• “We are secret,” they told me. “We are not of the United States, the European Federation, the Russian Republic, China, or Japan; we are not an agency of the UN or any other world politics.
    “We are secret.”
    That is what I was told when I first walked down a steel gray corridor in an underground facility on an international island—no other details, including what ocean or even hemisphere this island was in, were revealed. Nothing else was mentioned, except that I should not talk to anyone unless asked a question by name.
    I just happened to stumble into this situation by chance, as my wife and I were walking in the Undercity of Chapel Hill, which was relatively safe compared to that of neighboring Durham or Raleigh. We had only wished to get away from the chaotic bustle of the frantic world almost a hundred feet above our heads. Neither of us liked the stacked air-highways of that frenzied place, nor did we find the streets of the Undercity too dangerous; we both were licensed to carry registered weapons to fend off any would-be aggressors if necessary, and not once were we forced into any circumstance in which we might have been inclined to use them.
    We were simply walking down there that fateful day when we heard a cry to the left, and we found two women and a man fiercely beating two men with shockrods, unrelenting so that the short electric burst from each cruel blow would keep the victim paralyzed until the next merciless strike. Of course, we did not interfere of our own accord, because that generally meant in such barbarous situations that we, too, would fall victim; however, when one of the squealing men saw us, he let out a cry directed right at us: “Help!” he called, “Help us!” This immediately was caught by the three, and one of the women, after bashing his outstretched arm with an audible crack, turned towards us and started a calculated, wolfish approach.
    As you can imagine, the only option tangible to logic was to calmly begin walking away as if nothing had ever happened—as it hadn’t to us, yet—but the woman howled for us to stop and bounded towards us. In response, we continued walking, only removing our electric guns from their respective holsters as a silent warning that we were not as defenseless as the other two apparently had been, yet this did not halter her confident stride, instead quickening it. We fired, but the sparking nets that struck her chest and thigh only rattled over her rubber-composite clothing.
    That was the first time either of us had ever experienced genuine fear, as far as I knew, but I stopped to allow my wife a chance at escape, yet when the preying woman neared, I found my weakness as I would not allow myself to physically strike her, as that was not an honorable feat for a man to hit a woman. My error of ways was undoubtedly punished, as she pounced on me with a flurry of stabs and strikes from her shockrod, working relentlessly at my raised defending arm as the electric shocks numbed it until finally my arm fell limp, unable to sustain the defense against such a beating. Inevitably, that was when I was all-too-vulnerable for a potentially crippling strike, and the opportunity was not unnoticed by this ferocious creature. The shockrod slammed against my temple, and I fell to one knee, after which a heavy blow to my chest knocked me flat against the ground. The breath was propelled from my lungs as she plopped onto my stomach, pinning my neck between muscular legs. As she leaned forward, I caught a glimpse of her face as it briefly came out of the shadow—beautiful, really, in a deadly way, like a lioness; she was of oriental origin—Japanese, it appeared—with shoulder-length purple hair and soft lavender eyes that scrutinized her prey. Tattoos covered her exposed upper arms, slipping under her clothes where the fabric was torn at the shoulder, one marking daring to poke up the right side of her neck. Cocking her head, she smiled sideways and nodded, as if agreeing with some unstated logic, and pulled out a syringe, its slim fang pointed hungrily at my fleshy neck, and then there was only darkness.