by Kyle Andrews
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPERT FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
FIND FREEDOM/HATE ONLINE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1
Collin Powers looked down at his watch. It was getting late. Too late. Curfew was 10:00 for all citizens. It was already 9:55 and here he was, sitting in a parked car on the side of the highway that encircled his city.
The street lights had been turned off at 9:50, to conserve power and urge citizens to get back to their homes. He was stopped just far enough away from the city lights to be shrouded in darkness. The blue glow of the dashboard was the only light in the area.
From this distance, the city looked almost beautiful. Many cities around the country had been redesigned over the decades. Some buildings had been torn down. Others had been covered by new exterior walls, giving them the appearance of something new. But this city remained largely as it was before the world had fallen apart. Though some elements had been 'revitalized' or repurposed, the buildings themselves remained the same. At night, from a distance, it was impossible to see the cracks in the walls or the poorly patched streets. You couldn't see the parts of the city that had been abandoned because even the authorities didn't deem them suitable for living. During the day, everything looked gray and oppressive; even at the sunniest of times. There was a layer of dirt that covered everything. Sometimes it looked as though it even covered the people. Where this dirt came from and why it never washed away with the rain, Collin never knew. All he did know was that the very act of breathing the air of that city made him feel as though he was slowly rotting away from the inside out.
His stomach was churning. He was starting to sweat, which he could only partially blame on the heavy, uncomfortable jacket that he was wearing. He was always nervous when he was out in the world, because he knew that people were looking for him. Ever since his eighteenth birthday, when he failed to show up for his assignment meeting, he'd been running from one person or another.
It wasn't a calculated decision. It started off with simple uneasiness, which his mother assured him everyone felt when they were assigned. She insisted that it was perfectly natural, to head out into the world as an adult, unsure of what awaited you. She told him that he would feel better as soon as he got to the assignment building and saw all the other kids lined up. They were all the same, so he had nothing to fear.
Somehow, her speech didn't comfort him. It wasn't a fear of the unknown that bothered Collin. It was the idea that he was going into a meeting where his entire life would be determined, and nobody had thought to include him in the making of those decisions.
He would lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about all the possible assignments that he could be given. Teacher. Construction worker. Doctor. He loved learning, probably more than his teachers would have liked. He asked questions that they didn't have answers for. He applied for books at the library which weren't even on his reading list. He wanted to know how the world worked, but each application was denied. Every question went unanswered.
Something in his gut told him that he wasn't going to be assigned to a life that would encourage his passion for knowledge. The academics weren't the kids who asked a lot of questions, they were the kids who aced all the tests. Half of the time, Collin didn't even finish the tests. He knew all the answers, but something about them didn't feel true to him.
When he was thirteen years old, just entering high school, Collin was eager to enter the next phase of his life. He thought that the world was opening up in front of him, and he would finally find his place in it. He expected to soak up knowledge like a sponge. He expected to play chess and debate, and maybe dabble in the arts.
If he could have seen the look on his own face when his student schedule was delivered to his inbox, he might have found it funny. Football. That was his extracurricular for the first semester. During the second, it was paintball. Rock climbing. Wrestling. Gymnastics. Fencing.
The longer his high school career went on, the more absurd it all seemed. Sure, he could excel in those areas, but they were not playing to his strengths. If anything, they were playing in direct opposition to his strengths. So much so that he had to wonder if it had been done on purpose.
He requested transfers, but those requests were denied. So, he did what he had to do to survive through high school. He applied himself to the best of his abilities and saved his personal interests for his off hours.
Collin usually found himself in parks or coffee shops after school. Even when he didn't have the credits to order anything, he would hang around until he was asked to leave. He wanted to make smalltalk. He wanted to ask people about their lives; what they did, what they knew. It was the only way he could push the limits of his knowledge, but it didn't get him very far.
People didn't like talking, and they didn't like people asking too many questions either. He was sloppy in how he went about trying to learn. He sat in places where he didn't belong and talked to anyone and everyone. In his own mind, he was just being friendly. To the rest of them, he was suspicious.
Malcolm Edgar was one of those people in the coffee shop. He was a man who sat by himself, observing Collin. For weeks, he watched the kid fumble and overstep. Collin never approached Malcolm, because Malcolm made sure that his appearance was not inviting. Then one day, after Collin had just finished a conversation with a lovely young hospital worker, Malcolm took a seat next to him and kindly told Collin to shut his damn mouth and stop talking to people, unless he wanted HAND officers knocking on his door.
HAND: Homeland Authority and National Defense.
They were the military within our borders. The soldiers who kept order. Highly trained. Highly skilled. Nobody wanted a HAND officer knocking on their door.
Malcolm didn't offer much more to Collin that day, except for an old, small, plastic card that he slipped into Collin's pocket as he walked away from the table. It was an antique library card, which was of absolutely no use to Collin. His own library card was linked into his Civilian ID, and data stripe cards hadn't been in use for decades. The card that Malcolm gave him was a relic.
The card baffled Collin at first. He kept it hidden, because it seemed like a message of some sort, but he didn't know what it meant. He didn't know what significance an old library card could possibly hold. Not at first anyway.
It wasn't unusual for people his age to get nervous about the assignment meeting. It was common for kids to blow them off after getting wasted at their birthday parties. The meeting could be rescheduled up to three times before a warrant for arrest was issued. But after missing that first meeting, case workers were sent to investigate. They wanted to know why the meeting was missed. They wanted to assess the living conditions of the person who missed the meeting. They wanted to interview the family, to make sure that there were no signs of abuse or criminal activity.
Collin's mother was perfectly normal. His little sister was as loyal to the system as anyone could possibly be. She spoke of assignment meetings as though they were fairytale endings to every childhood. There was no good reason for Collin to have missed that meeting, except that he was nervous. The thought of attending made him nauseous.
As a case worker was poking around Collin's room, undoubtedly looking for any sign of drugs, she came across the library card. She wanted to know what he was doing with it. She wanted to know where he got it. She wanted to know how long he'd had it.
Collin wanted to know why it mattered so much. Unfortunately, the case worker was not there to answer his questions. She was there to ask her own.
After slipping the library card into her pocket, the case worker left the room to make a call. Collin's mother looked at him as though he'd done something horrible, but neither she nor Collin knew what he could have done.
Then his mother told him to get out—to go through his bedroom window. She told him to leave and to never come back. The words were cold, but the intention was not. She was telling him to run before the HAND officers showed up. If he was there when they arrived, they would want to question him. Since he didn't have any answers for them, blood would undoubtedly be spilled. Collin could be sent to Corrections.
Though he didn't even know why, Collin found himself on the run that day. He never returned home. He never knew whether or not his mother was punished for letting him leave. He never said goodbye to his sister.
Surviving on the streets was nearly impossible. A person couldn't even get food without a Civilian ID. Cameras would surely capture his image before too long. Collin had no idea how he was going to explain himself to the authorities when he was eventually found.
Two days into his life on the lamb, Malcolm Edgar found Collin sitting between boxes in an alley, starving. Collin didn't recognize him right away. He saw Malcolm's weathered features, large build and ominously dark eyes, and his first reaction was fear. He thought the HAND officers had tracked him down and he would soon be brought into Corrections, where he would be reeducated, reprocessed and shipped off to a new city, to start an entirely new life.
Instead, Malcolm gave Collin an apple, helped him to his feet, and led him to shelter. He met people who enjoyed sharing ideas as much as he did. He was told stories about the past, and listened to lectures about rights and freedoms. Some were a little over the top for his taste, but the general idea burrowed into his soul. For the first time, Collin felt like the answers made sense.
Since then, he had made a career out of running information between bases. He was a part of a movement called Freedom. It was a name that members of their group didn't think the government could twist into something ugly in the press. It was a correct enough prediction, but the authorities were crafty. In the press, they weren't known as Freedom. They were known as Hate. They were called terrorists. Extremists. Hateful, destructive members of society.
At home, they were called husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters. They just wanted to live freely. Without assignment meetings or HAND officers. One artist spoke of their cause in words that his grandfather once used: 'Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'
It seemed so sensible. How could anyone disagree? But the price on Collin's head seemed to suggest that disagreement was possible.
He'd been a part of Freedom for three years, and each year that passed increased the price on his head by a hundred credits. In a world where people couldn't afford the luxury of extra toilet paper, a hundred credits would go a long way.
Looking at his own reflection in the rear-view mirror, Collin studied his tired eyes and messy brown hair. The blue glow of the console made him look like a corpse. He couldn't believe that he was worth the reward that was being offered for him.
He looked at his watch once again. 9:58. In two minutes, he would be in violation of curfew. If the police or a HAND officer stopped him, they would find a trunk full of contraband. He no longer faced the threat of Corrections. Now, he'd be sent to prison. Instead of reeducation, he would probably be tortured until he gave up his co-conspirators. Then he would face a trial—possibly on national television—and would be sentenced to death.
By 10:00 the following night, he could very well be a corpse, all because his contact didn't know how to tell time. It was beginning to piss him off.
Collin looked at the console on the dashboard and pressed a button that said 'Traffic Overlay'.
The console displayed an image of the car from above, and pulled back to show him the surrounding area. If the authorities were watching, they would see the GPS signal of a surgeon from the city's HAND hospital. That was who the car had been leased to. The highway was on her way home. Maybe they'd assume that she had suffered car trouble. Maybe they'd send someone.
He couldn't see another car for a mile around his own location. So far, so good. Now, if only his contact would pick up the pace and get his trunk unpacked so that he could get off the street, everything would be fine and dandy.
As he waited, Collin slid his finger across the display, looking farther up and down the highway. Still no sign of any cars to the south. To the north, there was one patrol vehicle, about two and a half miles from his location.
“Crap,” he muttered under his breath.
The patrol car was stopped, but still too close for comfort. Collin decided to give his contact five more minutes before putting the car in gear and taking off. He couldn't sit around all night.
He looked around him. Through the windshield, he could see the highway stretching out in front of him, fading into darkness not far from his car. The city lights shined just a few miles away. Most people were at home. Only those who were required to work at night were out at this hour, and even they were supposed to remain indoors.
To the right of his car, there was a guardrail, beyond which was a steep hill. His contact was supposed to come from that direction, grab the delivery and disappear. It was supposed to be simple. Collin was supposed to be slipping down one of the exits already, parking the car, and taking shelter in one of the Freedom safe houses until morning.
Something was wrong. Something didn't feel right.
He was about to put the car into gear when he heard a tap on his back window. His contact had finally arrived.
Getting out of his car, Collin couldn't contain his anger as much as he would have liked. He said, “It's about time. Where were you? Sipping lattes? Eating snack cakes?”
Neither of those things were very likely for members of Freedom. Making such comments was usually meant as an insult, implying that someone was helping the enemy in one way or another.
“Dude, just shut up,” his contact replied. She was not much older than he was, sweating and dirty. “I'm not having a very good night either, okay?”
“Whatever. Just take this stuff and go.”
He opened the trunk, revealing two large duffel bags full of notebooks. Hand-written literature, created by Freedom members, trying to rebuild what was taken from them. Since most literature had been lost over time—due to paper reclamation programs or data wipes—the books contained retellings of stories that had been passed down through the generations. What they had now were poor imitations, but it was the best they could do.
The woman hefted the bags over her shoulders, muttering, “Oh joy. I get to haul books down the hill now.”
“If you'd rather do without...”
“Whatever, man,” she replied, reaching into her pocket and pulling out an envelope. She handed it to Collin and gave him a quick wave as she turned to hop back over the guardrail. Collin put the envelope in his pocket.
Out of the corner of his eye, Collin saw a light moving in the distance. He turned and saw the patrol car making its way up the highway. It was past curfew. Surely, he would be stopped.
“I can't stay here,” he told the woman.
“Well, you're not following me. No cross pollination, remember?”
It was a rule among the different factions of Freedom. Meetings could be arranged and safe houses could be shared, but the locations of different bases could not be known to lower-ranking members of the cause. If one of them was captured and tortured, the damage would be contained.
It was not a particularly heartwarming philosophy, but it was sensible. This meant that using the same escape route as his female friend was out of the question.
On the far side of the highway, there was a fence that would prevent him from escaping. His only options were to go forward or back.
As he stared at the approaching headlights, Collin wanted to ask the woman to stay and help him. If he had to fight, he would rather not do it alone. Then again, having members of two bases get captured and tortured at the same time could double the losses.
“Go,” he said as he turned, feeling the pride of their joint cause—and perhaps just a little bit heroic—as he offered to face the officers by himself.
The woman was already gone. Apparently, she'd never thought twice about leaving him. Logically, it made sense. There was no reason why she should be expected to fight by his side when it wasn't necessary, but she could have at least offered.
Collin wasn't normally one to pick a fight. He didn't imagine himself on the front lines of any war. He dealt in literature and art. He smuggled lesson planners and sheet music.
In his mind, he was searching the car for anything that might be illegal. He tried to remember if there could be any scraps of paper with Freedom slogans or artwork on them. Even a doodle could be costly.