The heat of Isibel's breath broke through the frigid air. It was the same with Caius. This freezing cold.

What they were doing was illicit and immoral but those were the times. Life had so little value that passion seemed a luxury, a unique dangerous inheritance. From some past generation or lifetime. It was wrong — what they were doing but it shouldn't have been criminal. A secret infected society and it was this: a woman should not be killed for this. And yet, it was that very danger that made Isibel do it. It was the only way to express her grief and anger over how war had destroyed her family.

She had read a story once about a child locked away during the only sunny day in a lifetime. When she was let out, it was simply darkness again — it was all the child had ever known and that sunny day was hope. It would never return again.

When Isibel was with Caius, her desire for him was insatiable. Maybe she told herself he would protect her if anyone were to find out. The only plausible way for the government to find out would be to get caught in the act — that was what she believed or told herself. If soldiers approached or the Guardian's located him, he could fight them off, get her to safety. The evidence would be blurred. And despite her infidelity she knew her husband's love remained, a sole beacon to something past, a permanent love. He'd never let them take her, not even for this.

She and Caius were inside the safe zone so there be almost no chance of Guardians, Altmen, or government soldiers. They were in the small house Isibel's parents had lived in before they'd been relocated closer to the interior of the safe zone to a small apartment in a home for elder residents.

If she could have she would be wearing nothing, but even under the covers it was freezing cold so she always remained partially dressed. There was little protection from the weather. The front of the house had collapsed during one of the few times grenades or missiles made it through the safe zone. Her parents' house was in Sayvil, formerly a family-centered community close the war zone. The boundary limits has since been re-established and pushed out a mile or two towards the war zone. Still close enough to the edge but still well protected. The abandoned neighborhood added yet another several miles between the main community of Tlaloc and the battlefield. Almost all citizens lived in Tlaloc.

All of the houses in Sayvil had been evacuated years ago, at the same time her parents left. The once quaint subdivision was now dark and ghostly. The inhabitants had been moved out quickly and most never returned to collect their belongings, fearing contamination.

For Isibel it was a strange juxtaposition: desolation and these intimate encounters. Perhaps it was the seed of something passionate in an otherwise barren place. The government would say it was a seed of rebellion, but she thought differently. She considered her actions to be human, her feelings righteous.

For Isibel it was a strange juxtaposition: desolation and these intimate encounters

It was almost always winter. The skies had long since darkened, contaminated with nuclear dust, smoke, pollution. Most months it was freezing cold, blustery. An eternal storm. And, in winter as it was that day, gusts of icy wind rattled broken window panes and whistled now and again sounding like oncoming missiles. One side of the house had been blown off and was boarded up with planks of wood. On the outside the back door was marked with a red circle with a cross in the center. "Evacuated." The front of the house was a shell with broken windows, holes in the roof, the porch blown off. The air and light broke through into what had once been a comfortable kitchen and living room. In the grim light, the couch sat covered in snow and dust. The kitchen table on it's side. Broken dishes. Everything rubble. In the front of the house, there was little protection from the elements, but the room they were in had been a bedroom at one time and the walls were in tact, the windows too.

Isibel and Caius remained mostly dressed and intimacy had to be that way. They only temporarily indulged physical closeness. They were naked for short periods, feeling the warmth of each others skin. But as soon as they finished making love they hurriedly dressed. It was the cold. It was also the danger and the need to be prepared to run.

The intimacy was comforting but wasn't the physical pleasure that brought her to him time and again, it was the power to do something so blatantly against the government's rules. To somehow exact revenge for what they'd done to her. For what the government had taken from Isibel and then covered up.

Caius turned over and sat up against the headboard. His light brown hair was soft. His face sculpted, handsome. To her Caius seemed like any other man. He wasn't though. He'd been engineered for war through biological and genetic alteration. The Altmen had an almost identical genome to humans. She remembered science class years ago. The teacher had explained the difference between Altmen and humans this way: imagine a genetic mutation that would happen once in a lifetime in the natural world. A couple of genes rearranged by accident making a human vastly more intelligent than the rest of us."

Caius was flesh and blood just like her. He was not an animal despite what most people purported. Caius and others like him were designed for war. They possessed superior cognition. Genetic alterations engineered Altmen for faster, more efficient neural-processing. Rapid synapses, better organized neural connections. She never understood how these superior people had gone from powerful orchestrators of politics and social life to subjugated warriors, fighting and dying for a government who had nearly exterminated then segregated and denigrated them. Now the Altman numbers were adequate to overthrow the government, harnessed the dissent and smoldering dissatisfaction amongst human revolutionaries but they didn't.

She looked into his eyes, the characteristic Altman velvety brown. A beautiful color yet she couldn't look into his eyes for too long because it stirred too many feelings and Isibel didn't want love in her life. She had put up so many walls and didn't want to need anyone.

"What are you thinking?" he whispered before kissing her cheek. He withdrew and looked into her eyes again. He bent forward and kissed her lips.

"I wonder what you really think of me." She kept her voice low and she was close to him she felt his breath rise and fall. He was leaning against the headboard and they were both under piles of blankets. Still the air was so cold. That moment seemed to Isibel less like reality and more like an impossible dream with flaws in logic. She'd had so many nightmares that felt very much like that moment. The dreams always start out lovely. A moment in an ordinary life, some mundane family routine. Ladling soup into a bowl for her son. Then like water rising around her, things change, grow sinister. She'll turn to her son, but he's vanished and the walls of their home are charred and burned out.

That moment in bed with a Caius was that way. His warmth, his beautiful eyes.

Caius's armor was off but still his clothes underneath were army issued.

"Why would you want to be in bed with a soldier's wife?" Isibel asked him.

"He's not my enemy."

"Of course he is." She laughed because Caius was very practical. Very pragmatic. Being in bed with Nole's wife made the two men enemies — with or without the rules of war"

"I'm his wife. Nole is your enemy."

"No." He turned away.

Isibel moved closer, kissed his neck then whispered again in Caius's ear, "I want to know what you think of me."

He moved closer to her and put his hand on her face. He held it there for a moment and then he gently traced her jawline. She could see things in his eyes. The people he'd killed. She knew there must have been so many. It was chilling to her to know this, even having known war all her life. Having lost her own son. She was in many ways sensitized to war, death but not Caius's killing for some reason. Isibel was not habituated to the idea that a man who touched her and made love to her had watched others die at his own hands, likely begging for his mercy. A mercy he would withhold. He leaned in and kissed her lips. Then he pulled away but remained close and whispered against her cheek "what do I think of you?"

She could see things in his eyes. The people he'd killed.

Her heart raced and she nodded, leaning her head back.

His lips still on her neck. "I think your skin is cold from the freezing air. I think you are very beautiful. But that's not what you're asking me is it?" He pulled away and his eyes found hers.

She let out a breath. The sound of a bomb exploding broke the silence. It was in the distance. Nothing new but still they both listened as one would wait to determine if a thunder storm was moving closer or on a heading in a different path.

"Let me pull the blankets up around you. It's too cold for you." He said.

Isibel slid down and he pulled the blankets up around them both.

Isibel was pretty. She wasn't beautiful. She had eyes the color of ivy. That in-between shade of green, brilliant and alive. Her dark hair was shoulder length and straight. Soft. The thing about her was that she looked very young despite her age. She was 32 but Isibel looked like a woman in her twenties. Something about her appearance. It certainly wasn't her demeanor or disposition. She had no naiveté or innocence. Isibel carried the death of her son everywhere. The weight of her grief was the first thing Caius had noticed about her.

That and her anger.

He pulled away and touched her lips, traced them. He smiled "You know what I think of you."

"But you're smarter than us."

He shrugged. "How can you be so sure of that?"

"You're engineered to be more intelligent. Your brain works faster and is far superior. I wonder sometimes what it would be like to think like that."

"Do you?"

She nodded. "I do."

He looked at her for a long moment before he spoke. "It's something like inspiration. Not calculating and mechanistic like people think. It's statistical — a keener perception and synthesis of all things human. Despite what you probably believe, we aren't like computers. We aren't rule governed like machines."

She shrugged, "maybe I can't understand."

"We are the way humans would be if they weren't constricted by preconceptions. You live in invisible prisons. We don't."

"How are we in prisons? Give me an example."

"We can see that numbers are imbued with gender, we are sensitive to greater spectrums of light. How do you suppose all the ancients aligned architecture with the heavens and knew to prepare the dead for a voyage beyond human life?"

"That's how you think?"

He nodded. "Yes."

She didn't mean to but she rolled her eyes. "Well so what? You may be smarter but you've never had a normal family. You don't experience love."

Caius raised his eyebrows. "How do you know I've never known love?"

"How could you?"

He stiffened. "That sounds like the government talking. You act as if I'm a separate species. Less human."

She narrowed her eyes. Whenever he mentioned the government he lowered his voice. It seemed suspect.

He looked away. Isibel could tell she'd hurt him. They both remained silent for a moment. The wind continued to whistle and rattle through the battered place. She noticed how frigid the air in the room was. Isisbel felt life was riddled with contradictions, constant irony and paradox. She felt deflated. It was as though she'd been moving quickly for such a long time, scrambling to find answers and now she'd abruptly stopped. For one of the first times since the affair started, she wanted more from him.

She touched his hand and he accepted it, held it for a moment.

He looked into her eyes. "It's all right."

She thought of her son's death and how it might be different if she could understand the world the way Caius did. "I wish I could be like you." She whispered.

He touched her cheek, moved back a loose strand of hair. "You do?"

She nodded.

"But you'd only get half a life. You wouldn't live past 40. You have more time to figure life out." He smiled and let out a breath, "I'd rather be like you."

Isibel moved closer to him, put her arm around him and then rested her head on his chest. She continued speaking but didn't look at him. "There are other things that make us different. You've been trained in the military from young childhood. How many have you killed? The human race wasn't meant for that. We aren't as barbaric. We don't watch our lovers as they're stoned to death."

He pulled away and looked at her, hurt or angry Isibel couldn't tell.

"No. You'd rather hide and benefit from our sacrifices. We didn't choose to be born into this, but we preserve your way of life. You move deeper into the safe zone while everyday we fight to survive on the battlefield. We're called animals, morally inferior. What kind of logic is that?" His body stiffened and she knew she'd offended him. "We aren't a separate species as people say."

Isibel moved closer and kissed his neck. She looked at him before she pressed her lips against his. "No. you're a man. You're flesh and blood. Just the same as us."

Caius lowered his voice considerably and moved closer to Isibel. It was conspicuously secretive. "I'll tell you what I think of you. I think you're foolish and it's because you're devastated. You loved your son and you believe his death has given you armor, that you are invulnerable because you're angry. I think you should be more careful. I'm leaving soon no matter what. I'm not coming back. You should stop meeting me here." He looked around the room. "You know this as well as I do. Don't think you're safe. And don't think there's any justice."

Caius left before her, at least half an hour. Being seen with him would be justification for immediate arrest and just like other women who committed this act, her execution would immediately follow her arrest. A woman wasn't allowed to associate with them.

Sometimes she imagined escaping with Caius. Of course there were societies beyond Tlaloc, but she had no idea whether they were hostile, civilized, or barbaric. Even then, to get to them he'd have to disguise himself as human or she as Altman. Likely he could get armor for her and they would be able to move through the battlefield. Or she could bring him clothes so he would appear human. Although removing his armor would reduce his abilities considerably. But, they never talked about such a future. Instead, their relationship was just physical, confined to a bombed out room, a dangerous interlude once or twice a week, and recently more often than that.