The gates of Sanctuary Six come into sight, rise out of the smog like an hallucination of gleaming metal poles woven into an artistic framework for the door.
'Sanctuary 6 can be witnessed freeing the slaves. There is no way Koch is too
WRITE THE RADIO TALKING ABOUT THEM HERE.
Welcoming them over the radio as heroes, who saved others from slavery.
Which does not mean shit when you're taking a pill vacation in Ruby's warm seats, thinking of Sanctuary 6 as an, 'I'll believe it when I see it,' thing in my mind. After weeks of riding along in Ruby on dope and hope, the sight of anything intact feels unreal. A destination. Due to storms and my oh so warm fucking heart, Ruby has now packed three inside her cab, others ride under tarps on the back, hood, and roof. They are all scrambling to get out and off now, to join the crowds gathering at the entrance, slowly going inside. No more surreal days of breaking down, fixing, breaking down again. Then the last two days — a smog so thick it turned daylight into a brown night. Maya and I walking off with the other lovers, trying to find privacy in a world that doesn’t allow it.
I feel too much for her. Gonna hurt when she dies.
I leave Ruby with in the line of cars. Others are doing the same. Walk toward the people pouring out of Sanctuary Six. They’re celebrating the gangs and everyone as heroes — clapping, thanking us for bringing their relatives home. I tell them I’m just the reporter, but they get that glassy‑eyed look, like I could change their world. Mostly, like all the refugees, I’m glad‑handed and welcomed into Six. Feels good. What the hell — after what we’ve been through?
Adam reaches his family first. His mother screams his name and nearly knocks him over. His father grabs him by the shoulders, shaking him like he’s checking to make sure he’s solid. His sister wraps her arms around his waist and refuses to let go. Adam cries openly, loud and relieved, and the sound pulls others into their own reunions.
The Panthers see their leader as a son again. Some break into tears at the sight. I remind myself some of these guys are nineteen, others grew up in the system and never felt welcomed anywhere.
All around me, people fall into each other — refugees, prisoners, soldiers, families. A wave of joy rolls through the crowd, raw and desperate. For the first time since the pits, since Thiel, since the battlefield, the march feels like it has reached something that isn’t death.
Something’s wrong.
Her tone is flat — the tone she uses when danger isn’t hypothetical.
I try to ignore her. I want this moment. I want to see Adam’s family. I want to see the prisoners smiling. I want to see Maya watching the reunions with that guarded expression she uses when she’s pretending she doesn’t care.
But Ruby keeps going.
The leadership is out here and they are showing signs of panic, under their grace and all that shit. Lord, they’re scanning the columns coming in, and they have people counting prisoners, the gangs--they lump you in with them.
'Oh fucking hell, gotta be a way to destroy it. Sanctuary Six is fucking eh, of course, of course beyond anything I imagined.'
Robots build nonstop to keep up with the refugees. Printers make beds, chairs, anything required. The city is built like the submarine it may be, or boat, hopefully both — the designs say the whole place slips underground into the dense swamp around Lake Michigan.. A nod to one possible future for humanity. Like most futures — a long shot. Hope, real or not, lived eternal in enough fools that humanity was marching to their death with posters of kittens saying 'HANG ON' on their t-shirts.
Then someone, has to be Ellison spies, turns on the holo screens, and they flicker to life across Sanctuary Six; every damn one sends holographic images of the Celebs into the room.
The crowd first yells and screams but then the man himself appears on the screen and they go silent. Koch usually stays behind the camera. The face behind the celebs, in all his pasted on make up trying to make his hundred and ten years match his toupee. No amount of plastic surgery could turn him anymore freakish. Huge lips, noise aquiline as surgeons could get, face so shot up with Botox to try to remove the deep etchings of time on his face, he looks as puffy as a marshmallow. with Botox. He is tall and slim, as they all are with the metamps they probably all they ate was a handful of vitamins.
Koch appears.
He’s framed in glitter and neon, surrounded by his celebrity parasites — Plumage with her drugged bird, Kosmic Konan in his glitter jacket, Blaze Burns smirking like cruelty is oxygen, Coral Reef with his sacred relic strapped to his waist like a joke only he understands.
Koch smiles, slow and satisfied.
“Sanctuary Six,” he says, voice syrup‑smooth. “Return my workers.”
The crowd stiffens.
“Return my property.”
People glance at the prisoners.
“Return the criminals you stole.”
People glance at the gangs.
“Return Juan Rivera, who incited rebellion.”
People glance at me.
“If you do not comply, we will attack Sanctuary Six, and extract our workers.”
The joy evaporates.
Painted bird moment incoming.
The crowd begins to turn on us immediately. We brought what they never expected to have in 6, what they thought they had left behind -- fear. We're a threat now. I feel the red paint splashed on my wings.
People who a moment before had been greeting the gangs, were now backing away, seeing them as The's... as Adam explained to me just a few days before. Too much had happened. Was happening. I go for the pills in my pocket and notice I am not the only one. We pop calm where there shouldn't be any. Pop calm where there should be screams. I prefer the calm because the screams wouldn't do any more good.
“You brought this on us!” Comes from one side. Naturally, we begin to gather together, myself and the gangs. We are too ominous for them to attack. The guards had seen the warriors at battle and wanted nothing to do with a war. Carefully keep their guns on their backs, never aimed in any way that was threatening, or even defensive; just hanging loose behind their backs, like a mere garment in a soldiers uniform.
Another:
“Koch wasn’t coming here until you showed up!”
Another:
“We were safe! You ruined it!”
The metaphor becomes literal.
In Kosinski’s book, a crow is splashed with red paint and tries to return to its murder. But the murder doesn’t recognize it anymore. They see danger where there was once kin. And they kill it.
I feel the paint on me — invisible but unmistakable.
The crowd doesn’t see Juan Rivera. They see the splash red paint.
They see danger.
They see the reason Koch might come.
They’re not seeing you. They’re seeing what Koch painted on you.
The guards raise weapons. The leadership signals retreat. Families pull their loved ones away from the column. The gangs tense, hands on weapons, eyes scanning for betrayal.
Someone screams:
“Get out! Get out before Koch comes!”
The crowd surges.
The celebration collapses.
And I realize — with a clarity that feels like a blade sliding between ribs — that we are no longer heroes.
We are threats.
We are painted birds.
And Sanctuary Six is already preparing to get us all killed.
.
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