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how the Retros were heavy on equipment but light on manpower. They were absolutely correct. Area 51 was home to well over a thousand attack drones, but we saw almost no people. Wherever this camp was, it looked to be just as under-manned. But from the number of empty beds I was seeing, that would change. People were coming. But who?
    After passing through a dozen identical empty barracks, I began to hear the sounds of work. There was hammering and sawing and the general cacophony one would expect from a large work force. We exited the final building and arrived at a busy construction site. Three more barracks in various stages of completion were being worked on by several dozen workers. Prisoners. It looked as though I was going to be put to work along with all the other orange-wearing, number-given slaves. This was my future. At least my immediate future.
    The guard led me through the work zone when a new sound entered my consciousness. It was music. Eerily familiar music. I froze. It was a sound I’d heard far too many times. Slowly, I turned around to see what I knew would be there and was greeted by an even more disturbing sight.
    Looming high above the new structures, no more than a few hundred yards away, was the giant steel igloo-like dome.
    The gate to hell.
    I had to fight from falling to my knees.
    A black Retro attack plane rose up next to it. It lifted vertically into the air until it cleared the top of the dome, then its musical engine kicked in and the killer craft shot off like a rocket. In seconds it was out of sight.
    I knew exactly where I was . . . the Mojave Desert, not far from where our SYLO helicopter was attacked and downed. Captain Granger had made a foolish mistake by flying us by here to see this structure. He should have known they’d be watching. Before we were attacked, we saw a Retro fighter plane float out from inside the dome. It proved that in spite of the fact that we had obliterated their entire fleet at Area 51, the Retro Air Force had not been defeated. More of these deadly craft were arriving from whatever factory was churning them out. How long would it be before the entire fleet was replaced so they could continue their ghastly purge of the planet’s population?
    From the sky we had seen the wrecks of hundreds of SYLO fighter jets strewn across the desert floor that had tried to destroy this monstrous structure . . . and that were blasted out of the sky by drones and antiaircraft guns.
    The dome was untouchable, the Retros were still very much in business, and I was their prisoner. The war, or at least my part in it, was over.
    I found myself wishing I hadn’t been thrown free of the crashing helicopter. I wanted to be together with my mother and my friends, however dire their fates were.

THREE
    T he guard pushed me toward a long half-completed wooden building that would eventually look like all the others. Next to it was a deep trench that looked to be the beginnings of the foundation for yet another building. This pit was being dug by hand, painstakingly. A large group of tortured-looking men and women in orange coveralls used simple shovels to move the dry desert sand. They methodically filled wheelbarrows that were carted off by other equally exhausted-looking prisoners.
    The Retros were at it again, forcing the survivors of their attack into slave labor. Seeing the vacant stares of the beaten and abused prisoners as they worked under the hot desert sun made my heart race with anger. How could a group of people who said they were trying to right the course of civilization treat their fellow men so badly?
    A Retro wearing camouflage, but unarmed, stood next to the growing pit, monitoring what looked like an oversized iPad in her hand. She was a severe-looking woman with short, steely hair and broad shoulders. The guard I had been following approached her and said a few words I couldn’t hear. The woman gave me a quick look and turned away, shaking her head. I guess she