by Adam Bender
Eve was surprised to hear the singing of birds as she pushed open the doors of the Head Church and let the light in. The rising sun cast a pink glow over the torn-up gardens. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she noticed that the statue of the Headmaster was gone, replaced by a crumbled mass of stone. Strewn here and there were the bodies of Underground agents and black-shrouded Saints.
“Eve!” called Ana, running over to her. “Are you all right? You’re bleeding.”
She had nearly forgotten about her arm but the reminder made her feel all that pain again. Ana helped tear off Eve’s sleeve, revealing a dark red cut. With the freshly torn black fabric from Eve’s shirt, Ana tied a tourniquet around the wound.
“That should stop the bleeding. You probably don’t need to go to the hospital, but if you want to keep the arm you’re going to need to disinfect it as soon as possible.”
She wasn’t worried about that. “Has Seven come out yet?”
Ana took a step back. “I thought he was with you.”
Eve was about to bolt back inside when the Headmaster burst through the open gates and fell face-first into the dirt. His hands were tied behind his back and he writhed around the ground like an upturned insect. Seven appeared behind him wearing a half smile. Eve ran to him and let him sweep her into his arms.
Ana chuckled. “You two are going to help me move this jackass, right?” she asked, indicating the weeping Headmaster.
“Leave him for now,” said a voice Eve did not expect. “I called Danny and reinforcements should be here any minute.”
Shaan was alive. His clothing looked singed and his face was smeared with black, but otherwise he looked to be in good health. Eve realized to her chagrin that this was the second time she had been convinced that the former special-effects engineer was dead. This instance had not been a setup. She saw the eighteen-wheeler truck explode with her own eyes. There was nothing fake about that.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Shaan, “but I saw that asshole with the rocket launcher a few seconds before he fired. I guess I got the hell out of that truck just in time. It’s a damned shame, though–we lost some good equipment.”
Ana ran over to hug him. “Hey, we’re just glad you’re okay,” she said.
He shrugged. “Just please tell me someone provided that idiot with a long and painful death.”
Eve considered Rodriguez’s fall from the top of the tower. “Oh, it was long.”
“Well, that does make me feel a little better,” he said. “Guess I’m glad we had you on our side.”
A distant hum grew into the roar of many engines as a line of Guard police cars and other vehicles pulled up to the Head Church. Seven’s blue roadster parked alongside the gardens not far from where they were standing. The door swung open and Haru stepped out.
“How long have you been in town?” exclaimed Ana. “We could have used your help!”
“You know I don’t have the balls for shit like this. I’m on the Council; Danny called all of us to headquarters last night. I drove Seven’s car over as a favor to Danny.”
He turned to Seven.
“It’s a super sweet ride, by the way. You must get all the girls.”
Seven grinned. “Just one.”
Eve felt herself turning red as he picked up her hand and led her to the vehicle.
Haru raised his eyebrows and clucked his tongue. “Very well, then. See you back at HQ, sometime? No hurry, yeah?”
As they sped away, Seven felt himself still buzzing from the night’s events. He knew he should be tired but he was going to try and maintain this high as long as possible. They had defeated the Headmaster and Danny Young’s victory in the election seemed all but assured. He was back with Eve and it felt right. There would be a lot of talking ahead for the two of them, but for now all he wanted to do was take her back to his place by the ocean.
He worried about the wound on Eve’s arm, wished he could have done something to stop her from getting hurt. But he was proud of her for facing up to Rodriguez, and he knew she could take the pain. Eve was a survivor.
Peripherally, he saw her looking at him. When he turned to catch her, Eve’s eyes floated back to the road. But she couldn’t hide the happiness on her face as she guiltily bit her bottom lip.
“We should probably listen to the news,” he suggested.
Eve turned on the radio.
“…new evidence that the tape of the Enemy was created out of whole cloth by the Headmaster and his closest followers. It’s just another stunning new development in our story. We are hearing now from Susan Levi’s camp that she plans to concede the election to Daniel Alexander Young. Levi is expected to make the announcement at a press conference starting within the hour. We expect Young to speak shortly after that. Unknown at this point is what the Headmaster’s response will be to the allegations against him…”
“I suppose they haven’t heard yet,” Eve said lightly.
“Guess not.”
She turned down the volume. When he looked over, her face had fallen into dark despair.
“Hey, you all right?”
“Seven…I love you, and you don’t know how happy it makes me to think we’re going to be together again, but I need you to be absolutely sure you want to be with me.”
“I’m sure,” he protested.
“That’s not what I mean. It’s just…I don’t think we can just fall back into our old patterns like nothing ever happened between us. I don’t think we should be planning a wedding. I don’t think we should even live together, at least not right way.”
“You mean you want to start over?”
She nodded. “I don’t want you to be Jon Wyle anymore, but I need to be sure I’m falling in love with Seven. This can’t work otherwise.”
He thought about what she said for a long time. If he was being honest with himself, Seven decided he couldn’t be sure whether he loved her because of Jon’s memories or his own. He felt attracted to her; there was no denying that. But maybe Eve was right that it would be a mistake to jump into anything.
“Well,” he said eventually, “would you maybe want to go out sometime?”
Eve’s features brightened. “Like on a date?”
“Yeah. Maybe some pizza and a show?”
He dropped his hand lightly to the platform between their seats. She reached out and held it. Her palm was soft and warm.
“I’d like that,” she said with a yawn. “But maybe…maybe we could have a nap first?”
She was asleep in seconds. Seven clicked off the radio and drove Eve home.
From the grassy cliffs of the Luna Coast, Seven looked over the edge of the world. It was about an hour before sunset, but already he could feel the slight chill in the air that always came before the fall of night. The lighthouse behind his back was covered with scaffolding, and the last of the workers had just gone home for the day.
The ocean was a vast and empty slate. The Enemy’s war boats had long since left the horizon. Whether they would return was a continuing subject of debate. Seven assumed the Enemy would try to strike again, but he wasn’t worried. The Guard would be ready this time. Since taking power three months ago, President Young had worked tirelessly to patch the divisions lingering from the old regime. It would take more time still to eliminate all of the prejudice, but the new government was making a difference. Young had even begun to organize talks with the Enemy. Maybe there would be peace after all.
Seven’s phone beeped in his hand. He was relieved to see it was just a text message from Talia.
Don’t fail
The device beeped again.
Seriously, good luck.
He smiled. She had come a long way since they had met, and he honestly didn’t know what he’d do without her as a friend.
Sometimes he wondered what life would have been like if he had taken up Danny’s offer to lead and reform the Guard. But Seven was glad he chose to stay behind and take over Young’s duties as chairman on the Undergroun
d’s council. While Shaan and Ana went to work for the Guard, Talia stayed to help Seven write a new charter for the group. The Underground no longer had to fight the government, but it could act as a check against abuse by anyone in a position of power.
The new Underground would operate within the laws of the land–at least mostly–but at the same time answer to no one but themselves. They could not be directly funded by Young, since that could have been seen as a conflict of interest. Fortunately, someone had managed to convince the estate of former President Drake to write them a hefty check.
So far the work was not nearly as glamorous as what had come before. But Seven considered that good news, and he did feel like they were making a difference. They didn’t hide from the public eye. He was particularly proud of their campaign to reduce the number of cameras hidden around the city. Tapping into social networks, Talia helped get a huge number of people excited about the issue. Already President Young was responding. Just yesterday he had announced plans to review and scale back the level of surveillance within the Capital and around the nation.
Seven felt good about the work, but it was Eve who he lived for. When Seven turned down Danny’s offer to lead the Guard, he recommended Eve for the job. It was a perfect fit. Eve took great pride reshaping the Guard’s mission into a force for uniting the people. Her first order of business was to wipe clean the country’s internal Watched list and eliminate the labels Patriot and Heretic. The Guard’s new, singular mission was to serve and protect the public.
While their schedules often clashed, Seven tried to see Eve every chance he got. He felt they were growing closer than ever, including back when he still went by the name Jonathan Wyle. They had even begun to joke about their strange history.
“Don’t forget about our date,” Eve said recently.
“Or what?” returned Seven. “You’ll cut open my head?”
They were kind of weird. But Seven never felt happier.
A sudden crunch of gravel shifted Seven’s attention to the parking lot. Eve honked her horn as she pulled in. He waved back. Lightly patting his jeans pocket, he walked out to meet her.
Eve stepped out of the car and jaunted toward him. Her golden hair lifted in the wind and Seven felt himself falling into her ocean-blue eyes.
As they embraced, he took a small, round object from his pocket.
“Guess what?” she burst before he could say anything. “I finally got Shaan to tell me how he did it.”
Seven closed his fist around the item in his hand. “How he did what?”
“How he faked his death!”
He recalled that Shaan had done it here on the Luna Coast. The guy drove his motorcycle straight off the cliff and into the ocean. Looking over the cliff now, Seven couldn’t see any way he could have survived. It was too high. “How?”
“No one saw him do it in person,” she said breathlessly. “All we had was a video recording from a single CCTV camera on the lighthouse. Shaan knew where the camera was. He sent his bike off the cliff at just the right angle so that we could only see his back.”
“You mean it wasn’t him? Who was riding the bike?”
“Apparently it was some prosthetic dummy he’d rigged for an action movie a while back.”
Seven laughed. He was impressed. “I guess we were the real dummies.”
She gave a wide-eyed smile. “Uh, yeah! Good thing he works for me now.”
“Eve, there’s something I need to ask you.” He knew it wasn’t an elegant transition, but he was acutely aware of the sun beginning its descent.
She looked concerned. “What is it?”
He got on his knees and held out his hand.
Eve gasped. “You…you kept it.”
The ring felt cold against his palm as he asked. The diamond flickered orange when she answered.
The End
WE, THE WATCHED
Watch the beginnings of Seven’s fight against the Guard in We, The Watched, the prequel to Divided We Fall.
After waking with no memory of his past, Seven struggles to conform to a society that accepts invasive surveillance by the government and forced uniformity by the church as necessary safeguards for protecting national security. But will the fresh perspective from his rebirth be a blessing or a curse?
“There’s action, romance, and social commentary woven into a brilliant story with an amazing plot twist near the end,” writes David Broughton in the American Chronicle. “It’s science fiction in the way that Orwell’s 1984 or Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury dystopian novels are considered science fiction … The writing is nearly on par with these geniuses of the written word.”
“The dialog was excellent and the situations seemed driven by curiosity, which is a great way to pull you into an adventure,” said Elizabeth M. for Readers’ Favorite. “The author captures the imagination of the reader.”
For more information, visit WeTheWatched.com.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adam Bender writes speculative fiction that explores modern-day political fears with a balance of action and romance.
Adam self-published his first two novels, We, The Watched and Divided We Fall. He was a quarterfinalist in the 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards, in which Divided We Fall was selected as one of the top 100 novels in the sci-fi category. Adam has also written several short stories.
A journalist by day, Adam has reported extensively on technology and the international debate between personal privacy and national security. He is a senior journalist for Computerworld, Techworld and CIO in Sydney, Australia. He previously covered US politics on Capitol Hill for the esteemed Washington trade journal, Communications Daily. He has won journalism awards from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the Specialized Information Publishers Association.
Adam maintains an active social media presence on Twitter and Facebook. He also has a website and blog located at AdamBenderwrites.com.
He lives with his wife in Sydney.