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

by Kyle Andrews

  Curious as he might have been, he only trusted one person. He had known Marti for a long time and she was the only person in the entire school that he could absolutely depend on, if and when all hell broke loose.

  Funny, he never thought in those terms before Uly and Libby were murdered. He was always careful about what he did and said. He always knew that he had enemies, but he never thought in terms of war until recently. Now, each person was either a ally or an enemy. No in-between. Every classroom and hallway was a potential battlefield. Every pencil, a potential weapon.

  It didn't help that many of his teammates and fellow students had taken it upon themselves to decide that he was a terrorist. They would pick fights with him. Sometimes he would just move on and ignore them. Other times, he would allow himself to be bested. He wanted to be seen as the victim, not the aggressor. The weakling, not the champion. Sympathy would work in his favor. Respect would get him killed.

  The thing that he didn't tell anyone was that he had come to look forward to those beatings. He wanted to feel the physical pain. It kept him focused. It strengthened his resolve.

  He hadn't been back to the Garden in days. His only communication with Freedom was in secret messages, passed through Marti whenever he wound up in the nurse's office after one of his beatings. They were never long messages. Marti would express concern from either herself or Aaron. He would respond by saying that he would get back there as soon as he could. He asked Marti to take care of his dog while he was away. It was crazy how much he missed Ammo, but he couldn't get back and he couldn't afford to have the dog brought to him.

  There was one other favor that he had asked Marti just that morning, but because she wasn't in the nurse's office when he visited, he had to leave the note in their hiding space behind the clock and hope that she got it in time. As the day wore on, he grew more anxious about whether or not she had gotten it. Either way, the result would be interesting.

  “Good morning, Justin,” came the familiar voice of the school's counselor, Willa Prescott. The woman who couldn't have been much older than Justin, but who insisted on dressing like an old lady.

  Willa smiled and tilted her head in a sympathetic way. She'd been doing it all week, every time she called him into her office. She always wanted to talk about his losses. She kept pushing and pushing, beyond the boundaries of her job. She was fishing and he didn't enjoy feeling like the catch of the day.

  “I have class,” he told her.

  Willa nodded, “Math. It's not something that I believe you'll be needing in your post-graduation life. You can miss a day.”

  “Not legally.”

  Willa chuckled, though Justin wasn't entirely joking. Skipping classes or entire days of school was strictly frowned upon. Do it too often and your activities could be monitored. The authorities could be put on notice. You could be detained. Questioned. Arrested. Tortured. Murdered. He wasn't really sure if it had ever gone that far before, but it was seeming more and more like the sky was the limit.

  “You can miss one day. I discussed it with your teacher. You have my authority,” Willa told him.

  “Can I have it in writing?”

  Willa's smile grew even wider and said, “That won't be necessary.”

  Justin wanted to argue the point, but he decided against it. He had gone through different versions of this conversation with her every day since he returned to school. Usually, she ordered him to meet her in her office and then made him wait there for ten or fifteen minutes, until she decided to show up. He figured that it was a strategy, to make him wait for her. To give her the upper hand in their conversations, as though she didn't already have it simply by virtue of being a member of the school staff.

  Willa had an extra sparkle in her eye on this particular day. She was eager to get on with their meeting, so he wouldn't be waiting.

  They walked to her office and she gestured for Justin to take a seat. He obeyed and sat down as Willa closed the door behind them.

  Walking around her desk, she said, “Did I ever tell you that I met with Libby, not long before she disappeared?”

  “Yes. A few times,” Justin replied. Willa made it a point to mention it every single time they met, yet always approached it as though she had never told him before.

  “Right,” she smiled, sitting down and taking a deep breath. “She was a... What was that word that they used to use? Firecracker?”

  Though Willa seemed amused with herself for using the term, Justin didn't smile. He had grown tired of this back and forth. She was hoping to break him, and he wasn't going to allow that to happen. Pretending to like her wasn't necessary.

  “She had so much resolve,” Willa noted, nodding her head. She then turned the comment around by saying, “And that's really what got her killed, wouldn't you agree?”

  Justin didn't answer. He just watched Willa, waiting for her to get on with whatever it was that she had to say.

  “You can't be that rebellious and get away with it. You can't fight the system and expect to win. That's just foolish, wouldn't you agree?”

  “Can I go do math now?” Justin asked her. He normally wouldn't be this forward, but his patience was wearing thin.

  Willa pointed at him and said, “Firecracker.”

  “I've told you before, I haven't been close to Libby for a long time. I never knew about Uly. You've questioned me. You've tested me. I don't know what more you want.”

  “My,” Willa grinned. “You're not yourself today. Or maybe you are.”

  Realizing that he might be pushing things a little too much, Justin looked down and said, “I'm sorry. I just... I have been beaten by kids who think I'm a terrorist. I've been looked at like I tried to bomb a hospital myself. I've been coming in here day after day, and I get the feeling that you want me to say something that I'm not going to say, because it isn't true.”

  “Has it been hard for you?”

  “It hasn't been easy.”

  “Losing your friends?”

  Justin smiled out of frustration and said, “They weren't my friends. I didn't even know who they were.”

  He could feel his words getting stuck in his throat. He hated saying them, but he had to do what he had to do. So, looking Willa in the eye, he said, “Friends are a myth. It's an outdated notion. Something that children curl up with at night like a security blanket, because they want to feel like someone cares about them.”

  “You don't believe that your friends were important to you?”

  “I did. But the truth is, they were never going to swoop in and save me when things got hard. They were out for themselves, just like everyone else in this world.”

  “Do you trust anyone? Marti?”

  “People are unreliable. But I do have faith.”

  “In what?”

  Justin moved his eyes over to the poster on the wall, which showed a HAND officer guarding a sleeping child. Willa looked over at the poster and stared at it for a moment, thinking about what she wanted to say next.

  After some consideration, she asked, “You believe in the system?”

  “It's just about the only reliable thing in this world,” Justin replied.

  Willa nodded and looked down at her desk. Without smiling, she said, “I've been trying to get you to tell me about your friends for days now. To tell me what you feel about them.”

  “I don't feel anything.”

  She tapped her finger on her desk and then looked up at him as she said, “I don't believe you. I know people, Justin. I know when they're holding back. I know when they're hiding something. It's my job.”

  Justin didn't respond to her, though Willa stopped to give him the chance. Maybe she wanted him to defend himself or put up a fight, but he wasn't going to feed into her suspicion anymore. For days, he had been watching his back. He'd been followed. He'd been questioned. He was sick of it. It ended here.

  “Did you know that I have the authority to go into anyone's locker that I want?”

  Justin looked her i
n the eye, making a point not to look away even though he wanted to. Still, he said nothing.

  “Yeah,” she smiled. “You'd be amazed how many people forget about that. They think lockers are private. Safe. But they're wrong. So when they put something in their lockers that they won't want anyone to find, they're always surprised to see it pop up here on my desk. They panic. Their eyes widen.”

  Willa opened her desk drawer and pulled out a stack of papers. She slapped them down on her desk and then held her hands out in front of herself as though she were silently saying 'ta-da.'

  Justin leaned forward and looked at the papers. By this point, his heart was starting to beat a little bit faster. His mouth was dry. But he didn't allow any of that to show through as he studied what was on the papers. They were all of the forbidden documents that had been passed around the city after they were discovered in Libby's blood. The documents that had vanished from the streets just as quickly, once the authorities started cracking down on anyone who even remotely resembled a Freedom sympathizer.

  Justin swallowed hard. This was it.

  “Do you know what these are?” Willa asked him.

  Justin nodded, but he didn't say anything.

  Willa's smile took on a slightly evil appearance as she asked, “Do you know where I got them?”

  Justin shook his head.

  “C'mon. Don't you think it's time we stopped playing games?”

  Justin remained quiet. This seemed to bother Willa. She wanted him to jump up and proclaim his innocence, or run out of the office like a thief. But he wouldn't do either of those things. He offered her nothing to work with here.

  Willa nodded snidely and pulled her tablet closer. She pressed a button on it and said, “I've just asked security to come in here. The principal too. There is nowhere for you to go from here. You're caught.”

  Justin's heart was pounding so strongly that he was sure she would be able to see it from the other side of her desk. He willed himself to breathe slowly and calmly, though he felt as though he were out of breath. His palms were sweating. He looked away from Willa, toward the window. He wanted to be outside, but there was no way to leave now.

  She stared at him, waiting for him to crack. She wanted to see the panic that he was feeling, and when he wouldn't give her the pleasure, Willa grew genuinely annoyed.

  “Say something,” she told him, her words clipped by frustration.

  He said nothing.

  “Say something,” she repeated.

  Still, he remained silent.

  A moment later, he could hear the door opening behind him. He could hear at least two men walking into the room, with keys making chain-like noises as they went. It was school security. He didn't need to look back to know that. Undoubtedly, the principal was there with them.

  Willa's annoyance turned to smugness as she looked at Justin. He allowed himself to meet her eyes for just a moment before the principal spoke.

  “Is this it?” the principal asked.

  “I told you I could get her to out herself,” Justin replied, gesturing toward the papers spread out in front of him. He widened his eyes in faked worry and mirrored Willa's smugness as the security guards moved to either side of Willa's desk.

  “What?” Willa asked, knocked completely off balance by what was happening.

  Justin stood up and leaned on Willa's desk as he told her, “People like you make me sick. I will never join your pathetic cause. I hope you're put out of your misery, just like Uly and Libby were before you.”

  He then turned to the principal and said, “Do you need me for anything else?”

  The principal shook his head and allowed Justin to walk out of the room. The last thing he heard the principal say to the security officers as he left was “Toss the room.”

  The office door was closed behind Justin and he could hear the search begin. He could hear Willa screaming for a few seconds. Then she stopped and he never heard a thing from her again.

  All week long, Justin had been followed and questioned. Everyone in the school was looking at him as though he were a terrorist and Willa was pulling him into her office every day, trying her best to pull the truth out of him. She wanted praises and a promotion, while he got locked up and tortured.

  He couldn't return to the Garden until the matter was settled, so he settled it, once and for all.

  Part of Willa's tactic was to make Justin wait in her office, putting her in a position of power over him during their conversations. She also gave Justin plenty of time to work on his plan for her.

  When the security guards searched her office, they would find hostile content stashed behind her posters and a piece of fresh fruit from the Garden in her filing cabinet... Assuming that Marti got his note and was able to sneak into the office in time.

  None of the papers in his locker or in her office had his fingerprints on them. When tested, hers were the only prints that anyone would find. He even managed to print one or two of those documents right from her own tablet.

  Willa Prescott wanted to expose Justin. She wanted to make him suffer for being a member of Freedom. But she wasn't a smart woman. She was a follower. She was a willing participant in the system that cost Uly and Libby their lives. She took delight in their deaths and would love nothing more than to add more names to the list. Justin hated people like her, but at least he could rest assured that by the time she died, Willa wouldn't be such a big fan of the system anymore.

  18

  Somewhere deep down inside, Rose always pictured a future with her family. She could barely tolerate them on a good day, but she wanted to show them a better world and a better way of life. She wanted her niece to know what it felt like to have a dream and to know that with enough hard work and effort, that dream could come true. She wanted her sister to know what it felt like to live somewhere that she actually wanted live and to eat food that she actually wanted to eat.

  She wanted to stand proudly before them with a smile on her face and show them what she had done for them. She wanted to see the look of realization wash over them as they woke up from their federally funded trance and saw the world for the first time without supplements in their system.

  But the funny thing about dreams like that is that they depend on other people who don't want the same thing. Her family would have to be dragged kicking and screaming into that future, and if she stood proudly before them with a smile on her face, they would probably hate her for what she had done to them.

  Was it worth it? The question repeated in her head again and again in the days that followed her final departure from that home and that life. Was the fight for her future and her freedom worth the sacrifice of her family? Was it worth leaving behind everything she had ever known?

  At the end of the day, the simple answer was yes. Her family wasn't really her family. They didn't feel for her the way that she felt for them. She would take a bullet to the gut while being set on fire for her niece's sake, but Ze wouldn't hesitate to call the authorities and turn Rose over to them. She didn't care that Rose would be hurt or killed. All she cared about was the reward of being praised by the system that made up her entire world. The system that fed her and clothed her. The system that put a roof over her head.

  Daph at least showed some sign of caring about her sister. She showed some human emotion. But her loyalty to the system was almost more offensive because of this. She acted against her own instinct because she refused to question what she was told. She refused to look at the world, and Rose had the sneaking suspicion that Daph knew exactly what she would see if she ever did look. Daph turned a blind eye because it was easy.

  The family that Rose was fighting for existed only in her head. The cute and sweet little girl that Ze once was no longer existed. The big family dinners, filled with laughter, were a dream that could never come true.

  As hard as it was for her to let go of those dreams, it also forced Rose to realize that she couldn't force people to think and feel. Whatever she did, she had to d
o for her own good and for the greater good. Leaving her family behind was worth it, because the kind of life she wanted for herself couldn't involve them. The world she dreamed of didn't have room for people who were content to sit by and allow the system to dictate their every waking moment.

  She tried to make her peace with these facts. She left her home and never looked back. As far as she could tell, there was no bounty on her head, so maybe Daph had stopped Ze from calling the hotline. It was something, but it wasn't enough.

  Rose went to her job at the restaurant each day. She waited tables whenever people came in. It wasn't something that happened often, but it happened often enough to keep up the appearance of a normal city, with normal people instead of a giant prison full of slaves.

  At night, she returned to the Garden. She took care of her friend's dog, when she could find him. She ate dinner with people who smiled and joked. People who wanted to be there. People who wanted to eat the food that was in front of them. She slept soundly, because the system had no power under that roof. Because those people wouldn't try to have her killed for expressing a thought or an opinion.

  The word 'family' began to take on a new meaning. It referred to the people who would have her back when she needed them. The people who would fight for her, rather than fight against her. People who might not always agree with her, but who wouldn't consider her evil for having an opinion of her own. She chose that family. She didn't even know all of their names, but they were hers. She was home.

  This realization didn't keep her from hurting or getting angry with the way the world had worked out.

  Amanda had a way of bringing that frustration out of Rose. Even though she always told herself that she was going to visit Amanda for only the purest of intentions, Rose sometimes wondered if she chose to go there when she wanted to pick a fight.

  “How's the revolution working out for you?” Amanda asked as Rose sat down during her most recent visit.

  “How'd the system work out for you?”

  “Just fine, thanks.”

  “That's why you were practically dead when Justin found you?”