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

by Kyle Andrews

  Rose sat on the side of the bed and thought for a moment before saying, “Do you want to hear about the day that I met Libby?”

  Was it cruel to delay the news? Perhaps. But Rose suddenly felt a strong need to defend Libby's choices in life before her mother learned of her death.

  “Go on,” Amanda told her.

  Rose looked toward the heart monitor and started talking, with no idea what she was planning to say, “The first time I met Libby, I was driving a car that I'd stolen from HAND. I know it sounds bad, but I had to. Because the authorities wanted Libby dead. They found out about her before she even knew herself. She wasn't one of us. She was just a girl with bad luck and they wanted to kill her for it.”

  “Why?”

  “Do you remember the day you went into the hospital, and Libby left to get tested with Uly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Libby found out that Uly was a member of Freedom that day.”

  “Freedom?”

  “The authorities call us Hate. But we aren't Hate. The group they tell you about doesn't exist. We don't murder people. You have to understand that. Uly never murdered anyone. He never bombed anyone. He never tried to kill anyone. He was killed by them because of what they found in his blood.”

  “What did they find?”

  “Data. Somehow encoded in his DNA. I don't know how it works. I just know that there were documents encoded inside of him. Historical documents that the government never wanted us to see. So, they killed him. And... It wasn't worth it. He didn't deserve to die.”

  Rose wiped a tear off of her cheek as she said that last part. She could still see Uly's face as clearly as ever when she thought about him.

  There was a long pause before Amanda said, “And Libby has this data inside of her?”

  “And those bastards tried to kill her for it that same night. That's why she never went back to the hospital. Justin saved her life and brought her back here,” Rose told Amanda. She then smiled halfheartedly as she said, “And we got some of those documents from her. The Bill of Rights. The Constitution... To a lot of people, your daughter is a hero.”

  “You don't think so?”

  “She's a hero,” Rose replied without delay. “But not because of the documents. The documents were... Maybe some people needed to see them, I guess. I don't know.”

  “And she believes in all of this? She's convinced that she's a hero?”

  “No. Libby never believed that she was a hero. She never believed that she should have been saved instead of Collin Powers. She never thought she was worth it. But she was. She was a good person. And she was my friend.”

  As Rose said those words, she could see every muscle in Amanda's body grow tense.

  “Rose?” Amanda said, in a shaky, hesitant voice. “Why did you say 'was'?”

  11

  Collin sat in the waiting room of the auto repair shop, waiting to be told what he was expected to do next. He assumed that they would be moving on to whatever base had organized his rescue, but he didn't know whether he would be walking there or driving.

  On the other side of the room, the little girl was sound asleep. Tracy was sitting next to her, gently stroking the girl's hair. It had taken some effort to get to that point. Only a half hour or so earlier, Collin had heard Tracy discussing the girl with Mek. They were in another room, keeping their voices low and trying not to be heard, but whispers are often the easiest sounds to hear and Collin couldn't help but make out a few stray words here and there.

  When Tracy walked back into the room, she stared at the girl, as though she were trying to figure out what to do with her. Could they take the girl back to the base? Could they leave her to fend for herself? Collin had no idea what the others had decided, but what he did know was that he wasn't in the business of leaving defenseless little kids alone when HAND was trying to track them down.

  The girl was an unpredictable element to be sure. She wasn't necessarily sympathetic to Freedom, but she couldn't have been too fond of the authorities by this point either. Could she be trusted to know where a Freedom base was located, or would she escape at the earliest possible moment and lead HAND back to that base in exchange for clearing her own name?

  There was no easy answer, but Collin knew that he could never bring himself to walk away from her. She was in the back of that HAND vehicle because they believed that she was a member of Freedom. True or not, her face and possibly her name were known to them. She wasn't safe, and that fact bothered Collin. Kids shouldn't be targets. Children shouldn't have to fear for their lives.

  Not long after Tracy came back into the waiting room, Mek returned as well. He had a steaming cup of hot carob with him, which he offered to the girl. A peace offering? An attempt to set her mind at ease? Either way, it worked. The girl drank and soon she began to relax. Then she fell asleep. When Tracy sat down beside her and started petting the girl's head, Collin was sure that the girl would wake up, but she didn't. She was out like a light.

  A few minutes later, Mek picked the girl up in his arms and turned to Collin. He said, “Let's move.”

  Without waiting for Collin, Mek began to walk out of the shop. Tracy stood, but waited for Collin to start walking before she took a step. She was either taking up the rear, or she was keeping an eye on him. Maybe a little bit of both.

  “You drugged her?” Collin asked her as they walked.

  As they headed out of the shop and onto the sidewalk, Tracy grabbed a hat from a hook on the door. She put it on Collin's head and pulled the brim down, forcing him to lower his head. He'd almost forgotten about the street cameras.

  “Nothing too strong. She'll sleep for a while. It'll be good for her, and we won't have to worry about how much she knows,” Tracy told Collin.

  Though his first instinct was to argue with the idea of drugging the child and carrying her back to the base, he had to admit that it was probably the best option for everyone involved. The question was, whose idea was it? When Tracy and Mek were discussing the girl's future, Collin couldn't quite make out who was on which side. Which one of them had voted to leave her behind?

  “You're not going to drug me?” he asked, keeping his eyes on the back of Mek's boots and following closely.

  “Too heavy,” Tracy joked. “Plus, if you were going to give up any Freedom bases, you probably would have by now.”

  “Probably,” Collin agreed. The truth was that the previous month was jumbled in his head. He didn't know what happened when, or which parts were in his head. He didn't know what he said or did, and it scared him.

  Silence fell between the three of them as they walked. Collin could tell by the way people moved around Mek that they didn't think anything strange about the man who was carrying the sleeping child. They probably assumed that she was sick, because most of the people kept their distance.

  Though he couldn't see any of their eyes as he kept his head down, Collin imagined that all of those people on the sidewalk knew exactly who he was. He imagined them staring at him. He imagined citizens calling the police or HAND. He imagined running for his life, as he had before, only this time there would be nowhere to go. Sophia's apartment was a long way from where he was now.

  But nobody screamed and no sirens sounded. All of the looks that Collin imagined those people giving him were just figments of his imagination.

  “I've heard things,” Tracy said after a while, breaking the silence as she moved to walk beside Collin. “I've heard stories about what they do to people in there. I can't imagine it.”

  Collin said nothing, but the first thought that came to mind was that he'd come to a point where he couldn't stop imagining it. His body was still humming with the expectation of its pain being turned up to the maximum level.

  Tracy looked over at Collin and said, “I'm sorry.”

  “It's not your fault.”

  “Kinda is. I shouldn't have left you. Who does that to a person?”

  “Someone who follows the rules.”

  Tracy
snorted and said, “Yeah, that's not my strong suit.”

  “I got caught because I wanted to get caught,” Collin told her. “It was... a gamble. I wanted people to see me. I wanted them to see what the evening news wouldn't show them. There was no part of it that was your fault.”

  Tracy seemed to accept that response and fell silent again. Collin replayed his own words in his head and he hated the sound of them. He sounded like he was trying to be a hero, but the truth was that he was just angry and tired, and sick of the lies. He wanted to walk into the street and give his life so that people would snap out of whatever delusion made this world acceptable to them.

  But he didn't give his life. At least, not all of it. Now what? What does a martyr do when they fail at dying for their cause? Spend the rest of his life telling stories about the glory days, back when he was being tortured? As they walked down that street, toward whatever base he was being led to, Collin tried to think of what came next. What could he possibly have left to offer?

  He was barely paying attention to where he was going. If he was ever recaptured by HAND and tortured for the location of this base, Collin wouldn't even have the option of cooperating. But before long, he was being led down an alley, to a large metal door, which Mek pounded on three times.

  The door opened and a man in a butcher's apron looked Mek up and down. Then he turned his eyes toward Collin.

  “Delivery,” Tracy smiled at the man, but he didn't smile back. Collin wasn't even sure if the man had the ability to smile. His face looked like it was carved from solid rock, with eyes made of cold steel.

  The man looked up and down the alley and then nodded slightly, allowing Mek to walk into the building. Collin and Tracy followed.

  Once inside, the butcher walked back into his shop and left the others to their business. They walked down a narrow hallway to an old wooden door. Since Mek was carrying the girl, Tracy opened the door and allowed Mek and Collin to walk through it before she followed and closed the door behind her.

  Inside, Mek pulled on a string, which turned on a flickering bulb overhead. They were standing in a large closet, with boxes stored to one side and clothes hanging here and there on wire hangers.

  Tracy pushed past Collin and grabbed one of the hangers. She twisted it slightly, allowing her to unbend the hanger and stretch it just wide enough to stick each end into what looked like nail holes in the back of the closet.

  As soon as she stuck the hanger through those holes, there was a buzzing sound and a click. The back of the closet opened, revealing a long, narrow hallway. Mek could barely walk through this hallway without his shoulders brushing against the sides.

  As Tracy re-bent the hanger, she smiled at Collin. Each base had its secret entrances, and each of them was cleverly hidden in some way or another. Collin assumed that the trick to this entrance was to complete a circuit, releasing a lock. It was an interesting approach, but his ability to be wowed had been dulled over the years.

  “We call it the Campus,” Tracy told him. “This building was a private school, before the education reform. After that, it was converted to storefronts and apartments, but the contractors in charge of making those changes kept a couple of things off of the blueprints. They managed to hide a hallway full of classrooms and sound-proofed the walls so nobody would know we were here. It's not as big as some, but it gets the job done.”

  When they reached the end of the narrow hallway, there was another door, with a series of combination locks running along the left-hand side. Tracy squeezed past Mek and began entering the various combinations.

  “What job?” Collin asked.

  Still focusing on the combinations, Tracy's only reply was “Hmm?”

  “What do you do here?”

  “We're a hub,” Mek told him. “We help organize information and supplies, transferring each between bases.”

  “The books you handed off that night on the highway went to a base on the far side of town,” Tracy added. “We get fresh fruits and vegetables from another base—We don't go to the bases. We just meet representatives and hand things off.”

  “Sounds dangerous,” Collin replied.

  Tracy shrugged, “Not if you know what you're doing.”

  She then froze and slowly turned around, looking at Collin as though she had offended him somehow. It took Collin a few seconds to remember that their book delivery was what started his whole situation with HAND.

  Tracy kept acting as though Collin were delicate and could be broken at any moment, just by her saying the wrong words. It was starting to annoy him. But maybe that was what she needed. Maybe she needed him to get angry with her, so that she could stop being angry with herself, for whatever misguided reason.

  “I'm a book runner,” he reminded her. “I knew what I was doing.” Then with a smile he added, “And I knew how to do it on time.”

  “I'm normally on time too. Except there was a checkpoint. How was I supposed to know that there would be a checkpoint?”

  Collin shrugged. It wasn't his question to answer.

  Tracy turned and resumed the task of unlocking the door to the Campus. When she wasn't looking at him anymore, Collin turned to Mek. Without looking back at Collin, Mek nodded his head just slightly. Collin wasn't sure what that meant.

  After all of the combinations were entered, Tracy pushed open the door to the Campus. Mek carried the girl in first, with Collin entering behind him. Tracy walked through the door last, securing each lock behind her.

  The Campus was exactly what Tracy had described. It was a long hallway, lined with lockers and classrooms on either side. There was what looked like a staircase in the middle of the hall, but it had been bricked over long ago. Now it served as little more than a place to sit for some of the base's residents.

  At first, it seemed as though nobody noticed Mek, Collin or Tracy entering the Campus. For that brief moment, Collin thought that he might be able to slip in under the radar and get some rest before being swarmed by people and hammered with questions about his time in captivity.

  Then one teenage boy looked over and saw Collin. He started to look back to the book in his hand before his mind put together all of the information that it had gathered from that glance. Then he realized who he'd seen and his eyes darted back to Collin.

  After that, it was like dominoes falling. The teenage boy tapped his friend on the shoulder and a comment from that friend caught the attention of an older woman walking by, which caused a middle-aged man to nearly run into her. The wave of disruption moved down the hallway and eventually turned to a wave of realization as each of those people looked at Collin.

  He knew this was coming. His face had been plastered all over town when HAND was searching for him, and apparently his letter to the people of the city had managed to make its way around while he was being tortured. But knowing that this was coming didn't make it any less awkward. Those people were looking at him as though they expected something that he couldn't offer. He didn't have answers. He wasn't a prophet, come to speak to the people and impart wisdom on them. He was a man who, at moments, had a hard time remembering which conversations with his ex-girlfriend were real and which were the products of his broken mind.

  Mek continued to walk down the hall and brought the little girl into one of the classrooms while Collin stood there, frozen in the spotlight. What was he supposed to do now? How could he make those people stop looking at him?

  “Some said we couldn't do it,” Tracy said, standing next to Collin, and loudly enough for people halfway down the hallway to hear her. “But those people would be wrong. Say hello to Collin Powers!”

  Cheers erupted so suddenly that Collin flinched at the sound of them. He hoped that the sound-proofing that Tracy had spoken to him about earlier was strong, or else they would all be in custody by nightfall.

  Leaning in closer to Collin, Tracy said, “Say something.”

  “Like what?” he asked her, feeling sweat dripping down his back.

  “Just spe
ak.”

  Collin wanted more than anything in the world at that moment to just walk into a dark room and sit in silence for a little while. He wanted to eat food and sleep without worrying about being woken up by a sudden surge of pain. But that wasn't an option. There were hundreds—okay, dozens—of people staring at him, waiting for him to say something. Waiting for him to live up to the image of Collin Powers that had been building in their heads for a month before they ever saw him.

  He took a step forward and cleared his throat. In his head, he was wondering why he stepped forward. There wasn't a microphone. He wondered if he looked stupid for stepping forward. But he couldn't dwell. He needed to get this over with. So, he began to talk.

  “I guess you all know who I am,” he said, realizing that he wasn't speaking loudly enough to be heard at the far end of the hallway. Speaking a little bit louder, he said, “A month ago, I was taken into HAND custody with one hope. It wasn't the hope of being rescued, because I honestly didn't think it was possible.

  “The hope that I had when I was captured was that the loyalists in this city would be forced to see what we see. The lies that they're fed on a daily basis. The corruption. And I guess my hope was realized.”

  Aside from his own voice, the hallway was silent. Collin wished that there was some other noise—something to make him feel as though all of those people weren't staring at him, hanging on his every word, but they were. It didn't make sense to him, and for a split second he entertained the notion that he might still be locked up, living in a delusion. But it was too real.

  “The world I left was a world where Freedom was forced to hide in the shadows. Our name was whispered, rather than spoken outright. But the world I walked into today is something else entirely. A world where our Bill of Rights is being spread around town faster than the authorities can control it. This is a world where people are talking. A world with hope.

  “I never dreamed that I would walk out of that building. Going in, I assumed that I would be dead within a week. But the impossible happened. I am alive. And because of your efforts, I am free!”