by Kyle Andrews
Walking through the street, Rose started to pick up her pace. She moved past one group of people and toward another, hoping to get away from the building and to the roads that would lead her home.
A HAND vehicle drove past her as she went. When Rose saw it, she became very aware of the gun that she had tucked in her belt. She was worried that they would catch a glimpse of the gun and confront her, but the vehicle didn't slow down. It moved toward that group of people in front of her, and stopped as soon as it was close.
She untucked her shirt and used it to hide the gun.
HAND officers stepped out of the vehicle, followed by a man in a suit and tie. That was something that she didn't see every day.
Rather than hurry past that group as quickly as possible, Rose moved closer to it. Still keeping a safe distance, she stopped and surveyed the scene. There was a teenage boy, covered in blood, speaking with HAND officers. He looked visibly shaken as he answered their questions. He looked as though he'd been crying, but that was over. Now he was the dutiful citizen, answering to the authorities.
The crowd behind that boy was watching something that Rose couldn't see. They were looking ahead, standing on their toes to get a better view, and talking with each other as though something wonderful was going on.
Perhaps she could have gotten closer to investigate, but Rose decided to keep her distance. As long as she had that gun on her, she didn't want to be anywhere near a HAND officer.
She started to walk slowly, keeping her eye on the crowd while resuming her course toward the Garden. Her hands were sweating and she didn't even know why.
The crowd started to shift. Something was happening. Rose saw the man in the suit standing away from the rest of the crowd. He looked at his watch and then toward the crowd. After a moment, the people in the crowd had moved far enough apart to allow a gurney to be rolled toward the man in the suit. He straightened as it approached.
Rose couldn't see who was on the gurney, just the body bag that this person was being carried in. She watched as the gurney was brought to the man and he stood over the body. She watched as he unzipped the bag and pushed it wide open, but Rose couldn't see the face of the dead person.
She watched as the man in the suit reached into his briefcase and removed a tablet of some sort from it. He took the dead person's hand and placed it on the tablet. It was one of those genetic scanners that she'd heard about, but Rose still didn't understand why they would be scanning a dead body.
It wasn't until the man in the suit walked away from the body that Rose finally caught a glimpse of its face.
She felt as though a jolt of electricity was surging through her as she realized who this dead person was.
But it couldn't have been Libby. Libby was nowhere near that place. Libby was at the Garden. It couldn't have been her.
Rose turned away before anyone could see the tears in her eyes. She wanted to throw up, but she forced herself to move away as naturally as possible.
She remembered the look on Justin's face. He knew. And if he saw it too, that meant that Libby really was dead.
It felt like the ground was falling out from under her. Nothing was certain anymore. She had no idea what tomorrow would look like. The city might be in ruins by then. The Garden could be crushed by the loss of Libby. To Rose, the words contained in Libby's DNA weren't life-altering, but Libby still represented something important. She still mattered. What would happen when that was taken away from the people of Freedom?
She was almost scared to go back to the Garden. She didn't know what awaited her there. Everything was changing so fast that she wasn't sure whether or not she would be able to keep up with it.
Though Rose was thinking about the effects of Libby Jacobs' death on Freedom, the reality of her friend's death took longer for her to fully understand. She found herself thinking about telling Libby about the death of Libby Jacobs, and it took her a few seconds to realize that this obviously wasn't possible. It wasn't just the Freedom icon that died. It was Libby.
Swallowing hard and wiping tears off of her face, Rose stopped walking and turned around. She looked across the area, from face to face, searching for Justin. She needed to get to him. She needed to make sure that he was okay, because she realized that if Libby Jacobs was dead, Justin had nothing left to lose.
As she moved away from the HAND building, Rose left the comfort of the lights that bathed the scene in their warm glow. She hurried down a street which was lined with streetlamps, but several of them had been shattered. Large patches of the street were left in darkness.
Glancing across the street, Rose saw a food store which had been broken into. People were pouring in and out of the store like rodents. When they left, they carried armfuls of food. Some of them were attacked as they tried to get away, and other thieves attempted to steal what had already been stolen once.
Everyone was hungry in the city. Rose couldn't blame the people for wanting more than they had, but they weren't thinking about the people who would go entirely without food because of this. They weren't thinking about the children who would starve because of it. A price would be paid for the food that was being stolen, but the looters didn't consider that fact.
There was nothing for Rose to do for that situation. All she could do was keep her head down and try to get home in one piece, but the streets were dangerous.
As she hurried along through one of those patches of darkness, Rose came across something which she at first thought was an overturned garbage can on the sidewalk, but as she got closer, she realized that it was a woman.
Rose crouched by the woman's side, looking her over and putting two fingers to the woman's neck, to check for a pulse. There was none. Blood soaked the woman's hair. She'd been struck over the head and left to die.
Now sitting close to the woman, Rose could see past the oversized sweatshirt that hid a pregnant belly.
With her mouth falling open, Rose looked around the area, for someone to help her. She thought that there must have been something that they could do to help the woman, or at least help the baby. Maybe she could cut it out. Maybe if she did it fast enough, the baby would survive.
But she didn't have a knife, much less the medical skill that would be necessary to cut open a dead woman and deliver a baby. There was nobody in the area that would help her. There was nothing that she could do except put her hands on the woman's stomach and feel for the child's movement.
Tears were falling down Rose's cheek's as she sat on the sidewalk, trying to figure out some way to make this right, but she couldn't. Everything was wrong. Everyone was dying.
There was no movement from the baby. Rose pressed on the woman's belly, trying to get a response, but still there was nothing. She slapped the woman's belly, as one might do to an unconscious person when trying to wake them, but still there was nothing. She put both hands on the belly and tried to think of some way to make that baby not dead, but there was nothing that she could do. She was helpless.
The woman had a piece of a paper sticking out of her pocket. It was folded and stained with blood, but Rose could tell that it was one of the fliers that members of Freedom had been passing out around the city. The woman was sympathetic to the cause. Maybe that should have made her death more tragic to Rose, or more personal, but it didn't. The woman was dead. The baby was dead. It didn't matter what side she was on.
No matter where she turned as she crouched by that woman on the street, Rose saw violence. She saw looting and people assaulting each other. She saw fires. Looking upward, she could see apartments being robbed while their occupants watched helplessly.
The normal street, where normal people lived and went about their normal business, was even worse than the front of the HAND building. The people who were being oppressed by their government weren't turning against the people who had spent decades holding them down, they were turning on each other. They were hurting their own instead of attacking the enemy.
Rose forced herself to get back
up and keep moving. She needed to find Justin. She needed to tell Aaron what was happening, and figure out some way to turn this into something other than the horror that it was.
She needed to get back to the Garden as quickly as possible. Fortunately, Rose was a driver. She knew how to get a car when she needed one, and she knew how to drive it fast.
Moving down the sidewalk, Rose looked for the right car to take. There weren't many to choose from. A few businesses had delivery vans. A few buildings had cars parked in front. But she needed to find one that was out of the way, where she wouldn't be seen and nobody would be able to identify her.
She came across an alley where she could see a car parked, probably by an owner who wanted to keep it safely out of the way. The alley was dark. There were no cameras. It was the perfect car to take, so she started to walk down the alley.
A hand came out of the darkness and grabbed Rose's shoulder. She was pushed against the side of a building with her face toward the wall. She tried to pull away, but she couldn't.
Another hand was placed on her thigh. Adrenaline surged through Rose, even more strongly than when she'd faced down the HAND officer.
“Stop,” she said, but there was no response. She could feel someone's hot breath on the back of her neck and a chill ran through her spine. “Stop now,” she said, through gritted teeth.
Whoever this person was grabbed her by both shoulders and threw her to the ground. He turned her over, pinning her down.
“Help me!” she screamed. The sound echoed across the alley walls, but nobody came to her aid.
The man on top of her was nothing more than a shadow against the darkness. She couldn't see a single detail on his face. He could have been a demon for all she knew, partaking in the chaotic festivities.
He put a hand over her mouth, trying to stop her from screaming. Rose tried to turn her head away, but it was no use. So instead, she opened wide and bit down as hard as she could, driving her teeth deep into the man's hand.
He screamed in pain. Nobody came to help him either.
As he turned away from her, a hint of light reflected in his dark eyes, just enough to prove that he did in fact have eyes. Rose was still biting his hand. She planned to keep biting until he either released her or lost the hand entirely.
The man grabbed Rose by the hair and slammed her head against the ground. She saw a flash of light as it struck, though it was only in her mind. He slammed her head again and she could feel a haze creeping in around the corners of her brain. She released his hand from her mouth without even realizing it.
It couldn't end this way. She couldn't be taken down by some random animal on the street. She was Freedom. She would happily die for what she believed in, but she wouldn't die so that a sweaty, smelly, drugged up loser could get his jollies on with her corpse.
She struggled as hard as she could, twisting and turning and doing whatever she needed to do to break free, but she was trapped. He was bigger than her, and stronger than her. This was happening, and she was powerless to stop it.
Her heart was pounding so hard that her entire body was throbbing with each beat. She tried to breathe, but no matter how much air she took in, it never seemed like enough. Her mind was racing with things that she wanted to do—scream, kick, jab—but her body was trapped beneath this shadowy monster.
He looked her over, slowly, breathing almost as heavily as she was. His hands were sweaty as they pinned her wrists to the ground. His breath smelled like garbage and Coffite.
He pulled her right hand down to her side and pinned it under his knee. His left hand moved sloppily across her chest, groping her tentatively, as though he wanted to see what would happen when he did.
Rose continued to twist and struggle, but there was little for her to do. She managed to knock him off balance of a moment, but he quickly recovered. He even seemed to gain more confidence in himself, after thwarting her attempt to fight back.
He slid his hand downward and fumbled with the buckle of her belt, eventually unfastening it. The belt loosened. And that's when she heard it.
The sound of metal on pavement.
In that instant, the fog that had been suffocating her every thought was gone. She had clarity.
Her attacker, on the other hand, did not. He heard that sound, but had no idea what it was. He paused, struggling to identify the sound.
They locked eyes.
He could tell that she was hiding something.
As if someone had blown a whistle, they both began moving. They twisted and shifted, trying to keep each other from getting the gun, just as much as they were trying to get the gun for themselves.
For the longest time, neither of them had the upper hand. Both had a grip on the gun. Her attacker was stronger, so she couldn't turn the barrel away from her. It was pressed against her skin so hard that her teeth were digging into her cheek.
Her attacker tried to jerk the gun out of her grip, over and over again, slamming Rose's head into the pavement each time he did.
The fact that she never let go surprised even her. Rose knew that she couldn't out-muscle her attacker. There was no hope of overpowering him and taking the gun by force. It was only a matter of time before her muscles were too tired to continue with the fight. Her only hope was to jam her thumb behind the gun's trigger and hold on, no matter what happened.
Their feet were scraping on the ground as they pushed against each other, limbs wrapping around limbs. Knees were pressed into stomachs and groins. This was no longer about rape for either of them. Only one would be walking out of that alley. Only one of them would see daylight ever again. Only one of them would ever feel another moment without the threat of death looming over them.
As Rose struggled with her attacker, his shadowy form became the embodiment of all fear and death. This was the thing that took her parents from her. The thing that had taken good friends. The thing that had been stalking her ever since she first resisted the authorities.
Beneath her hands, she could feel the wet, slippery blood oozing from the hand that she had bitten earlier. She dug her free thumb into the wound, as hard as she could. Her attacker screamed in pain.
His grip loosened for a fraction of a second and Rose saw her opportunity. She moved as quickly as she could, shifting the position of the gun and wrapping her index finger around its trigger. In the blink of an eye, it was over.
The sound of the gunshot echoed off of the alley walls. The body fell on top of her. There was no more hot, stinking breath on her skin, just warm blood soaking into her clothes.
For several seconds, Rose couldn't move. She'd killed someone. Not a HAND officer. Not one of the oppressors that she had vowed to destroy. Not a demon. She had killed a citizen.
Maybe a normal person would have broken down right there. Maybe a proper citizen would have said that they were sorry over and over, or tried to save the man's life. But Rose wasn't sorry. She was just glad that she had the gun.
She pushed the body off of her and it fell onto the pavement, face up. Still, she couldn't see a detail of his face. All she knew was that he was the ugliest thing she had ever encountered, and she was glad that he was dead.
She could hear sirens in the distance. Lights were going on in the apartments above her. Someone could look out at any moment and see her, if they hadn't already. She needed to get out of there.
Forgetting about the car that she had intended to borrow, Rose pulled herself to her feet. She ignored the feeling that the world around her was spinning out of control and she ran as fast as she could through the alley, coming out on the side opposite of where she'd gone in.
She turned down the street, which was just as chaotic as the one she'd been down before, and she ran for the Garden. Nothing was going to stop her now.
5
The van that Collin was in had hit the open street and was driving as fast as it could while avoiding the occasional pedestrian who ran in front of it, or threw something into the side of it. His sewn-up wounds
were alternating between itching like nothing he'd ever felt before, and stinging as though he'd been swarmed by an entire hive of killer bees.
Mek turned up the radio, filling the van with reports of violence from around the city. HAND units were being called to apprehend suspected Freedom members. Police were responding to break-ins and beatings. The fire department was swamped.
As important as all of this was, the one thing that Collin lingered on as he sat in the van, listening to all of those reports was the fact that the HAND dispatcher had actually used the term 'Freedom' instead of 'Hate.'
Had it always been like that? There was no way for Collin to know. He'd never had access to a HAND channel before. He'd never listened in on their internal conversations about Freedom, but it seemed significant. If this were new, it meant that they could no longer ignore what was really happening. It meant that they were losing their hold on the news that was spreading throughout the city. If this were new, it meant that Freedom had finally made some progress.
“Unit ten-sixteen,” an operator said over the radio.
“Ten-sixteen,” a male replied.
“We need a transport for the coroner from his residence to the HAND building.”
Coroner? The word caught Collin's attention. Surely, any number of people had died in the riot that had broken out in front of the building, but he would have expected them to be hauled away like garbage. He would have expected their deaths to be recorded later, so the authorities would know who would and would not be showing up for work the next day.
It could have been nothing. Again, he didn't really know how their internal system worked, but Collin suspected that they were calling for a coroner to report to the building in the middle of a riot because there was someone important who had died. Was it the Mayor? Some high-ranking member of HAND?
The radio traffic turned back to the assaults and the fires, and all of the other hell that was being unleashed upon the city. Mek started to play with the dial, looking for something more interesting to listen to.
Tracy put her hand on Collin's shoulder. When he felt it, he jumped. His heart started pounding in his chest and every one of his wounds began to throb.