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The line between police officers and soldiers were blurred more than ever.

Only a handful of them, as far as I could see from our height, seemed to wear the standard uniform of an enforcer of the law. The rest seemed more likely to belong in some jungle or desert, armed to the teeth in military-grade weaponry while facing unknown enemy combatants. Here? They were just civilians.

Some already began attacking protesters inside the dispersing crowd. Three or four plain clothed furs, two of them felines only in their late teens tried fighting back, only to be surrounded by the horde of riot shields and batons. The rest simply started shooting into the crowd, much to my naïve horror.

"We need to do something," I suddenly found myself saying, looking over the ledge of the building we knelt on. "We should do something! Lowell!"

Barrages of bullets filled the air, adding to the screams below.

"No can do, Adam," Lowell sighed between snapping shots on his camera. "We stay here."

"Are you even hearing yourself?" I growled, grabbing onto his shoulder. "Lowell, we need to fucking--"

"Keep quiet!" he hissed at me.

I frowned. "Or what?"

I flinched back at how the wolf suddenly jerked his head towards me, his sharp glare as foreign as a stranger's. The joking (horny) wolf from the prior night wasn't there. They had been replaced by a different, raw emotion. His auburn eyes remained, but his trained voice replaced the encouraging one from the abandoned neighborhood.

"Listen, Adam," he whispered over the shouting, "I understand. Believe me, I do. But we can't do anything for them. The world won't know this is even happening unless we stay here!"

Lowell turned back to the crowd and continued snapping photos, but I didn't bother looking down. I couldn't, really. The only thing I did was hope for their escape, or try to drown out the torrential gunfire and angry shouts echoing from the street.

Seconds later, he stopped.

"What is it, Lowell?" I asked, one of my folded ears immediately perking up.

"Oh shit..." he slowly rose, "I kinda take that back."

"What is it?" I asked again. Already, the fur on the back of my neck stood on end, wondering what caught his attention. "What's wrong?"

" Surrender yourselves at once!" a voice on loudspeaker rang from the incoming wall of batons and throughout the neighborhood. " By the order of the Chicago Safety Commission, all rioters are ordered to lay down their weapons!"

"A cop's pointing over here, across the street." He tensed, immediately standing up and placing the camera in his backpack before snatching my paw in a vice, "Adam, get up! Go! Go!"

Lowell feverishly hauled me over to the ledge to the fire escape, only letting go of my wrist when we scurried down the rusty ladder. I jumped with him onto the concrete asphalt and cautiously glanced out to find protesters throwing things in the direction of the incoming soldiers (or police officers? I no longer knew anymore...). Most took cover, however.

"Look." Lowell pointed.

Then I finally saw them, two armored troopers ignoring those fleeing or dying in the plaza of limp, bloody bodies, jogging directly towards us.

"This way! Run!" Lowell hitched his breath, "Run!"

We joined those remaining few fleeing from the plaza down the nearby streets. Gunshots rang out behind me and Lowell like thunder, yet I could barely even hear it over the shouting, cries of angry voices.

I glanced over my shoulder to see the soldiers from earlier still visible over the heads of other escaping protesters.

"Take this!" Lowell grunted, handing me a colorful bandana. "Put it on!"

I snatched from his paw and anxiously tied it around my muzzle. He did the same. We did not quit jogging down the street, trying to find a place to escape.

Suddenly, several of the protester crowded between me and the wolf, separating us.

"Adam!" he yelped out, trying to push through.

I could barely see him, my arms reaching out for him in the throng of terrified furs.

"Lowell!" my voice croaked out.

"Adam, over here! Adam!"

Panic swept through my being as he started to become less visible in the mass. My stomach dropped when I lost complete sight of Lowell, who was just a few feet from me mere seconds ago. Even his voice became lost amidst the ambience of civil unrest.

Just then, I lost my footing and tumbled onto the rough sidewalk.

"Ack!" I yelped when a few stragglers ignored me, nearly kicking into me or striking me with their shoes, "Watch it, watch it!"

Willing myself to stagger back up, I suddenly felt my ears fold against my head at the frightening realization. I lost him.

"Lowell? Lowell!"

I jerked my head left and right, trying to search for the familiar canine in the sea of bodies crowding further down the street. The only wolves I saw were too old or masked in different clothing. One brown-furred wolf had started bashing a baseball bat against a parked car, while another kicked at the bumper of a honking minivan.

"Lowell!" I screamed out again, raising my paws to shout louder into the chaos. "Low--"

** BANG! BANG!**

Feral instinct forced my legs to move again, propelling me with the rest of the other furs to what we believed to be safety, an intersection where we could disperse to refuge. Unfortunately, things went from bad to worse and incredibly worse.

The nearest intersection had another wall of riot police waiting. They were blockading us in, either shooting us down with rubber bullets or capturing stragglers to drag them away.

"Fuck," I unknowingly cursed under my bandana. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!"

A louder chorus of gunshots and shouting and screams echoed my way, propelling me to turn the other way and desperately find somewhere--anywhere--to hide. God, I could hear my own heartbeat ring in my ears.

Found it! An alleyway between two vandalized restaurants.

Making quick strides over the debris of broken glass at my feet, I could practically hear my own heartbeat ring in my ears. A crack of thunder seemed to echo behind my tail before I finally stumbled into the crevice. My lower limbs instinctively propelled me down the brick alley until I came to a T-junction. I went right without thinking, then instantly regretted it.

I skidded to a halt.

The black clergy robes.

My heart skipped over several beats.

A clerical collar around his neck.

Every fur on my body stood on end.

Two gloved paws confidently holding a baton.

Terror gripped me as if my legs had turned to solid stone.

And a gas mask outfitted into the shape of a restraining muzzle.

The bravery from before sparked out when my eyes looked three feet away, into the red-and-white eyes of a familiar fur; a tall Doberman.

"P-Please," my voice quavered, seemingly louder than the nearby gunfire echoing through the alleyway nearby. "P-Please, no! No, no, no--"

"Bag him."

Another figure emerged from behind me. Before I could even whimper, I felt a needle stab into the side of my neck. Soon, my cries were drowned out in a muffled darkness wrapping over my ears and muzzle. It smelled like leather.

"Sweet dreams..." he whispered through the bag. "Let's get him out of here."

He had to be the reality nightmares dreamed of.

They captured me. The Archangels captured me.

***

The streets of Devout America were in absolute anarchy.

_ I found running with Lowell across a chaotic boulevard of fighting figures and dancing shadows. Screams and chanting could be made out over the broken glass crackling underneath out foots. A trash can had been lit ablaze, and a mob of masked furs were fighting off a horde of dark specters in military uniform, their paws gripping clubs and clashing against blunt instruments._

_ The handsome timber wolf pulled me down a nearby alley, saying something I couldn't make out, but completely agreed with for an alien reason. Then, I spotted a bare brick wall and remembered the cans of spray paint jiggling in my backpack._

_ I assumed he was keeping guard as I did the important task at hand: spray painting a 'gay pride rainbow' on said brick wall. I was so focused that when I got to the bottom stripe, I heard a noise behind me and turned to see the wolf, now lighting a Molotov cocktail in one paw with a zippo in the other._

_ "Lowell," my voice distorted among the noise, "what're you doing?"_

_ Miraculously, Lowell's clothes disappeared from his body, his shirt now replaced with harness gear I recalled seeing from the illegal gay porn we loved to devour back at the hotel. I was so enraptured by his form, my finger stopped squeezing on the can in my paw. I didn't even object when he tossed the burning Molotov at one of the approaching dark shadows, now drowned out in flame and disappearing into blackened dust, when my eyes traveled down the wolfish erection he proudly sported between his muscular legs._

_ I could feel the bulge in my jockstrap suddenly spring to life. Whatever questions I had in mind gave way to only lust._

_ Grinning at me, Lowell then pushed my body against wall and kissed me. His canine tongue danced with mine in panting, drooling delight as he gripped my lower arm and bare chest. I could feel his erection grind against mine. He licked my cheeks and left me blushing for more. I could barely feel anything other than a burning inside my chest that resonated to the erection straining in my jockstrap._

_ "Adam...Adam..."_

_ "Oh, Lowell..." I moaned his name. "Lowell, I...I..."_

_ "Adam...ADAM."_

"--gah!" I yelped aloud, my cheek stinging in immediate pain. "W-What is--"

White pain flashed across my muzzle when someone slapped me again. I almost blinked in shock, only to realize I couldn't even see. A heavy blindfold was firmly tied around my head, plunging me into darkness, while duct tape constricted my paws around the back of a metal chair. I immediately felt paralyzed with fear, the dream from before now long forgotten.

"Good morning," a baritone voice trembled from the darkness obscuring my vision. "Do you know why you are here, Adam Grimwald?"

A heavy wet fell to the bottom pit of my stomach. My whiskers and feline lips quivered for words that never formed, and all that came from my muzzle were heavy, fearful breaths.

"Until earlier this April, you were a patient admitted by the state to a conversion clinic in Cicero, Illinois for displaying deviant homosexual behavior. You and dozens of other patients were then forcibly taken from custody by the terrorist groups responsible for a coordinated blackout that same night. Your whereabouts have been registered as unknown until yesterday."

The side of my neck still stung from whatever they injected me with. It itched like mad beneath my fur, yet I dared not to even try to unbind my wrists.

"Our databases concluded you were murdered by your Deviant kidnappers," the voice scoffed while flipping through what sounded like a pile of papers he held. I could barely make out a shape through the obscuring fabric over my eyes. "However, then it all changed when one of our agents found you not only alive and well, but out in public, with your backpack containing pamphlets containing illegal information. Some of it is borderline treasonous. Worthy of execution."

During the explanation, my tail curled against the chair's leg. The back of my mind noted how they didn't feel tied down.

"Why were you found fleeing from a riot that occurred yesterday outside of a DSA recruitment center?" the voice then demanded. When I didn't say anything, he then leaned forward, and I froze upon visualizing red through the darkness. One of his mask goggles, staring in my eyes like a demon. "Answer the question, Mr. Grimwald!"

"I....I was..." my voice came at long last, quavering. "...I escaped?"

Another paw roughly smacked my cheek again, causing me to yelp in pain.

"It is a sin to bear false witness, Mr. Grimwald!" the Archangel growled into my face, his hot breath smoldering with hate. "Now answer the question!"

"I was rescued by them!" I answered without a hint of falsehood. Not in my mind, voice or soul. "The-The Defiant rescued me from--"

SMACK!

** **"Ack!" I cried out, shaking and trembling rigidly in my seat. "I-I'm telling the truth!"

"Why would you need to be rescued?" asked the Archangel. "A conversion clinic is supposed to rescue your own soul from damnation's clutches!"

The memories of Cicero flashed before my eyes. White rooms and white clothing, nervous glances between younger and older furs, some of them bruising beneath their shirt or under their eyes. Hours upon hours spent listening in bored despair to hateful, valiant lectures of how our deviancy and illnesses festered from outside sources. Seeing a friendly smile or pair of colorful eyes, only to never see them again when the deadline for their owner's inner salvation passed without a breakthrough. When my deadline passed and they injected me with the needle after restraining me on the bed, I remembered feeling absolute terror.

Would I wake up again? Would I spend forever in a dreamless death?

"How can I be rescued when I'm drugged asleep...?" I mumbled through the stinging pain on my left cheek.

"Repeat yourself, Mr. Grimwald." The Archangel shifted in front of my blinded eyes, supposedly to lean forward and hear me better. "What did you just say?"

In a cold sweat, I lowly hissed aloud at the pain, which then riled up into a feline growl.

"How am I being rescued by being drugged asleep?!" I spat venomously at the top of my lungs, feeling overwhelmed in my rage, "Huh? Tell me!"

"Don't you raise your voice to me, boy!" the Archangel barked louder. "The clinic offered to cure you of your illness, but it seems you would not cooperate. Instead, you gladly allowed your captors to twist you. They raped your soul and led you astray from the protection of God's grace! Those terrorists made you believe that sin is good, that the enemy is good and that your sins should be indulged!"

"We're not terrorists!" I exclaimed, "W-We're freedom fighters!"

He scoffed. "Freedom fighters?"

A trickle of Lowell's bombastic, confrontational personality seeped into mine.

"Yes!" I nodded, firmly staring into my surrounding darkness. "The Defiant are freedom fighters! We're bringing back democracy and the United States! The Defiant are--"

SMACK!

** ** I yelped at the stinging pain again, now on my right cheek. Tears formed under the obscuring blindfold. The Archangel--who I now knew had to be a canine, likely the same Doberman who found me back in Chicago--leaned forward and gripped my left ear, snarling into it while ignoring how I tried to struggle away.

"The Defiant...Those deviant sinners...are not freedom fighters, they're followers of Satan!" his snarls resonated like vibrations on a body of glass. "They're manipulations on you weren't kindness or knowledge, it was all deceit and lies! They want to turn this country into a haven for heretics and heathens like themselves! The Devil has already turned the United Nations and the world to the Beast's evil reign. The Defiant are just another battalion of his army, can't you see that?!"

I could barely breath

"Sinners like the Deviants and Immoral States and the corrupt United Nations are the reason God is judging us!"

He let my ear go and stepped away. The silence engulfing the room echoed with my words. My tail fidgeted for a reply, whatever it would be from the Archangel standing before me, his form misshapen and hidden on the other side of the blindfold.

The sound of a door opening echoed on the other end of the room, following by a dim light. All I could hear was the Archangel's heavy, muffled breathing through his mask, followed by inaudible muttering I couldn't grasp. He was talking to someone at the end of the door, in quiet whispers that wouldn't echo into the isolated chamber.

The door closed again.

"Thankfully, you are not entirely beyond hope..." the Archangel said. "Listen carefully to my words, Mr. Grimwald. My colleagues and I have a proposition just for you. This will be your only chance for salvation."

My ear perked slightly.

"We know that your captors have a hideout somewhere in the vicinity of Chicago. They likely trusted you with its location after gaining their trust. Tell us the whereabouts and the Commanding Archangel will be more than eager to recommend that President Nessen gift you a governmental pardon. The National Church will not hesitate to wipe your record clean, too. This simple act will redeem you as a Devout citizen. You will be able to return to normal life...

"John Cardinal's capture will also lead to you becoming a national hero, Mr. Grimwald...Your family will be set for life, and your name will live on throughout history books in the Devout States of America."

She! My inner rebel screamed.Johanna is a doe!

I didn't believe a single word the Doberman said. As much as I wanted to return to a normal life, I couldn't. It was impossible. No matter how many praises or pardons they gave me, I would always be what they accused me of being: a heathen, a heretic, a rebel and their enemy.

However, I did find myself thinking momentarily about the offer.

"Are you...Are you telling the truth?" My words betrayed my heart, and I narrowly fell for his deception. "Will I be freed...?"

"Absolutely," the Archangel sighed contentedly. "You will be able to return to your friends, your family, everybody who misses you, Mr. Grimwald."

Back...to my family..., I mused over his words, tail swishing once and twice against the ground. Back home...to Mom and Dad...to...Mom and Dad.

_ _ Instantly, the mood turned sour.

If I accepted his offer, my true friends at the Maverick Hotel would be tried, then executed on national television. I would be hailed as a hero and returned to my parents. The same parents who sent me, their only loving son, to Cicero in the first place. The same parents who did nothing as they abandoned me to the so-called doctors and physicians drugging me to sleep when I couldn't pray my homosexuality away.

"What say you, Mr. Grimwald. Shall I take your blindfold off and we can agree--"

"I must decline."

"What?" he asked.

The anger from before rose to my lips, and I repeated, "I said go fuck yourself!"

SMACK!

The Archangel slammed a baton against the side my head, knocking me over onto the ground along with the chair. My cheek slammed into the floor, my teeth nearly colliding with the hard surface. Before I could register the impact, the baton roughly connected to my sides, and I yelled out for it to all stop.

"Stop! Please--ow! Fuc--Stop!"

Seconds later, it did.

"Your flesh and fur will burn unless you confess, boy! Do you want your soul to be forever damned to Hell for all eternity? Do you?!"

Raw iron crept around my gritting teeth like thinned molasses, slowly filling my maw.

My silence confounded the faceless Archangel.

Another sharp smack to my ribcage, except it stung less. I felt like each defiant word I spoke somehow gave morphine to the inner terror. However, the effects of it almost wavered when the Doberman held a familiar-shaped, metallic tube to my cranium.

"This is your final chance...Mr. Grimwald," He warned me, "In the name of God and our Devout States of America, tell us the location of the other Deviants. Otherwise, here is where you die right now..."

Lowell's inspired bravery returned, and I simply spat blood onto the floor.

"N...Never..." I rasped through the pain, the fear and the courageous sorrow. "And I'm not a D-Deviant...I'm DEFIANT! I am a member of the Defiant, goddamn it!"

I never imagined death so much until that moment. Which gate would I go to, those of Heaven or those of Hell? Knowing I didn't have enough time for a prayer, I hung my head down and waited for the inevitable.

Yet that did not happen.

No finger pulled a trigger.

No gunshot echoed through the room into my skull.

No momentary pain gave way to darkness or a blinding light.

No death came.

Suddenly...I heard an alien sound come from my government captor: a baritone chuckle. "Well done."

He pulled the barrel from my head. The door opened and two figures stepped in, pulling the chair back up along with me. As I gave bearing to what the hell was happening, the flash of light did come, only when one of the figures untied the blindfold.

A lone lightbulb hung above us, me, the Doberman Archangel (now unmasking himself to reveal handsome, apologetic smiles to me), and two Siamese cats my age in regular clothing, one of whom stepped behind me and cut my duct tape bindings with some scissors.

"You really are one of us, Adam," the Doberman tried to help me up, only for me to tense back from his outreached paw, still gloved in white. "Listen, I'm sorr--"

"What is this?" My eyes darted from side to side, settling on the door. My breaths "What's going on? I-Is this...a trick or something?

"Calm down, calm down," he half, chuckled, paws raised defensively. The Doberman's voice still remained baritone and deep without the gas mask, now left resting on the tiled floor of what looked like a derelict, unused bathroom of some kind. "It's not a trick, Adam. We're Defiant too."

I blinked, disbelieving him and myself, "...what?"