RONAN “Don’t do it,” I whispered to myself, eyes locked on the live feed from the bike’s scout drone. From two hundred feet up, the picture was brutally clear. Twelve local police officers, split between black tactical armor and standard blue uniforms, were closing in on the last survivors of a United States Army platoon. I had pulled off the road the moment the drone flagged a checkpoint ahead, rolling the bike into the shadow of an abandoned gas station and killing its lights. At first glance, I thought the officers in black were Guardians of Christianity. Their gear was close enough to the GC commandos’ preferred look that my stomach had tightened on instinct alone. But the drone kept climbing, sharpening the image. Patches resolved. Badges. County markings. Police. Then more units arrived, regular patrol officers spilling out from cruisers, joining the black-clad tactical teams already engaged. All of them were firing on the same targets: American soldiers pinned behind a ragged line of civilian vehicles. I never thought I would see Americans killing Americans. Never imagined a day when local police would be trading fire with the United States Armed Forces. Yet here I was, watching it unfold in real time, from a quiet roadside less than a mile from home. I knew why it was happening. The AI systems I had been fighting for weeks were poisoning law enforcement feeds, flooding their networks with fabricated orders, doctored evidence, and forged emergency bulletins.According to the lies, the federal government was staging a coup. Rogue army units were supposedly seizing infrastructure, arresting officials, executing patriots. Police were being told they were the last line of defense. I’d already seen the results of that fiction. Earlier on this same road, I’d passed two checkpoints, one army, one police. Both were silent. Both were littered with bodies. Burned-out vehicles. Blood drying into the asphalt where men had died believing they were on the right side. And now it was happening again, right in front of me. “Really,” I muttered, jaw tight. “Don’t fucking do it.” On the feed, the soldiers fought well. Even battered, they moved with discipline, covering arcs, rotating positions, dragging wounded behind engine blocks and axles. In a clean fight, they would have torn through the police units without much trouble.But this wasn’t clean. The platoon had already taken losses. Ammo was being conserved. The police kept coming, better equipped than most civilians ever should be, with numbers and angles steadily stacking against the soldiers. I was about to watch good men kill each other. I couldn’t stop that. Not entirely. But I could tip the scales. I could help the ones who weren’t being lied to by the machines pulling the strings. For what felt like the thousandth time that day, I checked the bike’s systems. Power levels blinked back at me in unforgiving red. Going off-road to avoid detection had eaten the battery alive. I wasn’t even halfway to my destination anymore. I did the math anyway. Again. I barely had enough charge to reach my parents’ house, less than a mile away.Nowhere near enough to complete the run I’d planned. And with propaganda saturating every channel, I knew better than to think the police would help me if I showed my face. To them, I’d just be another threat, another liar, another enemy wearing the wrong uniform. The decision settled in my chest, heavy and unavoidable. I exhaled slowly. “I’m going to have to do it.” Using the drone as a relay, I scanned the electromagnetic clutter until I found the frequency the surrounded platoon was using. They were fully engaged with a police element attacking from the south, pinned by accurate rifle fire and flashbangs tossed over car hoods. Meanwhile, another group of officers was advancing from the west, leapfrogging between abandoned sedans and driverless shipping containers left jackknifed across the road. They were close....too close. In another minute, they’d have a clear side shot into the platoon’s rear. Once I cracked the frequency, my contacts went to work. The army encryption key I’d been given slid into place, clean and fast. The platoon’s comms opened. Identity tags resolved. My vision overlaid instantly. Blue badges flared into existence over each soldier. Red triangles marked the police. It hurt, seeing it rendered that way. Police as hostiles. Enemies. My whole life, law and order had meant something. Police were supposed to serve and protect. They were supposed to be the line that held when everything else went wrong. I shoved the thought aside and searched the tags until I found the platoon commander. I focused on his identifier. An options bar unfolded in my vision. I selected a direct line. “Abraham Blue Six,” I said, reading the call sign. “You have ten hostiles approaching from the west.”Silence. Gunfire crackled through the open channel, sharp and echoing. I watched the commander continue firing from behind a wrecked SUV, returning controlled bursts toward the police pressing from the south. Then his voice came back, hard and flat. “Identify yourself.” “Not over the radio,” I replied. “You can trust my intel or not. Your choice.” I watched him make the call in real time. He tapped the soldier beside him, then moved fast down the line of cars the platoon was using for cover. Two blue badges winked out of existence. I closed my eyes for half a second. I knew what that meant. When I opened them again, the overlay snapped back into focus. The platoon leader broke cover and sprinted along the far side of another car, deliberately exposing himself to fire from the south. A round shattered a side window inches from his head, glass exploding outward and raining down across the asphalt. He slid into position behind the engine block, breathing hard, partially shielded now. He leaned forward, peering through the spiderwebbed windows of the next car, eyes fixed west. A second later, my earpiece chimed. “You flying a canary?” he asked. I swallowed. “Yes.” “Sync it to my system.” I sent the pair request without hesitation. The handshake completed almost instantly. The drone climbed higher at his command, widening the view until the entire battlefield fit on a single pane. Red triangles multiplied across the display. “You anywhere near these guys?” he asked.“No. Quarter mile out.” “Good.” The word carried more weight than it should have.