SOUVERAIN: THE KID by Mike Luoma Meet the woman who works with the U.S. Army by day and strikes out at night on her own as the vigilante SOUVERAIN! A Short Story Featuring Characters From the Comic SOUVERAIN Created By Ben Ferrari Smashwords Edition Copyright 2012 by Ben Ferrari and Michael Luoma An illustrated version of this story with art by Kitae Kim, appears in Souverain #1 from Earthbound Comics:http://earthboundcomics.com Published by Earthbound Comics and Glow-in-the-Dark Radio Books http://glowinthedarkradio.com MAY 2009 – BAGHDAD, IRAQ Souverain fires. PIFF! PIFF! The silencer's soft noise brings death. Her mark falls. Anything else? I'm waiting... Some suicide bombers hold "dead man" switches. Vests strapped with C5 and hardware store shrapnel often explode when she makes the switch holders let go. Far enough away. Won't feel the blast if this one does. Heh... Maybe he'll blow up their safe house. Souverain has been casing this nondescript house in Sadr City for the last two weeks. Seems to be the penultimate destination for many suicide bombers. They stop here before they go off on their missions. Pretty sure they shoot their martyrs' videos inside. Souverain listens. Waits. Silence. Nothing? Well. He won't be blowing anything else up tonight, either. Now, time to get back to the green zone. Getting late and early. "Souverain" needs to retire so "Lieutenant Lane" can get some sleep. Her daylight hours belong to the U.S. Army as Lieutenant Lane. But she gives her nights to the innocents of Baghdad as the masked vigilante Souverain. Her way to bring them justice of some kind. She checks her vest pocket as she makes her way to her getaway tunnel. Damn! Out of cigarettes. Have to hit the PX in the morning. She looks around to be sure she's clear of curious eyes. She ducks through a nondescript door in a nearby alley. On the other side is a passage and a ladder leading down into the secret tunnels of Saddam Hussein. Back in the nineteen-eighties, Hussein's men honeycombed the earth beneath Baghdad to create hidden passages – an attempt to assure access to exits for when danger arose. Saddam and his people are long gone. The ways are open for Souverain to use. No one else seems to have found or still know about these secret tunnels. They're a safe way to travel from out of the green zone and into other parts of the ancient city. Well... Almost no one else knows about the passages. Souverain sees a silhouette ahead as she reaches the green zone's end of the passage. There she is again. She knows the hidden ways. A teenaged girl hides in the tunnel's mouth. Souverain creeps toward her in near silence Doesn't think she can be seen. Cute. And dressed just like me, again. Hero worship? Kind of flattering. Got her own mask and everything. But this ain't Halloween. No treats in Baghdad, just tricks. Gone on long enough. Tired of worrying some kid's gonna go get herself killed trying to be a hero in my name. Don't wanna be worshiped, either! Souverain edges up next to the girl. Still hasn't heard me. Could tap her on the shoulder. "Hey kid," Souverain says in a soft voice. The girl jumps. She wheels around to face Souverain with something extended in her hands. A Tazer? Great. She doesn't fire - the teenager is frozen, unable to use the weapon in her grip. The girl's brown eyes grow wide. Souverain can't help grinning. The girl is wearing a bandana on her head for a mask and a tackle vest. Souverain is looking at a little mirror image of herself, only with darker skin and hair. Recognizing her, the girl melts, and almost shouts. "Souverain!" The girl is too loud. May draw attention. Souverain puts her finger to her lips to signal for quiet. The girl's mouth forms an O as she realizes she's been loud. She looks down. "Sorry," she whispers. Souverain replies with a whisper of her own. "I told you before not to follow me." "I wasn't following. I was waiting for you. There's a difference," the girl whispers in lightly accented English. There's a hint of defiance in her voice, although her eyes remain downcast . She glances up at Souverain. "I wanted to go with you. I didn't know you had already gone to Sadr City. "That's why you surprised me." "You're lucky it was me surprising you," Souverain cautions her, "and not some thugs." "I can watch out for myself!" The girl's voice grows a little louder. "No," Souverain says softly. "You can't." "I already risk everything," the girl says. "You are not Iraqi. You don't know!" She pauses, gearing up to make her point. "I've watched you! Learned from you," the girl rasps, trying to keep her voice down but still excited. "I have been training to be another Souverain... an Iraqi Souverain!" "Listen, junior," Souverain interrupts her. "You're too small to be out here on your own. You're gonna get hurt." "I bet they said the same thing to you," the girl answers back. She stares at Souverain. They did. Some still do. But that's... different. "Maybe they did," Souverain replies, "but that doesn't matter. If you're here, you might distract me. You could get hurt... and I could get hurt because of you, too." The girl hangs her head. "I do not want you to get hurt, Souverain." She pauses. Then she raises her head. The defiance returns! She looks at Souverain, eye to eye. "I will NOT cause you to get hurt," she says in a raspy whisper. "I am a fighter!" Souverain breaks eye contact and shakes her head. "I know... look," Souverain tells the girl, "You won't mean to. It just happens. I've seen it in the Army." The girl's eyes grow wide at the mention of the Army. Shit. Shouldn't have mentioned the Army. Just top of mind. Gotta get back and be Lieutenant Lane. She realizes she can see the girl and her surroundings too well. It's getting light out. Getting late for Souverain; early for Lieutenant Lane. "Go on," Souverain orders the girl out of the tunnel's end into the dawning day. "Don't be messing with this tunnel when it's light out – don't give our secrets away!" "I won't!" The girl responds. Souverain hears something tentative in her voice. The girl doesn't move. "Go!" Souverain orders again. Her smaller self turns, shuffling in reluctance, and heads for the tunnel's exit. At the end, the little Souverain looks back and waves a small wave at the original. Then she ducks out. Souverain herself soon follows, ducking out of the tunnel's covered entryway a few minutes after the girl. Souverain strips off her bandana and her vest and stashes them in a hiding place near the tunnel. She jogs away down the street to the main base, just another soldier jogging in the green zone. Despite the growing light, Souverain doesn't notice as the girl sneaks back behind her towards the tunnel entrance. Souverain's mind is occupied by other thoughts. Much too light out – I'm getting NO sleep! "LIEUTENANT LANE! Do you consider your post to be the proper place to take a NAP, Soldier!" "Sir, no sir," Lane snaps back automatically as she snaps into consciousness. Her brain tries to wake up. She blinks and sees The Colonel. "Sorry, sir. Won't happen again, sir!" Lane stumbles as she gets up out of her chair. She straightens up to stand at attention. "Haven't I heard that, before, Lane?" The Colonel asks her with a bellow. Lane swears she can feel her hair get blown back by his bluster. He leans down from his six foot five height to shout into her face. "Do you not consider the security of this base to be important enough to merit your full attention?!" "Sir, no sir!" Lane shouts back. "I mean, I do consider it important. Sir!" "Then look alive, Lane!" The Colonel gestures at the bank of monitors in front of Lane. "Do your part to keep our perimeter secure! Don't matter how many freaking cameras we got out there if nobody's watching on the other end, does it?" "Sir, no sir!" Lane responds. She stares straight ahead into blurry space as the Colonel continues. "And here I was coming to give you good news, Lane," he tells her. "We're heading back home. Or at least rotating back to Fort Drum. Orders just came down. Part of the new draw-down. Our unit is heading out sometime soon." That perks Lane up. The thought of heading back to the States soon is exhilarating! "Ah – see?" The Colonel's tone has softened. "That makes a difference, doesn't it, Lane?" "It does, sir," she agrees, looking up, smiling. The smile evidently makes the Colonel angry. He leans over to get in her face again. "Then try to make it through the week without falling asleep on duty, Lane! Do you understand me?!" Lane tries to spit a little as she responds. "Sir, yessir!" The Colonel blinks a little but doesn't seem to notice her misting. "And keep out of any other trouble, too, you hear me?" He cautions her. "Yessir!" she replies. The Colonel turns. He leaves the monitor room. Lane wonders if the colonel knows about her extra-curricular activities. Does he know I'm... "SOUVERAIN!" Someone shouts her name in the hall. She hears pounding boots, multiple footsteps coming down the corridor. The monitor room door bursts open. What? Oh no. No! Lieutenant Ernie Peterson is the first through the door. He's thin, dark-skinned, his brown-eyes flash behind wire-rimmed round glasses. He's an old classmate of Lane's. Top IT guy in the Green Zone. The Colonel returns to the room, following Peterson in. "Peterson, what's going on?" Lane asks, trying to sound calm. "Gotta commandeer a couple of your screens for a feed we're receiving, Lane," Peterson tells her. He motions for her to get up from the seat so he can get at her post's computer. She breathes a little easier as she rises up out of the way. "Suicide bombers in Sadr City with another martyr video," he says as he begins typing orders into the monitor controls. "Only this time they're broadcasting live. They say they've got that vigilante whose been terrorizing them, Sova-whatshername." "Souverain," the Colonel says. Was that a look from The Colonel? Lane tries to ignore him, pretends to be distracted by the flickering screens as Peterson changes the video feeds. "They just started sending this," Peterson says. "My monitor station is down right now. Crashed during the upgrade I was doing. Figures." There are nine large screens mounted on the wall in front of them, three rows of three. As Peterson types, the three lower screens go blank. The images that had appeared on the lower screens begin appearing on the six other screens, alternating with the original images on them. "Your surveillance cameras are feeding the top six now, Lane," Peterson tells her. "You keep your eyes on those." Peterson calls up a new feed for the lower three screens. Lane can't help but look down. She lets out a gasp as a silent image appears on the lower screens. She recognizes the backdrop as the same place the suicide bombers have shot all their videos. But now the man in the black mask is holding a masked girl in front of him as he speaks to the camera. She must have gone back down the tunnel to Sadr City - Damn fool kid! The terrorist is holding the girl Lane was with half a day earlier, the teenaged, would-be Souverain. "What's he saying?" The Colonel asks. "Do we have sound? Do we need the translator?" "Getting it, sir," Peterson says. "Hold on a sec... There!" "...orking for the occupiers. The invaders," the voice says in accented English. "This makes her our enemy, just like the American aggressors!" The man in the mask on the screen speaks to the camera. "And now? We have captured Souverain! She works for the Americans – let them hear my demands!" No you haven't, you ass. You've got a kid. What do they want with her? "If you want Souverain alive, you must negotiate with us!" the masked man shouts on the screen. "We have many demands!" "I'm sure you do," the Colonel says under his breath. Then he asks, louder, "Peterson, are we tracing this?" "Working on it, sir." "We will broadcast again in one hour with our demands!" The masked man makes a chopping gesture at the camera and the screens go blank. "You get it?" The Colonel asks. "I get it – he has demands," Peterson cracks. The Colonel stares back, the hint of a grin on the corners of his mouth as he tries to stare down Peterson's remark. "Ah," Peterson clears his throat. "Ahem. Got it. This isn't a broadcast, per se, Colonel. It's internet. Looks like it's coming from a masked IP address." Peterson types into and scans data on a small laptop. "I'm seeing if we can crack the masking encryption now. Messaging in the brain boys back home." The Colonel shakes his head. "I liked it better when we were tracing phone calls." Peterson pounds his keys as he and the techs back home try to find the source for the footage. He sighs and stops. "No fix that time, sir," Peterson breaks the news. "But our guys think they can get set up to crack it when the terrorists come back at us in an hour. You want to give them the go ahead for that, sir?" "Do it," the Colonel says. "If we can find out where they are, we can hit them hard before they know we're coming! That Souverain's a loose cannon anyway, a vigilante. If she gets caught up in the middle of this, that's her own fault." Told that girl she was going to cause me trouble. "Colonel?" Lane interrupts. "What is it, lieutenant?" The Colonel responds. He sounds annoyed. "That's not Souverain," she says. The Colonel looks at her, curious. His eyes narrow into a squint. "You got something you want to tell me, Lane?" he asks. "I've, uh, seen Souverain before. Sir. That's not her," Lane says. "It looks like they've dressed up a little girl, sir. Souverain is a grown woman." "Peterson, can you play that back?" The Colonel asks. Peterson types in commands and the footage replays. "....orking for the occupiers. The invaders. This makes her our enemy..." "Pause it!" The Colonel commands. The image on the screen freezes. The Colonel squints in at the image, looking at the girl in the Souverain mask, and the man masked in black at her side. "Gaddamnit. Lane's right. That's a little girl. Those animals are dressing up their freakin' kids, now." "I don't think that's their kid, sir," Lane protests. "What's that, Lane?" "Well, uh, Colonel... it's her eyes. Look at her eyes. She looks scared. And he's got a gun on her," she points out. The Colonel looks at the screen again. "Huh. You may be right, Lane. Probably grabbed some poor kid off the street. Well, I'll tell the strike force to watch out for her when we go in, Lane." The Colonel adjusts his cap and then turns to leave the monitor room. "Peterson, keep monitoring for that feed and let me know when you get a fix on the location," he calls back behind him as he goes. "I'm getting the strike team together. We'll have the choppers ready to go when we get it." "Yessir!" Lieutenant Lane relaxes a little with the Colonel out of the room. She looks at the image - the same image - on each of the lower three screens: A masked man in black, yelling at the camera, holding the little girl dressed like Souverain out in front of him with one hand and waving a Kalashnikov rifle with the other. Peterson sits back down in the chair. He begins to type. "Ha!" Peterson suddenly bursts out laughing. "I can't, oh my god, those guys." "What?" Lane asks, a little peeved. "I can't repeat it. The, uh, joke, I mean. The guys back at Langley just made a good one. You wouldn't get it." "Try me. I know enough about computers." Peterson actually blushes. "It wasn't a computer joke," he says in a small voice. "It was, uh, kind of inappropriate, I guess." The guy regains his composure. "Just a joke." Lane glares at him. Her mind goes into dark places as she imagines the content. "You Sexist pigs making jokes about women in captivity?!" She challenges the tech. "Lieutenant Lane?" The Colonel calls to her from the corridor before Lane can act on her impulse to punch Peterson in the head. "Could I have a word with you?" "Yes, sir?" She answers in both word and action, leaving Peterson behind in the monitor room as she finds the Colonel in the corridor. He beckons her over away from the door, where he can talk to her without being overheard. "I'm going to give you some advice , Lane," the Colonel tells her. "You see these bars?" He points to the bars on his collar. "Yessir?" "You get ahead in this Army because of what you know. Know what I mean?" "I think so, sir," Lane answers. The Colonel looks her in the eye. He seems... sharper, for the moment. "Sometimes, Lane? It's what you don't know... or what you decide you're not going to know... that can also help you get ahead. Do you understand what I mean by that?" "Um, I might, I guess, sir. Sometimes you have to pretend you don't know things?" Lane asks. She's not sure where the Colonel is going with this, and doesn't want to give anything away. "Not pretend, Lane. You simply don't allow yourself to know what it is you're not supposed to know. And I've gotten far enough along to know the things that I'm supposed to know, and the things I'm not supposed to know. And I know the trick of knowing the difference." Lane is no longer sure it was sharpness she was seeing in the Colonel's eyes. "That's handy for getting ahead in the U.S. Army, let me tell you," he continues. "But I also find it handy when there's someone doing good work I approve of – but when, if I knew that person was doing that work, I'd have to put a stop to it. So. Sometimes it's good not to know, you know?" "I think I know," Lane tells him. "Why don't you knock off for the day now, Lane. You're, uh, tired," the Colonel says. "Besides. Strike team's going to be ready to hit the house where they've got that girl in about an hour. Not knowing what I don't know, that might give someone enough time to get the girl out of there. Not that I know what I'm talking about." "That's funny," Lane says, now playing along. "Because I didn't hear you say anything. You know?" "Atta girl," the Colonel says, and for once Lane doesn't mind hearing it. "You get some rest." "Right sir!" Lane takes off down the corridor, and then out of Command and Control. She heads across the green zone to her barracks. Her bunk looks so inviting. She's tempted to rest, but manages to stay on her feet as she pulls on her gear. There's no time to sleep, not now. She has about an hour to get in and get out of that house with the girl. "They want Souverain? Those murderers are gonna GET Souverain!" She talks to herself as she gets ready to go, psyching herself up. She'll use the tunnels. Maybe I can get under the house itself? She knows she can get close. The sun begins to set as she reaches Sadr City. It takes her ten minutes to get within a block of the house. A few minutes more to take up a position behind one of the wrecked cars that litter the road here. She's crouching next to a burnt out white Nissan pickup truck, using her gun's site to get a closer look at the bombers' house. Sadr City shares some similarities with Souverain's hometown. Utility poles carry power lines down the sides of dusty streets as groups of kids play and walk on the sidewalks below them. But here all the buildings are the same sandy color. Then there's the constant heat, the dust... She peers through the twilight haze at the target. The house she's been casing looks like a small walled fortress from the outside. Tall dun colored walls shut out street noise, no doubt creating quiet living spaces within away from the chaos of the slum without. Decorative gaps in the shape of fat, upside-down Ts run along their tops, looking like the crenelations on castle walls. Souverain scans for any break in the walls, any weak points. The strong, greasy odor of rotting fruit and vegetables from the bombed out market next to her mixes with more pungent whiffs of something or somethings dead and burnt wafting on the evening breeze. Souverain thinks briefly of the dentist's chair, the smell when the drill gets too hot. A movement in the doorway of the house draws her attention back into the moment. A man steps out into the street to have a smoke. Beautiful. That means they'll be expecting him back. PIFF! PIFF! The man drops. Souverain lowers the gun. She holsters her piece and scrambles over to quickly search the dead man. She pockets the small pistol she finds tucked into his pants. She then drags the corpse out of the roadway, laying him in the gutter next to the wall of the house. Lucky for me you're a little guy. Still damn heavy! As she catches her breath, Souverain spies the still-smoking cigarette on the road next to where the man fell. She walks over and picks it up. Seems a shame to waste it. Never did get to the PX... She rips the filter off the end and tosses it aside. She takes a long drag off of the cigarette and lets the smoke calm her, breathing out her stresses as she exhales. She takes another quick drag, and then throws it away. Souverain draws her piece back out. She weighs the gun in her hand, the familiar, slight droopiness from the silencer pulling it down in front just a little. She's learned to compensate for it. Totally worth it for the element of surprise it offers. Any delay on the part of those who would shoot back at her is a plus. Ready? Souverain contemplates her targets. The men inside: would-be suicide bombers and the men who cheer them on; those who video tape them; and those who take credit for their deaths and enjoy the publicity from their horrible actions. Those men are expecting their friend to return from having a smoke. There will be no kicking down doors. No noisome alarms. Souverain walks up and tries the door. Unlocked, it opens. She lets it swing open full, and then she walks in. PIFF! "Surprise," Souverain says as she shoots a guard by the door in the head, point blank. The blood sprays the wall vivid red behind him. A second guard tries to bring up his rifle to shoot her from two feet away. She grabs the rising barrel with her left hand and pulls the man closer with a jerk on his gun. PIFF! Another headshot, close range. Two guards by the door down. Souverain surveys the scene in front of her. Those in other rooms of the house may not yet know these two are down. They might. But there is no one else in this anteroom, this foyer. Doors lead off to both the left and the right. Souverain decides to go left. Still have the element of surp... The blinding light and the booming voice begin simultaneously. "THIS IS THE UNITED STATES ARMY. THIS STRUCTURE HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED AS AN ENEMY COMBATANT BASE OF OPERATIONS. YOU HAVE TEN MINUTES TO LEAVE THIS BUILDING BEFORE IT IS DESTROYED. THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION. THIS IS THE UNITED..." The message repeats. The sound of helicopters grows louder, and more bright lights shine in through every open space. Souverain hears quick crackling like fireworks. Small arms fire from inside the house. Can't let them shoot the girl! They're cornered now – they could do anything. She runs along the front corridor looking for a door on the right, some way in to the inner part of the house. The corridor bends before she finds one. As she turns the corner, she's startled to see two men ahead of her. They're standing on stacks of packing boxes piled up in the corridor, firing up and out at the US forces outside through the decorative holes in the outer wall. Or maybe those holes were more functional than I thought. Their semi-automatics erupt like loud popcorn as they fire and then reload. The men, intent on their shooting, don't notice as Souverain approaches. PIFF! PIFF! Both men fall, quickly dispatched by bullets to the bases of their skulls. "Still some surprise," Souverain says to herself. She finds an open door on the right just beyond the men's defensive position. She sneaks through the door, and finds the room on the other side empty save for a heavy, metal office desk. There's another door in the opposite wall, behind the desk. She crosses the room and is about to slip through the next door when a voice stops her. "Hold it!" Souverain turns around and looks back into the room. She doesn't see anyone. Then she looks down, at the desk. There is a man hiding in the cubbyhole underneath the desk. He's leaning out just enough to threaten Souverain with the pistol he holds in his unsteady hand. "Really? Are you kidding?" she asks. POP! He takes a shot at her! PIFF PIFF! Two round holes in the man's forehead. He slumps to the ground under the desk with much bigger holes where the back of his head used to be. Souverain hears a familiar whooshing sound – luckily a ways away from her. Stinger! She ducks to the ground for cover. BA-BOOM! An explosion shakes the ground. The walls vibrate and dust falls and flies everywhere. Smoke billows through the door from elsewhere in the house. The Army's shooting back! So where's my girl? Souverain gets up and dusts herself off. She reloads her gun, checks the fit of the silencer. Then she walks through the doorway down another short corridor. The door at the other end opens on chaos. This is a main inner room of the dwelling, open and spacious; even more open now, thanks to the missile blast that just took off the front half of the building. One back corner of the room looks oddly anachronistic. There are tripods with video cameras perched on them, lighting tripods, computers and recording equipment. The cameras point back at tapestries and flags taped up to the walls with duct tape. There is a side wall painted green, creating a low-tech green screen. The other back corner looks like some kind of sleeping area. What once were the dining and kitchen areas in the front of the room now appear to be gone. Six men are scattered around the ruins of the room firing their Kalashnikovs out through the missing walls at the surrounding US forces. Some kind of feeble last stand. Souverain has but a moment to take the scene in before the thug closest to her starts to turn his rifle her way. PIFF! PIFF! He goes down. Souverain scans the room, looking for the girl. It's hard to see through the dust and smoke and dying light of day. She spies movement from what she first thought was a small sack at the feet of a man near the cameras. When the bundle moves again Souverain knows it's the girl. PIFF! PIFF! Souverain shoots the man standing over her teenaged friend in both eyes. As he falls, another of his comrades turns his rifle on Souverain. He fires. CRACK! CRACK! He misses. She spins to target him. The room seems suddenly quiet. Souverain swears the smoke clears as she shoots. PIFF! She knocks him down with a single shot between the eyes. Then all the noise and smoke and chaos come rushing back. The loudspeaker outside drones on as she tries to cross the room. "...ARMY. THIS STRUCTURE HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED AS AN ENEMY COMBATANT BASE OF OPERATIONS. YOU HAVE TWO MINUTES..." Souverain reaches the girl. The smaller version of herself looks up with a mix of fear and hope in her eyes. "Souverain?" "I told you you were gonna cause me trouble," Souverain says, trying to joke a little. But the girl takes her seriously. "I know. You were right," she says. "I am sorry." "S'okay," Souverain tells her. "Let's get out of here now, huh?" The girl nods. "I say we go out the back way," Souverain says. She shepherds the girl protectively in front of her as they make for the back wall of the room. The three men still standing don't seem to notice them, instead focusing their attention on trying to hit something, anything outside belonging to the U.S. Army with their old Soviet rifles. CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! Like an elephant tired of swatting flies with it's tail, the U.S. Forces finally put their foot down. Souverain and the girl are in the back corridor when Souverain hears the familiar whooshing noises again – this time there are many of them, and far too close. "Watch OUT!" is all she gets out as she covers the girl, as the Stingers explode and the floor drops and the air goes away and the world... goes... black. Souverain comes to a short time later. It doesn't feel like time has passed. Her head is throbbing. A similar feeling to a hangover, yet somehow more powerful, more insistent. And she hasn't been drinking. Where am I? Dirt floor. Quiet. Oh. The tunnels. How did I get here? The girl? Did she get away? Souverain struggles to her feet. Dizzy. She's awfully dizzy. She tries to focus. There's no sign of the girl. But Souverain is in the tunnels. Somebody had to help her get here, the shape she's in. Hope she got away. If I'm alive, she must have. Souverain puts one foot in front of the other, and slowly makes her stumbling way through the tunnels back to the Green Zone. She finds her barracks and strips off her Souverain gear with her head pounding. She puts her gear away in the bottom of her footlocker, and falls into her bunk. "I fell? I guess," Lane says. "You fell? From where?" The doctor asks. "Um, out of bed?" Lieutenant Lane is trying to explain why she has a concussion to the consulting physician at the base hospital. She found herself waking up in a hospital bed here this morning. "Then it's a good thing this one has rails to keep you safe," the doctor says. "These floors are pretty hard. Could knock you out for another three days," the doctor cracks back at her. Before he can press her he's interrupted by the appearance of the Colonel at the hospital room door. "Lieutenant Lane!" the Colonel calls out. "I thought I told you not to get into any trouble this week!" "Sorry sir," Lane responds. "I, uh, fell out of bed and hit my head." "So I hear. And that's all I know, Lane," the Colonel says. "You know what I mean?" "Please, sir?" Lane says. "Don't make my head hurt any more than it already does?" "Ha! Touche!" The Colonel enjoys the laugh. Then he produces the base newspaper and lays it on the bed in front of Lane. "You might want to read today's front page later. When your head is up to it." "Really?" "Seems that vigilante Souverain was at it again. Last night." The Colonel pauses, lets his statement sink in. "Wait. Last night?" Lane asks as she realizes what he's saying. "But the doctor said I've been here for three..." "Uh uh uh!" the Colonel interrupts. "Don't tell me things I don't want to know!" "Gotcha." "Funny though, Lane. Our reports tell us Souverain looks a little smaller than she used to. Anyway. Thought you'd enjoy that. Get better – you want to be able to leave when we go home in three days, don't you?" "Yessir!" Lane smiles. I may be going home... but Souverain might not be leaving Iraq after all! The End... ...For now! You can enjoy more adventures with Souverain, including her origin story by Ben Ferrari and another trilogy of linked short stories written By Mike Luoma and Illustrated by Ben, in Souverain #1 from Earthbound Comics – get a digital download at DriveThruComics: http://comics.drivethrustuff.com/product/96675/ More info at http://earthboundcomics.com and http://glowinthedarkradio.com Thank you for reading!