Amber Johnson hurried along the path leading to the hospital, feeling like a deer walking into a pit of crocodiles. She had quite the image to keep up as a carefree playgirl, and if she were caught by the paparazzi looking scared, it would be a blow to her female fans worldwide. A Shantih bikini shoot was more than just an ad campaign - it was a statement that here was a superwoman who was unashamed and unafraid to strut around in a bathing suit as if nothing had changed. And yet, Amber was afraid every day. Or more accurately, every day she left her house, which besides her closely monitored (and secretive) photo shoots, was becoming more and more rare. Her home was a fortress, with an interior courtyard where she could swim and sun without leaving the safety of her female staff of security guards.<br/><br/><div align="center">(http://i54.tinypic.com/2lk88r6.jpg)</div><br/>Everyone tried to pretend that the world was still the same, and her friends assured her that her fears of being captured or raped by a badge-bearing male were just a phobia. After all, there were so few fertile males, they said that a woman might only meet one in her lifetime. "It only takes one," Amber had replied grimly. One man to realize that he could make Shantih the bikini goddess into his fucktoy, and then the rest of the vermin would hunt her down. Her agent referred her to a psychiatrist for paranoia, but it hadn't helped. She was calm on the pills the doctor had given her... and she didn't leave her house.<br/><br/>It was her husband Jacob who had urged her to get her fertility tested. "There's no reason for you to be so afraid, when you could be exempt," he had said. "After all, we tried for years...." He trailed off, not wanting to finish, "before the Eunuch Plague took my sex drive and we had to stop trying." Amber's possible infertility, which had previously been a painful subject of conversation, was now the blessing that could save her from a life of fear. But - bitterly ironic - the only hospital that did such testing was this government station that also gave men badges to rape. Something about needing to be done in a hospital that was part of the database, the one that kept track of the men. Amber suspected that it was a deliberate plot. But she didn't want the doctor to force more pills on her, so she'd started keeping quiet about such fears.<br/><br/>She had done everything she could to make herself less nervous, and less of a target. She was wearing a scraggly blond wig that completely changed her appearance, and not for the better. Her body was hidden by layers of skirts and a loose sweater, like a homeless woman. She had even pulled a scarf over her hair that half-hid her face, like an old peasant woman. She kept her eyes fixed on the sidewalk and didn't talk to anybody, not wanting to draw attention.<br/><br/>As she walked into the hospital, she heard a wild-eyed man ranting against the Breeding Laws. She lingered in his steps, wanting to tell him, "Bless you... thank you." But she didn't want to start a conversation. So she just gave him a tentative smile, peeking out from behind the scarf for a brief moment. Perhaps she could speak with him on the way out - no, too dangerous. A cell phone number? She would try to invite him to her estate so they could have a conversation. It seemed she wasn't the only person who didn't believe in these new laws. Even if he was as crazy as he looked, this man on the street might prove valuable.