“Back it up,” the captain said, keeping his arms crossed at his chest.
Wisely avoiding a fight, the boy took a step back, creating more than enough distance between them to alleviate a problem.
But still not happy, the guard uncrossed his arms and gave the boy a quick shove in the chest. “I said move!”
The boy flew back, caught by the row of people standing directly behind him. Shocked, everyone in the surrounding area immediately stopped chanting, but the rest of the group had no idea and continued.
At least, until the guards removed the batons at their sides in a single, fluid motion.
Everyone in the front half of the march saw the unprovoked action, and the nervous tension spiked all around us. I was certainly nervous myself. Why would they just draw their weapons for no apparent reason?
But truthfully, I wasn’t afraid until I looked over at Christine standing next to me and saw the look of grave concern etched into her face.
That was when I heard a gunshot and a bullet whizzed past my ear.
Everything went to hell.
CHAPTER TWO
Chaos ensued. That was the only way to describe it. The Monarch PMC guards waded into the protesting crowd and started clubbing people with their batons while others tossed tear gas into the middle of the march. Above our heads a pair of black Monarch helicopters began descending and more gunshots resounded, though I couldn’t tell whether they were coming from the crowd around me or the guards.
“No, no, no!” Christine said, covering her mouth in horror.
Who fired? Why? This was supposed to be a peaceful protest! The fact the bullet had come from behind me told me the answer, though. One of the people in the back had decided to take a shot at the guards and ruined everything.
I watched helplessly as the Monarch captain came at Christine with his baton, smashing her in the gut. Christine hit the ground hard, her glasses falling on the street as the captain raised his baton for another blow. Instinct took over and I stepped in front of her protectively.
“Get away from her!” I shouted as my fist connected with his jaw. It was like punching a brick wall and I wondered, for an instant, if I’d broken my hand. Probably not but it certainly felt like it.
I was tall and strong, with quite a few people thinking I was in college. Despite considering myself a geek, I’d been invited more than once to join the football team. Even so, taking a shot at a guy who’d probably served in the Oil Wars was probably not my smartest move. The captain looked over at me and lifted his baton to crack me across the face before the fat guy from earlier charged into him, slamming him into the ground.
The effect on the crowd was electric.
The brutality of the guards and sudden assault had been causing the first part of the crowd to break up and run to the alleyways next to the building or try to flee backward, trampling their fellow protestors, but seeing attempts to fight back changed everything. This was followed by a virtual tidal wave of other protestors attacking the Monarch forces.
“Oh, crap,” I said, staring at the sight of the warzone which had erupted around me.
That was when I noticed something strange about all this. There weren’t Chicago police officers or reporters in the area. Everyone around us was either Monarch guards, protestors, or people behind barricades who had come to view things. Butterfly had, somehow, set it up so they could do all this without having to answer for it.
I clenched my fists in fury.
“Robbie,” Christine said on the ground, holding her hand up.
Looking down, I saw Christine’s glasses were shattered on the ground and her hair was disheveled. For a shameful moment, I paused to think how beautiful she was. Christine was only three years older than me and I didn’t think that was all that big of a difference, college junior or not.
Dammit, no, I had a girlfriend. Forcing that thought from my mind, I extended my arm to her. “I have to get you out of here.”
“But the protest—” Christine started to say.
“We’ll show the world what Butterfly has done.” It was the first thing which came to mind but was effective as I saw her ponder this. Truth be told, I really didn’t care about that much now. Hearing all the shouts, screams, and worse going on all round me, all I could think about was getting my friend to safety. Maybe I wasn’t that big of an idealist. Maybe I just cared about those I called friends.
“All right,” Christine said, taking my arm and climbing to her feet.
Turning to one side, I saw the fat man who’d tackled the Monarch guards earlier getting beaten by three of the mercenaries. I wanted to help but, looking over at Christine, I reluctantly started heading for the alleyway closest to me.
If there was one good thing about the riot taking place all around me, it was the fact it had caused there to be less crowding around the alleys. Still, looking around me, I was stunned at how horrible it all was. The air smelled acidic from the tear gas, there was fighting all around, and I tried not to think about the fact a few of the people on the ground might be dead. God, I hated it when my dad was right.
Carrying Christine past a pair of overturned barricades, I was surprised to hear a booming but methodical Irish-accented voice. “Citizens of the United States, it is I, Colin Reilly.”
Turning around, I looked up to the side of the Butterfly building and saw a huge holographic display, one of their New Technologies which had propelled them to the top of the economic ladder. It generated an image of a white-suited man in his late forties with a shaved head and black goatee, looking more like a thuggish movie star than an executive.
I recognized Butterfly’s CEO from the information packets Christine had sent to all of H.O.P.E.’s members during the preparations for the march. Somehow, standing several hundred feet tall, he still looked like a small petty man.
“It is with great sadness and regret I report the protestors outside of The Butterfly Corporation’s headquarters in Chicago have turned to violence in order to achieve their political aims.”
Colin Reilly’s image disappeared to show spliced footage of the protestors attacking Monarch’s guards and beating them down, editing out all their attacks against it. I didn’t know how they’d done it so quickly, but I was horrified to see it made us look like villains.
God, had he sparked this riot? Was he doing it deliberately across the nation? I knew what the result was going to be, though. The vote was also coming up to have their special legal status renewed. That’s what we were protesting in fact. This was going to make them look like the victims and H.O.P.E. to look like the bad guys. There were already plenty of people like my father who considered us dangerous radicals rather than wide-eyed idealists. Dammit!
Colin Reilly’s image returned. “I love freedom. I think every American should have the right to express their opinion, no matter how wrong, but I hate violence. I moved to this country in the wake of the Red Plague in hopes of building a better life for myself and can’t help but ask what kind of life we’re leaving behind for our children if such attacks like these can continue. I thus beg of the American people to write their congressman, implore their politicians, and show their support for ending this disorder across America. Do not let this country descend into anarchy and terrorism.”
“Terrorism!” I spat out, too enraged to properly articulate any thoughts. I wanted to kill Colin Reilly in that moment and had he been in front of me, rather than safe in some office somewhere, I bet I could have.
“That monster,” I heard Christine whisper. “He set this all up.”
“Yeah,” I said, thinking about the gunshot. I had the weirdest feeling that hadn’t been related to the riot. I had the feeling Monarch’s guards would have done it differently. Bloodier and flashier. I also couldn’t shake the sensation it had been aimed at someone specific. Christine? Maybe. But it almost felt like someone had been aiming at me. That was ridiculous, though.
Continuing onto the alley and then taking her onto the alley
beyond that, I saw the fighting had spread to the next couple of blocks over. The alleyway we were in was filthy with a huge dumpster, graffiti on the wall, and a bunch of trash on the ground. It didn’t have any other protestors or Monarch PMC, though, which meant it was temporarily safe until we could get back to our cars a mile away.
“I need to sit down,” Christine said, breathing heavily. “Just for a second. I think he might have broken some ribs.”
I lowered her to the ground against the dumpster before clenching my back teeth and fists. My expression softened when I realized Christine was looking up at me with an expression I hadn’t expected. Admiration? Maybe attraction? Either of them would have been wonderful and my heart skipped a couple of beats. I fantasized about sitting down and kissing her before pushing that thought away.
“Thank you,” Christine said. “I owe you a lot. I might not have made it out of there alive without you.”
I blushed, looking to one side. “It’s nothing. I…”
I tried to think of something which could make the situation better but couldn’t come up with anything. Any way you looked at it, today was an unmitigated disaster. H.O.P.E. had been framed for being a bunch of dangerous radicals and it would be hard to convince the public it was all Butterfly’s fault. That was when I noticed Christine was looking behind me.
“Excuse me, Miss, are you with us?” Christine asked politely.
I turned around to look where she was looking. There, about six feet behind us, was the White-Haired Girl. She was staring at both of us with an intense look on her face. Now that I was closer, I saw she had a scar on the bottom of her chin as well as the side of her cheek. Her nose had also been broken once and had healed badly.
Despite this, she was pretty in an understated way. She was also more muscular than most girls my age. The White-Haired Girl looked like someone who had been through some serious crap in her life and I couldn’t help but immediately sense a certain kinship with her. A feeling driven home by the torn look in her eyes, as if her mind was wrestling with its thoughts while being pulled in a million different directions. That was when I noticed the gun clenched in a twitching hand at her side. Crap. She was the shooter.
I took a step back, suddenly aware of how much danger we were in. “Why—”
I didn’t get a chance to ask more, because from the other side of the alley I heard a heavy voice. “I saw the guy who took a swing at the captain run in here. We can cut off his escape.”
I turned my head just for a second to see three burly security guards coming down the other side, their batons out. Looking back to the White-Haired Girl, I was stunned to see she’d vanished. What the hell?
Christine climbed to her feet by herself, clutching her ribs. In that moment she became the leader of H.O.P.E. again, displaying a courage which had drawn me to her. Turning to the three guards, she said, “Leave us alone. We’ve done nothing to you. We weren’t responsible for the shooting.”
The three Monarch PMC guards were close now, only a few yards away. One was Caucasian, another black, and the third of Asian descent. Their black-and-orange uniforms made them look like villains from a science-fiction novel. They looked different, though, more militarized that the guards from before. Each of them was clutching a baton and one of them was covered in a mixture of blood as well as a gray matter I really, really hoped wasn’t brains. To top it all off, they had what looked like small shotguns on straps slung around their shoulders. These guys weren’t messing around.
While I luckily had been saved from the captain’s wrath earlier, I had no doubt I’d get my ass kicked by even one of these guys. A part of me wanted to run, but there was no way for Christine to follow and I wasn’t going to abandon her. Stepping in front of her, I raised my fists.
The Caucasian man laughed. “Aww, look, she’s got a boyfriend.”
Christine frowned.
The black man tapped the Caucasian man on the shoulder. “Wait a second, that’s the girl from the briefing. Christine Trainer.”
Uh-oh.
“David, you got that pistol with the live rounds?” the Caucasian soldier asked.
“Yeah,” the black soldier answered.
“Good. Plant it on her after we deal with both,” the Caucasian soldier said, lifting his baton.
“You need to leave,” Christine said to me. “Get to safety.”
“No,” I said back to her. “Not a chance.”
The Caucasian man smiled, stepping forward. “Lady, you don’t get it, do you? Neither of you is leaving this alley.”
I was about to say something defiant, something stupid in the face of the mortal peril, but I couldn’t think of anything. That was when I saw the White-Haired Girl again, this time behind the three Monarch PMC guards, her expression even more conflicted than before.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she muttered, shaking her head in disbelief.
The Monarch PMC guards stopped, exchanging a look before the White-Haired Girl grabbed the Caucasian man three times her size and then hurled him over her shoulder. He practically flew down the alley before slamming against the ground with a bounce.
“What the—” the black soldier started to say before the White-Haired-Girl delivered rapid blows to his chest, looking like she was hitting him with a jackhammer. He fell to his knees before she turned around and gave him an elbow to the face that sent him to the ground.
The third and final soldier then cracked her across the face with his baton, knocking her back.
I leapt on his back, wrapping my arm around his neck. “Leave her alone!”
The Monarch PMC soldier just threw me over his shoulder into the side of the dumpster, which I hit with a crack. Stunned, I wobbled to my feet and looked up just in time to see the man fire the weapon that was slung around his shoulder. A brutal force slammed into my chest, and I instantly dropped hard to the ground with a thud, cradling my whole upper body like it was on fire. At first, I thought I was dead, until I realized I was in more pain than I had ever felt in my entire life.
Lying on my back, it took all the energy I could muster to keep from passing out, but out of the corner of my blurry vision I could see the White-Haired Girl leaping through the air, delivering a flying kick to the distracted guard’s face, dropping him to the ground beside me.
While I stared up at the sky, Christine now came into my view by standing over me. She was looking straight ahead as she spoke, presumably to our mysterious savior. “Wow. I don’t know how to repay you but—”
“Shut up and do exactly as I say,” the White-Haired Girl said.
That was when there was more gunfire.
Real gunfire.
“What’s—” Christine started to ask, understandably concerned.
The White-Haired Girl cut her off as she came into my view, glaring at Christine with eyes blazing a mixture of anger and frustration. “Just get out of sight and make sure he stays down until I’m gone,” she said, grabbing Christine by her arm and pushing her to the side of the alley.
That was when I heard a gunshot right next to my ear twice as loud as the previous one, causing everything around me to drown out in a painful ringing. It only lasted a second, though, and faded when I heard the patter of footsteps walking away from me, most likely the White-Haired Girl leaving the alley.
Eventually the footsteps stopped and, with my eyes closed, I could focus on a new set of voices in the distance. “Damn Butterfly mercs are still as stupid now as they—”
“Careful, Gunner. Don’t mention that sort of thing.” The White-Haired Girl was speaking now. “Not where civilians can hear you.”
“Is the Scorpion dead?” Another voice, a woman’s this time, said.
“Yes, Esther,” the White-Haired Girl replied. “It’s over.”
“Good work, Jane.”
She was protecting me. That was why she wanted me to stay down.
But why?
Who was she? Who were these people?
That wa
s when the combination of stress, my battered hand, and the throbbing in my chest caused me to pass out.
CHAPTER THREE
When my eyes opened again, I found that the pain in my chest had moved to my head. I took a moment to get a feel for my surroundings. I was lying back in a very uncomfortable bed with bright lights shining down from the ceiling above. There was commotion all around me, but I couldn’t see anything beyond a tall, white curtain enveloping the bed.
My first reaction was to panic.
I never got a chance to, though, as Christine’s voice distracted me. “Good. You’re awake.”
She had been sitting in a chair by my bedside and seeing her allowed my erratic thoughts to focus more rationally. I was in a hospital. How I got here, though, was a mystery. Who knows what happened after I passed out in that alleyway, and Christine was the most likely candidate to fill in the blanks.
“How long have you been sitting there?” I asked.
Christine sat up straight and looked me dead in the eyes. “Well, I’ve been coming here and visiting you every day for the last five years, hoping you’d come out of the coma.”
Her words shot straight through me, and for a moment, I forgot about the pain pulsating through my head. “I’ve been in a coma for five years?”
Christine’s rigid posture collapsed in a wave of giggles. “No, silly,” she laughed. “The EMTs brought you here about forty minutes ago. They said you’re fine and will be discharged in an hour.”
I was not amused. “Political activist and comedian. You’re a regular riot.”
“You should know. We were just in one,” she dryly retorted.
I found that joke a lot funnier than the first one, but the deep pain from earlier returned as I began to chuckle. “Ah! Ow! Ow! Don’t make me laugh. My chest is killing me.”
“It should,” Christine said. “You got shot there.”
“You say it so casually.”
She remained unconcerned, though, brushing it off with a wave of her hand. “Oh, relax. It was just a rubber bullet. Those Monarch thugs were shooting them at any protester they saw.”
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