Hiding Behind A Mask (The Maskless Trilogy #1)
Page 20
Chapter 19
“I’m not leaving the city,” Becca says to Eduard as they stand between two buildings.
He wears a white mask with orange and red flames that cover half of the face.
“He knows who you are,” Eduard says, his patience starting to give way.
“Correction: he knows I’m not who I say I am. We need to figure out how we can get to him without blowing our cover. I was really lucky that he didn’t kill me right there.”
“I don’t think he would have done that, Becca.”
“You never know. He is the leader of both clans… Who knows what he would do to me if he felt like it?” Becca gets an idea. “Actually, that’s where we can start.”
“What?” Eduard asks, lost.
“The library downtown. I’ll do some research him, just like we would do in school over the past.” Becca starts to leave, but Eduard grabs her arm, sending shivers through her body. “What?”
“You shouldn’t go alone.”
“No one will know.”
“Someone will,” he says, his fingers still gripping her forearm. “No one knows nobody in this city, and someone’s gonna ask questions.”
“Hey,” Becca says, more sternly than she meant to. “You’re the one that came up with the Hiders and mask-jumping. Remember that next time you worry about someone recognizing a mask, okay?”
Eduard hesitates and makes a sound like he wants to say something. Instead, he sighs and drops his hand, looking at the white brick wall standing behind Becca. He nods eventually and tells her to go get a new mask.
“Why?” Becca asks, ready to leave and figure out whom the worm called Quill is.
“You’re a political leader right now. You need to go back and get a different mask before heading down there.”
“It’s going to be obvious that I’m not who I say again, Eduard. I’m just going to go like this. And I have her ID, just in case. Meanwhile, you should send people out to expand. We can't defeat a government with the numbers we have."
“Becca—”
“Eduard. Do it. Double the number of Maskless by the end of the day if you can, and I don’t care how you do it. I’m the Face, and it’s time I start acting like it and taking charge.”
“Yeah, but Becca—”
“Look. Just do it, okay? There are over a hundred lives at stake here, so start acting like it. I’m heading down now. If I find anything, I’ll write it down somewhere. Go.”
With that, Becca turns and walks away, leaving Eduard in between the two buildings, one black and one white.
The library is a small building, old and worn, yet rarely used. Everything everyone needs is either in their home or at school. The only people that ever use the library are the ones that want to embark on an adventure full of knowledge and questions, or they want to do a more in-depth analysis of something for a school project.
The outside walls are an off-white color, standing out against the two bright white buildings beside it. One of those buildings is a hair salon, and the other is a Light Clan clothing place, but Becca isn’t interested in either of those.
She walks up the small vanilla steps and up to the tall, brown door. The library is a place both clans can be in, unlike the coffee shop she’d ran into a while back.
She opens the door and the bells above it chime a soft melody. The woman behind the counter at the right of the door looks up from her old computer screen and smiles.
“Hello, Belle,” the woman says, and Becca nods in acknowledgement.
Computers aren’t really used anymore, and aren’t very common. Librarians, along with store and restaurant managers, need it for tracking money and shipments, but no one else has one. Technology sputtered out when the oil-crisis came about, and people had to cope without the electricity they had come accustomed to. Becca doesn’t know if they use it in the government offices or anything, but she’s guessing they do. She doesn’t know much about the government, she realizes as she thinks more about Quill. The schools only teach them about the past to make sure it’s not repeated, but stray away from having the children learn about the government. She didn’t even know about Quill until she was thirteen, and he’s still a big mystery to her, though she’s been face-to-face with him a few times.
Becca walks on, straight through the tall bookcases lined neatly across the green carpet like soldiers standing at attention. Each one is filled to the top with different books of various sizes and colors. They give of a musty smell and dust floats in the air as the few masked citizens lift them from their places and leaf through them.
On the ends of each bookcase, there is a word or two printed in bold letters, telling whoever comes in where the books they are looking for are.
Becca walks between two of the bookcases and takes a left, heading for the non-fiction sign hanging from the ceiling, letting her know where its section is. She walks around the table in the center of the two separate rows of several bookcases. There are only two of them, due to the space, but it’s the largest library in the country. If Becca wanted to find anything at all about the government, it’d be here.
She makes her way to the history bookshelves, seeing that they are overflowing. This country thrives on the past, making sure that it doesn’t happen again. It’s pretty much all they learned about while growing up, besides don’t mess up or you’ll become a part of the Dark Clan, and you don’t want that.
Becca works her down to the ‘CLANS’ shelf, where she knows she can find something about the clans and the leader.
She pulls a large book with a smiling white mask on the front and the title The In’s and Out’s of the Light Clan, and flips through its pages, looking for a picture of a man dressed in both dark and light colors, or the word ‘leader’.
Suddenly, she sees the picture she’s looking for. Sort of. It’s a man in the same mask as Quill, but dark gray clothes instead of the dark, dark turquoise that Quill always wears.
The Leader, who has the option to choose three officials from each clan to be his cabinet, leads both the Light Clan and the Dark Clan. This can seem like quite a contradiction to some people…
So that’s how that happens, Becca thinks to herself. He chose Belle and all those people that follow him around everywhere.
She reads on, but there’s nothing more about the leader, even after she leafs through the rest of the pages in the heavy book.
Placing it back where it belongs, she runs her fingers over the protruding spines of the rest of the books. She pulls out another book by the same author, R. J. Jean, and flips through it. It’s called The In’s and Outs of the Dark Clan, a contrast to the first book. On the front, there is a large black mask with a frown and the feeling of sadness radiating from it.
Becca opens it up and turns the pages, reading little comments about the Dark Clan out of curiosity like “…the sane become the insane once the black mask is placed on their face…” and “…the black masks are not afraid to speak their mind, no matter how horrible or grotesque the words may be…”.
Suddenly, she comes across the same picture again, and the words are switched around to where the Dark Clan is mentioned first, but there is nothing else that Becca can find about the leader throughout the entire book.
She puts it back, her discouragement growing. If she can’t find anything on Quill, how can the Maskless be successful?
She spots a small book. It’s wedged between two larger books that sit on top of the row. Sitting the shadows, it’s almost hidden from sight, as if it wants no one to read its contents.
She reaches up and dislodges it from its place.
“The In’s and Out’s of the Leader of the Clans,” Becca breathes, as if the pages hold the secrets to the world. This is it—this is what she needs.
The cover is of a mask, the same mask that sat above Quill in the courtroom, one half white and happy, the other black and sad. The author’s name sits centered at the bottom in cursive, R. J. Jean.
She
opens the thin book. It looks to be only about one hundred pages, give or take a few.
On the first page, there is the same picture of the man in the dark gray clothes and the familiar mask, but on his shirt is the mask from the cover. It’s odd seeing it. Becca feels like it doesn’t belong there.
She turns to the front page.
- Introduction: The Leader of the Clans
The previous leader carefully selects the Leader of the Clans, once the year of resignation comes upon him/her. The mask is handed down and the retired leader is buried without his/her mask, in honor of the work he/she has done for this country/state/city.
There are three levels of Leaders. Level one is at city level, the Leader of the Clans. Level two is state level, the Leader of the State. Lastly, the third level is country level, the Leader of the Nation, or the President.
In this book, I will be talking about the Leader of the Clans.
Becca makes her way over to a seat, praying no one comes over to talk to her. She flips to the next chapter and reads on.
- Chapter 1: Roles of the Leader of the Clans
There are many roles of the Leader of the Clans, considering that he/she is the leader of both the Light and the Dark clan in his/her city.
Disinterested in the roles and interested in more of why Quill is the way he is, she skips forward, skimming over the chapters and the chapter titles.
- Chapter 7: Choosing the Leader of the Clans
In the beginning of this book, I told you about each position of leaders, and how the specific role you want to know about is chosen. But how is he/she selected from hundreds, even thousands of people?
From a young age, the children are watched. There is a handful picked out from the others that have just the right characteristics for a leader, as I mentioned in chapter four. Once they are chosen, they are not told they might be the leader of both clans one day, instead of being a part of only one. They are left in the dark, and no one but the city government knows about who these children are.
On the day of their first masking, the children that had been chosen for the city government to watch over are re-evaluated by the Leader of the Clans his/herself, including his/her cabinet. Of that selection, the officials pick five children to be observed.
These children will not know they are being watched until one of them is chosen as the leader at age thirteen. Even after that, it is the retiring leader’s choice, and last decision, to either keep the secret of the choosing or tell the children about the selection before the last masking ceremony, where he/she will give up his/her mask. Most of the past leaders have chosen to keep it a secret until then.
The children are ranked from one to five. Once they receive their teenage masks, the leader will start watching over the first ranked child personally, by keeping an eye out for him/her to make sure he/she stays out of trouble, and by attending the celebration of the child receiving his/her adult mask.
Becca rereads the last sentence.
Quill’s mask in the sunlight of the garden flashes before her eyes and she drops the book onto the table.
Had she been next in line to be the Leader of the Clans?