During the Second Civil War, a new U.S. political party called the Family Protection Movement established The Divide, which separates Normal people from those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. Seventeen-year old Serenity Blackwater lives in the normal Midwestern town of Mapleville, but she is not normal. She hacks into an illegal gay chat room and meets Dawn, a lesbian who lives in a gay community less than a mile away. Serenity discovers normal people can bribe their way inside the walls and decides to go, both to meet Dawn and check out what may be her future home. Dawn is even more beautiful than Serenity hoped, and the two soon become a couple. But Serenity only has a few months before she must take the Normal Verification Test, and then she’ll be separated from her family forever. So she joins the Human Equality Organization, an underground group working to end The Divide. Dawn thinks the rebellion is too dangerous, and since Dawn’s ex-girlfriend Malaki is also a member, Serenity doesn’t tell Dawn about her involvement. Serenity reveals to the HEO that her parents are leading a campaign to organize attacks on all Gay Communities. With her help, the HEO creates Project Jericho, in which all Gay Communities walls will implode at once. But after too many delays, and when Dawn discovers Serenity has been spending more time with Malaki than her, Serenity knows she has to start the revolution herself. She heads to D.C. to contact a group of senators secretly against The Divide ... or straight into a trap set by the Family Protection Movement.

Uprising

“We’ve been in hiding for quite some time,” Sol says. “We knew you’d been captured, we just weren’t sure where they’d taken you.”


“But how did you know anything at all?”


“Come on, Ser, everyone knew you were going to go to DC. Plus Sol had me put a tracking device on your bike a long time ago.” As Malaki speaks, she squints out the windows and doesn’t look at me. Her face is not bruised; she hadn’t been taken captive. If anything, the impossibly ripped muscles of her arms show she is in fantastic shape, although dirt-smudges on her face suggest the past few days may have been rough. Her blue mohawk is standing tall, but mousy brown stubble covers her head.


“Did you break anyone else out of there?” I ask softly.


Her round eyes grow solemn. “You are the reason for this mission. We had to get you and go. We don’t know if there are any other prisoners inside, but those other vehicles back there are full of soldiers who are going in to find out.”


Chapter 56