Bess took off her respirator mask. She held the dust-covered baby close, peeled its blanket back a little and sniffed the top of its head. Despite the burning plastics and concrete dust around her, Bess's sensitive nose delighted in the carroty-sweet baby smell. It was subtle, and faintly corrupted by a whiff of damp diaper, but it was still the best perfume she'd experienced.

Around her, the city popped with random gunfire. Against velvet blue night she could see flames from the city's iconic tower burning downtown. The view should have been blocked by buildings, except so many of them had been knocked down over the past several years. Now, in places, you could see landmarks practically on the other side of the city. At night, despite the ravines which scored the city vertically as it rose from the lake shore to the south; she could see factories and tall buildings because they were on fire. It used to make her angry, the way the EA deliberately blasted anything still standing.

This was the city of her birth, but at least it wasn't home. Home was the land promised to her when the war ended. In the NUS, she would walk through urban parks where the trees hadn't been burned for fire wood. She would drive down smooth streets lined by pristine buildings and hospitals. This was the promise that helped her get through the day-to-day destruction. It had become something to endure but Bess had learned not to waste her anger on it. She reserved that for cowardly strikes on schools and hospitals.

The sound of gunfire moved a little closer. The fighting couldn't be coming this way, could it? She unzipped her fire-retardant coverall and pulled her arms out of the sleeves. Slipping the baby inside, Bess held it against her chest where it would feel protected.

Out of the haze of concrete dust and smoke, Capt. appeared. His eyes widened when he saw her cradling the baby.

"Come on Bess, don't zone out on us. It's time to get out of here."

She ignored him. He was always telling her what to do but this time she was in charge.

He put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed until it hurt. "I shouldn't have to say it. C'mon Bess, lead, follow, or get the hell out of my way."

The rest of her team seemed so distant compared to the baby in her arms. She looked south and watched the lakeside tower burn.

"Look." She gestured her chin toward it. "That tower will be ashes by morning. They finally hit it." By the time baby grew up, it was anyone's guess what would be left of the city, or which side it would belong to. She corrected the disloyal thought. Of course, their side would win.

Cherry shouldered in between Bess and Capt., "Ooh, can I hold the baby?"

"Just a minute. I'm reconnoitering."

Capt. snorted. "She's lost it. Won't even call the mission finished."

Bess sent out the signal for her little team to return to their vehicles. The other search and rescue teams had already left. What was wrong with her? Usually she was so efficient.

Still, Bess couldn't bear to leave. She held the baby close against her body, letting the others retreat to the vehicles ahead of her. The top of its tiny head was covered in dark peach fuzz.

"Ma'am?"

There was a medic in front of her, dipping her white helmeted head in a show of respect.

"What do you want?"

"The baby, Ma'am."

Despite a lifetime of bombings and close calls and sleepless nights, this soft little body made the chaotic world around her feel silent and still.

"Can I hold her a little longer?" She stuck her face down into her coverall and kissed the top of baby's fuzzy head. It wasn't often Bess or her teammates could stop and enjoy their wins. They were too busy rushing from loss to loss.

Cherry had backtracked and now stood beside the medic. She raised an eyebrow at Bess. "Come on, you don't really want to hold the baby that badly. It's just a side effect of the boosts."

"You're wrong," said Bess.

"You know the Academy," said Cherry. "The minute their computers detected that you were hunting a live baby, they probably pumped you full of oxytocin."

"I'm not high on mommy hormones, okay?" Bess willed herself to lift the baby out of her coverall and hand it to the medic.

Cherry shrugged. "You don't need to feel embarrassed. They do it so you'll sacrifice yourself for it."

As if any of them weren't already putting their lives on the line. "The signal isn't dosing me, okay? I just like the way she smells."

Capt. came back, shaking his head. "She? I was hoping for a warrior." He put his hands on his hips. Bess was sure he did it deliberately because it emphasized his broad shoulders, which were wider than Bess's and Cherry's together.

"Don't you mean security cyber?" Bess corrected automatically. It annoyed her how he called security forces warriors. He was always implying search and rescue specialists were helpless little civilians his warriors needed to defend.

"Whatever. You need us." He towered over her, a smirk on his face.

Bess might look like a skinny kid but she was wiry. She was trained in hand-to-hand combat and did regular rifle practice.

"Yeah, you're my backup band."

He sighed and looked away.

"The world needs rescue specialists," she said.

"Warriors."

"Rock head," Bess muttered.

The medic took a step forward and Bess surrendered her charge. "Take good care of her."

The medic nodded, backing away a couple of steps before she slipped an oxygen mask over the baby's face.

"I'm going to look for the parents," Bess told Cherry.

Capt. put a heavy arm on Beth's shoulder and pulled her in uncomfortably close. "You can't. We have to go back to base."

"Says who?" Bess wanted to insist. She led the chain of command here, but he was right. The street was crawling with civilians, any of whom might try to jump Bess if she stayed here on her own. There was even a chance there would be another bombing on the same site. It was a threat they all worked under, since the EA figured out they could eliminate police and Academy grads that way. The EA claimed not to send drones to deliberately target civilians or rescue workers but it happened. If Bess were going to put this right, she had to be quick.

"See all those looky-loos? One of them must know who the baby belongs to."

"We can't stay and cover you just so you can ask them," he said. "You received the signal, same as me. There's nothing anyone can do tonight. We're ordered back to base."

The medic was only a few paces ahead of them. She was examining the baby on a tiny plastic stretcher, laid on the ground.

"But the parents..."

"...have forty-eight hours to claim it. Everyone knows the rules." Capt. crossed his arms and stared at her, eyes unblinking as Mount Rushmore.

"It's not right."

"He'll be accepted into the Academy. What's so bad about that?"

Bess loved the Academy. "It should be a choice."

Choice was a rare luxury for Bedabun's people. Ten years of conflict had turned the financial hub into a gravel pit. Families were so desperate they would sacrifice one of their offspring as a cyber factory worker. The meagre pay barely covered food and board in the company barracks, but the finder's fee paid to parents was generous.

Unattached children belonged to the Academy, unless unscrupulous types found them first and sold them. Cybers for menial factory jobs, and cybers for cannon fodder in armed conflicts; these were the cornerstones upon which their civilization's greatness was supposed to rise again. No more sending jobs overseas. Cybers provided cheap labour at home. No more need to explain the deaths of draftees to bereaved families when the military could deploy orphaned cybers raised by the Academy.

It ended the media nightmare of risking ground troops and relieved political pressure to end the war. A cyber soldier could be sent into the riskiest situations because if he died, there was nobody at home to protest or call for an end to the conflict. Bess relished her Academy life and felt privileged to risk her life for others, but if this child had parents, they should have a right to choose.

"If the baby's parents don't have a truck they'll have to walk from here to the Academy. I don't like their chances of making it in forty-eight hours." Bess didn't want to think about what had happened to the parents. No worried mothers or fathers had come forward asking for a baby during the rescue operation, which meant they were probably dead. Bess would ask around for next of kin. The nearest relatives probably didn't even live in the same building as the child, which was good if it meant they had survived, but finding them would take time.

"I can make my own way back to the base." She started to walk away but the signal stopped her in her tracks. She felt a paralysis boost flow up through her back and start slowly spreading into the rest of her body. If she didn't comply immediately, she knew what came next. Her legs would collapse under her but she would remain conscious, so as to experience every moment of her helplessness and disgrace. Prefects would come and carry her limp body back to the Academy for a discipline hearing.

Disobedience was impossible.

"All right, let's go," said Bess, wobbling after Capt.

When she got her leg strength back and caught up to him he said: "You don't deserve to lead. That was insubordination... over a baby."

Bess didn't answer as they climbed over the mounds of rubble between them and the trucks. Instead, she left Capt. and caught up to the medic who was carrying the baby on a rigid stretcher, as if she were holding an extra large baguette under her arm.

"Let me help." Bess fell into step to the medic's right and lifted one side of the tiny stretcher. It wasn't necessary. The baby was light enough for one person and there were other medics in the vicinity who could have helped.

I can leave her to the medics, Bess told herself. I can let go of the stretcher at any time...

But it wasn't until they reached the back of the ambulance and Bess saw her tiny charge properly strapped in and accompanied that she could tear herself away.

When she returned to the rescue vehicle, Cherry was already in the driver seat, grinning like the dog who ate the general's burger.

"Okay, you can drive," said Bess. She strapped herself into the passenger seat, suddenly exhausted. Her eyelids lost the battle against gravity and they didn't open again until they were driving back through the east end. Bess had slept through bumps and sudden stops and the sounds of gunfire which accompanied so many crosstown drives. You could get used to sleeping through anything.

Bess let her eyes close again. She didn't come fully awake until much later, when the cheers of Academy students greeted them as they entered the compound. Bess tried to smile and face her peers out the window. She was supposed to be a leader now, proud of her team and the good job they had done. Bess tried, but she was sure her ugly smirk fooled no one. Thinking about the baby and its missing parents, all that whooping and clapping just left her cold.

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Maaja