My name is Madonna Charlotte Adams. I was born Donald Charles Adams on July 12, 2105.

I'm the third child of six, the twins John Michael, Jr. and Jennifer are two years older than I am, and Bobby is two years younger, and the "baby" twins, Céleste and William, are three years younger. Our Daddy was John Michael Adams, Sr., Momma is Patricia Danielle, maiden name Emberly.

You'll notice that I mentioned our Daddy in the past tense. Well, the simple truth is that our father was killed in a work related accident at his factory just before Bobby's first birthday in October of 2108. This left Momma in an awkward position because Daddy left only a small pension in his will, barely enough to pay for his funeral and various legal costs. Momma was forced to find a job or go on assistance from the government to keep us all fed and housed. At that time, jobs were extremely scarce, and thus, Momma ended up on assistance.

In early November of 2108, Momma realized that she couldn't support us without another source of income, trying to feed four growing children on the pittance from the government was becoming an impossible task, even using every coupon or discount that she could find. This was necessary because she discovered that she was two months pregnant. The hardest part for Momma was when she found out that she would be having twins again.

So she went back out into the city looking for work, leaving us in the capable hands of an 18 year old girl named Thérèse. After spending almost a month looking for work with no prospects in sight, Momma decided to become a prostitute, and on the night of November 27th, she began to walk the streets in one of the seedier areas of the city.

What city, you ask? Well, that would be New Charleston, in what used to be the old state of South Carolina before the Second Civil War in 2073. That war ended with the former United States being split into a dozen or more small territories, each with their own military and government. The southeastern portion of the old United States was reborn as the Dixie Confederacy, consisting of the former states of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana.

The biggest change resulting from that war was the need to protect the cities from the fallout generated by the nuclear bombs that were launched during the war and the long term effects of greenhouse gases. Scientists had found a way to build giant bubbles that could be used to enclose the cities, and these were put into place, with the bubbles extending far enough from the old city borders to ensure that there was arable land for food crops.

The old rail systems were upgraded, then new lines were built deep underground, connecting the various cities within the Confederacy, as well as a few lines leading to major cities in the other territories across the continent and Canada to the north.

Momma went out every night, usually returning home around 4 AM. Some nights were good, some weren't, but Momma's earnings ensured that we would be able to eat well on a daily basis; what we didn't know was that she was putting about half of her earnings into a small lockbox in her closet, money that she intended to use for sending each of us to college.

Momma continued to go out and work the streets until the beginning of April of 2109, then stayed home until her water broke just after breakfast on June 1st. On June 2nd, just before 10 PM, after more than 36 hours of labour, the new twins, Céleste Marie and William Edward, were born. They weighed 7 lbs., 5 oz. And 7 lbs., 2 oz. Respectively. Cèleste was the elder by seven minutes.

Momma stayed home taking care of all of us, until the babies were fifteen months old.

On September 5th, 2110, Momma started walking the streets again. The babysitter, Thérèse, returned to take care of us. She would come over for supper, then babysit until the wee hours. Once I turned ten years old, I asked Momma if I could take over the babysitting, as Johnny and Jen weren't interested, being too busy with school and the never-ending circle of boyfriends or girlfriends; Momma agreed, with the understanding that Thérèse would always be on call for emergencies.

On May 5th, 2117, Momma was beaten and robbed by a john; she lost all her earnings for that night, about 500 credits. This caused Bobby to become extremely upset, actually, he was downright furious that anyone would harm Mommy. He vowed to replace the money.

On May 11th, after extensively checking out a wealthy neighbourhood, he stalked a woman as she was returning from a jeweler's. She was carrying a small, locked box under one arm, with an elegant purse hanging from her right shoulder.

She had no idea he was even there until he stabbed her the first time. She fell to the floor of the walkway, gasping in agony. For several minutes, in a mindless haze of rage, Bobby continued to stab her; when he regained his senses, he saw that she was dead.

Horrified, he screamed several times from the shock before he began to calm down; it was at this point that he felt a strange attraction to the blood and gore overlaying the still body of the formerly beautiful woman. While standing there looking at her, he dropped the knife, not even noticing that he had done so.

He knelt by the dead woman, picked up the box, and flipped the small latch, revealing several pieces of jewelry. He then checked her purse, finding a small wallet with several pieces of identification and some business cards, a bank card and three hundred credits in cash. Pocketing the money, the jewelry and the bank card, he looked down at the dead woman one last time, then proceeded to a pawnshop, where he sold the jewelry for over one thousand credits.

Bobby used the walkways, wandering around the city, trying not to show how nervous he was as a result of the killing, checking his timepiece every few minutes. When midnight finally arrived, he made his way to a bank machine, where he used the woman's card to withdraw the maximum amount, 5,000 credits, from her account.

Bobby returned home just before 1 AM to find Momma and I waiting up for him. We were very worried, Bobby was only nine years old and he was still awake long after his normal bedtime. He handed Momma the money and followed me to our room. Five minutes later, he was sound asleep.

I walked over to Momma's room, where I found her picking up a loose tile inside her closet. She found a crack in the floor and placed the money there. She replaced the tile, then placed a box filled with old and broken toys on top of the tile so that the money was now hidden from sight. Momma and I returned to the family rooms, where we talked about Bobby for almost an hour before going to our own beds.

At lunchtime the next day, two police officers came to our apartment; they charged Bobby with armed robbery and second degree murder. After they had finished reading him his rights, while he stood there sullenly listening, they handcuffed him and led him away.

The younger twins cried for more than three hours after Bobby was arrested. Momma took all of us to a snack bar, where she treated us to ice cream, hoping to calm us down and distract us from the arrest; due to our financial situation, this was a rare occurrence in our home, so it was something we usually enjoyed immensely, but even the ice cream couldn't fill the sudden hole in our lives. Momma and I didn't sleep at all that night.

Bobby was tried, convicted and sentenced on June 2nd. On July 6th, he was transferred to the juvenile Detention Facility on the edge of the city. The facility had its own private bubble, connected to the city's by an enclosed path with an airlock at each end. Little did I realize that I, too, would soon be there.

This is a revision of a post that I had here, originally comprising the next two chapters of the story.

When I posted it, there were comments that the whole of what was chapter 5 at that point was gratuitous, unnecessary violence. I responded, saying that I had felt it was needed, but afterward, I pretty much gave up on continuing the story.

That was how it stood until a few days ago, when i decided to revise it, in effect removing all of the fifth chapter, and providing an alternate set of actions that led to the same result, the capture/arrest of the main character.

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On September 14th of that same year, Momma was beaten and robbed again, right there in our apartment, by another john. While he was beating her, I went into my room, opened my closet, moved a few items around and pulled out the box containing the antique Glock 19 pistol that belonged to my great-great-great-great-grandfather, who served in the US Army in the last quarter of the 20th century, then as a state trooper in South Carolina.

In the same box that held the gun, there was a small bag filled with fifteen shot magazines for the Glock and a pamphlet describing how to clean and care for the gun; I had spent many hours reading that little pamphlet, until I knew it inside and out, and had tried my best to make sure the gun was in good operating condition.

Once I had everything that I wanted, I waited, lying on my bed as quietly as possible, listening to the shouting and the thumps and thuds as he knocked her around her room; after a few minutes, Momma apparently calmed him down, and they returned to the bed, the creaks and squeaks coming from the bed making it very clear what they were doing.

Finally, I heard him talking quietly to Momma, then moving toward the outer door of the apartment. I waited a moment, listening to Momma as she returned to her room. As the door closed behind him, I slipped into the family room and activated a hidden monitor by whispering the word “infinite”. A few seconds later, I could see him walking away from our apartment in the direction of our level's business area. I was determined to keep him in my direct line of sight until he returned to his home.

After checking to make sure that Momma wasn't coming out of her room, I opened the outer door and left the apartment, holding the door to ensure that it closed as quietly as possible, then began to follow the man. As he walked toward and then through the business area, I watched him constantly, noticing that he never looked back. Several minutes later, he stepped on a walkway and pulled out an elevator remote call button, letting the walkway carry him for about a hundred meters before he stepped off and walked toward the elevator located in the corridor's inner wall. As he approached the elevator, I moved quickly, following close behind him as he entered it. He didn't recognize me at all, so I felt confident as we were lifted skyward.

When he exited the elevator and stepped onto another walkway, I was directly behind him. I remained within several feet of him until he left the walkway at an intersection close to his home. Eventually, he stopped by a door and used his access key to open it, dropping it back into his pocket as he stepped in through the doorway.

I moved in fast, brought the gun up with both my hands wrapped firmly around the butt, and shot him at least a dozen times in the back, the trembling in my hands causing the gun to waver back and forth, up and down as I kept pulling the trigger, making entry holes all over his back as he slowly toppled to the carpeted floor of his foyer. Then, still trembling, I reached down with my left hand, rolled him over onto his back, checked the pistol, noticed a bullet still in the chamber, lowered the gun until it was touching his forehead and pulled the trigger again.

I looked around briefly, my fear of being discovered growing by leaps and bounds, then quickly searched him; I found his wallet in one pocket, his access key and elevator remote call button in a second, and some small change in a third.

With the gun still in my hand, I turned and ran toward the elevator, using his remote call to bring it up to his floor. Once by the elevator, I was forced to wait, and my emotions began to overtake me, mostly the worry of being found so close to the scene, but also the fear that I might be caught, and what might happen as a result.

Finally, the elevator arrived, and with a quick sigh of relief, I stepped into it, only to find myself walking right into the hands of several security people and two police officers. I was so shocked that I squeaked in alarm, tried to turn around so I could run away, but the officers grabbed me by the arms just as I started to turn.

Realizing that I was truly caught, I started to shake like a leaf, trembling harder and harder, my head whipping from side to side, looking for a way out. No escape was possible, as they were holding on to me quite firmly, and the fright and worry overloaded my mind, turning everything into blackness.