Blood Rights (Freedom/Hate Series, Book 2)

by Kyle Andrews

  The sound of sirens coming around the corner made her nauseous, but Libby didn't turn to look at them. She rushed to get behind two men who were walking up the sidewalk, and matched their pace. She stayed behind them, close enough to look as though they were together, but hopefully far enough behind them that they wouldn't turn around and ask her why she was following them. They must have seen her get out of the truck. They had to know that something was going on.

  The HAND vehicles rushed past her without slowing down. There were three of them, though she couldn't be certain that there weren't more nearby. There was always the chance that one of them would have stopped so that they could patrol the area.

  The more she thought about it, the more certain she was that there were HAND officers right behind her, just waiting to grab her, shove her up against a wall and shoot her in the face. She could hear the shot already. Smell the gunpowder. Blood. Gore. Pain. And then, nothing.

  But she wouldn't turn around. Doing so would be suspicious, if there really were officers behind her. It would tell them who she was, and she needed to guard that secret. Leo died for that secret.

  No. She stopped herself there, unwilling to think about Leo or Simon, or Paul, or Uly, or Collin, or any of the other people whose blood could be on her hands. She forced herself to think of something else. Something better.

  Sim came to mind, but this was not necessarily a great topic for her to think about at that moment. She suddenly remembered seeing him in the hospital, and she wondered what he must have thought as he realized that the girl he'd bumped into was her. He knew who she was with. He saw the HAND officers coming for her.

  He must have thought that she was a traitor. He could be cursing her right at that minute, or wishing for her death. But somewhere in Libby's heart she hoped that he wasn't. He told her that he loved her once, and she wanted him to keep loving her. Even if they never saw each other again, she wanted him to remember her the way she was. Foolish and naïve. Stupid and blind.

  Come to think of it, Libby had to wonder what he ever saw in her.

  The night was cold and curfew would soon be upon them. Libby had nowhere to go, except for the Garden. She had a long way to go, but she was pretty sure that she was going to make it.

  13

  Libby kept her head down and moved as quickly as she could through the streets without drawing any attention to herself. At first, she wasn't sure where she was. Every building and person looked the same, from what little she could tell when she glanced into reflections in store windows. She didn't dare to raise her eyes for a better look around, because doing so would be suicide. There were cameras everywhere.

  She didn't know exactly what Freedom believed in, since she hadn't read the literature or attended any of the lectures, but she had apparently learned something after all. Looking down to avoid cameras wasn't the most complex idea in the world, but at least it told her that she was capable of learning and changing. She never would have thought about those cameras or who was watching her before. She never would have cared that someone could be sitting at a desk, twenty miles away, tracking her as she walked home from school or when she sat on a bench with Sim. Now that thought made her stomach turn.

  Curfew was less than an hour away when Libby finally realized where she was. If she stayed on her present path, she would come across Marti's apartment building. It was about ten blocks away. If she were to turn left and weave herself through the streets and alleys, and she could be at Sim's apartment within twenty minutes. She could get to her old building, now nothing more than a burned out shell. She could get to school. The question was, could she remember how to get to the Garden, and could she make it there on foot before curfew?

  Once she knew where she was going, Libby started to walk faster. Minutes later, she was moving at a full jog. She didn't have to worry about people noticing her running down the sidewalk in a panic, because she wasn't the only one. Nobody wanted to be stopped by the police. The streets were probably filled with teenagers, trying to beat the clock.

  Of course, teenagers were encouraged to go wild and explore the boundaries of their minds and bodies, so the police couldn't be too hard on them when they were caught. Do some drugs. Get pregnant. Party down, as long as your did your schoolwork and fell in line when necessary. Rose talked about it like a running tab. The more liberated someone felt, the more debt their actions incurred.

  She'd never thought about these things before. She never saw the contradictions in the system. She never looked because she never cared. This was the way the world worked. She could try to take advantage of it at times, but working the system was a part of the system. Negotiate a little bit more food and feel victorious, never thinking about where the cost of that food would be made up.

  Libby turned down an alley and ran as fast as she could. It was dark, but she feared the light more than the darkness these days, because the light had eyes and ears.

  At the end of the alley, Libby turned left and continued to run. This sidewalk was a little less crowded than the one she was on before, allowing her to pick up more speed until she reached the end of the street and saw a police car parked at the curb.

  Her instinct was to slow down, so that she wouldn't draw attention to herself. Was that the right move? Would it only serve to draw more attention? If she crossed the street, would the police officers wonder why? Did they even care?

  No answer seemed like the right answer. Instead of doing anything, Libby stopped walking, bent down and pretended to tie her shoelace. She wasn't sure where this idea came from. She didn't think about it before she did it. It was simply the result of her having reached a mental dead-end and not knowing what to do next.

  The plan gave her a moment or two to think. It gave her seconds of standing still for reasons that had nothing to do with the police, which she hoped would make it seem like she didn't care one way or the other if they saw her. People with something to hide don't normally just stop to tie their shoes in front of a police car, right?

  Once she had stayed down for as long as she could without looking like she was stalling, Libby moved toward the street and crossed to the other side at a brisk—yet not rushed—pace. When she reached the other side, she turned the corner and picked up speed, feeling like she had outsmarted the system, when the truth was that the police officers were probably too busy talking amongst themselves to ever noticed her there.

  She kept moving, farther and farther away from the bright lights and occupied buildings. She didn't make it to the Garden before curfew, but she did make it to that part of town where the Garden was located. The area that was filled with abandoned buildings and hopeless people. Desperate people.

  It was dark in this area of the city, and the night air seemed cooler than it had before. The smell of ash and something rotting hung over every street in that place like an invisible fog. She could hear movement from within some of those crumbling buildings, and had to wonder whose eyes were on her at any given moment. But as long as they were inside, she didn't care. It was the people on the sidewalk that made her nervous.

  She saw men with skin that looked gray under the moonlight, leaning against the wall, smoking and watching her as she passed. There were more than a few of them. They looked like ghosts in that dead part of town.

  As she passed one of these men, he tossed his cigarette onto the ground and started to follow her. She picked up her pace and could hear him doing the same without ever looking back to confirm.

  She was not a fighter. She wasn't going to be able to overpower any of these men if they chose to do something to her. That was why Leo had been sent to the hospital with her. Why Paul drove her, rather than letting her walk. She'd never been through this area alone, and now she was beginning to understand why.

  On the ground, she saw kids who couldn't have been much older than herself, passed out. At least one still had a needle sticking in his arm.

  An old woman was sitting on front steps which no longer had a building att
ached to them. She looked as though she was getting some fresh air before turning in for the night, but where did she live? Why was she out there? Surely, there had to be a place for people like her.

  The old woman watched Libby pass and then looked behind Libby, to the man who was still following her.

  “Whore,” the woman said under her breath as Libby passed—as though Libby were asking for something to happen to her.

  As insulting as the comment was, it was even more scary. It implied that something bad was going to happen to Libby. She wasn't sure what to do about that. She could scream all she wanted, but this didn't seem like the type of area where screaming was likely to help.

  She was still blocks from the remains of the bank—the entrance to the Garden. It felt like a hundred miles, and fear was pushing her to move faster and faster, until she was running at full speed.

  Libby had never been an athlete. She walked where she needed to go, but she did not usually run anywhere. The cold air was burning her lungs and she could barely catch her breath, but she couldn't stop running, because that man was still behind her. But only one, as though he'd called dibs on her and none of the others would challenge that claim.

  Could she even go to the Garden? Could she afford to lead someone like this to such a vital Freedom base? Surely, this issue had arisen in the past, but Libby didn't know what the protocol was for it. Was she supposed to keep walking, as though the Garden didn't exist? It seemed like the only logical choice under the circumstances, but where else would she go?

  She needed to decide on what she was going to do, and she needed to decide quickly. She couldn't keep running forever, and the man behind her was catching up quickly. He was also laughing, as though this were all just part of the thrill for him.

  For one brief moment, Libby took her eyes off of the path before her and she looked back to see how close the man was. She caught a glimpse of his bald head. His height. His build. He didn't look like the type of person who had grown up hungry.

  A narrative formed in her head, of a HAND officer who couldn't obey orders and wound up on the street. True or not, this was what she imagined as she turned forward and looked at the buildings around her.

  Quickly choosing a store which no longer had any glass in its windows and looked as though it had been burned and looted years earlier, Libby altered her course. Without slowing down, Libby ran through the broken front window. Once inside, it was even harder for her to see. She dove behind a set of shelves and she stayed low as she weaved her way from aisle to aisle, deeper into the store. She then stopped and remained as still as possible, holding a hand over her own mouth to keeping herself from gasping for air.

  He was in the store. She could hear him stepping on broken glass and debris. He was moving slowly now, making a clicking sound with his tongue, as though he were calling a dog.

  Libby allowed herself to breathe again, taking very controlled breaths, listening to the sound of her pursuer as he moved through the store in search of her. If she was lucky, he would get bored with the hunt and leave her alone. She could wait a while and then escape through the back, so that nobody would see her leaving the same way she'd come in. But she wasn't a lucky person. She knew that he was going to find her. It was only a matter of time.

  She closed her eyes and kept listening, trying to think of a way out. Her legs were growing tired from all of the running and crouching. She was shaking. She was weak. When her weight shifted, she made a sound. It was slight, but she might as well have been beating on a drum in that place. She was sure that he would hear it and come running, but he didn't.

  Her hand moved along the nearest shelf. She couldn't see what was on it, but she didn't have to. All she needed was something that she could grab onto and throw. If she could make noise somewhere else in the store, maybe he would pursue that sound and she could escape.

  It seemed like a good plan, until she accidentally knocked over a small box on the shelf and the sound echoed through the entire store.

  A chuckle from the distance told Libby that he'd heard her. He started to move toward her and she had no choice but to stand up and run. She ran to the end of the aisle and turned toward the back of the store, but her pursuer was faster than she was. By the time she reached the back wall, he was able to grab her by the jacket and slam her onto the ground.

  Libby crawled backwards, trying to put space between them, but it was a futile attempt. The man was standing over her, watching her move. She could see hints of moonlight reflecting off of his teeth and eyes, but everything else was a shadow.

  “I got you,” he said in a hoarse whisper.

  “Please,” Libby muttered, but she couldn't get anything else out. She was shaking too hard and she couldn't catch her breath.

  The man bent down and sat on her legs. He said, “It ain't like that. I'm not gonna do what you think. I'm just going to cut on you for a while.”

  Tears filled Libby's eyes. She started to desperately feel at the ground around her, searching for something that she could use as a weapon. The man grabbed her arms and pinned them by her side.

  “I used to cut a lot of people,” he told her, with his lips close to her right ear. “I don't get to do that too much anymore though.”

  She was crying, and she hated that fact. She hated allowing anyone to see her emotions, especially when she didn't know that person. But she didn't have a say in the matter. In that moment, she was weak.

  The man closed his eyes for a moment and his grip tightened. He spoke one word to himself, under his breath: “Speak.”

  “Th—They'll come looking for me,” she said, trying to give him a reason to leave, but she sounded too scared to make it sound convincing.

  He opened his eyes and asked, “Who?”

  “My friends. My family.”

  “Nobody around here has friends or family.”

  He released her left arm as he reached for something that was tucked into his belt. It only took Libby a moment to realize that it was a knife.

  Once again, she searched the darkness for some sort of weapon, but he didn't seem concerned about her finding one. He held his knife firmly in his hand and pressed it against her cheek.

  “Speak,” he said one again, but not to her. She could barely hear the word that he said to himself, as though talking to some distant memory.

  She could feel the knife digging into her, and a drop of blood falling from her wound. In that drop of blood, she held the key to the past. To the future. It was the reason why she had been saved a month earlier. Why Collin Powers was abandoned. It was important. It contained the hopes of countless people around the city—the entire country, perhaps. Still, it fell to the floor, the same as any other blood.

  “Not so bad, right?” he said in an almost soothing tone.

  Her breath was shaky. Her crying was growing worse. She had no hope of survival, because she was not a fighter. She merely stood by while other people saved her.

  She tried to kick, and he stopped her. She tried to swipe at his face with her hand and he swatted it away like a mildly annoying gnat. She clawed at the ground, looking for something that would help her, but she couldn't find anything.

  She was a victim, born and bred. She was never meant to be anything else.

  The man put the knife to her throat and asked her, “You know what I could do right now? The power I have? I could flick my wrist and you'd pour out all over the floor.”

  He took a deep breath, as though he could inhale the power that he possessed in that moment. It was his drug of choice. It was why he spent his nights lurking in the part of town where there were no cameras and nobody would come looking.

  Finally, Libby's flailing hand hit something. It moved beneath her touch and though she didn't know what it was, she wrapped her hand around that object and swung it through the air with as much force as she possibly could.

  It struck the side of the man's face and shattered. Thin slivers of glass dug themselves into Libby's hand, but she
continued to push until the man screamed in pain and fell off of her.

  Libby pulled herself backwards, away from the man. Her hand was still bleeding and the pain was growing worse by the second, but she couldn't stop. She couldn't take even a moment to breathe.

  She pulled herself off of the ground and lunged at the man. She wasn't running from him anymore. If he wanted to kill her, he could kill her, but she was going to make sure that he would remember her every time he looked in the mirror.

  A scream escaped her mouth as she clawed at him, digging her nails into his already bloody face. She wanted to keep digging until she hit bone.

  He put his hands up, defending himself against her blows with barely any effort at all. Yet, as little good as it was doing her, it felt great to fight back for a change. It felt right.

  Then, he threw her aside as though she didn't weigh a pound. She slammed onto the ground beside him and started to pull herself back up immediately. That's when she felt the cool metal blade beneath her hand.

  She wrapped her hand around its grip and took another deep breath as she rushed toward her attacker. He threw up his hands and blocked her attack, still chuckling as though it were all part of the game to him.

  “What was that, a light bulb?” he asked her. “Damn.”

  He grabbed her and pulled her close, whispering in her ear, “You almost took my eye out with that thing.”

  She tried to pull herself free, but his grip was too tight. Though she held onto the knife, she couldn't do anything with it. She was once again feeling as helpless as ever, but she refused to give up.

  The man leaned in closer, to whisper into her ear, but she was done listening to him. She was tired. She wanted to get back to her room and her bed. So as he moved toward her, Libby slammed her forehead into his nose as hard as she could, just as she had seen Leo do to a HAND officer earlier in the night.

  To say that it hurt would have been an understatement. The pain reached around her head and down her neck. It lingered, like the sound of a bell that's just been rung.