by Tracy Lawson
Tommy noticed Pete staring at him, and the older man shook his head as if to clear the cobwebs.
“I’m sorry. For a minute I thought … you look a lot like my son.”
“You look familiar to me too.” He lowered his voice. “Do you know who we are?”
He smiled at Careen. “I do recognize this young lady. Your wig is crooked.”
Careen rolled her eyes and pulled it off.
Tommy held out the tablet. “I got this from Atari. It controls the Link, but the battery’s dead. Can we charge it?”
“Sure.” Pete took it and plugged it in.
“We want to show you this too.” He fished the chip drive out of his pocket. “You’ve been great about helping the Resistance get messages out, and I’ve got an idea how to use it.”
10:30 PM
The president’s security detail barricaded the conference room door and took up positions, guns drawn, to listen for any disturbance in the hall. Everyone else had taken shelter on the far side of the room, where they huddled out of sight below the long table.
Tom hunched next to President Wright. “Will they be able to evacuate you someplace safer, sir?”
“At present, it doesn’t look like it. I lose command authority if we’re pinned down here without access to secure communications. That may be what the Resistance intended to do all along.” He looked at Tom with raised eyebrows.
Tom hastened to protest. “Mr. President, the Resistance has been working to overthrow Madalyn Davies ever since she assumed the role of director, but on my life, I swear we never considered an all-out coup.”
“And do you deny that the Resistance was responsible for the bomb at the OCSD building?”
“I had no prior knowledge of the bombing at the OCSD building. Kevin McGraw is our point man at the OCSD. You’ve met him. He’s as committed as we are to affecting change without violence—and without attempting something as foolish as a forced regime change. The main faction of the Resistance is not your enemy. We support you and your administration. Mitch Carraway chose a different path; he’s no longer allied with us.”
Tom heard Lara murmur to Eduardo. “We were supposed to go help Tommy and Careen with Atari. I wonder if they’re all right. Is there any way to get in touch with them?”
Everyone jumped when the landline phone rang. An aide crawled over to answer it. “Sir? It’s Kevin McGraw on the line for you.”
The president took the receiver. “Yes?” He listened for a moment. “Wait. Who is this? … He’s been arrested? Do you know what’s going on inside the House chamber?”
He hung up. “It appears there’s more than one coup in progress.”
Chapter 36
10:40 PM
Pete listened to Tommy’s plan. “Sure, we can do that, but you’d be crazy to try to broadcast out here in the open where someone’s likely to recognize you.”
“Can we do everything from in here?”
“It’ll be a bit of a squeeze, but these are desperate times.”
Pete sat in the swivel chair in front of the control panel in the mobile news unit, microphone in hand, while the cameraman adjusted his lens from where he sat in the front passenger seat. The producer counted him down, and Tommy, Careen, and Jaycee pressed against the walls to stay out of frame. “Skirmishes continue here in the capital quadrant at this hour as unidentified forces occupy the Capitol building, where they are holding Congress hostage. We have word that the president and vice president may have been removed from the House chamber. It is not known whether Madalyn Davies is still inside. Just a half hour ago, an explosion of suspicious origin destroyed the OCSD building.
“And who is to blame? Is it the Resistance that now controls and terrorizes our country? I must warn you: the following footage is disturbing, and contains graphic images.”
The video, apparently recorded by a street camera, showed a woman running down a dark city sidewalk. When two marshals intercepted her at a corner, she struggled in their grip. One of them lost his hold on her, but the other shoved her against a wall, pinning her there while his partner zip-tied her hands behind her back. She tried to pull free, but the marshal slammed her against the wall one more time before flinging her to her knees. A fourth figure stepped out of the shadows, gun in hand. The marshals stood aside as a blond young man fired point-blank into the back of the woman’s head.
“The woman in the video has been identified as Careen Catecher, murdered by Tommy Bailey, son of Resistance leader Tom Bailey. Tommy just happens to be here with me now.” Tommy, minus his wig, moved into frame with Pete and they shook hands.
“Tommy, thanks for dropping by. So what can you tell us about that video?”
“It’s one hundred percent fake, and I want to set the record straight about a few things.” He reached out of frame, pulled Careen to his side, and put a protective arm around her. “Obviously Careen’s still alive. I didn’t shoot her. I love her and I’d never do anything to hurt her.” He smiled down at her.
“So what does the video mean?” Pete was an expert at leading the viewing audience to the preferred conclusion.
“One of our Resistance operatives created that video to prove how easy it is to be manipulated by what we see. The Link can be manipulated too.”
“Is the Resistance really a terrorist organization, as the OCSD would have us believe?”
“When Careen was accused of being a terrorist, I was ticked. She wasn’t a terrorist any more than I was. But since then I’ve realized that the only way to be true to my country is to fight the oppression we face at the hands of the OCSD. If that makes me a terrorist, then I guess I am one.”
Careen spoke up. “The OCSD makes decisions and imposes Restrictions that are supposed to protect us, when instead they strip us of our freedoms and leave us powerless. Our elected leaders don’t represent our best interests, because they’re afraid to defy the OCSD.”
Pete asked, “Are you afraid of the OCSD, Careen? You were once their spokesperson. They say you were kidnapped by the Resistance.”
“Of course I’m afraid of the OCSD, but I’m done lying for them. It’s horrible to be accused of something you didn’t do, and I don’t want that to happen to anyone else. But it will. Every one of you could be like me, falsely accused of a crime. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t done anything wrong. A surveillance program like the Link in the wrong hands—well, in anyone’s hands—is an invasion of our privacy that makes us vulnerable, rather than keeping us safe.”
Tommy gave her a reassuring squeeze. “All our lives we’ve heard the OCSD say, “it’s a small price to pay for our safety.” It’s easy to agree with that until you’re the one who’s accused of something you didn’t do. So to prove how easily this can happen, we’ve hijacked the Link. Everyone with a Link will now show up on the scanners as Careen Catecher, a wanted fugitive, and according to the law, may be arrested and charged with her crimes.”
“What do you say to people who call the Link a solution to our security issues?”
“Linking people makes them different and divides us instead of bringing us together. The OCSD keeps trying to isolate us so we don’t feel the strength in our numbers. The people who run the OCSD fear us. They don’t want us to speak out against them. They know they can’t keep us safe, but they need our compliance—and our tax money—to survive. They need us a lot more than we need them.”
10:45 PM
As Trina ascended to the podium, she prayed for strength to touch the hearts of the people around her and hoped her passion would equal that of the country preachers she remembered from her childhood. “I worked for the OCSD on the development team for the Counteractive System of Defense drug, CSD.”
She saw puzzled looks on many of the faces in the crowd. One representative asked, “So if you developed the antidote, how can you expect us to believe the Office of Civilian Safety and Defense hasn’t done anything to prevent terrorist attacks?”
She hid her exasperation. “I worked for
them for three months before I caught on that the antidote was never meant to protect anyone. Stratford had always intended to use it for mind control.”
“Preposterous. No one was controlling my mind.”
“Probably not, sir, because you were receiving a placebo dose reserved for government officials. When I realized what Stratford was up to, I called him out, and he gave me an extra-large dose of the drug and locked me up to get me out of the way. As soon as I was able, I began to fight against the OCSD, and I haven’t stopped. Why do you persist in believing they do good?”
A congresswoman raised her hand to be recognized. “I have always supported the OCSD. I have to continue to do so, because my constituents favor a strong antiterrorism stance.”
“But the OCSD doesn’t do anything to stop terrorism. They pander to people’s fears!”
Several people in the room spoke at once.
“You’re out of order, Dr. Jacobs. You’re no better than a terrorist yourself. You’re in the Resistance.”
“The OCSD hasn’t harmed us.”
“How will we stay safe without it?”
Renald stepped up to the podium beside Trina. “Please, everyone. Our captors are willing to let every one of you walk out of here unscathed. All you have to do is vote to get rid of the OCSD.”
The clamor rose again, and a man in the front row shouted, “If we go along with this we’ll just be giving in to terrorists. We have no real say. We’re literally being forced to comply at the point of a gun.”
Trina retorted, “How is that different from people who are being Linked? You didn’t have any problem with that. You only protest when it’s you on the wrong end of the gun.”
Movement at the back of the room caught Trina’s eye. One of the guards ushered a man carrying a large stack of papers into the room.
“Jack?” Trina hardly recognized her coworker under the caked-on dirt and dust.
“Hey, Trina.” He shifted the stack of papers he carried. “Thought you might want some stats on the OCSD’s effectiveness. It won’t take me long to sum up the terrorist attacks the OCSD has prevented since its inception in 2019.”
“Sure, that would be helpful.” She and Renald stood aside.
“Good evening, everyone. I’m Jack Fischer, head of Analysis and Integration at the OCSD. It’s my job to track suspected terrorists using intel provided by both government and private sources. I’ve been in this department since the OCSD was formed, and in that time, the number of terrorist attacks foiled by the OCSD has been exactly zero.”
The congresswoman with the strong antiterrorism stance spoke up. “What about all the attacks that led up to the forming of the OCSD?”
“I have Lowell Stratford’s files, and I’ve been over them many times. All but three were staged by the OCSD—some to elicit fear, others to demonstrate their ability to stop attacks before they happened.”
She persisted. “What about the other three?”
“Those were carried out by the same man who orchestrated this coup.”
An angry buzz of conversation rose from the members of Congress.
Jack called for attention again. “Before we get too self-righteous, I also happen to have the Resistance’s dossiers of crimes committed by members of Congress.”
Renald leaned in to the microphone. “None of us wants this to escalate. We have the president’s okay to call it a draw, call the vote, and let everyone walk out of here. Jack has agreed to head up a task force that will investigate and, if warranted, file charges against any person who was here tonight.”
The leader of the guards spoke up. “Let’s get this show on the road. No electronic voting. Call the roll.”
11:00 PM
Tommy picked up the newly charged tablet. “I wonder if there’s a way to delete a profile from the Link registry.”
Careen looked over his shoulder. “Can you delete everyone?”
“Maybe.” He tried to access the list, but a popup appeared. He frowned. “It won’t let me into the registry without a password now.”
Jaycee looked down at her Link. “Hey, just so you know, it says I’m me again.”
Tommy tried to access the field he’d used to change the ID numbers and was met with the same password request. “Okay, this is not good. It makes Careen too vulnerable. We need the password. Any guesses?”
Careen shrugged. “You know Atari best.”
“Let’s start with his video game obsession.” She watched while he typed in Pac-Man. Incorrect. Pong. Incorrect. Asteroids. Then a message appeared: “Too many failed login attempts. Try again in 30 minutes.”
Tommy swore. “Pete, is there anyone at PeopleCam who can hack this thing? Careen’s vulnerable until we can get back in and scramble the ID numbers again.”
“Maybe. Should I call and make sure the coast is clear before we head in?”
“Yeah, although now that the girls’ Links are live, there’s no place to hide.”
Pete grabbed his phone. Before he could connect the call, everyone cringed at the sound of machine gun fire nearby.
Jaycee spoke up. “Anyplace where they’re not shooting at us would be nice.”
Careen was silent as they rode to the PeopleCam building. Tommy put his arm around her. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. She’d never expected to return to the place where she’d been held captive and tortured. When they arrived, the producer and cameraman dropped them off and headed back out to get more footage of the riots. Careen kept a tight grip on Tommy’s hand as they and Jaycee followed Pete through the back entrance to the PeopleCam building.
Pete looked back at them as they headed up the stairs. “I wonder if Atari was able to pierce the Shield. That was supposed to happen, wasn’t it? I’ve got censored video and news reports of protests and people trying to escape being Linked, stuff the OCSD would never let PeopleCam broadcast. It’s been running on a loop for a couple of weeks. I hoped the Shield would be compromised, and somehow people here, and maybe even in other countries, would be able to see it.”
Careen began to tremble as Pete led them down a cinderblock hallway behind the studios. She glanced around, expecting at any moment to meet a security guard who would lock her in a room; or worse, take her to be interrogated.
Pete knocked on a door with Engineering Department on the plate. An elderly man whose scalp shone pink under his flyaway white hair was seated at a workbench, working on the insides of a playback machine. “Tommy, this is Chester, the chief engineer. If anyone can help you, it’s him.” Jaycee followed Tommy inside, but Careen balked, and Pete remained in the hall with her.
“My son was about his age.” Pete fished in his wallet, pulled out a photo of a blond young man, and showed it to her.
She gasped and tears welled up in her eyes. “I knew him … just for a moment.”
“He’d stopped taking CSD, and we argued about it on the phone. Next thing I knew, the QM came to me and said he had succumbed to the poison.”
“Tommy and I had stopped taking CSD, but the QM picked up Tommy and dosed him with Phase Two. That dose was awful. It was like he was in a trance, and when he left the house and headed for combat training, I ran after him. When I lost sight of Tommy, I got scared and hid, and I saw your son running away from the QM. They beat him and left him lying on the ground. I was with him when he died.”
“Did he say anything?”
She nodded and wiped her nose. “Something about death not being the worst thing that could happen.”
Pete drew a shuddering breath and patted her on the shoulder. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”
Her eyes were filled with tears, but she smiled. “Even though I’m Linked, I’m going to keep fighting and not give up. I have to do more than just tell the truth, because so far the truth hasn’t been powerful enough to change anything. Why do people believe the lies?”
“They’re too frightened to look for the truth. If you tell people to be afraid all the time, eventually
they start to believe they need to be.” He looked at the group in the control booth. “Let me show you something.” He led the way down the hall to Edit Bay 10. “I imagine the world will be surprised to hear from us. I hope, over time, people will learn from what has happened here.”
Careen pointed at one of the monitors. “Look! That’s in OP-439, where I went to school.”
He pushed a button to unmute the sound. “It must have just happened.”
“This is Jeremy Howard, reporting live from inside the history building at the university in OP-439. Student activists who have been rounded up and Linked because of their so-called criminal activity are barricaded inside one of the lecture halls with a number of their classmates, who are the children and grandchildren of high-ranking government officials.
“Have the activists taken hostages? The answer is no. Here’s the twist in the story: I’ve been told that all of these individuals have been involved in CXD from its inception, and have all been arrested since the Linking began. Those related to government officials, however, are exempt from being Linked, and have not been penalized. They stand in solidarity with their classmates who have been flagged as dissidents, and are sending a message to the country’s lawmakers calling for the complete disbandment of the Link program.”
Pete tapped another monitor. “Looks like the guys make it back and got the rest of the story over at the Capitol.”
They watched in silence as people streamed out of the building. The helicopters shined spotlights down on the scene. The producer who had been with them earlier took on Pete’s role and held out a microphone. “Can you tell us what’s going on?”
“Yes. I’m Senator Brandon Renald. The coup is over. Congress just voted unanimously to eliminate the OCSD. A task force will be assembled to oversee the transition. We feel confident that we’ve made the right decision as we head into 2035. Oh, and the State of the Union address has been postponed. Happy New Year.”