by Somers, Jill
“I doubt they’re planning on trying that one again,” Dash said; “it’s not exactly an inexpensive strategy. But you’re right. If we can, we should.”
“How did you end up doing it last time?” Charlie asked Rory. “None of us were there.”
“It was just me, Quinn, and Dash,” Rory told him. “And it wasn’t easy. But that was before.”
Quinn sighed, knowing what was coming.
“Before what?” Pence asked.
“Before Quinn realized she’s a seer, too.”
“How do you even know that?” Quinn asked, rolling her eyes. But she already knew the answer. Their two minds were practically one by now.
“So, you’re saying it might be easier now,” Ridley said. “Like, what, you just hold hands and close your eyes and wham, vision?”
Quinn glanced at Rory, shrugging. “Worth a shot, isn’t it?”
Rory extended her hand, and Quinn took it.
Wham.
Gunshots.
Not just gunshots. Fireballs. Illusions. Invisible attacks. The abilities of those who had betrayed them—the alliance—fighting alongside an army of regulars.
Quinn searched for anything in the vision, any indications of when this attack would be, of how long they had to prepare. Finally, she realized it: she was herself in the vision. It was like a lucid dream. She could act however she wanted.
She pulled out her phone and looked at the date.
One week.
• • •
“We add it to the video,” Charlie said when Quinn and Rory told them what they had seen. “We say, guess what, world? You tried nuking us, and when that didn’t work, you sent soldiers in. We know it’s coming and we’re telling you, no.”
Quinn rolled her eyes. “Like that’ll work.”
“We could redirect the video toward Cole and Savannah,” Pence offered. “Tell them we know they’re coming. Tell them we want to talk to them. Face-to-face. No weapons, no threats. Work it all out.”
“Work it out?” Quinn laughed out loud. “Pence, they don’t even know the meaning of the words.”
“We force them to,” Pence pushed. “We set up a live stream. We record them from the moment they land here. If they go straight into attack mode, the public knows. If either of them wimps out and doesn’t show, the public knows. Basically, if they do anything but have a peaceful meeting with us to arrange terms of peace and freedom, the public knows.”
“I think we’re taking a step backwards,” Angel said. “Our plan was to direct this at the UNCODA, not the DCA. Crowley’s DCA. American. We already know all the Americans want us dead.”
“The UNCODA will still see it,” Dash told her. “Everyone will. But think about the timing. If we direct it toward the UNCODA, even if we finish and upload it in a few days, we’ll never get a proper response by the time the attack comes. Not from anyone that matters. Then we get attacked, and our attackers blame us, and the UNCODA decides we are too violent to work with. We lose our one opportunity.”
Angel sighed. She seemed to understand his point.
“Well,” Pence said, “I guess that settles that. Let’s get shooting.”
• • •
High, wide shot. Swooping over the beautiful scenery of the island, revealing its buildings, its river, its horse farm, its woods. Courtesy of Angel and her wings.
Cut to: Haley and Rory.
“Hello,” Haley says, smiling a calm, serene smile. “My name is Haley Mylar.”
“And I’m Rory Malone.”
“This is our home.”
Cut to: Pence and Charlie, flirting in the courtyard. Charlie zips over to Pence, knocking into her playfully and bending down to kiss her. She laugh-shrieks, squirting him with a gentle douse of water.
Haley: “You know this place as Devil’s Island. You think it’s a prison, where we are confined to cells, locked away, never to be thought of again. But it’s not.”
Rory: “We know this place as Siloh. And, by the way, you couldn’t lock us away if you tried. Seriously.”
Haley smiles. “What Rory means to say is”— we cut to Angel, flying high over the wall, yet not yet leaving—“we have stayed here, on this island, where you put us, for years, even though most of us have the abilities necessary to escape, because we respect your wishes. We don’t want to harm you. We don’t want to scare you. We’ve been mostly happy here.”
Cut to: kids about Rory’s age, one with feathery, fluffy skin and birdlike eyes, yet still quite obviously innocent; the other teleporting around her friend in two-foot bursts. They are playing.
Rory: “But last night, a very evil man named Cole Crowley, who you all for some strange reason put in charge of the Deviant Collection Agency, dropped a nuclear bomb on our home.”
Haley: “Don’t worry. We’re fine.”
“It’s just, you see, I have the ability to see the future. I saved us all by foreseeing that a bomb was going to be dropped, which is how we were able to—very easily—put up a shield and protect ourselves. Now I foresee that Mr. Crowley is going to send an army of people here to kill us. Look, guys, we don’t want to fight you. We don’t want to hurt you. We’ve only ever used our abilities to defend ourselves. But if you don’t stop trying to kill us, we might have to fight back.”
“To be clear, isn’t a threat. This is a request, directed at Mr. Crowley.”
Cut to: footage of Cole Crowley giving a speech at a shareholder’s meeting. Face to name.
Rory: “Right, but also directed toward the public, because we don’t trust Mr. Crowley as far as we could throw him. Which, by the way, is really far.”
Cut to: a monster in his thirties with gigantic arms pitching a baseball across the entire island.
Haley: “Mr. Crowley, come to Siloh. We will be live-streaming your arrival. We will show the world that we don’t intend to harm anyone. Never have. But we do want to talk. We need to talk.”
“Yeah. You need to stop trying to kill us.”
• • •
“I don’t know,” Quinn said, shaking her head. “The tone is cute and playful, but the situation is serious. People’s lives are on the line.”
It had been three days since they had decided to make the video. After extensive planning, shooting, and editing, they had finally settled on the version they screened in the dining hall for the entire resistance. As always, everyone had an opinion.
“We do clearly state that a nuclear bomb was dropped on us,” Haley pointed out. “Sure, it’s a little gimmicky, but only enough to make us relatable. If we went any darker, we’d be isolating ourselves from them. They have to like us.”
“I don’t know, either,” said Dash. “Rory gets a little wild there talking about her visions and how she saved us all. I’m wondering whether we’ve lost cute twelve-year-old Rory to psychic demon child Rory.”
“I am totally still cute!” Rory objected.
“Cute, yes,” Quinn said, growing queasy at the memory of Rory’s lines in the video. “Insane, also. Rory, you’re telling the entire world that you’re the most powerful of all of us. You’re making yourself a target for every foreign government official, every bureau, every—”
“She’s also making herself a star,” said Pence. “The public’s going to love her, just like they loved you. And after everything we’ve told them about Crowley trying to kill us… They’re going to be looking out for us. They’re not going to let anything happen to Rory without a fight.”
“Yeah,” Quinn said grumpily, “well, neither are we.”
Dash smiled softly, putting an arm around Quinn. “Don’t worry,” he whispered to her. “This is good.”
“So, what do we do now?” Haley asked, turning to glance at Rita and Simon. “We just… hit ‘post?’”
Simon nodded. “Rita designed the website. We were actually all fans of ‘We’re Not the Real Monsters,’ but we decided it was more of a subheading. We decided to name the movement, and the website, ‘Save Siloh.’”
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Quinn nodded. It was a much better alternative.
“We will also be uploading to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and a handful of other websites I’ve never heard of,” Rita explained. “Along with anonymous submissions to every legitimate government website, newspaper, and media outlet I could find. We’re adding hashtags and links to the Save the Siren campaign along with all smaller human rights campaigns fighting for the cause. At the very least, this should be seen by a few hundred thousand. At the most…”
“Everyone,” Simon finished for her.
“More or less.”
“So that’s it, then?” Quinn asked. “We think this will work?”
Pence gave a weak, simple shrug. “It has to.”
• • •
It did.
It reached a hundred thousand views in minutes. A hundred thousand shares within hours. A million views by lunch. By the time the sun set, twenty million.
Plus, a phone call from Cole Crowley.
It was for Quinn, of course.
They were back in Haley and Quinn’s old dorm room when he called. She switched to speaker phone before answering, allowing Haley, Ridley, Dash, and their recording device to listen in.
“Ah,” he said when she answered. She shuddered at the sound of his voice, a voice she hadn’t heard since the day she lost Kurt. She fought as hard as she could to remain calm. “Miss Harper. So refreshing to hear your voice again.”
“Really? ’Cause I thought maybe the nuclear bomb you dropped on me was some kind of indication that you weren’t my biggest fan.”
“On the contrary, I was always a fan of yours, Quinn. I had high hopes that you would join the alliance—escape that rotten place and come to work for me.”
“I’d rather die.”
“Clearly.”
She wasn’t sure she could continue this conversation much longer without unintentionally starting a very hot, very large fire. “What do you want, Crowley? Does this call mean you’ll meet with us?”
“That’s not what this phone call is about, specifically.” He seemed to sense that he was being recorded. “I’ll be releasing a public video directed toward you tomorrow—learned from the best, you know.”
She gripped the phone tighter. God, how she loathed him.
“No, Quinn, this phone call is me telling you how much trouble you’ve caused for me. And me reminding you how bad things can get for people who cause me trouble.”
Her throat was dry. Her face was hot. She looked up at Dash, who clearly sensed all of the rage she was feeling. His comforting gaze was the only thing keeping her together.
“However much trouble I caused you,” she hissed at Crowley, “it’s not enough. Death wouldn’t be enough for you, you sick fuck. Immeasurable pain for the rest of your life wouldn’t be enough.”
Dash squeezed her hand, his face pained. It was incredible to her, the thought of someone else loving her so much that he felt her pain as if it was his own. It was a feeling she had almost forgotten since losing Kurt. She wished she could express to him in that moment how much it meant to her. She doubted he had any idea.
But Crowley’s words snapped her out of her lovesick thoughts and back into her harsh reality.
“I’ll see you next week, Quinn. Do take care. You’ll need it.”
• • •
They discussed releasing the recording of Quinn and Crowley’s conversation to the public, but decided against it. It wasn’t incriminating enough; besides, Quinn’s threats about death and immeasurable pain wouldn’t exactly help their cause.
They spent the next week training in a way Quinn was more familiar with: one-on-one combat. The only difference: guns were involved.
Tranquilizer guns, but still.
The biggest rule the resistance had agreed upon was that they would kill as few people as possible. They would be armed with fast-acting tranquilizer guns only. Of course, many of the members of the resistance—Quinn and Dash included—would have no need for guns; their abilities would do the trick. But for people like Ridley, Drax, and Angel, not having one was not an option.
Using tranquilizers for practice, Quinn decided, worked in her favor. Real gunshots did just about nothing to her. They caused her pain, certainly. They weren’t fun. But her skin always forced them out with ease and healed right up. Strong enough tranquilizers actually managed to sedate her—if only briefly.
For the most part, she was good at dodging them. Drax, she learned quickly, was a terrible shot. Hank wasn’t great. But Ridley and Angel were both impressive marksmen, and before long, she was on the verge of passing out from all of the sedatives flowing through her.
“The training is going well,” Michael announced to all of them a few evenings later at the dinner meeting. “We’re pleased with everyone’s progress and have high hopes and confidence for what the future holds. Of course, to some extent, this is all precautionary. Our videos have been streamed and shared all over the world by millions upon millions of people. Crowley put out a response video that was weak, to say the least. Tried to convince everyone we had been threatening the world with some kind of mass, organized destruction. Said the attack had been a ‘necessary evil’ but that he is now ready to try diplomacy for the sake of the world’s safety. Load of BS, clearly. They’re saying his approval rating is in the toilet. None of his shareholders knew that he was the director of the DCA; many of them are livid. The stocks for his company are plummeting. Everyone will be watching what he does next. It would be idiotic of him to still try to attack us.”
“You don’t know him,” Quinn warned. “I wouldn’t be so sure.”
“He is an idiot, in some ways,” Dash told them. “But he’s a genius in others. He’ll have something planned. Something none of us would have thought of.”
“Which is why we need to get into the specifics,” Evelyn said. “Plan A and plan B. Plan A: All goes according to plan. Crowley does not attack. What then? What, exactly, do we ask for?”
“To be left alone,” Hank suggested.
“That’s not enough,” Ridley told him. “We ask to be left alone, we’re right where we started. We must ask to be free. To be independent. To be granted rights, the ability to write our own laws. To be able to travel, to trade.”
“Maybe we could become a U.S. territory?” suggested Drax.
Boo’s and screams erupted throughout the hall.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Angel said to him, disagreeing with her best friend for one of the first times ever. “A U.S. territory? After all our country has done to us? Why would we want that?”
“Because we could demand things that way,” Charlie said, understanding where Drax was going with it. “Reparations, for the way we were treated by them. Stipends of goods shipped to us for x-amount of years until we get on our feet. Money. Tax breaks. Their attention and protection, were we to be attacked by foreign countries. They’d have to at least consider it, if we asked. We’re all Americans. Hell, most of us are native New Yorkers.”
“No,” Quinn said, standing up. “I’m sorry, but no. Charlie, Drax—everything you’re both saying makes sense. It does. But you don’t understand. Even if Crowley submits for now—even if he plays the game—he will never let us be free. Crowley owns this island. Okay? And he’s an American, and as far as we know, this is American soil. As long as that’s the case, he will think he owns us. He will continue to manipulate us and destroy us from the inside out.”
Everyone fell silent, absorbing the significance of what she was saying.
“No matter what happens when Crowley gets here,” she said, “no matter what he says… we must demand independent sovereignty. And if he says no, we take it to the UNCODA. Not the DCA. Not America. The world.”
The silence remained. Drax’s eyes were wide. He almost seemed ashamed of his suggestion.
“We vote,” Michael said. “All those in favor of requesting to be a U.S. territory.”
To her amazement, not a single person
raised a hand.
“Very well,” Michael said. “Independent sovereignty it is. My next question is this: How many of you would want to leave Siloh altogether? To move back to America, or another country entirely?”
More people than Quinn would have expected raised their hands. She realized she didn’t even know the answer she herself should give.
“We will add that option in,” Evelyn said.
Haley raised her hand, not waiting to be called on before speaking. “What do these conditions have to do with Cole Crowley? He’s in charge of the DCA, not the United States Congress. He doesn’t speak for the United States or the world.”
“You’re right,” Dash told her, “and you’re wrong. Crowley is America’s authority on all things having to do with this island. Not to mention, as Quinn said, he owns the island. Politicians know of him. Law enforcement knows of him. They’ve all chosen to let him handle it, to run the DCA, simply so they could wash their hands of it.”
“But even if he agrees to our terms,” Rory asked, “will they?”
Dash smiled sadly at her. “It’ll at least get them to pay attention.”
She nodded quietly.
“Very well,” Evelyn said, straightening. “This gives us a better feel for what terms of peace we should set. Now, for the terms of war, should it come to that.”
And the battle strategy began.
• • •
Live stream. Handheld.
Open on a close-up: Quinn Harper. The Siren.
“Yeah, I know, you’ve all been wondering what happened to me,” Quinn tells the camera. “Well, they kept me away for that first video. Didn’t want me to scare you all. But seeing as I’m what you could call our friend Mr. Crowley’s prime objective, we figured you’d see me sooner or later. Might as well be now.”
Camera pans to: Dash Collins.
“And him. Crowley wants him, too. Pretty, isn’t he?”
Camera makes a quick U-turn to reveal its wielder: Pence. She rolls her eyes.
“Mr. Crowley should be arriving any minute,” Quinn says. The camera pans back to her. “Now, I need to make one thing very clear to anyone who may be watching: we don’t want trouble. We just want to talk to Mr. Crowley. So if this live stream cuts off for any reason, or if you see him attacking any of us—”