Skin Nation

by Joni Bing

I opened my eyes, feeling the weight of the world that had once burdened them lift off. I felt the relief overtake my whole body and it made me feel nauseated. I sat up slow as my body awakened from painful sleep. I looked out of the dusty dim window of the hearse and took in the familiar sites of OYZ Stats, Borealia. I could barely make out the sun rising into the sky. It was still so early I the mourning, but so bright outside. Although as bright as it was outside, there was still a darkness hovering over the community; almost like an invisible cloud of negative energy.

  Z turned a corner and around it waited a massive crowd of Borealians. The crowd stood in a mix looking around and socializing. It wasn't their actions that scared me, it was their size in numbers and the way they were all standing—united and waiting for something.

  “What's going on?” I asked Z slower than I anticipated to say it.

  “They're waiting for you.”

  The hairs on my neck and arms stood straight up. “For me? For what?!”

  “For guidance.”

  “Why me though? Where's Lary?”

  “Don't you ever get tired of asking that?” Z boomed.

  I sat back on the leather of the hearse's black seat and watched Z's eyebrow twitch in the rearview mirror. He drove slower and looked up into the mirror to stare me down. “Look, it's time you became more independent, Bleu. You don't need us. You don't need Lary. All you need is you, but the people out there? They're not like that. They need a voice. They need instruction.”

  “I'm willing to be that voice, but I refuse without an explanation. How have I rose to power?”

  He smirked. He always seemed to love when I spoke intelligently. Then, he frowned. I didn't pester him, I just let the news fall to his lips and come out when he was ready to share it. “It's something to Reno.”

  My heart thudded against my chest as if it was pushed against the wall of my insides to escape. “Is he...dead?”

  “He's close to it. Lary and Gyn are headed south to a care center that can help him get back on his feet.”

  “How bad is he?”

  “He can't speak.”

  I looked down and built up the mental strength to control the tears that wanted to roll down. I felt selfish as I reviewed my first thought to the news. I found myself concerned with the possibility that Reno could never speak again, but only because he'd no longer be able to encourage me. On the other hand, to be perfectly honest, Reno being permanently mute was almost enthusing because deep down inside a part of me loathed the sound of his speech and his toxic cigarette breath.

  “You ready?”

  I looked up into the rearview mirror to Z's meet eyes then outside through both windows. On the left, the door of the commune where it all began. On the right, a crowd waiting for my voice to start their new chapter. It's funny how life connects like that. How you can be between two different points in your life at one time, almost like a state line or a road with two paths leading you toward polar opposite worlds. I decided to revisit my past first. I opened the left door and rushed into the commune when Z opened the door for me. I didn't hear the door shut behind me, but when I turned around to see why, I heard Z speak to the crowd on my behalf. I stood in the hall near the doorway until he finished and waved to the crowd before he closed the door.

  “Nice speech,” I smirked.

  “Not as nice as the one you'll be giving in a few minutes.”

  “Remind me, why don't you,” I laughed nervously.

  I turned my head forward as I entered the sitting room and took a few backward steps into Z when I saw who was waiting inside. He was in a small metal chair in the spot where the flat's old couch used to sit. His hands were tied up with the same plastic straps he placed on me nights ago. I couldn't help but race to him. I tried to cease my feet, but they stubbornly moved forward and didn't stop until I had reached his place in the room. I untied the rag stuffed into his mouth and loosened the knot to free it from his neck. Before I could wrap my arms around him, Z pulled me away.

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Are you? What is this?!”

  “He's the one, Bleu! He tried to kill Reno!”

  “What?!”

  “Think about it,” he immediately interrupted me. “Where were you when Reno got shot?”

  I thought back and it crushed my heart. The mental pain of the memory physically ached my chest.

  “I was there. I heard the shots. I saw the bullets...and the blood...”

  “Now, where was Josh?”

  I thought back and my mind went black. “I don't know. I was searching for him. That's why I ran outside.”

  “Who is Josh, Bleu?”

  “He's my friend, my best friend. The only person I've never lost hope in. The only one I've ever had hope in.”

  “No, who is he now?”

  “He's,” I looked away from the spot on the wall that I concentrated on while I spoke to Z and met Josh's eyes.

  They weren't the same. They weren't the laser green eyes I first had contact with in Borealia. They weren't the eyes of a Requester captain. They were the eyes that troubled my heart when I did something wrong. They were the eyes that would stare into mine when I needed to pour my heart out about how much I couldn't take the way we survived. Most of all, they were the same eyes that I looked into an unknown amount of nights back in confidence that they were no longer being controlled. I still saw that in their gleam. I couldn't think any other way. “Let me talk to him alone.”

  Z shook his head and humphed. “I'll be outside.”

  I waited for Z to walk out until I faced Josh again.

  “You gonna untie me now?” he smirked.

  I shrunk my eyes down to slits and wiped away my smile. “Not just yet,” I replied as I sat down on the couch facing him. I sat on the cushion farthest to the right, Lary's seat. “You have to earn freedom.”

  He looked a little taken aback from the harshness of my tone and I got a thrill from the control I felt I gained.

  “Do what you need to do, Bleu.”

  I hid my reaction to his words with a shift of my eyes to the floor. This couldn't be anymore difficult, I thought.

  “I know what you planned with Gyn that night.”

  All of sudden, my head spun. I went back to that moment, the moment I suggested we play that mindless shot game. I had totally forgotten about Gyn's part of the plan.

  I remained silent and he shook his head. “In short, I saw this coming.”

  I ignored his words, trying to stay on task. “I just have a few questions.”

  “Shoot.”

  Questions came to mind immediately and I realized that these questions were ones I'd wanted answered for quite some time. “What happened to them?”

  “To who?”

  “Our family.”

  “They caught 'em. I got lucky for a short while.”

  “You call becoming Captain for your enemies lucky?”

  He shrugged and continued to maintain a poker face.

  I kept mine up as well. “What about...”

  “They sought her the worse. I've heard rumors about what they do to escapees who get sent to Steppes...let's just say they're not the easiest stories to swallow.”

  His words ripped at my heart, almost clawed at it. It affected me greatly because every single horrible punishment that I ever knew existed attacked my mind, causing me to mentally experience them. It hurt to see through Marty's eyes.

  “And Blythe?”

  “More Blythe as ever. They didn't want her, but she insisted. She wanted to be wanted...”

  As always, was what I was sure he wanted to say in his latter.

  “So?” I prodded.

  “She...joined the Pre-Ex program starting this coming season.”

  As shocked as I wanted to be, I couldn't bring myself to feel it. It was always in Blythe to fit where she shouldn't be and do whatever possible to force the cause. The only shock that I experienced was just how low she was willing to bring herself just for acceptance
, just to one day be Followed.

  He hesitated at first, almost like whatever he was about to say next would hurt him physically to say out loud. “Can I just say something? Before you ask anything else?”

  I rose from my place in the room and took a few steps back. Bad vibes overtook me and I could feel my heart wanting to shut down. “Shoot,” I stammered.

  He put his head down and stared down the gray carpet laid out around the room. Josh wasn't looking me in the eye. That always meant something—danger, indifference, on the brink of tears, on the edge of confession.

  “Remember that day in my car?”

  My heart fluttered then stopped. I was betwixt the emotions to slap him and hug him until we both gave out of breath. I didn't respond right away and after waiting for a beat to hear my response, he continued. “Remember after...what I said in the hall?”

  No answer fell from my lips, but my mind was screaming the answers. He looked up and his eyes were glistening. It was danger. It was indifference in where his brink of tears and edge of confession would lead our future. The Future. I thought about it for a moment. This moment was the start of a future. My future. It would reveal my preparation for it. Had I grown or was I still Bleu Dalton who survived with no hope and for a boy who portrays fearlessness when the very life he lived was the very thing he feared most.

  So many facets of emotion overtook my mind, but my one and only reply to his question revealed a hidden piece of sense that I never knew abided inside of me. “But...you didn't.”

  I wanted to scream that. I wanted the whole world to know. I wanted to shout it in Carl Dicken's face and write all over the UIP Capitol walls. His eyes stretched as if he hadn't expected that response. I liked those reactions. The face of surprise, of shocking revelation.

  “Okay. My turn.” I took a look at my waist where his future laid. That look filled me, it empowered me.

  “Yeah?”

  I picked up on his word choice. Shoot was always our go to word for accepting to answer a question, but this time was different. This time a shot could be more than just emotionally damaging.

  “How willing are you to beat the System?”

  The question made him smirk. Now he had caught me off guard!

  “Haven't you heard? I work for the System.”

  Then, I frowned. “But not willfully.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  I looked down at the floor, trying with all of my remaining strength after everything that happened over the course of the past few months to contain myself. “I know your eyes when I see them.”

  He looked close to tears and my throat grew sore. I couldn't bare the sight of someone about to cry. It's like I could feel their pain. I could feel everybody's when I stared at them for too long.

  “Shoot.”

  My head lifted fast and I looked deep into his eyes. More pain hit my heart. What was this?

  “Bleu, you heard me right. Do it! Shoot me!”

  I didn't hesitate, but I didn't know what I was doing. I seemed to feel that way a lot when Josh was around, but suddenly I found myself drawing Brigg's gun from its holder clipped to my right hip, spinning it around with my fingers as if to Russian Roulette between the two of us, as if to allow Fate the choice between who would leave the flat a survivor. Finally, I aimed straight at—

  The gun went off and I closed my eyes from the pow, shocked by the intensity of the shot. I turned my head away from the scene, afraid of what I would see, and stepped outside slow. I had to do this now. I had to take charge. Lary was counting on me. Gyn was counting on me. Briggs and Taurus were counting on me. A whole nation. Counting on me. I couldn't be selfish and let Josh survive. I couldn't let one man survive and let a whole nation perish...no matter how much, all of a sudden, I could careless about the fate of the world and the idiots who lived in it.

  “Is it done?”

  I took a glance at Z who leaned against the wall of the commune's front entrance. We were the survivors. How had it come down to only us standing outside our flat? A flash of fear rushed through me that I forced out of my mindset. I was a survivor. I was in charge of my life now. I was my own leader. No, not just my own. I was to be Followed, and I was being Followed by an entire nation now. But what was next? Well, I was just as clueless as the crowd before me at the time, but my heart knew...so I let it speak.

  I stepped on top of the brown wooden box set up in front of the waiting crowd and began to speak when the cheering died down.

  “I know you're all here seeking someone to Follow. I'm here to tell you...that you don't need me.”

  The gray faces in the crowd dropped into a wave of hopelessness. I expected them to take it a little differently, but it wasn't far off from how I thought they would react. Nobody wanted to be controlled, but nobody could survive without guidance.

  I cleared my throat. “Carl Dickens may have rule over this nation, but he will NEVER have rule over our hearts! Freedom has always been ours, but now it's time to reclaim it! It's time to fight back!”

  The faces that once look doubtful seemed to glow. They believed me! Every single word that fell from my lips, they ate up.

  “They've killed our people and ran off those who might've saved us from enslavement. They have enslaved our minds, but they will no longer enslave our right to think freely!”

  Shouts and cheers rose slowly in the air like a thin wall of dust flying towards the sky. The uprise grew stronger and louder and I started to hear a chant move across the crowd. I can still hear their voices declaring, “We will live.”

  Live. That's what we would do. Not just survive. To survive was to only confront and overcome the challenge presented. But to live? That was defeating every challenge outright then taking back everything we had ever lost from the fight, and building our days off of what we gained back. We would live. This time around, we would conquer, and if Carl Dickens and the UIP had a problem with that...

  I smiled as the crowd continued to cheer. The back of a dark green truck the size of the tank I just sat in nights ago opened slowly on the left of where I stood on the platform and Z pulled on my arm to catch my attention.

  “Where to now, Lady?”

  I waved to the crowd as I jumped from the box and Z helped me onto the truck. Days ago, I would've gone crazy over that, but I found myself feeling nothing more than an affection similar to love for a pet. There was hope for me after all.

  “Now, we head to Steppes. It's time to fight and get back what we deserve.”

  Z nodded in agreement and I looked straight ahead in time to witness the crowd's first steps the moment they started Following the truck when it began moving forward. I was never one to be afraid of large crowds, but this one gave me chills. It was the intensity on their faces, the hunger for freedom in their eyes. We all wanted to live.

  To live and confront the challenge. And you know what?

  ...Challenge accepted.