“I’m just worried about you,” he whispered, still keeping his eyes on the ground.
“I’ll be fine for ten minutes while you say goodbye to Peter,” I assured.
Clark’s eyes finally met mine, and he remained silent for several long seconds before taking my hand in his and squeezing it tenderly.
“I have been sitting here this entire time trying to think of something to say to help you,” he admitted. “And I just…can’t think of anything.”
“There’s nothing to say,” I agreed.
“This isn’t a normal situation in any sense,” he added. “And with everything that’s happened, I can’t say that the pain will go away, or that at least you have memories of your times together, but I feel like that will only make things worse.” As much as I tried to will the tears away, exhausted and not wanting to cry yet again, they were blurring my vision before I knew it.
“But you can’t let this beat you,” Clark continued. “I know that everything about this situation is loaded, and it all must be so confusing for you, but you cannot bury yourself with grief.” The memory of me pleading with Mark to return to me after Josh’s death flashed through my mind, and I wondered if the deep pain that was resonating through my body was the same pain he had felt upon the death of his best friend. “I know that you will never be healed or okay from all the shit that’s gone down since you came to Central, but I need you to know, Lily, that you’re not alone.” Clark’s fingers tightened around mine. “You never were alone. I’ll always be here to help you.”
The tears were flowing down my cheeks for a different reason.
“No, Clark…” I moaned.
“I will,” he insisted, leaning closer to me. Sharp heat radiated through my chest like an explosion, threatening to crack my ribs. Clark may always be there to help, but I was going to be somewhere else, somewhere I hoped he would never have to be again.
I sat up, hugging him tightly.
“You don’t have to do that for me,” I murmured. “You’ve done nothing but protect me, and be there for me since I got roped into the Commission. You don’t need to always be the knight swooping in to protect me.”
“I want to,” Clark insisted, hugging me as well. “You’re my best friend, Lily. Honestly, you’re my only friend. And whatever you need me to do to help you through this hell you must be feeling, I’m here for you. I promise. I’ll always be here.”
My arms tightened around him. I was holding on so tightly I was vaguely worried I was hurting him, but I could not bring myself to loosen my grip. I wanted to thank him for everything he had ever done for me, for being my voice of reason and teaching me the ropes of the Commission, for helping me in the early stages of our revolution, for believing in our cause even as we fell back and fled to the south. There was so much I was thankful for that I never wanted to let him go, sure that it would take weeks for me to hug him through all the emotions I was feeling.
However, the opening of the door caused me to turn, pulling away from Clark. Mark walked into the room, his expression unreadable as always. He stepped silently over to Clark’s side and nodded once to him, giving him permission to leave the room. The simple action told me that Mark was the one who had insisted that I not be left alone while I dealt with the worst of the emotions involving Mykail’s suicide.
Clark smiled thinly to me—not a genuine smile, but a sympathetic pursing of his lips to let me know that he wanted to help me feel better but did not know how. With another gentle squeeze of my hand, he left the room, closing the door behind him and leaving me with the silent Mark.
The leader of the Eight Group went to his knees next to me and locked eyes with mine.
In an instant, I was crying again, throwing my arms around him and sobbing into his shoulder pathetically as he held me through the tidal wave of pain that rose within me once more.
* *** *
Four days after Mykail’s suicide, I left the storage room, feeling ill and exhausted, but strong enough to face people once more. Even though it was clear that the few dozen people left of our broken revolution wanted to talk to me and comfort me, but were sure there was nothing they could say to ease my pain. I was appreciative of the sympathetic look and the gentle, silent hugs. Words would have made everything hurt more.
However, we had a very real problem to deal with—Mykail’s body.
With our diminishing numbers and the constant surveillance of Dana trying to find the Central Angels and make an example of them to sway the entirety of the American people back under the Commission’s influence, taking Mykail’s body out to bury him was not an option. We would not have time to dig the larger hole and if we buried him too close to the fort, it was possible that Dana would find the freshly-dug dirt and find us that much sooner.
But leaving him to slowly decompose in the rec room was also not an option. While the smell had not become overwhelming yet, I knew it would not be long.
I found myself staring down the hallway, trying to remember the moment I had seen Mykail’s lifeless body. I could not walk back to see him. I had no idea if anyone was down there in order to keep people away from the bloody room, but I still could not go and see his body.
Griffin’s hand on my shoulder caused me to turn quickly, startled.
“Hey,” he murmured, nodding his head back to the strategy room. “There is something we need to talk about.”
I followed him mechanically, worried that they were going to force me to decide what to do with Mykail’s corpse. As I was still trying to grasp the reality that he was dead, I knew I could not make that decision yet.
The door to the strategy room closed and I lifted my eyes to Mark and Clark, who were both sitting around one of the notebooks we had for Mark on the table. I stiffly moved to one of the chairs and sat down, being sure to keep my eyes on the tabletop.
Griffin sat down heavily across from me, folding his hands on the table and sighing.
“I know that this is sensitive,” he started slowly, “but we do need to decide what we are going to do about Mykail.”
My vision narrowed to only the grain of the table, my brain still too flooded with emotions to allow any planning or rational thought to occur.
“Lily,” Griffin said carefully, “I cannot begin to understand how difficult this is for you, and I don’t want to upset you further.” I lifted my head just as Griffin threw a knowing glance at Mark. “However, Mark had an idea.”
I glanced at the mute man at the table, who was looking at me with a worried expression. Clark also seemed hesitant to tell me what they planned to do with Mykail’s corpse. I turned my eyes back to Griffin, hoping he would continue without me asking what they were thinking of doing with his body.
“Chris was captured in a very public way,” Griffin explained carefully. “His face was shown up close and in detail to the entire world on live television. We know that Mykail and Chris are different people, but the public does not.” He took a deep breath, pressing his thumbs together as a means of temporary distraction. “But if we were to show the public that there were two winged experiments, it might call the Commission back into question.”
It took several long moments for my cotton-muffled brain to understand what Griffin meant.
“How would we show them that there were two?” I pressed. “Mykail is—” I could not bring myself to say the words.
“I know it sounds crude, and horrific…” Griffin continued, his tone cautious, “but if we were to display him publicly, calling out the Commission, it would show that the Commission’s efforts to catch Chris were for a different experiment. After all, they wouldn’t publicly display their dark deeds calling themselves out.”
I glanced at Mark, surprised he had come up with such a gruesome plan despite my previous knowledge of how brutal he could be.
“You want to string him up somewhere?” I hissed. “Like what they did during the Second Revolution?”
“It’s not like that, Lily,” Clark said quickly, s
haking his head. “Mykail is still the symbol of our revolution, even after everything. And we can’t let it be believed that he was destroying everything in Central. Showing his body, his face, will call into question who the second winged experiment was.”
“…his face?” I whispered, my stomach twisting as I realized that there was a significant portion of Mykail’s face destroyed by the bullet that had ended his life. A heavy silence fell over the table as everyone else came to the same conclusion.
“…so now we’re just using him?” I hissed. “He’s just some thing we can use to try and change everyone’s opinions about us? No matter what Dana has won. We can show his body to the people and some of them may question it, but we’ve still lost.”
“That may be,” Griffin said quietly. “But this whole thing has shown more of the Commission than Dana would have ever wanted. It’s already shown winged experiments, the experiments that we broke out and their abilities, called into question the treatment of those who are taken in as criminals, and now people will be wondering about Eyna more and more as the story about Chris gets more and more attention.” The former soldier took a moment, seeing that my brain needed more time than usual to process everything. “Mykail died tragically because of Dana. Dana is the enemy. The Commission of the People is the enemy. And even if we’ve lost, if we can keep that seed of doubt in people’s minds, maybe the next group will succeed where we could not.”
I took a deep breath, dropping my eyes to the table once more as I thought over the words. I did not like the idea of stringing Mykail up somewhere to be gawked at—images from the Second Revolution flashed through my mind like the slideshow in Mr. McDermott’s class. However, if I could jab back at Dana one last time before he captured me, perhaps it was worth it. And as Griffin had said, maybe another group could succeed by building off the doubt we had planted in the minds of the people.
“…what did you have in mind?” I whispered, turning to Mark. The leader of the Eight Group relaxed slightly and turned the notebook to me.
“Central Hall.”
“What about it?”
“They’re rebuilding it,” Clark elaborated. “Since Chris crashed the helicopter into it, and there were so many bodies to be moved and processed from the attack, it’s been a slow process. If we put Mykail in the construction site in a place where he can be seen from the street as the first group of workers go by, we can cause enough of a media frenzy to get back at Dana before the Commission swoops in to try and take him away.”
“And there is no way the Commission would ever do something like that with Chris in such a public manner because it does not serve them…” I whispered.
“Also, Mykail and Chris are clearly different people. Chris was seen on television as being healthy, but Mykail’s thin body, and his necrotic show that he was not the person to attack Central. There was no way it could have been,” Griffin added. “A public stunt like that will bring doubt back into people’s minds.”
I nodded slowly, seeing the logical steps in the horrific plan.
“…it will also anger Dana,” I breathed. “He will try harder to get to us before we can cause more trouble for him after that.”
“True, but there are so few of us left, I’m sure we’ll be out of Central by the time he gets desperate enough to get aggressive,” Clark said.
I thought over the plan, not liking the idea of leaving the corpse of the young man I had once loved in a construction site as some sort of gruesome installation. But as I thought about how it could hurt the current reputation of the Commission of the People, I began to understand that it was to be our last campaign against the corruption in Central before we faded away into history. Also, while it was a concern for everyone else that Dana could become angered and desperate after our final public display, the thought actually appealed to me. If I was captured fairly by Dana while going against him, perhaps it would ease the pain I would inflict on my friends when I left them.
“Lily?” Griffin asked when I had been silent for a very long time. “If you don’t want to do this, then we won’t. We’re going to leave the final call to you.”
I took a deep breath, closing my eyes and preparing myself.
“Let’s do it. Let’s make sure his death means something.”
* *** *
It was unclear if I was not part of the process of planning the transport of Mykail’s body because I was so emotionally exhausted and pained over his death, or if it was because, due to that state, I was clumsy and unable to think with the clarity needed.
However, in order to fight his decomposition, Griffin, Mark, and Clark put their heads together and came up with a plan to move him within a day. I went back to the storage room—I still didn’t want to sleep around other people in the bunk room—and tried to sleep, though I ended up staring at the wall thinking about what my life would be like once I was captured by the Commission.
It had been a while since I had heard Dana’s voice, and it was difficult to remember the exact, horrifying intonation he used when he spoke, but I acutely remembered the fear his words always instilled in me. I tried to remember his exact words whenever he told me what he would do to me once he captured me, but they were a blur. I was unsure if he wanted to test on me and make me into an experiment, if he wanted to torture me for his own amusement, if he wanted to kill me…I had no idea what he really wanted to do with me, which made it impossible to prepare myself for what would happen when he finally had me.
I must have fallen asleep because I woke up when there was a gentle knock on the storage room door. I had become accustomed to the fact that it was impossible to tell the passage of time in the underground bunker, but it was still disorienting not knowing how long I had slept and what had occurred while I slept.
I turned my exhausted eyes to the door and saw Griffin poking his head in.
“Hey,” he said. “Sorry to wake you, but we need you out here.”
Untangling myself from the thick, scratchy blanket, I walked out to the main bunker, where everyone was standing, waiting for whatever announcement Griffin wanted to make. I moved mechanically behind Griffin, standing next to him as the large experiment turned to address everyone.
“I know there aren’t many of us left,” he started quietly. “And it won’t be long until we’re all on our journey to Mexico. However, considering this recent tragic event, there has been a decision to attack Dana and the Commission one last time before we flee.” He raised his hands, clearly seeing the concerned looks on everyone’s faces. “Not to worry, most of you will not be involved in this strike, which is actually the reason I brought everyone here. If, for any reason, those who leave tonight do not come back before dawn, it means we have been captured by the Commission.”
I perked up. I did not realize that the plan they had concocted would occur so soon, and hearing the possibility that we could be captured made my foggy brain realize there was an easy way I could trade myself over for the safety of the others. My heart began to beat a little quicker.
“Should this happen, I want everyone to go through with the original plans. Everyone’s group leader knows when their group is expected to leave and where to go for the first few safe houses. Further information on the safe houses will be provided by the others helping us over the border,” Griffin continued. “I think it is only fair that we tell you what we are doing and tell you that you must do everything you can to be sure of your safety and the safety of those in your group. If we do not return tonight, do not wait for us. Leave as soon as you are able and get across the border.”
Griffin turned to me and nodded once.
“Understood?”
I blinked at him, immediately horrified that he would ask me to remain behind on whatever they were going to do with Mykail.
My stunned silence of staring at Griffin was filled with the quiet affirmatives of the remaining individuals in the bunker.
“I’m coming with you,” I breathed.
“It’s too
dangerous.”
“So?”
“So, I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he said simply.
He turned and walked away, and while I took that as an offense, I did not realize he was strategically moving me away from the crowd so that I would not make a scene in front of everyone. I was too upset and grief stricken that I had forgotten there were still numerous people in the bunker who saw me as a leader of our revolution and did not need to see me break down.
“Wait a damn second!” I snarled, grabbing Griffin’s arm and pulling him when he had turned down one hallway to our main supply room. “I don’t give a shit if it’s dangerous, I’m going!”
Griffin sighed heavily as he opened the door to the supply room and walked in. The shelves had long started thinning out, but I did not realize just how low we were on food and rations until the bare skeletons of the racks were surrounding us.
Mark and Clark stood at the door as Griffin turned to me, sighing heavily.
“Lily,” he started gently, though the tone did nothing but anger me, “this is incredibly dangerous. We haven’t even properly planned for it. We’re going in half-blind.”
“I don’t give a shit!” I repeated.
“Well I do!” he snapped. “Lily, we’re breaking into the construction site and staging his body. We don’t know what sort of security we’re going to run into, or if anyone has eyes on the place in case we try something. I can’t put you at that sort of risk.”
“You aren’t my father,” I sneered. “You can’t tell me what to do. If you really think I’m not going to be there the moment that we leave Mykail, you’re delusional. If we’re going to use him like this, the most I can do is be there with him right up to the end.”
“You were with him until the end of his life, Lily,” Griffin said gently. “You were there—”
“No, I wasn’t!” I barked, my voice breaking. “If I had been there, maybe he wouldn’t have blown his brains out!”
The silence around all of us made my words sound even louder to me as they echoed around the empty steel racks. The words felt like boulders resting on my chest as I realized what I had said. It became harder to breathe, and I had to close my eyes and focus on remaining upright as my breathing became labored.
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