(Chapter 2.  Steve's office.  February 14, 2033)

Deputy Chief Steve Sloan massaged his stiff neck and groaned.  Looking at Commander Cheryl Banks, his second in command, he suggested, "Let's break for lunch.  The next candidate isn't due for another hour and a half."

The still attractive black woman nodded, smiled, and said, "Sounds like a plan."

"Good.  How about BBQ for lunch?"

"Steve, if we keep going to Bob's for lunch, Lauren's going to think you don't trust her.  Give the kid room to work.  She'll do you and her dad proud.  Besides, you need to watch your diet, Steven, CJ, and Maribeth are all worried about you."

"Yeah, I suppose.  A man my age has to watch his cholesterol and his sodium and his blood pressure and…"

"Give me a break, Steve.  A man your age?  With all the medical advances of the past thirty years, 'a man your age' can look forward to another twenty or thirty really good years . . . if  he takes care of himself."

Steve grumped and groused a bit, but finally conceded.  The stress of the past couple of years had really been wearing on him, and he'd had more than his share of run-of-the mill colds and flu.  He was nearly finished rebuilding his bureau, now, though, and then he and Maribeth were going to take a long-needed and much-deserved extended vacation.

"Ok, ok," he said.  "Get some take-out from the place across the street, something healthy, if you must.  I have to handle some paperwork and make sure Maribeth's Valentine's Day gift arrived, otherwise, the press will have another lovely little scandal to dig into."

At Cheryl's quizzical look, he grinned and said, "Deputy Chief Sloan Murdered by Enraged Wife."

With a laugh, Cheryl supplemented the headline with a lead.  "Deputy Chief of Police in charge of the Valley Bureau, Steve Sloan, was gunned down today at the entrance to his Malibu beach house as he returned home from work.  His wife, Maribeth, told reporters, 'After my birthday and our anniversary, forgetting Valentine's Day was just too much.'"

"Ok, ok, get outta here," Steve laughed, throwing a wadded up scrap of paper at her.  "I'm hungry and I have work to do."

Cheryl dodged the shot neatly, scooped it up, and deposited it in the recycle bin on the way out of the office.

First, Steve paged his civilian assistant, Leigh Ann, and had her call Captain Cioffi to let him know he would be needed in an hour.  Over the past year and a half, Steve had personally hired or promoted 69 new officers of the rank of lieutenant or above.  Cioffi needed two new lieutenants, and then it would be over, time for that vacation.  Ordinarily, he wouldn't have been so involved in the hiring and promotion of personnel, but given the scandals that had started a couple years ago, he decided he needed to know more about the people working for him.  His chain of command was held together by trust and mutual respect, and when the Chief had transferred out almost half his people to fill spots vacated by the arrests and suspensions, those mystical qualities were lost.  Now, faced with rebuilding his bureau using strangers and officers he'd never served with, he chose to meet each of them personally before approving their final transfer in.

Next, he called the florist, the jeweler, and Antonio's, and made sure everything was ready for the evening he had planned for Maribeth.  It was their thirtieth Valentine's Day together.  Ever since their first one, when she'd accidentally found out about Liv and nearly divorced him, he'd gone out of the way to make it special.  It had taken her some time to finally realize that he meant it when he said she was the only one he wanted, but now she enjoyed the attention almost as much as he enjoyed showering it upon her.

He sat back and sighed.  Ah, Liv…  He'd never spoken to her again after her wedding to Keith Stephens.  At first, it had been too painful to even consider picking up the phone.  Then he had met Maribeth, and he knew calling Liv would have been simply wrong, unfaithful, maybe.  When Steven was born his marriage had solidified, and he knew it would be safe to make that call, but by then there was no point.  His life had gone on without Liv, and he was sure hers had continued without him as well.  He still thought of her often and fondly, but he hadn't once felt that old, aching need in the 30 years he'd known his wife.

It had been one hell of a thirty years, at times amazing, other times, arduous.

Maribeth was his first miracle.  He'd literally fallen into her lap when he slipped on an hors d'oeuvre someone had dropped at the same charity dinner where he'd met Liv just the year before.  They'd stepped out to the lobby unnoticed and talked away the evening as if they had always known each other.  Steve couldn't help but notice that Liv's fichus had finally been replaced.  He was at first terrified to find out that Maribeth was Liv's replacement, but he was so drawn to her that he couldn't help himself.  They were married a year and a week later, on the beach at sunset, with Jesse as his best man and Amanda as the matron of honor.

His precious son was the next miracle, born just nine and a half months after the wedding.  Maribeth had been forty when he was conceived, and while that was no longer considered too old to have a baby, there were concerns about both mother and child.  Steven Mark Sloan, ten pounds, eleven ounces and twenty-three inches long, was a big, fat, beautiful, healthy baby; and his mother had weathered the ordeal just fine.  His father had fainted dead away.

Steve had been ducking a promotion for years, but when he was offered a captaincy in '05, he'd decided to take it.  With a wife and child to support, he felt it was wise to take a job that put him in the line of fire a little less often.  His family and friends were all delighted.  Little Steven had started to bawl during the ceremony, but as soon as his grandfather Mark started bouncing him on his knee, the youngster had quieted right down.

The grandmother of all earthquakes hit two days after his promotion.  His office was less than ten blocks from the epicenter, and he'd been just arriving at work at the time.  Terrified, frantic that he was completely cut off from his wife and son, his father, and his friends by the wrecked remains of the city, he had spent three exhausting days and three sleepless nights marshalling his troops from atop the debris of his building with nothing but some old radios that wouldn't hold a charge and a battered generator.  He had closed his mind to the thoughts of those who were buried in the rubble beneath his feet and his heart to the fear he felt for his own loved ones, and he had carried on. 

Somehow, even with a third of his personnel unaccounted for, they had managed to maintain order until help arrived from the National Guard.  Finally, an evacuation route was created, and the colonel who had relieved him of duty found him a ride to Community General.  Maribeth had found him sitting in shock on a bench in a Red Cross tent on the lawn in front of the hospital's main building.  She assured him that his father and friends were all fine, and then she wrapped him in a blanket and held him for hours as he collapsed, sobbing, in her arms. 

Twenty-four hours later, he was back at work alongside the men and women under his supervision, picking up the pieces.

By the time the dust had cleared from Mother Nature's demolition of LA, Steve and Maribeth were hoping for another miracle in the form of a baby sister or brother for their son.  They really hadn't planned to ever get pregnant again, and when the news came that Maribeth was indeed expecting, they were overjoyed.  Their joy turned to worry just a few weeks later though, when Maribeth was treating a young migrant worker for a broken arm and noticed a fine pink rash on his face.  He was running a low-grade fever, and had cold symptoms as well.  She had him admitted to an isolation ward until his condition was diagnosed, but it was too late.  She had been exposed to rubella, and because the pregnancy was a surprise, they had no idea if she still had any immunity from her last booster shot.  When she developed the cold-like symptoms and the pink rash, Alex and Jesse had both, as a matter of hospital policy, advised them that there was a high probability that the baby would be born with multiple birth defects.  They also said that some couples in similar circumstances chose to terminate the pregnancy rather than risk having a severely mentally and physically disabled child, but after a lot of prayer and discussion, and with Mark's support, they had decided to go ahead and hope for the best knowing that at their age, they may never have another chance. 

They weren't surprised when Maribeth lost the baby in the middle of her second trimester, but Steve was nearly devastated when she hemorrhaged during the miscarriage and he nearly lost her, too.  In the end, she recovered completely, but for months afterward, the guilt that in his eagerness to be a daddy again he might have pressured her into going on with the pregnancy against her better judgment had eaten away at Steve.  To make matters worse, he had thrown himself into his work and refused to talk about the baby, essentially denying himself and his wife the chance to mourn together.  Being forced to come to terms with her grief alone made Maribeth increasingly frustrated with her husband and her marriage, and finally, one day, after a shouting match over nothing, Maribeth had decided to end her husband's foolishness once and for all, and taking him by the wrist, she had dragged him off to the neonatal intensive care unit.

In sterile gowns and caps for the protection of the infants, Steve and Maribeth had quietly entered the NICU.  She had warned him that he dared not shout at her for fear of disturbing the preemies, and so, he had been forced to listen for a change.  Steve also knew that, because he was neither on staff at Community General nor a visiting parent, his presence here, among these tiny, fragile lives, was only being allowed as a special favor to his wife.  As their confrontation became increasingly emotional, he found he had struggled to hold on to all his pent up feelings for just a little while longer.

"Look at them, Steve," she commanded quietly, and he had, realizing that even the largest could easily fit into the palm of his hand with room to spare.  "They are weak, and they are tiny, and they are sick.  Their lungs and eyes and hearts are underdeveloped.  Some of them will have epilepsy, or cerebral palsy, or mental retardation.  Some of them will only live a year, but some won't last until morning."  She moved over to one of the incubators and read the chart.  "This one has a hole in his heart.  It's too big for us to fix.  He'll be lucky to last the week unless a healthy child dies and the parents donate its organs.  Some of these children will suffer for the rest of their lives, Steve.  Whether it's six hours or sixty years they will never know what it's like to be normal and free from pain."

"Maribeth, why are we here?" Steve asked, his voice thick with emotion.

"Did you know our baby was a little girl?"

Steve tried to answer, but choked on his words.  He shook his head to indicate that he had not known.  He had been with Maribeth during the delivery, but, knowing the child would never draw breath, he had found it hurt too much to ask.

"I went to records the first day I got back to work and checked it out.  She weighed just thirteen ounces."  Tears in her eyes, Maribeth said softly, "Steve, I am a doctor.  I knew that our baby would probably never make it to term.  I was just hoping I could carry her long enough for her to come here.  Don't you see, Steve?  I knew this place was in our little girl's future.  I wanted to have that baby knowing she would be born into a difficult life, maybe to suffer always, and possibly to die a painful, lingering death.  Now you tell me, which one of us is really selfish?"

Steve had crossed the room to take her in his arms, and he had told her, "You're not selfish, sweetheart, and you didn't 'know' any such thing."

"But Steve . . . "

"No, Mar, Jesse and Alex explained it to me, too, remember?  All we knew was that there was a chance the virus would harm the baby.  There was no way to be certain, and no way to tell how severe the problems would be.  We decided together to take the chance because we both just wanted to love another child."  They had stood for a while, then, holding each other, amid the dreadful and hopeful sounds of the preemies fighting for life, finally grieving for the child they had lost.

Once they had managed to talk about their loss, Steve and Maribeth had found an even keel again, and for a little while, life was good.  Alex had married a lovely woman named Marilyn, and they had purchased a house that had survived the quake of '05 not far down the beach from Steve and Maribeth.  Not long after, they had found that Marilyn was a carrier for a severe genetic disorder and there was a dangerously high chance that their children would be born either with the condition or as carriers of it.  Adoption did not work for them.  Three times, they were allowed to foster children, but when the parents refused to sign the necessary papers, the children were taken away.  For a while, everyone was sad for the young couple and worried that their marriage might not last, but eventually Alex and Marilyn had realized they would always be in love, no matter what.  After that, they had turned to raising Newfoundland dogs, spending lots of time with their friends' children, and fixing up their home.

In '07, the money for reconstruction after the big quake had run out.  The news hit the press the day before another shaker hit the city, and people panicked.  The ensuing riots were worse than anything Steve had ever seen, worse than Watts in the 1960's, worse than the Rodney King Verdict of 1992.  It all started two days after the tremor, on Washington Boulevard at the nexus of Southwest, Central, Rampart, and Newton divisions, and worked its way out from there.

When a convenience store owner who'd been waiting two years to rebuild and reopen his store finally got notice that his business was being condemned and was slated to be demolished, the city had offered him fair market value for the building.  It was a piddling amount, nothing compared to what the enterprise had been worth before the quake of '05, and it certainly wouldn't cover the debts he had incurred while waiting for financial assistance to rebuild.  He and a few friends decided to stage a standoff against the city demolition crew, the police were called in, and over a three-day period, nerves got frayed.  One thing led to another, somebody got jumpy, and people died.

As rage and fear spread across the city like an angry, bloody blossom opening up, Steve, like every other captain, had sent in all the personnel he could spare to help contain the violence, but unlike times past, this mob would not be quelled.  Hatred grew epidemic.  Hispanics attacked Blacks attacked Asians attacked Whites attacked Arabs.  Christians fought Jews fought Muslims.  Anyone who couldn't clearly be identified as a member of the group around him was as good as dead. 

Steve watched in horror with the rest of the city as hell itself surged through LA.  All the computer projections suggested the mob would stop before it got to the Valley.  The lack of things to destroy in the sparsely populated area north of Sunset Boulevard was supposed to turn the rioters back in defeat, but somehow, when the insanity turned east and crossed the Hollywood and then the Golden State Freeways, and the mob trashed the Northeast Community Police Station, Steve knew that he would soon be dealing with it himself. 

He called his best people--thirty lieutenants, sergeants, and detectives that he knew personally--and put them on alert.  Each was asked to choose two officers from the lower ranks who could be trusted to handle the pressure.  They were to maintain their regular schedules, but remain prepared to go wherever Steve called them at the drop of a hat.  The rioters tore through Forest Lawn Memorial Park, shattered Glendale and Burbank, and turned back to the west toward North Hollywood.  By this time, rioting had spread so far throughout the city that there was no one left to help the cops in the Valley Bureau.  They knew they were on their own.  In cooperation with other captains and commanders in the Valley Bureau, and with the approval of his own commander and the Deputy Chief, Steve worked to arrange a desperate ploy to stop the urban warfare before it left North Hollywood in tatters and spread to the valley.

Following his instructions and with help from the Highway Patrol and from the Foothill division, Steve's people blocked off the Golden State Freeway at Burbank Junction.  The mob would not be allowed to go any further north.  Under orders radioed from Steve, using water cannons, tear gas, and rubber bullets, they drove the mob west down Victory and Burbank Boulevards.  At the intersection of Vineland Avenue and Victory Boulevard, another wall of cops, this time with backup from Foothill, Devonshire, and Van Nuys, started pushing south toward Oxnard Street, and when Oxnard met Lankershim Boulevard, a third contingent of police, most of them from West Valley and Devonshire, urged the mob southeast, pushing them back upon those rioters who were still heading down Burbank Boulevard and slowing their progress.

It all ended at a 7-Eleven store not a block from the station.  Steve had his people form a semicircle across Burbank Boulevard, and, wearing a helmet and a Kevlar vest and a headset microphone that was hooked in to a hastily rigged PA system, with his heart in his throat, he walked a hundred feet down the street alone to meet the mob.  He could hear them half a mile away.  He knew the rest of the city was on fire.  He knew he was going to die, but he had to try.

He waited for what seemed like forever, watching the mob slowly advance on his position.  Then, when he could see the faces of the people at the front of the crowd, he spoke into his microphone, projecting a calmness and confidence he did not feel. 

"Enough!  Go home.  Stop killing each other."

The mob continued to advance, and Steve stepped back.

"This is no good," he told them.  "If it doesn't stop now, all we'll have left is a mountain of rubble."

He gave ground again.

"The world is watching us.  Show them that we are made of better stuff than hatred, anger, and violence."

Emotion threatened to choke him.  This was his city, dammit.  He had spent his life here, protecting its citizens.  He would not, he could not, allow them to tear apart his home, their home.  He had to stop it.  His people were half a block behind him; the mob was half a block ahead.  He would not turn and run.

Some wiseass at the front of the crowd saw the convenience store and yelled, "Hey, it's a 7-Eleven!  Free Slurpees!  Maybe we can give the cops some donuts!"

Steve backpedaled as fast as he could, but he refused to turn his back on the mob and run.  At the same time, he cut the power to his mike and spoke into his radio, telling his people, "Protect the store.  Do not let them take it.  This stops here and now, or we all die trying."

As a single entity, the semicircle of cops moved in front of the store.  Steve had two of his lieutenants boost him up onto the roof of a car parked on the street.  Those two and two of their subordinates stood on the hood and trunk of the car.

Steve stood on the car flanked by Lieutenants Lorena Martinez and Muti Al-Mannai on his left and Lieutenant Cheryl Banks and Sergeant Li Hong on his right.  He spoke into the microphone again, in a low, level voice, giving each word the weight of a sentence.

"Stop now.  Stop the killing now.  Stop hating now.  This stops today.  It stops here.  It stops now."

"Or what?"

"There is no 'or' anything," Steve said.  "It.  Stops.  Now."

"Why should we listen to you?  You probably live in the Valley.  Us in the city got nothin' to go back to.  There ain't no money left.  I been livin' in emergency housing since the quake of '05.  Ain't none of us got anything worth going back to."

The argumentative man and two or three of his companions stepped forward.  The cops behind Steve closed ranks.  Steve took a step forward, and throwing caution to the wind, tore his helmet off with one hand while he undid the Velcro to his vest and cast it aside with the other.  His three lieutenants and the sergeant followed his lead.

"I have a family," he said.  "All of these cops have families.  All of you, all of us, everyone in this city has someone who gives a damn.  *That* is something worth going back to."

A murmur swept through the crowd, and Steve pressed on.  "Hating someone is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat.  The rat goes away, but there's nothing left worth having.  End this now.  Go home now, while you still have something left worth having."

And so, a hundred cops faced down a mob of thousands.  Someone with a video camera caught the whole scene, and within the hour images of the fair-skinned, blue-eyed police captain, flanked by four other officers, Black, Latina, Arab, and Korean, were being broadcast across the city and around the world.  A few days later, when Dan Rather asked him why he'd chosen those particular officers to stand with him, he'd pleased his superiors immensely with the ingenuous answer, "They're my friends.  I knew I could trust them."

A year later, he was promoted to commander, and three years after that, he became Deputy Chief.  Two years later, his best friend Jesse Travis and his lovely wife Katie Lynne had a beautiful baby girl whom they named Lauren Stephanie.  The middle name was chosen in Steve's honor, and he and Maribeth were asked to be godparents.  

In 2022, a drought of unprecedented proportions coupled with yet another energy crisis cast the city yet again into the darkness of fear and hatred.  All that summer, Los Angelenos lived on the brink of eruption.  Finally, when the violence broke out at a water treatment facility in the West LA division, the National Guard mobilized immediately.  Using what they'd learned in the riots of '07, they quickly quelled the madding crowd.  For three years LA and most of Southern California was under martial law, and Steve took his orders from the National Guard instead of the Chief of Police.

The stress nearly killed him.  In the fall of 2025, he suffered a massive heart attack.  Jesse got him into an experimental program, and using genetically engineered stem cells, the doctors regenerated his own damaged heart tissue.  And the stem cells, those clever, mutable little buggers, took it upon themselves to reproduce and migrate throughout his body and repair scars from injuries he'd received thirty and forty years before.  In many ways, he literally was a new man after the procedure.  He was told it was a miracle, but soon, several other miracles had been reported, and Steve found he was a patient on the leading edge of medical science.  It turned out that he was the one patient in a million for whom the stem cells would actually migrate and go beyond their original expectations, but Steve decided that with the U.S. population hovering around six hundred million, a one in a million chance was not really much of a miracle.  So, he didn't call PAXTV.

He was back at work within the year, and when the rains finally came again in 2026, he and LA were both born again, a phoenix and its mate rising from the ashes and the rubble of the past.

For four blissful years, Deputy Chief Sloan had had it almost easy.  Yes, he was busy.  Yes, crime was becoming increasingly violent.  Yet, with no natural disasters or major fiascos to set things off, everything seemed much more manageable.  Then in 2030, it all went to hell again overnight.

What pissed Steve off most of all was that he had seen it coming 35 years ago.

He could still remember every word of that conversation with Chief Masters back in '98.

"I'm transferring you out of homicide and reassigning you to my task force on a permanent basis," Masters had told him in the entryway of the beach house after returning his badge and gun.

"I wish you wouldn't, sir."

"I make the assignments, Detective," the Chief had told him sternly.

"Then you can have these back."  Steve stood firm and offered up his badge and gun.

"Why?"

"I've seen you work," Steve had said, thinking of the whole affair that had gotten him shot three times in the chest and stomach, landed his father in jail, framed for killing the mobster who was the prime suspect for ordering the hit, and finally ended up getting Ian Trainor killed by his own brother, Malcom.  All to get Master's man, Ross Cainin in a position to take over the Ganza crime family.

"You're running the department and organized crime now, which makes the lines just a little too blurry for me to live with," he'd told the Chief.

Masters had walked out letting him keep his gun and badge.

"Helloooo, Steeevvve.  Where aaarre youuuu?"

"Huh?  Oh.  Back already?  What's for lunch?"

"A tofu burger with soy cheese and low-sodium mango chutney."

At his look of disgust, she grinned and added, "For me, and a large chef's salad with lime-grilled, free-range chicken breast and honey-mustard dressing for you."

Steve smiled humorlessly and asked, "Could it get any more hyphenated?"

"I could have had it massive-sized."

They ate in silence for a while, then Cheryl asked him, "So, just what thought were you lost in when I walked in here, Steve?"

Steve sighed, rested his chin on his fist, and said, "Did I ever tell you about Chief Masters?"

"The one with the organized crime task force?"

"Yep.  If I had said something back when it all started…"

"…you'd have lost your badge," she interrupted him.

"Maybe."

"Definitely.  You were just a Lieutenant I in '98, Steve.  Masters would have destroyed you and gone on his merry way, and I'd be having lunch with Kincaid now."

Steve shuddered at the thought.  His dad had been drawn into a murder pact by a psychologist who owed money to a loan shark years ago.  The guy had murdered a woman who'd threatened to downsize his dad out of a job, and had expected Mark to return the 'favor.'  When Mark had refused to reciprocate, the shrink had framed him, and Kincaid had been too stupid or too ambitious to see the frame.

"Still, it might have been worth it."

"Do you really think so, Steve?"

"Think about it Cheryl, when this scandal broke three years ago, forty percent of our personnel were tainted.  We narrowly avoided yet another disastrous riot when the picketing at City Hall turned ugly.  City wide, manpower is still down twenty-five percent, and public trust is hovering right at zero.  If I had said something back then…"

"…he'd have ground you into the dust, done what he damned well pleased, and you, Deputy Chief Sloan, would not be here to help this department clean up the mess." 

"But…"

Steve tried to protest, but she interrupted.

"You think about this, Chief.  The Valley Bureau was proven clean.  Not just seventy-five or eighty percent clean, but completely clean.  NO.  MOB.  INFLUENCE.  WHAT.  SO.  EVER.  That's due to your leadership, your integrity, your example.  Yeah, it's been a bitch for us to replace half of our personnel over the past eighteen months, but thanks to you, this city had somewhere to turn when it needed experienced people it could trust to fill the positions of those it had to release or incarcerate because of the mess Chief Masters started thirty-five years ago.  I really think you should have accepted the promotion to Chief when the Commissioners offered it to you.  This city needs someone it can trust at the helm now more than ever."

Steve smiled.  His old friend's unwavering support warmed him to the core.

Waving his hand modestly, he said, "Whatever.  The higher you go, the more political it gets.  I'm just a cop, not a politician.  Now eat up.  Al Cioffi will be here in a few minutes.  If we approve his candidates, the LAPD Valley Bureau will be back to one hundred percent, and I can take my wife on that second honeymoon to Maui."

It had been one hell of a thirty years all right, but he wouldn't change a second of it.