"To be honest, General, no, I do not regret it," Ferb said.
"Well, I'll have to fix that," the general said as he entered the room. "You cost me a lot, you know. That idiot Riggins is in charge of Special Research Projects now."
"You were a fool to think I'd turn on my brother."
"You were a fool to go with him. I thought you loved your father more than that." The general nodded toward the door. "This way."
Ferb followed him out the door. The white hallway had two doors on each side, and one more at the far end from where Ferb came out. The general led him through the door at the end, which opened into a small lounge area. Doctor Tjinder was sitting on the couch, wearing a collar and knits similar to Ferb's. Behind him, a young woman with short blonde hair and a silver lieutenant's bar on her collar held a slave-control remote.
"Ferb, who is this, where are we, and why are we here?" Doc asked, confused. "The lieutenant here has been remarkably reticent."
"Doctor Tjinder, this is General Alexander Archer, in charge of Project Sledgehammer, the American version of Obelisk," Ferb said as General Archer looked on, amused.
"Oh, him. Okay," Doc said, nodding.
"Last I heard he'd been reassigned to Montana, so I'd assume that's where we are, and presumably he kidnapped us because whatever scientists he assigned to Sledgehammer can't tell their arse from their elbow without an anatomy chart," Ferb continued.
Archer snorted with amusement. "Kidnapping is such an awkward term. I prefer repatriated."
"I am a Canadian national," Doctor Tjinder noted. "Repatriating would involve sending me back to Canada. Or possibly India."
"Collateral damage," Archer dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand.
"An act of war," Ferb noted. "Not your first."
"Won't be my last, either," Archer said. "Son, I'm too far into this to back off now. I need Dewdrop-class soldiers within six months, and you two are going to give them to me."
"Or?" Ferb asked.
Archer looked at the young woman. "Lieutenant Knox, if you please?"
The lieutenant pushed a button, and Ferb felt a brutal shock from his collar. His world went black as all his senses were short-circuited by the agony around his neck.
And then, an eternity later, it stopped. Ferb felt his neck, certain that the skin would be burnt and flaking off, but it felt completely normal.
"Induction system. Leaves no marks, but hurts like hell," Archer said. "So, if you two gentlemen will follow me, I'll show you to your lab."
"Okay. Do we have any idea where they might have taken Ferb and Doc?" Phineas asked.
They'd gathered in the base's conference room to try to plan what to do next. Lieutenant Colonel Scott sat at the head of the table as base commander. Captain Desjardins sat next to him, as commander of the platoon handling security and volunteers for upgrades. Across the table, Colin and Isabella represented the Obelisk-enhanced individuals. Next to Captain Desjardins, Vanessa represented Doofenshmirtz Biosciences as Doc's employer. Phineas held down the foot of the table, nominally representing DRDC.
"Security is still trying to figure out how they got out of the country, but they're fairly sure they did somehow," Colonel Scott said. "Once they track that down, it should help us figure out where they went afterwards."
"Let's look at it from the other end," Vanessa said. "Where are the likely destinations?"
"Do you think General Archer was responsible? He's not in charge of Special Research Projects any more," Colonel Scott said. "A General Riggins took over shortly after you defected."
"Riggins isn't ambitious enough to try something like this," Phineas said. "And Archer would want to get his own back. I suspect he kept Sledgehammer for himself."
"Sledgehammer being...?" Colonel Scott asked.
"American version of Obelisk," Phineas said.
"Which is...?" Colonel Scott gestured him to continue.
"Codeword classified," Captain Desjardins said, embarrassed.
The colonel sighed deeply. "Of course. Not like I'm supposed to know what the hell is going on on my own base."
"Sorry," Phineas said.
"Okay. So, we'll assume that General Archer has kidnapped these two scientists for use on this Project Sledgehammer?" the colonel said.
"That seems reasonable," Isabella said. "Do we know where Archer is?"
"Last I heard, he was at Fort Harrison in Montana," Phineas said.
"That's just across the border, isn't it?" Colin said.
"Maybe?" Phineas said. "Geography was never my strong point."
"Five hundred kilometers, almost due south," Captain Desjardins said.
"Okay. So we need to sneak across...what, three hundred kilometers of American soil, retrieve two people, and sneak back to safety in Canada?" Phineas said.
"That's assuming we're going to go get them," Colonel Scott said.
"Can we afford to leave them there?" Vanessa asked. "I mean, they're two of the top researchers in the country, both working on projects critical to national security. I can put Doofenshmirtz Financial's resources behind whatever we need," Vanessa added.
"I'll provide whatever needs to be invented to make it work," Phineas said.
"I'm willing to go in," Isabella said.
"I'm not quite 100% yet, but I'll go too," Colin added.
"The problem isn't that, it's getting whatever team gets sent across hostile territory, and then finding the targets once you arrive," Captain Desjardins said. "Without getting caught and causing an international incident."
"And that's assuming that this whole guess is right that they're at Fort Harrison to begin with," the colonel said. "I'd like to get that confirmed before we make any rash decisions."
"Okay. Let me see what I can do to get you that information," Phineas said.
The compartment Holly had been placed in opened with a *click*, and the door opened. She'd been led into the back of a truck, and placed in a small compartment toward the front of the cargo area. It had a chemical toilet and a light panel, and not much else. The truck had then driven for several days, she thought - she'd had no way to keep track of time except for when they'd stopped the truck every few hours. She assumed it was so the driver had a chance to eat; whenever it happened, another MRE got dropped in through an air vent at the top.
She was surprised that nobody had tried to rape her; she'd known enough slaves to realize how common that was for anyone wearing a collar. She suspected it was because she knew too much, and the Council wanted to keep her away from anyone she could talk to.
She remembered General Archer saying he'd been transferred to Montana, so she suspected that was where she had ended up. The door swung open the rest of the way, and she shaded her eyes from the bright sunlight behind the person opening the door.
"This way, slave," the guard said in a rough voice. Still shading her eyes, she stumbled toward him. Her legs were wobbly from not being able to walk much for the past few days. "Turn around," he said. She turned, and felt the handcuffs ratchet down on her wrists. He fastened them as tight as they'd go, cutting into her skin, and she grimaced silently.
He spun her around, clipping a leash to her collar, and gave it a tug. She blinked at the bright light and stumbled after him, still in the soft pajamas they'd put her in when she'd been captured. He led her on to a ramp that led down to ground level. She followed him down, her bare feet hurting against the cold, sharp metal tread of the ramp. She hissed softly from the pain.
The garage the truck was parked in was small and dark, and as she came out, the doors rolled down. They closed with a clang, and now she found herself peering into the darkened room. The guard tugged on her leash again, and she followed him to an unmarked door to one side.
"Where...?" she started to ask.
"Don't," the guard said. "I've been ordered to ignore any questions you ask, and shoot you if you try to tell me anything. Just keep quiet, and we're both happier."
Holly nodded, keeping her mouth shut as he knocked on the door. It had a palmprint reader next to it, but no other indication of what it was.
After a moment, a short young Caucasian woman in Army fatigues with a silver lieutenant's bar on her collar opened the door. "This the new one?" she asked the guard.
"I don't know anything. They told me to get her out of the truck and bring her to you," he said. "Now she's your problem."
"Noted. Thank you, corporal. You, follow me," she said to Holly, taking the leash.
Holly followed her through the door. The hallway beyond it was sterile white, and smelled of cleaning chemicals. Sounds seemed oddly muted, as if they were afraid to echo. A door sat across from this one, another immediately to her left at the near end, and one far to the right at the other end.
"Welcome to Sanford West," the lieutenant said, turning to her and unclipping the leash. "You can speak freely in here, as long as you do it respectfully. Everyone you find in here falls into two categories - either they're affiliated with the Council, or they're another slave like you."
"Meaning they crossed the Council and are never leaving here alive," Holly said.
"Got it in one. I'm Lieutenant Knox, I'm in charge of keeping those of you down here healthy until the Council's done with you. Work with me, and I'll be the best friend you could have." She turned and looked Holly in the eye, having to look up to do so. "Cross me and you'll regret it for the rest of your short, miserable life. Got it?"
"Yes, ma'am," Holly said.
"Good. I'm glad we can come to an agreement on that. Turn around."
Holly turned around, and she felt the handcuffs jerk a bit as they were unlocked. She rubbed her wrists in gratitude.
The lieutenant swiped a card across the reader on the door at the near end of the hall, then pressed her palm to the pad. The door clicked, and she swung it open.
"The doors are all secure," the lieutenant said. "You won't get them open without my cooperation. Don't try."
"Noted," Holly said.
The lieutenant swung the door open, gesturing Holly inside. A small lounge awaited, with a small television and two worn couches. A pale, middle-aged man in a loose knit outfit like Holly's sat on the couch drinking a glass of water; a collar around his neck indicated which category he fell into.
"Erik, this is Holly, she's going to be joining you," the lieutenant said.
Erik looked up and nodded to Holly. "Thanks, Kimmy," he said.
"Lieutenant Knox," the lieutenant said testily.
"Is that any way to treat your old Uncle Erik, Kimmy?"
The lieutenant rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Show her where everything in here is," she said. "I'll be back to grab the two of you for testing in an hour." Muttering to herself, she badged back through the door, closing it firmly behind her.
Chuckling to himself, Erik levered himself up off the couch. "Erik Bailey. Nice to meet you. What'd you do to piss off our malevolent overlords?" He extended a hand toward her.
Holly shook his hand; his grip was firm and confident. "Recorded Mayor Abercrombie and General Archer confessing to the Danville bombing, and the Council setting up the war so they could bring back slavery. Then sent the recording to the Anti-Slavery Front."
Erik whistled in appreciation. "Nice. Wish I'd had that sort of evidence."
"Why are you here? Wait, did you say Erik Bailey? They mentioned you on the recording..."
"Long story," he said. "Let me show you around." He nodded toward one of the two doorways leading out of the room.
"We've got time," Holly said, heading toward the door. Beyond was a small L-shaped hallway.
"Good point. I suppose I can talk while we walk." Five doors came off of the small hallway. "Four bedrooms. I'm in #2, you're in #1. It's just the two of us in here at the moment. If you want to move to another one, I don't think they'll object."
Holly looked into #1. It was a small room with a bed and a small dresser. Inside the dresser were more outfits like the one she had on. A desk held a computer screen and keyboard.
As she inspected the room, Erik talked. "I worked for the Council. Was one of the local heads for Southwest."
"They said you were responsible for Santa Fe."
He paused, sighing deeply. "Yeah. Not my first mistake, but my worst."
"Why are you here, then?"
"Well, when the Mexicans took Los Angeles, the Council lost a lot of its top political leaders in the Southwest. We were getting a lot of pushback on the slavery laws, and I could see which way the local winds were going, so I bailed on the Council and helped Southwest stay free the best I could. There were...other reasons, too. And when we lost, they decided to punish me for apostasy."
"You knew where the bodies were buried, then."
"Pretty much. And I'm lucky one of them wasn't mine." He headed back out the door. "Bathroom's at the end of the hall. We all share one."
"So we just hang around here?" she asked, following him.
"That's what the other side is for. This way," he said, leading her across the lounge and through another door. "Dining area in there," he pointed at a small nook off the hallway with a small table and four chairs, "but I usually just eat in front of the TV. Kim brings us meals, usually. They don't trust us with anyone who isn't fully briefed on the Council, and there aren't many of those here, really. Usually it's just Kim and Alex. Kim's lowest on the totem pole."
"How did a fresh lieutenant end up involved?" Holly asked.
"Her parents were Council leaders in Columbia, instrumental in the military takeover there." He gestured to the other doors in the hallway. "Spare bedding and towels in there, laundry machines behind there. No maid service, so it's all self-serve."
"And the door on the end?"
"That leads to the research labs here in lovely Sanford West, and through them to the other slave pen. This is the test subject side, that's the researcher side. A couple new ones came in recently, slaves this time, kidnapped from Canada. I'm actually surprised the last couple researchers didn't end up on this side wearing collars, to be honest. They were pretty pathetic. But they had friends in high places, or they wouldn't have been cleared to be in here at all."
"So do we go through?"
"Only when Kimmy tells us to."
"Is there a reason you call her Kimmy, instead of Lieutenant Knox?"
"I'm her godfather, actually. Her parents were good friends of mine before Shatter Day."
Holly paused, staring at him for a moment. "Seriously?"
"Oh, yes. Quite." He gestured back toward the lounge. "Should we sit while we wait for Kimmy to get back?"
"Sure." She followed him back and took a seat on one of the couches. He reached over and turned off the TV before sitting on the other.
"So," he said, "I knew Abercrombie and Archer were involved in Danville - it was obvious, since they 'just happened' to be there for recovery afterwards. That was part of the plan, actually. The folks who executed each attack would help with recovery until they were recalled to their posts. Same thing I did in Santa Fe. Made for good PR and it acted as cover for what we'd done. What else did they talk about that you recorded?"
"That they were both with the Council, and the whole goal had been slavery. Why is it the Council of Sanford, anyway?"
Erik looked oddly proud as he answered. "The winner of the most infamous Supreme Court case in history. Dred Scott vs. Sandford - it was misspelled, the owner's name was Sanford."
"So what was the deal with Nathan Hale's Liberators, then?"
"They were an existing group that we co-opted. Hale was Revolutionary War era, 'I regret that I have but one life to give for my country.' They were built around the idea that they might die but their beliefs would live on. Oh, they were really pretty horrible people. They made good fall guys, though, and since we controlled enough of the people investigating the attacks, we could point them appropriately. A whole bunch of assholes who wanted to establish a dictatorship in the name of Freedom."
"As opposed to the Council?"
Erik laughed. "Well, sort of. We were assholes who wanted to establish a dictatorship in the name of Being In Charge and Owning People. We were at least honest about what kind of assholes we were."
"To each other, at least."
"Anyway, I helped guide the little Northwest faction into Southwest in the consolidation. I was a Senator from Oregon for a while, and was getting ready to introduce the Servants for Loyal And Valued Entrepreneurs Act when Mexico got word of it."
Holly frowned at the acronym. "SLAVE Act? Seriously?"
"We figured subtlety was a bad idea, that we'd just go forward boldly and let people push back to what we wanted. We actually didn't figure we'd get full chattel slavery of POWs, to be honest. The goal was more that suitably-connected individuals could lease them for a while. But Central passed full-on slavery right off the bat, and then Dixie and Columbia followed. Everyone on the Council was surprised."
"So what happened with the SLAVE Act?"
"Some folks started talking about classifying being in the country illegally as treason, and thus an enslavement offense. Mexico saw the writing on the wall, and Mexican-Americans in southern California figured out pretty quickly that there would be a lot more collars on brown necks than pink. So the Mexican army came in and took the southern chunk of the state in the name of protecting their own. Problem was, a lot of the folks we had used to get power were in LA at the time, and were captured. Even the ones who got away lost their power base. So I never even introduced the bill. Instead, I started work on keeping Southwest separate. Pissed the Council off, but they couldn't touch me. I sponsored a bunch of research. Most of it was crap."
"Just most?"
"You'll see. Some of it is what they're working on on the other side."
There was a quiet beep outside the lounge door, and then a *click* as it unlocked. Lieutenant Knox swung it open and gestured down the hall. "Time to get ready for some research, folks," she said.
Ferb poked at the lab instruments. They were all top-of-the-line, but still nowhere near as good as the ones they'd built in Suffield.
"I have no idea how they expect us to recreate the Obelisk implants de novo," Doc said, idly flipping through the controls for a nanobot programmer. "I mean, it was one thing to replicate them with a working example sitting in the scanner bay. It is another thing entirely to recreate them from scratch."
"Well, if somebody hadn't encrypted all his research before he left, you'd have more to work with," General Archer said as he wandered into the room.
Ferb gave him an unamused look. "It's the same raw data. It's not like there's that much missing."
"Principle of the thing," Archer said. "Time to meet your test subjects. You even know one of them, Fletcher."
Ferb raised an eyebrow.
The door into the other half of the slave pen unlocked with a *click*, and Lieutenant Knox gestured two people in. The first was a pale man with a full head of greying hair. Just behind him was Holly, who was certainly not a person Ferb would have expected to see here. He saw that she, too, wore a collar, and wondered just what she'd done to deserve that.
"Your two test subjects. Holly you already know, obviously. And this is Erik Bailey, formerly of the Southwest Senate."
"Ferb?" Holly asked, confused. "I thought you got away to Canada."
"The long arm of justice can sometimes reach even that far north," General Archer said.
"He was even willing to kidnap a Canadian citizen to make it happen," Ferb noted.
"I do not think that was a wise move, to be honest," Doc said, lurking behind Ferb.
Archer shrugged. "It's done now. So, here's the deal. I'm not sure how far you've gotten on your Canadian version of Sledgehammer. But I figure you've got enough worked out so that you can get a working implant of some sort within a few weeks. Whichever kind you want. I'm not fussy."
"Or?" Ferb asked.
The general pulled a slave remote out of his pocket. "We can be persuasive."
Ferb shrugged. "Torturing someone into being creative is rarely effective."
"I'm aware of that, actually, Fletcher," General Archer said. "But, you're not the one I was planning to use this on." He tapped on the screen, and Holly and Erik dropped to their knees, clutching their collars. Holly's face was a silent rictus of pain, as Erik screamed. After a moment, Archer lifted his finger, and the screaming stopped. Holly glared at him as Erik leaned forward, steadying himself on his hands.
"Now, it's simple, Fletcher," Archer said smugly. "You can help us with our research, or your experimental subjects here will suffer. It's all up to you."
"Fuck you, General," Holly said, standing up and glaring at Archer. "Don't do it, Ferb. I can take whatever this asshole can dish out."
"It's far from the worst they've done to me," Erik said, pushing himself back up to his knees. "To hell with him."
General Archer's eyebrows rose. "Really. You'd do that for him?"
"No, Alex," Erik said. "I'd do it just to spite you."
"Not, perhaps, the wisest move you've made, Erik," Archer said. "But if you'd always made wise moves, you wouldn't be here with a collar around your neck." He blipped the remote briefly, making Erik yell. "Lieutenant Knox, take the subjects back to their quarters, and then meet me in my office."