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

by Kyle Andrews

  He could have gone on a long rant about how much culture had been lost over the previous decades, and maybe he would write an article about that, but this wasn't the time.

  “It doesn't matter,” he finally said. “My point is that the book explained that the more you try to sell the lie, the less people will believe you. The more you argue and rationalize, the less inclined they'll be to take in the information that you're presenting. The best way to make them accept the story is to let them make a few leaps on their own. Let them come to the conclusion that you want them to come to.”

  “But you're not trying to sell a lie. You're trying to tell them the truth.”

  “The reaction is the same. I've been putting facts out there for a year now, and they've gone over great for the people who were already inclined to see things our way, but are they winning over the people who don't want to believe?”

  With a shrug, Tracy countered, “People who don't want to believe won't believe.”

  “If that were true, the authorities never would have been able to take over. The methods that I'm talking about are the same thing they did years ago. They didn't make their points and argue their cases. They played with emotions. If you didn't agree with what they said, you were evil. People were scared to disagree, but they didn't even know what they were agreeing with.”

  They were at the coffee pot in the kitchen by this point and Collin was filling up his mug with Coffite. Tracy stood next to him, staring at him as though he were speaking an entirely different language.

  “Keep it simple, stupid,” Dor jumped in. Collin hadn't even seen her sitting in the corner of the kitchen when they walked in. She was at a small table, with a cup of Coffite in front of her.

  “Since when do you drink Coffite?” he asked her.

  “Since I've been pulling all-nighters.”

  “What for?”

  “Putting together my submission.”

  “For?”

  “The paper, dummy.”

  Collin couldn't help but smile and stare at her as though he were the proud big brother. Dor couldn't tolerate this for very long and said, “You're creeping me out.”

  As he took a seat at the table with her, Collin said, “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to creep you out.”

  Tracy refilled her cup before sitting with them and putting the article down on the table. She turned to Collin and said, “You're thinking in circles.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Your whole point was to show the people what the authorities won't. Give them the facts. Let them make up their mind. Now you're saying that the only way to get the point across is to not give them all of the information.”

  Dor nodded, “She makes a valid point.”

  “The old way isn't working,” Collin replied.

  “Yes it is,” Tracy argued. “I can't walk down the street without seeing a copy of the paper in someone's hand. Freedom's message is getting out there.”

  “That doesn't mean that we're winning people over.”

  “What do you want? Poll numbers? It's not like we can go survey the public.”

  “I don't feel like it's working,” Collin told her. “I don't feel like I'm doing enough. I'm not pushing it hard enough. I'm not playing their game as hard as I should be.”

  “Why should you play their game? Isn't our whole mission to show people how badly they're being played? How do we help them if we just become the other side of the same coin?”

  “Does anyone remember when I said that I was working?” Dor asked. “That wasn't sarcasm. I am actually working here.”

  Ignoring her, Collin told Tracy, “Putting the facts out there is important. But we need to prime the audience for them before we shove raw data down their throats. We need to make people want to hear what we have to say.”

  “It was nice and quiet in here a second ago,” Dor noted to herself.

  “I get what you're saying, but I'm the one who goes out there every day. I see how things are changing. All you do is watch what's on the TV, so of course it's going to look like your message isn't getting across.”

  Collin sat back in his chair and turned his cup around in circles on the table. He took a deep breath and then told Tracy, “They just have so much more power than we do. They have the internet, the schools, the news... We have one outlet. One voice in a sea of voices.”

  “It's a loud voice.”

  “I just... I expect more.”

  “Like what? You expected to undo decades of their hard work in a year? You're a smart guy, Powers, but sometimes you're really stupid.”

  Collin didn't respond to her. Maybe she was right. Maybe he had been shut away for too long, focusing on nothing but the news that was being reported on the TV and how he should respond to it. He couldn't see things for what they really were anymore. Maybe he'd lost touch with what life was like for those people who still had to answer to the authorities on a daily basis.

  Of course, this line of thought only served to make him more confused about what he was doing and what he should be doing. He'd been living inside the mission for so long that he couldn't even see it for what it was anymore.

  “TV shows,” Dor said.

  Both Collin and Tracy turned to her, waiting for her to go on, but Dor just kept working on whatever she was doing and didn't immediately offer further insight.

  “Please do go on,” Tracy urged, with a tone that was equal parts annoyance and interest.

  Dor put her work down and looked at both of the adults sitting at the table with her. She said, “The authorities use TV shows to put their message out there in non-threatening ways. A character suffers some crisis and the story plays out with only one natural conclusion, which just happens to be what they want the audience to believe. They don't talk to the camera, telling people what to think and they don't throw a bunch of random facts into it. They just tell a story and at the end of the episode, the soft music plays and the characters cry and you realize that the authorities were right all along. HAND is there to protect you, or whatever.”

  Dor had changed quite a bit since she first joined Freedom. She'd gone from being the quiet girl who observed the people around her, to being the girl who offered insight about what she saw while observing the world. There were times when Collin thought that this young girl could do his job better than he could.

  “We can't make TV shows,” Tracy replied.

  “No, but TV didn't always exist either,” Dor told her.

  Tracy bobbed her head from side to side, thinking through all of the options. She said, “We don't have the ability to broadcast radio shows. Or make movies. We can't even publish books on any large scale.”

  “We have a newspaper,” Dor informed her. “Which is missing something vital.”

  Dor turned to Collin and slid her work across the table to him. It was a comic strip, called 'THE MAYOR GOES TO TOWN.' The strip was a satirical take on the Mayor's reelection campaign, depicting him as the irrational lunatic that he was.

  On the next page, Dor had a sketch of what looked like a superhero named Freedom Fighter. According to the blurb, he was a lowly factory worker by day and worked to expose the devious plots of HAND after curfew.

  “Entertainment,” Dor told Collin. “Give people comics like this and the next time the Mayor uses one of his catch phrases, everyone's mind will go back to the joke they heard. It will be all they're able to see anymore.”

  “Kinda like brainwashing?” Tracy joked.

  Collin shook his head and put the pages back down on the table, saying, “I can't use this in my paper.”

  “Why not?” Dor demanded.

  “Why not?” Tracy asked as well.

  “The whole concept depends on the idea that people are already reading the newspaper. We're trying to win over the hearts and minds of people who don't want to read the paper.”

  Dor looked stunned as she said, “But...”

  “It's a good idea,” Tracy told Collin, pulling the papers closer to
her and looking over the sketches. “I mean, we'd need some more refined art and a maybe fix up the writing...”

  “What—?” Dor screeched, looking at Tracy as though she'd just been slapped in the face.

  “And we couldn't call him 'Freedom Fighter' either. It's too blatant. Same with HAND,” Collin added.

  “Are you kidding me? This is—” Dor started before realizing what Collin was saying. “Wait. What?”

  “It's not going in the Secret Citizen,” Collin grinned. “And I'm not sure we can use it all anyway. It's rough... But the idea is sound.”

  “What are you saying?” Dor asked.

  “I'm saying that a newspaper isn't enough. We need more. Comic books. Novels...” Collin said. Then with a grin he said, “We're going to destroy their empire by starting one of our own.”

  36

  Justin would have thought that he'd be nervous about the mission. Others had tried what he was doing before, but they failed. Most had either been discovered, killed or turned their backs on the mission once they saw what the HAND lifestyle had to offer. A few managed to maintain their cover, but they wound up in dead-end jobs that served no use to Freedom. This was going to be different. Justin wasn't going to leave things up to chance. He was going to be the perfect officer, no matter what it took.

  So, why wasn't he nervous? Why didn't he dread giving up everything that he'd ever taken comfort in? Why didn't he worry that he wouldn't be capable of maintaining his cover once he faced a truly difficult situation?

  As he got dressed that morning, something was nagging Justin in the back of his head. It felt like something was being overlooked, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what that thing was.

  As he was tying his shoes, he had the TV on, but kept the volume down. At some point over the years, Election Day had become the biggest holiday of all. It only happened once every four years, and when it did, the city was covered in decorations. Sparkling banners were hung across the streets, showing each candidate that was running for each position in the government. Debates were held weeks in advance, getting the crowd riled up for the big day. With each passing election, more debates were added and they began earlier and earlier. Now they were starting in June, which Justin thought was more than a bit excessive.

  There were no presents exchanged, as had been done with holidays of the past. Somehow, the authorities had managed to convince the citizens of the nation that the best gift that a person could receive was the thrill of waiting to see who would be elected. In a way, it fit. Justin had been told stories of Christmas and how children would get so excited that they wouldn't be able to sleep the night before. How they'd rip into their gifts with so much anticipation that they could barely stand it.

  Election Day was very similar to that, except that it was for adults. The campaigns were crafted carefully, so that the maximum amount of tension would be built. Who would win? Who would lose?

  Most of the candidates were the same, no matter which side you were voting for. They were of a different class than the average citizen and while they often rambled on about doing what was best for the people, what they really meant was that they would do whatever was necessary to ensure that they'd be allowed to stay in office and enjoy the perks of the job for another term. None of them had any conviction or moral compass. If you listened closely, you'd realize that all of their plans and proposals were exactly the same, just worded differently. And that was what it all came down to in the end. Who could sell the lie to the people with the smoothest style? Who could take everything from the people and have those people thanking them for doing it?

  The more he thought about it, the more angry Justin became. With the election finally arriving, he found himself in a nearly constant state of rage, but he'd learned to bottle it up nice and neatly. Nobody ever noticed. At school, he'd gone back to being the quiet kid that drew no attention to himself, yet managed to rise to the top of all of his classes and teams. Everything was going exactly as it should have been. Except, he wasn't nervous. Quite the opposite in fact. Justin was looking forward to going down to the assignment office and taking the oath of loyalty to HAND right then and there. He was looking forward to putting on the uniform and walking amongst those people, secretly contemplating how he would take each one of them out when the time came.

  And that was what was wrong. He savored the idea when he should have been nervous. Nerves would keep him sharp, but excitement could make him sloppy. Just knowing that he wanted to be there should have been enough to tell him that he was doing something wrong, but he couldn't help it. He wanted to get inside as quickly as possible and begin the process of tearing their system apart.

  A banner at the bottom of the TV told Justin that polls would be opening in an hour. By that time, he should be well on his way to being sworn in.

  He looked around his apartment and it already felt like he was visiting a place from his past. Nothing he owned was relevant to him or his life anymore. The only thing that struck a nerve for him was when he noticed a dirty and frayed rope toy underneath a chair, which he must have overlooked when he handed Ammo over to Rose.

  He would be okay there. Rose would take good care of him. Ammo was the one part of this whole thing that Justin would regret, but he couldn't afford to focus on that. He needed to think about the mission. When he did that, any sadness he felt melted away. Ammo would want those people taken down just as badly as Justin did. He knew it, and he couldn't help but smile at the fact. How many dogs would want to overthrow a corrupt government? But Ammo had his reasons.

  There was a knock on the door which caught Justin off guard. Who would be coming to see him at this time of the morning? Much less on such an important day?

  He went to the door but hesitated before opening it, wondering if his cover had been blown before it had ever even been assumed. His mind was working on a plan when the person on the other side of the door spoke.

  “It's me,” Marti said quietly, so that the neighbors wouldn't hear.

  Justin hurried to unlock the door and open it so that Marti could get inside without drawing too much attention.

  “You shouldn't be here,” he told her once the door was shut again.

  “Aaron sent me.”

  “Why?”

  “The MeID goes into effect today, haven't you heard?”

  “So?”

  “Aaron wants you scanned by us before you're scanned by them.”

  “They finally got that thing working again?” Justin asked. The scanner had been damaged when the Garden was attacked. It hadn't been functional since, as far as Justin knew.

  Marti shrugged and told Justin, “He says that you might have been entered into the system before, at the nurse's office. If you were, he wants to know what they know before you get in there. He wants to make sure that there's nothing that could link you to Freedom.”

  “There isn't. Even if they did scan me, they never encoded any new information.”

  “We eat the food that they give us. Drink the water. How do you know what they've done to us?”

  “If they could tie me to Freedom, I'd be dead by now,” Justin told her. They each took a seat on his couch and he watched as she pulled a needle from her bag. Since she'd been assigned to nursing and began classes three months earlier, nobody would think twice if they found her with a medical kit on her, but that didn't stop Justin from staring at the needle as she moved closer to him.

  “It'll only take a sec.”

  “Can't we just scan me?”

  “Simon can't bring the scanner out of the safe room.”

  “He never got the tracker disabled?”

  “He thought he did. Then the Garden was attacked.”

  “I thought that was Mrs. Edgar.”

  “Might have been. But we can't say for sure since we never saw her again.”

  Marti slipped the needle into Justin's arm so smoothly that he didn't even know it had happened until he looked down and heard the sound of his blood squirting into a
small vial.

  “Couldn't we have done this yesterday?” he asked her.

  “Could have. But didn't,” she replied. “I think Aaron's getting nervous.”

  Justin smiled on the inside. At least one of them was feeling the way that they should have.

  Marti packed up the sample as Justin rolled his sleeve down. She then stood and prepared to leave, but before she moved toward the door she looked at him and asked, “Are you ready for this?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked at him a little bit more closely and for a moment, Justin expected Marti to give him some inspirational words of advice before he set out on his mission. Instead she said, “Don't mess this up. Take them down. Kill them all and don't blink as you do it.”

  Justin nodded. Marti walked out of the apartment. That was that.

  37

  “Explain to me exactly how this will work,” a young female reporter said to a government official in a suit as she reported live from City Hall. She turned and started to walk slowly with the man, pretending to be one of the voters that would show up just minutes later. “Citizens will walk this way...”

  “Right,” the man told her. “They'll walk through the front doors, to this table that we have set up over here. Their Civvies will be swiped for the last time, checking that person into the system, and then they will be scanned into the MeID system by holding their right hand under the scanner.”

  “Their right hand. Is that important?”

  The man smiled and said, “The scanner is on the right-hand side of the booth.”

  “Right. And then what happens?”

  “Well, since they're already signed into the system with their Civvies, that's it. The computer puts a name to their file and they're all set. It was designed to be as easy and painless as possible. Any updates to your information can be made when you pick up supplement refills.”

  “It sure does sound simple,” the reporter smiled.

  Collin was sure that if the woman smiled any wider, her cheeks would pop like balloons.