Finally, I am getting this up. I know it's been a week or two, but I've been really busy. I'm at Starbucks right now as it is. :)

The usual disclaimers, Jossy, Mutant Enemy, you know that the site has these at the bottom of every page, right?

***

"Are you alive?" Dodd asked, and his voice sounded as bored as Zoe felt.

"No." she replied, bouncing a ball off the wall and deftly catching it again. She was sitting on the arm of the couch in the commons, and Dodd was sitting on the actual couch next to her. The other end of the couch was currently occupied by one of seven poker players. Only the occasional whoop for joy when one of the players realized they'd just won the pot broke the living dead atmosphere of the base.

It'd been like this for almost a week now. At first, everyone had been giddy and excited and ready for a fight, but after about three days of waiting for the orders that seemed to the soldiers would never come, the energy had died down; a stupor came over them all.

"Were you alive on Earth-that-was?" Dodd continued.

"Yes. Only five left." Zoe answered.

Dodd took a deep breath and began recounting the facts that he'd already discovered, "So, you're a man, you're Sino in origin, you killed a buncha people on Earth-that-was, and you're a military official... Hmm..." Dodd said as he thought it over. "You write anything?" he asked, tapping his chin, as he so often did.

"Mmhmm." Zoe said, "Four."

"You a poet?" Zoe could hear the sudden stroke of inspiration that lit his voice and knew he would win this round. He was a good kid-for she thought of him as an exuberant puppy, even if he was only a year younger than her-and she often wondered why he'd chosen a military career. He could've been one of them lofty intellectuals, but instead he preferred saying "ain't" and blowing shit up. Certainly made him a more interesting person to have around, at least.

"Yep." she said, throwing the ball again.

"A Sino warrior-poet that's dead and killed a buncha people on Earth-that-was?"