"Racheal!" Noah shouted toward the woman standing beside the grimy window. She turned and walked over, five-inch red stiletto heels clicking against the floor as she approached their table in the dim haze of the strip club. Six-foot-one and slender. Dreadlocks with purples beads cascaded down to her chest, brushing against her firm breasts.
Noah leaned in. "You think she's hot?"
Osa's mouth watered like a bloodhound. He wanted to rip off her leopard-print dress and bury his face in her softness.
"She's beautiful." Osa smiled.
Noah smiled, pleased with himself. "You see? I don't keep trash. Only the best girls work for me."
He lifted his beer, took a long swing, then burped loudly.
Disgust flickered across Racheal's face.
"How much is she?" Osa asked.
"Two thousand dollars gets you the whole night—at your place."
"How much is she?" Osa asked.
"Two thousand gets you the whole night—at your place."
Osa tilted his head. "How about one thousand?"
"Don't be cheap. She pays for herself by the end of the night." Noah grinned.
"And how do I know that?" Osa folded his arms, trying to look unimpressed.
"What are you, inexperienced?" Noah scoffed. "She's reliable. Professional. No complaints."
"Back when I was sixteen in Sumer, had a fling in high school before I got… bigger. But it's not me who changed—women just got shallow-"
Noah cut him off, "Are you paying or not? I got other clients waiting."
Osa pulled a wad of bills from his jeans pocket and handed it over."Here."
He grabbed Racheal's hand. She followed him into the streets of Zo-Zo City, dim under the flickering streetlamps. If money weren't a concern, she'd yank her hand free and run.
—
A pang of guilt flickered for Racheal. Noah exploited her—morals were never his strong suit.
Two weeks ago, Alan had warned him, 'Your story's too confusing.' Kill some of your darlings.
So he did. Ethan, James, Dan, Tobias, Tucker—all gone. More would follow. No regrets. Dan had begged for more chapters, but Merlot knew better. If readers wanted blood, then no character was safe.
Uncle Sam claimed seniority while shovelling dirt over Miss Columbia's 1738 debut. His arrival didn't come until 1814, a mascot stitched together not from ideals but from salted beef rations and military invoices. Time had gnawed at him: a white goatee, a face wrinkled by wars he never won, debts he never paid, and a mythology he mostly recycled.
Borealia, meanwhile, stayed perpetually twentish—waist‑length brown hair, unlined face—the nation that arrived late and learned early how to age by proxy: let older empires bleed first, then show up looking fresh.
Arriving late meant standing in Sam's shadow. Borealia never starred on recruitment posters, never pointed outward to scream I WANT YOU. Stayed quiet—not from innocence, but because silence was cheaper than consent, and left no fingerprints to trace.
Johnny Canuck stood at her side, hockey stick in hand, fending off Sam's tantrums. Sam hurled tariffs like frozen pucks, each one a rebuke for daring to trade beyond his reach.
Borealia wasn't sneaking through the back door for foreign goods—and Sam hated losing his cut. Free trade, turned out, applied only when she shopped in his aisle.
Johnny Canuck barked that Borealia wasn't for sale. Sam snorted—he didn't buy allies, he extorted them. Courtesy was for equals; fear was for the rest.
To Sam, Borealia's diplomacy was like whispering in a cannon's roar—civilized, cautious, and utterly pointless. Every gesture toward peace made him think of Liberatas, laurels gleaming, urging him toward victories instead of compromises. Sam could have courted Borealia, but he didn't—standards and pride came first.
Sam wasn't about to help Borealia save on taxes by letting her slip under his border umbrella. Protection was his oldest export. He'd be damned if anyone got it wholesale. Free security wasn't extended to nations that claimed they didn't exist the night his White House went up in flames.
Borealia's birthday stayed on hold as long as Uncle Sam insisted that the only acceptable outcome—on any battlefield—was his victory. At the Battle of Quebec in 1775, his troops were caught in a blizzard and captured, unable to break through the red‑coated line that held the city. By 1776, they had abandoned the effort, unable to bend Quebec into the shape of a willing fourteenth colony.
Borealia irked Uncle Sam endlessly, flaunting her "victory" over his attempts to grab her territory. He'd signed the Treaty of Ghent back in 1814—war over, borders reset to the way they were, no grand conquest, just a draw. Borealia wasn't even a twinkle in Confederation's eye until 1867. Impossible to claim triumph when you're a ghost who showed up decades after the battlefield went cold.
Conveniently, a new law appeared—under it, going to war with Borealia was forbidden, because Uncle Sam had placed her on his list of "allies," which meant off-limits when it came to invasion. After all, friends don't fight—not when they have access to heavy water and the know-how to make reactors hum without asking for enriched uranium. Sam would have to look elsewhere for enemies on whom to unleash his collection of bombs.