The Secret Citizen (Freedom/Hate Series, Book 3)

by Kyle Andrews

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  FIND FREEDOM/HATE ONLINE

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  Libby sat on a set of rundown stairs, inside an old building that stood three blocks away from where she lived. She liked to believe that nobody had set foot inside that building for years—decades even. It was something to be discovered. A relic from another time. A mystery to be solved. An escape.

  “It's dangerous in here,” Justin told her. He was thirteen years old, which made him slightly older than she was, but she was way braver than him.

  “It's fine,” she replied, grabbing the cloth sack that hung off of one shoulder, resting it on the step just above the one she was sitting on.

  Inside the bag, Libby had packed snacks. Nothing fancy, of course. She could barely manage to scrape together normal meals with what little she and Amanda found on their shopping list, but she put a few crackers aside here and there. Maybe a scrap of cheese. Maybe a piece of fruit. She was proud of her picnic.

  Then Justin opened his backpack and pulled out a turkey sandwich, a small bag of chips and an apple. Libby stared at the food as though it were pirate treasure.

  “What?” Justin asked, unwrapping his sandwich.

  “Nothing. I just don't get why you always have real food.”

  Justin smiled and said, “I have a better personality. People like me.”

  “What people?”

  “Y'know... Ladies.”

  Libby laughed. She didn't mean to, but the thought of Justin being a hit with the ladies was impossible to take seriously. She immediately regretted laughing though. She knew he liked her. When she laughed, he looked down and grew silent.

  Libby searched her brain for something that she could say to make him feel better. Maybe something to make it seem like she was laughing at something else entirely. She just couldn't think of anything fast enough, and the more she thought about it, the longer the silence between them lasted.

  Justin smelled his sandwich and wrinkled his nose. He looked up at Libby for a moment, and then looked down awkwardly again. He said, “It's turkey. I don't think I could stomach turkey today.”

  “Canned?” Libby asked.

  Justin shook his head. It was freshly sliced, yet still highly processed, deli meat. He asked, “Want it?”

  Libby's mouth fell open. She hadn't tasted the processed deli meat since Thanksgiving. Of course she wanted it, but she could tell that Justin was just being nice. If she took it, she would be leading him on. She would be allowing him to believe that she liked him the same way that he liked her.

  And she didn't. At least, she didn't think that she did. She wasn't really sure what it felt like to like someone.

  “Take it,” he told her. “I'm not really hungry anyway. I'm just gonna throw it away if you don't want it.”

  Libby hesitated for another moment, but eventually took the sandwich from Justin. She meant to thank him for it, but the sandwich was in her mouth before she could speak.

  She felt horrible. She'd treated him so poorly, yet here he was, giving her his food. Putting her before himself.

  Maybe she did love him. She just didn't know how she loved him. There were different ways, right? Obviously, she loved Amanda and—

  “My foot just went through the floor in there,” Uly told them, walking to the stairs from another room and pulling Libby out of her stream of thought.

  “I told you, it's not safe in here,” Justin said, shaking his head. “Can I have the crackers?”

  Libby tossed him the crackers that she had packed. In return, Justin tossed her the bag of chips. Now it was like Thanksgiving and the National Day of Service, all in one.

  “It's fine!” Libby told both of them as Uly took a seat on the stair beside her. “This place has been standing forever. What are the odds that it would fall apart on the day we decide to come inside?”

  “Considering the fact that nobody else has been in here in forever and we're the first people to put their weight on these floors in years?” Uly replied with a grin. He was the oldest of the group and loved to act smarter than the other two.

  “He just put his foot through the floor!” Justin reminded Libby.

  “Did he fall into the basement?” Libby asked. “No. Which makes this place at least as safe as Margie Camp's apartment building. I heard a guy died in there last week. Fell right into the basement.”

  “That didn't happen,” Uly sighed, rolling his eyes. “She made it up, so that people would think she was interesting. Which she's not.”

  Justin smiled widely and asked them, “Do you remember the time she tried to do the cartwheel down the stairs in front of school?”

  “Yes!” Libby laughed, as Uly shook his head and looked confused.

  “Splat,” Justin told him.

  “Dress over head. Flat on her back.”

  “And she's been that way ever since,” Justin joked.

  Libby started laughing so loudly that she had to put a hand over her mouth. Food almost went flying everywhere, which made Uly laugh nearly as hard.

  This was why Libby wanted to stay in that rundown old building. When it was just the three of them, the rest of the world didn't exist. Nothing else mattered. She wasn't even going hungry. When she was with them, she laughed. She felt safe.

  This was the type of day that she wanted to remember for the rest of her life.

  1

  Justin stood in the middle of the chaos, looking down at Libby's body in Sim's arms. He was rocking her and saying things to her which Justin couldn't hear, and all Justin wanted to do was grab her and run.

  On the ground around her, blood was pooling. Each drop of that blood was more valuable to the world than all of the credits and all of the shopping lists combined, but when he looked at it, all he saw was Libby's life being reflected in deep red.

  The world should have stopped right then and there. People should have stood back in shock. The Earth should have stopped rotating. Nations should have crumbled. The power should have gone out. Sirens should have been sounding.

  But there was none of that. Around Justin, the chaos raged on. Sim was crying and holding Libby close to him, but that was understandable. He was her boyfriend. If he cried, it was because he didn't know what was going on. If Justin cried, people would ask questions. As far as the general public knew, t
hey hadn't spoken in months. They hadn't been friends in years.

  He could hear HAND vehicles moving closer to them. They would want to take Libby. Justin might be able to stop them, but if he did that, he would have to bring her somewhere. He couldn't go back to the Garden with HAND following him. He couldn't go back to his apartment, because it was too far away. He could go nowhere and do nothing to save her. She was dead. Libby was dead.

  Libby was dead.

  The words threatened to shatter Justin's mind. He fought as hard as he could to remain calm and not fall onto the ground right there beside her. She was dead. Libby was dead.

  No matter how many times he told himself, he couldn't bring himself to believe it. She wasn't even supposed to be there. She was supposed to be safe and sound in the Garden, as far away from the HAND building and the Mayor as humanly possible. Why would she have gone there? Why?

  Nothing made sense. The more questions he asked, the less sense it made. He was shutting down. He was standing in one spot, staring at her, not moving—barely breathing.

  She was dead. That time, there was a bit of distance between those words and his feelings about them. She was dead. A little more space. He needed to think about this rationally. He needed to be smart, or else he would be brought down beside her. He couldn't let that happen. Not until he made them pay for what they had done.

  Justin took a step back, away from Libby's body. He turned away from it, but the image had been burned into his mind. He would be seeing it in his dreams for the rest of his life.

  He walked away from her, leaving her in Sim's arms as he blended into the crowd, moving away from the HAND officers that were approaching. Around him, there were blurs of color. They were people running around or fighting with each other.; they were objects being thrown, but Justin only saw the blurs. There was no definition to the world.

  He kept moving, not knowing exactly where he was going or what he was supposed to be doing at this point. There should have been something to do, but he couldn't imagine what.

  An elbow struck Justin in the back. He was pushed forward and turned to see who had hit him. He saw a man running as fast as he could through the crowd, pushing people aside as he went. The man was screaming, not because he was scared, but because he was out of his mind.

  He turned to resume walking and saw a large man holding onto a woman. The man's arm was wrapped around the woman's neck. Her feet weren't even touching the ground. Her arms were waving in the air. The woman was desperate to escape this man, but she was helpless. There was nothing she could do.

  What side this woman was on didn't matter. Justin started to move toward her without even thinking about it. He wanted to take that man to the ground and beat him until there was nothing remaining except a puddle on the street.

  But then he stopped himself. He couldn't fight the man. He couldn't draw attention to himself. He couldn't help the woman. That's not what he was there to do.

  Justin stood back, fighting the urge to tackle the man. He watched as the woman struggled, and eventually other people stepped in to help her. He watched the fight unfold before his eyes. The large man fell to the ground. The woman gasped for air, as those who stepped in to help her took swings at the man.

  This wasn't the war. This was one out of control civilian, taken down by other civilians. It wasn't Justin's fight, and getting involved wouldn't have helped him move any closer to his ultimate goal.

  What was his ultimate goal? As Justin stood there, watching the fight in front of him, his mind drifted back to the image of Libby's lifeless body. In that moment, he had one desire. It wasn't freedom or liberty. It was revenge.

  2

  Rose was on the ground, trying to pull herself up, but each time she thought that she might make it, someone else stepped on her hand, or knocked into her and sent her back down. One person ran right over her back, as though she weren't there. That person fell to the ground, but then scrambled back up and kept running. If only it were that simple for Rose.

  Things started out easily enough. It was a simple job. She was supposed to watch what happened when the Mayor called for Collin Powers' execution, and report back to the Garden. She hadn't expected a riot to break out, but maybe she should have.

  When she first arrived at the HAND building, Rose noticed several people in the crowd who looked different than the others. They were quiet while others cheered. They watched the people around them, rather than watch the show that was taking place on the front steps. It didn't take her long to realize that they were Freedom. Either one entire base of members who had come to rescue Powers, or a few members from different bases around the city. She didn't know any of them, but apparently the Garden was the only base to send people to the event with orders to blend in and remain silent. As soon as the smoke bombs went off around the area, those people began charging toward loyalists in the crowd, police officers who tried to stop them, and HAND officers who were armed and prepared to shoot anyone who got in their way.

  Rose was close enough to the front steps of the HAND building to see shadowy forms moving through the smoke and whisking Collin Powers away. If they were HAND, they would have taken him back inside the building. These people vanished into the night. He was rescued. That was great for him. Unfortunately, it left people like Rose in the middle of a crazed crowd of people, who were suddenly fearful for their lives, and she didn't have so much as a metal pipe to defend herself with.

  The smoke was burning her eyes, causing them to water. She could barely see anything around her, but while she was on the ground, the smoke wasn't quite as thick. She could think.

  Several feet in front of her, there was a woman jumping up and down, looking for someone to help her. But the smoke was thick and the woman could neither see very far, nor be seen by others from very far away.

  “They took him!” the woman yelled. “They took him! Someone stop them! It was a woman and a man! I saw them! I can describe them! Someone help me!”

  The woman turned toward other people, asking them if they saw what she saw, but those other people were more concerned with their own safety than with the woman's rantings.

  “I saw a van! It went that way!” the woman yelled. “I think he's in it!”

  Rose forced herself off of the ground and ran toward the woman. With a flying leap, she tackled the woman to the ground and sat on top of her.

  The woman's eyes widened and she was about to scream, but Rose put a hand over her mouth.

  “What did you see?” Rose asked the woman.

  The woman started to panic and point in the direction where she claimed to have seen Collin Powers escaping. Rose put her other hand around the woman's throat and squeezed.

  “What did you see?” she asked the woman again.

  The woman was still trying to speak and point, so Rose squeezed harder.

  “What did you see?” she asked, far more pointedly than before.

  The woman no longer had the ability to try to speak. She looked into Rose's eyes with the fear of death and finally seemed to understand what Rose was getting at. The woman shook her head, signaling that she hadn't seen anything.

  Rose loosened her grip on the woman's neck and said, “Good. Now, you're going to keep that mouth of yours shut, sweetie, or else I'm going to track you down and finish what I started here tonight. Do you understand me?”

  The woman nodded as tears escaped from the corners of her eyes.

  “Good girl,” Rose said, taking her hands off of the woman and getting to her feet. She turned and started to move into the crowd, away from the woman. She wanted to get as far away from that place as she could, as fast as she could. But the other woman had different ideas.

  As Rose walked away, she heard a scream from behind her. The woman was charging toward her, no doubt wanting to be a dutiful citizen and take down the member of Freedom who had threatened her.

  The mistake that the woman made was the scream as she attacked. It allowed Rose to know exactly where the woman
was and when to turn around, so she could punch the woman in the face.

  The woman went down, unconscious while Rose's hand felt as though it had broken in several places.

  “Ow!” Rose yelled, knowing that her voice would be drowned out by the crowd. She kept moving away. “Ouch! Son of a bitch, that woman had a hard face.”

  In the distance, a gunshot went off. Rose instinctively ducked her head and turned toward it, just as two more shots went off. There was another shot, from another direction. They'd been going off here and there for a while. HAND was cleaning up the streets.

  When Rose faced forward again, she saw a HAND uniform. The officer, a tall female who was built like a tall male, had her gun drawn. In front of her, a young man was on his knees. His hands were on his head. His eyes were closed.

  The officer was saying something, but Rose couldn't hear her over the sound of the crowd. There were other people who had stopped to watch the show. Some looked eager to see the man die. One or two had the same expression on their face that Rose would have expected to see on her own, if she happened to have a mirror handy. It was disgust and panic. It was the look of wanting to do something, but not knowing whether or not you should.

  To attack a HAND officer in public was like signing your own death certificate. There was no way to escape. If people didn't see you, cameras would.

  Rose only remembered the cameras as she was running toward the HAND officer. As Rose approached from the side, the officer didn't even see her coming. It was only when one man in the crowd pointed to Rose that the officer turned and saw her, just in time for Rose to jump on top of her.

  Rose and the officer both fell to the ground. It took Rose a moment or two to recover and get her breath back into her, but the officer was on her knees and moving toward Rose within seconds. She started to raise her gun in Rose's direction and there was nothing that Rose could do to stop her.

  Fortunately, the man on his knees was willing to help. He grabbed the officer's wrist and and pulled it. The gun went off, sending a bullet past Rose, missing her only by a foot or two. A man behind her fell to the ground, screaming about his leg.