Hero, Bad Apple, Velocitron, Hypnotica, Black Blade, Fire Nation, Memories, Eternal Empire, Tristan and Isolde, Tristan, Mombasa, The Dream is Collapsing.

If you like America, you're gonna have a hard time, friends.

Recovery

Run For Me

It was dark when they pulled him out of the cell. The lights were on, but the shadows they cast were stark black. Suit jackets, starched pants, close-cropped hair, the men with their strong arms restraining him looked like ghouls in the concrete walls and cinderblock barricades.

They lifted and dragged him, they put him in chains. They weren't the heavy iron manacles of another age, but the stainless steel braces around his wrists and ankles were stronger than those had once been, their delicate chains twinkling in the harsh glare of flashlights and ceiling lamps.

His fever had come and gone again, nearly breaking before a wave of something else in his system started the cycle over from the beginning. It felt like a commercial for indigestion: the pitching nausea in his gut, the lancing cold of the fever's spikes, the shivers and trembling shakes as muscles spasmed painfully around brittle bones. He wasn't going to die, but maybe it was something he could start hoping for.

'Take this face away,' it was one of the few coherent thoughts he could form as he was bundled and loaded up into a tight space with coarse synthetic fabric and a constricting belt to keep him in place. 'I don't want it anymore, God, take it away.' The machine's engine grumbled once before roaring to life, and the chatter of voices through a black plastic box needled him with sharp darts of frustration. Every little prick of irritation spouted sweat from his pale skin, and when he dropped his head between his knees, he wanted to bite the hand that dared to touch his back.

"Where's Westwood?" He breathed the words like exhaust billowing out the back of the jeep carrying them. The air felt hot over his tongue and carried the sour taste of bile, but he said them and he only did it once.

"He's in the car behind us." He didn't know the voice of the man next to him. He didn't want to know it either: not Westwood, not Phil, not that good guy from New England. "I can get him on the radio if you need to speak to him." But that sounded like an order Phil had given, because the agent didn't get it and he didn't sound like he wanted to try either: why give the radio to a prisoner? Why bring the crazy kid along for the ride?

America couldn't blame him for the last part. If given the choice he would have left Alfred F. Jones behind to rot too.

"No…" he was quiet for a long time after that, or for what he hoped was a long time.

The car the jeep the SUV, whatever it was that was carrying him made turns and rolled with the shape of the road. He saw the lights flash dirty yellow and pale orange and glint over the manacles binding his wrists, the slender links of the silver chain holding fast to one another like a taunt. He counted them as he felt them speed up and slow down into another wide turn along a concrete path. He counted the links: forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty…

There were more than fifty links, but he hit that number and started again. With every number, he felt that heat in his gut starting to rise a little higher, and maybe burn a little hotter.

Because one, two, three meant Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey.

And four, five, six was Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts.

Seven, eight, nine, ten: Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia…

Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen.

New York, North Carolina, Rhode-

"No."

Burn!

They were driving quickly and trying to make good time. There was an airfield on the edge of the city where a secure air-craft was being prepped to carry Philip Westwood and Alfred F. Jones, plus their security detail, back straight to Washington DC.

Security protocol meant the black SUV carrying Jones went first, because as far as the state and its agents had to be concerned, Phil was their main priority. God forbid anything happen to them on the state highway, but if it did the front car could behave like a decoy. Two agents and Jones in the first care, three agents and Phil in the second one.

It was dark and maybe Phil had forgotten what time exactly it was supposed to be outside. He'd been on the phone and lost in his e-mails and work documents since that hair-raising phone-call several hours ago. He knew he'd pissed off a lot of people and stepped on a lot of toes when he put his foot down about Jones, but he just couldn't let it go. It wouldn't have been right to let it go.

The interstate highway that carried them out where they needed to be was lit with the dark orange lights of an old construction project, green and blue signs announcing their exit before it appeared along the endless miles of gold four-lane freeway. A concrete barricade separated east and west bound traffic, and as Westwood looked out the heavily tinted glass to peer out at the dark trees whipping past them, he knew they were being suspended several meters in the air by the engineering. They were just skirting the edge of the city and the milky lights were bleeding through the orange glare, but no matter how quiet it was inside and how calm the world seemed beyond that industrial edge, things were getting dangerous.

"Is he swerving?"

The engine wasn't loud but the whole vehicle was humming with it, rumbling and vibrating with the shocks separating the passengers from the faults in the road. From his place in the backseat Phil looked up from where he'd been staring out the dark windows, and he pieced the words together when he saw the black SUV fifty yards ahead of them suddenly swerve before something terrible happened.

Their exit was coming up quickly, but when the other vehicle tried switching lanes Phil didn't understand how the simple maneuver turned into a sudden, violent twist that threw the back end of the SUV out. Maybe he really did hear the tires screaming over the pavement before they lost their grip all together. The roof spilled down and the machine showed its belly to the sky, and before Phil could stop himself he heard his voice yelling behind bullet-proof glass for someone or something to stop what he was seeing.

The driver slammed the breaks and he almost lost his seat completely before his seatbelt caught and slammed him back against the black padding. When their car fish-tailed over the dry road Phil felt his heart stop for a moment, but the tires grabbed the road again and put them straight before they finally came to a grinding halt.

"Shit!"

"No, what the fuck happened?"

How had that happened? What was the reason? It was a smooth road with no traffic, now slowly filling with smoke and exhaust from the totalled wreck in front of them. Broken glass was glittering on the road, pieces of twisted metal and the shreds of a blasted tire decorating the pavement. There was no way a freak accident like that-

"Is that-?" Movement from inside the totalled vehicle: a pair of hands that reached up into the cold night air from what looked like the back passenger window. "You're shitting me, that's-!"

Hands and arms connected to a blonde head and a sweat-stained teeshirt, handcuffs missing and strength restored to the point where the boy no one understood or wanted to trust pulled himself up on top of the wreck.

"Alfred…?" Phil breathed the name and somehow felt the attention of the young man standing there over broken glass and bent metal land on him.

It didn't make sense.

How had they crashed? Where were his bonds? Since when could a boy half-dead from fever hoist himself straight up and out of a wreck two federal agents hadn't stirred from yet? Their radio was silent and none of the agents around Westwood had spoken into their's yet, they were just dumbstruck, staring.

Alfred swung his arms and with a hop jumped from the shattered vehicle to the debris-laden ground, landing squarely on his feet and standing up straighter than Phil had seen him before.

As soon as the head agent in the seat in front of him popped open his door and screamed "Stop!" with one hand going for his side-arm, Phil felt his stomach hit the SUV floor. Alfred's ankle bonds had gone the same way as the chains around his wrists, but none of the agents in that car held the keys to open them.

He instantly realized that he'd made a mistake.

Because the boy with a Presidential bounty on his back took one long look at the agent advancing on him with a gun, bared his teeth, and ran.

"Attention all units, attention all units." The patrol radios on the dashboard of every state trooper and county police officer crackled.

"Accident on Highway 283 southbound, suspect escape in progress. Federal agents injured, please respond north of-"

Technical information and landmarks given, three, four sirens answer the call and peel off into late night traffic.

America wasn't stupid.

He could have his moments.

But when he made the decision in the tilted wreck to snap the chains that taunted him, it wasn't a mistake. Running wasn't a stupid idea, and neither was the heat: that energy the+ men around him hadn't been able to fight off, the confusion that scattered human senses and made them angry and rash and uncontrollable with a fighter's passion and a patriot's will.

He wouldn't do it again, but he didn't trust himself when he said that. His body was stronger for having given in, for making that change instead of laying back and waiting for the universe to sort itself out. He just wasn't laid-back enough for that kind of thing, he was too proactive for fate.

Taking the gun from the unconscious agent next to him did skirt the line of stupidity, but America chose to view it as a calculated risk. He was too headstrong for subtlety.

Should Alfred Fucking Jones go out with a bang?

Yes.

Yes he should.

So when America heard the shouts and two bullets fly wide of his position, he got a leg up on the concrete divide in the middle of the highway. Decades of parkour-training kicked in and took him straight up with his sneakers gripping the wall. As soon as he reached the height he missed his gloves, ripping the palm of his hand on the sharp stone as he straddled the high perch and twisted his body around, pulling the pilfered weapon from the strap of his pants where he'd dangerously stuffed it. He knew the tilt and lean of a standard CIA pistol and its FBI counterpart, so when he drew the side-arm and whipped it around, he knew neither shot he fired would hit.

But he still put two in the pavement, and a third one glanced off the black body of the SUV. It upgraded him to an Armed Felon and added assault with a deadly weapon to the list, and with that done he dropped towards the noise and danger of the east-bound lanes.

Let them come, they'd have to shoot across four lanes of traffic first.

"Attention all units, attention…

Suspect is on foot crossing westbound over 283. Suspect name: Alfred Jones. Description: white male, early twenties, blonde, white shirt and glasses. Backup requested by federal officers, all available units please respond."

America hit the other side and sprinted across four almost-empty lanes, playing a dangerous game with a semi-truck that came barrelling down on him with full lights and a blaring horn. As soon as he hit the safe edge he pitched the gun into the trees and vaulted the railing keeping pedestrians off the highway and away from the maintenance walk-ways. He wasn't far from the ground, but it was far enough not to leap it.

He could see the city lights and traveller comforts staining the night, running down rusty stairs and climbing over another fence with sweat coming down his face to chill his fevered skin. He charged from pavement into wild growth and tore his jeans on the barbed wire waiting for him when he got to that border.

Could he have just hidden there under the cover of wild bushes and noise-blocking trees? Of course. But America wasn't the kind to cower in the dark and hide when he had a point to make.

He tripped twice, fell once, nearly lost himself for good on the rocks and water of a creek the highway had adopted for rain run-off.

Up another chain link fence, this time without the barbs, and his feet hit shorn grass and city light.

It was two-hundred yards of open air before the first row of service stations, streetlights and the township beyond, and Alfred F. Jones took it at a run for America.

"Suspect responsible for multiple injuries to federal personnel: extensive military training, ex-army and prone to violent and erratic behavior. Civilian safety is top priority, suspect potentially violent: approach with caution."

Thirty seconds later:

"Suspect confirmed armed and dangerous."

With fifty yards to go at a dead run he heard the first sirens whining somewhere in the night, looking for the highway.

With twenty he saw the lights from a startled cruiser flash on at the nearest drive-through. America laughed through his teeth and shot himself at the nearest service door propped open for the May breeze. The siren chased him and he kept running.

"Dispatch, suspect sighted breaking west from the highway! Description is a match- he just bolted inside a local restaurant- we are in pursuit!"

The patrol car radios in what it sees, and the first of the two officers in the vehicle jumps out at a run to follow the madman.

White walls, white light, and the startled screaming voices of the part-time and under-paid.

One fry cook tried to stop him with words, another dove out of his way as the loud bellow of a county officer blasted through the back of the cramped and over-heated space.

Shortening his stride so he could move, America hit the counter with one hand and swung his legs out, a tray of tall fountain-drinks sacrificing itself in a spray of sugar and water that slicked up the floor with more shouts and startled screams. But he cleared the barrier, that was what mattered, and after that he went hoofing it over the grey linoleum to glass doors and freedom.

Actually, make that glass doors and more flashing lights.

Phil's world was spinning, and he wanted it to stop.

He wanted a reset, a do-over, a chance to sit down and figure out what the hell had happened in the space of fifteen minutes to make his headache turn into a full on disaster.

"Did you see how fast he moved?" He wasn't allowed to get any of that, because life didn't work like a videogame or a movie or a book: you couldn't just make a decision and go back to try again.

"An ambulance is on its way- look at these guys how the hell was he fine after that crash?" If anybody could do that, it would have been the driver from the totalled SUV, because he was still inside the mangled wreck and the rest of the agents knew better than to try moving him before an that ambulance could get here.

"What happened…?"

"Just stay calm, Jensen, you'll be fine." The lead agent was pissed with Phil's lousy decision and he knew it. But this couldn't have been Alfred's fault- that didn't make any sense.

But why had they crashed?

And how was he free?

And why the hell were they all just waiting around here?

"Which way did he go?" God help him, he was not going to stand around and do nothing. "Someone answer me: how the hell do I find him!?"

He hit the dark air and the bold arm held out to clothes-line him. Pain fired up his thigh as his sneaker caught the floor and the rest of his body tried moving forward without his head. He hit concrete and asphalt in a heap, but before the vigilante trying to stop him from running could say a word, America twisted his core and slammed his hands on the ground. His legs coiled up under him and he bounced to his feet, the world a mess of bright light and yelling voices as he had just enough time to see a county-officer and another gun before-

"Freeze!"

"No."

-he bolted all over again, and he heard a gunshot that shattered glass and sent teens and families screaming.

The reckless discharge gave him anger, and anger gave America strength, and he poured all of that into his legs with his arms pumping and the cold air beating his face. Parked cards and yellow painted lines shot past him and the angry sound of voices warbled through the dark, but he leapt over the hedge at the end of the lot and hit the pavement again on the other side.

There was no point sparing a glance before he barrelled straight through the next intersection, he just listened for the brakes screaming and horns blaring before he jumped one more time and felt the collision of his elbow on a hard windshield. The heat of the engine scorched his leg through his jeans and the hood of the silver car he slid over, but his feet found the ground again and he ran. He just ran.

Ran through the amber lights and ran when the red and blue started wailing again behind him. He ran and he ducked across more painted lines and a cyclist who swerved dangerously to avoid him, throwing himself into the dank shadows of an alleyway as the sirens rose in volume and he felt his world twisting between the smell of garbage and the flashing of police car lights.

His lungs had stopped hurting, his fever had stopped touching him: adrenaline got him to kick up a wall and jump with both arms up: he caught the bottom rung of a fire-escape ladder hitched up to the side of one of the buildings. The lock was good and didn't drop or try to impale him with a sudden fall, and when more shouting voices told him to get the fuck down and put his hands over his head, America grunted and forced one arm to bend while the other reached for the next rung up.

Repeat.

Repeat.

Bang- bang!

"Gun reform!" He shouted, flinching when one bullet ricocheted past his head after blasting the rusty metal where his hand just been. "Look it up!"

But he reached the platform. The rusted red steel shook and rattled as he let his wounded hand hold the rail and pull him up each flight of cramped steps all the way to the rooftop. He was only two stories up, and his options were limited, but he could already hear the clash and bang of someone pulling the ladder down properly.

The next rooftop was a leap of faith away.

America took that leap.

"Why does this kid mean so much to you?"

"Why doesn't he mean anything to you!?" Phil didn't have to wrestle for the keys to the SUV because their driver had left them in the ignition. What he had to fight with was the lead agent who pulled the driver's side door open as soon as he saw Phil climb inside and try to put the vehicle in gear. "Your people are injured, I get it: stay here and make sure they're taken care of but I-"

"-am going to stay here. Mr. Westwood this is not a joke."

"They're shooting at him!" He could hear it through the radio on the dash-board, he'd heard it come out of one of the agents' mouth while they spoke to each other on the highway with police cars and two ambulances scattered around them near the shattered body of the second SUV. County officers were firing guns at Alfred F. Jones, and it just scattered any other thoughts Phil tried to focus on. "If his life is some kind of joke to you then you're a sick fuck. The President's been shot, our allies hate us, the Free World is falling! If you think I'm not taking any of this seriously then think again: I'm taking the one thing I can fucking do seriously enough that if you don't either get in here or take two steps back, I will run you over and I will go to prison for it."

His declaration, as stupid and poorly phrased as it was, earned him a tense, unreadable stare-

"Move!"

"Yes, sir."

And complete co-operation as the agent shut the driver's side door, cut around in front of the SUV, and climbed into the passenger seat without another word.

Phil cranked the wheel, hit the accelerator, and they were off.

America was running out of faith.

But he had enough luck that when he straightened his body in mid-air to land on his back, he hit the contents of a dumpster, not the solid ground that would have brought tonight to an end he didn't want. The metal pieces that bit into the base of his neck between the shoulder blades was a small price to pay for a maneuver the men chasing him wouldn't repeat. The smell on his clothes as he grappled with the side of the dumpster and hoisted his body out was forgotten when he heard shouts overhead and another wailing siren.

Instead of breaking out onto the street again, another service door let him into the back of an office: the secretary screamed when he came running through the dark-lit space and passed a photocopier, coming out into the light of a small insurance brokerage and bolting through the front door. It put him around a corner and back on a major road, and as a large flat-bed truck came roaring by after pacing at a stop-light, America charged and threw himself at the sharp metal corner and tightly knotted cords of the vehicle's backside.

The truck didn't even lurch, but as the speed of traffic picked up and Alfred knotted his wrists in the thin ropes holding a tarp down over boxes and barrels, the sirens were confused but not far. He shimmied his way into the driver's blind-spot, but that didn't mean the car following them didn't suddenly lean on his horn as soon as he realized something completely wrong was happening in front of him.

The honking caused the truck to slow and speed up in confusion. When the back end started to swerve back and forth as the driver checked every mirror trying to figure out what the hell was going on, the white sedan America craned his neck around to see flashed its high-beams at him. The blinding white light made the truck honk back in frustration, and then before he was ready for it America felt his ride making a wide left turn that shook off the antagonizing little car.

It left him facing a lot of open asphalt under glowing highway lights again, the road bending up as they climbed onto an over-pass and the streets he'd just run through began to shrink into the darkness. It was impossible to relax with his legs cramped against the bumper of the truck, but at least he had a moment to catch his breath and get his plan back together.

The wind was loud and threatened to throw him off, his torn hand throbbing with pain from so much climbing and grappling. His lungs were shredded, his legs weak and numb with pain. He saw the back of a highway sign run over his head and felt the wind start to scream a little louder past his cold ears, but with only fifty yards of road between him and the next set of confused, flashing head-lights, jumping would have been a dangerous risk.

If he fell and he died, would that make him Alfred or America?

If he fell and he was only hurt, again, who would that mean he really was? If no one else could believe in what he knew was true, how was he so sure they weren't right. Maybe he really was insane? Alfred had carried the delusion 'I am America' with him every time he'd stepped through a cursed door parcelled with unbreakable windows and silent corridors. But what did America have to fear if he was just carrying around the delusion of Alfred's mortality?

He set his forehead down on the rough tarp trying to get his thoughts ordered and meaning straight, and came up with a simple answer to the question:

Fuck it.

"Is that-?"

"Speed up!"

Phil did speed up, and he broke eight rules of the road to do it through an intersection where he'd been about to turn right to get into the town proper and follow the scrambled shouts from frustrated country police about a reckless fugitive who kept running and vanishing without warning. When a truck carrying a load of covered cargo turned in front of him with a blond stowaway clinging to the back, he nearly caused a collision with a white sedan before trying to make sense of the lines on the road and the direction the truck was travelling in. As soon as the route became clear, Phil sped up.

A hundred yards between the two vehicles became seventy, became forty, became twenty, became-

Alfred jumped.

It wasn't a fall: he didn't slip down the back of the truck and get torn off of it by the road. His hands let go of the ropes and his legs pushed back against the bumper. When he turned in the air Phil swore for one split second he saw shock on Alfred's young face, eyes hovering over the polished hood of the car as the world completely froze-

And then with the lurch of a body passing under the front tires of the SUV, reality slammed into him and he felt himself screaming. He didn't know where to put his hands: on his face? In hair? On the wheel? He just screamed and stomped his foot first on the accelerator in panic, then the brakes and he felt the whole vehicle swerve and fish-tail. They zig-zagged across the lane before he wrapped his hands around the cold plastic, bending his shoulders into turning the wheel before finally mastering the engine to a terrifying halt.

"No- no, no!"

"Westwood-"

"Shut up!" Just shut up, oh God, he couldn't have just-

He popped his door open and almost killed himself by stepping down into the oncoming lane. Another driver swerving violently with a blaring horn and the agent jerking him back inside was what saved him from losing a leg as the wind blew his door shut. He had to just sit there, numb, for another five seconds waiting for an actual break in the late night traffic before trying again.

"Alfred!" He wasn't stopped this time, he reached the pavement and just ran back across almost fifty yards of distance between where the SUV had stopped and where the body was laying.

And he had to call it a body, a child's body, because he could see the dark stain on the asphalt and it was growing deeper and wider. His shoes just scuffed over the small bits of stray gravel and dust on the highway road, his tie blown back over his shoulder by the wind and his jacket coming off with several hard, struggling tugs between broken breaths and shattered words he was trying to say.

"No… no... no… Al, no…"

He was just lying there, and when Phil dropped onto his knees next to him he could smell the blood and exhaust. His tee-shirt was shredded down one side, road-burn weeping blood from his shoulder and arm. He was lying partially on his stomach with his arms still half-wrapped around him where he'd tucked them in hoping to roll away from the truck. His blond hair was matted from the sweat and the blood, and the red was still weakly dribbling out of a massive gash across the back of his skull. His neck was bent the wrong way, there were shards of bone jutting out of his collar, and his legs were twisted and limp on the ground.

There were tire marks on him for God's sake, and between hot breaths that felt like someone was behind him with their hands around his neck, Phil placed the jacket over the broken body praying it would help hide some of the damage.

There were headlights shining on them from another car that had turned to come this way up onto the highway and was now stopped by something Phil's mind was completely unable to cope with. There were flashing lights somewhere beyond those from a cruiser that had turned its siren off. Behind him he heard the agent calling for an ambulance, somewhere far away in the night a train whistle blew, and somehow with all of those distractions he still noticed when Alfred moved.

Jesus Christ, he moved.

"Al!" And he doubled right over the body, because he heard and saw the way his shoe scuffed against the road, and when he came down that close Phil was able to hear the dry rasp of shattered lungs trying desperately to take in air. "Al hold on! There's an ambulance on the way and they're gonna take good care of you! Alfred I'm sorry-!"

"Phi…" His hands- one of them was bleeding across the palm and the other was crushed from the SUV's tire, but he took the one that looked a little less mangled and tried to hold it. He told him not to speak, not to waste his strength on that and to just focus on breathing instead, but he still heard fragments of a voice try and reach him. "That you… Phil?"

"Good God, don't speak…" There had to be a way to help him, there had to be something more than holding his hand and moving to look at a half-skinned face mutilated by the road. He should have been able to do more than brush his hand back over those bloody locks of sweat-soaked hair, there should have been something that he could do-

"Phil… ru…" His voice sounded like a whisper coming through a long tube, it was broken and so weak, too painful and an effort that would kill him if he didn't stop… "Run… for me… Phil… run…"

"Run where?" He should have stopped himself from answering so Alfred wouldn't be encouraged to speak, but the haunting fear crept up on him like the cold air and said that if the boy fell asleep, he wouldn't wake up. "I can't carry you, Al, what are you asking for?"

"For me… a good guy… Phi… Phil Westwo… wood… should… for me…"

And then something strange happened. He felt it start in the tips of his fingers, and it crept up along the inside of his palm. He didn't know where it came from, but it was the hand holding Alfred's and he felt it moving slowly, creeping steadily over his wrist and slipping under the cuff of his shirt. When he tried to let go of Al's hand the boy just held on, and it was with a kind of strength that he shouldn't have had left in him after what had just happened.

"Alfred?"

"Run for me…" Did his voice sound… stronger? "That's… what I need…" And- moving?

"Stop! Stop, what are you doing?" He was rolling onto his stomach and somehow making his arms work. Their hands came apart but somehow Alfred's body was supported on his elbows. The act was impossible, but so was the clarity of his voice:

"I need you to run for me."

Impossible, like the milky white of his eyes.

"Al… fred…?" They weren't touching anymore but somehow he could still feel that something- that heat reaching over his shoulder and curling around his throat and chest, digging into the skin trying to get down into the muscles and burrow into his bones. The lights were the same but he was seeing things differently: he heard that train whistle blow again in the dark, but he was staring at a bruised, bleeding young face that had solid whites for eyes: no blue or black, not even red veins etched across them, just white.

And there was still blood on his clothes, but no bones, and his throat was so bruised it looked black: but not broken.

All of it impossible.

"Run for me." And then that voice, that phantom's voice, was almost enough to terrify him. Whoever this was was still kneeling on the ground, braced now on hands that should have been mangled and useless, staring past strands of sweaty, bloody yellow hair as everyone else who should have been around them seemed pushed to the edge of some unknown boundary.

"I don't understand-"

"You will." And then instead of hands and knees, that broken body was braced on fingertips and toes: likes a sprinter. They didn't break eye-contact and Phil found his heart beating louder, stronger in his chest and pumping that heat like adrenaline and cancer from the crown of his head down through his legs. It swept up everything in its path, and when he tried saying the name Alfred again he watched that road-burned face slowly bare its teeth at him.

The dismissive words of a man recently shot came to him:

An immortal man-child who people had seen shot, blown up and run over. Something like an angel with the strength of a devil and the innocence of a child paired with the cruelty of a murderer.

That train's whistle, so much louder and closer now than minutes before, screamed one more time in the dark and it sent that should-have-been-a-dead man charging towards the concrete divide between road and sky. They weren't very high up, but it was enough that the fall would kill someone who dove head-first like he did: and it would kill them even faster when Phil felt the structure holding him up shake with the passage of the train.

And all it took was one more moment, one more shadow of an instant before he finally realized that no one had ever said any of those things about Alfred F. Jones. They'd always meant-

"America!"

Take this face from me, God. I don't want it anymore.

I can't wear it anymore.

I don't own it anymore.

This face isn't mine, God: it belongs to someone we both know died a long time ago.

One day I will wither away and die, God. One day I will fall apart and my pieces will bring forth new life.

New names, new peoples, and new Nations.

But I'm not dead, God.

So take this face away from me, God, and give me back my true name:

-The United States of America.

Hiatus is over, and I think in two more Chapters, Recovery will be too.

My prose got kind of purple-y in this chapter? I'm not too sure what happened but god-damn, None Can Die is a song that just, wow. It's short but it's strong, and it kind of hurts too.

Alfred in this chapter came out a bit different from how I'd planned (first of all by being run over, which wasn't what I originally aimed for). He was supposed to make it onto the over-pass and then Phil was going to try and talk him down from jumping, only to fail and then have to deal on his own with the death of this kid and be like "jesus christ something needs to change how did the system let this happen".

Phil keeps coming out weaker than what I want, so hopefully the last two chapters will show that he really is just as worthy as Rossi of having a Nation's trust. To be fair at least, this was the first time I got to write the human side of when Nations pull the fate card. I was in England's perspective waaaaay back during the earthquake arc where he yelled at his boss, and in Romano's both for the tear-down of Seborga's Prince and then his "GO FIGURE SHIT OUT" mandate to Rossi.

This story is really fucking long, and I tend to forget that too sometimes. The earthquake was forever ago so please review! As always, it's an unparalleled pleasure to hear from people who've stuck with this story for so long!

Thanks, and see you soon!