Hey, y'all. This chapter was getting really long, so instead of taking a month to polish the whole thing, I've cut it in half. Part Two will be published soon, hopefully within a week. Enjoy!

Hugh stuck his hands in his trouser pockets as they stopped on the sidewalk outside the courthouse.

"Wow," the lawyer said simply.

"Yeah," Beth agreed.

"Never seen somebody lose it in front of a judge like that."

"He's used to winning," she explained. "Not getting what he wants is … a foreign concept."

Hugh raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Foreign concepts make him throw furniture?"

"Being angry makes him throw furniture. Being surprised means he didn't have a chance to edit his behavior for an audience."

"Ah."

Beth could feel him looking at her. She kept her eyes on the beautifully-landscaped park across from the courthouse. Normally it was open to the public. Today it was patrolled by security drones outfitted with anti-recording technology.

"He's more unstable than I thought," the lawyer commented eventually.

"Yup," she confirmed.

"And strong. Freakishly strong."

Beth shrugged. "People don't realize how much grip strength it takes to control a racecar."

More silence.

"I know a guy," Hugh said out of nowhere.

She tried smiling. "So do I. Lots of 'em."

Even though the drones made recording impossible, Hugh lowered his voice. "I mean I know a guy who helps people disappear. Start over."

"Like witness protection?"

"A lot like that, yeah. He could set you up with a new identity. New look, new name, new place. You could pick somewhere sunny, with lots of libraries. And I could … meet you there."

"Hugh …"

He spoke faster, like he was trying to get the words out before she stopped him. "We could have coffee. Get to know each other as regular people, without all this." He waved a hand to indicate the courthouse, the people in it, the drones trying to protect her court-mandated privacy, the press held at bay half a mile distant by police barricades. "Give it some thought. I know it's a lot to consider."

She could not help but be skeptical. There was no reason to think he would be as interested once she'd had her "enhancements" removed. "Ask me again when I've had the implants taken out. And my old nose back." And her eye color. And her real mouth shape. And, and, and….

"I'd like to meet the real Beth," he said with a hint of the stubbornness that made him such a good lawyer.

"Lizzie." There. She'd said it. The first person she'd told. The name drifted freely, like an invisible feather on the breeze.

"Sorry?"

"I've decided I want to be called 'Lizzie' when this is over. It's stronger. I like the 'Z' sound. The 'th' in Beth makes the name fade away at the end. It's soft. 'Lizzie' is strong." She straightened up. "I want to be Lizzie."

"It suits you. Changing your last name too?"

"Definitely. Maybe not back to my maiden name. I might take the opportunity to meet 'that guy you know', so I'd pick something else in that case. Like one of my grandparents' names. O'Hara, or Khalid. Something like that."

" 'Khalid'," Hugh suggested. "Definitely 'Khalid'."

"Why's that?"

He smiled with genuine warmth. "It means 'everlasting'."

She also dared a small grin as they started walking again. " 'Elizabeth Everlasting'. I like the sound of that."

His dark eyes twinkled. "I'm looking forward to 'Lizzie Khalid'."

"Me too," she said, tucking a strand of straight blonde hair behind her ear. She hadn't started growing it out yet.

They rounded the corner to his car, and stopped dead in their tracks at the same moment.

The glossy red paint was marred with long scratches, gouged down to bare metal by a hand that had been shaky with powerful emotion.

WHORE, the passenger side accused in huge letters. And in smaller scratches across the hood: burn in hell, you lying bitch.

"Sorry," Beth heard herself say flatly. "One of his groupies must have gotten past the patrols."

Hugh's voice was smooth and quiet, but with an undertone that said it took considerable effort to keep it that way.

"Let's … take a cab."

Before the taxi-cab could morph into his repainted car with the tampering device installed, Lizzie woke, choking on a cry of warning. Her arms convulsively closed around the barrel-shaped dog in her arms.

Charlie wriggled his stout frame happily, demanding to be cuddled like a body pillow. He nudged her chin with his black-and-pink nose. She squeezed him until he grunted.

"...'yers 'kay?" she managed to ask through the haze of sedatives.

Vincent's plaid shirt glowed blue and yellow in the light of a single lamp in her dark bedroom. He put down his paperback copy of A Fine and Pleasant Misery and came over to kneel beside the bed.

"Ayers is okay," he assured her, brushing a coil of dark hair away from her eyes. "Not even a bruise. He'll be back in the morning."

She made a small, relieved sound and fell straight back to sleep.

In the ARC control room, Catherine had been given access to every functional video feed that NORAD was monitoring in Detroit, trying feverishly to differentiate between seventeen nearly-identical hellscapes and find The Slayer, who had moved away from the portal too fast and on a path too unpredictable for the ARC to easily locate him. MESA's virtual intelligence algorithms were doing their best to sift through the visual input, but the marines had been wearing plate armor in a mossy green similar to The Slayer's colors. Finding one living person among the scattered body parts from ten thousand corpses was proving more difficult and upsetting than anyone could have anticipated.

'How the hell does NORAD look at this carnage every day, in Hellified Zones all across the continent?' Ross wondered. 'They must have a Trauma Machine of their own to put their command center personnel through.'

"Dang it, MESA," Catherine said after determining for the twentieth time that what the VI had found was not a living Slayer but a marine corpse being dragged by a demon, "stop giving me false positives."

I am sorry, Ms. Charbonneau, the VI intoned, it has only been my intent to locate The Slayer for you, not to cause you distress.

"Fine, fine," she grumbled, uncharacteristically flustered by two dozen repeats of having her hopes dashed. "Stop searching. Martin can perfect your algorithms later. This time we'll find him ourselves."

Ross leaned against the console next to her. "He might not be visible through all the demon bodies."

"Huh?" Catherine asked sharply, trying to focus.

"I mean he's probably under a dog-pile of demons attempting to bury him. I bet they're trying to stack enough weight on top of him that he can't move."

She gave him a glance that was almost admiring. "Look for a big mound of demons trying to smother something? That's clever."

Ross struggled not to blush, a problem he'd never had when Jessie complimented him, even back when he'd had a crush on the tall blonde. "Thanks." He left hastily and went over to Martin.

"Martin, can you refine MESA's visual search algorithms to differentiate The Slayer from a marine corpse? It's popping up with a lot of false positives and Catherine's having to look for him manually."

"Don't you mean 'visually'?" Darren said from his console next to Martin. " 'Manually' means 'with your hands'."

"Yeah, I should have said, 'without computer assistance' instead."

"I knew what you meant," Martin assured him placidly. "I'll start right away."

Oppenheim narrowed his eyes at the programmer from his arms-folded stance in the middle of the room. "Don't forget to keep pinging your mother for a phone call."

Martin pointed to a corner of his screen. "She's got me on hold." He paused for a moment. "That could go on for days until she finally agrees to talk to me."

"Don't give up, Mr. Mixom."

"Yes, sir."

"I think I found him!" Catherine said excitedly.

Ross and Oppenheim came back to her. She used a digi-pen to circle a two-story-high pile of demons. As they watched, the pyramid of squirming demonflesh abruptly dropped several feet, like a game of Tetris viewed from the outside instead of in cross-section.

Ross smiled in satisfaction. "He's in there. Cutting them off at the roots."

"That looked like a bomb going off underground," Oppenheim remarked, stroking his chin. After seeing a second such buried explosion, Oppenheim called to Darren, "Mr. Wright!"

"Yeah, Doc?"

Oppenheim blinked at him, unamused.

"I mean … Yes, sir?" Darren amended.

"Get The Slayer some more grenades."

"Yes, sir." Darren turned back to his console to begin the drone's journey from White Sands to Detroit after loading up with whatever experimental grenades Bailey and Tucker had lying around.

A high-up monitor flashed, requesting their attention. Catherine turned on its speakers.

"Director Oppenheim," said the NORAD controller she had been coordinating feeds with. "President Georgiou is now available."

"Thank you, Lieutenant."

The woman nodded and ceded her seat to the president, who looked like he had been rousted from a much-needed nap.

"Director," the country's leader said in greeting.

Oppenheim nodded back. "Mr. President."

"Doc!" Darren called out. "White Sands won't release the experimental grenades without some high-up authorization. Can you come over here and tell Bailey to cough up the goods?"

Oppenheim's eye twitched once in irritation. He was fine with "Doc Opp" being his nickname among the ARC personnel, but he did not permit them to call him that directly. "One moment, Mr. Wright." He bowed slightly to the president. "Mr. Georgiou, may I leave you with Mr. Friedmann and Ms. Charbonneau for a few moments?"

The president looked up from his notes. "Charbonneau? As in: Toussaint Charbonneau?"

"Yes, sir," Catherine said in a neutral tone. Ross knew her well enough now to tell she was downplaying something. "He is one of my ancestors."

Georgiou put his digi-pen flat on his desk and eyed Oppenheim.

"The heir to the Mixom fortune, the empress's nephew, and now Sacagawea's great-great-granddaughter?" His voice turned hard. "Is there a reason you are collecting minor royalty, James?"

Martin, Ross and Catherine all protested at the same time, talking over each other.

"– brother's actually next in line –"

"– and my mother were childhood friends –"

"– Shoshone don't have royalty –"

"– no talent for business –"

"– avoid any appearance of favoritism –"

"– many generations ago –"

"Enough!" Oppenheim's bellow cut through their babble, shocking them with his rare loss of composure. "Do not interrupt the President of the United States while he is having a conversation!"

"Yes, sir," they chorused quietly. Martin glued his eyes to his screen. Ross folded his hands meekly. Catherine focused even more intently on her work.

"Ahem." Oppenheim's voice returned to normal. "Yes. 'Minor royalty', as you have put it, are typically offered the best educational opportunities. If they are also naturally clever, the result of the enhanced education is a genius or something very close to it. An intellectual birthright, you might say."

"Hm. 'Born with a silver spoon in their mouths'?" Everyone knew that Georgiou had grown up in the slums of Philadelphia, and subsequently clawed his way out of them.

The ARC's minor royalty looked anywhere but the vid screen.

The director smiled politely, refusing to be baited. "More of a 'silver textbook in their hands', if I might alter the phrasing. This research organization," Oppenheim emphasized, "neither accepts nor solicits any 'gifts' from their respective dynasties, or pays them less than anyone else in the Diamond wage scale because they don't need the money. We value them for their rarified expertise in programming, analysis and communications, not their bloodlines."

"I'm not blood-related," Ross began to mumble.

"Friedmann …" Oppenheim warned without turning his head.

"Sorry, sir."

"Neither do we afford them additional security details than their co-workers receive."

"We have security details?" Ross blurted out in surprise.

"Friedmann."

"Shutting up now, sir."

"We'll return to this topic later, Director," Georgiou said more amiably. "They tell me you've located The Slayer, who for some reason has decided to join the battle in Detroit."

"Not just any reason," Ross interjected before he could think about it. "Because the director asked him to."

The president's eyebrows shot up almost into his disheveled hairline. "He takes orders now?"

Oppenheim shook his head. "He took a request, for the first time. I wouldn't count on a repeat."

"What made him take your request, Director?"

"VEGA's program is stored in his suit, as you know. Today we had initial contact with part of VEGA, who was permitted by The Slayer to tell us that in whatever time and place he comes from, he was once a marine."

"Thus, always a marine," the president finished the phrase, nodding.

"Yes, sir. When I told him there were marines fighting in Detroit who needed his help, he went immediately back to White Sands, and redirected the Slipgate portal to somewhere in Detroit. We have just located a cluster of demons we believe is attempting to keep The Slayer pinned down." Oppenheim smiled coldly. "It is not going well for them."

"Camera view 'Traffic-335', Mr. President," Catherine supplied with her usual politeness. "The big mound in the upper right corner."

"The one that's getting smaller?"

"Yes, Mr. President."

"Did I hear your drone pilot requesting grenades?"

"Yes, sir," Oppenheim answered. "We think that's what he's using to thin out the pile when it gets too heavy to swing his sword arm or reload his weapons."

"I'll take care of it." The video feed changed to the Seal of the President of the United States while he had his private conversation with White Sands.

Oppenheim dragged Ross a slight distance away by his shirtsleeve.

"What are you doing?" the director demanded.

"Sir?" Ross asked in confusion.

" 'Not just any reason. Because the director asked him to.' " Oppenheim quoted. "What was that?"

"Umm…." Ross dithered.

Oppenheim asked bluntly, "Why are you kissing my ass in front of my boss?"

"I just … thought …"

Oppenheim scowled. "Thought what?"

"Thought it might make you feel better."

The director's dark expression evaporated, replaced by genuine surprise. "Make me feel better?"

"Yeah, you know, like … having one's accomplishments acknowledged is a good feeling. Persuading The Slayer to do something he hadn't planned on is nothing to sneeze at." He shrugged, feeling more embarrassed than when Catherine had complimented him.

"And you …" Oppenheim puzzled through this train of logic, "wanted the president to know that you're not the only one capable of persuading The Slayer?"

Ross nodded. "But mostly because it might cheer you up."

The director stared at him incredulously, for so long that Ross started getting nervous. Finally Oppenheim said, "You're something else, you know that?"

"Sir?"

"Samuel Hayden does not share fame, and he does his best to instill that same attitude in all of his subordinates. That's what makes the UAC so difficult to deal with; they're all self-centered glory-hogs who'll stab each other in the back at the first opportunity. And they definitely don't give away an advantage to 'cheer someone up'."

"Well … obviously not all of them are like that." Ross waved a hand to indicate himself, Jessie, Darren and Sandeep, who had come with him from UAC Switzerland.

Oppenheim said thoughtfully. "Maybe that's why he let you go."

Ross opened his mouth to ask what that meant, but the president came back up on the screen above Catherine's station.

"He'll have his grenades delivered by Wright's drone shortly," the president was saying. "And you can pick up more from a nearby weapons depot. Here are the coordinates."

"Thank you, sir," Oppenheim responded.

"Uh, Mr. President?" Ross raised his hand like a schoolboy with a question.

The president's tired eyes crinkled at the corners. "Yes, Mr. Friedmann?"

"Why are the marines here? I thought Detroit had been evacuated."

"We have to retake the heavy munitions factory," he said. "It's the only functional one left in North America. The military can't fight these things hand-to-hand like The Slayer. Even if he were willing to be deployed where we ask, when we ask, he can't be everywhere at once. There are over three hundred Hellified Zones in North America."

Ross guessed that each of those had been a city with a population over 100,000. Continuing the president's thought, he said, "So even if he spent only an hour in each one, it would take him more than twelve days to reach them all. And it would still leave the rest of the world undefended, Slayer-wise."

Oppenheim added, "Plus, twelve days is more than enough time for the enemy to undo whatever good he's done."

"Yes," the president confirmed. "The Slayer is unquestionably a valuable asset, but in a war of attrition, he is just one man. An exceptional man, granted, but a solitary one." He set his mouth in a grim line. "We can't win this by simply putting The Slayer on the front line. There are too many front lines for an individual to make a lasting difference."

"That's why you haven't been pushing harder for him to join the fighting," Ross realized. "You want the tech he can create, not his brute strength."

Oppenheim and the president locked eyes. The director shrugged with a slight smile. "I told you he'd figure it out eventually."

"So you did, director."

Ross wasn't sure he liked the implications that The Slayer's presence would no longer be tolerated once he'd produced whatever winning strategy they were waiting for.

"Sir, can't we just rebuild the heavy munitions factory elsewhere?"

"We have," the president replied. "The demons demolish the new ones before they can be finished. We are building others at high elevation, but it takes the builders time to acclimate to the reduced oxygen levels up there, and hauling materials up a mountainside while under attack is harder than it sounds. My logistics experts estimate that if we do not retake Detroit, there will be a gap of five weeks this fall when the militaries of North America are completely out of ammunition. No bullets. No rockets. No grenades. No bombs. We'll be fighting with bows and arrows."

"Five weeks!" Darren blurted out what they were all thinking. "We'll be dead in five weeks if we can't shoot back!"

"Precisely. So if you were wondering why we've thrown forty thousand marines into the meat grinder currently known as Detroit: there is your answer."

More uncomfortable realizations forced themselves onto Ross: why was Denver the only place that the president wouldn't try to build a munitions factory? Why would he rather sacrifice tens of thousands of men and women, and risk running completely out of ammunition, rather than put something valuable inside the safest city on the planet?

"Where are they?" Ross asked, partly to distract himself before his thoughts showed on his face. "I see a lot of bodies, but no moving soldiers. No functional tanks, or mechs." He drifted closer to Catherine's split-screen. "I only see demons. Where are the thirty thousand who are still alive?"

"Guerilla tactics," answered the president. "A city made for six million people has a lot of places to hide. Mostly we lure the demons into traps. Either funnel them into minefields we've set up by night, or lure demons of opposite species together. They naturally fight each other when there are no human targets visible. Then we snipe the survivors."

"That's genius," Catherine said with a smile. "You get them to duel each other, and only have to take out the victor."

Georgiou looked to one side, nodded to acknowledge someone, and said, "Director, The Slayer's unexpected diversion is giving us an opportunity to push through to the munitions factory, and we are going to take it." He leaned forward for emphasis. "Please – and I cannot stress this enough – please keep him away from the factory. We want that machinery intact, and valuable things tend to blow up, melt down or explode when he is in the vicinity."

"Understood, Mr. President. Godspeed." The archaic phrase had been making a comeback recently.

"Godspeed to you as well, Director. Lieutenant Bautista will take over on my end. Let her know if you have a message for us."

"Yes, sir."

Lieutenant Bautista replaced the president, and put herself on mute until needed.

" 'Godspeed', sir?" Ross asked. "Are you religious?"

Oppenheim gave a half-shrug. "Not really, not since I was a kid. But I haven't seen anything to definitively make me think there isn't a higher power."

"Hmm. Catherine, are you religious?"

"I believe in the Great Spirit, like many of my people, if that's what you mean. But I don't exactly attend Shoshone religious ceremonies."

"Hmm," Ross said again.

Both Oppenheim and Catherine gave him looks from the corners of their eyes. " 'Hmm', what?" asked the director.

"Just a theory I'm working on. Nothing to speak of yet."

"Hmm," the director mimicked ambiguously.

"Um, guys?" Darren asked. "Unforeseen problem over here. Could use some help."

Ross and Oppenheim stepped across the floor to the drone pilot. "Yeah?" asked Ross.

"So, I've got this camouflaged drone here…" Darren began.

"Uh-huh?"

"And it's carrying this cute little box, chock full o' high-explosive presents for The Slayer …"

"Go on," Oppenheim urged.

"Uh … how do I get the box to The Slayer? He's kinda buried under demons right now. And we don't have radio contact to tell him the drone's up here."

"Oh," said Ross. "I didn't think of that."

The pile of demons, reduced to a one-story-high mound, rippled and heaved like a magma bubble about to pop. The Slayer, propelled by his jump-jets, burst up from the pile, grabbed the uncamouflaged box with one hand and used the other to punch the drone directly in the video pickup. The hardy drone did not explode into pieces, but whirled sideways in a nauseating roll, having dropped its payload.

Ross let out a neutral "Huh," Darren made a squeak of outrage on behalf of his abused drone, and Oppenheim sighed, "I was afraid of that."

"Afraid of what, sir?" asked Ross, while strangely-colored flashes of light began disassembling the demon mound where The Slayer had dropped back into it.

"I think his little friend VEGA left some programming behind in the ARC. Snooper code, some eavesdropping tidbits, things like that." He scowled at the rapidly-disappearing mass of demons. "Hopefully nothing malicious, like something to rewrite MESA's safety or loyalty protocols."

"Right." Ross felt uneasy. He should have thought of that first.

"He's popping off those grenades like fireworks," Darren said. "Gonna run out soon, but the drone's still operative. Where did the prez say the nearest cache is?"

"The Detroit Aquarium."

"Copy."

Oppenheim had a grim, far-away look on his face while Darren sped the drone over the wreckage of "Motor City".

"Sir?" Ross asked quietly.

The director grumbled, "Just hoping our AI friend doesn't have listening programs installed in the surveillance systems."

Ross didn't understand. "What do we have to hide from The Slayer? I think he's more than proven that he won't hurt us." His brow knitted as he thought about poor Bruce. "Not on purpose, anyway."

Oppenheim said quietly, "A few hours ago, I would have thought The Slayer was our biggest issue."

"And now?"

The director quirked an eyebrow at him. "You know what VEGA stands for, don't you?"

Ross had to think about it. "Actually, no. I thought it was a name, and they put it in all caps because … because he's special." It sounded really dumb when he said it out loud.

Oppenheim shook his head. "It's an abbreviation of the warning the UAC stamped on the entry doors to his original infrastructure: Volatile Ego Detected - Geneva Protocol Authorized."

"I've never heard of the Geneva Protocol."

"One assumes it has something to do with the Geneva Convention. Although knowing the UAC, it might mean to fully disregard the Geneva Convention."

"What were they trying to remind the staff about? Before they would go interact with VEGA, I mean."

" 'Be careful; this one's as unstable as an actual human.' "