The leader of the Commission looked at us, drumming his fingernails on the wood of the table.
“I know I don’t need to tell you about the immense implications of what happened this morning,” he said seriously. “This puts me in a very delicate position.”
“I assure you, we had no knowledge of this movement,” my mother started. “Of course, we got the emails, but that was it.”
“And I believe you,” Dana nodded, “mostly.” His eyes slid to me. I blinked and straightened.
“Me?”
“You already know that I don’t believe you are not involved in this movement,” Dana stated, his eyebrow raising.
“That is a very heavy accusation, Dana,” my father said, though it was obvious that he had already heard Dana’s opinion.
“This was a heavy crime,” Dana reminded him. “This has gone from an anti-Central group who were only engaging in relatively minor crime to a legitimate threat. Their appearance today at the Liberation Parade ended in shots being fired and people being trampled. Not only that, but the Commission has been openly challenged in its dealings with criminals.”
“You can always say that it was a scare tactic from a domestic terrorist group,” my mother suggested.
“When I first saw them on the news, that was my intention,” Dana said. “And then Mykail showed up, and that means I have to get creative.”
“How did he get out?” I asked.
“The screws on his windows had been filed through, so the bars on his windows swung outward,” Dana explained. “What I want to know is why he did not have the cuffs on his wings.”
Dana looked at me seriously, but before I needed to defend myself, my mother spoke up.
“I am to blame for that,” she admitted. “I have not put the cuffs on after bathing him for many weeks. He seemed not to need them…”
“Well, that has been proven incorrect,” Dana said sharply. “I told you explicitly to keep those on.” He leaned back in his seat. He fell silent for a few long moments before he spoke again. “The other question that remains is how no one else around here saw him. I called the Central Security Board and they are sending me all public tapes from the security cameras in the city, which is going to cost a lot of hours and manpower to sort through…”
Dana glanced at me again.
“Where were you when this happened?”
“At the parade?” I asked. “I was at Main and Delaware. I was filming the parade.”
“With what?”
“My phone.”
Dana extended his hand, flexing his fingers. After a brief hesitation, I pulled out my phone, handing it to him. He unlocked it without me telling him my password—that didn’t surprise me—and went to look at my saved videos.
As the video played and the grainy sounds of the parade washed over the table, I glanced at my parents while Dana and Sean watched the video.
My father looked at me and smiled thinly, extending his hand over the table. I met him, allowing him to take my fingers and squeeze them reassuringly. It wasn’t much, but it did remind me to take a deep breath. I had to remember who I was trying to deceive.
“Are you alright?” my father whispered. I nodded, turning back to Dana as I heard the screaming when Mykail flew into the air. Dana watched with a stoic expression, even as the gunshots sounded. Sean looked on worriedly over Dana’s shoulder.
When the video abruptly silenced, Dana sighed and set the phone down on the table.
“Okay.” He nodded once. “First thing tomorrow some men will remove the bars from your windows and doors. For now, we will cover all evidence that he was here. The Commission will have to make a statement in response to this.”
“You aren’t thinking of—”
“No,” Dana shook his head, cutting my mother off. “I cannot let my face be shown to the public. That’s for my safety as well as the safety of the Commission. We will have to have two or three faces representing the Commission.”
Dana looked at me briefly, smiling with dark purpose.
“Tommy,” he said, looking back to my father. “I want you to be one of those faces.”
“Me?”
“Yes. I think it’s important to let the people see a new face with the old ones. You will work with Danielle and Pat and you will calm the public down.”
“How do you plan to do that?” I challenged. “America, maybe even other parts of the world, saw someone with wings fly around a crowded parade. You can’t explain that away.”
“No?” Dana asked skeptically. “The American people will believe what we tell them.”
“Will they? If you say that the whole thing was a hoax, people will start looking carefully at the videos and they will question how it could be a hoax.”
“Lily,” my mother took on a warning tone.
“What?” I blinked. “I’m just saying this is not something you can explain away. People are frightened, and if you tell them there’s nothing to worry about, they won’t calm down, they’ll fight. They don’t want to be calmed like children, they want answers. They want to know.”
“Well, then, what would you tell them?”
Dana’s gentle voice startled me, and the question caused a bolt of fear to rocket through me. This was a challenge bordering on an attack. It was time for me to make my move. I was locked in a dance, both Dana and I hiding a gun behind our backs as we tried to keep the other just far enough away for the gun to remain hidden, smiling deceptively.
“Well…” I started slowly, organizing my thoughts, “I’m sure this will get attention internationally, so you can’t say it was an attack from another country trying to topple America because there will be backlash from other countries for finger-pointing…” I thought for a few moments. “But, if you say it’s a terrorist group, then the question will come up of how they have the technology to create someone who can fly, and then why they would try to pin that on the Commission.”
Dana waited patiently.
“Wouldn’t it be easier to say that you don’t know anything?”
“I suppose so,” Dana agreed with a nod. “But then that puts the expectation on us to come up with answers, when in reality, I do not intend to allow this to get any bigger. I fully intend to find this group as soon as possible and allow everything to settle back to normal.”
“Then tell the people that,” I shrugged.
“But if the Commission commits to such plans and statements, then that leaves us open for criticism. The people will find it strange that the Sweeps started and then the terrorist group suddenly appeared.” Dana looked thoughtful, though I knew he was just doing his part of our dangerous dance. “It’s obvious we have been looking for something already.”
“But these people came from inside the Commission,” my mother pointed out. “Were any of the people holding signs people who had not been broken out of the Commission?”
“No,” Sean shook his head.
“Their pictures have been going around on the emails,” I pointed out.
“Which means that the group already knew, mostly, who it was going to break out,” my father added.
“The fact that Mykail was involved makes me believe that this was all the experiments,” Sean interjected, glancing at Dana. “There would have been no other way for him to have known what was going on. It would have had to been the experiments who organized this.”
Dana looked at me, his eyes bright with electricity as he played the people around the table.
“Can the experiments do that?” my mother hissed, horrified. “Can they really gather and revolt?”
“It’s happened before,” Dana said. “But they never got this far. This is definitely a new kind of rebellion.”
“You think the experiments broke themselves out?” my father asked skeptically.
“Quite possibly, yes,” Dana admitted. “There is one experiment, in particular, that I am keeping my eye out for. Griffin was brought into the lab that day because of a seizure and when
the security system went down, he escaped with the others. Griffin would be able to do a lot of damage on his own, but he had to have help from outside to pull everything off so seamlessly.”
“Do you have any leads?” my mother asked.
“I’m looking at the young people of the Commission,” Dana said, looking over at me, seeing if I would be upset. I remained calm, keeping up with our dance. “They were upset after the fiasco with Miranda and Julie. It holds true that they would try to do something against me. Youngsters are rebellious by nature.”
I tried not to grind my teeth at the mention of Miranda and Julie, particularly now that I had heard their real story.
“But they couldn’t organize something like this…” my mother shook her head.
“Never underestimate angry young people,” Dana chastised. “Ask your husband. His brother was only sixteen when he started harboring people across the border, wasn’t he?”
“Lily, have you heard anything from the other children of the Commission?” my father asked, choosing to ignore Dana.
“I mean, everyone was upset about Miranda, but I don’t think any of us are suicidal enough to go up against you,” I said, looking at Dana.
“You might be shocked at the stupidity some people possess,” Dana chuckled, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his buzzing phone. He looked at the screen before touching the receive button and lifting it to his ear. “Yes?” He fell silent, listening. “Alright, I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
He hung up.
“I must go babysit Leader Simon, now,” he groaned, standing. We all stood as well. “I will be seeing you tomorrow at the meeting. Tommy, Monday at lunch you will come to the Commission and we will discuss the statement for a press conference. I will set one up for Tuesday.”
“Alright.”
After seeing Dana out, I quickly had to escape my parents asking me if I was alright. I assured them I was okay and that I was just worried about Mykail and everything that had happened. Then I made a stupid excuse to get away from them by saying I wanted to take a shower.
Trudging upstairs, I closed my bedroom door and heaved a sigh.
“This is fucking crazy…”
My buzzing phone caught my attention and I reached into my pocket, answering it absentmindedly.
“Hello?”
“I must say, I underestimated you,” a familiar voice said with a dark chuckle. My eyes snapped wide and my breath caught in my throat. “Don’t hang up,” Dana ordered.
“What are you talking about?”
“You organized such an elaborate reveal and actually managed to put me in a situation I’m not entirely sure how to handle. Congratulations, Little Lily, you are progressing beautifully.”
“Are you still on about that?” I rolled my eyes. “I had nothing to do with the parade today. You saw the video I was taking with my phone.”
“Yes, by all accounts, that’s true,” Dana agreed, his voice dangerous and yet soft, like water. “However, you seem awfully calm about having Mykail gone.”
“What?”
“Last I was aware, you two were getting very close, and then you come to the Commission one day deflowered…you don’t need to be a genius to connect those dots.” My stomach flipped angrily. “And with how calm you are over his vanishing from your house, there are only two options I can see. Either you knew all along and, therefore, know who is organizing all this, or you were the one to put him up to it.”
“For one, I didn’t know,” I snarled. “And two, I would never force Mykail to do anything.”
“As a pretty woman, you don’t need to force a man to do anything,” Dana chuckled coldly in a way that made my skin prickle. “All you need to do is give him a taste of paradise and he’ll go to the ends of the earth for you. But you already knew that, didn’t you, Little Lily? You’re not even aware that you’re doing it. That’s real talent.”
“Shut up. I told you I didn’t have anything to do with it, and that’s that.”
“That’s not that,” Dana said in a chastising tone. “Mykail was involved, you were involved with Mykail. Therefore, you have something to do with it. Don’t misunderstand, Little Lily, I am thoroughly impressed. I’m going to have to step up my game. I greatly underestimated what you were capable of.”
“Is that so?” I challenged, my tone mocking.
“Yes,” Dana chuckled. “But you have also limited yourself to Central, and that will prove to be very damaging for you.”
I could not stop the smile that moved across my lips.
We’ll just see about that, Mr. Christenson…
Chapter Fifty-Two
I was surprised at how much I relished in the chaos that was the Commission meeting the day following the parade. The Commission members were frightened by the appearance of the experiments and Dana had to admit that he had lied to everyone by not revealing that experiments had also been let loose, which led to higher tension in the meeting room.
I gloated in the fact that I had caused such panic and that the most powerful group of politicians in the world was finally starting to realize their mistake in supporting Dana’s experiments.
Dana continued to look at me from across the room. When I was not speaking directly to him or standing in front of him, I gave him a cocky half-grin.
I could hardly wait to see what the Commission meeting was going to be like the following week after phase two of our plan went into effect. Dana had been sorely mistaken when he thought we had limited ourselves to Central. He had grossly underestimated me.
Monday, I focused on the gossip around school dealing with the parade. The teachers tried to keep everyone from talking about it, saying that we should not jump to any conclusions until the official statement from the Commission of the People. When I got home from my afterschool time at the Commission, my father was waiting. He bombarded me with questions about the gossip around school. I told him a little bit of what I had picked up, but overall, I pretended to be uninterested as I trudged up to my room, ignoring the workers removing the bars from the door that had once led to Mykail’s room.
I already missed him. I had not had a chance to see Mykail on Sunday. It had been Clark’s day to visit the fort, since we were alternating to keep suspicion low.
Monday night, I could not sleep, feeling an excited knot in my stomach that I could not ignore. Dex, frustrated with my constant tossing and turning, finally abandoned the bed and went to sleep under the windowsill.
I managed to get about one hour of sleep before I was rudely awakened by my alarm clock. At first, I immediately regretted not sleeping. However, when I remembered that it was Tuesday, I quickly scrambled out of bed and dressed, anticipating what was meant to happen that day. Besides the Commission press conference, I had my own plans. Of course, there was no guarantee that things would go as I hoped, but judging by the number of people who had posted something on the internet and social media concerning with the Commission torturing people, which Dana had discussed the previous Saturday, I was feeling confident that the plan would work.
I went to school as though nothing was different that day. A few of the other Commish Kids nodded once to show that they were also waiting for the news that our plan had been successful.
I continued to watch the clock. In Mr. McDermott’s class, I glanced at the clock and smiled, knowing that it was about time we heard about another shocking incident.
Felicity was the one who called attention to it. Since she sat in the back of the room, she was looking at her phone constantly, checking for any update over her profiles of social media. When she finally found one, she gasped and caused me to whirl around.
“Felicity?” Mr. McDermott said slowly. “Are you looking at your phone?”
She did not say anything for several long moments. It took every ounce of my self-control not to break out in a wide smile. I looked at Becca, Taylor, and Jill, who were all smiling about Felicity being caught on her phone rather than what she was looking at
.
“Felicity,” Mr. McDermott said again, adopting a stern tone.
She looked up quickly, her face horrified. That caused our teacher to be taken aback.
“Are you alright?”
“…it happened again…”
“What?” Mr. McDermott pressed.
“The Stanford Parade…” she slowly elaborated. “They were there…”
Even through her vague description, everyone knew what she was talking about. Quiet murmurs broke out over the room and I looked at my group of friends, trying to act just as surprised and confused.
“Okay, everyone, calm down,” Mr. McDermott called. “I know that what happened on Friday was confusing, but with the amount of publicity it got, it makes sense that there will be some copy cats that will try to catch onto the tail of that fame. What we need to do is focus on what we’re doing here and not buy into the fear tactics of this radical group. Felicity, put the phone away and let’s get back to what we were doing.”
It was the first time I had heard Mr. McDermott so serious.
When the bell chimed and students flooded into the hallway, it was clear that Felicity was not the only one who had seen the news on her phone. The students were abuzz with gossip. Taylor fished out her phone. As we stepped into the crowded and loud hallway, she began reading the article to us.
“The seventy-second annual Stanford Parade honoring the beginning of the Second Revolutionary War witnessed a terrifying spectacle during the second half of the parade. A large group of people masked in Thomas Ankell guises marched in front of the dedication float with signs resembling those seen in the Central Liberation Parade last Saturday. Fliers were thrown from cars, denouncing Central and the Commission of the People as murderers of the true revolutionaries, claiming that they are making weapons out of humans for the purpose of another world war.
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