Page 136 of Strays
I swallow hard, and the weight in my chest shifts. It’s still heavy, but no longer crushing.
MEMORANDUM
TO: Deputy Under Secretary for Strategic Operations
FROM: Lt. Col. Antony W. Abrams
CC: Office of General Counsel (OGC)
SUBJECT: Judicial Assignment
DATE: August 18, 2025
Our position remains that Judge Gesson is an appropriate judge for the case in question and that there is no legal basis for his removal.
It is imperative that the judicial system does not yield to MAB pressure and, more importantly, that the MAB recognizes its role as part of this Department and complies fully with departmental directives. Any maneuvering to reassign judges is a flagrant overreach on the part of the MAB and constitutes insubordinate behavior.
My recommendation is to continue back-channel communications to affirm our support for Judge Gesson’s assignment and to reinforce the narrative that the integrity of the judicial process must remain protected from outside interference.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The Trial - Part One
Once we’re done handling Jo’s residency stuff, there’s nothing left but to wait.
We spend all our time with her, drowning in her scent, her soft skin, her smile, her voice. We cook together. We watch basketball games. We even mess around with the hoop in the backyard.
At first, she can’t even hit the backboard, let alone the rim. But as the days go by, she gets better, until finally, she sinks one clean through the basket. Her celebration is amazing. She screams and jumps like she just won the finals, laughing so hard she falls on the grass.
We spend a full day at Quassy Amusement in Middlebury again. Jo makes us ride the wooden rollercoaster twice, even though it rattles so hard I think I might lose a tooth. We eat corn dogs and fried dough, share a giant soda, and get soaked on the log flume.
On Wednesday night, we drive to Bridgeport for an Islanders game. We scream every time Jo screams. Her voice is completely shot by the time we get home, and she still won’t stop talking about the last goal.
We have sex every night, falling asleep in the early hours, wrecked and tangled, drenched in pleasure and warmth.
We love her. As much as we can, in every way we know how.
We don’t talk about the trial. But Aranya never lets us forget it. We’re watched constantly. Every time we glance outside, there’s a car parked somewhere along the street, different model, different make, but always the same too-dark windows, the kind you can’t see through, no matter the light.
Twice, I wrote down the plates, called Fontes and asked if he could run them for me. Both times, the plate didn’t match the vehicle. Cloned plates.
It fucking guts me to say it, but Aranya won. He made us stop. Completely. Even knowing there’s some fucker linked to him watching us, all we do is quietly document. We log dates, times, car descriptions, plates. We don’t take photos, we don’t give them any reason to consider us a threat. No provocation.
When we went to Bridgeport for the hockey game, and again when we went to Middlebury for the amusement park, we were followed. My brothers and I clocked the car both times, but we didn’t tell Jo. No point scaring her when there’s nothing we can do.
The pressure isn’t only coming from tinted windows and quiet tails. As the trial day approaches, we become a hot topic.
At first, it’s just passing mentions on local news programs. The headlines frame it like a David and Goliath story: big, bad aegis assaulting a defenseless human.
But things escalate fast. A week before the trial, we hit national morning news. Every kind of so-called specialist gets a segment: political analysts, lawyers focused on aegis rights, human rights advocates, and equity activists from both sides. The debate turns heated, personal.
Someone even digs deep enough to find out we were strays.
“It’s not fair to generalize all packs,” one commentator says. “This isn’t a normal pack. These aegis are an experiment. Their pack was artificially manufactured by a Research Program.”
That clip runs on repeat for two days.
The press goes wild after that, and we start getting calls and emails from journalists. Following Jayme and Renner’s advice, we keep it short: “We are not making public statements at this time.” Then we hang up. Block the number. Repeat.
