Roger nods. "When my country still existed," he says, "I served as a guard without knowing what I was guarding. It didn't end well, when the truth came out. I won't be caught flat-footed like that again."

He glances into the desert and says, without even having to stop to think, "Deathclaws. Mutant lizards. Bigger than you, with claws that'll rip open an armored man like a penknife gutting a fish."

And, this being the Sensoriums, a monstrous bipedal shape begins moving in the distance...