant, when he'd been my chief aide. It was an outline of the 'skimming' that Commanders did. As usual, my guy had been thorough - the ICC called his work a gold-mine.

Yes, folks, Gilead was falling.

THE 'R' WORD

It was the word on which my liberty hung.

There was Kathryn and our daughter. Kathryn all of 13 when she'd given birth. I didn't have a get-out-of-jail-free card with Kathryn. Her age back then meant that the 'R' word was in play. Our daughter was there for all to see. My deal with Commander Reilly, her father, was just a story. Kathryn herself was referred to as having Stockholm syndrome.

Then there was June. Serena Joy Waterford had been so charged with rape, when she'd 'forced' me to impregnate June. I mean, Nichole was here for all to see - she visited with her mom regularly. But she and June were offered counseling, something June declined but that Nichole took advantage of. (Except that she registered for it as 'Daisy', listing her parents as Neil and Melanie.)

My ICC-appointed lawyer said that June was not going to cooperate with prosecutors on that charge. Even Rita Blue said she would only give testimony favourable to me, except that by testifying, she'd actually be confirming the basic timeline of Serena Joy's order to me. The lawyer had said, "Rita Blue would not survive cross examination."

Then - my salvation, the microdot. The plethora of documents included on such a tiny medium. An old medium and there were today too few 'dot readers' available, except for in obscure archives.

The short of it - my lawyer came in with the info that the rape charge with regard to Kathryn had been dropped. On the dot, they found a medical report, of the firing (and particicuting) of a Gilead Doctor for raping a Commander's 12 year old daughter. The Commander had been noted as Reilly.

Not so simply with Serena Joy's prosecution, one that never saw a courtroom. Except that all the damning evidence still existed, including Commander Fred Waterford's original description of how the event had clearly been, 'outside of even Gilead law or practise'. June Osborne, as Offred, had not been in a legal position to consent - she'd been a slave.

Me, I saw this as payback. Payback for the cowardice of my youth.

I mean, I used to blame Rita Blue for it. If she had not been in the shadow out in the hall, shh'ing me - I would have gone in to put an end to it, right there in the Commander's study.

THE DAMNEDABLE THING

You know what Rita said?

She'd come to visit me, one of my oldest Gilead friends. It was amazing what we found to laugh about. We cried about Eden. We shared anger about June refusing to go with Nichole to Canada. We reminisced about the women's Holding Centre. I'd missed the whole Angel's Flight thing, as they called it here in Canada. Rita even had a poster of her face, the face of Angel's Flight as they fund-raised to support the kids here.

But you know what she'd said about that night outside the Commander's door, me with my gun drawn, ready to end all of it? You know what she'd said?

She'd not been there. She'd never done that. I must have imagined it. I'd been such a coward, that I had literally induced hallucinations. What a weasel.

My lawyer wouldn't let me plead guilty. She said that June's tape, the one she'd made for her husband, Luke….. the tape would get me off, even if June's current word wouldn't.

I asked her to lose the tape. Which she said she wouldn't do, not while she was my lawyer. I told her I deserved jail. She said that I deserved to be prosecuted fairly.

"Save your pity-party for when you're released, Nick." She then looked puzzled. "Are you sure you were once a High Commander in Gilead? No wonder your failed state fell."

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