The Child Thief 6: Zero Hour

by Forrest, Bella

  We were approaching the tents, now, all of them set up together like a mini-Edgewood. Except, of course, for Robert’s lone tent far out in the pasture.

  Robert. I suddenly remembered my conversation with him before the early morning leader meeting.

  “Jace,” I began, preparing to discuss my lingering doubt with him. But as we walked through the tent city, Jace was focusing hard on the people we passed. I began to look around and notice why.

  Every single person we passed was on their phone or their computer, staring intently with mouths agape. Some were watching alone, while others gathered in huddles to stare at one device. A few people were listening through headphones while they watched, but many others were listening to some sort of news broadcast that was playing out loud. The farther through the tents we walked, the more obvious it became that everyone was listening to the same thing.

  Nathan had been right. I knew that it was happening.

  “We’ve got to get to the team to find out what everyone is seeing,” I said.

  Jace and I took off jogging to our corner of the field. Sure enough, the team was gathered around Nelson’s computer and watching the broadcast together.

  “What’s happening?” I panted as we ran up.

  Nelson put her fingers to her lips to shush me. She beckoned for us to come around and look at the screen, and Jace and I walked to the back of the screen and began to watch.

  It was Nathan. Nathan, dressed in a smart business suit, was talking directly to the camera, like an impassioned news broadcaster. He was talking about Helping Hands.

  “What is this on?” I asked.

  “Everything,” Nelson replied in an awed tone. “Every single public channel. Every government website.”

  When Nathan finished talking about Helping Hands and the detention centers, how Little John had breached its security to find thousands of factory workers trapped in drafty barracks with barely enough food to eat, another man appeared on the screen. He was a middle-aged man, balding and portly, dressed in ill-fitting clothes. His eyes never looked at the camera. In fact, his eyes didn’t seem to be able to focus on much of anything. He looked very unwell. A bit of drool hung from his lower lip, and he stood hunched over and swaying slightly, as if he was barely able to stand on his own.

  “This is Perry,” Nathan was saying. “Perry is from Bakersville and has worked all of his life in textile factories. When his factory closed down, he had no way to feed or shelter himself. Until he was approached by a welfare organization called Helping Hands.”

  But it was hard to focus on Nathan’s words when Perry was so obviously unwell on the screen. I kept staring at his face, trying to understand what the disconnect was.

  What was wrong with him?

  MRIs and X-Rays flashed on the screen as Nathan continued to speak about the strange, disconnected man beside him. My heart began beating wildly and it suddenly all made sense. I hadn’t yet seen much of what lobotomization did to previously well-functioning people. It had practically zombified him.

  “Perry was lobotomized by the regime. He was lobotomized in the Helping Hands detention center and then sold to a factory as free labor. Only able to say his name and completely unable to work, he was released onto the streets. Our scouts found him and took him in,” Nathan said. “Your government did this. The Burchard Regime did this. And we can prove it.”

  Nathan then pulled out an identity scanner, the type that was only supposed to be possessed by agents and regime officials. The average person would never have had access to that device or the information it could scan. And that information, as Nathan showed it to the camera, was shocking.

  The screen was now displaying the ID scanner’s screen, which we had seen before on missions. But it would’ve been alien tech to most citizens. It was a simple documentation screen, complete with a small identifying photo of Perry. But that was almost all of what was displayed there. All of Perry’s other information—his name, date of birth, and last known address—had been wiped, replaced only by a number: 0001462.

  Gasps could be heard all around us as people watched the broadcast. There was only one entity that could have changed the information you got when you scanned an ID: the regime.

  I could only imagine how the public at large was taking it.

  “We can’t let the government get away with this,” Nathan said. “Will you stand with us and hold them accountable? Or will you allow this to happen to more and more poor people? Will you allow all of your goods to be made by permanently altered wage slaves? Will you allow the continuing theft of children? The selling of children? The lack of law and order and justice? Will you allow this?”

  My heart was beating in my throat. Would this work? Would the public see this? Would they be swayed?

  “Will you allow this?” Nathan continued. “Or will you rise up and stand with us?”

  19

  “What happened?” I asked Nelson. The recording had ended, and the screen was black.

  Nelson fiddled with her keyboard and pressed her fingers against the touchscreen of her computer. But nothing would come up: no websites, no news channels, nothing.

  “Public access has gone dark. The government’s websites and news sources. They’re all down,” Nelson replied.

  There was a dark awe in her voice that made me feel exhilarated and also terribly nervous. Obviously, Nathan had somehow infiltrated multiple broadcasts and websites at the same time—which meant our tech team was capable of that type of advanced hacking.

  “Did you know about this?” Jace asked. “You or Gabby? You guys are on the tech team.”“No,” Nelson said, shaking her head slowly. “No, he must’ve had another team working on this. I didn’t even think we had this capability.”

  “So then maybe Nathan took the initiative to expand pretty personally. He must’ve gotten started early,” I said, looking over at Jace.

  “Expand?” Jackie asked. “Did you guys know that this was going to happen? Is this part of the leader missions?”

  There was no use hiding it now. Everyone in the country knew about Nathan and Little John at this point. They had seen a lobotomized person on camera, and Nathan had offered some pretty convincing evidence to implicate the government when he showed the scanned ID. It was obvious that we were ramping things up, and we were doing it at breakneck speed. So what was the point in hiding things any further?

  “Yeah,” I replied. “We didn’t know exactly what he was going to do, but we knew that he had a plan. And his plan is to expand Little John. To get the public on our side.”

  “Do you think it’ll work?” Abe asked cautiously. “I mean, we know that the regime lobotomized that guy. We know that Nathan is telling the truth. But is the middle class going to believe it? They’re the ones we need on our side now. The poor are too weak to fight. The rich are too spoiled. We need everyone from the middle.”

  “I can speak to that,” Nelson said. “I came from a solidly middle-class family. And even back then, when I was a kid, my parents knew that the regime was bad. But all the news was suppressed by the government. Now that this has gotten out, I feel like they’ll finally have the evidence and the motivation they need to take a stand.”

  “You guys are nuts,” Ant said. “Why would they suddenly fight? They know that uprisings would be crushed.”

  “But maybe we don’t need them to fight,” Gabby responded. “Maybe we just need them to believe us so they’ll start speaking out. And then they’ll stop working against us by trying to turn us in to the government every chance they get.”

  “Pretty sure we’re going to need some of them to fight,” Denver piped up. “Otherwise we have no way to take down an entire government. We just don’t have the numbers.”

  “Yeah, Nathan has impressed me many times with his money and his reach, but there’s no way he has some secret army stashed away that could defeat the UNA’s entire military,” Alf added.

  I didn’t know anything about the military, other than
the fact that it was big. I certainly didn’t know anything about war. But Little John didn’t strike me as a warfare group. They were hackers, spies, and orators. Those were their strengths, not battle. So Denver and Alf were right. How was Nathan going to talk his way past a whole army?

  How could we win?

  “What did we miss before we got here?” Jace asked.

  “Nathan accused the government of selling kids and Jackson Burchard of siphoning federal funds. He had some docs to back it up. Pretty serious accusations,” Cloyd said.

  “Yeah, if the government hated Little John before, they’re really going to hate Nathan and his organization now,” Abe added.

  “How did you know to turn that on?” I asked.

  It had looked like every single person in the tents had been watching the broadcast. How did they all know to turn it on? And how many others had seen it?

  “Everyone got a text at the same time,” Gabby said. “It was the government emergency alert system. Except it was telling us to go watch the news. Nathan must’ve been behind that as well.”

  I suddenly pulled out my phone. I hadn’t noticed in all of the commotion, but I had gotten the alert too, just like Gabby said.

  “So pretty much anyone with a phone has seen this,” Jackie added. “And even the poor usually have phones, with the exception of the very poor. So almost every adult in the country just watched it.”

  Nathan had found a lobotomized person, put together a polished broadcast, hacked the government news sources, and managed to send out an alert through the federal messaging system?

  And now that the public had this information, what were they going to do with it?

  The entire community was abuzz with news, gossip, and conversations about the broadcast for the next couple of hours. The feeling among the Edgewood tents was electric. Maybe it was becoming apparent to everyone that Little John had just taken a giant leap forward.

  It was feeling that way to me.

  * * *

  “I’m nervous,” Jace said as he walked up beside me.

  I had been standing at the outer edge of the tents, staring out into the birch forest that led up to the mountains and using the solitude and the chilly breeze on my face to clear my head.

  “You get nervous?” I teased, looking over at him with a wink.

  He nudged against me playfully. “Even cavemen get nervous, Robin. You should know that by now.”

  I turned back to the mountains. I did know that. But it was nice to be playful and casual with Jace on what might’ve been our last day together in Brightbirch.

  “Do you think that Nathan will call us back soon for planning?” I asked. It was afternoon now, and every second that ticked by was taking us closer to our mission and Aurora’s execution. “He must’ve broken up that meeting so he could arrange the broadcast. But now that that’s over he should be calling us back, right?”

  “It can’t be much longer now,” Jace replied. “We don’t have the time to waste.”

  I looked down at my phone again. Still no texts from Nathan or Corona. I was starting to feel restless and anxious while we waited around for further directions. At the very least, I wanted to hear some sort of plan. After all, Nathan must’ve understood that he would’ve just angered the very people who were holding Aurora.

  But I didn’t think the government would pass up an opportunity to publicly execute a traitor. They needed to scare the public by showing them what happened to defectors, and they’d also want to strike a blow against Little John.

  As I considered the plan in Chanley, my thoughts began to drift to something more personal.

  “Hope is in Chanley,” I said softly.

  I wasn’t sure why I had said it. But it had been on my mind since Nathan proposed the mission to rescue Aurora, and I felt like I needed to say it out loud.

  Jace looked over at me. When I didn’t move or turn away from the mountains, he grabbed both of my shoulders and gently turned me toward him.

  “We’ll get Hope, Robin,” he said reassuringly. “Even if we can’t get her tomorrow, I promise that we will get her.”

  I nodded, trying to convince myself that he was right. But I couldn’t help but feel like I was risking the possibility of ever seeing my daughter again with every dangerous mission that Little John planned and I volunteered for. I believed in Little John, and I wanted to fight for the things that it stood for. I also wanted to help Aurora, since she had done so much to help us on our previous missions. But I didn’t want to risk never knowing my daughter.

  Then again, I also felt like the missions—to take back Hope and to see Little John’s plans to their ends—were intertwined. Reclaiming Hope was going to be nearly impossible without Nathan’s help because the Prestons were so wealthy and powerful. Even if I somehow managed to get Hope back, where would we go in a country that was still ruled by Burchard? They’d hunt us forever, and we would be running for the rest of our lives.

  I needed Little John to succeed if Hope and I were ever going to live normal lives.

  “Robin,” Jace began.

  I must’ve been wearing my fear on my face, because I knew that he was about to try to comfort me. But we were interrupted when the phone still in my hand began to buzz. My heart leapt into my throat as I looked down to read the message on the screen.

  Come now for Chanley planning.

  It was time. Nathan was ready to tell us the plan for the Chanley attack. I looked up at Jace expectantly.

  There was a shimmer of fear in his eyes as well. Was he thinking of Kory? We had both learned on our last mission that we weren’t impervious to loss. It was a hard and painful lesson. Even though we had all known going into this that death was a possibility, and maybe even a likely event, we hadn’t been fully prepared to lose one of our own.

  But we didn’t have time to focus on that now. It was time to find out what Nathan had planned.

  We walked quickly and purposefully to the administrative building, and I wondered about the details of the mission as we walked. Was it just leaders attending again? Would only the leaders be going to Chanley? It seemed like we would need a lot more people to infiltrate the capital city and thwart an attempted public execution.

  No matter what, if Nathan was back in fighting form and ready to lead, I wanted to be involved. I had been so concerned about Nathan’s suspicion taking over and leading to the dissolution of Little John that having the leader I knew and trusted back made me feel like we were going to finally move forward.

  I had been waiting for that. I was sick of being stuck on a strange base with the threat of another attack constantly looming over us, of not doing more to help the children who were still being snatched away from their parents, of giving up on the Helping Hands mission when we knew how much was at stake, and of letting Burchard and the regime claim victory over us after destroying a base and sowing discord amongst us.

  But mostly I was ready to move forward because the further we got in our missions, the closer I felt to finding Hope.

  We walked up the stairs of the administrative building and into Fiora’s office to see the base leaders as well as Nathan, Corona, and a few of the team leaders sitting around. It looked like we were walking in right as the meeting was starting.

  “Okay, let’s get started,” Nathan said, nodding at Jace and me as we found our seats. “The execution is tomorrow. We don’t have much time to prepare.”

  “The attempted execution,” Corona corrected him.

  “Of course,” Nathan replied. “Forgive me.” Nathan and Corona exchanged a tense look before Nathan continued to speak to the entire room. “Tomorrow, the government will try to threaten every person in this nation by attempting to execute a brave young woman who was fighting for justice. We aren’t going to let that happen. We are going to swoop in and take back our Aurora. We are going to humiliate the regime in front of the nation and the world. And by the time we’re through, news will have reached every person on this planet that peopl
e are standing up to Burchard and that he and his administration will now be held accountable for their actions.”

  Jace squeezed my knee. Maybe he was feeling the same sudden rush of confidence that I was. Nathan sounded very sure about the mission. It was a far cry from the defeatism he had been radiating since we landed in Brightbirch.

  “What’s the plan?” Evers asked. “Do you need money?”

  “Or a team of scouts?” Liza added.

  “Or one of our combat teams?” Zion asked.

  Nathan shook his head. “Every agent that the government has at that execution is going to be looking for us. We can’t be at all conspicuous. And without Aurora, we don’t have the protection of scannable identities. So we need a small team of spies.”

  Spies? We didn’t have a spy team, as far as I knew. Then again, maybe that was the type of thing that I wouldn’t know about.

  “I have scouts in and around Chanley,” Liza said. “They would be very discreet, and most of them have working identities.”

  “We need seasoned team members. I need people who have been on missions before and understand the danger and how to keep their cool under that type of pressure,” Nathan replied. “This is a delicate mission. If we mess up in the slightest, we will lose Aurora and more than likely any team members who are in the capital city.”

  “Then what do you suggest?” Arlo asked. “How will we be able to rescue this girl if everyone in Chanley is looking for us?”

  Nathan smiled mischievously. “We have to be invisible,” he said.

  “The mini-airship,” I said aloud.

  “That’s right,” Nathan replied. “It’s as close to invisible as we can get. But we’ll still need to have a small team on the ground for a diversion.”

  “They’ll be expecting that,” Evers said.

  “You’re right. But they won’t be expecting the airship to come down right over Aurora and pull her up,” Nathan said.

  “What is the diversion?” Luka asked.