by Kyle Andrews
Dor pulled back on her emotions and tried to see things from Collin's point of view. He was protective of her because he had always had to be. She had no family left, and when he found her in that HAND vehicle, she was nothing but a scared little girl who was about to have horrible things happen to her. Even when he brought her back to the Campus, she needed to depend on Collin and Mek—and to a lesser degree, Tracy—more than she relied on anyone else. Nobody there knew her back then, or what she believed. She didn't even know. And the people who brought her in were responsible for raising her. Because of them, she became the person that she grew up to be.
Approaching it from that point of view, she told Collin, “I love you, Brother Bear. You taught me everything that I know. Everything that I actually know to be true in this world is because you show it to me. The reason why I even want to spread this truth is because you inspired me. You taught me that this is a war that we all have to fight, and we all have to fight it as hard as we can. No holding back. No compromise. That's why I can't sit here and watch it all happen. I need to be there. I need to see it. I need to document it. Because if I don't—if we don't—who will build tomorrow's library? Who will tell people how it all happened?”
The thing about Collin was that his first instinct was always to protect Dor. She suspected that it was because he had lost his own sister and she was some sort of placeholder. But Collin wasn't irrational. He could be spoken to and reasoned with.
The way he was looking at her changed. It shifted from the look that he gave her when she was trying to skip out on her homework, to something else. It took Dor a moment to understand what that look in his eye was. She finally settled on pride.
“You know the plan?” he asked her.
“I do.”
“You know that you don't know how to fight or use a gun?” he asked her.
“I know that I'm not nearly as skilled in these departments as Mek would like.”
“No heroics. You document.”
Dor nodded and put her arms around Collin.
As she hugged him, she said, “You keep changing the world like this, and people are gonna want to build a statue or something.”
“If we do this right, people are going to be too busy building things for themselves to think about me.”
He patted Dor on the back and she pulled back, smiling at him. She knew how long he had been waiting for a day like this to arrive, and to see him ready to rally the troops almost brought tears to her eyes. Luckily, she held them back.
Tracy grabbed a camera from one of the shelves in the back of the room and handed it to Dor. While she might not know anything about guns or fighting, Dor knew this camera like the back of her hand. Holding it made her feel like the person that she wanted to be.
“Stay safe,” Collin told both Dor and Tracy as they headed for the door.
Both women responded with a quick wave of acknowledgment.
Once they left Collin's office, they walked straight out of the Campus. The air outside was cool, with a gentle breeze blowing. The sky was clear of clouds, though never really clear of drones. It was deceptively quiet outside. Most people had gone home for the night and were probably either sleeping or watching TV. Curfew was still in place, but it wasn't followed nearly as well as it had once been, so there was a straggler here and there. If a HAND vehicle drove by, those people would surely duck out of the way, but until that happened, they wanted to feel free. A moonlit stroll gave them that feeling.
Sometimes freedom came at a price. People were arrested for breaking curfew all the time. Some of them were Freedom members, but most were not. Most were just normal people whose only act of rebellion was to walk outside when they weren't supposed to. For that, they lost everything.
As she and Tracy walked down the nearly-empty sidewalk, they didn't talk. They moved through the night as they always did, from shadow to shadow, trying not to be seen or heard. It really didn't matter anymore, but this was how they were used to doing it.
Dor had to wonder how long it would take people to break the habits that were born of captivity. How long before they would sleep soundly? How long before they would eat a meal without wondering if they would be allowed to have another?
Though nobody was supposed to be out on the streets at this time of night, the large video monitors that were hung on the sides of buildings all across the city were still flashing with pictures of helpful HAND agents, and happy citizens getting food or medical care from their loving authorities, while phrases like 'LOYALTY IS REWARDED' and 'YOUR GOVERNMENT CARES' attempted to reenforce the lessons that had been drilled into the heads of every citizen since birth.
Considering what was about to happen, Dor suspected that the lessons never really took. Perhaps slogans like 'WE WILL KILL YOU IF YOU SPEAK OUT OF TURN' would have been more to the point.
Some of the monitors were displaying local news programs. Many of them were tuned into KCTY. Dor kept her eyes on those monitors as she and Tracy moved toward the HAND building.
Any minute now, everything would change.
26
Justin sat in his bed, staring at the window. The lights were on in his hospital room, so Justin could see more of the room than of the night outside. He kept his eyes on the glass because he didn't want to look at or talk to anyone else in the room.
Sim had left a little while earlier. He went home to get some rest, leaving Justin alone with his thoughts. The supplements were still sitting on the table beside his bed. He could only put off taking them for so long before someone noticed, but he wasn't sure that he could do it anymore. He was starting to forget what the world was like when he could feel it. He worried that at some point, all of the things that he did as a HAND officer would stop bothering him. He was already beginning to wonder how much of it he truly felt and how much was remembered from before.
As he sat there, staring at the reflection of his hospital room in the glass, Justin's mind wandered back to the people who were screaming and fighting at the stadium. He was one of them. The blood that they shed should have been his own. The lives lost should have been his.
Six years. For what? What had changed?
His eyes moved toward the TV, where another news broadcast was airing.
“Authorities are releasing more information about the events that took place earlier today, preventing the final game of this football season. According to statements released earlier tonight, a power generator at the stadium caught on fire, cutting power to the stadium. Witnesses at the scene tell us that the stadium went dark for several seconds, until emergency lights came on and the crowd was told to leave in an orderly fashion.
“Though some have told us that several rowdy fans were taken into custody, authorities report that the evacuation was mostly uneventful and that the game will be rescheduled. We will have more information on the new date for the game as soon as it is decided.”
Uneventful? Justin couldn't believe how blatant the lies were anymore. Here he was, sitting in a hospital that was full of injured HAND officers and government officials, and the news was reporting that nothing had happened at all. They didn't even try to come up with a more believable lie.
The sadder part of this was that many of the citizens watching at home would believe the reports without question. They wouldn't care if there was information that proved the official reports wrong. They wouldn't care if their neighbors didn't come home from the game. They would believe the lie just because it was easy to walk through life without questioning what they were told to believe.
Croy Fisker now had a park named in his memory. Little children dug around in sandboxes and played on slides in a place that was named after the guy who tried to rape and kill one of Justin's friends.
Beta Winston had been at the groundbreaking ceremony, giving a speech about the memory of a boy named Croy Fisker, whose goal in life was to finish school and work hard to give back to the community that had raised him.
For a long time after Rose kil
led Croy in self defense, the authorities told the citizens of the city not to let the acts of one racist murderer destroy their community. They told those citizens to remain calm, and that such acts of racism would not be tolerated by the authorities.
In telling the citizens to remain calm, the authorities bred anger. In telling them not to be angry at the racists, the authorities created the racists. They created a divide that kept many citizens from realizing that they were all being equally oppressed by the authorities who claimed to care for them.
Hate and hostility kept the citizens from banding together. Justin would have loved to believe that such a plan would never work and that his people would rise up against this government, but it hadn't happened in six years. There was no reason for him to believe that the plan of the authorities hadn't worked.
He didn't want to wallow in self pity. He didn't want to brood and cry, but Justin was starting to wonder what the hell was taking Freedom so long. He had spent six years working for the enemy, feeding information back to Freedom. Six years. He didn't even care about his own life anymore. That had been thrown away long ago, but he signed onto this mission in order to change the world. When would that happen? How much longer would Freedom sit on their asses while he went on destroying lives and arresting good people?
Where was the change that he was promised?
Justin closed his eyes, wishing that he could drown out the world around him, but there was no hope of that. He could still hear the TV. The reporters were still telling lies and people were still believing them.
Then there was static.
The reporter was gone.
Justin opened his eyes.
27
Marti was sitting in Geo's room. Her tea had gone cold long ago, and the cup was now resting on a table in front of her. She was playing with it as she spoke with Geo.
“Tell me about your life,” she said to him, as though she cared how the elite class lived.
“What about it?”
“I don't know. Tell me what it's like to be famous.”
Geo laughed. He was sitting in a chair on the other side of the room, watching her fingers as she pushed the cup around.
“I'm famous?” he asked.
“Governor's son. You were on the cover of a magazine once, I think.”
Wincing, Geo said, “Don't remind me. I didn't approve their use of that image.”
“Why not? Ashamed of being one of the most eligible bachelors in the country?”
“That's an exaggeration. It was only a statewide magazine.”
“I stand corrected, sir,” Marti nodded. She then said, “What is it like, growing up the way you did?”
“Not very different than the way you grew up, I guess.”
Marti couldn't suppress her laugh. It caught her completely off guard, and she hated herself for not catching it.
“Nobody's life is perfect,” Geo told her.
“No?”
“Tell me about your life.”
Marti hesitated. Obviously, she wasn't going to tell him about her life. About the parents who raised her—two of them, which was a rarity in and of itself. She wasn't going to mention being a part of Freedom, and hating everything that people like Geo Garrison did to her kind. She wasn't going to mention how the love of her life was gunned down for having the wrong DNA, or how she had seen the video of his death replayed thousands of times over the years. She wouldn't mention how seeing it killed a little piece of her humanity every single time.
And obviously, she wasn't going to tell him that she sometimes poisoned patients because she couldn't stand the thought of their living for one more day.
The fact that Geo even asked the question made Marti hate him, because he didn't care about her or her people. To him, those stories would be an amusing little bedtime story, just like the one he would eventually tell all of his friends back home, about how he befriended a commoner. How charitable of him. How down to earth.
She wanted to kick him in the face. Fortunately, she had learned to restrain herself. Most of the time.
“I went to school. I got assigned to nursing school. I wound up here,” Marti told him, looking him squarely in the eyes as she did.
Geo returned the look and nodded, “I went to school. I more or less got assigned to working in a political office. I wound up here.”
“More or less?”
“I didn't have a choice. My parents decided for me.”
Marti wanted to go off on him right there. Being a snotty little mama's boy wasn't nearly the same thing as having all of your rights stripped away and being forced into labor.
The longer she stayed in the same room with him, the closer she felt she was getting to losing her temper. She needed to find a way to diffuse the situation.
She smiled. That always seemed to help. Then she stood up and stretched her legs.
“Are you okay?” Geo asked her.
“Yeah. I'm just not used to sitting for so long. My life is always go-go-go.”
Geo nodded, but didn't say anything to her. She was worried that he felt her pulling away, which could complicate her attempts to get closer to him.
Trying her best to put on one of those cute, coy expressions that were always useful, Marti asked, “Are you hungry?”
“What?”
“I need to stretch my legs. I should probably check on another patient or two. But I could also go for some food, so I was thinking of swiping a tray.”
“I could order something.”
Yes. He could. The poor, abused son of a bitch.
“Where's the fun in that?” Marti asked, turning toward the door. “So, should I grab enough for two?”
There was a delay. Marti's back was to Geo, so she couldn't see the expression on his face. He could have been fawning over her, or considering calling HAND officers to take her away for stealing food. She couldn't tell. The longer he stayed silent, the less sure she was about herself.
Finally, he said, “Grab enough for three. I'm starving.”
Marti looked over her shoulder and smiled at him as she walked out the door.
As soon as she hit the hallway, her smile dropped. All she wanted to do was find something to punch or kick. She needed to destroy something.
Walking along, she glanced into one of the other patient rooms. Inside, she happened to see that old, fat man from earlier. The Commissioner of Rehabilitation. The man in charge of torture and brainwashing.
His room was dark, but Marti could see the flickering of a TV screen in there. She could hear the sound of a news reporter, blabbing about some lie or another.
Marti stood there for a moment, considering her options. Finally, she walked down to a medicine cart that was sitting in the hallway. She swiped her ID badge and unlocked the drawers that contained vials of medications. She ran her finger along each of those vials, looking for just the right one to accomplish the job.
Finally, she grabbed her medication of choice and a syringe to go along with it. She stuck both inside her pocket and walked back to the Commissioner's room.
Quietly, Marti walked inside and closed the door behind her.
“Who's there?” the pig asked, sounding groggy.
“Just a nurse, Commissioner. I have some medication that will make you feel much better.”
Actually, it would make Marti feel much better. Not the part where she killed someone—the killing itself never gave her a thrill—but the part where she took someone like him out of the world forever. That part felt right and good.
She walked to the side of his bed and pulled the vial and syringe from her pocket. She unwrapped the syringe and filled it with the contents of the vial. It was a medication normally used on patients whose wounds wouldn't stop bleeding. A small amount would cause the bleeding to stop. A larger amount, when combined with some of the more common painkillers, would cause a blood clot to form. Eventually, the clot would travel to their lungs or heart, causing a sudden death.
In some patient
s, this would not be the best option. Marti only used this method on those who had the luxury of sitting around, growing fat. It would look more natural with them.
Marti moved the syringe to the Commissioner's IV tube. She was just about to kill the man when she heard a strange static sound from the TV.
She stopped and turned to look at the screen.
28
Rose drove the van across town, to an alley where several members of Freedom were waiting for her. When she arrived and pulled that van into the dark alley, she couldn't help but think of the first night that she had ever fired a gun.
A HAND officer was the first target that she had ever aimed for. It was an act of war. It happened in the heat of battle. It was Freedom versus HAND, and there was no real choice to make.
All of the rationalization she could ask for, but Rose could still hear the gurgle of that officer's blood as the woman choked it up. On that night, Rose killed a person for the first time. It wasn't something that she took lightly. It was what it was.
On that same night, Rose took a second life. This was not an act of war. This was not in the heat of battle. This was not Freedom versus HAND. It was one man, in a dark alley. On the news, he was an angel. In her memory, he was everything that ever went bump in the night. He was a dragon with fire breath, which she felt on her neck when he was on top of her. He was a werewolf, clawing and ripping. He was a vampire. He was a demon. He was a zombie.
Rose killed the bastard. She would do it a hundred times over too, but that death was not the same as taking the life of a HAND officer. She didn't see the HAND officer whenever she walked down a dark alley. She didn't feel sick at the memory of the HAND officer.
She wouldn't have described herself as a victim. She was a bad choice, made by a stupid, stupid man. She would never hide in fear. She would never allow herself to be traumatized by what might have been. But every time she entered a dark alley, Rose put her hand on her gun. Just in case.