The Secret Citizen (Freedom/Hate Series, Book 3)

by Kyle Andrews

  The hallway burst into another round of cheers. It seemed like as good a place as any to shut up and go back to being the quiet kid, sitting in the back corner of whatever room he happened to be in, hoping that nobody ever really noticed him. He turned and started to move back to Tracy when he heard a young man call to him from halfway down the hall.

  “Have you heard about Libby Jacobs?” the man asked.

  Collin turned around and thought for a moment before answering, “The Library? The girl with the microchip or whatever it was?”

  “She's dead.”

  There were no more cheers. The hallway was so silent that Collin could have sworn that his heartbeat would be heard on the far end of the hall. Tracy sighed, but said nothing. Everyone was waiting for Collin to say something. But what could he say? That it wasn't worth it? That he was a nobody and that he should have been left to die? That those people had organized a rescue that had obviously somehow resulted in the death of another person? A person with so much more to offer than he could ever hope to provide.

  What could he say?

  Collin took a step back, as though putting more distance between himself and those people would make it easier for him to think or feel. Of course, all it accomplished was his feeling stupid once again.

  He looked out across the hallway full of people, from face to face. He could see it now. He could see the slightest crack in their resolve. The hint of defeat where he had only seen joy and hope moments earlier. And they were all looking to him, waiting for him to say something that would make them feel better about this horrible tragedy.

  What could he say?

  “When I was hiding out, before I was captured...” he started, once again far too softly. He needed to raise his voice, but worried that it would break as he spoke. Starting over with more volume, he said, “When I was hiding out, I saw the news of Uly Jacobs' death on TV. I saw the reporters with that hint of excitement in their eye, salivating over the death of one of us. But his death drove me forward. It drove us all forward. It forced us to confront the truth about our situation and what must be done.

  “There's an old saying. 'Freedom isn't free.' It costs us far too much, whether we lose one life or a thousand, but we keep moving forward. We keep fighting. Because it is the right thing to do. Because we don't have a choice. We fight, because it's in our blood.”

  12

  The weird thing was, Rose liked Amanda. She didn't expect that. She went into Amanda's room expecting to find your typical loyalist; the person who was as passionately supportive of the government as Rose was opposed to it. But that wasn't what she found.

  Amanda wasn't a warrior. She wasn't an activist. She wasn't concerned with the future or the political landscape. She was just a woman, trying to get by in an impossible world. She had never known anything else. She had never imagined that anything else was possible. She was foolish as hell, in Rose's opinion, but she wasn't the bad guy.

  Then again, bad or not, people like her were the reason why the world was the way it was. Ignorance was no excuse. Complacency was the mother of all the world's troubles. But in that room, Amanda was just a sick woman who had been trying to do right by her daughter for many years, and who failed in the end.

  Rose couldn't see Amanda's face very clearly in the dark hospital room, but she could hear a shift in the woman's voice when she found out that her daughter was dead. That was the moment when Amanda died, and no amount of medication could save her. Everything that she had been living for was gone. After that, Amanda didn't care about Freedom or whether or not Libby was good or bad. Rose had expected anger and hatred, directed at the evil terrorists who got Libby killed, but Amanda didn't scream. That was harder for Rose to accept than any amount of vitriol that could have been spewed her way.

  There weren't many words after that. Rose sat with Amanda in the darkness. Perhaps she shouldn't have cared as much for this woman as she did. Maybe she should have had as much anger toward Amanda as she expected Amanda to have toward her, but as they sat in that dark room, the silence united them. They were the same when it came to the pain of losing someone that they both cared about. Good or bad, right or wrong, there were times when people were just people. It was easy to forget that fact when both sides were trying to destroy each other.

  It wasn't often that Rose felt a desire to spend time with her family. She never got along with her sister. They were as different as two people could be, and while Rose loved her niece, the girl was turning into the ideal citizen of a corrupt city. Rose could barely stand being in the same room with her niece at times. To see so much promise in the girl, and watch as it was thrown away.

  But in the darkness of that hospital room, as she sat with Amanda, Rose realized that there were some things that went beyond personality and life choices. As frustrating as she found her family, they were her family. On some level, they were her reason for fighting—Or, one of her reasons.

  When she thought about what had happened to her the night before, she couldn't help but wonder how her sister and niece would react if things had gone differently. If she hadn't taken the gun from that HAND officer. If she hadn't pulled the trigger. If her attacker had managed to finish whatever he'd set out to do and left her dead in the alley.

  She thought about all of the things that would go unsaid between herself and her family, and it broke her heart. She might have hated her sister at times, but she never stopped loving her.

  After a while, Amanda fell asleep. She could have been pretending, just to get rid of Rose, but Rose stayed in the room with her anyway, listening to the sound of the woman breathing. Amanda was sick—probably dying. She had been unconscious for days. Breathing didn't come easily to her, and Rose found herself listening closely in between breaths, wondering if there would be another.

  She stayed there for a while, just listening. It didn't feel right to tell someone that their daughter was dead and then just leave, but what more could Rose do? There was no way to make this day easier for Amanda. There was no making this right.

  Finally, after listening to this relative stranger's breathing for far too long, Rose walked out of the dark room and into the brightly lit hallway outside. She closed the door behind her and just stood there for a moment, trying to figure out what came next. Where did she go now? What did she do?

  Officially, she was supposed to be waiting tables at a restaurant that was about a mile and a half away, but she wasn't going to work. If anyone asked, she would tell them the truth. She was attacked during the riot and couldn't make it. If anyone gave her grief over that excuse, she'd shoot them in the face with her shiny new gun.

  Okay, probably not that last part. Still, a girl could dream.

  She walked into the main lobby of the Garden, where people were scurrying around, making notes of news reports and comparing those notes with witness accounts. As soon as she was spotted, one of the other residents of the Garden walked over to her, holding a clipboard and flashing a warm smile. Her name was Gracie. She was a small, light-haired woman, in her early 30's, but she looked like a teenager. Rose knew Gracie, but not too well.

  “Feeling better?” Gracie asked with genuine concern, though Rose knew that she was only getting the pleasantries out of the way so that they could get down to business.

  “Much. Thanks. You want my report, right?” Rose answered.

  Gracie nodded and scrunched her nose as she said, “I know you'd probably like more time, but I kinda have to.”

  “I get it. No problem,” Rose agreed, and she started to tell Gracie everything she remembered about the night before. She started with her arrival at the HAND building, moving through the crowd. The smoke. The violence. Her quarrel with a HAND officer, whose gun she ended up taking. She told Gracie all about seeing Libby's body, and the last time she saw Justin.

  “Has he reported in, by the way?” Rose asked.

  Gracie shook her head and said, “No. But Marti went over to his place to make sure he's okay. I guess he's pr
obably taking it hard.”

  “Probably.”

  “What happened to you after you left the HAND building?”

  As Gracie asked the question, Rose's eyes drifted over to one of the TVs, where a reporter was once again standing in the alley where she was attacked and wound up killing her attacker.

  Gracie turned to look at what Rose was watching and then turned back to Rose saying, “It's horrible. Kids like that had no business being out there, you know? But the Mayor turned a public execution into a spectacle that everyone wanted to see, and this is what we get for it. Apartments being broken into and people being strangled to death for their food. Kids like this, lying dead in the street. They say he once raised a family of kittens when the mother cat abandoned them.”

  “The kid was a rapist,” Rose blurted, catching Gracie off guard. “Or, an aspiring rapist anyway.”

  She'd been trying to think of her attacker as simply a mugger or a murderer, but there was no way to avoid the facts. She knew what Croy Fisker wanted from her in that alley, and it wasn't her wallet. There were already enough people avoiding the truth about him. She wasn't going to do the same.

  “What?” Gracie asked, in a somewhat startled tone.

  “He was the bastard who attacked me and slammed my head into the ground, trying to kill me. I'd happily shoot him again if I had the chance,” Rose told Gracie. “Be sure to write that down. And if you see Aaron, tell him that I will want my gun back. Lord knows, I earned it.”

  She then walked away, leaving Gracie behind as she made her way toward the Garden's exit. It wasn't that she was angry with Gracie necessarily, but she couldn't believe that members of Freedom would buy into the news reports—any news reports. They should have known better by now. Everything on TV was fiction, and the nightly news was the greatest fiction of all.

  On the way back to her apartment, Rose passed by the alley where she shot her attacker the night before. She could have gone around it if she really wanted to, but this was the most direct way home and part of her was curious to see the place in the light of day. Being there was like visiting her own grave in a way. It felt strange, though she had passed the place a thousand times before.

  There were news vans lining the street, with reporters talking into cameras. They all had hair that looked as though it were molded from plastic, and teeth which were disturbingly white. They looked mournful and shook their heads as they reported, but as soon as the cameras stopped rolling, those reporters smiled as though they'd just walked into the world's largest all-you-can-eat buffet.

  In the alley, there was a make-shift shrine with candles and flowers, and pictures of a very young and innocent-looking boy who in no way resembled the large, intimidating figure that had attacked her.

  Candles and flowers were not common items on everyone's shopping lists. You might be able to buy candles if you were willing to give up enough credits, but the flowers were not something that just anyone could come by. They fell under the Controlled Farming Act and were strictly regulated, just like grains, fruits and vegetables. Rose suspected that the whole setup had been wheeled in by the authorities, crafting yet another tale of hatred that would keep citizens trembling in the dark.

  Judging by the people who stood around the area, the story was sticking. There was a large group of people gathered to mourn the loss of such a sweet and innocent boy. Rose recognized many of those people from her own neighborhood.

  She moved closer to that gathering and saw an older, large woman crying with her friends. Rose had seen this woman around before, but never knew her name.

  A car pulled up to the curb near the group of people and a husky, dark man stepped out. He had slicked back hair, a neatly pressed suit and a gold watch. Obviously, he had never been to this neighborhood before. He lived in the same area as the politicians and the media stars, but Rose had seen this man before on TV.

  His name was Beta Winston. He was famous for appearing on TV, championing the cause of the under-represented minorities in the country. He claimed to be one of them, just because his skin was a similar color, but nobody in her neighborhood owned a suit, much less a gold watch.

  Beta looked over to the reporters and stared for several seconds until one of those reporters noticed that he was standing there.

  “Mr. Winston! Could I have a word?” that reporter yelled, moving toward Beta and pulling her cameraman along with her.

  Soon, all of the reporters were swarming, trying to get close to the man who would dictate how the media covered this story from that point forward.

  As soon as he had their attention, Beta turned to the group of upset citizens and put his arms around that large woman that Rose recognized.

  When the reporters moved near him, he waved them off, shaking his head and saying, “This is not the time for interviews. This is the time for mourning.”

  He hugged that woman tightly and she buried her head in his finely tailored suit. As soon as she started sniffing like her nose was running, Beta moved her to arms-length and looked her in the eye with feigned compassion and sympathy.

  Then he turned to the reporters and said in a preacher's tone, “Was it worth it? Was the hatred and the selfishness, the racism and the greed worth the life of this poor child?”

  And all of the sheep around him shook their heads in unison, like background singers in a musical act.

  “Do you know who did this?” Beta asked the crowd, though he was making sure that the cameras caught his good side. “Hate did this. People who feel entitled because of what some outdated documents tell them. People who feel that people like this poor boy should have been a slave to people like them.”

  Rose kept a straight face, though it was hard. Everyone was a slave. Working for table scraps. Going where they were told to go by their masters. Performing whatever tasks were demanded of them, and if they dared to rebel, they were put in their place.

  Beta waved his arms at the crowd and proclaimed, “They don't want us to have medicine! They don't want us to live near them or work with them. They call themselves Hate, because that is what they are, deep down in the core of their being. They are hateful people. They are shameful people. They are liars and murderers, and if you need proof of that, look no further than this poor little boy who was gunned down in the street by someone who didn't like the way he looked.”

  The audience was captivated, while Rose kept wondering what it would be like to feel Beta's nose breaking under her fist.

  “But we are strong!” Beta declared. “We have faith that these monsters will be brought to justice. We believe in the system of equality that has replaced the small-minded, largely-antiquated, moderately-dilapidated system that they want to bring back and force upon us like a rapist in the night!”

  Here Rose couldn't suppress a snort. Fortunately, nobody noticed.

  “So when you see one of their fliers, rip it down!” Beta ordered and the crowd cheered. “When you hear their vile words, cast that person out! If you know someone who is associated with this group called Hate, call the authorities and have that person removed from the streets. Our streets! Our homes! Not theirs! Our lives! Not theirs! Our children! Not their victims! No more! No more! No! No! No!”

  Beta stood there for a moment with an angry expression on his face. Then, as though a switch had been flipped, this expression vanished and he walked away from the crowd. Though they called for him to mourn with them, he walked straight to his car, climbed into the backseat and drove away.

  As the reporters lowered their microphones and the cameramen put their equipment away, the citizens who had gone to that place to mourn remained, crying with one another as though this boy were their own child.

  Rose moved closer to that shrine and squatted down to look at the picture of the man who had attacked her. Of course, the photo had been taken years earlier—assuming that it was the same person at all. She'd never seen his face. For all she knew, this was the picture of a model, hired to pose for the shot because of how
innocent he looked.

  An older woman with pale white skin, white hair, and droopy eyes approached Rose and said, “I'm so sorry for your loss.”

  She said it as though Rose were related to this would-be rapist, simply because they both checked the same box when filling out official paperwork. It was offensive, but Rose tried not to let her revulsion show.

  Hoping not to sound too mocking, Rose turned to the woman and nodded her head mournfully. She then said, “It seems like just yesterday that I saw him last. Heard his voice.”

  “Poor child.”

  The more this person spoke, the more Rose wanted to blurt out the truth, but she couldn't. To reveal the truth about that 'poor child' would reveal the truth about who she was and what she'd done—and with reporters only feet away.

  She couldn't hate this woman, because the woman was simply doing what she'd always been taught to do. She was going through the motions of feeling sadness and outrage, simply because she was being told to feel those things.

  The voice of her attacker was still fresh in Rose's head. Standing in that place, she could have sworn that she could smell his breath lingering in the air. All of those mourners may have genuinely wanted to be good. They wanted to feel, even if they couldn't put a name to that longing. They wanted their world to matter, but it never would.

  Every voice in the area rang through Rose's head in that moment. She heard people discussing the horrible tragedy and the innocent life lost. She heard people talking about the ugliness of Hate and how they needed to be taught a lesson.

  When Rose heard those people talking, it was like watching dominoes fall. The authorities wanted to turn the people against each other, so the only place left to turn for security would be HAND. They wanted a witch hunt. They wanted blood, and they knew exactly how to get it.

  She wanted to make them see the truth, but standing on the street and speaking in a loud politician's voice only ever worked for liars. There was no way to reach all of them at once, but she had one person in front of her, listening to her.