California was my home, had been mine and Rina’s but now it was just mine.“But to Tucson not Phoenix, I knew Phoenix would have been overkill. I e...en got you your old apartment back. Had to buy out the couple that had it, but they were happy enough when they left,” he said.“I’ll bet,” I said. Well at least it wasn’t Phoenix.“So, if I’ve got my old apartment back, why are we headed to Phoenix,” I said. “And how much did you pay the renters. I’m gonna repay you for that.”“Isn’t it obvious? To see. Other than the absence of dead bodies where there was supposedly no one there to remove them, the subterranean tunnels were the same as previous visits.Benni was aggravated. Young but tested, he had expected to be placed in the first assault team. He had no expectations of taking point, but he figured he was good enough for the first team. Instead, he had been given the lowly task of guarding the spaceman in the back of the second team. Shasa had made the first team and that really ate at him.. All of him. This may have been a mistake, coming here. He felt the weight of his decisions anchoring him down and he wasn’t ready for it. He felt like the very air was heavy and thick. Maybe it was why he was having so many problems breathing.He was – abnormal. The whole fucking situation was abnormal. He didn’t belong here. He wasn’t supposed to be here. He was only a kid. He was only a kid who was way out of his depth, making decisions on too little information, and it was coming back to. She laughed at his confusion and left him in peace to contemplate his dawning understanding of who really ran things in the village. Always in the past, he had heard whispers from the hunters that it was the women who really controlled tribal destiny. He thought they were referring to a woman's ability to have babies, but perhaps, they had meant it more literally as it referred to daily tribal activities. He had been at the hunter's fire many times, and knew that nothing of importance was ever.