I know Christine had more time to process that information than me, but I was furious about it. Marching in the protest, I had no idea things would devolve that quickly. I never expected the guards to attack us. But they did. Without mercy or remorse. Hell, it seemed like those guys in the alley wanted to kill us! They needed to pay. Things had to be made right.
“We should press charges or something,” I said as calmly as I could to keep the pain in my head from growing any larger. “I should talk to the police and give a statement, right?”
But still, Christine appeared unmoved by enthusiasm. “No use. They don’t care.”
Now, headache or not, I couldn’t stop myself from exploding. “What?! How?! Those Monarch goons just attacked us out of nowhere.”
I admitted, a part of me was furious about this. I had known the police weren’t sympathetic to H.O.P.E. Monarch had made massive donations to the various service departments in their local cities. A lot of police were also people who either knew or planned to serve in support roles with Monarch. Still, I would have thought they would have been willing to keep something like this from happening.
Christine then went on to explain the part of the story I’d been missing. “Butterfly’s claiming that Monarch defended themselves after someone shot from the crowd. Which is insane because it was a peace march. Why would someone bring a gun? Well, except for that girl who saved us.”
Her last sentence reminded me of an important detail I’d forgotten. “The girl! What happened to her?”
“I don’t know,” Christine answered shrugging her shoulders. “She fired a gun into the ground by your head and then took off. Weird, huh?”
“Why would she do that?” I asked, my ears still ringing from the experience.
“Who knows. She was talking to some other people outside the alley. I was hiding, though, and couldn’t really understand what they were saying.”
Probably thinking I was unconscious, Christine didn’t bother asking me if I heard them. And given how strange the whole situation was, I wasn’t about to tell her. But I was curious to know more about our mysterious savior.
“Was she even part of the protest?” I asked.
Christine shook her head. “Possibly. But I never saw her before. That doesn’t mean anything when you’re dealing with the kind of numbers we are. One thing’s for sure, though. Gunshot or no gunshot, those Monarch guys were going to attack us regardless of what happened. It was a setup.”
I wish Christine wasn’t right, but nobody keeps a stockpile of anti-riot equipment on standby like that. They were waiting for us by their headquarters, and while I assumed they were just there to stand guard, the way they drew those batons told everyone in the crowd otherwise. But whoever fired that shot gave them the excuse they needed to attack, turning Christine’s greatest achievement into a monumental failure.
The thought of all her hard work down the drain weighed heavy on my head, causing it to drop into my chest. “And now Butterfly looks like the good guys. It seems we would have been better off staying home.”
My comment had the reverse effect on her, though. Contrary to my disappointment, Christine sat up in her chair and leaned forward with a renewed sense of enthusiasm. “No. Never say that. Butterfly is a public relations machine. They will always find a way to spin the news in their favor. But we’re not going away and we’re not letting up. Persistence is key. Nothing’s going to change overnight. But we’ll keep pushing and growing and pushing and growing until Colin Reilly has no choice but to listen.”
Christine paused, staring right into my eyes until her inspired determination forced a smile onto my face. And this was why I would follow her anywhere. No matter what, she would always charge ahead. She followed her heart wherever it led her and would not be deterred by a bully like Butterfly.
“I’m proud of you, Robbie,” Christine went on once she saw my spirits had lifted. “You travelled here, marched with a bunch of strangers, and stood your ground in the face of real danger. Hell, you even punched a PMC captain for me. You know I don’t condone violence but given the circumstances, it was actually pretty sweet.”
Thanks to her reminder, I finally felt the faint pain in my wrist that had been dwarfed by the ones in my head and chest. “Yeah. And almost broke my hand in the process.”
I lifted my hand and began flexing it into a fist. That’s when I suddenly remembered the reason I punched that PMC captain in the first place.
My eyes shot over in Christine’s direction with a look of concern. “Wait…how is your…”
Christine put on an appreciative smile, though, and waved her hand while rubbing her abdomen with the other. “I’m fine. It’s just a bruise.”
“Are you sure?” I asked unconvinced. “Maybe you’re the one who should be in this bed.”
But Christine laughed off my concern. “Relax, Robbie. I’m fine. We’re in a hospital. They checked me out as soon as I got here.”
We locked eyes, smiling at one another, and again I was sucked into her charm. Christine was so sweet, funny, and kind. Yet at the same time, she had the tenacity of a woman driven to make a difference.
And then, at that untimely moment, thoughts of Anna began creeping into my mind. I can’t fall for Christine. I had a girlfriend who was probably worried sick about me. She must’ve heard news by now about how the Chicago protest turned into mayhem. I knew I had to get in touch with her, but here I was, staring into the eyes of a beautiful girl who waited by my bedside. I hope this wasn’t considered cheating.
I must’ve shown on my face how conflicted I was because Christine’s sweet smile started to fade into worry. She saw something was bothering me, but a voice distracted both of us before we had a choice to broach the subject. “Excuse me.”
We both turned to find a young nurse had already walked through the curtain separating us from the rest of the room. The girl was fully outfitted in a surgical gown, mask, and cap. She also held a series of folders in her arms, which I assumed to be the medical files of all the protestors admitted to the emergency room.
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” the nurse said in a soft, apologetic voice.
Snapped out of whatever conversation we were about to have, Christine stood from her seat, lifting her backpack that had been resting on the floor. “No, it’s fine. I need to get going anyway. My train back to campus is going to leave soon. And you, Mr. Stone, have a bus to catch if I’m not mistaken.”
The nurse’s cheeks slightly lifted the mask, a sign of the smile hiding beneath it. “Well, just a couple of questions and I can have him out of here in no time.”
Christine left the chair’s side, moving over to the foot of the bed. The nurse took a seat while Christine looked back at me, smiling with one hand on the curtain, preparing to walk around it. “Be safe, Robbie. I’ll be in touch.”
“Bye, Christine,” I said, smiling as well. “Thanks for everything.”
The farewell lasted a few seconds longer before Christine eventually turned around and disappeared through the curtain. I remained staring at the spot she was standing, though, until the nurse to my side broke my concentration.
“Good,” she said, finally removing her mask and cap. “I thought she’d never leave.”
The nurse was the White-Haired Girl.
CHAPTER FOUR
“It’s you,” I said, surprised.
The White-Haired Girl nodded her head. “Yup. It’s me. The name’s Jane, by the way.”
I didn’t exactly know how to feel in that moment. In the short amount of time I’d known her, this girl proved to be mysterious in every aspect of the word. But sitting next to me now, as vulnerable as ever, I never got the feeling she meant me harm. And so, showing my appreciation for her badass heroics seemed like the appropriate response.
“I never got a chance to thank you for saving me,” I said.
“Yeah … well … I tried to kill you first.” Jane, if that was even her real name, appeared unmoved by my show o
f gratitude. “So I think that kind of evens it out.”
While I certainly had suspicions, as did Christine, we couldn’t have known for certain it was our savior who fired a gun from the crowd. But while Christine assumed the shooter was aiming at the Monarch PMCs, I knew better. “That was you who shot at me?”
“Guilty,” the unapologetic girl said shrugging her shoulders, as if attempted murder was no big deal.
At first, I was almost glad to see her, this white-haired girl did rescue me from certain death after all, but her nonchalant attitude towards trying to kill me was starting to get on my nerves. I needed answers, and I needed them now. “Why? This doesn’t make any sense. I don’t even know you. What do you want from me?”
Sensing my aggravation, Jane innocently lifted her hands to calm me down. “Right now, just to talk.”
But I was starting to realize just how absurd this whole situation was. “No. This is crazy. I have to get out of here.”
“Relax. I saved you, remember. If I really wanted you dead, I had a hundred opportunities to do it.”
Ignoring her, I sat up off the bed, preparing to leave. “No. I’m going home.”
“Sit back, Rob,” she demanded in a much colder tone than when she was trying to reassure me of her intentions.
But I stopped short of getting out of the bed, surprised not so much that she knew my name but that she got it wrong. “My name’s Robbie.”
“Oh, that’s right,” she said, laughing to herself. “You’re not in college yet.”
If I was confused before, now I was completely lost. “What?”
The laughter softened her demanding disposition into something a bit more reasonable. “Nothing. All I need is a couple of minutes, OK? Just hear me out.”
Torn between sanity and curiosity, I hesitated while sitting upright in the bed. Any way I looked at it, this girl was dangerous. Possibly even unhinged. It didn’t appear that she was going to hurt me, but if I left now, there was a strong chance I’d be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life, wondering who this Jane was and if she would ever come back.
After swallowing any reluctance that remained, I carefully leaned back on the bed, a sign that I would stay. Jane then took a deep, slow breath before beginning to speak. “I’m going to tell you a story. Now I don’t want you to say anything. Just sit there and listen. Absorb everything I say and know that every word of it is the truth.”
Jane paused, either to be dramatic or to allow me a chance to respond. I didn’t, though. Just sat staring in her direction, waiting for her story to start. Which she began to tell with sharp, stone-like eyes. “In the not-too-distant future, the company you were protesting today, along with the corporate conglomerate they’re aligned with, will gain even more power than they already have. So much so that concepts like freedom and human rights disappear from the planet.”
So far, I was unimpressed with her prophecy, mostly because it predicted a fairly obvious future. It was a world that didn’t require a whole lot of imagination to picture and people like Christine were fighting every day to avoid.
Jane didn’t stop there, though, and continued her story. “Eventually, a man known only as the Scorpion, an often-overlooked predator of the butterfly, leads a charge against the corporations and sparks a revolution that overthrows the civilization of control they built for themselves. Unfortunately, the Scorpion was also a madman and, in his quest to change the world, became responsible for the greatest mass genocide this planet has ever known. His revolutionaries spread across the earth and cut down anyone that stood in their way. Billions of people were killed in his name, making him the greatest mass murderer in the history of mankind. I know this because I’ve lived through it.”
“You did?” I asked.
“I come from that future,” Jane finally said with the same flat, detached tone.
It was certainly quite an account of events. Fiction, no doubt, but extraordinary nonetheless. Especially in the storyteller’s monotone delivery. She must’ve been rehearsing that speech for weeks. Regardless of how impressive her acting skills were, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at the tale. “Yeah. OK.”
“I understand how it sounds,” Jane responded, undeterred by my skepticism.
But I cut her off, laughing as I began to find amusement in the science-fiction aspect of our situation. “No. This is good. I’ve heard this story before. You come back in time and kill me, so I don’t grow up and stop the bad guy from taking over.”
“No, Robbie.” Jane shook her head, still deathly staring me in the eye. “You don’t stop the bad guy. You are the bad guy.”
My smile slowly drooped down from the confusion her statement brought. “What?”
“The Scorpion is you.”
Although it was no longer funny, the girl’s revelation only affirmed the ridiculousness of her story. “Now I know you’re crazy. Why would I kill billions of people? My mentor preaches non-violence for, Christ’s sake.”
“You don’t have to believe me, but it’s the truth. Here I’ll show you.”
She lifted the medical files she’d been holding in her arms, revealing a thick hardcover book hidden between the folders. It appeared old, its pages worn, dirty, and tattered from a lifetime of abuse. The once colorful cover was littered in stains and grime, too faded to make out.
Jane carefully opened it and leaned forward, placing the book in my lap. On one side was a whole page filled with text in a foreign language. German, if I had to guess. But on the opposite page was a close-up picture of a man, one that was meant to be a portrait. He appeared middle-aged and angry. Long hair and a stubble of facial hair. Behind him looked to be a building on fire.
It was an unremarkable photo … until I stared at it long enough and the man’s face became all too familiar. His cheeks. His nose. His chin. They were older but the same features I’d been staring at all my life in the mirror. And below the picture was a single caption: Der Skorpion.
The uncanny image nearly left me speechless. I struggled to form the simplest question, which needed to be asked. “That … that’s me?”
“It will be,” Jane answered with a single nod.
I looked up at her, still baffled by the book in front of me. “Why is it in German?”
“English-speaking civilizations were too torn apart to print history books. Even that one was hard to come by.”
Denial was my first reaction, and it seemed like the most logical one. “I can’t read this. It could say anything. And I’ve seen age-progression pictures that make babies look like senior citizens. This doesn’t prove anything.”
“I know it’s hard to accept. But I didn’t want to kill you, Robbie. I wanted to talk to you, to explain things to you, to give you the chance to stop yourself from becoming that monster.”
Up until now I was doing my best to laugh off Jane’s story as a joke. But then I remembered just how serious she was. This girl legitimately tried to kill me not too long ago. However crazy her story seemed, she believed it enough to commit murder.
That concern must’ve shown through my face, for Jane gave me a friendly, non-threatening smile as if she read my mind. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to kill you. That ship has sailed for me.”
There was no reason for me to trust her on that, but the girl’s expression and voice looked as genuine as it could be. If I was going to brush her off, now was my best chance, and I had to do it as gently and respectfully as possible.
“Well … thanks,” I daringly muttered, handing the book back to her. “But I’m sorry. You have the wrong guy.”
Surprisingly, she didn’t appear disappointed by my lack of faith. “All right. If you say so,” she said rather simply, retrieving the closed textbook from my hand.
The disguised nurse then tucked the book back into her folders and stood, preparing to exit my small, cordoned-off partition of the room. Just before leaving though, Jane stopped with her head lowered onto her chest, looking just as conflicted as she
did in the alleyway.
“Just promise me, Robbie,” she finally said. “Be good, okay? No matter what Butterfly does, no matter how hard things get, don’t ever let the darkness into your heart. Stay in the light, understand? Because once you step out of it, there’s no going back.”
“I promise,” I said, also adding you nutjob in my thoughts.
She then walked through the curtain without ever looking back. There was now no way I could get out of this hospital bed soon enough.
CHAPTER FIVE
Checking out of the hospital proved easier than I expected. There were hundreds injured from the H.O.P.E. protest and the hospital was overwhelmed with patients. They didn’t want me around and I was happy to leave.
Even so, passing by one of the nurses’ stations, I couldn’t help but ball my fists. They were talking about the protest.
“Can you believe those ungrateful millennials?” an elderly Caucasian woman said. “They’re a bunch of anarchists, that’s what they are.”
A young Asian woman replied, “I don’t think they’re that bad.”
“The Butterfly Corporation paid for this hospital and is the reason we’re all employed. Do you see the politicians doing anything? No. Because—”
I walked away angrily before I said something I regretted, heading into the elevator. Thankfully, I managed to catch an empty one and pushed the button for the parking lot below. I was still woozy from the medication they’d given me, but tried to sort through events anyway.
Not only had Butterfly made a mockery out of the H.O.P.E. protest but they’d turned it to their advantage. Hundreds of innocent people had been injured and it was made to look like we were the bad guys because they owned the television stations.
Worse, I had my very own stalker. Some kind of crazy girl who had gone to all the trouble to make a text book in German with my aged self pictured in it. She’d taken a shot at me, too, single-handedly turning a peaceful protest into a near-massacre. Well, no, Butterfly was always going to find an excuse to break up our protest, gunshot or not.
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