"If I were you," Wall™ pontificated, "I'd hit the red one-but hey, it's your call."

"It will only lead troopers here, draw more fire," I said. 

"Tough choice. Stay here and be held up to the world as another youth reduced to a petri dish, or be harvested by the others."

"All for biogenics likely to backfire anyway!" I told it.

"Stay here, the whole house could be rolled flat-with you inside. Do something!"

Rioting had returned full force. I saw cops lob canisters of pepper spray, some thrown back at them, one rolling up by the driveway and rolling back.

You could hear the confused rattle and laughter of cops in gear as they pelted the crowd with rubber bullets even as they engulfed them, shouting: "Stop the harvest! Free Pellegrino!"

My message must have gotten out. They used my name. Now the cops tried to undo the damage.

Light, revolving colors. Lasers flew across the intersection until transformers around the station exploded in flames and everyone withdrew.

Stormer batons beat the back door until it gave way to a crunching sound. 

At the same time, a flood of them in hazmat suits rushed across the front lawn, bearing down on the door monitored by Wall™.

Citizens linked arms in a circle, all donning 3D printed gas masques, all breaking the law, all legs planted wide, facing the cops at my drive.

"We're broadcasting your live ass. Hope you don't mind. Take that as a yes," one announced without more than a glance my way.

It was not the first time they harvested my parts. But this time seemed more like civil war than a band of rights brigands trying to save us all, I thought. These were no protesters; these were backups dressed a part-investors. Probably Lockheed, maybe Monsanto. 

"The very idea of this creature glowing with biogenic hopes sends shivers of delight throughout my associates," she said to the masked stormers trickling in with the techs.

"Don't shoot!" Wall™ amplified from my shout. 

Were they prepping me for the final harvest, I couldn't tell. The alpine feast for the senses made me feel like a steer being grain-fed near the end, boding ill for me. Who or what could I trust now?

They took a kidney once, lymph nodes other times. What else could they "borrow," as they said, that would let me go on living?"

"I'm Crutch. You're my new assignment. I'll be your doctor overseer."

"More like my undertaker."

"Heaven's no."

"Then why do I have this belly rash from the injections, from the other doctor?" A lacerating itch festering across my back, neck, arms. Cold, reeking of salt, shuddering. Now I seemed to be swimming in the air, losing it. "Is this broadcast? Is this now?"

A gurney driver pulled up the walk, asked, "Hey, chicken legs, you okay? Quite the bang at your doorstep. Anyone need a lift to the hospital?"

"He's good, thanks. Everyone is safe," Crutch replied, ignoring me.

"Mother's coming!" Wall™ said."

"That's Mother?" I asked, pointing to Crutch, who was off to greet the so-called mother I've never met.

"Nope. That's Mother. Says she cares, paid your bill; that the card got lost in the parameter chart; says, "'saw it all, all a happy mistake.'"

"Your wall has a sense of humor," Crutch said. "So what if they send you to the coast and make you dig shale for flakes of gold? Hard labor would be better than this torture."

But, knowing I had nowhere to go, I simply said, "They feed me, and beside, they've filled me with tracking devices."

"You're really here just because you joined a demonstration against police brutality?" Crutch asked.

"Yes. One thing led to another. I lost my job. Now I'm a canary."

"And much more," she said.

Drones rushed to greet them, clearing the smog as they arrived.

"Mother!" Crutch greeted her.

"Barely peach-fuzzy, late to the changes," Mother exclaimed.

"Was starving, but the metabolism popped, coaxed by a homeless cocktail, we call it," Crutch replied.

"Autoclave drone has arrived," the gurney boy said.

As the front door slid open, I slipped out as a gruff voice bellowed, "Get the little shit!"

I dove out between them, ripping a surgical mask off a stormer-to his horror-and stumbled into the monstruous junipers lining the driveway.

"Get that pit of pus!" a baritone voice said from a blue smock while grabbing my ankle and twisting it until he could drag me back toward the house.

But I slipped free and made a run for it again. I heard cheering from beyond the police barricade. 

The stormers turned their water cannon on the street my way, shredding my T-shirt. I zigzagged, of no help, stumbled and tripped.

Only in my dripping boxers, with nowhere to go, I was left fleeing in circles.

"He's nothing but a big weenie," one of the stormer medics said. "Look at him."

"You okay, sweet cheeks?" Crutch asked, now baring her silver grin. "Turn around boy." From a water cistern laced with chlorine and insecticide, the bionic Crutch sprayed me gently, as one would a wounded mangy caged dog. I recoiled, turned my face away, and curled up into a ball on the soggy sod.

Crutch brushed my wet face with the back of her hand, as if drying tears. Hypocrite, I thought.

Drones dropped me off at the foyer door, upon which Wall™ proclaimed, "The splash of boils fleeing a body, collected with shrieks and shivers in the heat."

To stormer medics, Wall™ said, "Avoid the road. The sky crawling with drones."

"Ah, the boils, beautiful, replenishing...what more could we ask for?" Crutch quipped with a smile.

Lips cut raw in the scuffle, tongue tender from my own teeth, I spoke not a word.

Every breath seems acrider after flesh bursts. "Just harvest me," I wanted to say as the pinprick syringe did its draining. An Erlenmeyer gathered the flora from the undersides of arms and down sides, thighs to knees, across my back.

"Blossom in hosts still unknown?" Crutch asked the lead tech.

"We're just getting started this round, so impromptu, with the questions and riot," she said to her.

"Ah, the stormers always get what they want," Crutch said. "They trace breaking points-want to own them all, corner the market and militarize every nook and angle of it, us. Look what they did to you. You got to fight this. Don't just roll over. Can't you see? They want nothing less than total loss of bodily coherence, or even better, a sort of virtual total amputation, as if to nip the mind itself. What could be more devious? They send it reeling, parting the brain from the sea of the body."

#

"No place for a lad. Get out," the driver said as I was pushed out of a van, barely awake. 

I heard a voice from the bus stop, "What a shame. A waste."

"Thank you for working with us, at least trying to," Crutch said, leaning out from the back seat. "All the damp fungal crusting notwithstanding, the crackling quite strapping. Just stay clear of others until it all heals over." 

"He'll pull through." Another said.

"Whatever you collected, it hasn't killed me," I shouted, feeling stitches across my belly.

"Don't bet on it, and don't pick on it. That's what they told us to say!"  they shouted back.

"A flower bed of pus-laden-hope," one said with arms spread wide. "You're tough, going to be kicking some serious ass with that shit."

"You're nuts," another said to the first. "Don't tell him that, confuse the poor fuck." And they drove off.

There was no trace of the riot. The charging station had been paved over as a parking lot.

Inside the house was still a mess, but the blown-out windows had been replaced. Wall™ was gone. An envelope on my dining table read, "You are now free. Thank your buddies." A lie. I knew that now.