Inside

by Kyra Anderson

  My eyes glued to them, I crept down the final steps and to the door into the garage at the bottom of the staircase. Slipping through the smallest opening possible, I held the handle down as I slid the door back into place before moving around the cars in the garage to the door leading into the backyard. Closing that door just as quietly, I crept around the far side of the house and slipped the latch on the gate open, walking into the driveway and ducking under the windows of the kitchen, making my way to the front of the house, where I sat on the sidewalk behind some of the bushes to keep from being seen by my parents.

  I knew this was a very reckless and risky move. I did not entirely know if Leader Simon was going to understand what I wanted to do or if he was just tricking me into revealing treasonous thoughts to him that would cause me to be put in the Commission of the People before I caused too much trouble.

  I decided that I would give him the benefit of the doubt, but until I knew for sure, I was not going to talk about my plans for a rebellion. I was only going to talk about how I disagreed with the Sweeps and how, as Leader, he needed to put a stop to them. I was sure that would give me a good idea of how Leader Simon felt about Dana and the Commission.

  Each time I saw headlights, my heart raced. When the car that was supposed to take me to Central Hall did show up and two men ushered me in, I was sure that my heart was going to come out my throat in anticipation.

  I sat in the dark backseat, shivering from the chill I had caught and anxiously wringing my hands in my lap.

  I had been to Central Hall before on a tour many years previous, but I did not remember what the building looked like.

  It was a modern building, a structure of black steel and reflective glass that lit up at night, though no one could ever see what was going on inside, despite the glassy look of the walls. The building was meant to symbolize a leap into the future and the reflected sky was meant to show the serenity and peace that Central hoped to achieve for the whole country.

  However, it was not easy for me to get inside Central Hall. I went through rigorous security measures and when I was finally let inside the large building, Leader Simon was pacing in the foyer, waiting nervously.

  “Miss Sandover,” he greeted with a shaky smile.

  “Leader Simon.”

  “I’m afraid we don’t have much time,” he explained, reaching his hand out to me as he motioned the security guards away. “I can only sneak away for about fifteen minutes.”

  “That’s enough,” I assured, my voice tight.

  “Walk with me and speak quietly,” he advised, leading me into a hallway. I did not pay attention to my surroundings, focused on the limited time frame.

  “Tell me the truth about what you wanted to ask me,” he hissed.

  “I want to know why you approved the Sweeps again.”

  “I didn’t have a choice,” Leader Simon breathed, staring at me seriously as we walked down another hallway. I did not know where he was leading me, but I assumed it was somewhere where we could speak privately. “Dana wanted to activate the Sweeps again. There was nothing I could do.”

  “He said that it was because you were worried about being attacked and that there was a group out there plotting to overthrow the government,” I told him.

  “Well, there is that,” he admitted. “Several weeks ago, the military computers were hacked and very valuable information was accessed. It’s entirely possible that we have a terrorist group in the country. But when the message went out over the computers…” He sighed and shook his head, leading me around a fifth corner.

  “It seemed more like the message was geared against the Commission of the People, though,” I reminded him.

  “True…”

  “Do you approve of the Commission and what it does?” I whispered.

  He fell silent, and after a few steps he stopped and turned me to face him.

  “The Commission of the People is very important for the security of the nation,” he said. “Even when nothing is wrong, it’s the attack dog that we can let loose if we need to.” He looked around the hallway nervously. “It’s Dana that’s dangerous. I don’t know if he’s running the Commission or if the Commission is running him, but the experiments and the Machine of Neutralization project…he’s not protecting the peace anymore. He’s trying to provoke attack to justify these weapons and I don’t know why.”

  “Then stop him,” I hissed. He rolled his eyes.

  “If I could, I would have,” he groaned. “But there is nothing I can do to contain him. As soon as I try he becomes volatile and dangerous.”

  “He’s a monster, Leader…”

  “I know,” he whispered. “I know…” His eyes fell to the ground and he placed a hand on my back and led me further down the hall. “Do you have any suggestions?”

  That surprised me. I was not expecting the Leader of America to ask me how to get rid of the man who was supposed to be the second most powerful person in the country.

  “Suggestions?”

  “To appease Dana, get him to call off the Sweeps…anything?” Leader Simon asked, turning to one door and opening it, stepping inside before me. I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could, a yelp left my lips and I jumped backward at what I saw in the room.

  I was in Leader’s office, and sitting at his desk in front of the flag of our nation was Dana, leaning back in Leader Simon’s cushioned chair, his feet on the desk, Sean standing silently behind him.

  “Good evening, Greg,” Dana smiled darkly. His eyes turned to me. “Little Lily.”

  “How did you get in here?” Leader Simon gasped. “My security is supposed to keep everyone out of this room unless I am in here.”

  “You got your security from me, Greg,” Dana reminded him with a cocky smile. He tilted his head to the side. “They know who their master is.”

  I shivered and my stomach flipped. I had been caught in a secret meeting with Leader Simon. I thought I was going to be sick…

  “Why are you here, Dana?” Leader Simon asked, his voice shaking.

  “We need to talk,” he said, taking his feet off the desk and standing up, adjusting his coat and smoothing his tie before he walked toward us. He looked me over and chuckled.

  “Why is she here?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at Leader Simon. “Meeting with underage girls in the middle of the night in your office is a good way to start a scandal.”

  “It’s not like that!” Leader Simon gasped.

  “It better not be,” Dana growled, his voice possessive and dominating. I shivered and retreated a step, trying to keep from collapsing, my brain filled with static. “Let’s talk somewhere else,” Dana suggested.

  “Alright,” Leader Simon nodded. He turned to me and a wobbly smile came over his face. “I’m sorry, but I will have to answer your questions another time. I will call your parents and let them know when I have some free time.”

  “O-okay…thank you, Leader,” I said, lowering my head.

  Leader Simon stepped past me and out the door while I tried to remember how to breathe.

  Dana smiled and stepped forward. I flinched away from his hand as it pressed to the side of my head. He moved in front of me and his mouth came to my ear, close enough that I could feel the heat of his skin.

  “Did you really think I would let you pull a stunt like this?” he whispered, which caused my body to lock up in fear as my brain raced, trying to figure out what he thought I was doing there and what he already knew.

  He turned his head. “Don’t underestimate me, Little Lily,” he breathed. He came even closer to my ear, his lips brushing my skin. “I know everything…”

  He gently kissed the shell of my ear and straightened, his thumb brushing over my cheek once before he began to walk past me, calling over his shoulder for Sean to drive me home.

  I should have known then that I was in over my head.

  Chapter Forty

  I was quiet for the rest of the week, worried that I had exposed the entire rebellio
n. But even after the horrible mistake of meeting with Leader Simon, Dana made no moves to show that he understood what I was really planning. At Archangel, people were asking me what was wrong, and I quickly told them that I was tired. At the Saturday Commission meeting, I knew I should have been paying more attention, particularly because there was a lot of information on the Europe trip that was leaving Tuesday, but I could not focus. On Sunday when Clark and I met with the other teenagers to ask what they knew about the cells of the Commission experiments, I was asked what was wrong with me, to which I told them I was just thinking about a lot of things.

  Mykail and Clark did not know what had happened.

  It was on the Sunday night news that the word went out of the Sweeps being reinstated. There were speeches from Leader Simon and the Chair of Region Affairs about the terrorist message everyone had received, stating that it was obvious the Sweeps needed to be put in place once again to preserve the peace of America and prevent another rebellion.

  Our message that was sent out over emails was never shown on the news and little coverage was given to the message content, which annoyed me, but considering I got another one of our emails earlier that day, I knew that everyone in the country was getting the message.

  Monday, the entire school was abuzz with talks of the Sweeps and the email message. My friends at lunch were even weirder around me, thinking that I would turn them in, though they did ask me about the Sweeps once. I told them the truth and said that I had no idea how the Sweeps worked and I didn’t know what else to tell them. The Commission was also abuzz with talks of the Sweeps. Almost all of the conference rooms were filled with meetings from the various small groups within the Commission, discussing the Sweeps and protocol, as well as outlining the areas of the country to start with.

  I was starting to feel like I had taken on far more than I could ever hope to handle.

  The constant movement did not stop when I got home. My parents were leaving for Europe the following day and were hurriedly packing, making sure they had everything together for their trip and telling me a million times the rules for the house and how I needed to behave myself in their absence. I helped them pack, despite my daze, and when they were heading to bed to get some sleep before their departure early the next morning, I trudged into Mykail’s room and collapsed on the bed, where he reminded me that he wanted to take his tracers out the following evening to allow the wounds as much time to heal before anyone else saw him.

  Sleep was a welcome relief from the activity.

  That morning, before I went to school, I said goodbye to my parents, who were loading their bags into one of the cars of the convoy that had come to pick them up. All of us were tired, so they did not repeat the house rules again, saying a simple goodbye and that they would call me every now and then to check up on me. I wished them a safe trip and the best of luck on what they were trying to accomplish, which I had forgotten the details of.

  It wasn’t until the middle of the school day when I woke up and realized I would be able to sleep in Mykail’s room through the night.

  I was so excited about the thought that I went through the entire day with a smile on my face. This made everyone think that whatever depression I had been in the previous few days had vanished and that I was feeling better which, admittedly, I was.

  But I was still irritable enough to fight with Clark about the best way to get the experiments out of the Commission. There were several cells in the holding cell area where all four inhabitants of the cell were not criminals, but minorities that could be let loose to help us in the revolution. But when we started seeing how many of the people in the holding cells were innocent, it became difficult for us to decide which ones were more able to help. We wanted to help the younger captives and the weaker ones, but they would not have been able to help us in the same capacity as some of the well-bodied captives so difficult decisions had to be made.

  Also, we fought about the cell that Miranda and Julie were in.

  Clark had found them in a cell near the back of the holding cell area, sharing a cell with a white-collar money launderer and a man who had committed seventeen acts of armed robbery in three different regions.

  As much as we wanted to free Miranda and Julie, we were not sure we could get them out while keeping the two actual criminals in the cell.

  Then, of course, we discussed how we were going to even go back into the Commission and get the experiments out in the shortest time frame without anyone noticing.

  When we were both at each other’s throats and frustrated, we gave up and finished homework, preparing for the final projects and tests of the term. Break would be coming up soon and that would give me a reprieve from balancing school and the revolution, so I was greatly looking forward to it.

  When I got home, Mykail was waiting for me in the foyer.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey!” I grinned, throwing my arms around his neck, kissing him enthusiastically.

  He smiled into the kiss and then pulled away.

  “How was school?”

  “Boring.” I rolled my eyes. “But…everything is better now, knowing that I have the house, and you, all to myself.” I kissed him again. “Are you hungry?” I asked, moving into the kitchen.

  “Actually…Lily…”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know if you should really eat just yet,” he said quietly, looking at his feet.

  “Why?”

  As soon as I asked the question, I remembered what he had told me the previous night. He wanted me to remove his tracers. My stomach flipped over and my appetite disappeared.

  “Oh…”

  “Yeah…” he said awkwardly. “I can take the ones out of my ankles and my foot, but the wrists and my wings…” he shook his head. “I can do my left wrist, but I don’t really trust myself to work a knife with my left hand.”

  I set my backpack against the nearest wall and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly through my nose.

  “Right now?” I groaned. “I just got home…couldn’t we do it another day?”

  “This is going to need some time to heal,” he told me, shaking his head. “And I know that if I let you get out of it tonight, you’ll continue to avoid it.” He took my hands, looking me in the eye. “I can’t help you if I can’t even leave the house. You know that you’ll need to have your Commission tracers removed as well, at some point.”

  “Not tonight,” I said strongly.

  “No, not tonight,” he agreed. “But…Lily, we need to do this now. Preferably before you eat something.”

  I closed my eyes and nodded.

  “Alright…” I whispered, barely hearing the word leave my mouth. He leaned forward and kissed my forehead.

  “Thank you.”

  “What do we need?”

  “I got everything together when you were at school,” he said, squeezing my hand. “Come on…”

  I let him lead me upstairs, feeling the nervousness eat away at my gut. I already hated needles and sharp objects and I had almost passed out when I had my tracers put in. I was not sure how I was going to handle taking out Mykail’s tracers.

  We ended up in his bathroom, where I looked at the matches, small knife, tweezers, gauze and bottle of whiskey on the counter. I glanced at the whiskey and then turned to him with a skeptical eyebrow.

  “It’s for sterilizing,” he rolled his eyes, laughing.

  He closed the lid of the toilet and sat on it, his wings barely fitting in the space between the vanity and the wall.

  I took a deep breath to steady my nerves and then looked at everything on the counter.

  “I already sterilized the knife,” he said, watching me stare at the objects without picking any of them up. “Do you want me to do the ones in my ankles?”

  “Please,” I nodded quickly.

  “Okay, can you hand me the knife?”

  With trembling hands, I picked up the knife, feeling the cold metal of the handle more acutely due to my anxi
ety.

  “Will you also flick the switch on the automatic kettle?” he asked, nodding to the electric kettle filled with water that he had taken from the kitchen. I pressed the button before finally handing him the knife.

  He took it from me and smiled.

  “Breathe, Lily.”

  I nodded and immediately let out a breath, but I almost forgot how to inhale afterward.

  He raised his left foot and folded it under him to rest his ankle on the porcelain lid of the toilet.

  “I think this one will hurt the most…” he murmured, looking at the tattoo of 80073 along the bottom of his instep.

  “Um…w-what else do you need?” I asked weakly.

  “If you could have the gauze ready, that would be good,” he nodded, readying the knife and taking deep breath.

  I closed my eyes, light-headed, not bothering to grab the gauze at all. I turned to where I knew the counter was and leaned against it, lowering myself into a crouch and breathing carefully, keeping my hands on the cold vanity surface.

  “Lily, the cut’s done and the tracer’s out…” Mykail said long before I was ready to open my eyes. “But I need the gauze…”

  I took one deep breath and then stood, feeling my head spin, but I grabbed the gauze and turned to him. There was blood everywhere. Over his leg and running down to the tile at his feet, on the lid of the toilet, and even starting to stain the fabric of the shorts he had tried to move out of the way. The blood pouring from his foot caused me to panic and I quickly jumped forward, taking his foot in one hand and pressing the gauze to the cut.

  I turned to look at him and was surprised to find him smiling apologetically to me.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry, Lily,” he whispered. “I don’t mean to freak you out or anything…this is just something that needs to be done.”

  “I know…” I nodded, carefully pulling the nearly-saturated piece of gauze away and grabbing another one to press to the wound. “Doesn’t that hurt?”

  “A little,” he admitted. “My tolerance for pain is higher than most…”

  I did not respond.