I remember it like it was yesterday. My father had called it a war chest, said it was the weapon of my future—my education. I knew this money was all he and my mother had. How could I take it?

But my mother had insisted. "What do you want us to do with it?" she said. "You're the reason we saved this money all these years. If you refuse, our lives will be wasted."

I can still see myself sitting on that old creaking train, scared out of my mind. I knew good and well that when a young man left the South, he never came back.

As the train groaned beneath the weight of its battered steel and gathered speed, I looked out the window and saw my father nod farewell. My mother couldn't let go of me so stoically. She ran alongside the train with tears streaming from her blue eyes until she collided into the iron chest of an ungodly tall centurion. When I close my eyes, I still see his blond hair whipping out from beneath his golden helmet. Just before we disappeared into the King Charles Tunnel, I saw him grab my mother and drag her back to where my father had been standing. My father was already gone.

That was three years ago.

Today I'm coming home, but I haven't done what my parents sent me out West to do. I haven't finished school and never will. My parents won't be waiting for me on the landing where we said our good-byes. They're gone now, and I won't see them again.

The train jerks as its brakes screech against the hot rolled steel of the rails. The behemoth slows and breathes thick waves of billowing smoke before coming to a stop inside the once magnificent station of the South. With its thirty-foot ceilings, ornate murals, and crystal chandeliers, this station was once the pride of a community. Now it's nothing but a thin, pathetic shell of its former self. The murals haven't been cleaned in decades, and most of the chandeliers were shattered during the Great War. Those that survived hang unlit. The station looks like the rest of the South and the people who live here—exhausted.

The slim door of my cabin opens, and the conductor appears. He's short, with a potbelly and a handlebar mustache. He examines the passengers' papers in a gruff yet efficient manner. Behind him follows a centurion who eyes each passenger with a mixture of suspicion and hatred. He's large, like the man who grabbed my mother, but not nearly as tall. I have the contours of that man's body memorized and will know him when I see him.

There are only seven passengers in my cabin. Leaving the West to travel south isn't a smart thing to do. The growing unrest and coming war has made my home a dangerous place. The man across the aisle shakes as he scrambles to produce his papers.
Nervous.

My papers are resting on my lap, where they've been for the final hour of the journey. This is the moment I've been waiting for, and I'm ready. One more test and I'll be home.

The lies already have been told.

More important, the lies have been believed. All I have to do is keep from retching onto my boots, which I'm on the verge of doing.
My turn.

"Papers," the conductor barks. Not a question, an order.

I hold up my ID card and travel visa for him and the centurion to see. The conductor snatches them from my hand while the centurion glares down at me from behind the dark shield of his helmet. I stare resolutely at my reflection in his shield. I'm beginning to look older. At twenty-three I'm no longer the fat-faced boy who left this place. My visage is longer, my blue eyes a shade darker, and my sinewy muscles hardened from countless hours of running sand dunes, flipping oversize tires, and learning to kill. I departed this place a boy; I return a man.

The conductor examines my ID card and says, "American?"

Keeping my eyes fixed on the centurion, I reply, "That's what it says on the card." I've vowed not to be intimidated by these soldiers.

The conductor furrows his brow. "Yes, young man, I'm able to read. I'm not some ignorant Southerner. But I'm asking you a question, a privilege that won't be afforded a third time. Are you an American?"

I look the conductor in the eye. "Yes, born and raised here in the ignorant South."

"And your reason for leaving the West? Your visa says you're still a student." He checks his watch. "If I'm not mistaken, the fall semester starts in less than a month."

Here comes the hard part. My eyes nervously bounce from the conductor to the centurion, who has lifted his shield to examine me closer. His face is classic Nordic: bright blue eyes, snowy white skin, and a sharp nose that curves down like the beak of a bird. But his expression is anything but centurion. This man's face isn't full of hatred. Instead he looks at me as if admiring a work of art. This isn't what I want.

My eyes dart back to the conductor. "My parents were abducted by the Kingdom," I say. "I've come home to handle their affairs. The Office of Record has already processed their papers, and they're waiting for me at their house."

The conductor opens my travel visa, a tiny blue booklet with a golden etched profile of King Charles's face. "Deacon Larsen. It says here that your father is a laborer and your mother a maid. Their assets can't be too extensive. And you mean 'selected' not 'abducted,' don't you?"

"My father was a laborer, sir. And my mother was a maid. And..."
Easy,
I tell myself. I clear my throat and say, "Yes, sir. I'm sorry. They were
selected
by the Kingdom to serve in the northern camps...where they both died, unfortunately."

The conductor yawns. "They died honorably in service to the Holy King Charles. All honor be given to his name."

"All honor be given to his name," the centurion and I repeat in submissive, robotic unison.

Bile rises from my stomach and climbs the walls of my throat.

The conductor acts as if nothing has happened. "You're an only child?" he says.

I swallow my vomit and feel it torch my esophagus on the downward plunge. "Yes," I say through clenched teeth.

"How long do you expect to stay?"

"I've been granted a year's leave from my studies."

He lifts an eyebrow. "A long time to suspend an education."

"I've applied to take courses at the University of the South."

The conductor grins. "Bit of a joke, right? Compared to the education you're receiving out West in Old California? Do they even teach medicine in this backcountry of slaves and misfits?"

"They offer courses on anatomy and chemistry."

The conductor grunts. "You're to report to the Office of Record every Monday at noon to check in with your supervisor. Since today is Sunday, you have tomorrow's itinerary. Understood, young medicine man?"

I nod. The centurion's ruddy face shines with interest, as if he's on the verge of asking a burning question. But of course he doesn't. Centurions rarely speak to Americans, unless it's to bark an order or inform someone they're about to be shot.

"Very well then." The conductor flips shut my visa and hands it and my ID card back to me. "Go in peace to serve the Kingdom and the venerable King Charles."

"May the gods ever help me," I say, feeling the bile return.

The conductor and the centurion move past me and out the back door of the cabin.

And there it is.
I made it home!

The official story is that I'm returning to the South to handle the affairs of my deceased parents. But it's a lie. My parents are dead, and no amount of pomp and ceremony will bring them back from the grave. The real reason I abandoned the safety of my studies—studies that would have given me a privileged life in medicine—is that I've decided to betray the Kingdom.

I haven't come home to handle petty paperwork. I've come home to avenge my parents' deaths and join the resistance. I have no interest in blessing the dead; I've come to bury more.

he Southern heat wraps me in an unwanted embrace of moisture and defeat as I step from the train. Three years living by the sea has made me soft to the climate, and I've forgotten how oppressive the summer air can be. I wipe sweat off my face with my sleeve and move cautiously from the train into the station. I'm fully aware that I now walk among people who will kill me should my motives be uncovered.

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