Once the field workers realized I was one of them, they all welcomed me to their tables to get to know me. I gave them my nickname, Zay. They found it unique. They apologized for their behavior and asked me to understand why they were afraid of me. They had been fearful of the Firemen, who had been going around snatching their kind up and burning them to a crisp.

I looked to Momma Emma, who accompanied me on the lap around the tables getting to know all 57 of the workers who worked there. Two kids my age argued how come I got the real mark on my chest and all they got was the baby one. The mothers tried to explain that I might be a special case.

I could barely remember the names of the people I met. But I did remember one thing that linked all of them together—Momma Emma.

Momma Emma saved one guy from being transported south to Kentucky by holding up the wagon and setting him and his family free.

Momma Emma saved another girl from a frisky white man who wanted to have his way with her.

Momma Emma offered a job to a young man who couldn't find one in the city as a free man.

Momma Emma offered a place to stay to a young Native American woman whose reservation had recently been attacked by the Firemen and she was the sole survivor.

I was overwhelmed by stories of Momma Emma that either was a propaganda campaign or genuine. How could one woman be so...heroic, so helpful, and call herself a Reaper?

I went into the kitchen to get some respite from the crowd. Momma Emma stood behind to talk some business with Kendrick. When I went inside, I saw Nala there cleaning some of the pots used to make the large supper.

"Glad to see you on your feet little one," Nala said, scrubbing soot from a pot with vigor.

My eyes went to her burn marks that ran along the length of her arm as she pulled back her sleeves to clean the dishes. At first, I accused Momma Emma of causing her pain. But she denied it saying she was one of the good ones.

"Momma Emma," I muttered aloud. "She...she stopped the fire from reaching your face."

Nala kept on scrubbing, with more intensity. "Those Firemen took me and tied me to a stake and set the grass around me on fire. They say we ain't supposed to be free. They say we ain't human."

I wasn't sure exactly what time period I was in—but I was sure this was a potential memory. The last one I saw involved Noa unlocking Operation Sweeper that my father apparently organized. But even then, I couldn't interact with the past like when I failed to stop my father from hitting Noa again. Why was I being allowed to do so now?

"Miss Emma swooped in like a hawk. She kicked all those Firemen to the can and reached into the fire to untie me and set me free before the flames could get to my neck."

That explained the burn marks on Momma's Emma's right arm.

"Miss Emma didn't need to go out there and risk her life for a poor old negro like me..."

I heard the door open behind me and Momma Emma stepped in. "Nala, you know I don't like that word."

"Sorry Miss Emma," Nala looked down at the pot and scrubbed extra harder.

"Why don't you let me finish up the cleaning here Nala," Miss Emma said. "You go on back there and enjoy yourself."

Nala smiled. "Yes Miss Emma."

Nala left Momma Emma and I alone in the kitchen filled with stoves, counters, and kitchenware hanging from hooks on the walls. Momma Emma went around to the water basin where she took a pad and started scrubbing the pots. "You look surprised, Zaslay."

I flinched back. "I never told you my full name."

"You don't have to. I've been watching you for quite some time now."

"So then..." I motioned around me, "All of this?"

"It's a reconstructed memory. I took the opportunity now that you're in a coma, to show you why I started the Reapers."

I think I forgot how to breathe at that moment. "Wait, I'm in a coma?"

"I was assured you'd make it through," Momma Emma said. Assured by who, I'd never know because Momma Emma jumped right into twisting the reality I had been raised to accept.

"I didn't form the Reapers to terrorize and kill those who seek to steal the wealth of the rich. I created the Reapers to protect my workers, my family, and the families of those who were, and still are, terrorized by the injustices of bigotry."

She rinsed the pot and hung it on an iron hook to dry. Then she patted down her hands with a towel and leaned against a counter. "We called them Firemen back then. You call them the police, the corrupt, the KKK, the terrorists, the polar extremes of political sides..."

She paused as if this next sentence stung her tongue. "...the Reapers."

The noise from the supper augmented into song that droned through the walls. Momma Emma smiled. "I love it when they sing. It fills me with hope. I never had to suffer these injustices. These men and women have every right to hate all people that look like me after what we have done to them. But yet, they still sing."

I couldn't hear all the verses, but key words sifted through the walls. Freedom. Love. Hope. Change.

"They started coming after my workers," Momma Emma said. "At first I was angry that I had to keep finding good men and women to help me on my farm. The Firemen didn't like how I treated my workers. They said I was being too nice to them. They said I was going soft. They started kidnapping my workers. Some they transported south into slavery. Others they raped and murdered. Many they burned..."

Momma Emma clenched her fist. "Sure, I could've hired people my color, but why should I be forced to? These men and women I employed were hard workers. They treated me with respect and have the will of a thousand of their counterparts. I shouldn't be told how to run my farm."

Momma Emma pointed at her sickle scar. "And I wasn't alone. Many other white folks, they hated the Firemen just as much as I did. They didn't want to see their employees, their families, torn from them. So, I called them together. I suggested a militia that would combat the Firemen and protect our workers, even when the government and society around them has abandoned them like dead carcasses."

She picked up a large knife from the table. "I was young and inexperienced. I learned from members who had training in defense and combat."

She tossed the knife across the wall and it wedged itself in the abdomen of a roach that was barely noticeable along the brown wall. "I took that training and trained my employees in the art of self-defense. An army of folks will be at my gates if I militarized them. They would hang them all for shedding a single drop of blood from white folk. I implored my colored members to keep from killing. Let the hard work rest on the Reaper Core."

She looked at me and sighed. "Something you must be familiar with."

I nodded. I pulled up my pants and showed the second engraving, scarred with ice, of a scythe with a circle around it—the mark of a Reaper Core member—the mark of an assassin. It was different from the seal inside our situation room where it seemed like a sickle was keeping a city from precariously falling to its demise.

"The Core was created to take the fight to the Firemen where the regular members couldn't because they would be punished and treated differently as people of color. We carried out the heavy moral work of the organization to keep our workers, our communities, our families safe from prejudice."

She paused and looked at the black spot on her wrist that didn't look like a regular mole. Skin flaked from it and it was almost decrepit. "We did good for a while. But I couldn't stick around forever. When I passed, things started to unfold. Once poor farmers sold their big farms for large sums as the city expanded. They abandoned their workers and moved to the developing city center where they invested in factories to exploit the desperate. They kept the organization going not to protect the lower income farmers and their employees from harassment, but to secure their own wealth."

Momma Emma walked over to me and gripped my shoulders. "Zaslay, you are the product of the greed that comes with wealth and power. The question is, will you follow in your father's footsteps, or will you restore the Reapers to its roots?"

"It's roots..." I muttered.

"Protecting the weakest amongst us from discrimination by a society that has long since abandoned them. Aiding the fight for the weak to grow strong...."

Momma Emma took a step back and sized me up. "And kill the predators who cull those below them."

As she said that, I recalled back to Noa's advice as I was falling to my death. He advised me to direct my talents in a different way—by ending the right people.

Momma Emma patted my back. "Your older brother, he gave me hope. I saw what he wanted to do to save this organization, but he was sadly cut down short of achieving the level of skill necessary to do so."

The singing outside grew louder. Yet as that happened, the walls around me seemed to glitch as if I was in a malfunctioning virtual reality.

"It seems you're about to awaken, as promised."

"Wait," I said, trying to hold onto her. "What was Noa trying to do? How can I restore the Reapers to its roots? What should the Reaper Core be doing now? Slavery doesn't exist anymore. Jim Crow is gone."

"But the fight remains," Momma Emma sighed. "As long as a single person is downtrodden because of an inherent attribute, the battle continues."

Her body started to fade. The wall dividing the kitchen from the living room flickered away. The singing continued, yet their voices were silenced even as their lips moved. She stared off at her workers. "I long for a day where I can hear them singing their achievements, not just their dreams."

Momma Emma turned towards me and smiled. "Goodbye Zaslay. I'm counting on you to save my family."

And like that Momma Emma disappeared completely and I was back in darkness.