Above and behind, ingrained metal vines decorated the walks. They encapsulated all but the front, whose glass revealed nothing but blurs. The three girls may as well have hidden in a refrigerator, cold and insulated as they were, perhaps even immune to nuclear fallout? Jess had enough faith in Valerie to forget fear, yet enough uncertainty to feel anxious. How would the human resistance greet her? The question hit her over the head, again and again.

Answers came when the darkness opened, like a flap, to signs of civilization. Below them, on the other side of the glass, lay a field of concrete surrounded by the rock of an underground cavern. The artificial and natural features encompassed an industrial underworld, one both alien and earthly. Several aircraft stationed below caught Jessica's fascination, a series of parked jets the likes of which she only discovered in fiction and, more recently, footage. Within the crisscross alignment of aluminum flew the sparks of welding tools. But the biggest feature was a two-legged metal beast. 

"Now, how did they get a Gundam in here?" Jessica said studiously. 

"Is this a freaken hangar?" said Shannon.

Jess and Val said "Yes" in unison. A mild resonance vibrated beneath their feet as the elevator touched down. Between them, only Valerie's face kept its color. 

Jessica turned red as soon as the glass door slid open. It was proofed by another door that, presumably, led into the mysterious compound. Total silence fiddled with their anticipation.  A million questions zoomed across her mind, questions superseded by excitement as the second set of doors parted.

"Hands up!"

"Freeze!"

"Show me your hands!"

A bombardment of orders came attached themselves to the barrels and scopes of assault rifles, leveled against their gazes. Seven men and women stood armed to the teeth, some of them with bags under their eyes, and all bulked up by vests. Shannon's hands were the first to shoot up in excited surrender, a move her friends quickly copied.

"I am unarmed!" she announced. "I am not resisting! I am an innocent human civilian who happens to be black!"

"What are you doing?" Jessica whispered.

Shannon whispered back. "In case you haven't noticed, these people are white! They could be American. From the South—California maybe. Bitch, I don't know—I am not resisting!"

"Wildcat!" Valerie cried. She rocked upright,  arms in the air. "Wildcat 217563. Reporting from under the Wizard's banner."

Her friend was speaking in code, Jess realized. Val knew these people, and they were supposed to know her. But it didn't take a keen eye to see paranoia between their gnashed teeth. Fortunately for everyone, a deep and tranquil voice intervened.

"At ease, grunts."

From behind the armed entourage stepped a stalwart physique in a green uniform. His chest bore the same symbol as the other uniforms: earth around a rising fist. Unlike them, he advanced evenly, and his commanding brown eyes looked down from a dark crew-cut.

Shannon glanced at the advancing leader and breathed a sigh of utter relief. "Oh, thank Jackson!" The guards lowered their weapons as their superior halted, back to them. After sizing up the three new arrivals, his sharp brown eyes isolated Valerie. 

"I have your designation, Wildcat, but who are your two guests? Report!"

"Two civilians who I trust with my life, sir!" Valerie exclaimed convincingly. "They helped me get here! Together, we've brought evidence that could mean the world."

"Were you followed, Wildcat?"

"I—we covered our tracks three times over," she answered, nerves creeping into her voice. 

The commander turned an inquisitive eye to Shannon. "And you?"

"Shannon Wolf," she exclaimed, flinching upright. 

"What brings you here, Shannon?" 

"They do, sir! Valerie and Jessica are my friends. I watch their asses!"

The leader stepped close, sizing up Shannon who somehow seemed calmer than Val. "Who is Jessica?"

"The girl beside me, sir."

Oh, no. He's going to turn to me. Is he turning? Damn, he's looking at me now. The man's eyes lifted the hairs on her skin. She darted and, accidentally, regretfully, made eye contact as he stepped in her direction. The next second, he loomed over her with the gravitas of a job interviewer.

"Full name, civilian."

"Jessica Leibniz," she answered, standing up straight.

"Why are you here?"

"I'm here..." The journey thus far had been odd, uneventful, and tiresome—terrible in many ways. Trapped in her own thoughts, she failed to hear the second question. That's when Shannon gently shook her out of oblivion.  So she turned back to the commander and absorbed his severe gaze. "I'm here because—because I know what really happened to Pine Rim Hovels on July fourth, sir! I have a Pandora's box with a bubblegum crisis and hope you'll avoid shooting me long enough for me to tell you about it, with all due respect."

"Jess knows more than I do," said Valerie. "What we have was worth coming down here and worth coming out of the field."

The man's eyes smoldered over them, in what appeared to be a final evaluation. It ended with his fix on Jessica and a sly smirk above his stubble. "Call me Monarch," he said. "As you were." 

As Jessica, Valerie, and Shannon dropped their postures so too did the rebels at Monarch's rear. The sweaty tension in the air diffused, the situation defused, and the resistance leader gestured for the girls to follow. The whole of the underground compound lay before them.

Sobriety underlined the hazel in Jessica's eyes, tinging between worry and excitement. She was invited to witness a rebellion. Despite how surreal, she followed the road to mental acceptance.  Still, disturbed by a million questions, she hoped at least one would escape her breath before her head exploded. They followed the man known as Monarch.

The scent of gasoline prevailed as strongly as the sight of steel: old aircraft, modern cars, and more—Jessica had grown accustomed to neither. Like a tourist entourage, she and her friends gawked at an underworld of mechanical mystery and vintage miracles. The jets left of them seemed straight out of a 90s flick. Closer to their path lay a series of workout treadmills. Paramilitary personnel ran to the beats of an old boombox. Like straight out of a museum, she thought, though the artists were, as the lyrics went, "Straight outta Compton."

Shannon beat Jessica to a revolving question. "What the hell is this place?"

Monarch held his head high. "Back in 2016, when the aliens delivered their ultimatum, many of our kind thought ahead and dug underground. Obviously, the promise of an epoch transition was too tempting for the rest of humanity. Not to mention our government was afraid to test the extraterrestrials' floating stockpiles. Russia, on the other hand, decided to learn the hard way."

Through a row of computer terminals, Jessica locked her eyes on the rigs whose hardware she barely recognized, though were high-tech at a glance. "I remember sifting through archives of the year 2016," she said. "Kept finding memes of the same gorilla."

"But what is the real reason humanity surrendered, Monarch?" Valerie said. "The nail in the coffin? The straw that broke the camel's back? The last drop that made the cup run over?"

Monarch stopped in in the middle of their improv tour, tossing back a look of shame. "According to several accounts—many in fact—the Azareans threatened to take our wi-fi away. During the first day of the invasion, they did. Sounds silly these days..."

"Of course!" Jessica stammered. "All you need is an LED light calibrated for internet access. Just imagine..." Once again, she made eye contact with Monarch, except this time she lost her cynicism. "'It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity' -  Albert Einstein."

"If that's true, then I wonder how that translates for the Azareans," Monarch said grimly.

"It makes them puppeteers with strings in the form of tech."

Monarch led on. "Then you understand why we're the minority, Jessica, and why we're losing."

Despite Monarch's statement, Jessica livened at the community. The cavern held a multitude of men and women tied together by defiance, and they'd been hiding under the Union's nose for years, literally under New Sumer. It would have taken a gross bit of effort and resources to build the infrastructure they call home. Only considerable cleverness, ingenuity, and creativity could have made Sub Terra a reality. 

One-hundred years of resistance still in the shadows. 

Further along, the overhead hologram of Earth had grown in size. Of the many eye-catching curiosities littering the underground base, the planet render begged for attention. At the top of a metal staircase, Jessica and the entourage passed a single door that led to an operating nexus underneath the globe. As soon as she entered the circular haven of technology, she was floored.

Floored. 

A gallery of terminals populated the inside of a torus, Earth's hologram the epicenter. Computers on the left, computers on the right, the interior was illuminated by an endless stream of LED buttons. Jessica skipped past the operating staff of random uniforms, past the guards, up a short series of steps, and stopped just underneath the globe. There, she found the node. So cleared her throat, inhaled, and in her deepest and throatiest voice uttered a single word. 

"Commander.

"I once stepped into a Star Trek set and began pressing random buttons. I don't think I can do that here." Sure, the nexus looked fascinating, but it was the software—the potential schemes of resistance computer programs—that cultivated her curiosity. She pondered the differences to surface technology, but just as her curiosity caught fire, Monarch stepped into her personal space.

"Excuse me," he said flatly, "but you're here because you have something to show us."

Apparently, someone invited the whole party, because Jessica took a single sideways step before flinching at Valerie, Shannon, and an entire rebel inquisition blocking the entrance. At first, they were glued to Valerie, Monarch included, but Valerie pointed her finger at Jessica. "Don't look at me," she said, shrugging. "Jess is the whiz who cracked the secrets of the Wizard's cell."

"Way to put me on the spot, Homegirl."

Monarch folded his hands behind his back and turned his tight neck to Jessica. "You said you had pertinent information on Pine Rime's destruction? We know those pointy-ears are responsible, but our only insider was recently compromised. Meaning, we have no damn evidence or retaliatory measures."

"You know," Jessica started, tone sober, "I always wondered if there was a secret world, like an upside down dimension to the lies shoved in our faces on a daily basis. Then, I found out you were real but in the wrong light. Now that I see this place, I wonder, what does Sub Terra hope to accomplish?"

Monarch tongued his cheek.  "It starts with your intelligence."

"My IQ's pretty high."

"I refer to—"

"I know what you mean, I just said my IQ's high." Near nervous, Jessica retrieved the white flash drive from her front vest pocket and cautiously handed it to Monarch. As it touched the palm of his hand, Valerie stepped forward. 

"Sir," she began. "What of the operatives who found this data? Where are they?"

"They went dark," he drawled. He inserted the drive into the node. "For so many years, our war against the Union corporations has been one of information. Progress is negligible and scarce. Let's face it, our predecessors submitted to the aliens because of a gross technology gap."     

Above,  the Earth hologram rapidly shrunk and pixelated under an array of files. Jess guided Monarch to the aforementioned evidence, helping him steer away from the temptation of opening more. As a result, the playback eventually commenced and resounded throughout the entire headquarters. Jess and her friends would have to sit through the traitorous recording again.

"Increase the volume," said Monarch. 

The reverberation of the sound managed to lift their collective skin hairs, supplanting the industrial ambiance of the base with ominous voices. Two voices echoed, acting as a clockwork sedative to everyone's workflow. Every pair of eyes steered to where the globe had been, fixing on the holographic emulation of soundwaves. 

When she first heard the recording, Jessica was gripped by confusion and anger. It still had that effect, minus the confusion. This time, her reaction came vicariously. Azareans were the enemy, as far as these rebels were concerned. Even now, however, every listener subscribed to quiet disbelief and disgust. By the last few sentences of the recording, disdain had engraved itself on their faces. Like a vacuum, the echoes between Malvis and the fake resistance leader sucked every shadow of doubt from the compound. This was the resistance.

The playback ended. 

"What else is there?" Monarch deadpanned.  He turned, surprising Jess with his blank expression. Compared to everyone else, he may as well have been a cold shell. 

"There's plenty," she asserted. "I'm not even—not even—going to get into the socio-political shitstorm, but thi—this will throw a wrench into future ploys in the Azareans' sinister bucket list, okay? The space elves won't see this coming."

Monarch's brow furrowed. "This recording?"

"With all due respect, sir," Valerie interjected, I don't think the people who risked their lives getting this information considered it useless."

"Not what I'm implying. But in recent months, the Azarean regime has demonstrated the reach of their false epistemology. Since they always succeed, our options are limited. We need something on top of this, revolutionary staying power: technology, operations, intelligence on the backend. We need actionable info on how they're running the show."

"Fine!" said Jessica. "I've seen what's on the chip. There's plenty data on heinous projects— corporate schemes: how they funnel their finances, experimental research base locations, and some real fuckery going on."

"Logistics? Weapons? Ways to breach their network?" 

"Ohhoho," Jessica laughed. "Are we uncovering secrets or looking for ways to conduct a war?"

"I understand what we have, in regard to evidence, but it's not that simple."

"Maybe not for you. This isn't the 21st century; damning evidence actually means something when leveled against a big-wig."

"We need a method of distributing that evidence to the world. Do you understand how difficult that would be? It involves breaching an impenetrable network, establishing a line to the global broadcasting system, and then holding the line long enough to get the message through. Forget hacking New Sumer, let alone the entire world. New Atlantis, Camelot, Babylon... Every Eden must have a failsafe to stop a breach into the other's cyberinfrastructure. Unless you somehow hack it from the source, there's nothing you can do."  

Jessica turned away, tired from looking at the commander. Then again, it was technically morning and she hadn't slept well. She had just enough energy to roll her eyes in hardcore annoyance. Eyes: pale eyes, dark eyes, dubious pupils. The Sub Terra guards had been starting all the while, keen through every bout of their exchange. She wondered what they'd sacrifice for their cause, twiddling her thumbs.

"You can try hacking Goliath HQ," she mumbled.

"And what are we going to do?" said Monarch. "Just walk in there and steal access?"

"I did." 

Monarch's brow furrowed into a chasm. "You did what?"

Jessica turned back around, pursing her lips. "I ran in there and took their files."

"Explain." 

"I will explain slowly..."

Jessica dumped the next few moments with info as she recollected every dealing with Goliath. She began with her Lynx alias, her role as a contracted cryptologist, and segued into her dealings with David Mourner, the director of Computer Engineering. She then mentioned Goliath's encryption algorithm, SK-3, and how it gave her a backdoor into Goliath's systems. This eventually transitioned to her woeful memory of Malvis.

"In other words, I can do whatever Goliath can do," she finished. Her anxiety suddenly returned. The huddled crowd of rebels had grown in size since the start of her monologue. Armed men and women crouched mere meters away, grey jumpsuits on her left, and a motley crew of polyester tanks and bombers on the right.

"Leaking the data on the internet is easy, but getting it front and center is the tricky part," she added, but deliberately neglected to mention her involvement in the last terrorist incident. Failure still rolled off her tongue.

"So, you were contracted by Goliath?" Monarch repeated back.

"To discover potential backdoors into undisclosed encryption software," said Jessica. "I was surprised as hell to find collisions in a hash function, and that's what I told David."

Monarch cleared his throat of skepticism. Confidence played in his eyes when he looked at the teenager. Moreover, judging by their faces, the rest of Sub Terra seemed to understand and accept her story.

"In the end, I hacked Goliath and forged a document that would give me access privy to executive personnel, though I haven't tested the limits of that access. But it's there in case I'm ever next to their TPUs, you know... downloading porn or something."

A random listener chimed in. "Okay, but you would still need a signature, right?"

"You do. I got one."

"And how did you pull that off?" enjoined a female grunt with blue bug eyes.

"By walking into the Goliath and asking for one."

  "Say what?" said Valerie.  

Perplexion and surprise tagged every listener's face. Murmurs followed suit. Jessica withdrew a tablet from her backpack. "I copied Goliath's script and hid it in this employee evaluation sheet. Some simple tweaks to the language; goodbye, Goliath administrative access; hello, Tacquizza review."

"Someone signed it?" asked Monarch.

Grinning with a gesture for patience, Jessica pulled up her goggles and projected a hologram. "This is the bastard," she answered. The still-image of an Azarean lay bare for all to see. 

"We've seen that particular Azarean before..."

One ragged member of the motley resistance crew inched forward. "From what intel we've gathered, he goes by Malvis," he said. "Evidence suggests he's one of many agents immersed in shady dealings for the private sector. All off the books, naturally."

"Malvis is a dick," said Jessica.

"That space elf's a bit of a mystery, and a recent player in corporate espionage," rejoined Monarch. "Guesses say he reports to the very top."

"Top of what?" asked Valerie.

"The top...

"There's someone here who can tell you more about him, actually. I would like you to meet him right now. You two will have a lot in common, I'm sure, and he can copy the data from Goliath. Everything. But while I still have you, I want to know something." Straightening his posture, Monarch met Jess with undivided attention. There a little less condescension and more respect in his eyes.

"You implied that you have access to Goliath's network," he said. "Say you were back in there, hypothetically, could you take control of their