by Kyle Andrews
“Not yet,” Aaron replied.
Collin stepped closer to Simon's work station and watched as Simon tapped away at his keyboard. He then looked to Aaron, wondering if he should bother asking who their contact at the HAND hospital was. He decided against it. If they had wanted him to know, they would have told him.
“It's been too long,” Collin said to Aaron.
“How long do you suppose a mission like this should take?” Aaron replied, in a tone that was oddly comforting.
“Wait...” one of the tech guys said, and both Aaron and Collin moved toward that man's work station.
Collin didn't know this man well, if at all, but if he had information on Dor, this was Collin's new best friend.
“I'm getting something from their server,” the man said. He was staring at his computer as though it were about to launch into space, and then a smile began to form on his face.
“We have access,” Simon reported. “Everyone, get everything you can.”
Every one of Aaron's people began to type commands into their computers, drawing information as quickly as they could.
“She did it?” Collin asked.
“Looks that way,” Aaron replied.
Collin wanted to ask them if they had confirmation on Dor's exit from the building, but it wasn't as though they were in contact with their men in the field. There would be no confirming Dor's safety until she came through their front door.
“I found the stadium feeds,” Simon reported.
“Queue them,” Aaron ordered, then turned toward the door and yelled, “Someone get Mig in here!”
As the screens that hung on the walls began to switch over to paused video from the stadium, Mig and Mek hurried back into the office.
“Play the main feed. I want to see what happened to the Hollinger girl,” Aaron ordered.
Everyone moved closer to the monitors, as though moving closer would allow them to see more of the stadium. They each held their breaths as the video began, showing them footage that they'd already seen earlier.
Mandi Hollinger was at the microphone, nervously looking off to her side as she tried to remember the words to the pledge of allegiance. Collin found himself mouthing the words along with her, having seen this piece of the video so many times already.
But the video continued past the point where the broadcast had cut off. Now, everyone watched that scared little girl as she went on, “I... I mean... With liberty and justice for all.”
Collin gasped. Mig put a hand over her mouth. Mek closed his eyes and shook his head.
On the screen, silence filled the stadium. Mandi Hollinger knew that she'd said something wrong and she started to cry. She cried big tears which tore into Collin's soul.
Then there were two gunshots. Mek opened his eyes. Everyone was staring at the screen, wondering what was happening.
Mandi's head shot to her side and her sobs turned into silent screams as the girl's microphone was turned off.
The poor little girl knew that she had messed up, and now what? What did she see when she looked toward her parents?
The stadium erupted into more screams as the people in the crowd began to revolt against what had just happened. The blurred image of a uniformed HAND officer passed across the screen, grabbing Mandi and hauling her out of sight. All Collin could see now was Tash Parsins standing with a hand over her mouth, crying. The woman had no idea what was happening or where she was supposed to go.
Then the camera cut out. That was it. End of show.
“I need another angle. I want to see the parents. Tell me we have another angle,” Aaron said to Simon, who was typing even faster than normal on his computer.
Simon clicked through files and looked at bits of video on his computer without bringing it up on the big screen on the wall. “The must have been a hundred cameras in that stadium. I need more time to sort through all of them.”
“Isn't it obvious what happened to the parents?” Mig asked. “I want to know what happened to the girl.”
Mig was speaking directly to Mek now. Everyone knew what was happening to the girl. She would probably be taken to a holding facility, locked up where she couldn't be influenced by Freedom. Given the fact that the girl had spoken the true pledge, she would probably be taken to a reeducation facility, never to be heard from again.
Freedom didn't have much time to take action if they wanted to save Mandi Hollinger from that fate. They needed to find out where she was and they needed to get her out.
13
Marti and Justin weren't exactly a normal couple. They were friends. They were allies. They had seen their futures ripped away from them and loved ones slaughtered by the authorities. They could rely on each other and keep each other on course in ways that nobody else could.
After Justin was assigned to HAND, Marti lost contact with him. He went through training without any communication at all with Freedom, and he didn't get in touch with her once he got out. This was for the best. He couldn't talk to anyone from Freedom, aside from the prearranged methods of covert communications, or he would risk exposing them all. He was gone, and Marti had her own life and her own assignment to think about.
She had the option of refusing assignment and living in one of the Freedom bases full-time. Many members of Freedom chose this path, because it meant that they didn't have to answer to the authorities. They didn't have to report to jobs that they hated or live lives that they didn't choose. It was the easy way to live. The coward's way, as far as Marti was concerned. Those people could have worked their way into the system, giving Freedom access to every office in the city, from waste management to construction. Those people could have served the cause and allowed them to plant the charges that would eventually destroy the entire system. But most people didn't want to live the life of a spy. Even if they did agree to be assigned, they usually didn't work their job for the benefit of Freedom.
Marti was different than most of those people. Everything that she ever imagined wanting in her life was taken from her on the day that Uly was murdered. Every dream. Every hope. Though her parents assured her that she was young and would eventually move on and find someone new, Marti focused on Uly. She poured everything she had into hating the people who killed him.
That was a long time ago. She was older now. Wiser. She realized that maybe her parents were right. Maybe she would have broken up with Uly. Maybe the feelings that she'd had for him were the product of youth and hormones. Maybe her dreams were far fetched and unrealistic. But what she never lost sight of was the fact that whatever would have happened with Uly, he deserved better. The anger that she felt toward the people who killed him never went away, no matter how many years had passed. She wanted those people to suffer and die the way that she suffered and the way that Uly died.
Even before Uly's death, Marti had taken an interest in helping to treat the injured and sick. Whether it was part of the programming that she'd received in school or something deep within her, she didn't know or care. What she knew was that this was a practical skill that could be used to help people. She poured herself into learning how to do that work, hoping that she would be assigned to becoming a doctor, but she would settle for nursing.
When she first got out of training, she was assigned to a city hospital, where most people went to die. The walls were covered in mold. The ceilings were leaking. The equipment was usually not working and their access to supplies was limited to say the least. But Marti was good at what she did. She worked hard and she made people take notice of her abilities, all while managing to smuggle what supplies she could to Freedom.
When she ran into Justin on the street, she was surprised to find him with Sim. She wasn't sure how she should react to him. Sim knew that they knew each other, but they weren't supposed to be close. So, she made smalltalk and tried her best to avoid topics like Uly or Libby while Sim was around.
As the weeks passed, Marti ran into Justin and Sim more and more. Sometimes it was just Justin. Sometime
s when he was off duty. She could talk freely with him, and she realized that she was the first person that he'd seen in a long while who he could speak to as well. It took a lot of work to keep up the acts that they were putting on, so it was nice to have someone who understood.
They never really started dating. They never fell in love. They just went through the motions, so that the rest of the world wouldn't ask why they were seeing each other so much. They spent time with Sim, just like any friends would, only now they were hanging out in Justin's fancy HAND apartment. Marti assumed that the authorities wanted to keep their officers comfortable, so they wouldn't want to return to their former lives. It was a nice place.
Whether it was because of her own work or because someone noticed that she was spending time with HAND officers, Marti was eventually reassigned to the HAND hospital. The risk was greater, the work was less rewarding, but the benefit of the job was that she could gain intelligence for Freedom and smuggle much better supplies back to them.
She and Justin kept up the act of being in a relationship, so they could talk in his apartment after curfew. She slept there on many nights, and he slept in her new place as well. He never really said it out loud, but Marti knew that he had gone through the same thing that she did, watching someone he loved get killed and having everything he dreamed of in life die with her. They bonded over their experiences and the knowledge that neither one of them was in this fight simply for the sake of freedom. As nice a guy as Justin was, Marti knew that he wanted to see the authorities' world burn just as much as she did. There was no happy ending in either of their futures, and they wanted to make sure that the same was true for the people who did this to them.
Seeing Justin on that gurney, bloody and unconscious, made Marti realize just how much she'd come to depend on him. She loved him, even if she wasn't in love with him. Seeing him in that position and picturing all of the things that could go horribly wrong brought back all of those feelings that she'd felt when Uly died. The helplessness. The desperation. The fear. She'd done everything that she could to assess Justin's condition, but there was too much that she couldn't see.
Nobody cared that Justin was badly injured. They didn't care that he was her boyfriend. These were the people that she worked with for fourteen hours a day, six days a week, and they didn't care if someone she loved was dying right in front of her. He would have to wait for the VIPs to have their boo-boos kissed before a doctor would so much as shine a light in his eyes to see how his pupils reacted.
“Marti, he'll be okay,” Sim assured her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Justin is no weakling.”
She turned toward Sim, trying to think of what to do next, but she couldn't think straight. She asked him, “What happened out there? What really happened?”
Sim looked down and then glanced around the area as though he wanted to tell her everything, but he didn't. He just said, “The crowd got rowdy. Justin stepped in to save a man's life and wound up getting hit pretty bad.”
Justin's gurney had been moved to one of the walls, so that he would be out of the way when he died. Marti wanted to punch someone. She didn't know what to do or how to help Justin. She just knew that she had to.
Though she was panicking and obviously not in a happy place, one of the orderlies approached her with a tablet in his hand. He said, “Doctor Sampson told me that you had a patient who needs a head CT? Curtain three?”
Marti looked at the orderly and then to the curtained off area where the fat man with the scratched head was sleeping. She then nodded and put a smile on her face as she said, “Yeah. I was just bringing him up.”
“I can do that. It looks like you guys have your hands full down here,” the orderly replied.
“It's stressful, that's for sure. Umm... here. This is him. The doctor's swamped with the higher-up patients, so let me know as soon as you have the results and I'll get them to the doctor.”
The way she said it was effortless. She would have believed the lie herself, if she wasn't the one telling it. The orderly didn't think twice about what she was saying. He just grabbed Justin's gurney and started to move.
“Good luck,” the orderly said to her as he left. “I'd hate to be stuck down here today.”
Marti smiled and said, “Try not to fall asleep upstairs.”
And the orderly moved off, getting Justin the scan that he needed. He never even stopped to wonder why he was transporting a patient who obviously hadn't been treated yet.
Once he was gone, Marti turned to Sim. He stood silent, watching her as though he were waiting for her to say something, but what was she supposed to tell him?
“I should get back to work,” she said.
“You lied. If someone finds out...”
“Are you going to tell anyone?”
Sim didn't answer her, but she knew that he wouldn't. She took a deep breath and looked at him with a friendly expression as she said, “Justin needs that scan more than the guy in curtain three. I'm not denying anyone treatment that they need, I'm just being practical about the use of our resources in this time of crisis. The sooner that Justin is back on his feet, the sooner you guys have another officer back on the streets. Part of my job is managing the doctors. I do it all the time.”
She wasn't sure whether Sim believed what she was saying or if he were just willing to go along with it in order to help a friend, but he gave her a nod and took a step back, moving out of her way as she moved across the ER.
“Should I wait in here?” he asked her.
“There's a waiting room, through those doors over there. If it's too full and you don't want to deal with it, come find me. I might be able to hook you up with a lounge pass.”
“Breaking all the rules today?”
“Just the ones that don't suit me,” Marti smiled.
She was dangerously close to the truth with Sim, but she played it off as though she were just the concerned girlfriend, doing what she had to do. In those terms, he could probably understand her.
Sim was a puzzle to Marti. He was loyal to the authorities, without a doubt. He often spoke about Freedom in private and there didn't seem to be any love for them in his words. At the same time, he wasn't one of the mindless soldiers who marched up and down the street. He cared about people, if only a little. Marti wasn't sure what to do with that. She liked him well enough, but she couldn't allow herself to let her guard down around him, because when the day came that he would have to choose between his friends and his masters, she didn't trust the choice that he would make.
As she left Sim and tried to resume the appearance of a normal day on the job, Marti passed by the nurses station and looked over the tablets which contained patient charts. She was looking for the man who came in with Justin. The one who he'd nearly died for. The one who looked strangely familiar to her, but whose face she couldn't quite place.
She looked through all of the charts and skimmed through information on a number of the patients, but she couldn't find him. The doctor must still be evaluating the man, which meant that Marti might be able to slip into the room without drawing too much attention to herself. She wanted to know who he was, because she needed to find out if he was worth everything that had happened to Justin.
Putting down the last of the tablets, Marti was just about to walk away from the nurses station and find that man when someone approached the desk.
“Nurse,” the man said, drawing Marti's attention.
She turned toward him with the sweet and caring expression on her face that she'd been mastering for years. She nearly lost control of that expression when she saw the man who was talking to her. Older, with a torn and dirty suit. A slight scratch to his cheek, just below his icy blue eyes—the same eyes as the man that Justin saved. Marti knew who this man was without a moment of uncertainty, and the sight of him made her want to vomit.
“I'm looking for my son,” the man at the desk said to her.
Forcing a smile, Marti said, “Of course, Governor.”
<
br /> 14
Dor was riding high on the wave of her success. She didn't know what the results of that success were at this point, but she knew that she'd gotten into the KCTY building and out of it without being shot, so she'd done her part. If they failed to get any useful information now, it was because of Simon's side of the mission.
She was rushing home from the station, hoping to sneak into the Campus and see Aaron before Collin knew that she was back. If she could find any morsel of useful information and spin it into a great story for the paper, maybe he wouldn't yell at her.
Dor had written for Collin before. Comic books mostly, but a few other short stories too. This mission was her chance to prove her worth to the Secret Citizen. She was grown up now and she wanted to be an active part of the fight for truth. Collin couldn't go out on the street as easily as she could. He had other reporters, but none of them had the same nose for news that he instinctively possessed. Dor did. She rarely needed Collin to explain his thinking to her, because she had grown up watching him work and she realized that it wasn't just about telling people about the facts, it was about listening to the people and understanding them. They would never accept the facts if they couldn't relate to the facts. The lies told by the authorities were usually much sweeter and easier to swallow than the cold and bitter truth. Packaging was everything.
She was keeping that last thought in mind as she got closer to the Campus. She needed to package her mission in a way that Collin would understand and accept. The key was to not draw any attention to herself until she was ready to present the story. The less he knew, the better.
As soon as she opened the door to the Campus, Dor could tell that something was wrong. People were running back and forth, from one office to another. Something had happened while she was away, but she didn't know what.
She could see Collin at the far end of the hallway, talking to Mig. Whatever had happened, it looked important. Collin was rubbing his temple, the way he always did when thoughts weren't coming to him as quickly as he would have liked. He shook his head, disagreeing with whatever Mig was saying.