stranger.
“Your whole lives,” she continued. “They’ve used your faith against you!
Twisted it! Weaponized it! The corporations and your leader fed you lies!”
The crowd groaned. Miss Carriage had expected them to embrace the truth.
She was wrong.
“If that’s how you want to live,” she said, “so be it.”
The cannon on her stomach opened and began firing fetuses
indiscriminately. She no longer cared who she hit man, woman, or child.
“Exiles, let’s clean this city.”
“Stop!” Luke shouted. “You don’t have to shoot those things at the crowd.”
“Yeah, it’s fucking gross,” the puppet added.
“You can either join us,” Miss Carriage said, “or get out of our way.”
Luke straightened up. He looked at the corpse beside Miss Carriage,
already turning to dust. He glanced toward Samantha and Karissa.
“I can’t join you,” he told her. “There are good people here. People who
don’t deser—”
A fetus struck him in the face. He spat out fluid and coughed.
“Seriously, lady,” the puppet snapped. “Has anyone ever told you how
fucking gross you are?”
Miss Carriage kept firing. The fetuses shrank in size until they felt like
droplets of spit. Some people in the crowd looked up, thinking it had
started to rain.
“I didn’t sign up for this,” Jimmy said. “I’m going to California.”
He turned and walked away. The other exiles followed. None of them had
powers. None of them wanted to hurt anyone.