The White List

by Nina D'Aleo

  “No excuses,” he snarled. He lifted a hand and threw her across the parking lot. She flipped mid air and landed on her feet. She looked to Rocco for support, but he said nothing. No one else from the group offered her any help. Her eyes misted over. She turned and ran into the shadows.

  Then the breaking moment was over and Rocco turned his eyes to Omen and said with complete control, “I’m here with you not because of you. Take that for the truth it is or kill me now!”

  It felt as if everyone in the group inhaled sharply and held it. The rage in Omen’s face stayed for a second longer and then evaporated into his more usual expression of silent derision. He stepped back from Rocco and made an overly emphasized After You gesture.

  Rocco took charge, addressing the rebels: “The standing guard changes at zero two hundred hours. That is in five minutes’ time. We’ll hit the new shift right as they’re starting. Remember: disable—don’t kill. We get the List and we get out.”

  Omen nodded in approval of the plan.

  “Move out,” Rocco instructed.

  We left the lot and moved as a tight mass down the deserted road, the longest industrial stretch within the city limits. I walked beside Marco at the back of the pack. In contrast to all other times I’d seen him, Rocco’s younger brother now seemed calm. The fear and anger were gone from his eyes. It’d seemed like it should be the opposite, considering we were just about to attack a C11 facility and basically announce to the Horseman ‘Here we are—come kill us’ but, as they say, action is the antidote to despair. He, and probably all the others, were tired of hiding and planning to do something—now they were actually doing it.

  They were ready, but I felt anything but. I had the shakes and couldn’t stop, which I guessed could be delayed shock, maybe from the torture—maybe from everything. All I could think was: Where is Dark? I could see Omen walking at the front with Rocco and I really wanted to run up and kick him in the back, bash the hell out of him until he told me that my partner was all right—but of course I wouldn’t even get close to him, let alone touch him. As I thought these thoughts, Omen glanced back and caught my eye—he gave me a nod as if to say, Learning, are we? I returned a look that said, Kiss my ass. He smirked.

  Rocco pulled the group up with the facility in sight. It was a low, rectangular building surrounded by a high fence topped with a roll of razor wire. We watched as a stream of cars exited through the boom gate and turned in various directions down the strip, their headlights flashing bright then vanishing into the darkness. The shift had turned. I heard Rocco speak, voice quiet but urgent, “Now.”

  Without further instruction the rebels separated into four groups, each closing in on the facility from different sides like a hunting pack. I stayed beside Marco, and we headed, dead on, toward the boom gate. We came so close that the C11 Security agent posted in the boom gatehouse saw us. I thought he might call for backup or even open fire, but he only had time to narrow his eyes, and then he fell silently and didn’t rise again. Marco grabbed my arm and I found myself flying through the air beside him, up and over the fence, into the enclosed concrete square. All the rebels were leaping over and thudding down from every angle. This brought the new guards running—yelling instructions—“Hands up!”; “Get down!”—and so on.

  Poor bastards didn’t stand a whisker of a chance.

  The Shaman hit them with a barrage of supernatural strengths and, like the boom gate’s guard, they all just fell with hardly a sound. When Omen had announced they were moving on the facility, my mind immediately began devising elaborate plans to get in—stealing guards’ uniforms, forging passes—but why would the Shaman bother with that when a confrontation was so effortless for them? Again I was reminded of the fragility and helplessness of humans against Shaman. How could we fight an enemy that could directly affect our minds? Rocco had ordered the rebels to disable not kill, but some of the guards looked extremely still. I understood the anger of the group against the Chapter, but I assumed most of these guards were like me, agents who didn’t have a clue what was really happening—but we should have.

  The mob marched on, a hungry and desperate beast. We burst through the front door of the facility, meeting more guards: they fell just as fast with not a shot fired. I assumed Omen was taking out the security surveillance as we went, since no alarms were sounding, and no backup arriving.

  Apart from the guards, the building was largely empty at this hour, unlike Headquarters, which was always bustling. We passed hallways of offices, conference halls, tearooms, pushing further into the building. Omen and Rocco led the pack. They seemed to be following a location device, which I guessed held the coordinates for the server hosting the White List. We left the main building and approached a large warehouse-style building behind the facility. It was locked down with high-level security, which Marco disabled in seconds. Omen opened up the doors with a flick of his hand and we entered. The inside was nothing like I’d expected. I’d imagined lines of massive steel shelving and towering server stacks, but instead it was a huge office-like space with long rows of computers on benches for as far as I could see.

  “The hub,” I heard Omen say. “This is where they control the List. I knew this place must exist, I just couldn’t find it. It was like a mirage: everywhere I went it wasn’t.” He gave a bitter laugh, then led the group into the area.

  “Everyone boot up and get a copy of the List,” he ordered. “No mistakes this time.”

  The rebels scattered around the room, each of them going to stand in front of a computer. I copied them, sitting at a desk halfway down the stretch of building. I couldn’t help but notice the photographs beside the computer screen, pictures of smiling kids, a shaggy dog … There was a small calendar with marked dates–Angie’s birthday—speech night—Brett’s Final. I turned my attention back to the task. I didn’t have my USB, I’d left it in the office, but there was the option of just taking the whole hard drive. It wasn’t like the rebels were being subtle any more. I rummaged around in the agent’s pens and equipment and found a steel nail file that I used to unscrew the computer box cover and prize out the hard drive. I pushed it into my jacket pocket and glanced up at the rest of the group.

  Everyone was concentrated on the task—except Marco. He was standing in front of a door at the side of the building. I left the desk and went over to stand beside him. He didn’t even register I was there. His face was frozen like a store-window manikin. I’d seen Omen and Rocco lock up with the same unnatural stillness, as well as that Medical officer at Headquarters, and it made my skin crawl every time. It was a sharp reminder that Shaman were not human, even though most of the time they looked the same as us.

  “Are you all right?” I asked Marco.

  He blinked and turned my way.

  “There’s something behind this door,” he said, his face pale white. “I can hear—something.”

  “Something like …?” I pressed.

  “I don’t know,” he said. He glanced over his shoulder toward Omen and Rocco. Then he went to the security code board beside the door and pressed his hand against it. The locking mechanism clicked open. Marco took the door handle and slid the heavy door across. We stepped into the room through a gust of freezing air billowing out from just above the door. The mist cleared and I looked around.

  It was an equally large warehouse space, but there were no desks here. It took a second to understand what I was actually seeing, and as I did, it felt like the ground was being ripped from under my feet like a trick carpet. The entire hangar was packed full of prison-like cells with gurneys and smaller cages inside, with people hooked up to bags and machines, restrained and chained in various degrees of sedation and damage. Experiments. On living people.

  Everywhere I looked horrors burned into my mind. My whole face was pricking and my vision started to go white. I saw children there, bruised and frail. I thought I was going to be sick or even pass out, and realized I’d started to back out of the room without knowing I was mov
ing. I looked at Marco. He had tears running down his face.

  I leaped as a hand closed over my arm. I turned to Rocco.

  His dark eyes were empty of emotion. “We have to go. The Horseman’s soldiers are coming,” he told me.

  “Are you seeing this?” My voice came out loud and harsh.

  “We knew the Horseman was conducting experiments on Shaman, just not where …”

  “And now you know where,” I said. “We have to get them out.”

  “There’s no time,” Rocco said.

  “Bullshit!” Marco broke out. “They’re our people! We’re not leaving them!”

  He started to run into the room, but Rocco gestured and his legs just buckled and he started to fall. Rocco scooped up his brother before he hit the ground and slung him over one shoulder.

  “He’s too young. He doesn’t understand. He can’t help anyone if he’s dead. We have to run now so that we can live to come back.” He looked deeply into my eyes. “We will come back. They’re almost here.”

  I couldn’t move, so he grabbed my arm and dragged me out of the room. We broke into a run, joining the last of the rebels fleeing the facility. We sprinted around the side of the grounds and leaped over the fence. I could hear many voices at the front of the building. A car pulled up beside us. I shied away from the headlights, but Rocco pressed forward. He opened the front door and pushed me in. Willow sat behind the wheel.

  “Okay?” she asked me.

  I couldn’t reply. I felt like my face was frozen and my body was a hollowed-out shell.

  “Go!” Rocco said from the back, and Willow slammed her foot down, taking us away from that nightmare place—leaving the helpless to the mercy of demons.

  32

  The place of rendezvous was an eerie returning. It was the same colonial-style house in Bank Terrace in the inner outskirts of Toran-R, where Dark and I had attended the Bushels’ murder, where we had first encountered Omen’s power. The house was the same, minus the bloodied bodies, but I was changed, so everything looked different. I couldn’t stop thinking about what I’d witnessed. How could I ever stop thinking about it? How could anyone do that to another person? It was true, atrocities such as these and worse had been perpetrated throughout all the history of humankind, but we were largely sheltered from it in our safe little part of the world. We read horrors in books, in newspapers, online, but never really saw it—and Omen was right—we needed to see it to really feel it.

  I sat on a couch in the darkened living room of the house, wrestling with my mind, which now seemed to belong to someone else, someone angrier, colder, smarter and more driven than me. My whole body shook with the headache from hell. My thoughts strayed to what Rocco had said to me about who I was—dark in places—and I’d asked, weren’t we all? I didn’t know the real answer to that. I didn’t feel like I was in a position to analyze humanity as a whole. I didn’t even know who I was any more. Was I the person who felt heartbroken by tragedy, who went to pick up the pieces when all was said and done, or was I a person who could fight the source—stop it from happening again? That’s who I’d wanted to be; but I’d forgotten myself somewhere along the way. Or maybe I’d just grown up and found out life wasn’t that simple. Rocco had said at times it was. Maybe he was right. I felt so much hate right now toward whoever was torturing those people: if I met them who knows what I would do? Maybe I’d fight them, maybe I’d collapse into a crying heap on the ground. I’d never been in this situation before. Nothing had ever been so real and raw.

  I could hear the Shaman resistance in the dining room, feel their excitement as they examined the List, the names of all the Shaman still ‘sleeping’, who they could wake to fight the Horseman—to stop his plans. Would they be in time? Only one thing was certain—the world was about to change forever. We were on the verge of war, one that may see the extinction of humans. It sounded impossible, but who would have thought creatures as huge and powerful as the dinosaurs could be one day reduced to fossilized bones, to dust and dreams?

  I had to find Dark; I had to get my family together. I had to try to take them somewhere safe before the war broke out—if such a place existed. Dawn light threw shades of gray through the darkness. I knew what I had to do, but I felt like I could barely move. I fought back the exhaustion and dragged my phone out of my pocket. I startled as it buzzed in my hand from an incoming call. My heart thudded faster. I thought it might be Dark, but it was the General’s number. I hesitated then answered.

  “Silvia?” My mentor sounded uncharacteristically aged and nervous.

  I had no idea what to say to him.

  “Silvia, are you there?” he asked.

  “I’m here … I’m sorry …” I finally found my words.

  “Dark called me. He’s worried about you. He said you’re in trouble.”

  I felt a rush of emotion. If Dark had called the General it could be that he’d gotten out.

  “When did he call you?” I asked. “Was it from the hospital?”

  “I’m not sure where he was,” the General said. “Silvia—tell me what’s happening.”

  I considered lying, that’s what I’d been doing my whole life, that’s what felt comfortable, but I decided then, no more—let there be truth. “I found something out. Something terrible about the Chapter.”

  “Tell me,” the General prompted.

  “The agency—it’s not what we thought it was—it’s just a cover up—someone inside C11 is controlling everything—they’re going to use the walts to try to destroy the world.”

  The General paused and then he said, very gently, “Silvia, I’ve been investigating this exact situation for a very long time, and I believe you, but we must talk. You’re in terrible danger by knowing these things. It’s much more complicated than you know. Please tell me where you are. I’ll come and find you. We’ll talk through everything. Where are you?” I closed my eyes. Hearing the General say he believed me felt like a huge weight off my shoulders. I was positive Omen wouldn’t trust him to be involved and I didn’t want to drag him into this either, but I could see the rebellion desperately needed him. If I started telling everyone the truth, people might think I’d just lost it, but when a man like the General spoke, everyone listened. He could change everything.

  “I’m in a house on Bank Terrace—I’m with a group of walts who have broken-thru and survived. They’re trying to stop what’s happening, but we’re being hunted.”

  “I understand,” the General said. “Just stay put, and I’m coming to you. I’m with you, okay?”

  “Sir, it’s too dangerous,” I told him. “I’ll call you when I’m clear. I’ll come to you instead. I’m scared for Dark … I don’t know where he is.”

  “We’ll find him,” the General said. “But first I’m coming to get you.”

  “No—” I started to say again, but he hung up, leaving me twisted with anxiety that I may have just done exactly the wrong thing.

  I lowered the phone and stared out the window into the garden gradually taking shape in the new daylight.

  My phone buzzed with an incoming message and I tensed thinking again that it could be Dark, but the ID was Byter. The message said, I’m sorry :(

  I wrote back quickly: I’m the one who should be sorry. Things are happening I can’t explain. Don’t trust anyone.

  Then I sent another message that said, Get armed and get as far away from Headquarters as you can.

  I sensed someone behind me and looked over my shoulder. Rocco stood beside the couch, silently watching.

  “Hi,” I murmured.

  He walked around to sit down beside me, so close our arms were touching. He took my hand in his. He had a warm, strong grip.

  “How’s Marco?” I asked.

  “Angry,” Rocco said.

  “Do you blame him? We left those people there,” I said to him. “Those children …”

  Rocco nodded. “We left them,” he repeated. “We could have stayed and we would have been killed, then wh
at about all the humans we’re trying to save—thousands, millions of other people, including children?”

  I rubbed my eyes and nodded. The theory sounded right, except this was actual life and not a hypothetical.

  “It doesn’t seem like it yet,” Rocco said, “but we’re already at war, and at war the decisions you make aren’t right or wrong, just bad and worse …” He paused. “If you’d known this was happening, would you have done something?”

  I nodded. I would have. I knew that much. “Does that make any difference?” I said.

  “It does,” Rocco said. “I’ll find a way to get them out. All of them.”

  “Why would the Horseman do that to his own kind?” I asked.

  “I think he’d do anything to anyone to accomplish his mission.”

  “His mission—turning humans against each other? I don’t understand. Why would he bother taking us out in such an insidious way when he could just attack directly? Humans don’t have any weapons that could fight the Shaman.”

  “I don’t know for sure,” Rocco said. “But my instinct is that he doesn’t want a Shaman versus human battle—he wants to sit back and watch humanity turn itself inside out on a mass scale.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  Rocco looked at me, his eyes shimmering silver in the dim light. “Because his power has made him unbalanced. Because he’s angry about how humanity chose to treat us when our mutation was revealed. Because it requires less effort than taking the world by force. All of the above and probably many more reasons we don’t yet understand.”

  “And Omen?” I whispered.

  Rocco paused. “He wants to stop the Horseman. Right now that’s enough to keep him directed.”

  “Do we seriously have a chance?” I asked.

  “There is always a chance,” Rocco said.

  His eyes lingered on mine. He was so close. Another time I would have been thinking about kissing him, but this wasn’t another time. This was now—and as he’d said—we were at war.