Loyalty Theater

Theo's hands fail him, a patient falls, and a broadcast becomes a sacrament of humiliation.

The cold was a physical thing. It seeped up through the floor tiles, a damp chill that found the seams in his bandages and settled deep into the bones of his feet. His fingers, wrapped in gauze that was now wet and clinging, felt like swollen sausages. Numb. Useless.

He scraped the brush against the porcelain. The bristles were stiff, unyielding. He needed to scrub harder, to press the thick, gray water into the stains that ringed the bedpan's basin. But his wrist couldn't torque the right way. Every movement was a negotiation between a sharp pain in his elbow and a dull, throbbing ache in his knuckles.

"Come on," he muttered. The words were a puff of steam that vanished instantly in the freezing air.

The room was a box. Shelves crammed with bleach bottles, stacks of folded towels that smelled like mildew, a bucket of murky water that sloshed with every hesitant shift of his weight. The only light came from a single LED bulb in a wire cage, flickering just enough to make his eyes strain. It cast long, dancing shadows that turned the collection of medical waste bags in the corner into hulking, waiting shapes.

He dipped the brush again. The water was opaque, a soup of dissolved filth and chemical cleaner. It was lukewarm where his fingers touched it, but the air above the bucket was sub-zero. He held the bedpan steady with his left hand, the gauze slick and cold against the porcelain. He attacked the stain again.

*Sponge. Wipe. Sponge. Wipe.*

It was the only rhythm he had. It wasn't journalism. It wasn't truth-seeking. It was the monotonous, humiliating cadence of a man who had been stripped of everything but his physical capacity to move. And even that was failing.

His hand spasmed. A cramp shot up his forearm, a wire of fire in the cold. The brush slipped from his grip. It hit the bedpan with a clatter and skittered over the side, splashing into the tub. A spray of dirty water arced up, catching him across the chest and cheek.

"Fuck," he breathed. It wasn't anger. It was a statement of fact. A tired, hollow acknowledgment of his own incompetence.

He stared into the tub. The brush floated, bristles upward, like a drowned thing. He needed to get it. He leaned over, his knees protesting on the hard tile. He reached in. The water was thicker here, congealed with things he didn't want to identify. His fingers, clumsy and uncooperative, fumbled for the handle.

He missed. Brushed against something soft and yielding. He jerked his hand back, a gag climbing his throat. He slapped the tile edge, the impact a dull thud that didn't help. He tried again, closing his eyes this time, focusing on the memory of how hands were supposed to work.

Finally, he hooked a finger through the handle. He lifted it out, dripping, and placed it back on the shelf. He looked at the bedpan. The stain was still there, a brownish-yellow ring mocking him. He picked up the bedpan.

He held it in both hands, gauze gripping porcelain. He was going to set it on the floor, right next to the tub, so he could get a better angle. He bent his knees. Lower.

And then the world jumped.

It wasn't an explosion. There was no shattering glass, no deafening roar. It was a single, massive impact against something far away, a sound so deep it was felt more than heard. A *THUD* that vibrated through the floor, up his legs, into his chest. The water in the tub sloshed violently. The LED light flickered and died for a full second, plunging the room into absolute darkness, before buzzing back to life, dimmer this time.

Theo froze, bedpan in hands, heart hammering a frantic, irregular beat against his ribs. He waited for the scream. The alarm. The running feet.

Silence.

Then, a different sound. A rhythmic, booming percussion. *THUD. THUD. THUD.*

A battering ram. Against the reinforced doors of the main library. The sounds of the clinic—those low moans, the hiss of a ventilator, the murmur of a radio—died instantly, replaced by a taut, listening quiet.

Theo’s mind, the journalist’s mind, kicked against the wall of his paralysis. *What’s happening? Who is it? Is it the BHI? A different faction? What’s the story?* The questions were automatic, a conditioned response to violence. But his body was screaming at him. It wanted to curl into a ball. It wanted to be anywhere else.

He didn’t have time to decide.

The door to the sluice room burst open, slamming against the shelves and making the bleach bottles rattle. Mina stood there, framed in the dim light of the hallway. She was panting, her breath pluming in the cold air. Her face was pale, her eyes wide with a kind of controlled, urgent panic.

"Theo. Now." Her voice was stripped of all warmth, reduced to pure command.

He blinked, still holding the bedpan. "What—"

"*Now.*" She stepped in, grabbed his arm just above the elbow, her grip like iron. "Evacuation protocol. Basement. It’s a BHI raid. They’re not breaching the clinic yet; they’re bringing the population into the garden. We have to move the criticals first. Lead-lined basement. It’s our only chance."

She was pulling him out, dragging him into the hallway. The bedpan was still in his other hand. He dropped it. It clattered on the tiles, the sound echoing, obscene in the quiet tension.

Mina didn’t look back at it. "Bed 4. The catatonic. You’re on the left side with me. Owen and the other guard are taking the lung-shot case from Bed 2. We move now." She was already moving, her strides long and purposeful, navigating the dim corridor of the Main Atrium.

Theo followed, his mind scrambling to catch up. The Atrium, the heart of the clinic, was a tableau of frozen fear. Patients on cots were awake, eyes wide, propped on elbows. Some were trying to sit up, their injuries forgotten. The air was thick with the smell of sweat, fear, and the ever-present underlying note of antiseptic. The flickering lights cast long, jumping shadows that made everyone look like they were already ghosts.

They reached Bed 4. The woman lay flat, her eyes open but seeing nothing. A frail bundle of white sheeting and matted hair. She weighed nothing. That was the terrifying part. She was a bag of bones held together by willpower and fading warmth.

"Lift on three," Mina commanded, positioning herself at the head. "Don’t jostle. Keep her level."

Theo moved to the foot of the cot, his bandaged hands finding the cold metal frame. The weight was negligible, but the precision was everything. He had to be stable. He had to be strong. He watched Mina’s face as she counted down. She wasn’t looking at him; she was focused on the woman, on the fragile life in her care.

"One. Two. Three."

They lifted. The cot was lighter than he expected, but awkward. He heaved, his arms protesting, a sharp pain blooming in his shoulder. They turned, a slow, careful pivot. The basement door was at the rear of the Atrium, through the stacks of what used to be history books, now burned for fuel.

They took a step. Then another. The floor was cold linoleum. His breath came in short, sharp gasps. He could feel the eyes on them—patients, the other guard, a few staff members frozen in the act of securing supplies. They were the evacuation. The first wave.

They passed the giant windows that looked out onto the Reading Garden. The glass was frosted, opaque, but from the corner of his eye, Theo saw a sudden, violent change.

A light. Blinding white, slicing through the gray gloom of the winter day.

It wasn’t just a light. It was a floodlight. It swept across the frosted glass, painting streaks of brilliant, painful glare on the inside wall. It was followed by another, and another. They were setting up a stage.

The journalist in his skull screamed, a high-pitched, grating noise that drowned out the pain in his back. *This is it. This is the story. Theatrical brutality. The public humiliation of the zone.*

He glanced out the window, just a quick, desperate look. Through the frosting, he saw shapes. Dark-clad figures. BHI agents. They weren’t storming in with guns. They were moving with a choreographed, almost ceremonial grace. A drone, small and black, lifted off from the ground, its own light adding to the blinding glare. It hovered, a mechanical eye.

They were broadcasting. They were turning the raid into a show.

His hands were on the cot frame. He was the left side, left hand. The cot was level. Mina was walking backward, pulling the head. The patient was safe. He was doing his job as a human. Helping. Being part of a community.

The light in his mind flared. *The camera. The bag. Behind the radiator in the triage room.*

He needed it. This was the shot. The defining image. Proof. Evidence. The thing he came here for. The thing that would make all of this—the bedpans, the cold, the failures—worth it.

The choice was not a choice. It was a reflex.

His left hand, the one gripping the frame, simply opened.

The cot tilted violently. Mina, yanked forward by the sudden imbalance, cried out—a short, sharp sound of shock. The woman, Bed 4, slid. She didn’t scream. She didn’t make a sound. She just rolled off the mattress, a limp doll, and her head connected with the linoleum with a sickening, wet *thud*.

"Theo!" Mina’s voice was a crack of lightning. She was on the floor instantly, hands under the woman’s head, her face a mask of furious horror. "What the hell are you doing?"

But Theo was already moving. He didn’t look back at the patient. He didn’t look at the blood, bright red against the graying floor. He was already running. His feet slipped on the linoleum, his frostbitten toes sending daggers of pain up his legs, but he didn’t stop. He scrambled past the stacks, past the other guard who was staring, mouth agape.

He reached the triage room. The curtain was drawn. He ripped it aside. The room was empty. The beds were made. The medical supplies were neatly stacked. And there, behind the radiator, half-hidden by a gray wool blanket, was his bag.

He snatched it. The leather was cold and cracked. He slung it over his shoulder and turned back toward the windows. He was a ghost in his own life. A taker. A parasite. The human part of him was dying in the Atrium, bleeding onto the floor. The observer was all that was left.

He reached the window, the one he’d seen the light through. It was already shattered, a spiderweb of cracks radiating from a central point, a jagged hole where a rock had gone through. The cold air poured in, a physical force.

Outside, the spectacle was in full swing.

They had turned the Reading Garden into a television studio. The snow, which had been pristine white days ago, was now churned into gray slush by dozens of boots. A temporary gazebo had been erected, its skeleton of PVC pipe and canvas glowing with harsh LED floodlights. A white banner, stark against the gloom, was strung across the front. Theo squinted. It read: "TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION."

A PA system crackled to life, a voice filling the garden, resonating through the shattered windowpane and into the clinic. The voice was calm, articulate, almost kindly. It was the voice of a man who believed he was doing the right thing.

"Citizens of the Minneapolis Autonomous Zone," the voice boomed. Steven Grant. "We are here today not as conquerors, but as doctors. You have been led astray by the sickness of rebellion. You have starved yourselves for a false ideal. We are here to offer the cure."

Below, residents were being herded into a loose semicircle in front of the gazebo. They were thin, shivering, wrapped in layers of scavenged fabric. Their faces were pinched with hunger and fear. BHI agents, clad in black tactical gear that obscured their faces, stood with stunner rifles, not pointing, but holding at a low ready. It was a posture of menace, of implied violence.

Theo fumbled with his bag, his fingers stiff and clumsy. He yanked the zipper open. The cold metal teeth bit into his numb fingertips. He pulled out the camera. It was a heavy, professional DSLR, wrapped in a protective neoprene sleeve. He peeled it off. The camera body was icy.

He brought it to his eye, leaning his back against the icy wall next to the window frame for stability. He needed to be a shadow. The floodlights were so bright they were bleaching the color out of the world, turning the garden into a stark arena of light and shadow. The shadows of the clinic interior were a refuge.

He framed the shot. The gazebo. The sign. The waiting crowd. The drone, now hovering directly above the gazebo, its camera lens a black, unblinking eye.

His own camera whirred as he adjusted the lens. It was a motorized focus, smooth and precise. Or it was supposed to be. It tried to engage. He heard the tiny, high-pitched whine of the motor struggling against the cold. It zoomed in, then out, then in again, hunting. It couldn’t lock. The autofocus system, frozen, was trying to focus on the falling snowflakes in the foreground, the tiny specks of ice that drifted past the window pane.

"Come on," he hissed, his voice a low growl in his own throat. He couldn’t afford to miss this.

He clicked the switch to manual focus. The motor disengaged. Now it was all him, his frozen hands, his trembling fingers twisting the focus ring. He squinted, trying to make out the faces of the first person being led up to the gazebo. It was a man. Maybe sixty. His coat was patched with duct tape. He looked like he could be anyone’s grandfather.

"...must participate in the healing process," Grant’s voice continued from the speakers. "To receive your nutrient ration, all you need to do is confess your crime against the restoration. This is a catharsis. A public service."

The man was pushed gently but firmly onto the gazebo platform. A single spotlight caught him. He squinted, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the blinding light. A BHI agent, voice digitally modulated through a mask, held a microphone to the man’s lips.

"State your name and your transgression," the agent said. The words echoed through the garden, picked up by the drone and the PA system.

The man’s shoulders slumped. He looked at the crowd of his neighbors, his fellow starving residents. "I… I’m Mark Thomas. I… I took three batteries from the recycling bin on 4th Street. I… I kept them for my hearing aid. I was… I was hoarding." His voice was a reedy, broken thing, lost in the vast, cold space.

"Is this true?" Grant’s voice boomed, gentle but implacable. "Did you steal from the community for your own private comfort?"

A sob caught in Mark Thomas’s throat. He nodded, tears freezing instantly on his cheeks. "Yes. It’s true. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry."

A nod from the masked agent. A different BHI figure stepped forward from behind a crate and handed Thomas a foil-wrapped ration pack. The man clutched it to his chest as if it were a holy relic, and was quickly escorted down the stairs, back into the crowd of onlookers. The next person was already being moved forward.

Theo’s finger hovered over the shutter button. This was it. The first photo. The setup. The seed of the story. He pressed the button. A soft, satisfying *click*. A red light on the camera body blinked. Number one. He took another, adjusting the exposure. The image was stark, brutal. The man’s face, half-hidden by his hands, the gleam of the drone above.

He could feel his hands shaking more violently now. The adrenaline was fighting a losing battle with the cold. His breath came in ragged bursts. He needed more. He needed the climax. The story wasn’t about a man taking batteries. The story was about the system that made him confess it on a stage.

Another person was led up. A young woman, maybe twenty-five. She confessed to hoarding a can of beans. Another. An elderly woman, confessing to keeping a single, frozen apple from the communal pot. Each confession was a small, pathetic crime born of desperation. Each act of humiliation was broadcast, recorded by the drone, dissected by the BHI. It was a sacrament of shame.

Theo kept shooting. His thumb worked the dial, framing shots. A wide shot of the crowd, their faces pale, their expressions a mixture of fear, shame, and a strange, hungry hope for the ration pack. A close-up of the foil pack in the woman’s hands. The drone, a silent predator in the sky.

His battery indicator was on the bottom of the viewfinder. He glanced at it. 5%. The cold was draining it faster. He gritted his teeth. He had to be efficient.

Then, the crowd parted. A ripple went through the semicircle of people. A man was being pushed forward, not gently. He was tall, broad-shouldered under a heavy parka, and he was fighting. Not loudly, but with a low, constant resistance, a twisting of shoulders, a dragging of feet.

Theo’s breath caught. He knew that face. He’d seen it in the briefing files Owen had hacked, in the hushed conversations at the clinic. Felix Arden. A former union organizer. A known leader in the resistance. Not a leader of the violent fringe, but a voice of order in the chaos. A man who had advocated for supply distribution, for a council. He was a symbol of what the Zone could be.

If he was here, this wasn’t just a show. It was a narrative shift. The story was about to get its ending.

Grant’s voice took on a new, almost parental tone. "Now, we reach the core of the infection. A man who would call himself a leader. Felix Arden. A man who has poisoned the well of your community with promises of a false future. A man who hoarded not just batteries, but hope. He hoarded it for himself, to distribute on his terms, to make you beholden to him."

Felix was shoved onto the gazebo platform. He stumbled but didn’t fall. He straightened his back. He looked out at the crowd, not at the stage lights. His eyes seemed to scan the frozen faces, the lined-up agents, the dark windows of the clinic where Theo was hiding. His gaze seemed to linger for a fraction of a second on Theo’s window. A trick of the light. It had to be.

"Confess your crime against the restoration, Felix," the modulated voice said. The microphone was held up. The drone zoomed in, its small lens catching the harsh light, the stark lines of Felix’s face.

Felix didn’t look at the microphone. He looked at the crowd. "My crime," he said, his voice clear and strong, cutting through the wind and the hiss of the PA, "is believing that people should have food without confessing they’re hungry."

A silence, absolute and profound, fell over the garden. Even the wind seemed to pause.

The BHI agents tensed. The masked figure holding the mic took a half-step back. Steven Grant’s voice, when it came back, had lost its warmth. It was steel. "That is not a confession. That is rebellion. We are here to save the flock. Sometimes, a sacrifice is necessary for the herd to survive."

Theo’s hands were frozen claws. He had his camera up, the lens pointed at Felix. This was it. The shot. The moment where the regime showed its true face. The moment a man was turned into a martyr for a silent audience of thousands, maybe millions, watching on illegal feeds from across the world.

He focused. The manual ring was stiff. His finger was numb, barely feeling the shutter button. He checked the battery. 4%. Just enough for a short burst.

He hit the record button. The red light pulsed steadily. *Recording.*

The screen in his viewfinder switched to a live view. The image was crisp. Felix, defiant. The gazebo. The backdrop of snow and smoke from the burning barrels. It was perfect. Horrifying and perfect.

Then, the screen flickered. A blue box appeared in the center of the image. "CARD ERROR. WRITE SPEED TOO SLOW. DATA CORRUPTION POSSIBLE."

"No," Theo whispered. "No, no, no."

He hit stop. The red light died. He ejected the SD card. It was cold, a thin rectangle of black plastic. He fumbled with the slot, his fingers clumsy, his nails scraping the plastic. He tried to push it in. It wouldn’t go. It was seated wrong. He pulled it out, turned it over. His hand was shaking so badly the card jumped from his grip.

It landed on the frost-coated windowsill, inches from the jagged hole in the glass. It slid, a faint scratching sound, and came to rest in a small, dark patch of wet snow that had blown in.

Theo stared at it. The black card against the gray slush. The camera hung from his neck, dead. The moment was slipping away, written in air, invisible.

He dropped to his knees. He reached for the sill, his bandaged hands plunging into the cold, wet mess. He patted around, feeling for the hard, square edge of the card. His fingers closed around something smooth. He pulled it out. It was a shard of glass, sharp and clear. He tossed it away. He went back in, digging, the snow melting against his gauze, soaking it, seeping into his frozen skin.

"Where is it?" he hissed, his voice ragged. "Come on."

He found it. The card. He clutched it, a fist of triumph, and scrambled to insert it back into the camera. His hands were blue with cold, the tremor now a violent, full-body convulsion. He fumbled it. The card skidded off the metal slot, tore a gash in the neoprene sleeve of the camera bag. He grabbed it again, jammed it in. It didn’t click. It was in, but not seated. He pressed it with his thumb, desperate, frantic.

From the garden, a single, flat sound cut the air.

A pop. Like a firecracker. Sharp, final, and utterly devoid of the bass-heavy echo of a gun fired outdoors. A small, surgical report that didn't fit the grand theater around it.

Theo froze, card in hand, camera against his eye.

He was looking through the lens. The frame was dark. The camera was off. The live view was dead.

He pulled the camera away from his face. He looked with his own eyes, naked and unprotected.

On the gazebo stage, Felix Arden stood for a single, eternal second. His head snapped back slightly. A red flower blossomed on the chest of his parka, tiny at first, then expanding with shocking speed, dark against the black fabric. He didn’t cry out. He didn’t gasp. His knees buckled. He folded, collapsing forward onto the platform, a puppet whose strings had been cut.

The body was a pile of dark cloth on the illuminated stage. The drone hovered, its camera lens pointed down at the still form. The snow, the floodlights, the distant, watchful windows—it all remained, but the central figure was now just a thing on the ground.

The moment was over. It had been over before he’d even truly missed it.

He had been scrabbling in the filth on his windowsill while history was made and unmade in a single, simple act. He had chosen the camera over the patient, and in the end, he had neither.

Below, Steven Grant’s voice returned, smooth as silk. "A necessary correction. The infection is cauterized. The rest of you will receive your rations. Remember this day. Remember the mercy shown to you. The truth has been aired. The restoration begins now."

BHI agents moved with brutal efficiency. They didn’t linger on the stage. They didn’t look at the body. They turned to the crowd, who stood in stunned, silent horror, and began handing out the foil-wrapped ration packs. The gesture was obscene, a final, crushing layer of humiliation. Take your food. Pretend this was for you.

The drone made a wide, graceful turn and began to fly back toward the dark, illuminated Spire, its work complete. The floodlights remained on for another minute, illuminating the scene: the gathering crowd accepting their empty promises, the dark shape on the stage, the untouched body. Then, one by one, they blinked out, leaving the garden in the gray, featureless twilight of the winter afternoon.

The BHI agents left. They walked away, their boots leaving deep prints in the slush. They didn’t even look back at the empty crates they’d left by the gazebo. Someone, a resident, kicked one over. It was hollow. Lightweight. A prop.

Theo couldn’t move. He was still on his knees by the shattered window, the camera in one hand, the wet, corrupted SD card in the other. The cold was no longer just a sensation. It was an entity. It had seeped through his clothes, through his skin, into his organs. It was slowing his heart. It was freezing his thoughts.

He had witnessed nothing. He had recorded nothing. He had only seen.

He pushed himself up, his knees cracking. He turned from the window, a man hollowed out. He walked back through the clinic, his footsteps leaving wet, dirty prints on the floor. The Atrium was silent now. The patients were quiet, huddled under blankets. The two other members of the medical team were gone, probably hiding in the basement or the stacks. The lights still flickered, casting a sickly, intermittent glow.

He approached Bed 4. He had to.

Mina was kneeling on the floor next to the overturned cot. The patient, Bed 4, was awake. Her eyes were wide, clear, and full of a terror that was somehow more terrible than her previous catatonia. She was touching her head, her fingers coming away wet and red. A dark stain was spreading through her graying hair, matting it to the tile. A small, dark pool was forming under her cheek.

Mina had her hand on the woman’s shoulder, a gesture of comfort, but her face was a mask of stone. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t yelling. Her jaw was set, the muscles working under the skin. She was applying pressure to the wound with her other hand, a bandage already soaked through in her grip.

She heard Theo’s footsteps. She didn’t look up immediately. She finished securing the bandage, her movements precise and economical. Only then did she lift her head.

She looked at him. Her eyes, dark and deep, held no anger. No rage. Anger was a warm, messy emotion. What she had was colder. It was assessment. It was a final, terrible calculation.

She didn’t hit him. She didn’t scream.

She spoke, her voice low and flat, devoid of all inflection.

"You did this," she said. It wasn’t an accusation. It was a statement of fact, like saying the sky was gray or the floor was cold.

Theo opened his mouth to say something. An apology. An excuse. *I saw the light. I saw the story. I had to.* But the words were ash in his throat. They were useless lies.

He was holding the camera. The black, useless brick. The SD card was still in his other hand. He looked from it to the woman on the floor, to the blood, to Mina’s unblinking stare.

In the silence of the clinic, broken only by the woman’s shallow, terrified breaths, Theo Garrick understood. He had not failed to witness history. He had not missed the shot.

He had become a part of the crime. He was the camera. He was the empty crate. He was the useless, pathetic man on his knees in the slush, clutching at things that didn’t matter while the real, ugly, terrible truth happened right beside him.

Mina turned back to the patient. "Get me another bandage. From the supply room. And don’t. Drop. Anything."

Theo stood there for a second longer, frozen in the absolute, static silence of his own failure. Then, he turned to go to the supply room. His feet, heavy and soaked, made a soft, wet sound on the tiles. Each step was a lead weight. He was moving forward, but he had never felt so utterly, completely stuck.