We killed Joan -- our Joan, our leader, so brave on Monday when the cops took her -- the Friday they let her go, selfish and cowardly. We were not discreet: she screamed in a street corner as the poison burned her. When she died we took her body and drove away.

The blind eye of the cops suited us all. We were of one mind and opposite intent. Prisoners annoyed and martyrs scared them; how much better to reshape their minds with a few days of neuroengineering and let them go as embarrassments for their accomplices to kill?

We picked our poisons well: Joan was already alive before the van had left the city, although her spirit was still broken. She was the soul of our fight and our hope for the future and we had by unspoken convention three days to engineer her back to who she had been on Sunday. Less than what the cops had had. Yet we had our own resources and this wasn't the first time we had done it.

Everything was ready for her when we arrived.

Joan screamed as chemicals and robots and software began their work on her body and mind, half in fear we despised and half in pain we regretted. But we knew she would forgive us on Sunday just as she had every other time. As we had all forgiven others and might yet have to forgive again.