Authors: Ryan Hunter
CHAPTER 2
I didn’t make it past the picnic tree before I sank to the ground and searched the news bulletins. The moisture from the grass soaked through my trousers and chilled my legs but being too consumed with the updates the Alliance sent to my PCA every three minutes, I ignored it. The red news bar at the bottom flashed as they released details about the attack, barely giving me time to devour one bulletin before a new one reiterated what I’d just learned. I searched through them all, absorbing the details, trying to find anything I’d missed until my power indicator beeped. Night had settled hours ago and I knew if I didn’t plug in soon, the power would be cut across the city before I could charge my PCA. Then I’d be waiting all night for any updated news.
I planted my feet on the grassy soil beneath me and pushed away from the tree
. The crowds had dissipated but their voices still rang—questions, tears, unrestrained insecurity and fear.
But the Alliance had reassured the crowds, promising protection and justice
, just like they always promised and just like they always delivered. What they never promised was a way to get the victims back—a way to steal away the pain.
My head tipped back, high enough to take in the high apartment
buildings lining two sides of the square. Each window hinted at light—the Citizens inside preparing dinner and talking with their families before the Alliance cut the power and they were forced to take refuge in their beds.
I’d always believed myself lucky to have a real home to ourselves, a yard of thick, green grass and trees to shade us from the sun. I’d believed that we lived a fairy-tale
sort of life where my father got special treatment because of his job and I could excel in school should I choose … but that’s where mediocrity helped. The mediocre didn’t become targets. They didn’t lose their fathers.
A child’s laugh escaped through an open window
, and I brushed off the back of my slacks, envious of the child’s innocence. I’d never laugh with my father again. I’d never see him—never speak to him. I turned from the park and walked from the business district.
Four
terrorists had broken into the building to kill my father and nine of his colleagues. That much I knew. What I didn’t know was why.
I
opened my PCA and read the reports that filled every screen across One United—the story of how my father got his brains blown across his office. Pictures showed him sprawled across the floor, a hole through his forehead as if he’d been professionally executed. Others showed people I’d met in the shopping center, men who worked with my father and greeted him warmly when we met on the street. I flipped through the pictures, taking in every face, every detail, even as those details repulsed me and made my anger flare. I closed them out, opened an updated report and read as I walked. The route was so familiar I could navigate it in my sleep.
It backed up the facts of the first—ten men killed execution style in my father’s building. Two were guards who worked the back door where the men had entered, the other eight worked in
random offices throughout the building. Criton Aberdie, recovery—Jude Copes, bookkeeper—Brennen Carmichal, doctor … as I read through the names, I remembered my father’s voice as he spoke of the men at the dinner table or while we walked together in the woods. They’d known each other and from the way my father had spoken, they had known each other well.
A breeze
tugged at my shirt, now hanging loose nearly to my thighs and though I knew I was out of dress code while wearing this uniform, I didn’t care. It was dark. I was out of school and my father had just been murdered. I deserved a little slob time.
The breeze caught the droplets from the neighbor
’s sprinklers and misted my arms, making my hair stand on end. That meant ours would run next, and I hoped they’d been fixed because the constant patter on the center sunlight from the broken sprinkler had been enough to produce insomnia for the past three weeks. Tonight, I feared it would make me snap—or my mother—and she’d be too fragile to handle that well.
I stopped several feet away from our entry hall.
The cars had disappeared, leaving the house like any other night. I closed my eyes and imagined my father greeting me, asking me where I’d been because he’d beaten me home again. I imagined him laughing about one of the interns at work or something he’d seen on his commute. I imagined it, then shut down my emotions and shuffled inside. I swiped my hand over the sensor by the door and the lock clicked, allowing me to access the spiral staircase that led to our living area. The gray floors were softened only by a small, red rug in front of our tattered couch. Our kitchen intruding on that space, with the short dining counter a jutting peninsula in the concrete cell. No light filtered in through the skylight, allowing me to easily see the
charged
indicator on my solar lantern that hung in the garden that was in the center of our home. Each room was connected by glass doors in glass walls—the skylight our main source of light by day, easily filtering through the transparent walls.
My mother had
already drawn the curtain that hid her room from the rest of the house. But it was not enough to disguise her sobbing so I slid open the small compartment on the back of my PCA and removed a transmitter—a flat, round object the size of my pinky nail. I accessed the music program on my PCA and as I stuck the transmitter to the bone behind my right ear, music flooded into my mind and I turned up the volume, drowning out my mother’s grief. Somehow I knew that if I allowed her grief inside my head, it would incapacitate me and I had to stay focused.
I checked the time, reli
eved that I still had thirty minutes of power—just enough to charge my PCA—before the Alliance cut it for the night, leaving us to rely on whatever we’d saved through our solar panels. As I eased through a glass doorway into the garden and scooted between two raised garden beds, I could smell the rich dirt, having been freshly watered. I grabbed my lantern and silently entered my bedroom—a simple room with concrete floor and walls, bed, a closet and built in drawers next to the closet door. My outlet was across from my bed, too far to get comfortable while my PCA charged. I plugged it in and settled down on the floor beside it. On the floor to my right was scribbling from elementary, to my left was my scribbling from last week. My mother called them evidence of A.D.D. My father had called them my creative outlet. Neither had told me to stop.
I brought my PCA to life and saw updates in the
news bar that included video. My finger hovered over the red link. I closed my eyes and clicked on it, hearing the familiar reporter, her voice soft—almost hypnotic.
The names of the terrorists who breeched security at the Section Seven Alliance City Center have been released, along with exclusive video of their capture.
I rolled my eyes. Since when had it ever
not
been exclusive? Their names scrolled up the screen and I caught my breath. I knew one of the terrorists, had talked with him in the park with my father.
Security footage inside the building caught these four men as they took down armed guards at the Alliance City Center and proceeded to execute eight highly-trained professionals,
she continued, pictures of the center fading to a symmetrically oval face with wide green eyes and long, black eyelashes. She enunciated each word perfectly, and I found myself leaning toward the screen to capture every word she said. I shook my head and pulled back.
I should warn you that the footage you are about to see has not been edited and may be disturbing to some viewers.
She spoke as though only adults viewed the news when, in fact, every child in One United received their own PCA when they entered elementary school and every PCA displayed the same videos and warnings despite the ages of the owners.
The video that ensued had been taken from a drone, a quad
-rotor, automatic machine gun that recorded everything in its path. I bit my lip and leaned away, wanting to shut my eyes but unable to look away from the horror I knew would follow.
The drone whirred down the spiral stairs in a residence that looked just like mine
. The woman quit speaking and the volume muted on the film. A man burst from the garden, his mouth open as if yelling. The drone zoomed in and his picture froze. The man looked like any other Citizen—his hair streaked with gray, his eyes dull and tired. The screen split, and his face from the surveillance tape popped up next to it to prove his guilt. The pictures faded back to video as the shots started, the man dropping from the frame almost as soon as it began. Smoke obscured most of the background, but the bright red drops of blood across the wall could not be blotted out.
The sound returned
to the news feed, an eerie buzz of silence until a child screamed in the background.
I shut off the news feed and placed my palms over my eyes. I’d never be able to un-see that video or forget the sound of that child’s wail. For somehow, her wail had already become a part of me, a voice to the world that I had already suppressed.
CHAPTER 3
My hands shook when I took them from my eyes and the images replayed over and over,
with the scream piercing right through my soul. There had to have been another way to apprehend the man without killing him in front of a child. So why had they executed him like that? I already knew the answer, for I’d been taught in school because terrorism had become such a part of our society, but in this video it had felt different.
Drones save lives,
we’d been told.
The threat must be eliminated immediately without threat to our officers, the men who keep us safe. When an innocent is a witness, it’s a necessary casualty.
There seemed to be a lot of ‘necessary casualties’ in One United. My stomach growled and I swallowed, knowing my own saliva would not satisfy my hunger, but not caring.
I leaned my head back against the wall and closed my eyes. My father used to laugh at the dinner table every night. He used to tell about his day in joki
ng that got both my mother and I giggling. He’d get serious later, while mother did the wash or tended her tiny flower bed in front of the entry hall. We’d talk about the academy and my schoolwork but never his views on the Alliance. He reserved his personal views for our hikes.
I stretched my feet out in front of me, the concrete cool through my thin
, still damp, slacks. I debated on getting into bed or not, but my mind felt muddled, my limbs tired to the core.
My PCA beeped, a personal message indicator. I forced open my eyes and clicked on the message. I’d heard about the standard grieving allowance but had never had to see it until now.
Brynn Aberdie is excused for three days from the Alliance Academy of Science 427 to allow grieving time for her father,
Criton Aberdie, victim of terrorists. Upon return to school, she will have seven days to complete all missed work. Rations will remain the same for 24 days at which time they will be reduced according to family size.
My mother’s renewed interest in crying proved she’d received a personal message on her PCA as well. It usually allowed the parent the same grieving time, but in some cases of terrorist activity, the Alliance actually compensated the surviving spouse with a small stipend.
I’d never understood how money could make up for someone’s life, but the wages would be welcome.
I’d just about turned off my PCA when another message beeped. Coming from an unknown source, I hesitated before clicking on it. People rarely sent messages because every word sent across the machines was monitored, every conversation catalogued and recorded.
Just heard. Sorryt. My condolences.
I hadn’t thought I’d receive any condolences, but dozens of messages flooded my PCA, the beeping making me flinch until I muted the tablet. Each offered sympathy, understanding, or hate for terrorists. Each came from an ID number associated with a Citizen. Some I knew, others I’d never met.
Then another from the same unknown source as the first.
Wish I could comfort you as the Alliance comforts the sorry Citizens.
My finger hovered above the delete button. People in One United could be such fanatics, but I only recognized that because I was one of the few who’d actually traveled beyond its borders. Encompassing all of what used to be the United States, Canada and Mexico, One United stood strong and enormous. We had closed our borders, except for an elite few chosen each year through a series of testing done through the academies. These few were allowed tours of other continents. My tour took me through Europe, six months ago, with four other students, and that was the first time I’d ever heard the term “sorry Citizens.”