Inside, Pt. 2

by Kyra Anderson

  “It seemed more like the message was geared against the Commission of the People, though,” I reminded him.

  “True…”

  “Do you approve of the Commission and what it does?” I whispered.

  He fell silent, and after a few steps he stopped and turned me to face him.

  “The Commission of the People is very important for the security of the nation,” he said. “Even when nothing is wrong, it’s the attack dog that we can let loose if we need to.” He looked around the hallway nervously. “It’s Dana that’s dangerous. I don’t know if he’s running the Commission or if the Commission is running him, but the experiments and the Machine of Neutralization project…he’s not protecting the peace anymore. He’s trying to provoke attack to justify these weapons and I don’t know why.”

  “Then stop him,” I hissed. He rolled his eyes.

  “If I could, I would have,” he groaned. “But there is nothing I can do to contain him. As soon as I try he becomes volatile and dangerous.”

  “He’s a monster, Leader…”

  “I know,” he whispered. “I know…” His eyes fell to the ground and he placed a hand on my back and led me further down the hall. “Do you have any suggestions?”

  That surprised me. I was not expecting the Leader of America to ask me how to get rid of the man who was supposed to be the second most powerful person in the country.

  “Suggestions?”

  “To appease Dana, get him to call off the Sweeps…anything?” Leader Simon asked, turning to one door and opening it, stepping inside before me. I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could, a yelp left my lips and I jumped backward at what I saw in the room.

  I was in Leader’s office, and sitting at his desk in front of the flag of our nation was Dana, leaning back in Leader Simon’s cushioned chair, his feet on the desk, Sean standing silently behind him.

  “Good evening, Greg,” Dana smiled darkly. His eyes turned to me. “Little Lily.”

  “How did you get in here?” Leader Simon gasped. “My security is supposed to keep everyone out of this room unless I am in here.”

  “You got your security from me, Greg,” Dana reminded him with a cocky smile. He tilted his head to the side. “They know who their master is.”

  I shivered and my stomach flipped. I had been caught in a secret meeting with Leader Simon. I thought I was going to be sick…

  “Why are you here, Dana?” Leader Simon asked, his voice shaking.

  “We need to talk,” he said, taking his feet off the desk and standing up, adjusting his coat and smoothing his tie before he walked toward us. He looked me over and chuckled.

  “Why is she here?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at Leader Simon. “Meeting with underage girls in the middle of the night in your office is a good way to start a scandal.”

  “It’s not like that!” Leader Simon gasped.

  “It better not be,” Dana growled, his voice possessive and dominating. I shivered and retreated a step, trying to keep from collapsing, my brain filled with static. “Let’s talk somewhere else,” Dana suggested.

  “Alright,” Leader Simon nodded. He turned to me and a wobbly smile came over his face. “I’m sorry, but I will have to answer your questions another time. I will call your parents and let them know when I have some free time.”

  “O-okay…thank you, Leader,” I said, lowering my head.

  Leader Simon stepped past me and out the door while I tried to remember how to breathe.

  Dana smiled and stepped forward. I flinched away from his hand as it pressed to the side of my head. He moved in front of me and his mouth came to my ear, close enough that I could feel the heat of his skin.

  “Did you really think I would let you pull a stunt like this?” he whispered, which caused my body to lock up in fear as my brain raced, trying to figure out what he thought I was doing there and what he already knew.

  He turned his head. “Don’t underestimate me, Little Lily,” he breathed. He came even closer to my ear, his lips brushing my skin. “I know everything…”

  He gently kissed the shell of my ear and straightened, his thumb brushing over my cheek once before he began to walk past me, calling over his shoulder for Sean to drive me home.

  I should have known then that I was in over my head.

  Chapter Forty

  I was quiet for the rest of the week, worried that I had exposed the entire rebellion. But even after the horrible mistake of meeting with Leader Simon, Dana made no moves to show that he understood what I was really planning. At Archangel, people were asking me what was wrong, and I quickly told them that I was tired. At the Saturday Commission meeting, I knew I should have been paying more attention, particularly because there was a lot of information on the Europe trip that was leaving Tuesday, but I could not focus. On Sunday when Clark and I met with the other teenagers to ask what they knew about the cells of the Commission experiments, I was asked what was wrong with me, to which I told them I was just thinking about a lot of things.

  Mykail and Clark did not know what had happened.

  It was on the Sunday night news that the word went out of the Sweeps being reinstated. There were speeches from Leader Simon and the Chair of Region Affairs about the terrorist message everyone had received, stating that it was obvious the Sweeps needed to be put in place once again to preserve the peace of America and prevent another rebellion.

  Our message that was sent out over emails was never shown on the news and little coverage was given to the message content, which annoyed me, but considering I got another one of our emails earlier that day, I knew that everyone in the country was getting the message.

  Monday, the entire school was abuzz with talks of the Sweeps and the email message. My friends at lunch were even weirder around me, thinking that I would turn them in, though they did ask me about the Sweeps once. I told them the truth and said that I had no idea how the Sweeps worked and I didn’t know what else to tell them. The Commission was also abuzz with talks of the Sweeps. Almost all of the conference rooms were filled with meetings from the various small groups within the Commission, discussing the Sweeps and protocol, as well as outlining the areas of the country to start with.

  I was starting to feel like I had taken on far more than I could ever hope to handle.

  The constant movement did not stop when I got home. My parents were leaving for Europe the following day and were hurriedly packing, making sure they had everything together for their trip and telling me a million times the rules for the house and how I needed to behave myself in their absence. I helped them pack, despite my daze, and when they were heading to bed to get some sleep before their departure early the next morning, I trudged into Mykail’s room and collapsed on the bed, where he reminded me that he wanted to take his tracers out the following evening to allow the wounds as much time to heal before anyone else saw him.

  Sleep was a welcome relief from the activity.

  That morning, before I went to school, I said goodbye to my parents, who were loading their bags into one of the cars of the convoy that had come to pick them up. All of us were tired, so they did not repeat the house rules again, saying a simple goodbye and that they would call me every now and then to check up on me. I wished them a safe trip and the best of luck on what they were trying to accomplish, which I had forgotten the details of.

  It wasn’t until the middle of the school day when I woke up and realized I would be able to sleep in Mykail’s room through the night.

  I was so excited about the thought that I went through the entire day with a smile on my face. This made everyone think that whatever depression I had been in the previous few days had vanished and that I was feeling better which, admittedly, I was.

  But I was still irritable enough to fight with Clark about the best way to get the experiments out of the Commission. There were several cells in the holding cell area where all four inhabitants of the cell were not criminals, but minorities that could be let loose to h
elp us in the revolution. But when we started seeing how many of the people in the holding cells were innocent, it became difficult for us to decide which ones were more able to help. We wanted to help the younger captives and the weaker ones, but they would not have been able to help us in the same capacity as some of the well-bodied captives so difficult decisions had to be made.

  Also, we fought about the cell that Miranda and Julie were in.

  Clark had found them in a cell near the back of the holding cell area, sharing a cell with a white-collar money launderer and a man who had committed seventeen acts of armed robbery in three different regions.

  As much as we wanted to free Miranda and Julie, we were not sure we could get them out while keeping the two actual criminals in the cell.

  Then, of course, we discussed how we were going to even go back into the Commission and get the experiments out in the shortest time frame without anyone noticing.

  When we were both at each other’s throats and frustrated, we gave up and finished homework, preparing for the final projects and tests of the term. Break would be coming up soon and that would give me a reprieve from balancing school and the revolution, so I was greatly looking forward to it.

  When I got home, Mykail was waiting for me in the foyer.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey!” I grinned, throwing my arms around his neck, kissing him enthusiastically.

  He smiled into the kiss and then pulled away.

  “How was school?”

  “Boring.” I rolled my eyes. “But…everything is better now, knowing that I have the house, and you, all to myself.” I kissed him again. “Are you hungry?” I asked, moving into the kitchen.

  “Actually…Lily…”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know if you should really eat just yet,” he said quietly, looking at his feet.

  “Why?”

  As soon as I asked the question, I remembered what he had told me the previous night. He wanted me to remove his tracers. My stomach flipped over and my appetite disappeared.

  “Oh…”

  “Yeah…” he said awkwardly. “I can take the ones out of my ankles and my foot, but the wrists and my wings…” he shook his head. “I can do my left wrist, but I don’t really trust myself to work a knife with my left hand.”

  I set my backpack against the nearest wall and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly through my nose.

  “Right now?” I groaned. “I just got home…couldn’t we do it another day?”

  “This is going to need some time to heal,” he told me, shaking his head. “And I know that if I let you get out of it tonight, you’ll continue to avoid it.” He took my hands, looking me in the eye. “I can’t help you if I can’t even leave the house. You know that you’ll need to have your Commission tracers removed as well, at some point.”

  “Not tonight,” I said strongly.

  “No, not tonight,” he agreed. “But…Lily, we need to do this now. Preferably before you eat something.”

  I closed my eyes and nodded.

  “Alright…” I whispered, barely hearing the word leave my mouth. He leaned forward and kissed my forehead.

  “Thank you.”

  “What do we need?”

  “I got everything together when you were at school,” he said, squeezing my hand. “Come on…”

  I let him lead me upstairs, feeling the nervousness eat away at my gut. I already hated needles and sharp objects and I had almost passed out when I had my tracers put in. I was not sure how I was going to handle taking out Mykail’s tracers.

  We ended up in his bathroom, where I looked at the matches, small knife, tweezers, gauze and bottle of whiskey on the counter. I glanced at the whiskey and then turned to him with a skeptical eyebrow.

  “It’s for sterilizing,” he rolled his eyes, laughing.

  He closed the lid of the toilet and sat on it, his wings barely fitting in the space between the vanity and the wall.

  I took a deep breath to steady my nerves and then looked at everything on the counter.

  “I already sterilized the knife,” he said, watching me stare at the objects without picking any of them up. “Do you want me to do the ones in my ankles?”

  “Please,” I nodded quickly.

  “Okay, can you hand me the knife?”

  With trembling hands, I picked up the knife, feeling the cold metal of the handle more acutely due to my anxiety.

  “Will you also flick the switch on the automatic kettle?” he asked, nodding to the electric kettle filled with water that he had taken from the kitchen. I pressed the button before finally handing him the knife.

  He took it from me and smiled.

  “Breathe, Lily.”

  I nodded and immediately let out a breath, but I almost forgot how to inhale afterward.

  He raised his left foot and folded it under him to rest his ankle on the porcelain lid of the toilet.

  “I think this one will hurt the most…” he murmured, looking at the tattoo of 80073 along the bottom of his instep.

  “Um…w-what else do you need?” I asked weakly.

  “If you could have the gauze ready, that would be good,” he nodded, readying the knife and taking deep breath.

  I closed my eyes, light-headed, not bothering to grab the gauze at all. I turned to where I knew the counter was and leaned against it, lowering myself into a crouch and breathing carefully, keeping my hands on the cold vanity surface.

  “Lily, the cut’s done and the tracer’s out…” Mykail said long before I was ready to open my eyes. “But I need the gauze…”

  I took one deep breath and then stood, feeling my head spin, but I grabbed the gauze and turned to him. There was blood everywhere. Over his leg and running down to the tile at his feet, on the lid of the toilet, and even starting to stain the fabric of the shorts he had tried to move out of the way. The blood pouring from his foot caused me to panic and I quickly jumped forward, taking his foot in one hand and pressing the gauze to the cut.

  I turned to look at him and was surprised to find him smiling apologetically to me.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry, Lily,” he whispered. “I don’t mean to freak you out or anything…this is just something that needs to be done.”

  “I know…” I nodded, carefully pulling the nearly-saturated piece of gauze away and grabbing another one to press to the wound. “Doesn’t that hurt?”

  “A little,” he admitted. “My tolerance for pain is higher than most…”

  I did not respond.

  Once I had wrapped his foot and sterilized the knife again, he repeated the actions on his two ankles. I was quick to cover the wounds. By the time it came to the tracers in his wrists, I was no longer as light-headed, though I was still shaking.

  “Alright, are you ready?” he asked, looking me over nervously. “Because if you’re shaking that badly, I don’t really want you cutting into me.”

  I took a deep breath and slowly let it out, grabbing the knife and rinsing it off with the boiling water before grabbing the alcohol and pouring a little over the blade. As I was putting the bottle back, I glanced at it and, before I had time to think better of it, I lifted it to my lips and took two large gulps. The liquid burned and it was repulsive, but I forced it down as Mykail blinked incredulously at me.

  “What the hell?”

  “Oh…that was a bad idea…” I groaned, setting the bottle down with a clank and shaking my head.

  “Well, then you need to do this quickly before that gets into your bloodstream on an empty stomach,” Mykail blinked. “So, let’s get this done and get some food in you, quickly.”

  Not really registering the meaning of his words or his concern, I took another deep breath, carefully taking one of his wrists. My eyes were locked on the far side of his wrist, where the chip was embedded and the scar was barely visible. Focusing only on that spot, I pressed the tip of the knife to his skin.

  The blood pooled and dripped onto my
arm, surprising me, but I forced myself not to jump or flinch. Carefully repositioning the knife, I made another small incision and then pinched the area, seeing the tiny black chip rise to the surface.

  Carefully picking it out, I got the gauze, pressing it to the wound as Mykail smiled at me.

  “See? Easy.”

  “I wouldn’t say easy…” I groaned.

  He pulled his hand away and pressed his wrist against his chest, holding the gauze against his skin as he extended his other hand to me.

  “Let’s just get this done.”

  I took out the other tracer in his wrist and when both wrists were done, I wrapped the wounds with gauze.

  Removing the tracers from the wings proved to be easier for me, but more difficult on him. His wings were very sensitive, particularly where the tracers were, which was close to where the stretched skin met with the thicker skin over the bones of his wings.

  He cringed and tried very hard not to flinch when I first cut into the thick skin where only small feathers grew, but he moved and I decided we needed to switch positions. He turned around and rested his chest and his head on the back of the toilet while his wing rested over the vanity, allowing me more room to move and more stability for him.

  It took me a while to get through the thick skin and feathers, and then I had to search around the torn skin carefully to find the chip, which was difficult to spot since the cut was not as clean.

  The second wing went a little smoother, but it was still very painful for him and I was starting to feel a little dizzy, though it probably was from the alcohol.

  Both wings were wrapped and, when it was over, we hugged tightly, ignoring the mess of blood around us, holding one another close.

  * *** *

  I knew Mykail felt better later on in the night because he was teasing me about drinking on an empty stomach and getting drunk so easily. I was sure I was not drunk, but I definitely felt the alcohol as time wore on. Even though I had eaten, I was still feeling dizzy, a little giggly, and I kept staring at Mykail’s ass whenever possible.