Inside the cramped office of the Elite Operations Detachment, the atmosphere carried the quiet satisfaction that comes when a long investigation finally starts tightening its grip. Jack leaned back slightly in his chair, flipping through a thin stack of case notes as he briefed Sam on the latest developments from their previous case involving John and Sarah, the middle-school teachers whose quiet suburban life had turned out to be a front for a counterfeiting operation.

  “Not that it’s surprising,” Jack said, shaking his head, “but they’ve both turned on each other.”

  Jack continued, explaining that the two suspects were now desperately begging for plea deals. The desperation had come fast once they realized the depth of the evidence against them. But the District Attorney wasn’t biting. The DA’s office had made it clear—there would be no plea agreements on the table right now. Instead of accepting responsibility, John and Sarah had resorted to the oldest play in the book: the blame game. Each of them was now claiming the other had masterminded the operation. John insisted Sarah had pressured him into helping. Sarah claimed John had run everything and she had merely gone along with it. Their statements contradicted each other constantly, each version trying to push the weight of the crime onto the other person’s shoulders.

  Sam gave a short, humorless chuckle.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I know that game a little too well.”

  Jack glanced up.

  Sam leaned back, folding his arms as he explained what he meant. He wasn’t talking about suspects in an interrogation room—he was talking about his own parents. His mother had cheated on his father years ago, and when the truth came out she blamed everyone but herself. She said she needed attention. She said her husband had neglected her. She said the marriage had already been failing. Even after the divorce, when she married the man she’d had the affair with, the excuses never stopped. Years later she was still cheating—this time on the man she’d cheated with in the first place. Sam shook his head as he spoke.

  “You ever hear that saying?” he said. “If they cheat with you, they’ll cheat on you.”

  He let out a quiet breath.

  “My mom is the living, breathing example of that warning.”

  The conversation shifted back to the case.

  Despite the chaos of John and Sarah trying to sabotage each other, Sam made it clear that it ultimately didn’t matter. The District Attorney already had enough evidence to bury them in court.

  “Rock solid,” Sam said with confidence. “The DA’s got them dead to rights.”

  He began laying it out point by point.

  The charges were substantial: counterfeiting, possession of counterfeit currency, and knowingly passing counterfeit bills. Investigators had already linked the illegal printing operation directly to the couple’s personal computers. Financial records, purchase histories, printer logs, and recovered digital files all pointed back to their home network. The forensic trail alone was strong enough to build a case. But the real problem for the suspects—the thing that would destroy them in front of a jury—was the witness testimony.

  “We’ve got multiple witnesses,” Sam explained. “People who can testify about their spending habits. You can’t convince twelve jurors that two middle-school teachers suddenly started living like investment bankers.”

  Designer clothing. Expensive electronics. Frequent luxury purchases. And the weekend trips—especially the ones to the Cayman Islands. The lifestyle simply didn’t match their salaries.

  Jack nodded, thinking about that part. “My sister-in-law’s a teacher,” he added. “She’s married to my older brother Daniel. She teaches junior high—English and arithmetic—in the city. She makes about $8,400 a year.”

  He shrugged slightly, “And that’s city pay. Rural teachers only make about $5,300 annually.”

  The implication was obvious. Teachers didn’t suddenly start buying designer wardrobes and flying off to island vacations. Sam then asked the next obvious question, “So how much counterfeit cash did they actually print?”

  Jack glanced at another sheet in the file. “Evidence unit is still counting,” he said. “But the last update I got was thirty-four thousand dollars.”

  He explained that investigators had also begun tracing where some of the fake bills had been spent throughout town. Several local shops had unknowingly accepted the counterfeit money during purchases made by John and Sarah.

  The government had already stepped in to reimburse those businesses for the losses. Stores that had taken the fake bills in good faith would receive compensation through federal reimbursement programs. Other businesses, particularly those where John and Sarah had directly spent the counterfeit money themselves, were handling it differently. Those transactions were now being classified as theft by fraud, allowing the businesses to file insurance claims to recover their losses.

  Jack closed the folder. Between the digital evidence, the counterfeit currency, the spending trail, and the witnesses who had seen the couple living far beyond a teacher’s salary, the case was rapidly becoming airtight. And no matter how loudly John and Sarah tried to blame each other, the reality was simple: They were both going down.

  The conversation between Jack and Sam drifted from the counterfeiting case into one of the more ironic details that had come out during questioning. At one point during the investigation, Jack had actually asked the District Attorney to pose a very specific question to John and Sarah: why they had chosen to move into the house next door to Sam and his wife, Hailey. When the DA asked them, both suspects gave the exact same answer. They insisted they had no idea that Sam was a federal agent or that Hailey was a beat cop. The moment Jack repeated that explanation, Sam burst out laughing. When John and Sarah first moved in, Sam and Hailey had told them outright that they had two cops living on the block—Sam himself and Hailey. They had even said it casually during a neighborly conversation when the couple was settling in. Sam could only shake his head at the memory, realizing that John and Sarah must have assumed it was a joke or some kind of lighthearted exaggeration rather than the literal truth.

  Jack added that, in a strange way, it was fortunate their mutual friend Mitchell had not been the one living next door to them instead. Mitchell was also a beat cop, but he handled confrontations very differently. His approach to fighting was controlled and reactive, closer to the style of someone like Jason Bourne—he preferred reaction over initiation, exploiting weak points and using whatever objects were available as improvised weapons. Sam, however, said he had always thought Mitchell resembled the Equalizer more than anything else. Mitchell’s style was about selective intervention: he watched, assessed the situation, and often gave people an opportunity to walk away before stepping in. But once he decided action was necessary, it was quick and decisive—one move, one moment, and the conflict was over. Mitchell rarely bothered bringing weapons of his own, operating under the philosophy that if someone else had brought a weapon into the situation, he could simply take theirs and use it instead.

  That discussion reminded Jack of something he had witnessed years earlier during junior high gym class. Their gym teacher had been the type who constantly talked about how he had almost become a professional baseball player, complaining about the career that might have been if things had gone differently. Yet Jack remembered one moment during a seventh-grade wrestling exercise that had stuck with him. Mitchell had been paired with another boy on the mat, and when the kid tried getting aggressive, Mitchell reacted instantly. Without looking angry or even particularly invested in the match, he simply grabbed the boy’s wrist and twisted it in a way that wrists were never meant to bend. The motion was controlled but extremely effective, and the other student dropped immediately, clutching his arm while the gym teacher rushed over.

  Sam remembered that same gym teacher well and rolled his eyes at the recollection of the man’s constant stories about almost going pro. Even when they were seventh graders, most of the students already knew the truth behind those stories. A professional baseball team had indeed scouted the teacher and even signed as a rookie, but his career never made it off the ground. He developed a reputation for showing up late to practice, often hungover, and arguing with coaches and teammates. Eventually the team had enough of the behavior and forced him to break his contract before he ever played his first professional practice game or official match. Instead of earning the roughly ten thousand dollars a year a rookie player might expect, he ended up working as a middle school gym coach making only about forty-eight hundred dollars annually, supervising dodgeball games, wrestling drills, running laps, jumping jacks, pushups, situps, and other routine physical activities for students.

  Jack recalled something Mitchell had once said about that teacher that perfectly captured the situation. Mitchell had pointed out that the man had been complaining about not becoming an all-star or making the kind of money professional players could earn—fifty thousand dollars a year or even more—when in reality he had thrown away one of the easiest positions in the sport. As Mitchell explained it, playing right field was generally less demanding than other outfield positions because left field saw far more balls hit in its direction. In Mitchell’s blunt opinion, the man had squandered the chance to make serious money simply because he could not show up on time or stay sober. Mitchell also noted that some of the few baseball players he actually respected made around one hundred thousand dollars a year.

  In the economic context of the Country of Little Bird, that level of income was almost unimaginable. A typical worker might earn around five thousand dollars a year, meaning that over a forty-year career as a person might accumulate roughly two hundred thousand dollars before retirement. Because the country had such a low cost of living, someone earning one hundred thousand dollars a year could effectively secure financial independence almost immediately. In practical terms, that kind of income could allow someone to purchase twenty homes outright without needing loans or mortgages. Thinking about it that way made the gym teacher’s lost opportunity even more striking: he had once stood within reach of a career that could have guaranteed lifelong financial security, and he had thrown it away before it even truly began.

  Sam realized where the conversation was heading the moment Jack casually mentioned his plans for the evening. He knew his friend well enough to predict the outcome before Jack even finished describing it. Sam had been about to head out to the store to pick up a few things for dinner, and when he mentioned it, Jack had simply shrugged and explained what his own night would probably look like.

  “I’m just going to head home,” Jack said with a tired sigh, running a hand through his hair. “Throw a TV dinner in the oven and somehow manage to have it come out burnt or rock hard again. Same story as always.”

  Sam stared at him for a moment, genuinely puzzled.

  “Which—what exactly are you doing wrong, Jack?” he asked. “Do you crank the oven up too high or something?”

  Jack shook his head immediately.

  “No, the temperature’s fine,” he explained. “That’s not the problem. The problem is I leave it in there too long. Every single time I make one, nature calls.”

  Sam raised an eyebrow.

  “It starts off simple,” Jack continued, gesturing vaguely toward the hallway as if illustrating the scenario. “I think, ‘Alright, I’ll just run to the bathroom for a quick piss.’ But the moment I get in there, it turns into, ‘Well… guess it’s not a quick piss anymore, I’ve got to take a dump now.’ And while I’m answering the call of the wild, my dinner is slowly turning into charcoal in the oven.”

  A small, genuine smile crept onto Sam’s face as he listened to the explanation. The situation was so absurdly predictable that he couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Alright,” Sam said, waving a hand dismissively. “Forget the burnt Salisbury steak. Why don’t you just come over and have dinner with me and Hailey tonight?”

  Jack’s expression brightened almost immediately. The relief was obvious.

  “You know what?” he said. “That actually sounds a hell of a lot better than sitting alone in that empty mansion all night.”

  Even as he said it, there was still a hint of disbelief in his voice.

  “I still can’t believe my father-in-law gave us that place as a wedding present,” he added. “A two-story mansion. Who even does that? It’s insane.”

  Sam nodded slowly. He had been to the house once, and “insane” was a perfectly fair description. The place was enormous—far larger than any single person reasonably needed, especially when that person spent most of the year living there alone. It was a grand, classic structure with a wide open layout and a second-floor balcony that overlooked the main living space. The house seemed designed for large gatherings and big families rather than a single occupant trying to heat up a frozen dinner.

  The interior was impressive by any standard. A massive living room flowed into an equally large dining area. The kitchen featured sleek granite countertops and more cabinet space than most restaurants. Every bedroom in the house was oversized, each one slightly larger than what most people would consider a master bedroom. There was even a second-floor balcony overlooking the back deck, which itself faced a scenic view of the river. A two-car garage sat beside the house, and next to it was a discreet stairwell that led underground directly into the basement level of the home. Upstairs, tucked away in a side room, was a pool table that looked like it had barely been used.

  “It’s a nice house,” Jack admitted, his tone shifting into something more reflective. “I won’t lie about that.”

  He paused for a moment before continuing.

  “But when you live in a place that big by yourself for eight months out of the year, the biggest threat to your life is honestly just walking around at night and falling down the stairs.”

  Sam glanced at him.

  “That actually happened to me once,” Jack continued with a grimace. “I was heading to bed late one night, half asleep, tripped over my own feet, and ended up tumbling all the way down into the basement.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck at the memory.

  “Hurt like hell.”

  Jack quickly tried to lighten the mood with a nervous laugh.

  “But hey,” he added, “I guess that’s still better than having kids. Can you imagine tripping over one of their toys? I’m pretty sure the concrete stairs would’ve hurt less than landing on a pile of those plastic bricks.”

  He shook his head.

  “I tell you, I’m lucky my wife and I don’t have kids.”

  Among their friends, however, the real reason Jack and his wife didn’t have children was well understood. It wasn’t about luck—it was about logistics. Jack’s wife was a Marine Drill Instructor, a role that demanded relentless focus and an almost inhuman work schedule. She trained one class of recruits through the entire four-month boot camp cycle, and the moment that class graduated she immediately started training the next one. Her schedule ran like clockwork: from January 2nd through the beginning of September she was essentially nonstop in training rotations. Only after September 1st did she finally get the rest of the year off.

  Under those circumstances, raising children would have been nearly impossible. Jack himself a federal agent, already working nine-to-ten-hour days as a baseline before factoring in investigations, paperwork, and unpredictable case demands. Adding kids to that equation would mean long stretches where those children would effectively be raising themselves.

  Sam understood that reality better than most. His own situation with Hailey wasn’t much different. Hailey worked as a beat cop, putting in an exhausting sixty-three hours a week—nine hours a day, seven days a week. Sam’s federal workload often matched or exceeded that, frequently climbing to sixty-three or even seventy hours depending on how active his cases were. And like Jack, those numbers didn’t even include the time spent chasing leads, conducting surveillance, or responding to emergencies.

  For both couples, the conclusion had been the same. The demands of their careers left little room for the demands of parenthood. It wasn’t that they disliked the idea of having children—it was simply the reality that neither household had the time necessary to properly raise them. Their jobs required constant attention, and until those demands changed, family life would remain a distant possibility rather than a present one.

  They ended up stopping at Maxwell Supermarket, figuring it would be faster to grab what they needed now rather than make another trip later. As they pushed their cart down the aisles, they turned into the condiments section—and immediately spotted a familiar sight.

  Mitchell was standing there casually tossing a piece of cereal into the air.

  It was one of those ring-shaped pieces, the kind formed like a solid torus, and he flipped it up with practiced ease before catching it in his mouth as it dropped back down. He did it again, almost absentmindedly, like it was a habit he’d picked up years ago.

  Meanwhile, his wife Cadence stood beside the cart studying the shelves, carefully comparing different bottles of ketchup and mustard.

  Jack stared at Mitchell for a moment before speaking up.

  “You know that’s stealing, right?”

  Mitchell didn’t even look remotely concerned. He simply tossed another cereal piece upward, caught it cleanly, and shrugged.

  “It’s not stealing,” he replied calmly. “Not as long as you pay for it.”

  And, technically speaking, he did have a point. In practice, most grocery stores didn’t really care if someone sampled something before paying—as long as the item itself still got rung up at the register. People brought empty snack bags, half-eaten candy bars, or empty drink bottles to the checkout line all the time. As long as the barcode scanned and the register recorded the sale, the store had gotten its money. From the store’s perspective, that was what mattered.

  That reality led the conversation into a small tangent about the mechanics of modern retail. In many places, the transaction itself had become the only thing that truly mattered. Stores weren’t concerned with the journey an item took through the store, or even its condition by the time it reached the register. The system was built for speed and efficiency: the barcode scanned, the register beeped, and the item was considered sold. Ethical considerations about when or how the product was consumed often didn’t enter into it. The bottom line was simple—if the system registered payment, the store had no reason to complain.

  While the discussion drifted in that direction, Cadence made her selections. She placed one bottle of mustard and one bottle of ketchup into the shopping cart, setting them down gently rather than tossing them in. The careful handling wasn’t just habit—both condiments came in glass jars, and neither of them wanted to deal with broken glass in the middle of a grocery aisle.

  That detail highlighted one of the more interesting quirks of the Country of Little Bird: its tendency to retain older technologies and packaging methods long after the rest of the world had moved on. By the 1950s, many industrialized countries had largely shifted away from glass containers for common condiments, replacing them with lighter, cheaper, and safer plastic bottles. Plastic reduced shipping weight, prevented breakage, and simplified mass production. Yet in Little Bird, the traditional glass jar stubbornly persisted.

  It wasn’t that the country rejected modern packaging entirely. Plastic squeeze bottles existed there too and were sold alongside the classic glass versions. But the older style had never fully disappeared, partly out of tradition and partly because the country often preferred durability and familiarity over constant industrial change.

  That same philosophy could be seen in another everyday system: telecommunications. While most of the world eventually adopted the standard ten-digit phone number format—consisting of a three-digit area code followed by a seven-digit number—Little Bird retained an older system rooted in the original North American telephone exchange naming conventions.

  Instead of beginning with a numerical area code, phone numbers in Little Bird started with a two-letter prefix representing the local exchange tied to a specific town or city. For example, a number in the town of Clearlake might begin with CL, while numbers in the city of Empire might start with EM. Those letters corresponded to numbers on a telephone keypad, following the classic mapping where 2 represented ABC, 3 represented DEF, and so on. Only the number “1” remained strictly numeric.

  After the two-letter exchange came the final four unique digits, which functioned much like the last portion of modern phone numbers. For the people of Little Bird, this system had one clear advantage: it was easier to remember. Instead of memorizing ten digits, people only needed to recall the two-letter exchange and four numbers. The result was a telecommunications system that felt almost like a living relic from an earlier era—efficient enough to function but unmistakably rooted in the past.

  Eventually Cadence finished comparing labels and moved on with Mitchell, continuing their own late-evening shopping.

  Meanwhile Jack and Sam grabbed a cart and headed toward the MEAT section of the store. Jack carried a basket while Sam leaned into the refrigerated display and pulled out several packages. He grabbed four packs of pork chops and dropped them into the basket.

  Jack glanced down at them, “You know,” he said, “I’m glad we don’t live in a country full of factory farms.”

  Sam chuckled, “Knowing Mitchell’s half-twin sister?” he said. “She’d walk into a factory farm and shove a cattle prod somewhere the sun doesn’t shine.”

  He paused, “And I’m not talking about the butt.”

  Jack asked, “How many pork chops did you grab?”

  “Four packs,” Sam replied. “Four chops per pack.”

  Then Sam suddenly stopped and snapped his fingers, “Hold on,” he said. “We can do bacon-wrapped pork chops.” He grabbed a package of applewood bacon already coated in pepper and tossed it into the basket.

  After the meat, they moved on to grab a few other things: a couple bags of instant mashed potatoes and several cans of vegetables—green beans, corn, and sweet peas.

  Jack grimaced slightly when he saw the mashed potatoes.

  “I hate instant mashed potatoes,” he admitted.

  Sam glanced at him, “Why?”

  Jack shook his head, “Because of my mom. Every bag says something like ‘add half a cup of milk and two tablespoons of butter or margarine.’ But she’d buy ten bags at once and still only add half a cup of milk and two tablespoons of butter total.”

  Sam blinked.

  “Wait—you mean she didn’t multiply it per bag?” Sam asked

  “Nope.” Jack confirmed

  “So she made ten bags with the ingredients for one?” Sam asked

  Jack confirmed it which led to Sam laughed, “Jack, your mother is the kind of cook who could somehow make tree bark taste like Gordon Ramsay prepared it.”

  Jack nodded solemnly. “Amen, brother.”

  Once they finished gathering everything, they headed to the checkout.

  The total was remarkably cheap. Six cans of vegetables—two green beans, two corn, and two sweet peas—came out to 36 cents. The instant mashed potatoes cost 20 cents, and the pork chops and bacon ran about three dollars.

  Altogether the bill came to $3.56.

  Sam simply tapped his bank card to pay. After the groceries were bagged, he carried them out and set them in the back seat of his car. A few minutes later they were pulling out of the supermarket parking lot and heading toward the Hartstock residence.

  When they arrived, Sam parked in the driveway right beside Hailey’s sedan, the porch light glowing softly above the front door.

  When they stepped inside the house, Sam called out toward the kitchen to let Hailey know they were back. She appeared a moment later from around the corner, wiping her hands on a dish towel. Sam explained casually that Jack would be staying for dinner that evening. Hailey didn’t visibly argue, but the pause in her expression made it clear she wasn’t thrilled about the sudden addition to the table. She kept her tone polite, simply saying that she and Sam would talk about it later. Sam nodded, understanding the message, but moved past it for the moment.

  He handed her the grocery bag.

  “I grabbed a few more things from the store,” Sam said. “Pork chops, bacon, some canned vegetables, and mashed potatoes.”

  Hailey looked through the bag briefly and nodded. “Alright,” she said. “I’ll get the pork chops started on the stove first, then throw them into the pressure cooker.”

  With that she moved back into the kitchen to start preparing dinner. Sam turned to Jack.

  “Want something to drink?”

  Jack shrugged. “Yeah. I’ll take a soda.”

  Sam headed into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, pulling out a cold glass bottle of soda and grabbing two glasses from the cabinet. While Hailey worked at the stove—heating a skillet and preparing the pork chops—Sam poured the drinks and brought them back into the living room.

  The two men settled onto the couch and turned their attention to the television. The evening news was already in progress, moving through its usual routine segments. The anchor discussed the day’s activity on the stock market, followed by a quick overview of the seven-day weather forecast. Graphics of clouds and temperatures rolled across the screen as the meteorologist explained the upcoming conditions.

  Eventually the broadcast shifted to local crime coverage, and both Sam and Jack glanced up as a familiar headline appeared.

  The reporter began discussing the John and Sarah counterfeiting case, explaining that the District Attorney for the Commonwealth of Mountain was still refusing to offer any kind of plea deal. According to the report, the DA’s office believed the evidence was strong enough to secure a conviction at trial, and prosecutors were prepared to pursue the full list of charges. If convicted, John and Sarah could be facing sentences totaling up to thirty years in prison.

  While the report played in the background, voices carried from the kitchen.

  Hailey spoke first, “By the way,” she said, glancing toward Sam while adjusting the heat on the stove, “the insurance adjuster came by earlier today.”

  Sam looked over from the doorway, “He took photos of the fire damage,” she continued. “Said the claims department is going to review the policy and the damage. They’re also waiting on the fire department’s preliminary and final reports before approving anything.”

  Jack, overhearing the conversation from the living room, leaned slightly toward the kitchen, “Did they catch the guy who threw the Molotov cocktail?” he asked.

  Sam answered without hesitation, “Yeah. Mitchell handled that.”

  Jack raised an eyebrow, “How?”

  Sam took a sip of his soda, “He popped the arsonist in the head with his .45.”

  Jack leaned back on the couch and nodded slowly, unsurprised. “Yeah,” he said with a head shake . “That sounds about right.”

  He took a drink of his soda and shook his head slightly. “That’s Mitchell being Mitchell.”

  The evening news continued to play quietly in the background while Sam and Jack sat in the living room, the sound of dishes and cooking drifting from the kitchen as Hailey worked at the stove. The broadcast moved through its usual routine—economic updates, weather graphics, and a few local stories—until the tone of the program suddenly shifted.

  A sharp “Breaking News” banner flashed across the screen.

  The anchor cut away to a live report, and a female field reporter appeared, standing outside what looked like a police station. Her voice carried the urgency typical of developing news.

  “We’re interrupting our scheduled programming with breaking news out of the Commonwealth of Mountain,” she said. “Authorities have confirmed that Maria Hartstock has been arrested this evening on charges related to adultery, a felony offense still enforceable under longstanding state law dating back to the Colonial period.”

  On the right side of the screen, a small inset video played showing the arrest footage. Two uniformed officers were escorting a furious Maria Hartstock across a parking lot toward a waiting prisoner transport van. She was yelling loudly, protesting the arrest, her voice rising in frustration as she tried to argue with the officers.

  One of the officers spoke calmly but firmly while guiding her toward the van.

  “Ma’am, the law has been on the books in the Commonwealth of Mountain since Colonial times,” he said. “You’re under arrest for adultery and public conduct related to the incident involving the deputy mayor.”

  The reporter continued explaining that the arrest stemmed from a public incident earlier that evening, where Maria had reportedly attempted to openly flirt with and pursue the deputy mayor inside a crowded restaurant. Witnesses had confirmed the behavior, and authorities had determined it violated the state’s still-active adultery statute.

  Jack slowly lowered his soda as he realized what he was watching.

  He glanced over at Sam.

  “…Sam,” he said carefully, “I’m sorry, man.”

  Sam barely reacted.

  His expression remained flat as he looked at the screen for another second before leaning back into the couch.

  “I’m not losing any sleep over it,” he said plainly.

  Jack hesitated.

  Sam shook his head slightly.

  “Honestly, I wish I wasn’t related to her,” he added.

  There was no anger in his voice—just a tired kind of resignation. After a moment he took another drink of his soda.

  “Frankly,” Sam continued, “it’s about time consequences finally caught up with her.”

  He gestured slightly toward the television where Maria was still shouting as officers helped her into the van.

  “My mom’s been a home wrecker for years,” he said bluntly. “Cheated on my dad, blamed him for it, divorced him, married the guy she cheated with… and then started cheating on him too.”

  Jack didn’t interrupt.

  Sam shook his head again.

  “And now she’s trying to crawl into the deputy mayor’s pants in the middle of a restaurant,” he added.

  He let out a short breath.

  “So yeah,” Sam said, his tone almost coldly satisfied, “I’d say it’s about time she finally faced some consequences.”

  The footage on the television showed the van doors closing as Maria continued yelling at the officers.

  Sam leaned back further into the couch.

  “Honestly,” he muttered, “I can’t wait to hear how that conversation goes on cell block six when she has to explain to the other inmates why she’s there.”

  Jack gave a quiet, uneasy chuckle.

  Sam just stared at the screen a moment longer before taking another sip of his soda, his expression unchanged.

  Sam leaned back on the couch after the news segment ended, still holding his soda, his expression calm in a way that suggested he had already processed the situation long before it ever appeared on television.

  “You know,” he said after a moment, “she’s going to call any minute.”

  Jack glanced over at him, “Who?”

  “My mom,” Sam replied simply. “Once they finish the booking process, they’ll give her a phone call. And she’s absolutely going to use it to call me.”

  He let out a small chuckle—not amused, exactly, but unsurprised, “But she’s wasting her time,” Sam added. “Because I’m not helping her.”

  Jack didn’t say anything, so Sam continued.

  “This actually reminds me of a story I heard once,” he said. “About a lawyer who got into a pretty bad car accident. Guy was laid up in the hospital for a while. While he’s sitting there recovering, his parents and sister show up—not to check on him, but to ask him to do them a favor.”

  “They wanted him to hide his sister’s assets and represent her in court pro bono,” Sam said. “She’d gotten herself into some serious legal trouble.”

  Jack already knew where this was going.

  “The lawyer refused,” Sam continued. “Flat out. First, because hiding assets would’ve been fraud. Second, because he wasn’t about to represent someone in a criminal case who had clearly done something wrong and deserved the consequences.”

  Sam took a sip of his soda.

  “Apparently the parents didn’t like that answer,” he added. “They kept pushing. Kept insisting. Tried to guilt him into doing it. And every time he said no.”

  “So what did they do?” he asked.

  “They started calling every lawyer in the city,” Sam said. “Trying to find someone who’d take the case pro bono.”

  Jack said in a way that he already knew the answer, “Let me guess.”

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “All of those lawyers hung up and never called them back.”

  He paused for a moment, “But the funny part is what happened next.”

  Sam explained that the situation had taken place in the Country of Little Bird, where there was a law known as the Parental Responsibility Ordinance. Under that ordinance, parents were legally responsible for the actions of their children until those children turned eighteen.

  “And when I say responsible,” Sam said, “I mean really responsible.”

  Jack leaned forward slightly.

  “If a kid commits certain offenses, the parents can get hit with a $1,000 fine, 400 hours of community service, and mandatory family counseling.”

  The economic context made the penalty even more severe. In that country, the average person earned about $400 a month, meaning that a $1,000 fine was roughly equivalent to three months of wages.

  “That fine is basically the government saying,” Sam explained, “‘You’re responsible for your kids until they become adults. If you let them run wild, tear up property, and act like consequences don’t exist—then congratulations, now you get to experience those consequences too.’”

  And the government took enforcement seriously, “If the parents refuse to pay,” Sam continued, “the government just takes it directly out of their paycheck. Fifty dollars a week until the fine’s paid off. You can’t dodge it by declaring bankruptcy either.”

  Jack frowned, “What if they try working overtime to pay it faster?”

  Sam shrugged. “The government thought of that too. If they see you working extra shifts to bring in more money, they’ll take half of whatever you make in overtime.”

  Jack laughed under his breath, “Sounds like they really want that fine paid.”

  “Oh, they do,” Sam said.

  The ordinance was controversial in some circles, but Sam explained that most parents in Little Bird actually supported it. The loudest critics were usually the same parents who took a dismissive approach to discipline—the kind who brushed off bad behavior with phrases like ‘kids will be kids.’

  “Meanwhile,” Sam said, “the parents who actually raise their kids with structure and boundaries aren’t worried about the law at all.”

  In fact, judges sometimes referenced that mindset directly in juvenile cases.

  “If a parent shows up in court saying ‘kids will be kids,’” Sam said, “judges tend to interpret that as neglect—basically admitting they weren’t paying attention to what their kids were doing.”

  And when those same kids got involved in riots or destructive behavior, reality hit quickly.

  “They learn the hard way,” Sam added dryly, “that a fire hose isn’t the same thing as a squirt gun, police K-9s aren’t the same as your friendly house dog, and a baton made from hardwood hits about as hard as a baseball bat.”

  Jack said, “Fair point.”

  A few minutes later, the house phone rang. Sam looked at it for a moment.

  “Right on schedule,” he muttered.

  He stood up and walked over, picking up the receiver, “Hello.”

  The voice on the other end was exactly who he expected: his mother. She immediately launched into a frantic explanation and then asked him to come down to the precinct and post bail. Sam listened quietly for a moment before finally responding.

  “No,” he said calmly.

  There was a brief pause on the other end, “I’m not coming down there,” Sam continued. “And I’m not posting bail.”

  The truth was that Sam had never posted bail before and didn’t even know the exact process—but that wasn’t the point. He had already decided he wasn’t going to help her.

  “You used your one phone call on the wrong person,” he told her. “You called the one person who isn’t going to help you.”

  His mother immediately switched tactics, trying to guilt him, “You owe me,” she snapped. “I carried you for nine months. I went through fourteen hours of labor bringing you into this world. And when you got sick, I stayed by your side.”

  “Really?” he said.

  Jack could hear Sam’s voice from across the room, steady but cutting, “When I had the flu, you left my room to sneak your side piece into the apartment and fuck with him for seven and a half hours,” Sam said bluntly. “Meanwhile I was in bed puking my guts out.”

  He continued without raising his voice, “I had to get out of bed myself just to get ginger ale. And when Dad came home at seven that night, he sat next to me the entire time until morning. Fourteen hours straight.”

  Sam’s voice hardened slightly, “He stayed in that chair making sure I had something to drink if I ran out. He made sure I got the rest I needed. And he took me to the doctor the next morning so I could get actual medicine and antibiotics.”

  There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Then his mother tried another angle. She warned him that her husband—Sam’s stepfather—could make Sam’s life miserable if he didn’t help.

  Sam almost laughed, “Listen carefully,” he said.

  His tone turned colder, “You cheated on Dad, divorced him, married the guy you cheated with, and now you’ve been arrested for cheating on him because you tried to seduce the deputy mayor in a restaurant.”

  He paused briefly, “And now you’re threatening a federal agent over a recorded police line?”

  Sam shook his head, “That’s not intimidation,” he said. “That’s adding more charges.”

  He leaned slightly against the wall, “You just threatened a federal agent while being recorded inside a police station,” he continued. “So congratulations—you may have just made your situation worse.”

  He took a breath and finished the conversation calmly, “You wasted your phone call.” And then Sam hung up.

  After a while, Hailey called out from the kitchen that dinner was ready. Sam and Jack stood up from the couch and walked in, the smell of pork and bacon filling the house. When they reached the table, they noticed something immediately: the bacon hadn’t actually been wrapped around the pork chops like Sam had suggested earlier at the store. Instead, the strips of bacon sat beside the pork chops on the plate, next to a small portion of sweet peas.

  Neither Sam nor Jack said anything about it.

  There were no complaints, no exaggerated sighs, and no passive-aggressive noises. They simply accepted the meal as it was and sat down to eat.

  For Jack, that reaction came naturally. He had grown up in a strict household, the kind where you didn’t criticize what someone put on the table. His parents had strong opinions about what counted as a “respectable” life path, and they weren’t shy about expressing them. Jack had seven older brothers, all born during the late stages of the 1980s when computers were just beginning to transition from old mainframe terminals to early personal systems with black screens and glowing green text. To Jack’s parents, however, the entire field of computing and engineering might as well have been fiction. They believed the only legitimate careers were in business, law, or finance, and anything outside those professions was treated with open skepticism.

  They were the type of people who would lecture a cashier for refusing to honor a sale that had ended over two years earlier, convinced the store somehow owed them the deal anyway. Growing up around that mindset had taught Jack one thing very quickly: you didn’t argue over food or small inconveniences. You took what was in front of you and moved on.

  Sam’s experience with dinner growing up had been different, though it had taught him a similar kind of acceptance. In his household, his mother had almost never cooked. The responsibility for meals had fallen entirely on his father, a former Army culinary specialist who approached cooking with the practical mindset of someone used to feeding soldiers rather than running a restaurant.

  At first glance, the food combinations his father made sounded strange—sometimes even unappetizing—but in practice they worked surprisingly well. His father had spent years watching soldiers get creative with whatever food they had available. In the Army, meals were repetitive by design. Breakfast was almost always oatmeal or porridge, sometimes pancakes and eggs. Once a month there might be a slightly bigger spread with eggs, toast, bacon, sausage, and sausage gravy. Dinner rotated through staples like beans, potatoes, bread, and occasionally some kind of meat.

  When people ate the same thing day after day, they learned to improvise. Soldiers mixed foods together, added condiments in unusual ways, and experimented with flavors simply to make the monotony more tolerable. Scrambled eggs might get mixed with crumbled toast and bacon, then covered in hot sauce. Oatmeal sometimes ended up sitting next to eggs with a splash of ketchup or mustard somewhere on the plate. It sounded bizarre until you tried it—and then it just tasted like food.

  The reality was simple: soldiers were ordinary people eating the same meals repeatedly. Eventually they got creative. Hot sauce, ketchup, mustard—sometimes even mixing all three together—became ways to keep food from feeling exactly the same every day.

  Sam had carried some of that mindset with him later in life, especially during his time as a Marine during the Third World War. Combat had taught him something else entirely: never take a hot meal for granted. There were stretches where he and the other Marines spent days, sometimes a full week, surviving on MREs and combat rations while staying on the line. After enough time eating out of sealed plastic pouches, even the simplest hot meal started to feel like a luxury.

  When a unit rotated off the line for a week of rest and recovery, something as basic as pork chops, pot roast, ham, meatloaf, or spaghetti with meatballs suddenly felt incredible. It reminded you how much you had missed food that actually came off a stove instead of out of a ration heater.

  So when Sam and Jack sat down at the table that night, neither of them had any trouble appreciating the meal in front of them.

  The first bite of pork chop caught Jack completely off guard.

  He chewed slowly, his eyes widening in genuine surprise as he processed what he was tasting. The meat was tender—almost unbelievably so—and full of flavor in a way he simply wasn’t used to when it came to pork chops.

  “Hailey,” he finally said, setting his fork down for a moment and shaking his head with theatrical surrender. “I’ve got to admit something.”

  He lifted his butter knife and lightly pressed it against the thick, bone-in chop on his plate. The blade slid through the meat effortlessly, like it was cutting through warm butter rather than a dense piece of pork.

  “I’ve never had pork chops from a pressure cooker before,” he said. “My mom… well, she’s a traditionalist.”

  He demonstrated again, slicing off another piece with almost no resistance at all.

  “Mom always uses Shake ’n Bake,” he explained, “and then she throws them in the oven for what feels like an hour and a half.”

  A small shudder ran through him.

  “The result is usually something you need a chainsaw to get through,” he added. “I’m not exaggerating either. You’ve got to lean into the knife just to cut the thing, and by the time you’re done chewing it your jaw feels like you just finished a workout.”

  He lifted another forkful and took a larger bite this time, clearly enjoying it.

  “But this?” he said after swallowing. “The way you made these in the pressure cooker? I’m pretty sure I could cut this with a plastic butter knife.”

  The meat practically fell apart on his fork, moist and flavorful in a way that was a world away from the dry, cardboard-like pork chops he had grown up eating at home.

  Across the table, Hailey watched his reaction with a slow, satisfied smile spreading across her face. She raised one eyebrow slightly, clearly pleased with the response.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment, Jack,” she said with playful pride.

  She knew exactly what he meant. Complaining about someone else’s cooking—especially a parent’s—was often the highest form of praise when it came to a home-cooked meal.

  Sam chuckled quietly beside them.

  “My dad could make pork chops a bunch of different ways,” he said, cutting into his own piece. “Depends on what kind of mood he was in.”

  He took a bite before continuing.

  “But yeah, he made the juicy ones like this pretty often,” Sam admitted. “Though honestly, his favorite thing to make was pork chop sandwiches.”

  Jack looked intrigued.

  “Those were good,” Sam added. “Real good.”

  Sam explained that his father had learned to cook that way from years of running a restaurant kitchen and from his time in the military. When you cooked for a lot of people, you quickly learned that everyone had their own preferences. Some liked their meat tender, others wanted it crispy. Some wanted more seasoning, others wanted it simple.

  “When you run a kitchen,” Sam said, “you learn pretty fast that cooking isn’t just about following a recipe. It’s about being flexible. My dad always used to say the phrase ‘the customer is always right’ is a lie.”

  “Oh yeah?” he asked.

  Sam nodded, “According to him,” Sam said, “there are only two kinds of customers: your best customer, and a Karen.”

  “Not ‘the customer is always right,’” Sam continued. “Just whether they’re someone you actually want coming back or someone who’s going to make your life miserable.”

  He took another bite before adding one last example, “One time he had a guy come into the restaurant and demand a steak.”

  Jack looked confused.

  “Which wouldn’t be weird,” Jack said, “except…”

  “Except the restaurant didn’t serve steak,” Sam finished.

  Jack laughed, “So what did your dad do?”

  Sam shrugged, “Told the guy we don’t serve steak.”

  “And?” Hailey asked

  “The guy kept insisting,” Sam said. “Said he wanted a steak anyway.”

  Jack shook his head, “And what did your dad say to that?”

  Sam told that guy, “He told the guy, ‘Sir, if you want a steak, you’re going to need to go somewhere that sells steak.’”

  Hailey laughed openly this time. Sam picked up another bite of pork chop, “And apparently the guy still stood there for five minutes trying to argue,” Sam added.

  Jack chuckled, “Well,” he said, lifting his fork again, “at least he didn’t try asking you to make one out of pork chops.”

  Sam said, Give some customers enough time,” he said, “and they probably would.”

  After dinner wound down, Jack leaned back in his chair with a satisfied sigh. The plates were mostly empty, and the easy quiet that followed a good meal had settled over the room.

  “Well,” he said, standing up and wiping his hands with a napkin, “I appreciate the rescue tonight.”

  Sam looked up from the table. “Rescue?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You saved me from another burnt TV dinner.”

  Hailey rolled her eyes slightly but smiled anyway.

  “You’re welcome,” she said.

  Jack thanked them both again, grabbed his coat, and headed out into the night. A few minutes later the front door shut behind him, and the sound of his car starting up faded down the street as he headed home.

  The early morning sun had barely crested the horizon the next day, casting long pale shadows across the quiet streets. The town hadn’t fully woken yet; traffic was light, and most storefronts were still closed.

  An unmarked sedan rolled slowly toward the intersection of 4th and Main before coming to a smooth stop along the curb. Behind the wheel, Sam eased the car into a clean parallel park and shifted the vehicle into park. He reached for the radio mounted beneath the dash and keyed the mic. Static crackled softly through the speaker.

  “Dispatch, we’re on location,” Sam said calmly. “Intersection of Fourth and Main. Confirming surveillance position.”

  A short burst of acknowledgment came back through the radio. Sam nodded and shut the engine off. The quiet that followed made the low background hum of the city feel strangely loud.

  Jack, seated in the passenger seat, reached for the door handle. The moment the door cracked open. A dark shape exploded out of the blind spot beside the car.

  A massive arm shot forward and slammed into Jack’s chest with brutal force, knocking him backward into the seat. The impact hit like a battering ram, sending the door slamming partially shut again.

  “What the—”, Sam reacted instantly, twisting in his seat.

  He threw a sharp elbow backward toward the attacker’s ribs. The blow landed solidly, and the man grunted from the hit—but the attacker barely slowed. A thick hand grabbed the back of Sam’s head. Before Sam could react, the man slammed his skull into the reinforced driver-side window shattering it.

  The world flashed white for a second as pain exploded through Sam’s head. The attacker leaned into the car, effectively trapping both officers inside the vehicle. The assault lasted only seconds—but it felt chaotic and brutal. Then suddenly the attacker screamed.

  A raw, agonized scream tore out of him as his grip on Sam collapsed. The man staggered backward, clutching his lower back, his body folding forward as if something had punctured him. Sam blinked through the dizziness just in time to hear a sharp hissing sound.

  The attacker stumbled away from the sedan and onto the sidewalk, writhing in pain. Standing behind him, completely calm in the middle of the chaos, was Mitchell. Without a word, Mitchell held a large industrial-sized can of pepper spray and continued spraying directly into the attacker’s face.

  The man collapsed onto the pavement, half in the gutter and half on the sidewalk, screaming and rubbing his eyes as the chemical burn took hold.

  One hand clawed desperately at his burning face. The other clutched a small metallic object sticking out of his lower back. Mitchell stepped forward and delivered a quick, efficient kick that rolled the man onto his stomach. The fight was over.

  Mitchell calmly pulled a pair of handcuffs from his belt and secured the man’s wrists behind his back, “You have the right to…blah blah blah, you know the rest.”

  Jack slowly pushed himself upright in the passenger seat, still catching his breath, “What the hell—”

  The reason for the attacker’s sudden collapse was now obvious.

  Before deploying the pepper spray, Mitchell had driven a short fighting knife into the attacker’s lower back, just deep enough to disable him and break his grip on Sam. The move had been fast, precise, and brutally effective. Mitchell’s approach to force was practical—and partially born out of stubbornness. He wasn’t certified to carry a Taser.

  Not because he couldn’t be. Because he refused. The department required a thirty-hour certification course, followed by recurring training sessions. Mitchell had declined every opportunity. His reasoning was simple: those hours conflicted with his schedule.

  Specifically his football games. And baseball. And occasionally rugby—even though he openly admitted he didn’t actually care about rugby. So instead of a Taser, Mitchell carried tools he already knew how to use. Like knives.

  With the attacker cuffed and writhing on the pavement, the man managed to spit out a threat through watering eyes, “My employer… is going to make your lives a living hell!” he gasped. “You hear me? A living hell!”

  Mitchell crouched beside him, completely unfazed, “Yeah? Well you tell your employer this.”, Mitchell’s expression didn’t change, “If he sends people after my family…I hope he’s got enough money for closed-casket funerals.”

  Sam and Jack exchanged a glance. Neither of them thought Mitchell was exaggerating. They both remembered another incident involving him.

  A coworker’s niece had once been bullying Mitchell and Cadence’s triplet children. At first Mitchell tried handling the situation diplomatically—talking to the woman and asking her to step in. Instead of fixing the situation, she escalated it. She sent her brother—who happened to be Mitchell’s coworker—to intimidate him. That decision had gone poorly. The man had stepped out of his car to confront Mitchell.

  Mitchell responded by grabbing the heavy steel car door and slamming it repeatedly into the man’s torso. The sound had echoed across the street, being thud. Thud. Thud. The door handle and metal frame hammered into the man’s stomach until he collapsed onto the pavement, clutching his midsection and gasping for air.

  It was a brutal demonstration of how much force a solid steel car door could generate when someone truly meant it. After that, nobody doubted Mitchell when he made threats. And watching the attacker writhing on the sidewalk at 4th and Main, Sam and Jack knew one thing with absolute certainty. Mitchell never made promises he couldn’t keep.

  What Sam and Jack genuinely admired about their friend Mitchell wasn’t just his fighting ability or his confidence under pressure—it was his absolute refusal to be manipulated. Mitchell was the kind of man who simply did not tolerate disrespect, guilt-tripping, or people trying to take advantage of him. If someone crossed a line, he made it very clear where that line was, and he never backed down from enforcing it.

  That attitude showed itself most often with family.

  In particular, Mitchell had zero patience for relatives who tried to dump childcare responsibilities onto him and his wife Cadence during vacations or holidays. His response to those requests had become something of a legend among their extended family. Whenever someone hinted that Mitchell and Cadence could “watch the kids for a few hours,” his answer was always the same—blunt, direct, and impossible to misinterpret.

  “If you don’t want to watch your own kids,” Mitchell would say flatly, “you should’ve thought about that before spreading your genes. Because I’m not playing babysitter for people who think they can dump their children on someone else so they can go have fun. You should’ve thought about that before having kids.”

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Most relatives learned quickly not to push the issue.

  One cousin, however, decided to test that boundary.

  She arrived at Mitchell’s house one afternoon, dropped her children off on the front porch, and drove away without asking permission or even properly notifying anyone. Cadence, being the softer touch in the relationship and not wanting the children to be left alone, kept them inside for a few hours.

  Mitchell’s response was… different.

  Instead of simply calling his cousin to complain, he called the Department of Family Services.

  His reasoning was simple and legally accurate. If someone explicitly refuses to watch children and the parent abandons them at that person’s home anyway, it can legally qualify as child abandonment. The cousin soon received a visit from state officials who explained that particular detail in a very official and unpleasant manner.

  From that point forward, Mitchell’s reputation within the family was cemented.

  He wasn’t bluffing.

  And he wasn’t someone you tested twice.

  But Mitchell was only one piece of a much larger—and, in many ways, more intimidating—family network.

  The Waterson family had a reputation for being fiercely outspoken, especially when they believed someone was abusing authority or making decisions that endangered others. Every member seemed to have their own way of confronting injustice head-on.

  Take Mitchell’s cousin David Waterson, for example.

  Dave served as a Captain with the Empire Fire Department, and he had developed a reputation for heated—but often justified—confrontations with law enforcement during major emergencies. These arguments weren’t about ego; they were about jurisdiction and safety.

  At one particularly infamous car accident, Dave ended up nose-to-nose with an Island Patrol officer who insisted the entire scene belonged to the police department. Dave refused to budge. With trapped occupants, leaking fluids, and the possibility of ignition hazards, Dave made it clear that the scene was under fire department control until the situation was stabilized.

  When the officer threatened to call his supervisor, Dave didn’t flinch.

  “I don’t care if you get the Mayor, the President, or God Himself on the phone,” Dave reportedly said, standing firm in the middle of the wreckage. “When I’m on scene, I outrank all of them in matters of fire and rescue. You do not interfere with my crew during a life-and-death operation.”

  The officer eventually backed down.

  Another defining trait shared by the Watersons was their complete intolerance for political hypocrisy. Dave was particularly vocal about this when it came to city budgets and fire department funding.

  He had a habit of exposing waste with painfully clear comparisons.

  For example, the city council once shut down a vital Engine company to save money—claiming the move would reduce expenses by eliminating roughly $3,600 per week in salaries for the 28 firefighters assigned across four rotating shifts. The council also claimed it would reduce vehicle maintenance costs.

  Meanwhile, at nearly the same time, the mayor authorized the purchase of a brand-new luxury government vehicle, complete with custom modifications—costing almost exactly the same amount as a new fire truck.

  Dave didn’t let that contradiction slide quietly.

  During a union meeting, he presented a brutal example of the real cost of that decision. Shortly after the engine company was shut down, his crew responded to a major structure fire. Normally the closest engine company would have been there within minutes—but with that unit gone, the next available engine was fifteen minutes away.

  During the attempt to rescue trapped occupants, part of the building collapsed. Half of Dave’s crew ended up in the hospital with injuries. The missing equipment and manpower from the closed engine company made the situation far worse.

  And the people inside the house didn’t survive.

  Dave later told the press exactly what he believed: the city hadn’t saved money—they had spent human lives.

  It was exactly the kind of decision the Waterson family refused to stay quiet about.

  After the attack at 4th and Main, Mitchell made one thing clear to Sam and Jack.

  “You two need medical treatment,” he said.

  Neither of them argued.

  They headed to the Clearlake Clinic, the town’s modest medical facility. Clearlake only had about 5,500 residents, and nearly everyone in town relied on the same two doctors. The clinic itself was a medium-sized building with two examination rooms and a single operating room reserved strictly for emergencies.

  Sam and Jack were separated into the two exam rooms.

  Sam ended up with Dr. Thompson, who immediately began cleaning the wounds along the side of Sam’s head. When Sam’s skull had slammed into the car window during the attack, small fragments of glass had embedded themselves in the skin.

  Dr. Thompson used a straight razor to shave a patch of hair from the left side of Sam’s head so he could clearly see the injuries. One by one, he removed the glass shards with careful precision, disinfected the wounds, and began patching the cuts.

  Across the hall, Jack was being examined by Dr. Reays, a relatively new physician in town. She had graduated from medical school three years earlier and had only recently finished her residency.

  Jack described his symptoms—headache, dizziness, and confusion.

  Dr. Reays performed a quick neurological exam and immediately noticed something concerning.

  His right pupil was larger than his left.

  “That’s a concussion,” she said, jotting down a prescription on a pad.

  Jack stared at the note she handed him.

  “How do doctors read this?” he asked, squinting at the scribbled handwriting. “This looks like chicken scratch.”

  Dr. Reays smiled slightly.

  “Doctors have their own language,” she replied.

  And in a sense, that was true. Medical terminology and handwritten prescriptions often looked incomprehensible to anyone outside the profession.

  When both examinations were finished, the doctors compared notes.

  Sam had been lucky—his injuries were mostly superficial cuts and bruises.

  Jack, however, had taken the worst of the impact when the attacker slammed him into the car door frame.

  As Sam and Jack stepped out of the clinic, they noticed something across the parking lot.

  The man who had attacked them earlier was still there.

  He was sitting on the curb, still crying from the lingering effects of the pepper spray. His eyes were red and streaming, and blood soaked through the bandage covering the knife wound in his lower back.

  Sam instinctively reached toward his holstered firearm, just in case the man decided to try something again.

  But the situation was already under control.

  Mitchell’s partner, Officer Starlight, had taken custody of the attacker while Mitchell left to deal with another situation. Dispatch had radioed that members of Mitchell’s extended family had arrived at his home with a moving truck and were attempting to move in without permission.

  Mitchell’s response over the radio had been simple.

  “Responding Code 1.”

  Code 1 meant non-urgent response—follow all normal traffic laws.

  He had all the time in the world to deal with that particular problem.

  Meanwhile, Officer Starlight handled the prisoner without difficulty. Despite being only 5'10", lean, and relatively slight in build, she controlled the man easily as she escorted him toward the patrol car.

  Starlight was only 21 years old, but appearances were deceptive.

  She was a combat veteran who had lied about her age to enlist and had fought through all five years of the war.

  And anyone who assumed she was easy to overpower tended to learn very quickly how wrong that assumption was.

  The realization had honestly left Sam a little stunned.

  Even hours later, sitting outside the clinic and replaying the conversation in his head, the whole thing still felt like some bizarre cosmic joke. The fact that all of them had lied about their ages at some point—Mitchell, Jack, Starlight, Cadence, Mackenzie Rose, and even Sam himself—was strange enough on its own. But the part that really scrambled his brain was the coincidence hiding underneath it.

  They were almost all the same age.

  Mitchell, Jack, Sam, Starlight, and Cadence were all 21 years old, while Mackenzie Rose, at 20, was the lone outlier, her twenty-first birthday still a few months away. For different reasons—war enlistments, job requirements, or just the strange paths their lives had taken—each of them had at some point misrepresented their age. Yet when the truth finally came out, the numbers lined up in a way that felt statistically absurd.

  Sam kept trying to wrap his head around it.

  The chance of two random people sharing the same birth year and being close in age wasn’t that unusual. But six people, all within roughly a single year of each other, all ending up friends in the same orbit? The probability dropped quickly with every added person. For two people, the odds of sharing a birthday were about 1 in 365. For multiple people born within the same year and month range, the probability shrank even further.

  To Sam, it felt like the universe had rolled a set of dice and somehow landed on the same number six times in a row.

  Mitchell, however, didn’t seem particularly surprised by it.

  He just shrugged when the topic came up, wearing the faint, knowing smile he usually had when people overthought things.

  From his perspective, the coincidence wasn’t that extraordinary. After all, he and Cadence had been born only three days apart, something they joked about constantly. Compared to that, the rest of their friends being born the same year barely seemed worth mentioning.

  Still, the calendar told an interesting story. They were all products of 1990. Mitchell and Cadence were technically the “winter babies” of the group.

  Mitchell had been born on January 17, 1990, while Cadence arrived just three days later on January 20. They liked joking that even though most of winter technically belonged to the tail end of 1989, their birthdays planted them firmly in the new decade.

  Then came the spring cohort. Sam was born March 14, 1990. Starlight followed on April 10, 1990. Jack rounded out the trio with May 17, 1990. Three friends, born within barely two months of each other.

  And then there was Mackenzie Rose, the lone autumn child of the group, born October 26, 1990—the only one who hadn’t quite reached the twenty-one milestone yet. When you laid the dates out like that, the whole thing looked like some kind of strange statistical cluster.

  But geography explained part of it. They all lived around the same mid-sized town region, the kind of place where social circles overlapped constantly. In a smaller community, people tended to meet through school, work, or shared acquaintances. The pool of people was smaller, which meant the odds of similar ages grouping together naturally increased.

  Even so, Sam couldn’t shake the feeling that something about it still felt… oddly deliberate. Like fate had shuffled a deck of cards and somehow dealt them the same hand. Eventually the conversation drifted toward something else entirely.

  “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “I still think Mitchell and Starlight would make more sense together than him and Cadence.”

  Jack raised an eyebrow, “Oh yeah?”

  Sam shrugged, “They’ve got more in common,” he said. “Same kind of background. Same kind of mindset. Same training. Same war experience.”

  Jack shook his head slightly, “You’re missing the reason Mitchell and Cadence work,” he said.

  Sam looked at him, “Opposites attract.”

  Sam snorted, “Cadence is basically a pacifist,” Jack continued. “Mitchell… well…”

  Jack paused, thinking of a good example, “You remember the guy who hit his sister Twilight?”

  Sam grimaced, “Oh yeah.”

  Mitchell had tracked the man down personally. What followed had become something of a dark legend among their friends. Mitchell had broken the man’s arm, pinned him down, and then—using a pair of pliers—ripped out all ten of the man’s fingernails.

  Afterward he calmly told the man that if he ever laid another finger on his sister again, he would wake up in a pig pen. Because, as Mitchell’s half-twin sister Cadenza liked to remind people, pigs are omnivores. And they would absolutely eat things they shouldn’t. Jack spread his hands, “Cadence balances him out,” he said. “That’s the point.”

  Sam couldn’t really argue with that. Still, something about the group’s age coincidence kept bouncing around in his head.

  Jack noticed the look on his face, “What?” Jack asked.

  Sam shrugged slightly, “I’m just trying to figure out the math,” he said.

  Jack blinked, “The math?”

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “What are the odds that all of us ended up friends?”

  Jack thought about it for a second.

  Then he laughed, “Buddy,” he said, “that’s not a math problem.”

  Sam frowned, “It’s not?”

  “No,” Jack said, “That’s a life problem.”

  Jack was finally home, granted temporary reprieve from the chaos of the night. However, before he could truly rest, Sam had diligently driven him to the nearest pharmacy to ensure his prescription was filled. With the necessary medication secured, Sam then brought Jack back to his residence.

  Sam’s obligations, however, were not yet complete. He immediately returned the vehicle to the Elite Operations Detachment (EOD) building. The car, a victim of the previous night’s pursuit, needed attention. Sam sought out the on-site mechanic, meticulously detailing the damage and the circumstances that led to it.

  Once the car was in capable hands, Sam’s next, and more difficult, duty was to report to his and Jack’s superior officer. Their boss, a man known for his dualistic professional and personal demeanor, greeted Sam with a somber, professional tone. He demanded a full account of the events, stressing the importance of omitting no detail, no matter how peripheral it seemed.

  Sam began, recounting the tumultuous events that had bled over from his personal life into his work. He started with the devastating news from the previous night: his mother’s arrest on charges of adultery. It was a call that had brutally interrupted a rare moment of peace—dinner with Jack and his wife, Hailey, enjoying a meal of pork chops with bacon and sweet peas. His mother had called, desperate for Sam to post her bond. He had steadfastly refused, explaining that he would not enable her choices. This rejection had prompted a chilling threat: his mother vowed that her husband, Sam’s stepfather, would make Sam’s life "a living hell."

  The threat materialized almost instantly. Sam’s stepfather soon appeared at their home, performing the routine of the "concerned stepdad." Sam, however, saw through the act and cut straight to the point. The stepfather, in turn, tried to manipulate Sam into bailing out his mother. When Sam began to close the door on the proposition and the man, the stepfather, his composure finally cracking, delivered an explicit, sinister threat before departing.

  The boss listened intently, his professional facade briefly replaced by a wistful, almost nostalgic expression. He confessed that Sam's story—the mix of bureaucratic duty, personal peril, and old-school threats—reminded him vividly of his time as a Field Agent back in the 1970s.

  To Sam, this comparison only solidified the impression that his superior officer was, as he internally phrased it, a "dinosaur." The boss hailed from an era Sam could only imagine in black and white: a time when computer keyboards required a forceful, deliberate press to register a key; when printing a single sheet of paper involved a loud, "godforsaken screeching sound"; and when urgent communication required using the country of Little Bird's specific Fire Department (FD) code of 10-2, which mandated a physical "Call your Field Office or Local Precinct via phone" (or for the actual Fire Department, "Call your Quarters or Dispatch via Phone").

  Sam mentally contrasted this obsolete past with the present. Now, agents were issued budget smartphones, and while they still received a uniform allowance, it had been significantly upgraded. Agents in the 70s were given a paltry $30 to buy a casual suit that cost $51, forcing them to spend their own money on necessary professional attire. Today, the allowance stood at $110, enough to purchase two basic suits. Although this allowance was only renewed every few years for replacement or repairs, and getting a tailored suit still came out of the agent’s own pocket, the difference was enormous.

  The superior's age, Sam mused, was further underscored by his history. This man was working at a time when field agents literally had to buy their own ammunition, a stark contrast to the present where the department holds an exclusive government contract with Strawberry Armory for all agency-issued weapons and ammunition.

  This fact, unbelievable as it seemed, resonated with historical precedent, a concept Sam had learned from his colleague Mitchell. Mitchell had often pointed out that in the infancy of law enforcement in many countries, particularly in the US, sheriffs and urban department members were required to purchase their own uniforms, guns, and ammo. This practice continued until the modernization efforts of the 1910s or 1920s, with the timeline varying between urban and rural departments. Mitchell further argued that many sheriffs and deputies of that earlier age had no official uniform at all, simply wearing their everyday clothing adorned with a five or six-pointed star badge. Uniforms for sheriffs did not become standard until the 1930s and 1950s, whereas their urban police counterparts had established uniforms as early as the 1850s.

  The country of Little Bird, however, did not have traditional "Sheriff Offices" in the American sense. The closest equivalent was the court officers. Crucially, these were not bailiffs. In Little Bird, a bailiff was purely a peace officer tasked with maintaining order, removing disruptive individuals from the courtroom, and escorting them to a holding cell. Deputies, conversely, were the officers responsible for physical security—protecting the court itself from external threats and assisting the bailiffs when a forceful removal was necessary. They did not patrol unincorporated areas or entire counties, as is common for Sheriffs and Deputies in other nations. The closest entity Little Bird had to a wide-area patrol force was the Island Patrol. Significantly, the Island Patrol did not function as a Sheriff's Department; instead, it operated much like the American State Police or Highway Patrol, focusing on major routes and inter-island enforcement, not the comprehensive, county-level jurisdiction of a Sheriff's Office.After leaving the clinic, Sam drove Jack to the pharmacy so he could get the prescription Dr. Reays had written filled. Jack still looked a little dazed from the concussion, though the medication and the doctor’s instructions had helped clarify things a bit. Once the prescription was ready, Sam drove him home, making sure he got inside safely before heading back out.

  With that done, Sam returned the sedan to the Elite Operations Detachment building. The first stop was the garage bay, where the on-site mechanic worked on agency vehicles. Sam explained what had happened at the intersection earlier that morning—the ambush, the struggle inside the car, and the impact that had sent his head into the window. The mechanic walked around the sedan, checking the door frame and glass while Sam gave him the quick rundown. After making a few notes about possible repairs and safety checks, the mechanic waved him off and said he’d handle it.

  From there Sam headed upstairs to report directly to his and Jack’s superior officer.

  Their boss had two distinct modes, and Sam knew which one he was about to see. The moment Sam stepped into the office, the man shifted into professional mode.

  “Start from the beginning,” the supervisor said calmly. “And don’t leave anything out.”

  So Sam didn’t.

  He explained what had happened the night before: how his mother had been arrested on adultery charges, how she had called him during dinner while he, Jack, and Hailey were eating pork chops with bacon and sweet peas. He described how she asked him to post bond and how he refused, and then how she tried to intimidate him by saying her husband—Sam’s stepfather—would make his life miserable.

  Sam also explained how Rick had shown up at the house later that night, putting on the concerned stepdad routine before eventually revealing he wanted Sam to use his position to get his mother released.

  “And then he threatened you?” the boss asked.

  Sam nodded.

  “When I started closing the door, yeah.”

  The supervisor leaned back slightly in his chair. Something about the story seemed to trigger an old memory, and he gave a small chuckle.

  “That reminds me of my field agent days back in the 1970s,” he said.

  Sam kept his expression neutral, though in his head he couldn’t help thinking that the man really was from a different era—almost a dinosaur compared to modern field operations.

  Back then, computers were barely recognizable compared to modern systems. The keyboards required heavy pressure just to register a keystroke, and printers screeched like tortured machinery whenever they spat out a sheet of paper. If agents needed to contact someone in the field, they didn’t have smartphones or encrypted messaging systems. They had to follow procedures similar to the Little Bird FD code system, using signals like 10-2, meaning: call your field office or precinct by phone.

  In the fire department, that same code meant contacting your quarters or dispatch via telephone.

  Even the clothing allowance had been different.

  Back then, agents were given about $30 to buy a casual suit that actually cost closer to $51—meaning they had to make up the difference themselves. Modern agents were better equipped. Now they were issued budget smartphones, and their clothing allowance had increased to $110, which was enough to buy two decent suits if you shopped carefully. The allowance could be used every few years for replacement clothing or repairs, or agents could go to the uniform division to get tailored suits—though the extra tailoring still came out of their own pocket.

  Sam had heard stories from older agents about how rough things used to be.

  In the early days, agents often had to buy their own ammunition. The department didn’t yet have the government contract with Strawberry Armory that now supplied weapons and ammo. That part, at least, sounded believable to Sam.

  Mitchell had once mentioned something similar about law enforcement history. In the earliest days of policing in many countries, officers often had to buy their own uniforms, weapons, and ammunition. In rural sheriff departments, deputies sometimes wore whatever clothing they already owned, simply pinning a five- or six-pointed star badge to their chest to signify authority.

  Uniforms for urban police departments started appearing around the 1850s, while rural sheriffs didn’t consistently adopt official uniforms until somewhere between the 1930s and 1950s.

  The Country of Little Bird handled things differently. They didn’t really have sheriff departments in the traditional sense. The closest equivalent existed within the court system. Bailiffs maintained order inside courtrooms, removing disruptive individuals and escorting prisoners to holding cells. Deputies protected the courthouse itself and assisted bailiffs when situations escalated.

  For rural patrol duties, the closest thing Little Bird had was Island Patrol, which operated more like American State Police or Highway Patrol rather than a sheriff’s department.

  Sam’s boss eventually leaned forward again, “Where does your stepfather work?” he asked. “And where does he live?”

  Sam understood immediately what the man intended to do. Still, he answered without hesitation.

  “My other father,” Sam said, The words came out with a heavy edge of venom. “Works overnight at Old Mill Chemical Plant. Ten at night until seven in the morning.”

  He said without preamble, “He’s home during the day.”

  Sam then gave the address, “A house on 14th Street, east side of town.”

  The superior officer wrote the information down calmly. Sam didn’t feel even the slightest bit guilty. In his mind, his mother and stepfather had earned whatever consequences came their way.

  With the report finished, Sam left the office and headed upstairs to the second-floor breakroom. He poured himself a cup of coffee, grabbed a jelly doughnut, and sat down at one of the tables while the small television in the corner played the local news.

  He had barely taken two bites when the broadcast suddenly shifted. BREAKING NEWS flashed across the screen. The station cut to a live feed.

  The camera stood several yards back from a suburban house—one Sam recognized immediately. Several unmarked sedans sat across the front lawn. In the foreground, an Elite Operations Detachment agent held a shotgun while other agents moved toward the front door.

  A moment later the door burst open with a loud crack. Agents rushed inside. A few seconds later they reappeared—dragging Rick out onto the porch. He was wrapped in nothing but a bath towel, still soaking wet. They had caught him in the shower.

  Sam watched the television feed in the breakroom as the situation outside his stepfather’s house unfolded in real time. The camera showed Rick Garvey being dragged across the lawn toward one of the unmarked sedans parked near the curb. Two federal agents pushed him down into the back seat before the car door slammed shut.

  Within seconds, the convoy of sedans began pulling away from the property.

  The reporter on the screen stepped forward slightly, microphone in hand, clearly trying to maintain a professional tone while the scene behind her wrapped up.

  “Socialite Rick Garvey has been arrested by federal agents this morning at 9:45 AM,” she reported. “At this time, we don’t yet know what charges he’s facing. This is Emily Arvin, reporting for Channel 5 News, outside the Garvey residence.”

  Before the live feed cut away, another vehicle rolled into frame.

  A tow truck.

  Sam didn’t need anyone to explain what that meant. His stepfather’s prized luxury car—Rick’s favorite status symbol—was about to be hauled away. In the Country of Little Bird, vehicles seized during federal investigations typically went straight to the impound lot. If the owner didn’t pay the fees and reclaim the vehicle within 30 days, the government had two options: auction it off to the public or send it to be scrapped and melted down for recycled metal, which would likely end up being used in the construction of another vehicle.

  Sam knew there was a decent chance Rick’s car would end up in that exact process.

  And Sam didn’t feel the slightest urge to intervene.

  A few minutes later the broadcast ended, but the story wasn’t finished inside the building.

  Sam stood up from the breakroom table just as two agents escorted his stepfather through the front entrance of the suboffice. Rick looked pathetic—still soaking wet from the interrupted shower, his damp white towel hanging loosely over his shoulders like a defeated flag.

  The agents didn’t say a word as they marched him down the hallway toward the secure holding area.

  Rick, however, had plenty to say.

  “This is an abuse of authority!” he shouted. “You’re harassing an innocent man! I’ll have your badges for this!”

  The words echoed through the hallway.

  Neither agent even slowed down.

  Sam noticed the brief glance they exchanged with each other—a silent look that practically screamed the same exhausted thought: Here we go again.

  They had clearly heard that speech before.

  Everyone who got arrested seemed to claim they were innocent. Everyone claimed they were being harassed. But the reality was simple: federal agents didn’t kick down doors and drag people out of their showers unless a judge had already signed a warrant.

  If Rick were truly innocent, they wouldn’t have been there.

  Sam watched until the group disappeared through the secure doors leading toward the holding cells.

  He didn’t follow them.

  Instead, he walked down the hallway and stopped at the railing overlooking the main operations floor of the Clearlake Suboffice. From the mezzanine on the second level, he could see the entire room below.

  Rows of desks stretched across the floor, each one occupied by agents working quietly behind glowing computer screens.

  Interestingly, most of them still referred to those machines as “terminals.”

  It was an old habit that had stuck around from earlier decades. Many of the veteran agents in the office had been born in the 1970s or early 1980s, back when the dominant interface with computers had been clunky mainframe terminals—dedicated monitors and keyboards connected to centralized systems. Those machines had displayed glowing green text on black phosphor screens, long before the era of modern flat displays.

  The terminology never fully disappeared.

  Even now, with sleek flat-screen monitors and modern operating systems filling the office, the older agents still casually said things like “check the terminal” or “pull it up on your terminal.”

  To Sam, it was almost an inside joke—an acknowledgment of how much technology had evolved.

  In reality, true computer terminals had long since vanished from everyday use. If you found one today, it would probably be sitting in a collector’s basement or behind glass in a museum display.

  The Clearlake Suboffice itself was unusual in other ways.

  Most of the agents working there were in their late thirties or forties, which wasn’t accidental. Clearlake was considered something of a quieter assignment compared to the region’s larger field offices. Many agents transferred there after years of working in much more chaotic environments.

  Some came from the Empire Field Office, which handled a constant flood of urban crime. Others transferred from Las Adventure, where investigations were complicated by the city’s gambling industry and endless financial crimes. Some came from Fort Sunction, a politically sensitive office where investigations often collided with powerful local interests. And others arrived from Fort Flurry or the sprawling City of Chocolate Field Office, where sheer population density meant every case was more complicated.

  Agents typically came to Clearlake for one of two reasons.

  Either they wanted a more predictable workload after years of high-stress assignments, or they were approaching retirement and wanted a calmer environment to finish out their careers while securing their full pension. Compared to those urban offices, Clearlake was almost peaceful. Sam and Jack were the outliers. At 21 years old, they were easily the youngest agents in the entire building.

  Unlike most of their colleagues, they hadn’t transferred in from somewhere else. They had grown up here. Both of them were Clearlake natives, born and raised in the quiet town they now served. The suboffice itself also had a unique mission.

  While agents occasionally handled local cases, their primary role was to support the larger field offices. Clearlake specialized in the kind of detailed investigative work that larger offices rarely had time for—deep background investigations, long-term data analysis, complex digital forensics, and the meticulous research required to build airtight cases.

  Most of the dramatic raids and arrests happened elsewhere. But the work done in Clearlake was the foundation that made those operations possible. Sam leaned against the railing, watching the quiet hum of activity below. The agents at their desks typed steadily, screens glowing, files moving from one system to another.

  It wasn’t glamorous work. But without it, the bigger offices wouldn’t function at all. And somewhere down the hallway behind the secure doors, Rick Garvey was sitting in a holding cell—probably still yelling about his innocence.

  Sam unlocked the front door and stepped inside the house, closing it quietly behind him. The sound of the latch clicking shut seemed unusually loud in the stillness. The late afternoon light spilled through the living room window exactly the way it always did, stretching across the floor in long golden strips. Nothing looked out of place. The furniture sat where it always had, the kitchen still held the faint lingering scent of breakfast coffee, and the television remote rested on the arm of the couch.

  But the house felt wrong.

  It wasn’t messy or damaged or disturbed—it was simply empty.

  Hailey wasn’t there.

  The quiet made the entire place feel less like a home and more like a museum exhibit dedicated to a life that had briefly paused. Sam stood there for a moment, letting the silence settle around him, before moving slowly toward the hallway.

  His boots sounded heavier than usual against the floor as he walked toward the bedroom.

  When he reached the door, he pushed it open without turning on the light. The room was dim, illuminated only by the fading sunlight slipping through the curtains. This had always been their shared space, the one room in the house that truly felt like a refuge after long shifts and sleepless nights.

  He didn’t stop at the dresser or the nightstands.

  Instead, he walked straight to the closet.

  Sam opened the double doors, the polished brass handles cool in his hands. The faint scent of cedar wood and lavender drifted out from inside. Hailey kept small lavender sachets tucked into the corners of the closet to keep everything smelling clean.

  Among the everyday clothing—jackets, work shirts, and folded jeans—hung something he rarely took out.

  His Army Service Dress uniform.

  The olive-drab fabric was still perfectly pressed, the sharp creases running down the sleeves and torso with the kind of precision that only came from military inspection standards. The brass insignia on the collar reflected the faint light of the room: Corporal.

  But the real story of that uniform was written on the upper arm.

  Just below the shoulder seam were two embroidered patches.

  The bottom patch displayed the bold arching text “MARINES.”

  Directly above it was another patch marked “SPECIAL FORCES.”

  Together they identified what Sam had been during the war: a Marine Commando.

  The rest of the uniform carried the insignia of the 2nd Marine Division, which explained part of the structure of the unit he had served in. Officially, the four Marine Commando groups were attached to the division, giving them logistical support and a place within the larger command structure.

  Unofficially, they operated very differently.

  Their missions placed them far ahead of the main force—deep reconnaissance and direct action operations that were designed to disrupt the enemy long before conventional units arrived. They were essentially high-tier Pathfinders, operators sent behind enemy lines to cause chaos.

  Assassinating enemy officers, Destroying artillery positions. Sabotaging communication networks and phone lines, Blowing supply depots.

  Anything that made the battlefield easier for the divisions that followed. On paper, those missions were described in carefully sanitized language.

  Off the record, everyone knew the truth. They are a special operations unit, operating in a role similar to the historic Marine Raiders of World War II—small teams capable of working independently, striking fast, and disappearing before the enemy could respond.

  Sam reached out and ran his fingers along the sleeve of the uniform. The fabric felt exactly the same as it had the last time he wore it. And that was the problem. His mind kept drifting back to the ambush earlier that morning.

  Years of training—hand-to-hand combat, reaction drills, fighting inside vehicles, fighting in confined spaces, learning how to react when caught off guard. He had trained for exactly that kind of situation.

  And yet when the attacker came out of nowhere beside the sedan. He hadn’t stopped him. Sam leaned slightly against the closet frame, staring at the patches on his sleeve the attacker had blindsided them, Jack had been slammed backward into the car.

  Sam had managed to throw an elbow, but that was it. The man had grabbed his head and smashed it against the window before he could really react. In the end, the fight had been stopped not by him or Jack but by Mitchell.

  Sam let out a shaky breath. The thought looping through his mind wasn’t anger. It was something worse. A quiet, persistent doubt. All that training, all those years learning how to fight. And when it actually mattered he hadn’t been fast enough to protect either of them.

  Sam stood in the kitchen for a moment, staring at the leftover food on the counter before deciding he might as well eat something. The house was still quiet, the kind of quiet that made every small movement feel louder than it should. He opened the refrigerator and pulled out the leftover pork chops and a container of green beans.

  Instead of reheating them properly, he did something a little simpler.

  He took a slice of soft sandwich bread, placed a cold pork chop on top, and folded the bread over it.

  It was a strange habit—one he had picked up from his father. Sam remembered his dad insisting that a pork chop sandwich was the only proper way to eat a leftover chop. Sam had never actually tried it himself until now, but after taking the first bite he had to admit his father had been onto something.

  The bread soaked up just enough of the meat’s flavor to make the whole thing work. It wasn’t fancy, but it was good in the simple, comforting way that reminded him of childhood meals and late nights in the kitchen with his dad after long days.

  For a few minutes, life felt almost normal. Then the doorbell rang. The sharp sound cut through the quiet house like a blade. Sam froze instantly.

  Years of training—and a career spent dealing with dangerous situations—had conditioned his body to react before his mind even had time to process what was happening. His hand moved automatically toward the service pistol at his hip. He didn’t draw it, but he rested his hand against the grip as he moved carefully toward the front door.

  He paused beside it and looked through the peephole.

  A second later his shoulders relaxed. Standing on the porch was Cadence. Sam took his hand off the pistol, making sure it was securely holstered before opening the door.

  “Cadence?” he said, surprised but pleased to see her. “What are you doing here?”

  Cadence stepped inside without hesitation, holding a large basket in both hands. Her expression carried the mix of concern and determination that usually appeared whenever she decided someone needed help.

  “Mitchell told me what happened,” she said. “And you know me—I couldn’t just sit around doing nothing.”

  She lifted the basket slightly, “So I went to the drugstore and put together a little something.”

  Sam couldn’t help smiling. That was exactly like Cadence.

  She had a way of turning concern into action almost immediately. If someone was hurt, stressed, or just having a bad day, she would appear with something—food, medicine, tea, snacks, or whatever else she thought might help.

  She preferred calling them care packages.And honestly, the name fit her perfectly.

  Cadence was the living definition of compassion. She was a committed pacifist, someone whose entire worldview revolved around kindness, patience, and the belief that people should take care of one another. While the rest of Sam’s circle operated in worlds full of violence and confrontation, Cadence always approached life with the mindset of “love thy neighbor.”

  Sam accepted the basket from her and set it down on the kitchen counter.

  Inside, he found exactly the kind of things Cadence knew he liked: a thick portion of salted venison, a stack of assorted biscuits, a bag filled with his favorite mixed candies, a large milk chocolate bar, several oatcakes, and a generous pack of beef jerky.

  Comfort food. Sam looked back up at her, clearly touched, “Thank you, Cadence,” he said quietly. “This really means a lot.”

  Then another thought occurred to him, “Wait,” he said. “Did you get something for Jack too?”

  Cadence’s face lit up immediately, “Of course I did!” she said, almost offended by the idea she might forget him.

  She began listing off what she had packed for Jack, “I got him some valerian root to help him sleep and calm his nerves,” she explained. “A few cans of apricots, some canned corned beef, assorted offal, a wedge of aged cheese, a big chunk of artisan bread, another selection of biscuits and crackers, some dark chocolate, and those weird neon gummy bears he likes.”

  Sam chuckled. That list sounded exactly like Jack’s strange eating habits.

  Cadence’s attention to detail didn’t surprise him either. She remembered the little things about people—the odd snacks they liked, the foods that comforted them, the things that helped when they were stressed or recovering from something rough.

  She didn’t judge any of it. She just remembered. And then she showed up with a basket full of it when someone needed it most.

  Cadence glanced at the clock on the wall and suddenly straightened.

  “Oh—shoot,” she said, half-laughing at herself. “I’ve got to run.”

  Sam looked up from the basket.

  “Already?”

  “Yeah,” she said, adjusting the strap of her purse. “Dentist appointment in about twenty minutes, and then a doctor’s appointment an hour and a half after that. I cut it a little close getting over here.”

  She stepped back toward the door.

  “Take it easy, Sam. And don’t forget to give Jack his basket.”

  Sam nodded.

  “I will.”

  Cadence gave him a quick, warm smile—the kind that always seemed effortless for her—before stepping outside. A moment later he heard her car start, and within seconds the sound of the engine faded down the street.

  The house returned to silence.

  Sam stood there for a moment looking at the basket she had brought. He couldn’t help thinking about Cadence and the kind of life she had chosen.

  There were a lot of jobs she simply couldn’t do, not because she wasn’t capable, but because they clashed with who she was as a person. Cadence was a committed pacifist to the core. The idea of harming anything—even something as small as a fly—clearly bothered her.

  Which meant certain professions were completely out of the question.

  There was no way she could work in a slaughterhouse, carving up livestock. Law enforcement would be impossible too—she couldn’t imagine herself arresting someone, let alone fighting them. Even something like being a martial arts instructor would feel wrong to her, because the entire foundation of it involved teaching people how to hurt someone else.

  And yet Cadence had found a life that suited her perfectly.

  She was content being a housewife.

  Not the kind of contentment people sometimes pretend to have—the kind where someone smiles in public but secretly feels miserable or trapped inside their own life. With Cadence, the happiness was real. It showed in everything she did. She genuinely loved the rhythm of the life she had built.

  Sam, however, had never quite figured out how she did it.

  To him, the routine sounded exhausting in a different way than his job was. Every day followed roughly the same pattern: waking up early, making breakfast, getting the kids up and fed, making sure they brushed their teeth, getting them dressed, getting them out the door to school or activities. After that came cleaning the house, running errands, grocery shopping, planning dinner, and making sure everything was ready for when the family came home again.

  Then the next day, it started all over again.

  Sam leaned against the counter, still holding the slice of bread with the half-finished pork chop sandwich. He took another bite and shook his head slightly. He couldn’t imagine doing the same routine every single day without going crazy.

  After finishing the last of the leftovers, Sam rinsed the plates and set them neatly into the dishwasher. The simple routine helped settle his mind a little. Once the kitchen was cleaned up, he walked through the house, flipping off the lights one by one. At the front door he reset the alarm system he and Hailey had installed only a few days earlier, then double-checked the locks before stepping outside.

  The evening air was cool as he got into his car.

  He started the engine and pulled away from the curb, heading across town toward Jack’s place. The drive took a little longer than most of his usual trips. Jack lived on the far side of town in a neighborhood where the houses grew progressively larger the farther you went.

  Eventually Sam turned onto the long road leading to Skybolt Manor.

  The mansion was hard to miss. A tall fence enclosed the property, with a wide central driveway that curved up toward the front entrance. Unlike most houses in the area, the garage wasn’t off to the side—it was built directly into the front of the house, making the entire structure look more like a stately estate than a typical suburban home.

  Sam pulled through the open gate, parked in the driveway, and stepped out of the car. He walked up to the front door and knocked. A minute passed before the door opened and Jack appeared, still looking slightly groggy from the concussion but clearly doing better than earlier.

  “Sam?” Jack said, surprised, Sam held up the basket. “Cadence stopped by earlier,” he said. “Brought you a care package.”

  Jack immediately smiled as he took the basket from him.

  “That woman has a seventh sense,” he said with admiration. “Cadence just… knows when someone needs something.”

  Sam chuckled and cut him off before he could get too sentimental.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Sam said. “We know. She’s basically been the unofficial team mom since junior high.”

  Jack laughed. Sam leaned against the doorframe for a moment, remembering an old story.

  “Remember when I broke my leg back in school?” he said.

  Jack nodded slowly, “Cadence was the one who handled that,” Sam continued. “She grabbed a belt and a couple sticks and made a makeshift tourniquet to keep the leg straight. Then she and Mitchell carried me all the way back to my dad’s apartment like I was a damn piece of lumber.”

  He shook his head slightly, “They didn’t even let me walk so I wouldn’t mess the leg up any worse.”

  “That sounds like her.”, He glanced down at the basket again.

  “You know what’s funny?” Jack added. “Cadence is the complete opposite of most women I know.”

  Sam raised an eyebrow, “How so?”

  “Well,” Jack said, leaning casually against the door, “most women I know focus on their careers first. They work for years, build up savings, get some financial stability. Then maybe in their late twenties or early thirties they start thinking about kids.”

  He shrugged, “Which makes sense. They want enough money saved up so if they go on maternity leave—or if their job only covers part of it—they’ve got enough capital to cover the gap.”

  Sam nodded slightly, “Pretty normal logic.”

  Jack said. “But Cadence?”, He gestured toward the basket, “She skipped all of that. Just went straight into the housewife life.”

  Jack laughed, “She’s got a whole gaggle of kids running around, a house to manage, meals to plan—and somehow she looks completely happy doing it.”

  Sam couldn’t really argue with that. Jack continued, “And honestly, she probably doesn’t worry about finances much anyway,” he said. “Between Mitchell’s police salary and his Army pay from before, they’re doing just fine.”

  Sam folded his arms and looked back toward the massive house behind Jack.

  “Well,” he said, “at least she’s using that happiness to feed the rest of us.”

  Jack lifted the basket slightly, “I’m not complaining,” he said.

  Sam stepped inside as Jack moved aside from the doorway, letting him into the house. The first thing Sam noticed was how enormous the place felt from the inside. The high ceilings and open floor plan made the entryway echo slightly when the door shut behind them.

  Sam looked around slowly.

  “Swanky house, Jack,” he said with a whistle under his breath. “Your father-in-law must be loaded.”

  Jack snorted as he walked toward the kitchen.

  “Oh, he’s loaded alright,” Jack said. “The kind of loaded where it almost doesn’t sound real.”

  Sam followed him inside, and Jack continued explaining.

  “When he handed my wife the keys to this place as a wedding gift, I asked him straight up how he could afford something like this.”

  Jack opened the refrigerator briefly before shutting it again.

  “You know what he said?”

  Sam raised an eyebrow.

  “What?”

  Jack shrugged.

  “He just said, ‘I got several.’”

  Sam blinked.

  “Several?”

  “Yeah,” Jack said with a small laugh. “Just like that. Like it was no big deal.”

  That alone told Sam quite a bit about the man.

  Jack leaned back against the counter.

  “My father-in-law’s a real estate mogul,” he explained. “He buys properties that nobody else wants—old houses that are falling apart, buildings that got wrecked in fires, places that cities have declared vacant.”

  Sam nodded.

  “And then he flips them?”

  “Exactly,” Jack said. “Fixes them up, renovates everything, and then either sells them at full market value or rents them out.”

  Jack paused and added one more detail.

  “But he doesn’t do the usual landlord thing. He gives renters a rent-to-own option.”

  Sam said “So if someone rents long enough…”

  “They can buy the place,” Jack finished. “Exactly.”

  They stepped into the kitchen where Jack placed Cadence’s basket on the large granite-top island in the center of the room. He began going through the contents again. When he pulled out the chocolate and biscuits, he shook his head in appreciation.

  “When I see Cadence again,” Jack said, “I’m giving that woman a bear hug.”

  He paused and said, “As long as she isn’t pregnant again.”

  Sam chuckled. “She’s not,” he said. “But she’s skinny enough that if you’re planning on hugging her, you’ve probably got about a month window before she ends up pregnant again.”

  Jack laughed loudly, “Fair point.”

  He set the basket items back down and leaned against the island.

  “You know something though?” Jack said more thoughtfully. “I really respect Cadence.”

  Sam nodded slightly, “Yeah?”

  “She’s one of the few people I know who doesn’t jump to conclusions,” Jack said. “She actually listens to both sides of a story before deciding what to believe.”

  Sam tilted his head.

  “What brought that up?”

  Jack sighed quietly. “There was this situation a while back,” he said. “Someguy brother knew got accused by his girlfriend of assaulting a minor.”

  Sam frowned, “That’s serious.”

  Jack said. “And the moment the accusation came out, everyone believed the woman immediately.”

  He shook his head.

  “The guy basically became a social pariah overnight.”

  People stopped talking to him. Friends cut him off. Family members distanced themselves. His reputation collapsed in a matter of days.

  “Except Cadence,” Jack said.

  Sam looked at him.

  “She didn’t treat the guy like a monster,” Jack explained. “She actually talked to him.”

  Jack recalled how Cadence explained her reasoning.

  “To her,” he said, “liars usually show certain patterns. They interrupt constantly, they try to dominate conversations, they get louder than everyone else, and their stories change depending on who they’re talking to.”

  Cadence had quietly listened to both sides. And something about the accusations hadn’t added up. Later, when police interviewed the children who were supposedly involved, the truth came out: nothing had actually happened. The kids explained that their father’s girlfriend had made the whole thing up for attention.

  But by then the damage had already been done.

  “Even after the truth came out,” Jack said, “most people didn’t want to admit they were wrong.”

  Sam folded his arms, “They just pretended it never happened?”

  “Pretty much.” Jack said

  Some of the man’s friends and relatives later tried to reconnect with him once the lie was exposed. They talked about forgiveness, about “moving forward,” about family healing.

  But the man refused, “He told them all to go away,” Jack said quietly. Because when the accusations first appeared, Cadence had been the only one who believed him. Everyone else had treated him like he was worse than the devil.

  Jack shook his head, “It’s easy for people to say ‘let bygones be bygones’ when they’re not the ones whose life was destroyed for a year.”

  Sam agreed where that Jack sighed and glanced at the basket again, “That’s why I respect her,” he said. “Cadence actually thinks before she judges.”

  He paused before adding something else, “Most people don’t.”

  Sam looked around the large kitchen again, “People believe rumors faster than truth,” Jack continued. “Lies spread faster.”

  He shrugged, “Truth takes time. Rumors don’t.”

  Jack opened the refrigerator and carefully set the bottle of valerian root drink Cadence had included in the basket onto the middle shelf. The thick, earthy drink was something he actually enjoyed, especially when it was cold, and he closed the door with a small nod of satisfaction.

  Then the conversation drifted back to the morning’s incident.

  Jack leaned against the kitchen island and looked over at Sam.

  “So,” he said, “what happened to the guy who attacked me?”

  Sam crossed his arms and rested his shoulder against the counter.

  “Last I saw him,” Sam replied, “he was still a sobbing mess.”

  Jack raised an eyebrow.

  “Mitchell’s pepper spray?”

  Sam nodded.

  “Eyes watering like a busted faucet,” he said dryly. “They had him cuffed and were dragging him out of there.”

  Sam paused for a moment before continuing.

  “By now he’s probably sitting in a holding cell,” he added. “Or maybe already in an interview room with a lawyer. If he’s smart, he’s telling that lawyer to move fast and try to get ahead of the District Attorney before the charges are officially filed.”

  Jack shook his head slowly.

  “His eyes are going to be red for a long time,” Jack said. “Mitchell emptied that whole can on him.”

  The memory made Jack grimace slightly.

  “Seriously,” he added, suddenly realizing something, “what the hell was Mitchell doing carrying a twenty-four-ounce can of pepper spray?”

  He looked genuinely baffled.

  “Was he expecting a bear attack or something? That’s enough to drop a moose.”

  Sam chuckled quietly, “That’s Mitchell’s workaround.”

  “For what?” Jack asked

  “For refusing to get taser certification.” Sam said

  Jack blinked. “Oh right.”

  Sam explained. “The department requires thirty one-hour classes,” Sam said. “Or you can do the three ten-hour Saturday courses. Either way, Mitchell won’t do it.”

  Jack laughed softly, “Let me guess.”

  “Yep,” Sam said. “He says he’d rather spend Saturdays being a father.”

  Sam described Mitchell’s reasoning.

  Instead of sitting in a classroom learning how to use a stun gun, Mitchell would rather take his three oldest kids to the park. He liked teaching them how to throw a football, how to pitch a baseball, how to catch a ball properly. Normal father stuff.

  “And after the kids go to bed,” Sam continued, “he’d rather spend the rest of the night watching sports.”

  Jack said, “Football, baseball…”

  “Even sports he doesn’t actually care about,” Sam said. “He’ll sit there watching rugby and still complain he doesn’t like rugby.”

  Jack laughed, “That sounds exactly like him.”

  Sam shrugged, “Honestly, in the Country of Little Bird, he’s not the only one who feels that way.”

  Sports culture runs deep in the country. For a lot of people, Saturday nights meant one of two things: sitting in front of the television watching a game or heading out to a stadium to see one live.

  The idea of voluntarily spending those hours inside a classroom learning how to use a stun gun capable of delivering twelve hundred to two thousand volts didn’t appeal to most people.

  “Put it this way,” Sam said. “If you asked the average person in Little Bird whether they’d rather watch a football game or sit in a lecture about electrical incapacitation devices…”

  Jack raised a hand, “Don’t even finish that sentence.”

  Sam said, “Exactly.”

  Jack nodded toward the refrigerator where the valerian drink now sat, “So Mitchell’s solution,” Jack said, “is to just carry enough pepper spray to knock down half a zoo.”

  Sam shrugged again, “Works for him.”

  Sam and Jack finally pulled out the dining table chairs and sat down across from each other. After everything that had happened that day—being attacked, the clinic visit, the arrest, and the strange cascade of events afterward—it felt good to sit down and actually talk without standing around or rushing somewhere.

  The conversation drifted quickly to a subject that both of them had strong opinions about.

  Their boss.

  “Honestly,” Jack said, leaning back in his chair and taking a long drink, “our boss is a total dinosaur.”

  Sam smirked.

  “He’s got one foot out the door and the other still planted in the 1970s,” Jack continued. “The guy still calls computers terminals for crying out loud.”

  Sam laughed quietly.

  “And he keeps talking about the ‘good old days’ when agents had to bring their own guns and ammo,” Jack added.

  Sam nodded.

  “It’s true,” he said. “Half the office is drowning in his history lessons.”

  Sam leaned forward slightly.

  “Remember when he started talking about those old printer machines?” Sam said. “He described them like they were everywhere back then—said they stretched ‘as far as the eye could see.’”

  Jack groaned.

  “Oh God, the dot-matrix stories.”

  Sam chuckled.

  “I swear he thinks printers should still scream at you every time you print something.”

  Jack snapped his fingers.

  “Exactly! That horrible screeching noise when the printer head ran across the paper.”

  He shook his head.

  “I was trying to explain to him that the 1970s weren’t just different inside the office. The whole world was different.”

  Sam nodded thoughtfully.

  “Yeah. My dad used to talk about it too,” he said.

  Jack leaned forward slightly.

  “And if Mackenzie ‘Macaroni’ Waterson’s girlfriend Claire—‘Lusty’ Johnson—is to be believed, cities like Empire back then were absolute chaos.”

  Sam raised an eyebrow.

  “Claire once said you could stand on a street corner for five minutes and watch seven street fights, a handful of muggings, and maybe a couple carjackings,” Jack continued.

  Sam whistled

  “That bad?”

  “According to her, yeah.”

  Jack shrugged.

  “But it wasn’t just crime. The city governments were a mess too.”

  Sam nodded, already knowing where that conversation was going.

  “Oh yeah,” Sam said. “Cities like Empire were constantly claiming they were on the edge of bankruptcy.”

  Jack leaned forward.

  “But at the same time,” Jack added, “the politicians were running around with taxpayer-funded charge cards, spending money like the city had an endless bank account.”

  Sam shook his head.

  “Classic,” he said.

  Back in the 1970s and 80s, some cities developed a reputation for constantly claiming poverty while quietly wasting enormous amounts of money behind the scenes.

  “They’d say the fire department couldn’t afford spare parts for engines,” Sam said. “They’d say the fire trucks were ten years past their service life.”

  “And meanwhile,” Jack added, “water pipes and bridges were still the same ones installed in the 1950s.”

  Sam nodded.

  “Meanwhile the same politicians crying about budgets were using city charge cards like personal credit cards.”

  Jack snorted.

  “Not just mismanagement,” he said. “Straight-up corruption.”

  Sam leaned back.

  “I remember hearing that some cities ended up getting government audits because the finances were such a mess.”

  Jack pointed a finger at him, “The ‘nothing gets built’ scam.”

  The trick was simple.

  City officials would announce a new infrastructure project—roads, bridges, public works buildings, whatever it happened to be. They’d file paperwork for the project, estimate the cost, set a deadline for completion. And then…Nothing. No construction. No building. No visible work. The money would simply disappear.

  Jack shook his head, “It’s still happening today in different ways,” he said. “Half the time it’s just about keeping union payrolls flowing.”

  Sam agreed, “Workers get told there’s work coming,” Sam said. “But sometimes they’re basically sitting at home collecting paychecks.”

  Jack chuckled, “Watching sports.”

  Sam laughed.

  Saturday night football. Baseball recaps, Thursday night basketball, Friday night soccer, European football, Golf, Rugby.

  Jack physically recoiled when Sam mentioned golf.

  “Don’t even say that word,” Jack groaned.

  Sam raised an eyebrow.

  “You hate golf that much?”

  “My dad tried to teach me once,” Jack said.

  He rubbed his forehead like the memory hurt.

  “The only good part of that entire day was when a woman drove up in a golf cart asking if we wanted snacks.”

  Sam laughed.

  “What did you get?”

  “A drink and a hot dog,” Jack said immediately.

  “That was the highlight of the entire day.”

  He shook his head, “Golf is the most mind-numbingly boring sport on Earth.”

  Jack mimicked swinging a club.

  “You hit a tiny white ball with a fiberglass stick and then stand there trying to figure out where it went. Middle-class and rich people call that fun? I’d rather watch paint dry,” Jack said.

  Then he laughed at another memory, “One time my dad tried to chase a goose off the course.”

  Sam immediately started laughing, “Let me guess…”

  “The goose kicked his ass,” Jack said.

  Sam nearly choked on his drink.

  Jack continued, “And another time he tried to grab a golf ball that landed near a family of swans.”

  Sam groaned, “Oh no.”

  “The father swan went after him,” Jack said, “Full attack mode.”

  Sam shook his head, “Swans are territorial.”

  Jack said. “And I had to explain that to him.”

  Jack pointed at himself, “I was twelve years old. “And my dad was thirty-nine.”

  Sam laughed again, “So a seventh grader had to explain wildlife behavior to a grown man?”

  Jack nodded, “Yep.”

  Sam leaned back in his chair, “Sounds about right.”

  Sam ran his hand along the edge of the dining table, feeling the smoothness of the varnished wood beneath his fingertips. The grain was deep and rich, the kind of pattern you only saw in wood that had been properly aged and worked by hand. After a moment, he looked up at Jack.

  “Where did you and your wife even get this table and chairs?” he asked. “This stuff doesn’t look store-bought.”

  Jack smiled and leaned back in his chair, “That’s because it isn’t,” he said. “All of this was handmade.”

  Sam raised an eyebrow, “Seriously?”

  “Yep,” Jack replied. “Every bit of it. Took us about four months to finish the whole set.”

  Sam blinked, “Four months?”

  Jack explained, “My wife was very particular about the wood,” he explained. “She wanted it to be just right. The lumber we used had actually been sitting in a warehouse for fifteen years so it could properly mature and acclimate to the climate.”

  Sam admitted, “That’s dedication.”

  Jack chuckled, “That was just the beginning,” he said. “Each chair took about two weeks to make.”

  Sam did the math in his head.

  “So four chairs…”

  “Eight weeks total,” Jack confirmed. “Two weeks per chair. Sanding, shaping, assembling, sanding again, and then finishing it with varnish.”

  He tapped the table, “The table itself took about four weeks,” he continued. “We sanded the boards down, assembled the frame, re-sanded everything, and then sealed it with varnish.”

  Jack shrugged, “Though to be fair,” he added, “we worked on the table in between the chairs.”

  Sam leaned back in his seat again, impressed.

  Jack admitted, “Thank God for shop class.”

  Sam agreed immediately, “Yeah, no kidding.”

  Unlike Jack’s house, most of Sam and Hailey’s furniture wasn’t handcrafted at all. It was the complete opposite—mass-produced furniture bought from one of those strange furniture stores that everyone in town knew about but almost nobody ever actually walked into.

  The kind of store where the windows always displayed dining sets and couches with ridiculous price tags, yet somehow the place stayed open year after year.

  Sam shook his head, “You know what kills me about furniture stores?” he said. “They’ll sell a dining set for fifty dollars, and yet you could walk into a hardware store, buy a few plywood boards and some 2x4s, and build the same thing yourself for like twenty-five.”

  Jack nodded, “Damn straight,”

  Both of them knew why they had that perspective. In the Country of Little Bird, shop class wasn’t optional. It was mandatory.

  Every student had to pass shop class in both junior high and high school. The curriculum covered everything from basic carpentry to metalworking. Students learned how to fabricate objects using hand tools, power tools, and even larger shop machinery. They were also taught practical skills—basic home repair, structural maintenance, and how to fix common household issues.

  By the time someone graduated, they usually knew how to build or repair half the things in their house. Jack shook his head.

  “Honestly,” he said, “when was the last time anyone even went into Old Man Smitter’s furniture store on Main Street?”

  Sam laughed. Jack had a point. In a small town like Clearlake, people weren’t constantly replacing furniture. Most couches, tables, and beds had been in people’s homes since the 1980s or earlier. Unless something physically fell apart, nobody felt the need to throw it away. That mentality was very different from what existed in a lot of other countries.

  Many places had developed a throw-away consumer culture. Products were designed with the expectation that they’d only last around ten or twelve years before being replaced. Replacement parts were often expensive or difficult to find, which pushed people toward buying entirely new appliances or furniture instead of repairing the old ones.

  Sam remembered something Mitchell’s cousin, Mackenzie Nova Waterson, once explained. In some places, a new dining room set could easily cost $800, and a refrigerator could run $1,200 or more. Even worse, those appliances often seemed designed to fail shortly after the warranty expired.

  “If you’re lucky,” Mackenzie had said once, “your fridge lasts twelve years. But that’s only if you’ve got a golden horseshoe shoved somewhere unpleasant.”

  If something broke, replacement parts were often absurdly expensive—sometimes costing almost as much as the appliance itself. The result was a frustrating mindset.

  People would think: Why bother repairing it? I might as well just buy a new one.

  But in Little Bird, things worked very differently.

  Furniture was typically handcrafted and built to last twenty to thirty years, sometimes longer. Appliances were designed to be repaired rather than replaced. It wasn’t uncommon for homes to still have refrigerators built in the 1940s or 1950s that were still running perfectly.

  If something broke, people could simply walk into a hardware or supply store, buy the replacement part, and fix it themselves. That philosophy reflected a broader cultural mindset. Quality over quantity. People preferred to buy one good couch, one good table, and one good bed that would last decades rather than cycling through several cheaper pieces of furniture every ten years.

  As one old saying in Little Bird went: “Better to buy one thing that lasts thirty years than eight things that barely last ten.”

  Sam leaned back in the chair and shook his head slightly, as if remembering something that still annoyed him years later.

  “You know what’s funny?” he said. “I’ve got three female relatives named Mackenzie in my family.”

  Jack blinked, “Three?”

  “Yep,” Sam said. “And the last time they were all in the same place together was at a backyard BBQ.”

  He paused, “They still aren’t speaking to each other.”

  Jack raised an eyebrow, “Let me guess. Family drama?”

  Sam let out a tired laugh, “That’s putting it mildly.”

  He explained. The oldest Mackenzie had been dating a doctor for several years. Everything seemed stable until the middle Mackenzie decided she wanted him instead. According to Sam, the middle one didn’t waste time with subtlety—she seduced the guy, got pregnant, and effectively baby-trapped him.

  Jack winced, “Oof.”

  “And that wasn’t even the end of it,” Sam said.

  A few years later the youngest Mackenzie entered the situation and decided she wanted the same doctor too. She apparently gave the guy an ultimatum: leave the middle sister and start a relationship with her, or she’d start spreading false rumors about him that would ruin his reputation.

  Jack stared at him, “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope.” Sam confirmed

  “And?” Jack asked

  “He left the middle one.”

  Jack got up to turn the chair around, “That’s… wow.”

  Sam shrugged, “The last time the three of them were in the same room together it turned into a full-blown screaming match.”

  He chuckled, “And you know it’s bad when Mitchell refuses to get involved.”

  Jack asked, “What did he say?”

  Sam laughed.

  “Starlight once asked Mitchell if they should respond to a disturbance call involving those three.”

  Jack already looked amused.

  “And Mitchell told her: ‘Those ladies will take an eye.’”

  Jack burst out laughing.

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “If Mitchell’s the one saying stay out of it, you know it’s bad.”

  Jack wiped his eyes and added something else, “Although in Mitchell’s family the name Mackenzie isn’t rare either.”

  Sam asked, “How many?”

  “Fifteen.”

  Sam nearly choked, “Fifteen?!”

  Jack nodded. “But they all have nicknames,” he explained. “Otherwise nobody would know who anyone was talking about.”

  These weren’t the typical cute nicknames either. They were the kind that reflected personality, habits, or quirks.

  “Take Macaroni, for example,” Jack said.

  Sam said, “Yeah, Mackenzie ‘Macaroni’ Waterson. She got that nickname because she loves macaroni noodles. She once said ‘Cheeseburger’ doesn’t have the same ring to it. Then there’s Sturmgewehr. That one’s because she still uses a captured Assault Rifle Model 1943, an old rechambered StG-44.”

  Jack shook his head.

  “Seventy years since World War II and she’s still running around with one. Mitchell’s family is something else.”

  After the laughter died down, Sam’s expression turned more serious.

  “Honestly,” he said quietly, “I hate most of my family.”

  Jack didn’t interrupt.

  “The only sane one is my dad,” Sam continued.

  The rest of the Hartstock family, according to Sam, operated on a strange internal system. They kept score. If you asked them for a favor—anything at all—they’d mentally record it like a debt. They’d bring it up later, reminding you how much they had sacrificed for you.

  But if you asked them for the exact same level of help in return? They’d act like you were being unreasonable. Sam shook his head, “And whenever they get in trouble with the law,” he said, “they come running to me.”

  Jack sighed, “Because you’re a federal agent.”

  Sam said. “And every time I tell them the same thing: I’m not a lawyer and I’m not calling someone to make your charges disappear.”

  Sam explained that his father had recognized the problem early on. That was why Sam’s dad had never invited that side of the family to Sam’s school sports games growing up.

  “To them,” Sam said, “going to a junior-high baseball game would’ve been some huge sacrifice they’d write down on their scoreboard.”

  Jack nodded. But if those same relatives invited you to something—like a birthday or family gathering—and you couldn’t make it? They’d throw a tantrum and add it to the same scoreboard.

  Sam snorted, “And if you asked one of them for a ride to the doctor,” he said, “they’d act like they’d just arranged a personal meeting between you and God.”

  Jack laughed softly, “Yeah… that sounds exhausting.”

  Jack then admitted his own family situation wasn’t much better, “My family’s just high-maintenance in a different way,” he said.

  Jack explained that his parents had raised their children in a way that looked loving on the outside. They provided everything—nice clothes, education, opportunities. But in reality, it was all tightly controlled.

  “They raised us to live their version of life,” Jack said.

  Careers were predetermined. Finance. Law. Business. Those were the only respectable options. Creative jobs, technical jobs, anything outside that narrow lane was seen as unacceptable.

  “They basically groom their kids to live the life they wish they had lived,” Jack said.

  That meant predictable careers, polished social circles, and carefully curated lifestyles.

  “You’re expected to marry someone with the personality of a cardboard cutout,” Jack said dryly. “Drive a car that screams I come from money…” Sam laughed.

  “And spend Saturdays playing golf,” Jack finished bitterly, “Wearing a polo shirt in some color that died in the 1970s.”

  Sam shook his head, “And that’s saying something,” he said.

  The Country of Little Bird itself already had a strange aesthetic. Culturally, the country looked like a fusion of the 1940s through the 1960s, but with advanced technology layered on top—a kind of retro-futuristic vision of the future as people from that era imagined it.

  Cars still had distinctive body shapes and bold styling. You could identify the manufacturer just by the silhouette alone, without even seeing the badge. Fashion still leaned toward mid-century styles. Architecture reflected the same era. Yet underneath that nostalgic appearance existed modern 21st-century technology. It was a strange but oddly coherent blend of past and future.

  Jack leaned back in his chair, “Honestly,” he said, “sometimes the country feels like someone took a 1955 magazine’s idea of the future and actually built it.”

  Sam nodded, “Yeah. And somehow it still works.”