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After the Revolution · Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts

Chapter Eleven

June 25, 2021·30 min·2 clips
A cyber-enhanced veteran fights fifty armed militants alone as combat drugs threaten to turn him into a mindless killer.
Chapter Eleven opens with Roland. He loves fighting men in powered armor because their expensive suits give them just enough chance to keep the violence interesting. It is an ugly kind of fun. Then the scene shifts to Sardar and Roland sharing a blunt while smoke stains the morning light. Jim is coming. Three more squads are flying in, Austin has approved emergency funding, and some of that money will reach their front. Sardar is already counting the way out. Cascadia means fifty grand for residency and roughly another hundred grand to survive the first year while he finds work. He calls it a future, but the word has a lot packed into it: El Paso, army training, and his first blooding in the Albuquerque secession. Jim noticed him there. When Sardar's term ended, Jim offered five years of work and enough money for a new start out west. Portland becomes the clean version of the life Sardar wants, a place where things might finally move again. Roland knows Portland too. He remembers a girl, the fog rolling in, and the strange softness of talking about her. His body gives him away. Even with carbon fiber in his bones and altered control over his functions, he still makes a nervous human gesture. Sardar does not pity him. He just says carrying loose memories around sounds hard, and the war drops into the background for a moment.

As heard by us

A tense Roland chapter that ties combat, money, and memory together with a restrained, reflective edge.

Chapter 11, Roland, opens in combat and keeps its grip by putting powered armor, infantry, smoke, money, and memory in the same frame. The war detail is blunt and ugly, and the cost of the suits gives the violence a sharper edge than the action alone would.

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Why you'd press play

If you like war stories where what lingers after the fight matters more than the fight itself.

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