The effect on a society that some white powder could have was incredible to Prviate Andrew Rockland. Men went to prison for it. Men died for it. And at least in Michigan, men were being freed for it. Mostly.

The Northern government had freed those in prison for hard drugs and then decided that they ought to at least be rehabilitated first. It wasn't his place for Andrew to question policy when in uniform, but he could see flaws with the plan.

Nevertheless, he was riding alongside his brother, Alex, and two other men as they perused the streets of Detroit. They were going house to house to round up those who had been released from heroin-related sentences to bring them back to rehab in an attempt to keep them off the stuff and more importantly, make sure they didn't keep trading it.

Turns out though, when you go around taking peoples' livelihoods from them, they tend to start disliking you a little. He'd been spat on three times tonight already, so he was not feeling particulalrly optimistic about their next stop.

Christian DeLeon was their next target. Sentenced for running heroin, he'd been released just a couple of months ago. He was recorded as living at 2744 Cortland Street, an old brick tenament that stood isolated, the ones accompanying it having long since been demolished. It looked skinny and lonely as they pulled up to it, a lone lightpost illuminating the street before it.

The car came to a sharp stop and the men piled out.

"Nice driving" Andrew dryly remarked to Alex.

The men were in standard NU military uniform but not their exoskeletons. The skeletons were thought to be far too threatening for police work, and that's officially what this was - police work. Though without their exoskeletons, they still wielded their standard issue assault rifles, something Andrew and his brother had both decided entirely defeated the purpose of not wearing the exoskeletons. Again, technically not their place to question policy.

Alex gave the front door a stern knock. The window shutters were closed but slits of light revealed that at least someone was probably home. After a commotion inside, the door finally opened a crack and an older woman opened the door.

"The fuck you want?" she asked, her tone as hostile as her words.

"We're here looking for Christian DeLeon. You know him?" Alex calmly replied.

"I know 'im. What's it to ya?"

Suddenly, the door swung wide open. A younger man with a pistol pulled the trigger without hesitation and with only the smallest squirt of blood, Alex collapsed to the ground. Andrew, halfway through raising his weapon, began to fire at the man. Four quick rounds later, he was a crumpled heap on the ground.

Andrew couldn't help but instinctually scream out his brother's name as he dropped to the floor beside him. The other two soldiers behind them rushed in and began to search the building.

Alex was dead. The shot had got him clean between the eyes, and the death must've been instant. Andrew's eyes began to tear up as what lay before him finally began to process. A hard sobbing made him look up to the woman who had answered the door.

Christian DeLeon was not having a great day. Keisha, his long-time girlfriend, was apparently locked up. She'd been caught "agitating" at some protests on 8-mile. Girl picked the wrong time to get involved in politics.

Bail was set at something like $10,000. He didn't have that kind of money, at least not on him. Across the city Christian must've had at least three times that much money tied up in crack and heroin. But it's incredibly difficult to liquidate that kind of stock, even if it was legal now.

"You could maybe ask Malik for the money".

Christian looked across the room to his mother on the couch and took a sip of his beer.

"Ma, you know his ass ain't ever givin' me money again".

"Watch your tongue, boy, I raised you better than that".

Christian sighed. The worst part of having his house blown up in a war, even worse than losing literally everything he owned, was having to move back in with his aging mother. It wasn't fair either. Two years he'd been having that house paid for while in prison, and all for nothing.

"Now I think yeah, y'all two left off on a sour foot, but he knows how much Keisha means to you. He knows you good for it" his mother finished.

There was a hard knock on the door. Christian finished his beer as his mother rose to answer the door.

"I wasn't expecting nobody" his mother angrily declared, "were you?"

Christian shook his head and reached under the coffee table, his hand feeling for the cool Glock that was kept down there just in case. Gripping it, he rose and stood just out of view of the door before his mother opened it.

"The fuck you want?"

"We're here looking for Christian DeLeon. You know him?"

Christian recognized the tone of voice as belonging to authority. In this day and age, that meant Canadians. He knew that they had been going around and wrangling up all the former convicts. Something about a reversal of drug policy was all he knew. But he thought he'd be safe here, since officially his residence was still at his old home that these same Canadians had turned into a crater.

"I know 'im. What's it to ya?"

An instant passed as he weighed his options. If he was taken in and they found out about his new operation, he'd be guarenteed at least another decade in prison. If he ran, he could get out of town, maybe even make a run for the border. But there wasn't a back door. Only one option.

He pulled the door all the way back with his left hand and pulled the trigger with his right. He heard thunder as he found his mark right between the soldier's eyes. He'd made a critical mistake however. There were three more behind him. More thunder, but this time, it wasn't his.

Christian's mother collapsed to the ground to hold her son as he bled out. Four rounds had torn his chest apart. Out of her sight, she could hear soldiers ransacking her home, looking for a man they'd already shot. As the weight of the moment began to bury her, she sobbed.

She looked up at the man who had shot her son. Holding the other soldier, he was also on the ground. Their wet eyes met.

In that instant, they were finally the same.