Chapter 2 - Miramar

San Diego California, Western Free States, planet Earth

July 9, 2090                                                                                                                             

Something was not right with the air. There was a crackling that Torr could only sense when he stopped breathing. An intermittent wave of whispering, skin-tingling static. He lay on the platform inside the shadows of the cement bunker and stared through his rifle scope at the Shaman’s Shield. For three years the cloud barrier had stood between the Western Free States and the Tegs. Torr had joined the Gaia United rebels at the southern border two years ago, facing the massive wall every day. It soared up into the sky as though it were a towering marble cliff or a plunging waterfall, five miles high, stretching east to west far as the eye could see, shimmering like water but solid as stone. As far as anyone could tell, it was a cumulonimbus cloud made of ash from the volcanic mountains, held together by an unknown shamanic magic. The scientists called it an electromagnetic force field, of a sort no one had ever seen before. At its peak, the wall curved overhead, sealing them in from above in a thick cloud cover. But today the southern wall had receded from its normal position, exposing flat desert scrubland and skeletal bushes coated in ash. Since dawn, dark, vertical shadows had appeared at the base of the wall, as though some giant creature had attacked it overnight with long, jagged claws.

Torr crawled forward and poked his head out through the open front of the bunker half-buried in the hillside, and peered up at the sky. The cloud barrier overhead still appeared intact; the sky was gray and gloomy as ever, though it smelled like a storm was brewing. He pulled himself back inside and settled down behind his gun, tightening its bipod and adjusting the sand bag under the butt of the rifle. He inhaled deeply, held in his breath for three seconds, then exhaled and held it out for three seconds, hoping the breathing exercise would stop his cheek from twitching. It hadn’t bothered him in months—now his left cheek was spasming non-stop. He could not shoot with it jittering like that.

Inhale one two three. Exhale one two three.

He glanced over his right shoulder at Reina, propped up on her elbows on the plywood platform between him and the cement wall. She was staring through her spotting scope. Her TAFT stood on its bipod next to her, loaded and ready to mow down Tegs should they come streaming across the plain. Torr wanted to die before she did; he didn’t think he could bear to watch her suffer, or see her dead eyes staring up at him. It was a selfish thing to wish, but he wished it anyway. Bobby, on the other hand, lying on the platform to his left—two hundred pounds of solid muscle—he wouldn’t mind dying before Bobby. Torr would lean into him as he died, and Bobby would tell him everything was going to be all right, even though they both knew it wasn’t.