by Kyle Andrews
He was a nice guy. Rose liked him a lot, when he wasn't ruining her party.
She locked a steely gaze on Baxter as he approached Paul, hoping to warn him off of sending Paul out on a mission in the middle of their celebration. She was not successful.
“Mek wanted me to tell you to head out to the stadium. We need to see what's happening out there.”
Paul looked at Baxter with a questioning expression. Baxter responded by gesturing toward a TV and saying, “The game was cut off before it began. Nobody knows why, because we don't have anyone feeding us intel from the stadium. We need you to do that for us. Please.”
Paul smiled at Baxter and said, “You're not supposed to say 'please' when you're giving someone an order.”
“The last time I tried giving one of your people an order, they almost put me through a wall.”
Rose nodded and said, “So I put her through a wall. Problem solved. When do we leave?”
Paul and Baxter both looked at Rose as though she were insane. She turned her steely glare toward Paul, silently insisting.
Paul shook his head.
Rose nodded hers.
Paul narrowed his eyes and nodded toward the cast on her arm.
Rose smirked. A stupid cast wasn't going to stop her.
“You're not cleared yet,” Paul finally said to her.
“I'm fine.”
“You have that thing on your arm for another week.”
Rose turned toward Baxter and asked, “When do we leave?”
Paul turned toward Baxter and said, “I'm on my way.”
Baxter nodded at Paul, avoiding eye contact with Rose as he walked away from them.
“I have to go,” Paul told Rose. “I'd make a joke about having dinner ready by the time I get home, but I can see that you have a knife on you, so I won't do that.”
“Cook your own damn dinner. I'm going with you.”
Paul leaned in and gave Rose a kiss on her forehead before saying, “I love you. I'll be back soon.”
He walked away, and that was it. There was no argument. There was no discussion. He simply walked away from her, and it pissed Rose off.
What pissed her off even more was knowing that he wasn't doing anything wrong. It would do more harm than good for her to go out there when she wasn't at a hundred percent.
Rose wanted to slam her fist into a wall, but doing so would probably not help her recovery time. All she could do was stand there and watch as Paul left for his mission.
8
Years earlier, Justin witnessed another riot. That night, people seemed to be causing chaos just for the sake of causing chaos. Many didn't have a side in the battle, they just wanted to set fires and see what burned.
The stadium was different. There weren't any people urinating on police cars. These were people reacting to whatever it was that they saw happen inside. Some were trying to run for their lives, knowing that the situation was horrible. Others were fighting mad, ready to wage war right then and there.
If Justin had his choice, he would have blown his cover and fought alongside those people, but he couldn't do that. He couldn't sacrifice years of undercover work and all of the information that he might be able to feed to Freedom for this. Instead, he had to go in the opposite direction. He had to fight those people that he supported. He had to beat them. He had to stand up for the evil in the world, for the sake of the greater good.
There was rationalization for all of this in his head. Duty. Honor. But at the end of the day, he was just fighting for the wrong team. There was no getting around that.
As Justin pressed through the crowd, people were grabbing at him and trying to hit him. He countered several punches by throwing his attackers to the ground. He slammed one man's face into a glass trophy case, shattering the glass and causing the man to bleed everywhere.
There was no more using the baton. The closer that Justin got to section one of the stadium and to the VIPs who entered their box through a staircase in that area, the more violent the crowd became. HAND officers were shooting people on the spot, for posing a threat to a public official—and some probably just for declaring their objection to the authorities. If Justin approached the area with only his baton drawn, he would have looked like an idiot, so he pulled his gun and he took aim at anyone who HAND would deem a threat. He shot, praying each time that his aim would be true and that he wouldn't actually kill anyone.
There was no instruction manual for what he was doing. There hadn't been any real training for what he was supposed to do when faced with a situation like this. Looking back, Aaron hadn't properly prepared Justin at all, and every single day of his life now was spent wondering if he should have done something differently. Should he have arrested the people that he arrested? Should he kill, just to protect his cover? How was he supposed to know where that line was?
Every time he pulled his gun, he heard his HAND instructors' voices in his head, telling him that he was the authority. To enforce the laws of the nation. To protect the values that had been forced into his mind since he was a little kid. His instinct was to shoot those who would defy the system, because that was the instinct that had been programmed into him, and there was no counter-programming. There was no Freedom brainwashing flashing keywords like loyalty and duty into his brain, pushing him to act without thinking. Every second of his on-duty life was spent trying to counteract that brainwashing. Telling himself that he was Freedom and that Freedom would prevail.
It was an impossible struggle. If those thoughts caused him to hesitate at the wrong moment, or if anyone saw a glimpse of doubt in his eyes as he pursued a Freedom member, everything that he worked for would be lost.
But how could he remain true to his cause while working for the enemy?
Year after year of working for HAND, day after day of fighting this battle within himself, and it never got easier. If anything, he was worried that he was beginning to break. Not that he would reveal his true beliefs to his HAND superiors, but that his true nature would crumble beneath the programming and he would do something truly horrible. If he hadn't already. He honestly didn't know anymore. He just prayed that it would be worth it in the end. That the supplement deliveries that he helped to stop would make a difference. That the Freedom members that he saved from being arrested would make up for those that he couldn't help and those that he arrested himself.
He told himself that they would have been arrested anyway, with or without him, but he knew deep down inside that one person does make a difference. He just hoped that his good outweighed his bad when all was said and done.
So, here he was. In the middle of a crowd of Freedom sympathizers who wanted to kill the leaders of their city and state. Fish in a barrel. How could he miss them without looking like he wanted to miss them?
He squeezed off a shot, which narrowly missed one man and ripped into the wall behind him. The man looked at Justin and then ducked out of the way.
Another man moved toward the VIP area, and Justin took careful aim, hoping to miss the man entirely, but he wound up hitting the man in the arm. It was probably non-lethal. At least, that was what Justin hoped.
There was no way to keep shooting through a crowd of people without mortally wounding someone. Other HAND officers could shoot in any direction that didn't risk harm to one of their own, and they didn't have to think twice about it. Justin tried his best to appear as indifferent as them, but it was hard.
Up ahead, Justin saw a line of HAND officers pushing back on the crowd with shields, making room for the VIPs to hurry out of the stadium and back to their cushy luxury vehicles, which would take them back to their cushy luxury homes or hotels.
As the first man in a business suit moved from the VIP box, the crowd surged forward, screaming and swinging. The man wasn't familiar to Justin. He was probably an adviser of some sort, or perhaps just an aid. The HAND officers who were trying to keep the crowd back could barely manage to do their job when this man passed. There was no way that they wo
uld be able to keep the path clear for very long.
Two young, well dressed women hurried from the box next. They were holding onto each other and running through the crowd, keeping their heads down. They looked terrified.
A man tried to punch Justin. Justin grabbed his arm and twisted it around his back, pulling until it popped. The man screamed in pain and Justin kicked him to the ground, hurting but alive.
As Justin turned to see if anyone else was coming at him, he saw two men preparing to make their attempt. Behind them, Sim and three other HAND officers were fighting off civilians of their own. There was no clear shot, thank God.
Justin used the butt of his gun to take out the first man, then elbowed the second in the face. He grabbed the second man and threw him into the first. As they fell, they took down two more civilians.
Once again turning toward the VIP section, Justin saw a handful of men rushing though the protected path. Civilians were throwing bottles and food at them, but the men made it outside safely. Justin couldn't see what awaited them outside, but he could hear sirens and gunshots, and yellow smoke was blowing through the open doors.
Two hand officers came from the VIP box next, followed by two men in black suits—possibly Secret Service agents, in charge of guarding the VIPs. It was obvious that the Mayor and Governor would be coming out next.
The crowd's screams grew louder. Their pushing grew more violent. Mayor Northfolk was escorted through the crowd with a bulletproof vest protecting his chest and a helmet to protect his head. Agents surrounded him while HAND officers cleared the way forward.
The crowd lunged toward him and the wall of HAND shields began to waver. Justin began to make his way forward without even realizing it. He was moving toward the violence which he knew would only be getting worse.
Governor Garrison moved through next, with similar security surrounding him. As he passed, the wall of shields failed and the crowd began to move forward.
Agents grabbed the Governor and pulled him out of the building, and the crowd of people grew more violent in his wake.
The HAND officers with the shields tried to maintain order, but their effort was fruitless.
Another security team tried to make its way from the VIP box, but the first HAND officers to come through were attacked by citizens, and the two Secret Service agents were overwhelmed by the swarm as well.
Behind them, Justin could see a young man in casual clothes being pulled into the crowd, which piled on top of him. Justin moved forward as quickly as he could, shoving people out of the way as he moved. Men tried to block Justin, but he pushed through them, slamming the butt of his gun or his elbow into their faces.
There were other HAND officers behind him, trying to move forward with Justin, but most of them were too far away to help shield him from the blows of the people around him.
As he got closer to the man who was being attacked by the crowd, a glass bottle struck Justin across his brow. He could feel the blood pouring from the wound and his vision blurred for just a moment, but he couldn't slow down. He had to keep pushing forward. He needed to get to the man who was under attack.
Why? Why shouldn't he let the man suffer? It was a question that passed through Justin's mind for a fraction of a second, but he couldn't entertain the idea of letting the man die by the hands of the civilian mob. Failing to do his job would serve none of his objectives.
In front of Justin, a HAND officer was struck over the head with a mop handle. Though the officer was wearing a helmet, he stumbled, leaving himself open for attack. Justin might have been able to step forward and save the man, but he didn't. Instead, Justin kept pushing through the crowd with one single objective: to save the man who had come from the VIP box. If he worked toward this goal, he could avoid randomly shooting innocent civilians, he could allow HAND officers to be taken down, and no matter what else happened, he could simply tell his superiors that he was fighting to secure a VIP. Anyone from the elite class was a priority for HAND, especially if they were connected to the office of a powerful political figure. Whether Justin saved this man or not, he was a good enough excuse.
The HAND officers who had been forming the wall of shields were now scattered through the area, being pulled away by civilians who wanted to tear them apart. Any officer or agent who might have been able to help the man on the ground was distracted by the violence around them, leaving the man vulnerable.
As Justin got close, he could see the man curled up into a ball on the ground, protecting his head with his arms. There were people ripping at his clothing, kicking him and spitting on him. Around these people, HAND officers were fighting. Justin could holster his gun without drawing attention to himself, so he did. Then he pulled out his baton. If he had to beat the crap out of a civilian, it was a better option than shooting them in the head.
Now close to the man on the ground, Justin swung his baton with purpose, striking one man across the face, another in the chest and sweeping the legs out from under him, all in one fluid motion.
People tried to swing makeshift weapons at him, but Justin blocked their attack and countered with his baton. He hit hard and he didn't hold back. Anyone he took down with the baton was better off going down by his hand than that of another officer.
Standing over the man on the ground, Justin turned to fight off more of the attackers and found that Sim, and two other HAND officers, had followed him through the crowd and were fighting off citizens.
“Get him out of here!” Sim called to Justin.
As a man from the crowd charged toward Justin, Sim took aim and shot the man dead.
Sim looked back to Justin and yelled, “Go!”
Justin bent down and grabbed the arm of the man on the ground. The man flinched at Justin's touch and didn't uncover his face to see that it was a HAND officer and not another angry civilian.
“You need to get up now and come with me, sir,” Justin ordered the man.
After hearing Justin, the man finally looked up. He had blood on his face and fear burning through his icy blue eyes. He looked vaguely familiar, but Justin didn't have time to figure out who this man was. He pulled on the man's arm and got him to his feet.
As a woman pushed her way through the crowd, screaming and trying to get at the man, Justin deflected her and shoved her to the ground. He pulled the man forward, fighting off person after person who was getting in their way. Fortunately, Justin had help from other officers, because there would have been no way for him to make it through the doors any other way.
Outside, Justin expected to see a mob just as thick as the one that he's been fighting through inside, but instead he found room to breathe as he exited the building.
The citizens from the stadium who were not fighting for Freedom's cause had flooded out of the stadium. When they reached fresh air, most of them ran for home as quickly as possible. Now there were only the sympathizers who were staying behind, fighting against whatever they had witnessed. Justin still had no idea what had set this whole thing off, though he suspected the worst for that poor little girl.
Yellow smoke hung heavy in the air outside of the stadium, keeping Justin from seeing very far in front of him, and probably keeping most of the angry mob outside from seeing him leave the building with another VIP.
Those who did see him moved forward, and Justin fought them off as best he could, while taking several hits to the face and body along the way. Other HAND officers were fighting to clear the way for him, but they couldn't stop everyone, and Justin couldn't defend every angle of attack.
As they moved toward the edge of the smoke, Justin looked for one of those luxury vehicles that all of the VIPs had arrived in, but none were waiting for the man that he was escorting out.
Looking for another option, Justin happened to glance across the mostly-empty parking lot and he spotted a man observing the scene from a distance. It was a familiar face. A friend. Paul.
Seeing Paul standing out there threw Justin off for just a second. It might h
ave been a more effective blow than any of the punches or kicks that had been directed at him inside of the stadium.
Paul saw Justin too, and for one very brief moment, they locked eyes. Then Justin saw Paul stiffen. A fraction of a second later, something struck Justin in the head. Colors flashed across his eyes and he suddenly felt the ground beneath his knees.
The screech of tires. Some muffled yelling, and the man next to Justin was yelling back. Justin couldn't make out the words that they were saying, but he heard gunshots just before he felt the impact of his face on the cement.
9
“Mig!”
The sound of Mek's thunderous voice could be heard from across the Campus. He wasn't happy, which wasn't entirely unusual, but he was usually a little bit more subtle with his anger.
Collin was working in his office when he heard Mek yell, and though there was nothing to indicate that he was involved in any way, he felt a need walk out into the hallway and see what was going on. It could have been his journalistic instinct kicking in, or maybe just the tone of Mek's voice, but if Collin didn't figure out what was wrong, it would drive him crazy all day.
He walked to the doorway of his office and looked into the hallway. Mek was walking past his door just as Collin reached it, and he shot a glare toward Collin.
“Did you know about this?” Mek asked Collin in a surprisingly quiet tone, which somehow made Collin feel even more worried.
Collin narrowed his eyes and said, “What?”
Mek was about to answer Collin when Mig approached. She did not look any more happy than Mek did as she said, “You need to stop your bellowing.”
Mig looked Mek squarely in the eyes, without a hint of intimidation reading on her face. There weren't many people that Collin knew of who could endure Mek's anger with such grace, but Mig did it. She didn't even seem surprised by it.