One in Ten Ch. 05

"If the answer is 'no', you should ask yourself why the hell you are doing it to somebody who needs your protection a whole lot more," Capri kept going.

"It is not that black and white and you know it," Angel glared.

"Why not?" Capri jutted her chin forward.

"Listen Detective Kristi, I think you are a good person. I think Israel likes you - though I can't fathom why," Capri explained. "But you and I are faced with compromises every day, choices Israel doesn't have. It is only grey because you let it be grey. That is the reality of the situation. I've chosen to keep this case and my career is over because of it."

"I know exactly what I'm doing and it's not because I have a fatal fascination with Israel's irrational personality," Capri grinned viciously. "Not a single lawyer in the Public Defender's office wants to consult with me on this case. I find that disgusting. They tell me we need to survive as a race. Wrong. What we should be asking is do we deserve to survive as a race."

"Not everyone can afford the price of your morality," Angel stated. "Are you sure Israel can? Israel, can you?"

"With me it is easy," I said. "Morality costs me nothing because I stopped caring about what they are going to do to me. I have no future here anymore. If there is an 'us', it won't be in this callus society."

"What are you going to do?" both women asked.

"Live free of fear for starters," I felt relieved to get those words out.

"Let's get you home," Angel requested.

"It will take me twenty-seven minutes," I responded. I took the metro every day after all.

Angel gave an anguished groan then stormed off. Capri walked me to the station.

When I got home, Angel was waiting on the sofa. My 'freak out' neurons were so flat-lined I simply walked past her and got lemonade out of the refrigerator and took my place in the corner of the living room.

"Israel, I have to be a cop. It is the only thing I know how to be," she started.

"I understand," I shrugged.

"Then let me help you," she insisted.

"Angel, you need to understand that in most cases you can't," I met her eye to eye.

"I don't want you to. You have to accept that. If there is a legal problem, you aren't in the room with those people - your friends and colleagues, I am. If there is a prosecutor, she's one of them. If it is a judge - the same. A jury - twelve of the same people who see me as an ejaculation machine who gives 'good sex'."

"I don't want you to beat yourself up over this," I continued. "You make me very happy and that's something I wasn't sure I'd ever experience again. The reality is that you can't watch over me twenty-four/seven. It will be the same commuters, the same cops like Riga and those two patrolwomen, and morally bankrupt leaders like the Mayor."

"If you really care about me and my free will, let me fight this war with the skills I've earned dealing with this prejudice all my life," I stressed.

"Israel, look at yourself," Angel came to me. "You aren't winning."

"I'm not winning in a way you would understand," I looked up at her. "Trust me, I'm winning the only victory I can achieve."

I finished the lemonade then answered my messages. It was the 'usual' gang plus a few co-workers, commuters and Ms. Silverhorn, my boss. I invited the girl gang over, lied to Francesca about how last night went and how I was looking forward to work on Monday. The ladies responded in different ways to Angel's anger with me.

Venus, Samantha and Aniqua sensed an opportunity. Roni was sticking with Angel while Kuiko hovered around nervously. In that moment, I wanted to go back on the drugs and let all of this go away. I could commit myself and all of this would stop. Confronting this terrible weakness breathed the dwindling spark in my intellect back to life. Top of my fucking class.

I had been sitting in my corner when I popped up.

"Ladies, please give me some forbearance. There is something I need to do. I need to get some items from the store then I'll be right back. I'd appreciate it if you went back to your places, get your computers and return here," I looked them over.

"What is all of this about?" Venus was sitting cross-legged on the floor.

"I can't tell you everything yet," I evaded "but I plan to make myself a pain in the ass for as long as I can get away with it. I need help getting the ammunition to fight with."

"Is this going to be illegal?" Aniqua asked.

"Eventually...I withhold comment because I don't want to lie to you," I answered.

"Sounds fun," Kuiko nodded with a grin. "Come on girls, what do we have to look forward to? Thirty-five years at a lousy job, maybe a child and ending up in some retirement complex exaggerating about the four or five sexual encounters we had in our lives?"

"Crazy-K," Aniqua sighed. "This isn't a game and there ain't likely to be a happy ending." She stared at her friend for several seconds. "All for some cock we have never had?"

"Aniqua, you were the one who told me how furious you were when you saw the fear in Israel's eyes," Kuiko reposed. "Feelings are pointless if we never act on them."

"I'm going to regret this," Aniqua groaned. The rest of the group looked around to see who was going and who was staying. No one was making for the door.

"Okay Israel, it looks like we are all in - to what I have no idea," Roni smiled. "Next?"

"Computers for the rest of you," I instructed.

"Look up any birth records for the past ten years; forget North America. Look at South America and Asia primarily. You need to look for abnormalities like duplicate figures or low production for male child products."

"What would those be?" Venus asked.

"No clue. I've never even contemplated caring for a child," I shrugged. Long, long ago, childrearing was 'women's' work. Society was moving away from that model with men taking greater parenting responsibility when the plague broke out. In this day and age, having a father at all was a rare luxury. Women took care of their offspring because no one expected the man to hang around.

"Angel, we need to go get some supplies," I requested.

"What are we going to get?" she inquired even as she stood up to join me.

"Less surveillance," I gave a wan smile. She nodded. We'd had a part of this discussion earlier. For the government to access a home security system took a warrant but it was ludicrously easy to find a judge who would grant one on a male for the flimsiest of excuses.

The blind spots in external systems were much larger in neighborhoods like ours - places where we could talk openly.

"I'm not going let you run off a cliff, Israel," April announced. I shook my head in resignation.

"Why is it so hard to believe I plan to live a life worth living?" I regarded her.

"You are a wounded individual. You've made some life choices I have a hard time understanding. You are picking fights with cops," Angel looked pained.

"Why haven't you written me up yet?" I murmured. "It would be a lie, but no one would call you on it. If I'm out of order, shouldn't a police officer have me corrected?"

"It is not that easy - not with you," she admitted.

"I'll make it easy on you," I said. "Are we in a safe place?" Angel nodded. "The 'Vanishers' contacted me last night. I took them up on their offer to get out." Angel put a hand on my chest and stopped my forward process.

Her face went through the permutations of 'was he kidding', disbelief and finally that sick sense of despair that I had abandoned everything she'd devoted her life to.

"Israel...," she whispered. She didn't ask why.

"Your lack of faith in my love for you is disappointing Angel Kristi," I put my hand on hers.

"I love you. I'm not bailing without you...and as many of the others as I can convince to come along," I tried to smile.

"They don't take women," she was clearly back to thinking I was unhinged.

"I'm not going with them," I chuckled painfully. "They're just another bunch of women telling me what to do. Fuck that. I'm saving myself."

"But...what...why agree to their help?" Angel sputtered.

"Do any of us have the skills to disappear?" I smirked - painfully yet again. "I don't think so. That means, to escape, I have to use them as much as I can without being snared."

"This is completely insane," Angel tried to convince me.

"Angel, you are questioning me running, but the only other option is to see whether they break my body before they break my mind," I explained. "I need to disappear to survive. Think about it. Besides, all I need them to do is get me out of the city. I already know how to defeat the bracelets."

"How?" Angel still looked disbelieving.

"Angel, I was held prisoner for 87 days. How come the cops didn't find me if I had a bracelet?"

Angel blinked and her mouth opened in surprise.

"Oh fuck...how?" she inquired.

"There is a flaw in the system, not the hardware," I related. "If you cut the bracelet, or forcefully remove it, the device lets off an emergency alarm...unless the wearer is both dead and verified by a corner to be dead."

"She killed you," Angel muttered. The 'she' was the Aurora Slasher. Angel was a pretty good detective too.

"Yep. She injected me with God-knows what which flat-lined my vital signs. Four minutes later, the bracelet dutifully recorded my death and went into storage mode. It was given a coroner's code, shut down and then she cut it off me - no problem. Finally, she revived me," I told her. "That didn't work on all her victims - some didn't make it back."

"If the authorities know about the flaw, they would fix it," Angel reasoned.

"Recall eight million bracelets? Over a flaw that even most cops don't know about?" I pointed out. "Only licensed coroners and Federal Investigators know that trick. There simply aren't enough male homicides for others to figure it out."

"Ugh...you've pretty much annihilated any hope of me getting a good night's sleep for the next week or so," Angel murmured. "Is there anything else you want to hit me with?"

"Yes...I want to have sex with Kuiko," I said as I started walking again.

"We are not attached," Angel got out a few seconds later. "You don't have to ask."

"I respect your feelings Angel. I don't want to hurt you," I shrugged. "I know I do, but I don't like it."

"Okay, but why Kuiko? Aniqua is...more of my body type," she was studying me.

"Several reasons," I related.

"I think it will help the group's tension level if I'm with someone besides you occasionally. I also think she's trying really hard to respect my space. Lastly, but most importantly, I think she'd be fun in bed," I finished.

"You are slipping," Angel stated softly. She was referring to my mental state.

"Yes. Either I go full throttle, or I go numb," I tried to make her understand. I was a rape victim. I would never stop being a rape survivor, but I could try to stop being a victim. Full throttle wasn't fighting through - it was stealing something good from the demons. It was a little more fuel to keep the fire going.

I had no illusions that the demons would be banished by a woman's embrace. That was a fantasy. As Angel said, I was wounded...but I wasn't dead; not yet.

"Okay," Angel conceded. "I'll stick with you...but I'm still going to give you hell when I think you are acting crazier than whatever the fuck is normal for you. Deal?"

"Deal," I smiled. Maybe she was starting to understand me, or trust me.

The journey to the store and back again was comparatively easy. Angel even agreed to front the bill though she couldn't figure out why I wanted surgical tape and wooden curtain rods cut into twelve inch sections. I told her 'I have a plan' which did nothing to ease her mind.

When we returned, the rest of this little troupe was actually working diligently at the task at hand. Once I had the supplies stashed away - except for the dowels - I was working on those, I put the 'Kuiko Method' into play. Venus was the first recipient. I quietly moved up behind her and began massaging her shoulders.

She was about to come back with a snarky remark when she turned and realized it was me.

"You seem tense," I said. "Would you like a massage?" Venus nodded. In reality, you went after men until you got one. Only in romance novels were men overtly sensual. Venus was working cross-legged beside an end table as I maneuvered behind her.

I knelt behind her, my legs spread to either side of her hers, my crotch against the small of her back while my hands caressed her shoulders. I moved along her upper arms, neck and mid back while Venus murmured contentedly. After roughly fifteen minutes, I finished up by wrapping my arms around her abdomen and kissing her on the nape of her neck.

"Are you okay?" I asked gently.

"Oh - oh yeah, thank you," she sighed happily.

"Thank you," I responded. I pushed off her back and stood. All the other women were looking at me with varying degrees of desire. Only the twinkle in Roni's eyes revealed that she had figured out what I was really up to.

I moved as sedately to the bathroom as I could. Once inside, my resolve slipped and I shivered. It was not their fault. It was none of their faults. I had to believe that. I had to shore up my mind with that understanding. I couldn't fold up. I had to keep it together. I went back out. It was Aniqua's turn. A smile, a few words and some light contact. I could do this. Compared to what I planned to do on Monday, I had to shore myself up now.

(Monday)

Angel told me to stop whistling as I got dressed. She had stopped arguing with me about what I was going to wear last night. I think in the old days it was called a hymn before battle and I was certainly prepared for a fight. I called Kuiko before I left and asked if we could have privacy at her place for about an hour when she got off work, provided I was still eluding police custody. She was more than happy to oblige.

I trekked to the metro station with the jauntiness of a sixteen year old - not a care in the world and the mind of a maniac. My neighborhood was no longer running off a cliff - we were in free-fall. It turned out two of the eleven surviving males in my district were homosexual. It was bound to happen in any population of large enough size (as in the total number of males in the country).

Mind you, Farad and Jimmy were doing their part. They had sex with woman and were apparently rather good at it, performing above standards and more than the required once every twenty-eight days. That didn't matter. They were homosexuals and they had to be corrected so a tactical unit went after them Sunday afternoon.

Unfortunately, both Farad and Jimmy knew something was up, or were simply sick of the sneaking around. They had a plan. They had converted a van into a mini-mobile home, complete with multiple propane canisters. They also made zip guns to defend themselves. The tactical team knew about the guns, but not about the canisters so they went in with rubber bullets.

Sadly, rubber bullets penetrate propane canisters and electricity (aka Tasers) ignites the gas. I'm not sure how many canisters they had but the resulting explosion vibrated glasses in my condo a kilometer away. Scratch two more sperm-jockeys. Now there were only nine of us (actually, only eight, but I didn't know about the one who had vanished a few hours earlier - yet).

Inside my mind was a beaten, whipped and shattered eighteen year old boy rattling the bars of his cage and screaming at me to stop what I was doing. He begged me to save myself the humiliation and pain. I couldn't listen to him anymore. Hiding hadn't been surviving; it had been delaying the inevitable. I wasn't fighting - that would be stupid. I was resisting.

I was wearing really nice jeans, courtesy of Bethany, a nice white shirt with the sleeves partially rolled up, with a tailored jacket over one arm and a satchel strapped across my body. I also had a twelve inch baton with the handle taped to give me a firmer grip. I smiled, nodded to a few ladies and even said 'hello' to a few others. Basically, all the wrong things for a man to do - unless he's a prostitute.

I doubt any of them noticed the baton. That wasn't the wood they were looking at. The first one wasn't even remotely difficult. The predators had gotten sloppy, lazy, arrogant and careless. She was blonde, mid-thirties maybe and I'd seen and been groped by her before. She breezed up behind me, patted my ass and was about to say 'hey' or something like that.

I snatched the hand that had just touched me, yanked it up and smacked her in the head with the baton. It was meant to sting, not crack her head open and I'd been practicing last night.

"Ow! What the...?" she squawked.

"You sexually assaulted me; I was defending myself," I grinned savagely. "We can check the video from the camera I'm standing well in view of if you like."

"You hit her," Fatima came sputtering my way.

"It would certainly look that way, wouldn't it," I kept smiling.

"Why?"

"She sexually assaulted me," I reiterated.

"All I did was touch you," the first woman said.

"Check your laws, ladies," I used my authoritative tone. "Touching another person without their consent is assault. Touching a person in a sexual zone - in my case, the lips, pubic area or...buttocks is considered SEXUAL assault."

"Also according to the law, I am allowed to defend myself, or another person under threat of harm, with enough force necessary to remove myself, or that person, from danger," I lectured.

"All she did was touch your ass," a third women joined in. They were really starting to gather around now. The metro was almost here.

"And I hit her with a stick for doing it too," I glared at her.

"You can't run around beating people with a stick," Fatima threatened me.

"As long as it is in self-defense, I most certainly can - as can any citizen," I pointed out. "What twisted evil thought process could make any of you think you can touch another person against their will? Come on now, that's just sick."

"But you are a guy," a fourth woman struggled and failed to make sense of the situation.

"That's discrimination and that's against the law too," I flashed her a bright smile. The metro arriving put an end to the conversation, but I had to put knots on the foreheads of two more women before I made it to my seat.

The Metro Cop came for me two stops down the line. I wasn't belligerent, I handed over the baton when requested and I watched her fend off the angry commuters around me. I had the law right. I explained that I couldn't afford a taxi so this was my only way to work. The police officer informed the women that I was legally correct and to stop antagonizing me - hallelujah.

The best part was after the cop left and the metro started rolling again. The women were seriously looking for some payback. I grinned, unzipped my satchel and drew forth my second dowel. They looked flabbergasted.

"Yeah bitches, I'm smarter than you are," I chuckled. None of them harassed me.

It wasn't much of a victory. In their minds my resistance was all my fault, not theirs. Anyway, groping was something women did casually. They weren't expecting a connection. I had robbed them of their second shot of espresso in the morning, that's all. Or, it would be all, if it was only me. As I told a disbelieving Angel, I had a plan.

Coming out of the metro stop by City Hall, I caught sight of a woman who nearly caused my heart to freeze in fear. It was one more step and I took it. She saw me and looked cocky. I smiled and headed right toward her. I imagined she was about to inflict (further) pain on my person when I wrapped her up in a hug. Her colleague looked equally dubious as to my intent.

"Flame!" I greeted her. "How the hell are you doing?" I kept my arms around her, titling back so we could make eye contact while my crotch was pressed against her stomach. I hadn't realized how much shorter she was than me during our first encounter - the one where she beat me half to death.